Have you even considered the possibility that you may be mixing cause and effect here?
“I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.”
Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-56 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Compnay, Inc., 1963), p. 372
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam/ddeho.htm
Final declaration, dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina, in which the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People’s Republic of China, the State of Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America took part…
The Conference takes note of the clauses in the agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Viet-Nam prohibiting the introduction into Viet Nam of foreign troops and military personnel as well as of all kinds of arms and munitions…
no military base at the disposition of a foreign state may be established in the regrouping zones of the two parties…
the military demarcation line should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary…
general elections shall be held in July 1956, under the supervision of an international commission composed of representatives of the member states of the International Supervisory Commission referred to in the agreement on the cessation of hostilities.
from The Department of State Bulletin, XXXI, No. 788 (August 2, 1954), p. 164.
Since New Deal Democrat isn’t Vietnamese, the former is irrelevant; and the “long-term struggle against Communism” turned out to be a big waste of time and money.
Excuse me? We won the Cold War in the end in a decisive victory with the breakup of the USSR.
Excuse me-the topic of the preceding posts was communism in Viet Nam.
He was talking about my quote on “the long term struggle against Communism” by which I meant the Cold War not just Vietnam.
New Deal Democrat was talking about the fight against Communism in Viet Nam, and Really Not All The Bright responded by saying that
, obviously referring to Viet Nam.
I was the first to use the term “long term struggle against Communism” and meant the Cold War.
Actually, Rotarian Magazine was the first to use the term back in March of 1953. 
Considering that the only Communist regimes left in the world are the ones we actually did use our military against, it seems plausible to argue that the use of our military had nothing to do with ending Communism and was actually detrimental to that effort.
I can see China-by-proxy in Korea, but Cuba?
Bay of Pigs Invasion?
Not military, was it? It was a CIA/Cuban exile project.
You’re probably right. I was thinking of it more generally as an attack, and failed to take the thread subject fully into account.
Actually, I find the Geneva Convention to be a little flawed. If it governs war and says what can and cannot be done, then it prevents militaries from using every means at their disposal to achieve total victory.
Bullshit.
I was referring to the Vietnam conflict, but frankly I think the point remains regardless.
Communism doesn’t really work, and if anything, Western paranoia helped many communist governments hold on to power long after the experiment had failed. In any event, we didn’t win the Cold War; that’s Reaganese. The Soviets stopped playing.
When I worked in California for Mitsubishi Electronics, a co-woker had the last names of “Halsey”. I asked if he was any relation to the famous admiral, he replied that he was his great-nephew. I told him that if it wasn’t for people like his uncle, we’d all be worjing for the Japanese.
he didn’t get the irony.