Did you (Would you have) support America's involvement in Vietnam?

[JanMichael]

Poll question: Did you (Would you have) support America's involvement in Vietnam?

Done in the spirit of the war posts.

[David Zephyr]

1. JanMichael.

"Done in the spirit of the war posts." -- You kill me. :hi:

Listen, if 70% of Americans still believe that Saddam orchestrated the events of 9/11, I am no longer surprized that even at a leftwing site like this that we would have war supporters. I need a cold Kirin.

Ooops. On edit: I forgot to make sure the record for Ashcroft exists that I voted No on the War that Allen Dulles helped begin and that Henry Kissinger made a fortune from.

[JanMichael]

3. I try to be subtle, I really do.

Kirin would be grand!

I'm on my last Molson Golden (The only mass market 6-pack that's enough) as we speak.

[union_maid]

5. Opposed, but not early on

I was a young teenager when we started to get deeper in the Big Muddy. I wasn't paying a lot of attention. I trusted our president, whomever that happened to be, and our government. Kind of like Britney Spears does now, I guess. Like..totally. When draft card burning started in earnest, I still wasn't so sure. As the body counts mounted each day and officers and soldiers brought back stories of atrocities on both sides, I gradually became antiwar.

[CarlBallard]

2. I put I don't know

Because while I oppose it in hindsight, I don't know what I would have thought if I was alive at the time.

[buddhamama]

4. No.

[On the Road]

6. Wait a Minute, I May Have Voted Wrong

I voted "no" based on what I know now. I was in high school and college during Vietnam, and I was so apolitical I didn't have a strong opinion. I may have supported it by default like a lot of people support Iraq today.

That "Did You (or Would You Have)" is ambiguous.

[xJlM]

7. I was 12 years old in 1973

When tricky Dick started to withdraw troops. I was pretty confused as a kid about where to stand on a war, so I didn't vote in your poll.

[FloridaPat]

8. Still waiting to hear why we were there for 20 years.

Some interesting notes in the NYT after the war. 1. There are suspected to be very large oil reserves off the coast of Vietnam. 2. When the Vietcong took over, BO, AMACO, and someone else tried to keep the oil contracts they had with the previous US backed puppet government.

[pocoloco]

9. Wow! That reminds me

that I havn't heard anyone trash Jane Fonda lately!

[sujan]

10. hell no

[scarletwoman]

11. "Even now we lie to ourselves about Vietnam" -- Robert Jenson

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/clinton-vietnam.htm

<snip>

The standard story in the United States about that war is that in our quest to guarantee peace and freedom for Vietnam, we misunderstood its history, politics and culture, leading to mistakes that doomed our effort. Some argue we should have gotten out sooner than we did; others suggest we should have fought harder. But the common ground in mainstream opinion is that our motives were noble.

But we never fought in Vietnam for democracy. After World War II, the United States supported and financed France's attempt to retake its former colony. After the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954, the Geneva Conference called for free elections in 1956, which the United States and its South Vietnamese client regime blocked. In his memoirs, President Eisenhower explained why: In free elections, the communists would have won by an overwhelming margin. The United States is all for elections, so long as they turn out the way we want.

The central goal of U.S. policy-makers in Vietnam had nothing to do with freedom for the Vietnamese people, but instead was to make sure that an independent socialist course of development did not succeed. U.S. leaders invoked Cold War rhetoric about the threat of the communist monolith but really feared that a "virus" of independent development might infect the rest of Asia, perhaps even becoming a model for all the Third World.

To prevent the spread of the virus, we dropped 6.5 million tons of bombs and 400,000 tons of napalm on the people of Southeast Asia. Saturation bombing of civilian areas, counterterrorism programs and political assassination, routine killings of civilians and 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange to destroy crops and ground cover -- all were part of the U.S. terror war in Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia.

This interpretation is taken as obvious in much of the world, yet it is virtually unspeakable in polite and respectable circles in this country, which says much about the moral quality of polite and respectable people here.

(much more...)

I wish EVERYONE would read this!

I graduated high school in 1967, and went straight to the streets in protest against the war as soon as I entered college. I voted "no" in your poll, but that's only because I clicked there before I saw your 3rd option: "REALLY no!". (can't change my vote, dangit...)

Peace,
sw
:hippie:

[sandnsea]

13. And CAmerica, Africa...

and wherever else we've had little wars over the last 50 years. Guaranteeing capitalism. That's it.

[scarletwoman]

14. "Guaranteeing capitalism." -- yup, that's exactly it. (n/t)

[sandnsea]

12. Pretty young then, but still didn't

I was about 12 or so, 1969, when I knew something was 'amiss'. I vividly recall 'Dad, how come they always have 50 times more soldiers killed than we do?' He said something about not believing anything they were saying. No big liberal my Dad, not even a high school education; but no idiot either.

But to those who wonder why America is asleep, they really were then too. I remember a couple of conversations and utter disgust from my Dad. Both the war and the protestors. My mom though, who was usually opinionated... nothing. For the most part, I don't remember alot of discussion amongst the adults about it. Life went on. Cars and TV's were bought, camping trips and summer vacations, backyard bbq's. I remember more people talking about what Jeannie's bottle looked like in color than I do the war. Not much has really changed.

[DoNotRefill]

15. What's fucked up....

is that they really DID lose soldiers at an unbelievable rate. IIRC, after the war, the North Vietnamese (Giap, who would have been in a position to know) claimed to have lost over a million soldiers dead, compared to our 50,000. We killed a shitload of them, but they had the stronger will.

Had we as a nation wanted to win, we would have. It would have required invading North Viet Nam on a large scale to capture their leadership, but it was "do-able".

[scarletwoman]

16. "do-able" -- to what end?

Is making the world safe for global predatory capitalism a worthy cause for killing millions of people in their own damn country?

sw

[DoNotRefill]

19. Whoa, there...

I'm talking about from a tactical standpoint.

[sandnsea]

17. I totally disagree

We were bombing the entire region. We had operations all over the region. I totally reject this idea that we could have won if we'd wanted to. I used to believe that, but when I really stop and think about how much we actually DID do over there, I don't think so.

Iraq today is proof of it. It wouldn't matter how many troops we sent over there. All they have to do is know the country better, build tunnels, retreat over the borders, and hit sporadically. Over time, some cities move even more towards the 'rebels' and occasional all out battles take place. It's easy to see how there's no way to win this and there was no way to win Vietnam. The only way to win a war is if the people themselves turn towards the invaders or accept the concept that the winner rules, whoever it is. That's not going to happen in Iraq and it would never have happened in Vietnam.

And the body counts was one of the most purtrid things of that war, so let's not even go there.

[DoNotRefill]

20. I disagree.

We applied combat force in a severely haphazard manner. When confronted with guerilla attacks, such as Tet, we slaughtered them. From a military standpoint, Tet was a great victory for our side, in that it destroyed, what, at least 60% of the VC cadre in under 10 days of fighting? Afterwards, the VC was h'ors de combat, and the NVA had to come in to take up the slack caused by their inability to mount effective operations. It was, of course, a public relations disaster for our country.

Throughout the war, we maintained air superiority over the vast majority of North and South Viet Nam. Had that air superiority been let off the very short leash they were on, it would have DEVASTATED their entire country.

When faced with a "stand up fight", we killed them en masse. Had we actually invaded the North, the energies the North was putting into combat operations in the South would have been diverted to our forces in the North. We could have severed their lines of supply from China and Russia. They would have been in "a world of hurt". This would have allowed the South room to consolidate, and eventually take over the occupation duties in the North, getting us out.

The Rules of Engagement the military was forced to fight under, coupled with micromanagment from Washington were our biggest tactical problems. Our largest problem in general was our lack of a specific agenda, and an exit strategy, coupled with increasing unpopularity at home.

Please note: I'm strictly talking from a tactical perspective. The issue of should we have been there is entirely different.

[sandnsea]

22. Exactly

And after 13 years at least, where were we. Even if you can win military battles, you can't defeat a determined resistance. Not without winning over 'the hearts and minds' as the saying goes. I think Democrats finally get that (most anyway), Republicans still don't. If they did, Afghanistan would be in significantly better condition and reconstruction of Iraq would have been planned much better. We won't win these types of wars with military action alone.

[IndianaGreen]

18. I began as a hawk

ended as a dove when a Vietnamese interpreter for the US Army was assassinated by what turned out to be a Green Beret death squad working under CIA's Phoenix Plan.

His widow used to stand outside the US embassy in Saigon hoping to get an answer from the US government to the whereabouts of her husband.

[frustrated_lefty]

21. That's a difficult question to answer,

our involvement in Viet Nam spanned quite a hefty chunk of time. It was different than Iraq...there wasn't a sudden declaration of war and massive influx of American troops until the Gulf of Tonkin. We slipped and stumbled our way into Viet Nam starting out with a few hundred advisors back in the day when the CIA was the OSS. Our involvement in the area began to escalate when the French got their asses handed to them at Dien Bien Phu.

I don't think most American's could have rationally made a decision one way or another whether we should have been in Viet Nam during the 50s. By the mid 60's, though, it was blatantly clear something was wrong.

[ClintonTyree]

23. Absolutely not...................

I was a strong anti-war activist in the 60's and 70's and saw through that fiasco from the beginning. I watched a documentary today (can't remember what channel, the minds the first thing to go) about Kent State. What a flood of memories and feelings that brought back. I actually broke into tears for a while, remembering that horrible massacre, those moments in history, the entire Viet Nam era, the peace and love generation, acid trips, women, music, and the feeling that those heady days are forever gone, that it was all in vain, that nothing's really changed. I'm getting old.......