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How should the U.S. have handled Vietnam and Iraq?

JC Callender

JC Callender

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Many people seem to believe that our wars in Vietnam and Iraq were utter failures that should've been avoided, but there were reasons we went that had bipartisan support. Communism was a pretty big deal back then and it was spreading. And Iraq...would you really be surprised if we did find WMD's? And do you think a guy who gassed his own citizens would possible consider using them on us or our allies?

Bonus question: Would you still say Vietnam was a mistake if we ended up winning in the early 70's?
 
Vietnam = Don't go to war if you really needed a draft to get soldiers and the mainland of the United States was not at direct risk.

Iraq = Leave Saddam Hussein be. It's easier to occasionally spank him (Operation Desert Storm) than to destabilize the region and force us to stay there for decades.
 
Luftwaffe said:
Vietnam = Don't go to war if you really needed a draft to get soldiers and the mainland of the United States was not at direct risk.

Iraq = Leave Saddam Hussein be. It's easier to occasionally spank him (Operation Desert Storm) than to destabilize the region and force us to stay there for decades.
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Would you say waiting for their homeland to be at direct risk paid off for the Europeans during the 1930's? And would you say the Middle East was stable before the Iraq War?
 
JC Callender said:
Would you say waiting for their homeland to be at direct risk paid off for the Europeans during the 1930's? And would you say the Middle East was stable before the Iraq War?
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We did wait until Pearl Harbor to declare War on Germany and Japan so yes we waited until we were ATTACKED.
Vietnam was a peoples revolution against foreign imperialism and we had no more right to get involved than if France decided to back the British in 1776.
The M.E. was MORE stable than it is now and the overthrow of Saddam is to blame.
 
JC Callender said:
Would you say waiting for their homeland to be at direct risk paid off for the Europeans during the 1930's? And would you say the Middle East was stable before the Iraq War?
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The ME seemed a lot MORE stable.

Also, the Europeans were at risk for having to share the same continent. We were not.

The Japanese put us into the war.

In the end, I hate wasting money. And Iraq was a waste of money. Too bad conservatives don't share the values of smaller, responsible government like we libertarians do.
 
Luftwaffe said:
The ME seemed a lot MORE stable.

Also, the Europeans were at risk for having to share the same continent. We were not.

The Japanese put us into the war.

In the end, I hate wasting money. And Iraq was a waste of money. Too bad conservatives don't share the values of smaller, responsible government like we libertarians do.
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Fair enough. I think some folks feel a moral obligation to keep the world as safe as possible. You don't seem to share that sentiment as long as our safety isn't jeopardized.
 
JC Callender said:
Fair enough. I think some folks feel a moral obligation to keep the world as safe as possible. You don't seem to share that sentiment as long as our safety isn't jeopardized.
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Perhaps. I feel the American way is a way of free and unadulterated trade, prosperity, and peace/neutrality.

Washington had warned us of making whacky alliances and allowing the Europeans (who have a knack for giving us grief) to suck us into their wars.

I don't mind having a near invincible Navy in case anyone does attack the Americas (South or North).
 
Luftwaffe said:
Perhaps. I feel the American way was a way of trade, prosperity, and peace/neutrality.

Washington had warned us of making whacky alliances and allowing the Europeans (who have a knack for giving us grief) to suck us into their wars.

I don't mind having a near invincible Navy in case anyone does attack the Americas (South or North).
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I understand your point and honestly don't have a lot of faith in our politicians to direct these wars competently. I think if war is declared, then we should go all out and throw everything we can at them until we win. The good thing about WW2 is that we could easily do that without question since the threat was so serious, but wars that are considered more on the preemptive side like Vietnam and Iraq seem to be fought much more politically and it's not fair to our troops, imo.
 
JC Callender said:
Fair enough. I think some folks feel a moral obligation to keep the world as safe as possible. You don't seem to share that sentiment as long as our safety isn't jeopardized.
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There is no moral, ethical, or logical argument that the USA is the World's policeman. We use US National militaries to acquire resources for private Corporations. We do not protect "liberty and justice for all," and we install compliant Dictatorships, not democracies. We removed a democracy in Haiti. we removed a democracy in Honduras. We removed a democracy in Chile. We removed a corrupt democracy in Ukraine. We removed a "Jamariyah"(sp) in Libya. We removed a democracy in Egypt. We attempted to remove a democracy in Nicaragua. We have caused the deaths of millions in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria where rebels have used deadly gas and the rebels are funded, armed and trained by USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Again, the USA is not a World policeman, but a Hegemonic Militaristic/Economic/Criminal infrastructure dominated by the principles behind the New World Order. The NWO matured from Banking to World Economic Domination via the Federal Reserve CORPORATION.

Bonus question-As a Vietnam Veteran, the Vietnam War was and always will be a mistake. Ho Chi Minh asked us for aid and we refused to support Imperialistic ambitions. Many very good people on both sides died as a result of our Collective Ignorance. That or our Government doesn't ever really tell us what is going on, eh?
 
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You're all incorrect.

The biggest problem (according to the Neo-Cons) was we just didn't kill enough people yet.

See if we could have just killed a few more, and some more, and then a little more... We would have won both wars, eventually, they promise.
 
Jetboogieman said:
You're all incorrect.

The biggest problem (according to the Neo-Cons) was we just didn't kill enough people yet.

See if we could have just killed a few more, and some more, and then a little more... We would have won both wars, eventually, they promise.
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I don't think we've killed nearly as many in all of our wars as Stalin had of his own people alone. That's a single Communist leader. Should we talk about the death tolls of other Communist leaders? Communism was a real threat back in the 60's and many people thought it had to be dealt with.
 
Jetboogieman said:
You're all incorrect.

The biggest problem (according to the Neo-Cons) was we just didn't kill enough people yet.

See if we could have just killed a few more, and some more, and then a little more... We would have won both wars, eventually, they promise.
Click to expand...

Wars are not about killing people. They are about big profit, banking, business, energy, and resource acquisition. Profit has loyalty/allegiance to the most powerful currency of the time. NeoCons are the stooges representing those interests at this time. You win by bankrupting your opponents Government so that he cannot afford to fight any longer.
 
Jetboogieman said:
You're all incorrect.

The biggest problem (according to the Neo-Cons) was we just didn't kill enough people yet.

See if we could have just killed a few more, and some more, and then a little more... We would have won both wars, eventually, they promise.
Click to expand...


JFK & LBJ escalated the Vietnam war. And LBJ used the USS Maddox as a propaganda piece for bolstering ground troops by sending it into hostile territorial waters to be fired on.

They were democrats I believe.
 
RetiredUSN said:
JFK & LBJ escalated the Vietnam war. And LBJ used the USS Maddox as a propaganda piece for bolstering ground troops by sending it into hostile territorial waters to be fired on.

They were democrats I believe.
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We entered all of the major wars of the 20th century with a Democrat president.
 
JC Callender said:
We entered all of the major wars of the 20th century with a Democrat president.
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Well... would not a Republican president just as gladly war Japan if Pearl Harbor got bombed?

I think anyone would, even a ****ing libertarian.
 
JC Callender said:
Many people seem to believe that our wars in Vietnam and Iraq were utter failures that should've been avoided, but there were reasons we went that had bipartisan support. Communism was a pretty big deal back then and it was spreading. And Iraq...would you really be surprised if we did find WMD's? And do you think a guy who gassed his own citizens would possible consider using them on us or our allies?

Bonus question: Would you still say Vietnam was a mistake if we ended up winning in the early 70's?
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"Comunism was NOT "spreading".

As we have seen in the threat was zero.

The United states simply ignore or violated the peace agreement signed by the French and the Vietnamese. Communism was only "a big deal back then" only because American political leaders needed a boogie man for us to fear.

And Iraq, there were NO WMD's which was then the only reason given, that Saddam was a threat to the world

Based on the Pentagon papers and what we know now, Vietnam was Kennedy's attempt to show Krushchev he had a pair.
 
Jetboogieman said:
You're all incorrect.

The biggest problem (according to the Neo-Cons) was we just didn't kill enough people yet.

See if we could have just killed a few more, and some more, and then a little more... We would have won both wars, eventually, they promise.
Click to expand...
Do you have any quotes to support this bull**** claim of yours? Oh, and Vietnam was LBJ's war. He was a liberal.
 
RetiredUSN said:
JFK & LBJ escalated the Vietnam war. And LBJ used the USS Maddox as a propaganda piece for bolstering ground troops by sending it into hostile territorial waters to be fired on.

They were democrats I believe.
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There was a peace agreement in place between the Vietnamese and France carving out a path to peace. Kennedy ignored it. Please do have a look at the Pentagon Papers. The whole show from top to bottom was completely unneccessary by ANY account
 
The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime cannot be repealed. As in Vietnam in 1965, U.S. power and prestige have been massively committed in Iraq, and it is incumbent upon the United States try its best to leave behind in Iraq a better place than it was before the invasion, even if that means reconsidering some ambitious U.S. objectives in Iraq. What if, for example, the United States is forced to choose between stability and democracy in that volatile country? Many experts believe that genuine democracy lies beyond the power and patience of the United States to create in Iraq. If so, both Americans and Iraqis might have to settle for some form of benign quasi-authoritarian rule along the lines of Kemal Ataturk's Turkey, Anwar Sadat's Egypt.

Face it folks, in the Middle East, other than Israel, no country has embraced our version of Democracy. Why? There are many historical and religious reasons why we were not embraced in Iraqi. Our politicians only read the history that suits there objectives. I was very disappointed in Sec Rice, she is a smart and intelligent woman. But she became an ideologue and chose to ignore the history of the region, and terribly misjudged the outcome. One only needed to look at the history to foresee the inevitable miscalculations made in post invasion Iraqi. I have a margin of faith that our politicians have learnt from the Iraqi episode, but not enough to keep us from repeating the same error.
 
Fletch said:
Do you have any quotes to support this bull**** claim of yours? Oh, and Vietnam was LBJ's war. He was a liberal.
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Who gives a **** if he was a liberal or not?

I don't.

I was talking more along the lines of those TODAY who think the war was winnable.
 
Fearandloathing said:
"Comunism was NOT "spreading".

As we have seen in the threat was zero.

The United states simply ignore or violated the peace agreement signed by the French and the Vietnamese. Communism was only "a big deal back then" only because American political leaders needed a boogie man for us to fear.

And Iraq, there were NO WMD's which was then the only reason given, that Saddam was a threat to the world

Based on the Pentagon papers and what we know now, Vietnam was Kennedy's attempt to show Krushchev he had a pair.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes

And concerning Saddam, I don't think much more evidence is needed then the fact that he gassed thousands of his own people. Once you start posing threats after that, they should be taken seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack
 
RetiredUSN said:
JFK & LBJ escalated the Vietnam war. And LBJ used the USS Maddox as a propaganda piece for bolstering ground troops by sending it into hostile territorial waters to be fired on.

They were democrats I believe.
Click to expand...



You mean the FAKED gulf of Konkin incident and the alleged 'follow up'? The one where even Johnson was skeptical. It is so ironic that "those attacks' just happened to coincide with predrafted plans to heavily escalate because the South Vietnamese were tanking badly.

By the way, everything the French projected when Kennedy escalated came true
 
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