Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (148618)	10/22/2004 9:54:05 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Ed, It amazes me how we can be so much on the same page re: vietnam but we diverge so sharply on Iraq and the WOT. You will accuse me of not learning the lessons of vietnam and i will maintain that you learned the wrong lessons from that war. What i do understand is that the next admin(whoever it is) needs to gain greater consensus in fp that can make two old dogs like us support a common policy for a change along with bruce, gst and a bunch of others on this thread. Bush did not do this well at all but my hope is that he is better in term2 and as i posted earlier, if the dems really had a better alternative i too might have voted differently based on Ops failure in post-war war. mike

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (148618)	10/22/2004 12:43:40 PM
From: Bruce L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<< I have read, somewhere, that we did sell out the S. Vietnamese in the Paris accords. The rumor is that Kissinger was simply buying time to get our troops out and save face, but that there was an implicit agreement that we would take no action when the North later invaded.>> If you have a source for this, I have never seen it. If, in fact, this was the case, it would have been morally wrong. The South Vietnamese People were the third-party beneficiaries of this Agreement; all those Vietnamese who had gone out on a limb to support us from 1959 - 1973 they had a right to expect expect that we would honor our commitments made in Paris. To abandon them - and there were millions - was morally bankrupt. <<As far as "romantic" visions of people fighting to their death for big ideas, what do you think people voluntarily risk their lives for? It's usually for survival or for big ideas. What would you fight and risk your life for?>> My Brother, you know very well that you are - in debate terms - switching 'apples for oranges.' I was referring to your "romantic" image of 'noble and brave' Vietcong holding 'true through death' to their "idea" of a united (communist) Vietnam. Hogwash IMO. <<For instance, how do you continue to "help" prop up a government when its people and its army will NOT fight for that same government. Don't forget that we'd fought and died propping up that corrupt, morally bankrupt puppet government for years.>> My Brother, you are deliberately ducking the argument. Clearly, from any objective standpoint, the South Vietnamese Army AND PEOPLE did fight bravely from 1973 - 1975. That they did not prevail had nothing to do with their moral fiber - no more than the defeat of the French in 1940 to the Germans proved the latter's moral superiority. In 1975, the South Vietnamese govenment was not perfect; but it was far from the worst government in the world, and the South Vietnamese People clearly preferred it to the harsh Spartan-style regime of North Vietnam. Bruce