View Full Version : Vietnam: A look back
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/04/30/captured-a-look-back-at-the-vietnam-war-on-the-35th-anniversary-of-the-fall-of-saigon/1781/
Is it me or were the images chosen by someone who was against the war?
variablebinary
08-01-11, 02:48
Is it me or were the images chosen by someone who was against the war?
To be honest, it's very hard to make Vietnam look good.
There is very little good about Vietnam, but it was a sign of things to come when it comes to warfare. War has always been political, but never politically correct until Vietnam.
And look where it has gotten us...
To be honest, it's very hard to make Vietnam look good.
I would say impossible.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261) McNamara (SECDEF) in a video on the subject. (http://youtu.be/HODxnUrFX6k)
Vietnam was a testing ground for various technologies. Some worked, some didn't.
There were no ground troops in Laos............... Dad said there wasn't a nice Now Leaving Vietnam sign in the jungle.
LowSpeed_HighDrag
08-01-11, 17:54
Is it me or were the images chosen by someone who was against the war?
As you may or may not know, war ****ing sucks no matter how you spin. Vietnam sucked the hardest for everyone it touched. Its hard to put a good spin on it.
platoonDaddy
08-01-11, 17:59
I would say impossible.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261) McNamara (SECDEF) in a video on the subject. (http://youtu.be/HODxnUrFX6k)
This has been discredited.
Edit: **** it the war is over, let it go. We came home to shit in the streets and for whatever reason people refuse tooooooooooo let it go. Move on!
Fantastic thread. We must never forget.
montanadave
08-01-11, 20:40
A very moving collection of photographs depicting a very troubled time in our nation's history.
Regardless of one's opinion with respect to our involvement in Vietnam and southeast Asia, the men and women who sacrificed and served deserve this nation's honor and appreciation.
And our civilian leaders should be held to a much higher burden of proof to justify putting our troops in harm's way, a standard which we have sadly failed to meet too many times since Vietnam.
ThirdWatcher
08-02-11, 05:35
Edit: **** it the war is over, let it go. We came home to shit in the streets and for whatever reason people refuse tooooooooooo let it go. Move on!
The Vietnam War really screwed this country up. I was in the Army for two weeks (still in BCT) when the ceasefire was signed (29 JAN 1973). When I was young, I HATED the Vietnamese for what they did to this country... as I matured I realized that it was our leadership that screwed us, not the Vietnamese. (I grieved for the 58,000 US troops lost, but how many people did they lose?) I respect our fellow warriors for their service, but I believe they were misused by our leaders. YMMV
variablebinary
08-03-11, 00:32
Vietnam was a big foreign policy shit sandwich, and we took a huge bite.
It took a long time to shake those demons, but we are still affected to this day on many levels.
Though, I think if you tried spitting a Vietnam vet now and call him baby killer, you can expect a negative reaction from all sides. In that regard, we've come a long way.
Oliver Stone's version of Vietnam is behind us.
Thomas M-4
08-03-11, 01:26
Failure of leadership we had LBJ micromanaging the war. There were numerous times we could have walked into NVN. If the WH would have stayed out of it and let the Generals do there job we would not have the out come that we did.
Failure of leadership we had LBJ micromanaging the war. There were numerous times we could have walked into NVN. If the WH would have stayed out of it and let the Generals do there job we would not have the out come that we did.
If the United States would've stayed out of it we wouldn't have had the outcome that we did either.
Thomas M-4
08-03-11, 01:48
If the United States would've stayed out of it we wouldn't have had the outcome that we did either.
True .
But history has shown that when you let politicians run the war the out come is shit.
But history has shown that when you let politicians run the war the out come is shit.
I absolutely agree and wasn't making a snide remark towards you I'm just tired of using heroic American's lives to feed the military industiral complex's blood lust. A great read on the subjecxt is War is a Racket by 2 time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient USMC Major General Smedley Butler.
ThirdWatcher
08-03-11, 03:18
Failure of leadership we had LBJ micromanaging the war. There were numerous times we could have walked into NVN. If the WH would have stayed out of it and let the Generals do there job we would not have the out come that we did.
Exactly right. IMO, LBJ's tactics in Vietnam were almost as good as Hitler's were in WW2.
Thomas M-4
08-03-11, 09:02
I absolutely agree and wasn't making a snide remark towards you I'm just tired of using heroic American's lives to feed the military industiral complex's blood lust. A great read on the subjecxt is War is a Racket by 2 time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient USMC Major General Smedley Butler.
No I didn't think it was snide.
I would like to add in perspective that before we became majorly involved. That we just had the Cuban Missile crises and the mood of the country was to stop the spread of communism every were that it could. We had Cuba going communist 90 miles off of Florida coast. We also had a president that was killed by a man that had communist ties. The prospect of South East Asia going totally communist would have been very worrisome indeed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex and rightfully so and it is still a problem to this day.
GermanSynergy
08-04-11, 10:07
In retrospect, Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, but a nationalist first. He wanted the Japanese and the French out of Vietnam.
American involvement in Indochina was a mistake, and it turns out Communism was not the ideologically monolithic entity we thought it was.
Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese and Yugoslav communism were never 100% hunky dory with each other.
CarlosDJackal
08-05-11, 11:39
If the United States would've stayed out of it we wouldn't have had the outcome that we did either.
IMHO, we should have had our hand in it from the get go. At the end of WWII, an OSS Major was the chief military adviser for a nationalist named Ho Chi Mihn. He had been fighting the japanese all those years and when the war was ending, he declared Vietnam's independence by reading a modified version of the US Declaration of Independence.
But since the US, GBR and the other Allies decided to appease De Gaulle and his frogs by catering to their insistence of reclaiming pre-war colonies (IE: French Indochina); we turned out back on the man who was until then an ally but will later be the head of North Vietnam.
Like it or not we were suckered into the fiasco that was Vietnam because France wanted to regain some "power" that they did not earn.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and marines who fought in that God-forsaken place did our country proud. They did not loose the war; in fact they won just about every major engagement despite the circumstances.
Most of my Drill Sergeants and the subsequent NCOs I served with were Vietnam Vets. I learned a lot of the good lessons they learned under fire and I will forever be grateful to them. JM2CW.
Vietnam brought the small caliber, high velocity (5.56mm) round to the forefront - for better or worse, depending on your perspective. It also kick-started the US conventional munitions industrial base, which had pretty much atrophied (in the case of airmunitions,anyway) in favor of nuclear weapons production/R&D.
In the USAF's case, things got kind of twisted. Strategic assets (B-52's) were heavily used in the tactical role (Arclight, etc.), and tactical assets such as F-105's were used to strike strategic targets in North Vietnam. Obviously you use what's appropriate based on target set, equipment capabilities/availability, etc., but it wasn't quite what planners had envisioned in pre-war years. B-52's worked well. F-105's, well, we lost about half the inventory in Vietnam despite some very skilled and capable pilots.
Belmont31R
08-05-11, 14:06
IMHO, we should have had our hand in it from the get go.
The history there post WW2 to our involvement with ground forces in the 60's is something that doesn't really get the attention it deserves.
Submariner
08-05-11, 17:06
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who fought in that God-forsaken place did our country proud.
Fixed it for you.
Sorta'.
ThirdWatcher
08-05-11, 18:39
IMHO, we should have had our hand in it from the get go. At the end of WWII, an OSS Major was the chief military adviser for a nationalist named Ho Chi Mihn. He had been fighting the japanese all those years and when the war was ending, he declared Vietnam's independence by reading a modified version of the US Declaration of Independence.
I agree. History has proven that the representatives of the major powers should have listened to that little man (in stature) when he arrived in Paris in 1946 (instead of totally ignoring him).
Thomas M-4
08-05-11, 18:55
IMHO, we should have had our hand in it from the get go. At the end of WWII, an OSS Major was the chief military adviser for a nationalist named Ho Chi Mihn. He had been fighting the japanese all those years and when the war was ending, he declared Vietnam's independence by reading a modified version of the US Declaration of Independence.
But since the US, GBR and the other Allies decided to appease De Gaulle and his frogs by catering to their insistence of reclaiming pre-war colonies (IE: French Indochina); we turned out back on the man who was until then an ally but will later be the head of North Vietnam.
Like it or not we were suckered into the fiasco that was Vietnam because France wanted to regain some "power" that they did not earn.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and marines who fought in that God-forsaken place did our country proud. They did not loose the war; in fact they won just about every major engagement despite the circumstances.
Most of my Drill Sergeants and the subsequent NCOs I served with were Vietnam Vets. I learned a lot of the good lessons they learned under fire and I will forever be grateful to them. JM2CW.
Good post
And it is surprising that we did let France have Vietnam. Considering we were pressuring Britain to give up its Colonies.
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