| | This thread is split from another thread where Bill Dwyer made the following statement:
Were the benefits of the Vietnam war worth the costs? Nowadays, most people would say that Vietnam was a mistake, if only because we lost.
Bill I would phrase your question this way.
Were the benefits of the Vietnam war worth the costs if the Deomcrats had not voted to cancel the war?
Which I would answer the question phrased this way as a resounding yes it would have been worth it if the Democrats had not abandoned Indochina to the worst democide history has ever recorded.
I see parallels of this to today's war in Iraq. Today's Democrats are behaving like spoiled children, using the unpopularity of a war to score a political victory and subsequent advocacy of canceling the Iraq war to the detriment of ourselves and others in the world. I can only come to the conclusion the Democratic party simply does not care nor gives a damn about the consequences of ending a war before it is finished.
The Vietnam war was essentially canceled, not lost. If you read any objective historical accounts of the Indochina conflict, you will learn that South Vietnam defended itself for a full two and a half years after the United States pulled its troops from Indochina with only material aid and support from the United States. It was only until the Democrats cut all funding to the South Vietnamese that they fell to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The NVA was essentially squashed completely after the Tet offensive, which was a last ditch effort by the NVA to score a victory in a war they were losing. What happened after the Tet offensive? An already unpopular war was made more unpopular due to the fact the Tet offensive occuring so late in the war, resulted in the highest single day casualties for US troops. This played out in the media as the US "losing the war" rather than the more accurate description the NVA was pretty much done with as a standing army and the war was almost won. In fact the US could've launched an offensive into the North and completely annihilate all NVA. There was a concerted campaign made by hippies, democrats, and American communists to make that war unpopular, to portray it as a lost cause.
The statistics on the democide that occured after Indochina was abandoned are staggering. More Vietnamese died after the fall of Saigon than in the prior decade of fighting.
Taken from R.J. Rummels site
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Just as South Korea has been able to defend itself indefinitely with the help of the US from North Korean aggression, so too could the South Vietnamese have defended themselves indefinitely had the US not abandoned them to the slaughter they experienced.
From Michael Dickey's site:
Killed in Vietnam
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1B.GIF
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1A.GIF
Between 1975 and 1987 the Vietnamese Communist government killed 2.5 million people (these are moderate estimates). The last US soldier had left Vietnam in March 1973. The war was over in April 1975. 500,000 people died at sea (10 times the number of American soldiers killed) The Vietnamese Communist government killed ANOTHER 1.5 million people in Cambodia and Laos in the same time period. That's 4.5 million dead, killed by Vietnam Communist government since 1975. The Khmere Rouge, a government put into power by Vietnamese Communist government and armed and supplied by them, would kill another 3 million people That's 7.5 million people since we left Vietnam. Not surprisingly this is not a statistic you hear very often.
From 1975 -1987 the Vietnamese Communist Government was responsible for 7.5 million murders.
How many people were killed during the US involvement in Vietnam? Rummel estimates 1.75 million war dead. How many more would have been killed continuing to defend the South? 1,000? 10,000? 1 million? We will never know, but 7.5 million people died because we did not continue to defend the South. Every politician, labeled as 'hawks' by the 'peace activists' warned of the dreadful blood bath that would ensue if we abandoned Indochina to the communists.
Where were the peace activist when Hanoi rolled through Saigon? Where were they when it crushed Laos? Where were they when it brought the Khmere Rouge to power? Where were they when 500,000 Vietnamese people died at sea? They were as silent as the 7.5 million people murdered by the government they helped bring to power.
http://www.matus1976.com/politics/vietnam/free_vietnam.htm
(Edited by John Armaos
on 5/29, 8:14am)
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