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.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (12207)	8/29/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I trained with ARVN air force at Boloxi in 71. There were line and field grade officers there, as well as senior NCOs. As a Californian going to Mississippi, I was not exactly overwhelmed though I did enjoy Belengrath Gardens over in 'Bama, but I can imagine that those S. Vietnamese regulars were suitably impressed, given the travels I've done in SEA since then. There's nothing wrong with a policy of constructive engagement but I think one has to consider the historical perspective. The Soviet Union was paranoically seeing an alliance of Western Allies surrounding and encroaching the motherland. They were intent on securing buffering and broadening their way of life. Their presense and support in Vietnam would probably not be diminished by constructive engagement in that distant time either by themselves or their Chinese surrogates. It was a team effort. Speaking of the Communism's virulence and capacity to oppress, its my perception that the kernal of this world movement that gave rise to the USSR sprung to life within Russia and successfully festered into its full blown virulent and oppressive self without any outside influence. Maybe conditions were just right. In defense of the evolution of the Cold War, I find it interesting that throughout the 50 year period after WW2 and even past the fall of USSR that a bipolar world stimulated and honed capitalism both here in the US and abroad. More recently with the elimination of a clear and present enemy, and the obvious capitalization ongoing in Communist China we are faced with a near worldwide economic panic which might be leading us to a deflationary disaster. Maybe if Yelsin is stubborn enough, he will force the hand of his internal competitors and give us a return of the previous bogeyman that a recommunized or even socialized or facist revolution in Russia would represent. Short of that, we can only hope that someone will finally unbury the bodies of the little green men who died in Roswell, NM, so long ago.

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (12207)	8/30/1998 10:56:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<<I can't agree with your premise that Ho "did not yet have the apparatus to destroy resistance with violence and terror." Ho had the band of guerillas who had been fighting the Japanese with him.>> In 1945 he had a core armed force of around 300 men, with a larger number of auxiliaries, few if any of which he would have regarded as ideologically trustworthy. He would have had to spread them awfully thin to terrorize the entire nation. <<All it takes is the willingness to start killing any rivals who get in your way, and Ho was doing this from the time the Japanese left.>> Wrong. Initial occupation of northern Vietnam was by Chiang Kai-Shek's forces, the first time the artificial north/south division was imposed. During this period Ho made extreme efforts to keep his act clean, obviously courting world approval. The real violence took place after the French return. This provided Ho with a wonderful excuse to eliminate rivals: when a nation is occupied by an invading army, violence against collaborators is easily justified, and it's rarely difficult to pin that tag on someone you dislike. <<he demonstrated that he also learned Lenin's teachings on the art of seizing power with a small, disciplined cadre.>> Hardly a craft unique to communists. Witness Hitler, Mussolini, and any number of others. <<As for training ARVN field grade officers in the US, we did exactly that.>> Far too little, far too late. I think you're giving communism a romantic mystique which it does not necessarily deserve. It is not an all-consuming force. Western European countries have had legal communist parties for years, and they haven't been overwhelmed. It's pretty clear from history that short of external conquest, only countries where the populace has lost all hope in the existing system are vulnerable to communist revolution. America's great mistake in fighting communism came in trying to support those existing systems, instead of trying to provide an alternative vehicle for entirely reasonable ambitions, like being free of domination by outside powers or feudal elites. Playing "what if" can be fueled by random speculation or hard reason. Our initial point of contention was whether an American move to seize Hanoi and Haiphong and capture Ho would have ended the war. When I say it wouldn't it's not exactly a random statement. Ho would presumably have responded as he would have responded in the past - retreat to the countryside and fight a guerilla war. We've already discussed the difficulty of creating a substitute government. Even if you do install a government, it needs an army and a police force. Sure, you can recruit from those who left, but then you've got the same guys that were already defeated under the French. Bottom line is extended American occupation of the entire country. We won every battle in Vietnam, but lost the war for a simple, non-military reason. The country was simply not strategically vital to us, and the communists knew it. This knowledge enabled them to abandon any plan to achieve military victory, fight a war of attrition, and wear us down, which inevitably they did. Devoting major strategic resources to non-essential objectives is a sure recipe for defeat. Fighting a communist insurgency with military force is like punching the tar baby. You just get stuck. The great tragedy of the '50s is that those who recognized this truth - and there were many - were dismissed as pinko sympathizers and ignored. Steve