On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:36:54 -0700 (PDT), dusty wrote:

On Mar 27, 4:09*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:58:41 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 26, 3:11*pm, :???????? wrote:
"..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on
the Hanoi area, * you had won the war. *It was over..."

"-A Better War
Lewis Sorley's A Better War challenges the accepted view of Vietnam,
does so with great authority, and will hopefully thereby foster a
significant re-examination of this sorest spot in the national psyche.
The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971
the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War. *That is to
say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective
control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created
a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the
war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies
and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North
if they violated peace agreements.
Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson's assessment that :

* * In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52
attacks on the Hanoi area,
* * you had won the war. *It was over.

At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won
the insurgency phase of the War. *Additionally, the North had been
defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally
had the War brought home to them in a significant way. *Though the
overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting
to be won.

So what happened ? ..."

...One book can not change peoples' minds about a matter as
contentious as the Vietnam War. *In fact, the intellectual classes and
the Baby Boom Generation have so much of themselves invested in the
idea that the War was wrong and unwinnable that it's unlikely that any
number of books could change their minds. *But as the years go by and
as new generations take a fresh look at the War, it is important that
they approach it with an open mind...."

google any part to read more

Looks like it was lost in the end! * Only the removal of the crook
Nixon stopped the bombing!

Anyone with half a brain knows that the U.S. did NOT lose the MILITARY
WAR in Vietnam. *Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw
a day in Vietnam during the war like to pander the silly notion that the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military.

It was Kissinger who lost that war for the U.S., and he never served a day
in the military. *If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders
would have simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own
military being killed and we would have remained there until at least1980.
Because we were a society sick at our moral core by ever contending there
was any need whatsoever to consider that tiny piece of land to have any
military significance in the U.S. defensive posture.

Eventually, North Vietnam would have run out of resources, since we were
far from running a "guns or butter" economy along with running that war.
Our Peace Wall would now have 200,000 names at least, but North Vietnam's
wall would have been ten times as large. *And no matter what, a few
years after we left, with North Vietnam totally defeated militarily, South
Vietnam would have internally collapsed politically, because it was held
together with nothing but American guns, glue and money... making
some very bad people very rich. *And we would be right where we are
today, except for the million of humans that would probably have been
slaughtered.

But this claim about the U.S. losing the military war in Vietnam should
not be the issue. *There NEVER should have been such a war!! *We should
NEVER have slaughtered so many innocent human beings under false
pretenses!!! *The immorality of the U.S. in even engaging in such a war
dwarfs any implied immorality in our engaging in war in Iraq. *Not one
American life was in danger from forces in Vietnam if we had never
ventured in. *It was a war with no reason whatsoever. *Proven by the
fact that today Vietnam is in the same political position it would be
in if we had never set a single military foot in Vietnam.

It has to be said that most of our military LEADERS, agreed completely
with the belief that we needed to kill opponents of the very civilian leaders
of South Vietnam that WE kept in power. *And if they had been permitted
they would have killed ten times as many as they led American troops
to kill. *Thus the loss of innocent lives in Vietnam has to be seen as nothing
but mass murder on their part. *Further... *in that act of horrendous
deceit and knavery we most certainly did more than lose our presumed
"innocence." * We turned an ideological and moral corner... and still
have not found our way back again.

Planet Visitor II


"Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw a day in Vietnam
during the war like to pander the silly notion that the Viet Cong and
the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military."

Ah.. the old "thump-my-chest" claim of superiority. Chum... I was serving
in Vietnam while you were still trying to get Susie to pull down her knickers
in the third grade. I served 20 years in the military, and can prove it. I
served the prerequisite year in Vietnam at DaNang AB, on good ol' Monkey
Mountain; I served another year in Thailand at Korat RTAB, with thuds
taking off every morning, and sometimes a few less coming back in the
evening; and I served another two years at Drake AB in Tokyo, where the
major military hospital in Japan was located, and the seriously injured military
were treated, with kids as young as 19 and 20, in wheelchairs, with clamps
on their heads so they could not move their heads because of traumatic
spinal cord injuries.

And I still have the orders and my retirement certificate from 1 April 1973 to
prove it.

Who's the anti-American:

Well, that would be you.

"If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders would have
simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own military
being killed and we would have remained there until at least
1980. ...a society sick at our moral core"

The truth doesn't make my anti-American. In fact, I am more patriotic
because I see the truth, and accept that it does not make me anti-American
to recognize the warts and all in a country I love and honor.

The mass opposition to the war, already apparent in the early
seventies would have exploded had the war continued "...until at least
1980" as the body bags carrying the precious corpses were flown in in
increasing numbers and the American economy got into deeper and deeper
crisis as the costs of the war spiralled. That mass opposition of
Americans is given no credit by you at all. You prefer to blame the
war on "Americans" rather than nail the banker-capitalists as its root
cause. That makes you a fake patriotic hiding the crimes of the ruling
class.

That's because you are a fanatic socialist, obsessed with a failed political
system which treats humans like pawns. The problem we had with
Vietnam was our political and military leaders were filled with personal
hubris, and gave no thought to geopolitical or long-term considerations
about the far-east. The very fact that there was this deep objection from
citizens to that war, points out clearly what there is to love about the
deep-rooted morality of so many Americans. My only argument is that
we should never have even entered into that war. But once in we
certainly never LOST that war. There is not a single instance of any
document of surrender by any U.S. combat force in any engagement
against the Viet Cong or the NVA. Nor would any such instance show
that the U.S. military LOST the war in Vietnam, when considering the
numerous defeats of the Viet Cong and the NVA in various military
engagements.

PS: your fantasy of the fighting ability and organisation of the
Vietnamese bears no resemblance to reports by Australians who fought
in Vietnam.

ROTFLMAO. When cowards argue they generally try to latch onto others
who were not. Are you claiming that Australians who fought in Vietnam
felt they were outfought by the Viet Cong, and they admit that the Viet
Cong were better fighters man-for-man, than they were?

The argument is a claim that the U.S. military, with all it's military might
LOST the military war in Vietnam. And that argument is a total crock of
****! The Viet Cong admitted that the most frightening part of that war
was the B-52, and the fact that they could be walking through the jungle
and suddenly find the ground around them exploding with ordnance from
the sky. Unannounced, and with no place to hide. How many B-52s did
the Viet Cong or the NVA have?

During the course of that war how many bombings did North Vietnam
receive from the U.S. Air Force? During the course of that war how many
bombings did the U.S. receive from the North Vietnam Air Force??

For the U.S. military to have lost that war would have required the U.S.
military to have combat boots on the ground present to announce a
surrender to the NVA. That's how one defines the MILITARY LOSS OF A
WAR! There was not a single U.S. combat boot on the ground when the
NVA invaded South Vietnam and entered Saigon.



Planet Visitor II