Actually, the Democrats’ claim that we “lost” in Vietnam are because we lost. We didn’t accomplish any of our ultimate objectives, and the other side accomplished all of theirs.
Now, the question of whether we could have won, if we had aggressively attacked previously-neutral countries, that’s a different one, but I’ll let someone else tackle that one.
I apologize for taking so long to get back to this thread; I’ve been busy.
It seems that a lot of the debate has centered around a third objection that I didn’t tackle in the OP, namely the objection that we need a powerful military to stick up for good guy democracies and fight back against bad guy dictatorships around the world. But I feel that I did address this in the OP, though apparently not directly enough.
When the United States sent troops overseas to fight in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War, the justification seemed clear enough. In each of those cases, there was an aggressor who had started the war by attacking it’s neighbor(s) without provocation, for the sole purpose of conquest. In all of those cases it was clear that the aggressor was a tyranny opposed to human rights and democracy. In all of those cases the nation(s) that we defended were, if not perfect, at least better than the aggressor.
Then came the Vietnam War, and America was forced to sit up and have an epiphany. Now it was the United States that was starting the war. Now it was the United States military occupying a foreign nation. Now it was the United States that was opposing democracy. Now it was the United States deliberately targeting civilians for mass killing. In short, the United States was now doing all of the bad things that the bad guys had done in those previous wars.
So that’s the backdrop to my OP along with other cases where the American military occupied a foreign country (Panama, Grenada, Iraq, &c… &c…) We can have an enormous military, in which case we can and will invade foreign countries whenever the President chooses. Alternatively, we can have a small military and not have the capability to invade foreign countries. I believe that both the United States and the rest of the world will be better off if we don’t have the option of invading foreign countries. My position is based on my most honest, unemotional look at what the American military has done in the past 50 years. I think it’s done more harm than good. It has done some small good in a few cases, but not enough to outweigh the bad.
First, John Kerry never betrayed his comrades nor gave aid and comfort to the enemy, nor is it likely that General Giap was aware of Kerry’s existence during the war. If you’re going to post on the Straight Dope Message Board, you should probably get in the habit of checking your facts first so that you don’t embarrass yourself by posting things that are blatantly untrue.
Second, how is it possible that Nixon both negotiated a peace treaty ending the war and promised to resume bombing Hanoi and Haiphong? Don’t those two statements contradict each other?
Third, what’s cowardly about ending the war? Personally I think that ending the war was one of the few genuinely courageous acts that our politicians have done in recent years.
(By the way, is anyone else surprised to learn that Giap is still alive? The dude must be 100 or something.)
Horseshit. The US didn’t start the war in Vietnam. :rolleyes:
Glossing over a lot here, but I suppose that at the core this is true enough.
Back to horseshit. The US deliberately targeted civilians during WWII, but didn’t actually DELIBERATELY target them during Vietnam. Given the technology at the time of Vietnam, in many cases it amounted to the same thing, but we didn’t just carpet bomb North Vietnamese cities or deliberately drop incendiary munitions targeted solely against civilians the way we did against the Japanese, instead we targeted military installations that were, in most cases, deliberately put in locations where civilians were located. I am not sure if the distinction will be lost on you or not, but it is there.
Again, horseshit. The US always did bad things, just like everyone else did. We did nothing in Vietnam that wasn’t done in any earlier wars, by both sides. This good hat/bad hat stuff is simply fantasy.
ETA: And none of this has anything at all to do with whether or not our defense budget should or shouldn’t be cut.
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Nixon bombed Cambodia and we didn’t win.
Ergo, a Republican lost the Vietnam war.
We bombed targets in Cambodia during the Johnson administration too. 
Well, we certainly didn’t win.
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Sounds like Johnson was acting like a Republican!
Could be, could be. Or, maybe Nixon was acting like a Democrat.
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Not to revive an old thread but sadly I believe this would have made the war a lot more popular as people laughed at the war protesters on their way to fill up their Humvees with $0.99 gasoline and then back to their homes which they can heat for about $100 over the winter.
Yes it did - by flouting the Geneva Accords and inventing the ‘country’ of ‘South Vietnam’.
Be specific on what was flouted.
Even if it was possible to do this OPEC countries would just turn their spigots off till we left again. It just wouldn’t be possible practically or diplomatically. And we’d be legitimising groups like Al Quaeda if we did it.
No…we didn’t. We didn’t invent the country of South Vietnam…the North/South split stemmed from the same dynamics that North/South Korea and East/West Germany came from. And if anyone was responsible for ‘starting the war’ it was the French, who insisted on trying to hold onto their past glories and empire in Indochina.
Look…if we were willing to go into Iraq and basically take it over in such a way that we seized the oil fields, built up defenses around them and the pipeline and essentially left the rest of the country to go to hell or not as it pleased, I seriously doubt that we’d be to worries about what OPEC did or didn’t do…or that they’d be willing to do much of anything, considering that if we did that to Iraq, we could do it to them in the same way.
As to legitimizing AQ, that’s true I suppose, and might have made more attacks here at home likely. Guess it would be a trade off.
(Note, I’m not saying we SHOULD have done it this way…I’m just saying we COULD have done it that way)
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It’s ridiculous to think we could do it. We’d be validating everything bin Laden said about us, we’d be unbearably toxic for our client states in the region to be associated with us, we’d be completely unable to take over the oil production facilities and keep themm safe in Iraq without everything being blown up, never mind every other OPEC country. And who the hell do you think runs the oil production system in OPEC countries? The fairies? We’d need to import tens of thousands of highly skilled Americans (they don’t exist, there just are nowhere near enough of them) who could run the production facilities as the natives certainly wouldn’t turn up for work. And who the hell would fund our adventure? The Chinese aren’t going to fund our debt while we’re taking over the world’s oil facilities. It’s beyond silly. It’s just not an option.
I think modern military machines are way too expensive to be funded by seizing raw materials what so ever. If you need to mobilize the USAF, the only natural resource worth seizing is the American tax payer.
This thread may have gone off track, but since it’s my duty to help fight ignorance 
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Without putting words in anyone’s mouth, it almost sounds like a ‘recent adventure’ guided by altruism or some other noble purpose is being contrasted with what that adventure would have been had “we” sought “our own benefit.”
You have it backwards! The Iraq adventure was pursued for our benefit, but “we/our” does not include the ordinary American. Do you think Bush, Cheney and their friends are upset about high oil prices? :smack: