The Vietnam War

[Mike Utinne]

Why didn't Canada stop this war?

[eyeball]

7 hours ago, Mike Utinne said:

Why didn't Canada stop this war?

 

[bush_cheney2004]

7 hours ago, Mike Utinne said:

Why didn't Canada stop this war?

 

Because Canada wanted to make billions of dollars on war materials....like defoliants, napalm, munitions, generators, uniforms, etc...and that is exactly what Canada did.

K' ching !

 

https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/supplying-the-war-machine

[Dougie93]

Once Diem was deposed, the Americans were actually fighting the good fight, because in the wake of the internal putsch in the North, they weren't fighting the Viet Minh, but rather a monstrous Stalinist regime backed by the Maoist Chinese.

The mistake was chasing the fight inland with Search & Destroy when the Americans could have just stayed in the cities and waited for the NVA to mass, then bomb them into oblivion with Arc Light.

If Creighton Abrams had been in command from the get go, the war effort could have been sustained until the North lost Soviet and Chinese support with the onset of Detente.

When Nixon deescalated the Cold War, the Soviets and Chinese lost interest in Vietnam, but the Democrats had already lost the war before Nixon could fix it.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Dougie93

[August1991]

On 5/10/2019 at 10:16 PM, Dougie93 said:

The thing to understand is that North Vietnam was not a monolith.

.....

How clueless can one be?

======

The "Vietnam War" is better described as the "Battle of Vietnam" since it was one fight in a larger "Cold War" that America ultimately won.

Evidence?

The Soviet Union no longer exists.

 

[August1991]

On 5/11/2019 at 5:06 AM, Mike Utinne said:

Why didn't Canada stop this war?

Because like many Westerners at the time, we were confused.

[August1991]

On 5/11/2019 at 12:33 PM, bush_cheney2004 said:

Because Canada wanted to make billions of dollars on war materials....

 

Disagree.

=====

We simply didn't see the threat. I understood it later in life, once I had travelled behind the Iron Curtain, spoken to people.

Trudeau Snr/Nixon were wrong. Reagan/Thatcher - like Churchill with Hitler - dealt with it correctly.

(By nature, Canadians prefer that everyone get along.)

=====

I reckon that Nixon had no political principle - except winning. (IMHO, he's the ideal politician.)

Trudeau Snr, unlike Nixon, had a political principle - which justified him in Canada.

In either case, both were wrong on the world scene.

As I say, both Nixon and Trudeau Snr were wrong. Detente was wrong. The Soviet Union is now no more.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were correct.

 

 

  

Edited May 19, 2019 by August1991

[Answer me please]

On 5/19/2019 at 5:00 PM, August1991 said:

Because like many Westerners at the time, we were confused.

 

Were you also confused when the US invaded Iraq?

[August1991]

On 7/17/2019 at 1:55 PM, Answer me please said:

 

Were you also confused when the US invaded Iraq?

At the time, I thought that Bush Jnr was wrong to invade Iraq.

Why?

Iraq, like Canada, is a complicated place.

[Dougie93]

On 5/19/2019 at 2:55 AM, August1991 said:

How clueless can one be?

One has to be pretty clueless about North Vietnam if they don't realize that it was not a monolith but rather divided into factions, eventually coalescing into a Soviet backed faction led by Ho Chi Minh which was deposed by a Chinese backed faction led by Party 1st Secretary Le Duan, who turned out to be the Stalin of Indochina.

[Dougie93]

The Chinese however turned out to be too radical for even Le Duan, when they backed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, at which point the North Vietnamese flipped back to the Soviets and went to war with the Khmer Rouge who used all the North Vietnamese tactics which they had used against the Americans, back against the North Vietnamese, who were now in the position of the invaders.

This then led to a direct confrontation between the Chinese and Vietnam when China invaded Vietnam in 1979.

The belief that the Communists were one big monolith, rather than them actually being sworn enemies in fact, is called the Domino Theory.

Which was the reason the United States got involved in the first place, under the Eisenhower Administration.

Ike having invented said Domino Theory,  at a press conference on 7 April 1954.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Dougie93

[Michael Hardner]

23 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Ike having invented said Domino Theory,  at a press conference on 7 April 1954.

So Ike improvised the term ?

[Dougie93]

16 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

So Ike improvised the term ?

Well the concept that the Communists were a monolith which was going to spread relentlessly predates the Domino Theory itself, but Ike was the first to invoke the Dominoes, when speaking about the situation in Indochina regarding the French Indochinese War against the Viet Minh to justify why America was backing the French.

"Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.^" ~ General Eisenhower, 7 April 1954

[Dougie93]

It was complete nonsense of course, but when the Supreme Allied Commander from the Second World War invoked it, that made it the gospel once and for all time

It persists still by the way, because the American position in the Middle East now is still the Domino Theory, Jimmy Carter simply rebranded it as the Carter Doctrine in 1979 in the face of another Dien Bien Phu type crisis with the Iranian Revolution, and Iran remains the North Vietnam of the Middle East to this hour in fact.

The Saudis are of course the ARVN, similarly unable to fight their way out of a wet paper bag in Yemen no matter how much American kit they are given.

That's not actually fair to the ARVN, the Americans gave the ARVN a bad rap because the Americans needed scapegoats, the ARVN were honestly much better troops than the Saudis, the Saudis are frikkin pathetic.

That's actually another Big Lie in Vietnam, that the South Vietnamese wouldn't fight.

It was more nuanced than that, the South Vietnamese simply refused to chase the National Liberation Front through the jungle stepping on booby traps as they went.

The ARVN wasn't hardcore enough for that, only the American troops were that disciplined.

But each time Le Duan launched one his big offensives against the cities on the coast, which was every four years, 64', 68', 72' and they went early in 75', the ARVN fought hard to defend the cities, although it was lost cause in 75' and once the NVA was at the gates the ARVN packed it in.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Dougie93

[August1991]

I was wrong.

Trudeau, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan were all correct.

[Rebound]

7 hours ago, August1991 said:

I was wrong.

Trudeau, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan were all correct.

Correct about what?

[August1991]

On 9/11/2023 at 9:21 AM, Rebound said:

Correct about what?

They all disagreed with compromise.

Trudeau, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan all said - no.

Trudeau famously said - after repeated questions: :"Someone will have to negotiate - but it won't be me."

Thatcher? "I don't turn."

[August1991]

Yet Nixon famously went to China. He compromised.

True, Nixon bombed Hanoi - but not as Churchill did Dresden.

IMHO, Nixon was a player - like Clinton and Truman and Roosevelt. American politicians are mostly players.

Reagan was different - he was like Trudeau. He had a principle.

====

I prefer a State with politicians such as Nixon and Clinton.

Trudeau was more a federalist than a democrat.

Lévesque was more a democrat than a federalist.

I prefer politicians such as Lévesque - players.

Edited September 13, 2023 by August1991

[Rebound]

5 hours ago, August1991 said:

Yet Nixon famously went to China. He compromised.

True, Nixon bombed Hanoi - but not as Churchill did Dresden.

IMHO, Nixon was a player - like Clinton and Truman and Roosevelt. American politicians are mostly players.

Reagan was different - he was like Trudeau. He had a principle.

====

I prefer a State with politicians such as Nixon and Clinton.

Trudeau was more a federalist than a democrat.

Lévesque was more a democrat than a federalist.

I prefer politicians such as Lévesque - players.

If it weren’t for Roosevelt you’d be speaking Japanese. Or German. Roosevelt kicked everybody’s ass in four years.  He got America building bombers, fighters, subs, aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, tanks and more incredibly fast.  Then he built massive shipyards to get it all shipped to Europe, Africa, Russia and the Pacific. Then he had atomic weapons invented which Iran still can’t don. 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Rebound

[Michael Hardner]

9 minutes ago, Rebound said:

If it weren’t for Roosevelt you’d be speaking Japanese. Or German.  

I always thought this was a weird thing to say.  Japan spoke Japanese after 1945.  Germany spoke German in both East/West not Russian/English.

[Rebound]

43 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

I always thought this was a weird thing to say.  Japan spoke Japanese after 1945.  Germany spoke German in both East/West not Russian/English.

What it means is that if it weren’t for Roosevelt, Canada would be occupied by Germany and/or Japan.  That’s what it means. 

[Michael Hardner]

2 minutes ago, Rebound said:

What it means is that if it weren’t for Roosevelt, Canada would be occupied by Germany and/or Japan.  That’s what it means. 

Yeah, that's obvious but the 'speaking German' thing is a bit threadbare... just a side comment

[Rebound]

On 5/19/2019 at 2:55 AM, August1991 said:

How clueless can one be?

======

The "Vietnam War" is better described as the "Battle of Vietnam" since it was one fight in a larger "Cold War" that America ultimately won.

Evidence?

The Soviet Union no longer exists.

 

But Vietnam is still communist. 

[robosmith]

10 hours ago, August1991 said:

Yet Nixon famously went to China. He compromised.

True, Nixon bombed Hanoi - but not as Churchill did Dresden.

IMHO, Nixon was a player - like Clinton and Truman and Roosevelt. American politicians are mostly players.

Reagan was different - he was like Trudeau. He had a principle.

====

I prefer a State with politicians such as Nixon and Clinton.

Trudeau was more a federalist than a democrat.

Lévesque was more a democrat than a federalist.

I prefer politicians such as Lévesque - players.

Reagan traded arms to Iran for hostages.

Quote

What followed would alter the public's perception of the president dramatically. How "Iran" and "Contra" came to be said in the same breath was the result of complicated covert activities, all carried out, the players said, in the name of democracy.

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home," and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan's campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

...

By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

When the Lebanese newspaper "Al-Shiraa" printed an exposé on the clandestine activities in November 1986, Reagan went on television and vehemently denied that any such operation had occurred. He retracted the statement a week later, insisting that the sale of weapons had not been an arms-for-hostages deal. Despite the fact that Reagan defended the actions by virtue of their good intentions, his honesty was doubted. Polls showed that only 14 percent of Americans believed the president when he said he had not traded arms for hostages.

And he secretly negotiated with Iran before he was elected, to leave hostages held by Iran to rot until after the election.

The Reagan Campaign Delayed the Release of the Iranian Hostages

Quote

The New York Times confirmed a long-ignored story that in the summer of 1980, Casey persuaded former Texas Governor John Connally to embark on a secret mission to the Middle East, where Connally and his associate, Ben Barnes, asked various Arab leaders to urge the Iranians not to release the 52 hostages. This firsthand account was only the latest evidence that Casey, at a minimum, attempted to prolong their captivity in order to help his [Reagan] candidate win.

Reagan sacrificed whatever "principle" he had.

[August1991]

On 9/13/2023 at 1:03 PM, Rebound said:

But Vietnam is still communist. 

Strongly disagree.

I have been to Vietnam, 2022 - both north and south.

Reagan won the cold war.

Let me make this more plain: you Americans won the Cold War.

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by August1991