But the the trouble was the getting involved. That's the lesson we should ahve learned. When you aks people to die in a democracy, where people have a voice, you have to make sure the reasons are compelling. You can't just be imperialistic and seek to do whatever you want. people will object sooner or later. And the more freedom you have, the less you can control the facts, and this will always lead to someone questioning the reasons behind the war.
What's happened in practice is that one President feels it''s necessary and the next will campaign that it is unnecessary. There is no ongoing commitment to winning once the decision is made and everyone knows that. Thus your enemies will just wait you out. The United States is weaker since Vietnam, that's common knowledge, and the US will be weaker and ineffective everywhere. I think it's a damned shame myself and would have preferred more support for the American initiative but other leaders naturally preferred that the Americans do the bulk of the work, And they did.
At one time wars were fought to be won, but now US leadership is always publicly discussing "withdrawal", an unthinkable idea not all that long ago. In fact it was never spoken prior to Vietnam.
And no, genocide wasn't a meaningless term here. You would have had to kill most the population. I challenge you to put aside what you've heard and look at exactly how much we dropped on VN. The number of sorties and bombings were large, and certainly not something to be seen as not fighting the war. The fact was the people there wanted their own government, not ours and were going to fight. Winning, as you define it, required more than we would ever be willing to do. And you will never see this type of action be maintained in a free society.
I don't believe you''ve actually studied anything of the war and your loosely defined use term of "genocide" suggests as much.. Keep in mind it was the Communists who came closest to committing actual genocide, as you would know if you were aware of the "Boat people" and the 're-education camps'. They behaved like Communists everywhere.
We need to stop looking at these things like a football game, and more like something that is serious and requires greeat thought and reluctance to get involved in. We need to assure good reasoning and sound justification before we ever ask Americans to die over there, where ever over there is. We failed once again to do this, and had similar results. It is being reckless and too eagar to jump into something that can't be properly justified that has hurt us and not people like Moore or the press.
No matter what America does, or how much any war might be justified and essential to American security, the Fifth Columnists at home will undermine it. That attitude can be traced directly back to Vietnam. When Americans start attacking their own President and defending Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, or any number of international despots, they're on a losing track. Who will take America's place is still open to question, but I doubt the world will be a more secure place without US leadership.
