Why am I still waiting for the Communist to hurt me?

Question

In 1969 I was told "We are fighting in Vietnam to keep them from coming to our town and killing us". So I joined the military. We lost Vietnam on 30th April 1975. 31 years later I'm still waiting for the Communist to come to my town and kill me. Now I'm told we must stop the terrorist in Iraq before they come into my town and kill us once again. ( How many times do we have to hear this story?) How can the USA people fall for these lies the Government tells us?

Answer 1

This is a point that I have reiterated time and time again with regards to baiting people by fear in both Vietnam and in our current conflict in Iraq. Conservatives constantly harp on about how we lost the Vietnam War, and how that loss was a result of liberals weakening our resolve. Yet that loss did not result in a domino effect of all the nations of the world falling to Communism, as many conservatives predicated. Clearly all of rationale offered to go into Vietnam never panned out, and the same holds true with the current crisis in the Middle East.

The logic and the fear mongering are exactly the same. We are told that we are “fighting the terrorists over there so that we won’t have to fight them over here.” Talk about utter rubbish. First, Iraq did not harbor or aid and abet any terrorists that were involved in the 9/11 tragedy. Secondly, terrorism in Iraq only started becoming an issue because OUR ACTIONS inflamed sentiments in Iraq so that they would be receptive to outside terror groups like Al Qaeda. Finally, the insurgent movement in Iraq is completely limited to attacking troops that are on Iraqi soil, there is no indication that this insurgent group has global aspiration, just as there was no legitimate reason to believe that Vietnam’s fall to Communism would engender other nations to follow their lead.

You asked a very important question, and one that has bothered me for quite sometime. You asked how the American people could repeatedly fall for this sort of deception time and time again? It’s quite simple really, and that is what is so sad about the whole affair. Americans perpetually fall for the same fear mongering rhetoric, because Americans have very little respect for history and never learn from it.

Answer 2

I'm not so sure that it is the American Government telling the lie here.

We never really "lost" in Vietnam. It was people that behaved then the same way you are behaving now that condemned us to not winning in Vietnam.

I was once told that there are actually people in the world who know about the Vietnam war. That includes almost no Americans. We prefer not to think about Vietnam, so we haven't learned from it. There was a completely winnable war in which we lost no major battles, in which the guerilla fighters (the Viet Cong) were utterly destroyed as a fighting force early in 1968, never to be rebuilt, and yet we lost. How? Diem had announced that he would fight until we got tired of it and went home, and he proceeded to do so. It really didn't matter who won on the battlefield as long as the NVA won on the US TV screen. After the Tet battles of 1968, the Viet Cong were destroyed as a fighting force and the NVA were significantly weakened. Walter Cronkite announced that we were lost, and Johnson said that if Cronkite said so, then the American people were lost. That is, Cronkite's analysis was completely wrong but his conclusion was right, because it was a self-fulfilling prophesy. Our adversaries have learned this lesson, and we haven't. There is no way we could possibly be beaten militarily. The military can handle Iraq. What they can't do is handle public opinion at home, which is where the war will be won or lost.

Answer 3

We may have lost Vietnam, but we did not loose to Vietnam. And that was just one aspect of the fight against communism. The Berlin wall did come down, we won the cold war, and communism did not come to your town and kill you. All these things might just be related... ya think? Who is to say that our actions today might not prevent terrorist from coming to your town in the same way? Iraq is just one battle in the total war on terrorism. You might not realize what role it plays in that for years to come....


And come on... all governments, and leaders lie.

Answer 4

Well, I know a tiny bit about the good old S.E. Asia wargames and our 2nd place showing there. As I recall NVA sappers never came to the World Trade Centers and planted satchel charges, nor did they hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Centers.
I don't know about you, but I worry about an enemy who is hitting us on our soil and abroad i.e. USS Cole...
Maybe you were just lucky and don't worry about things. You may be the lucky kind of person who can drive in bad neighborhoods at 2:00 a.m. with your windows down and exchange pleasantries with the local crack traders and walk away unscathed.
Kudos to you, I wasn't so lucky when I was working in law enforcement and had several friends killed, so congratulations. Keep looking to the clouds with your head in the sand.

Answer 5

When you get your pay stub this week and realize that you are working 7 out of 10 days for the government (more in some states like NY and CA) you will come to know that they have silently already won.

Answer 6

In a way you are right, but...

The commies gave us Rubik's Cube and Tetris back in the early 1980s. What have the Islamic terrorists given us?

What I'm saying is, the communists are much more like us than the Islamic nutjobs.

Answer 7

The communists may not have hurt you, but that terrible ideology has killed millions of people. Google Democide to see what I mean. Mao and Stalin killed more people than anyone in history. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge killed over 20% of their own people. It was a bad idea to go into Vietnam, but America was trying to stop a horrible and deadly ideology from spreading.

Answer 8

How do you know they still wont. China is communist and will be a threat to the USA one of these days and the Russians still hate us.There may be sleeper cells of terrorist in your home town now, so how do you they wont?

Answer 9

Because you're having LSD flashbacks.

Look at the bright sided. They didn't get you, but between the Soviet Union and China they managed to murder about 100,000,000 of their own citizens.

Answer 10

what are you? pro-commie or pro-terrorist? this is just the type of seditious rhetoric that the hippie liberal left-wing media will have you believe. the only lies being told are coming from people like you who are unamerican.