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Who won the Vietnam War?

Who won the Vietnam War?

  • The French

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The British

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The Americans

    Votes: 6 6.1%

  • The Canadians

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The Chinese

    Votes: 3 3.0%

  • The Russians

    Votes: 3 3.0%

  • The Japanese

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The Vietnamese

    Votes: 46 46.5%

  • No one

    Votes: 23 23.2%

  • Other

    Votes: 18 18.2%
  • Total voters
    99
Wiseone said:
Invasion of Canada (1775) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oh....

The American Revolution was in no way defensive, in fact it was the exact opposite. The powerbase of the Revolution was New England and from there we spread North, West, and South. After the US pushed Britian out of most of New England they decided to turn to the South and that is where most of the southern militias fought their battles, but it was hardly a defensive war since we were forcibly pushing them out of the colonial borders and really as far as we could push them. Remember at that time there weren't "13 colonies" there were just "the colonies" as far as the British were concerned there wasn't much difference between the colonies of Canada and those of what would be the future United States or those of the Caribbean.
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Those familiar with my posts know I have a real affinity for Clausewitz, who was a strong proponent of the defense being the stronger form of war. I would consider the American Revolutionary War as a whole to be a defensive war from the American side, even if it involved offensive and counteroffensive tactics and operations, because from a strategic point of view we were defending ourselves from foreign occupation. Regardless, the Invasion of Canada was pretty much repulsed by a British counteroffensive which goes to Clausewitz' point that I mentioned beforehand.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
Perhaps your father could contact fellow Vietnam veteran, Jerry Lembcke, who wrote a book about how no returning Vietnam vet was ever found to have been spat upon?

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I have to say to celticwar that I don't think any military veteran should be spat on or ridiculed for what they went through. Standing with, and supporting the troops, is not the same thing as supporting a certain Administration's foreign policy. I think our generation has done a much better job of making that distinction between the war and the warriors.
 
StillBallin75 said:
I don't entirely agree, but that's another matter. The real question is whether or not stopping Communism in Southeast Asia a worthy goal at all to begin with. I fail to see how Communism in Indochina was a direct threat to the lives or safety of Americans, which in my opinion is the only sound justification for military intervention in another part of the world (unless it's a UN humanitarian peacekeeping mission like the Sudan or Congo).
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You got to remember, It was the common view at the time and even now that communism is basically an evil establishment. The spread of the communist allied force around the world was a direct threat to America and it's freedom. This is a direct Cold War conflict. The same Cold war that initiated the Cuban missile crisis, the korean war, space race, and many others i don't feel like listing them all. Making this reasoning invalid makes all of these moments in history invalid. The fight between communism and america is still going on today. How do you not see how the threat of communism permiated the american culture in all aspects. This is something we are getting less and less passionate about...
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
Perhaps your father could contact fellow Vietnam veteran, Jerry Lembcke, who wrote a book about how no returning Vietnam vet was ever found to have been spat upon?

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I could of sworn i have even seen some videos on this in school, but i could be mistaken, but yes i know from a primary source that it did happen. I have no idea to what degree though, i don't think it was a whole mob doing it, all it would take is like two people for soldiers to see it and not like it.

Why do you think this is not likely at all lol? people are even doing this to Irag war veteran's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_-TBirrPiQ

What got my dad the most was being called a baby killer and stuff
 
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It was the common view at the time and even now that communism is basically an evil establishment.
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I'm a history major and yes I realize this. However I believe the fear was entirely overblown.

The spread of the communist allied force around the world was a direct threat to America and it's freedom. This is a direct Cold War conflict. The same Cold war that initiated the Cuban missile crisis, the korean war, space race, and many others i don't feel like listing them all.
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The Cold War is hardly something I would call a "direct" conflict. For the most part, it was about two superpowers that would have been going at it regardless of ideology. Apart from the air raid drills and all that, in realistic terms the Cold War had little effect on the lives of ordinary Americans except when we chose to make it a problem, and in the lone case of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The fight between communism and america is still going on today.
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Really? Where? The West has won. History has proved Communism to be a failure at the state level and ineffective at the economic level. Communism defeated itself because it wasn't feasible.

How do you not see how the threat of communism permiated the american culture in all aspects.
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If you could list some concrete examples I would like to hear how Communism permeated American culture. We certainly don't go running around singing L'Internationale or calling each other "comrade."

This is something we are getting less and less passionate about...
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Because it is becoming more and more irrelevant. Stalinism is dead.
 
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Patrickt said:
I would vote that the socialists in the U.S. won.
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Right, we allowed Vietnam to fall to communism which created a domino effect and everyone is a communist today. Oh, wait, none of that proganda turned out to be true did it? They have been a tradeing partner of ours since the early 90's.

If we had ended the war years before we did, the only change in outcome would have been tens of thousands less people would have been killed and our National debt would not have increased as much.
 
Amazed said:
Feel free to condemn JFK at any time then.
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Why? JFK did exactly what Eisenhower did. Just like Eisenhower escalated policies he inherited from Truman, JFK escalated policies he inherited from Eisenhower. The one I blame the most is Johnson. He's the idiot who turned our support for a puppet government into a full-blown war.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
Why? JFK did exactly what Eisenhower did. Just like Eisenhower escalated policies he inherited from Truman, JFK escalated policies he inherited from Eisenhower. The one I blame the most is Johnson. He's the idiot who turned our support for a puppet government into a full-blown war.
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What's sad is that Johnson was fighting a war he himself hated, similar to Obama's position in Afghanistan today.
 
celticwar17 said:
Correct that was our objective. But the whole reason for entering into the Vietnam war was to stop it. If we completely beat the northern Vietnamese, communism would have been eliminated in this "whole" region of indochina ( which only comprises of Vietnam and Laos)( Cambodia was a constitutional monarchy). If Vietnam went down the threat would have been eliminated. That's why we entered in the first place.
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And how do you define " if Vietnam went down"? Destroy the North's government and unify Vietnam with the South in power? Or drive the North back to the agreed upon line? Either option would require years of commitment and permanent presence to either squash insurgents or intimidate the North from any further attempt. Unless you drop an atomic bomb on the North (or enough bombs to have the same effect) - that should do it.

In Cambodia, the seed of unrest was already happening. Sikhanouk was a socialist with very close ties to China. America already distrusted him and once Lon Nol came to power, civil war was inevitable. Would that war have ended with victory for the Lon Nol government if the American was in charge of Vietnam? Maybe, if Sikhanouk was killed or in some way reconciled to the government.
 
Amazed said:
Yes of course, your source can speak for EVERY other Vet, how absurd.
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Well the author searched for evidence and found none, even after his book was published, no veteran came forward with personal experience of being spat upon. It appears it's nothing but urban legand.
 
nonpareil said:
And how do you define " if Vietnam went down"? Destroy the North's government and unify Vietnam with the South in power? Or drive the North back to the agreed upon line? Either option would require years of commitment and permanent presence to either squash insurgents or intimidate the North from any further attempt. Unless you drop an atomic bomb on the North (or enough bombs to have the same effect) - that should do it.

In Cambodia, the seed of unrest was already happening. Sikhanouk was a socialist with very close ties to China. America already distrusted him and once Lon Nol came to power, civil war was inevitable. Would that war have ended with victory for the Lon Nol government if the American was in charge of Vietnam? Maybe, if Sikhanouk was killed or in some way reconciled to the government.
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"Destroy the North's government and unify Vietnam with the South in power? Or drive the North back to the agreed upon line?"

Either one could have been done in under seven years. The only reason the war drew out for that long was because of the war policies. WE HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THE WAR IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.

They would have surrendered if America allowed itself to actually fight the war.
 
Sorry....do some research.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a fervent believer in containing communism. In his first speech on becoming president, Kennedy made it clear that he would continue the policy of the former President, Dwight Eisenhower, and support the government of Diem in South Vietnam. Kennedy also made it plain that he supported the ‘Domino Theory’ and he was convinced that if South Vietnam fell to communism, then other states in the region would as a consequence. This Kennedy was not prepared to contemplate.



Sheik Yerbuti said:
Why? JFK did exactly what Eisenhower did. Just like Eisenhower escalated policies he inherited from Truman, JFK escalated policies he inherited from Eisenhower. The one I blame the most is Johnson. He's the idiot who turned our support for a puppet government into a full-blown war.
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Sheik Yerbuti said:
Well the author searched for evidence and found none, even after his book was published, no veteran came forward with personal experience of being spat upon. It appears it's nothing but urban legand.
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I certainly find it entirely plausible that vets were spat on and ridiculed. If it can happen now (as evidenced by celticwar's youtube vid), it certainly happened back then as the anti-war atmosphere was a lot more toxic. However, again, a distinction needs to be made between the war and the warriors. Today, just because you oppose a particular war doesn't mean you hate America or hate the troops. I'm a staunch liberal, very pro-military, and want to join the Marine Corps after college. However that in no way distorts my personal belief that a lot of wars are just stupid and shouldn't be fought.
 
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Amazed said:
Sorry....do some research.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a fervent believer in containing communism. In his first speech on becoming president, Kennedy made it clear that he would continue the policy of the former President, Dwight Eisenhower, and support the government of Diem in South Vietnam. Kennedy also made it plain that he supported the ‘Domino Theory’ and he was convinced that if South Vietnam fell to communism, then other states in the region would as a consequence. This Kennedy was not prepared to contemplate.
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You said what I said -- Kennedy continued the policies he inherited from Eisenhower.
 
He did it because he believed he was doing right....not simply because someone else was doing it.

His motives were his own as were his decisions.....it's called personal responsibility....which HE believed in.


Sheik Yerbuti said:
You said what I said -- Kennedy continued the policies he inherited from Eisenhower.
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StillBallin75 said:
The very nature of the Revolutionary War was defensive. We were on our home turf fighting off a British colonial occupation and invading forces. That in and of itself is defensive strategy, regardless of what kind of tactics we used.
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That's untrue, unless you have some kind of documentation to back that up. Obviously, you can't use the Civil War as an example. Do you have another?
 
apdst said:
That's untrue, unless you have some kind of documentation to back that up. Obviously, you can't use the Civil War as an example. Do you have another?
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We've been through this exercise before. The most relevant example in my mind is the Peninsular Wars. We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

Edit: would you agree that the Confederates during the Civil War were pretty much in the same strategic position that we were in during the Revolutionary War?
 
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Amazed said:
He did it because he believed he was doing right....not simply because someone else was doing it.

His motives were his own as were his decisions.....it's called personal responsibility....which HE believed in.
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Do you think I disagree with that? I get the sense that you do.

Still, Kennedy didn't start the war -- Johnson did.
 
Wiseone said:
Invasion of Canada (1775) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oh....

The American Revolution was in no way defensive, in fact it was the exact opposite. The powerbase of the Revolution was New England and from there we spread North, West, and South. After the US pushed Britian out of most of New England they decided to turn to the South and that is where most of the southern militias fought their battles, but it was hardly a defensive war since we were forcibly pushing them out of the colonial borders and really as far as we could push them. Remember at that time there weren't "13 colonies" there were just "the colonies" as far as the British were concerned there wasn't much difference between the colonies of Canada and those of what would be the future United States or those of the Caribbean.
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I never said it was. Stillballin did. Talk to him, not me.
 
StillBallin75 said:
We've been through this exercise before. The most relevant example in my mind is the Peninsular Wars. We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.
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Are you saying that the Peninsular Campaign was an example of an offensive strategy?

Edit: would you agree that the Confederates during the Civil War were pretty much in the same strategic position that we were in during the Revolutionary War?[/QUOTE]

Not even hardly.
 
reefedjib said:
The leadership of the North Vietnamese "Communist" Party won. The Vietnamese people certainly did not win. From 1975 to 1986, not only were there widespread persecutions, but the economy sucked. Doi moi has helped the economy tremendously, but they are still a dictatorship, and treat their people poorly.
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actually most people in both north and south vietnam supported the communists.
 
The communist supporting Vietnamese won the war.
 
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