The American War: The US In Vietnam

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by upside-down cake, Feb 3, 2013.

  1. upside-down cake

    upside-down cake Well-Known Member

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    It's kind of cute the way they set it up, but it has a lot of good information in it about the war with Vietnam and a lot of the things you might be unclear on. It also deals with background information surrounding the issue and might touch on some other things you were not aware of. If you are the war-nerd type or the history-buff type, enjoy...

    [video=youtube;5LctoUV-tag]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LctoUV-tag[/video]
     
  2. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Ken Burns does Vietnam...
    [​IMG]
    Vietnam Redux, Again: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s Epic PBS Series
    March 20, 2017 “You will kill 10 of us, we will kill one of you. But in the end you will tire first.” — Ho Chi Minh
     
  3. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Too bad Eisenhower got the USA into that Vietnam war. Maybe that's why the John Birch Society called him a "traitor" back in the day. While I certainly don't agree with that group on this issue, there is no doubt that the USA would have been far better off without getting involved there.
     
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  4. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Wow, posting the same nonsense in yet another thread.

    At the most, President Eisenhower only sent 900 troops to Vietnam. Kinda hard to claim that is "starting a war".

    And I am actually chuckling at your attempt to use the JBS as a validation. The JBS is a rabidly anti-communist organization. And their claims that Ike was a traitor because he would not expand the war to include the invasion of North Vietnam and a full blown American intervention.

    You kinda shot yourself in the foot there by combining those 2 contradictory claims. You are greatly confusing the history of the JBS. Until 1968 the organization was very Hawkish, and were strong proponents of the war (even expanded as it was by LBJ). They frequently held support rallies favoring the war.

    [​IMG]

    And you jokingly insist that the "right wing" is into revisionist history.

    But please, show me any kind of credible references that state that the JBS opposed the conflict in Vietnam prior to 1968,
     
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  5. Soupnazi

    Soupnazi Well-Known Member

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    Except he did not get us into the vietnam war
     
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  6. VietVet

    VietVet Well-Known Member

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    Burns does excellent work.
    I still cannot believe that after Vietnam, America was stupid enough to get talked into invading Iraq (Not the first time, the second time).
    Is the attention span that short????
    Maybe there would have been more opposition to Iraq if there was still a draft.
     
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  7. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Yes he did - just look up the links I provided.
     
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  8. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    As always, the right wingers continue to show their ignorance of the truth while engaging in the promotion of mythical revisionist historical comedy. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the truth and who is willing to openly say it KNOWS that the John Birch Society opposed foreign interventionism in Vietnam just like it did in Iraq under both Bush's.


    https://www.thenewamerican.com/cult...anything-have-we-learned-from-the-vietnam-war



    The John Birch Society was virtually alone in asking why we were fighting to prevent South Vietnam from falling to the communists at the same time we were favoring communist countries elsewhere with trade and aid. Trade with the Soviet Union continued throughout the war, even though the Soviets were the biggest suppliers of arms and equipment to North Vietnam. Sales to Russia included parts for trucks that moved North Vietnamese troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam, and parts used in antiaircraft weapons to shoot down American planes and pilots.

    To be sure, then as now, a growing number of inter-related industries in the network that had come to be known as the military-industrial complex was profiting from the war, despite the burden it placed on the economy as a whole. But did that alone explain our government’s interest in continuing to prosecute a no-win war in Vietnam? Back in 1965, as the United States was just beginning its combat mission, Robert Welch, founder of The John Birch Society, was publicly raising the questions few others were asking:

    What are we fighting for? What are we trying to accomplish? What are our goals? What is our real purpose? Nobody knows — or at least nobody in the administration is willing to say. And it is only when that question is answered honestly that the whole business makes sense and, paradoxically, becomes crazier than ever.

    The answer Welch offered no doubt struck many people as too simple to be true. “For the purpose of our being at war in Vietnam, ladies and gentlemen, is simply to be at war.”






    Welch, like John McManus (JBS President) knows that foreign war expands central government, needlessly kills Americans, causes self defeating tax increases, promotes corporate welfare, and magnifies social division. Anyone who denies that has never read The New American which is the source of this link and is the official news paper of that organization. While some right wing America haters on this forum call me a liberal they fail to understand that I have read the New American ever since the 1970s and know the JBS from first hand experience. I have even corresponded several times with Mr McManus.





    Now try to prove to me that this TRUTH is without basis.
    Good luck with that, buddy.
     
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  9. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Sheesh, once again you accuse others of revisionism.

    Once again, without spin and fluff, show where the JBS was against the war prior to 1968.

    The issue with the war and why it was fought in 1965 is not the issue, and your source is spinning it entirely the wrong war. Mr. Welch was disturbed in 1965 because he thought it was not going far enough! The position of the JBS was that the war was pointless because it was only trying to defend South Vietnam, and not trying to eliminate North Vietnam.

    Remember, this is an organization that thought that countries like China and North Korea in the 1950's should be nuked if they did not bow down and overthrow Communism. You are talking about an organization which is to be honest completely insane, and has a single mission, destroying Communism by whatever means necessary.

    But OK, fine. Let's go with your revised year of 1965. Show me the protests of the JBS against the conflict in Vietnam which was clearly aimed at ending not expanding the conflict, in the 8 years prior.
     
  10. Soupnazi

    Soupnazi Well-Known Member

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    No he did not, it is simple historic fact he did not and you provided no such links to the contrary
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
  11. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There was no MACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) before 1962. It was JFK who founded MACV and thought he cold stop communist expansion at the 17th parallel with a few Special Forces (Green Berets.)

    Before 1962 there was MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory Group) that was created by President Truman. MAAG was under the command of the U.S. State Department not the Department of Defense.

    The first NVA combat troops wouldn't cross the border into the RVN until 1964.
    http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/vietnam/nva.htm

    The first American combat troops wouldn't be deployed to the RVN until 1965.
     
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  12. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    from Google:





    The first American soldier killed in the Vietnam War was Air Force T-Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. He is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having a casualty date of June 8, 1956. His name was added to the Wall on Memorial Day 1999.
    Wall Information - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
    thewall-usa.com/names.asp





    you may thank Eisenhower for that
     
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  13. VietVet

    VietVet Well-Known Member

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    Every time I heard bimbo Bush say "I listen to the generals" I would cringe. Johnson listened to the generals in Vietnam, and by 1968 we had HALF A MILLION troops there.
    The difference between Johnson and Nixon - Vietnam destroyed Johnson. He would look at casualty figures and hold his head in his hands. Nixon didn't care. He promised "peace with honor" - for BOTH of his campaigns.
    Vietnam tore the country apart - almost like now.
    Nixon, as did Bush, tried to say if you weren't for our war of aggression, you were un-American. I believe just the opposite to be the truth.
     
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  14. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And John Birch was the first American killed during the Cold War...what's your point ?

    Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. was the victim of a homicide (murder).

    Many vets feel strongly that Fitzgibbon's name shouldn't be on the "Wall." But political correctness rules today.


    • Major Dale R. Buis (d. July 8, 1959) and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand (d. July 8, 1959), were formerly the first names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the US. Buis and Ovnand were MAAGV advisers stationed at a compound in Bien Hoa that trained units of the South Vietnamese army. They and two ARVN soldiers and a child were killed and another adviser was wounded during a VC attack on their base. Like Fitzgibbon they were previously discounted because they died before the January 1, 1961 deadline....-> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_R._Buis
     
  15. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    But those soldiers were there, not at home where they belonged.
     
  16. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Any what gives you the right to determine where they belong?

    That is your opinion, and nothing else. Myself, I think we should be in more places. Then again, I have concerns about much more than just my own safety.
     
  17. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps you should consider reading a history book and learn to see if our Founding Fathers approved of intervening in foreign wars. If they were here today they would have been the first ones to say stay the hell out of there.
     
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  18. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    May I suggest "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power"
    https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Wars-Peace-Small-American/dp/0465064930


    From 1800 to 1934 U.S. Marines have landed on foreign shores 180 times and broke some things and killed some people. Mostly they were "Crush and Bolt" punitive action wars.

    And most Americans have trouble just naming a dozen of the well over 100 wars that America has fought.

    America's first Korean War was fought in 1871.
     
  19. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    The "shores of Tripoli" intervention dealt with American vessels under attack in the Barbary Coast. Not because imperialists in Washington DC were interested in propping up regimes which were interested in securing contracts that were favorable to corporate interests. Years later such as in the Mexican revolution, the government decided to intervene in order to profit corporate interests. The safety of Americans was not involved. Same thing in Vietnam. The USA had absolutely no concern with what went on there. But corporate interests wanted a war so that they could profit. This is why the war was fought and it is the same truth behind Bush's two imperialist wars in the Middle East.
     
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  20. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Why, look no further than the Napoleonic Wars. Thomas Jefferson (who was a "Founding Father") said and did some interesting things during that conflict. Supplying arms, applying and lifting embargoes, pretty much everything short of sending the military itself.

    Something he later did do when it came to the Barbary Wars (which was an international Response - not just the United States).

    So at least one Founding Father shows you to be wrong, and one of the most important ones there was (next to Franklin, Adams and Washington).
     
  21. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Jefferson knew the USA was threatened by France in the West and this is why he used millions to pay for the Louisiana Purchase. The French needed money to pay for their Napoleonic wars and readily consented to the purchase.
     
  22. Ole Ole

    Ole Ole Banned

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    Nixon get out from Vietnam war and he was both black and White critizism in America a war JF Kennedy never wanted but he get shotet in 60s after ones never likes JFs conserversiel speech about Vietnam war.
     
  23. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    I did not mention the Louisiana Purchase.
     
  24. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    FYI:
    Did you know that the phrase "gook" is a Marine Corps slang for any person, place or thing that isn't American and is strange or different ? True and it was coined during the Barbary Pirates War. It might have been those strange four legged creatures known as camels that the Marines were referring to as being gooks.

    It was some PC beard scratching liberal during the early 1970's who never served who used revisionist history and changed the meaning and definition of "gook" to further political correctness.

    Exactly which Mexican revolution are you referring too ? There were so many.

    Lets see, Mexico was occupied by the British and French armies twice and the United States military has gone into Mexico four or five different times from the late 1830's to 1916. Except for one incident I believe all were punitive actions.

    There are four types of "small wars," punitive, protective, pacification and profiteering. The vast majority of America's small wars were punitive and it was mostly "crush and bolt" wars. Marines have gone ashore on foreign shores 140 times from 1800 to 1934. What happened in 1934 ? FDR and his "Good Neighbor Policy" that ended the Banana Wars and profiteering wars in Latin America.

    The Banana Wars would fall under profiteering and pacification and those wars are what Gen. Smedley Butler was referring too when he said "War is a racket."

    But Gen. "Howlin' Mad" Smith, Chesty Puller, "Red Mike" Edson, Evanson Carlson (Carlson Raiders) all said the lessons that were learned during the Banana Wars led to defeating the Japanese in the Southwestern Pacific.


     
  25. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    According to Chomsky one of the main reasons for the US fighting in Vietnam was to send a message to the people of other de facto US colonies. If one de facto colony became independent, the people of other de facto colonies would think they could do it too.

    Noam Chomsy "The Domino Theory"


    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chomsky+vietnam+war

    The US is an imperialists power and it has a lot of de facto colonies which have puppet governments. This is a basic fact that is pretty much well known outside of the US.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/american-imperialism.371897/

    Outside of the US there's nothing more amusing than a group of Americans discussing politics.
     

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