# \*groan\* . . . OK, let's debate the Vietnam War . . . again . . . **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318 "2004-10-21T01:17:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/41 "2004-10-26T09:45:59Z")
An additional point why the war was immoral: the US voted for war because of ‘the Gulf of Tonkin’ incident, which was ‘purposely misconstrued when presented to Congress and the public by President Johnson’. [http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/USA/GulfTonkin.html](http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/USA/GulfTonkin.html) Apparently the lesson about invading based on false information has not been learnt 40 years later… ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/42 "2004-10-26T09:56:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > … > > Could the U.S. have achieved victory by fighting with different strategies? (Defining “victory” as a lasting division of the country into two states, one of them non-Communist and both of them more or less at peace internally, as in Korea.) I know this point has already been addressed by Princhester. I’d like to expand on it. North Korea is not a wealthy country. Yet since the end of the Korean War, which you define as a ‘victory’, it has built up one of the largest armies in the World. Who’s paying for all this? Isn’t the country kept ready for an invasion of South Korea? (just as soon as the US pull out) What sort of Government do they have? Isn’t it a direct consequence of the ‘victory’? When can people in the North see their relatives in the South? What must life be like in North Korea for the average citizen? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/43 "2004-10-26T11:03:06Z")
And (to expand on that, glee) what must it be like to live in a nation where you know that the psychopathic government of your neighbour spends a vast proportion of the nation’s effort on creating a war machine to pulverise you into dust the moment your protector leaves? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/44 "2004-10-26T14:52:18Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You’re chopping debate off at the knees, there. A “victory” that consists of creating an artificial and inherently unstable situation hardly seems like victory to me. Or to put it another way, “lasting division of a country” is an oxymoron. The Korean situation is like saying that a pressure cooker is lasting and stable. Well, for purposes of this discussion I wanted to set the bar low. The only alternative “victory” scenario would been for the U.S. to conquer and occupy or “liberate” North Vietnam, and so far as I know that was never even seriously considered (unlike in Korea, where the whole country would have been united under a pro-Western government if the Chinese had not intervened). ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/45 "2004-10-27T04:14:11Z")
> [@Alan Smithee](#): > > The quote from Wikipedia provided by **BrainGlutton** is very interesting. I’d not heard the idea that Kennedy deliberately manipulated a conflict in Vietnam as a “release valve” for tensions building to a nuclear war between the superpowers. How was this supposed to work? If the Soviets had won, wouldn’t they have been even more desperate, and therefore more likely to rely on nuclear rather than conventional forces? Was giving them a real but costly victory the real “victory”?: did it convinvce them that nuclear conflict wasn’t necessary yet, but that further expansionism wasn’t profitable? > > Is the fact that nuclear war was avoided proof that we actually achieved our goal in Vietnam? Or is the fact that we avoided nuclear war (and further Asian expansion by the Soviets) _despite_ loosing proof that the war was unnecessary to begin with? Anyone? Is this a commonly held understanding, that Kennedy deliberately escalated the conflict in Vietnam? What is the evidence? Why did he do it? ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/46 "2004-10-27T09:34:01Z")
My impression was that J.F. Kennedy was terribly immature (almost child like), and very cavalier about the lives of his soldiers. There is a famous quote of his (from a cabinet meeting in 1961: “We have to make our power credible, and Vietnma looks like he place”!) So he plunged this nation into war, without thought (apparently) of the consequences and the human cost! He (JFK) was the real author of the disaster that would become Vietnam. Many have theorized that he (Kennedy) was under the influence of drugs (he took massive doses of steroids for his Addison’s disease). I think he just was a very poor leader, and a bad president. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/47 "2004-10-28T01:02:25Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > My impression was that J.F. Kennedy was terribly immature (almost child like), and very cavalier about the lives of his soldiers. There is a famous quote of his (from a cabinet meeting in 1961: “We have to make our power credible, and Vietnma looks like he place”!) > So he plunged this nation into war, without thought (apparently) of the consequences and the human cost! He (JFK) was the real author of the disaster that would become Vietnam. Many have theorized that he (Kennedy) was under the influence of drugs (he took massive doses of steroids for his Addison’s disease). I think he just was a very poor leader, and a bad president. OK, but whether Eisenhower or JFK or LBJ bears the most blame for getting us into the war in the first place is beside the point. The issues are: Was it a mistake? Was it justified? And could it have been won? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2004, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/48 "2004-10-29T21:06:29Z")
L. Fletcher Prouty was an ex-intelligence officer who wrote a book, _The Secret Team_, setting forth his explanation of why the hell we ever got involved neck-deep in Vietnam ("…and the big fool said to push on!"). According to Prouty: Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon didn’t really want to bother with Vietnam that much. It was certain elements within the CIA that were gung-ho to go in there and start messin’ around, beginning as early as the Truman administration. And they were the ones who forced the presidents’ hands. Once these CIA cowboys started getting their balls in a sling over there, it forced Ike and then Kennedy to send in military “advisors” to try and pull the CIA’s nuts out of the fire. And it just built up from there. The Bay of Pigs was another such rogue CIA adventure that forced Kennedy’s hand, if you recall. So much for being “Commander in Chief.” Prouty said Eisenhower tried to warn America about the dangerous unaccountable power of the Secret Team, but without naming them explicitly. Prouty also thinks these same rogue CIA elements got mad at Kennedy for planning to begin troop withdrawal from Vietnam in 1964. Finally, he quoted Nixon as complaining that even though he wanted to get out of Vietnam back in 1969, there were forces at work that wouldn’t allow him to. Prouty suggested that Nixon was afraid that what happened to Kennedy would happen to him too if he pissed off the Secret Team, and cited Nixon’s own statements as evidence of this. After all, Nixon had campaigned in 1968 with his so-called secret plan to end the war, but then… whatever happened to it? Once he got in office he inexplicably dragged it out for another 4 years. (Incidentally, the very first “October Surprise,” years before that term was coined, came late in October 1972 with Nixon’s announcement “Peace is at hand.”) I know Prouty’s explanation sounds too tinfoilish for most Dopers, but he was after all in the CIA and saw these boys at work with his own eyes. Also, Ollie North’s rogue machinations were blown wide open in 1986, exposing an uncanny déjà vu of something resembling Prouty’s “Secret Team.” So even though most conspiracy theories cannot be proven or are based on mere speculation, once in a while it comes out that some conspiracies are genuine after all. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2004, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/49 "2004-10-29T23:20:00Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > Prouty also thinks these same rogue CIA elements got mad at Kennedy for planning to begin troop withdrawal from Vietnam in 1964. Finally, he quoted Nixon as complaining that even though he wanted to get out of Vietnam back in 1969, there were forces at work that wouldn’t allow him to. Prouty suggested that Nixon was afraid that what happened to Kennedy would happen to him too if he pissed off the Secret Team, and cited Nixon’s own statements as evidence of this. After all, Nixon had campaigned in 1968 with his so-called secret plan to end the war, but then… whatever happened to it? So Oliver Stone was right? ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2004, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/50 "2004-10-29T23:31:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So Oliver Stone was right? Or Nixon was just as much of a paranoid nutcase as him, which certainly seems to be the case historically. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2004, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/51 "2004-10-30T05:49:29Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > I know Prouty’s explanation sounds too tinfoilish for most Dopers… Well, Prouty’s always been considered too tinfoilish for respectable company. [pointless reminicense] In the Funny How the Mind Works catagory, I heard Frankie Valli’s song “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)” earlier this evening and muttered to myself that it was nice SOMEBODY had good memories of '63. Besides JFK’s assasination there was the assassination of Diem (that was a swell November–nice that Frankie’s December was so good :rolleyes: ) and the sinking of the Thresher. Then I thought about self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in downtown Saigon. Maybe I was an excessively spiritual nine year old (and one who watched and read the news WAY too much) but that effected my view of the war in Vietnam from that point forward. If a man of God (or Gods–I’m still unclear) would be so against that war that he would do such a thing in protest of it then maybe he had a point. Maybe he didn’t expect to radicalize any little kids in rural Virginia but he did. [/pointless reminicense] ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2004, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318/52 "2004-10-30T05:52:52Z")
[continuing because I hit Enter too soon] Of course, he wasn’t really protesting the war, just the persecution of Buddhists, but what do you want–I was nine and only familiar with Vietnam because we kept sending advisors there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/groan-ok-lets-debate-the-vietnam-war-again/270318.md?page=2)