How amny lives would have been saved? Since the war continued till 1973 or so, what was accomplished for the 5 years?
Given the debate about iraq-would it have been better to have “cut and run” from Vietnam in 1968?
1957 - 1
1958 - 0
1959 - 2
1960 - 5
1961 - 16
1962 - 53
1963 - 118
1964 - 206
1965 - 1,863
1966 - 6,144
1967 - 11,153
1968 - 16,589
1969 - 11,614
1970 - 6,083
1971 - 2,357
1972 - 640
1973 - 168
1974 - 178
1975 - 160
I’m trying to figure out what we accomplished in those five years. It seems to me that Vietnam would look the same today had we left in 1973 or 1968 or 1964. The only difference I can estimate is that there would be tens of thousands fewer Americans killed and wounded, and at least hundreds of thousands fewer Vietnamese killed or wounded.
As a Vietnam veteran who spent 13 months and 12 days in the country at the peak of US troop strength and very much against his will, let me say:
Amen, Dude. 
Well, have you ever wondered why there is an Abrams tank and no Westmoreland one?
He got turned into a helicopter.
Previous threads:
Vietnam War – wrong to fight or wrong to quit?
What if America had used nukes in Vietnam?
Bush says it was a mistake to pull out of Vietnam
Is Vietnam better off today than it would have been if the U.S. had not pulled out?
The relevant mistake was not to continue to support South Vietnam. The South was quite capably holding against the North (just as South Korea does). The diffierence was in the difficulty of defending a border in Vietnam, but overall the situation was clearly stable; the U.S.'s pullout was not so much military as economic. In any event, the situation was relatively quiet until the American kneecapped the South and the North smelled blood.
It was the single most evil act ever perpetrated by any American in history (yes, IMHO even past slavery and the various nastinesses against the Amerindians), but less known and more easily hidden because it was so banal. It was a quiet thing, and as long as we didn’t have to see it, the papers really didn’t care.
Its easy to just say, “Oh well, see how it ended: it couldn’t have happened differently.” That’s bull, and unless you believe in some historical determinism there’s no way to even rationally believe it.
That said, the military bears part of the blame for the general BS line they adopted during the war. But the various tools in America who pretended the North was some virtuous garden of love and socialist joy were gratuitous idiots, and the moral midgets who cut off aid were losers, too. Some people apparently were of the opinion that if South Vietnam couldn’t stand on its own, it didn’t derserve to live. Ignoring, of course the vast aid handed out by Russia and China to the North.
I’m sorry if this seems… vehement… but if you are going to argue that we shouldn’t have gotten involved, fine. Or if you are arguing that it wasn’t worth our (relatively light) losses, fine. But let’s not pretend the North were anything except tyrants. (I know, no one said it. Just sayin’.) And as for the idea that “it was inevitable” - don’t go there. It’s the pinnacle of irrational thought, in defiance of all sanity and history. And it trivializes (when it does not outright ignore) the untold suffering of the relatively decent South Vietnamese government* under the malicious monstrosity of the Communists.
*Yes, I know it was not your idea of the pinnacle of human social kindness. It didn’t have to be. The standard is not the ideal, but the alternative. And the alternative was grinding poverty, purges, mass murder, and at heart the sort of willing stupidity all totalitarian nations get to as a result of their inherent contradictions.
…
This is a topic which really burns me, if you haven’t noticed. There’s so much excuse-making bull thrown around it makes me sick. :mad:
Revisionist histories to the contrary, the South Vietnamese government was never able to capture the people’s loyalty except insofar as they saw it as a minimally acceptable alternative to chaos. It could not have survived in the long run, with or without U.S. backing.
:dubious: Vietnam isn’t so bad off under that same government now, is it? I very much doubt you could find many people in the southern part of the country who remember the RVN fondly.
Gee, when I go to Eden Center here (the hub of economic and social activity for many of Northern Virginia’s Vietnamese citizens) I see a big flag flying over the shopping center - and it ain’t the flag of North Vietnam or post-1975 Vietnam. It is the yellow one with red stripes - Republic of Vietnam.
And while you are correct in observing that Vietnam isn’t so bad off now - and these same Vietnamese people would agree as they take advantage of less restrictive travel and trade restrictions - they would tell you that that government wasn’t so nice at the outset - which is how they ended up here in the first place. Furthermore, Vietnam isn’t particularly nice to religious or ethnic minorities - this is a matter of fact that I’m sure you won’t dispute.
So your little response ignores quite a bit of history in the interim.
I know all that – just as I know Miami Cubans have no love for Castro, which is why they live in Miami – but in this thread we have an actual Vietnamese (as in now living in Vietnam) Doper, Geekmustnotdie, who (starting with post #28) expresses a general satisfaction with how things turned out and only wishes the U.S. had pulled out sooner or never intervened in the first place.
Uh huh. I certainly understand that that opinion may be common, especially in a country only partly free. 
You seem to give certain opinions a lot more weight than others. Certainly it is your right to do so, but it reveals your biases rather clearly at times.
Personally, I’m of the view that a vote with your feet is a clear expression of opinion - and I’m not going to discount it right off.
Free enough for Internet access, anyway. (Unlike, say, China.)
Don’t you think the opinion of a resident of Vietnam, who has to live with the war’s results in his daily life, is of more weight on the question of those results than is that of those who gave up on Vietnam and left and now know little more about contemporary Vietnam than you or I do?
…if the 800$ billion spent on the Vietnam War , had been spent on giving the Vietnamese a wester lifestyle, every resident of Vietnam would have been a millionaire!
Hey, newsflash - for the most part these people didn’t give up on Vietnam - they were forced out of the country by the aftermath of the war. So they are dealing with the war’s results as well.
No longer supporting a thoroughly corrupt regime that didn’t enjoy the support of its people is worse than our enslavement a race for several centuries? And you are saying that the people of Vietnam suffered more in the past three decades than the American Indian did over a couple hundred years? You ought to explain those points some more, because I believe you have lost all perspective.
It’s easy to say because I believe it is an astonishingly simple case to make. The only time the South had the popular support of the people is when elections were held that resulted in 110% re-election numbers. I throughly condemn the abuses and repression instituted at the hands of the Communist leadership of North Vietnam, but when a nation has a general desire to be united, neither American bullets nor dollars can prevail in the long term over the self-identity of a people. Any perception to the contrary is either illusion or John Wayne flag-waving hysteria.
I went there. Why don’t you try to put together a cogent argument explaining why I’m wrong instead of implying I am insane.
A more interesting question is what would have happened if Vietnam had been allowed to have its scheduled national referendum in 1956.
Which does not necessarily mean they know much of anything about Vietnam as it is today.
However much that is true (and I think they know plenty) you certainly seem to be in denial about the reeducation camps, the persecution of ethnic Chinese, and the boat people crisis following 1975.
In your post you said these people “gave up on Vietnam.” That’s a rather simplistic way of looking at these events, isn’t it?
Pattern of events for you, sadly. You’ll excuse lots of sins so long as a leftist commits them.