we went to war in Vietnam to battle communism and one could argue that we didn't win convincingly...?

Question

how come the world didn't tumble into communism in a domino effect? Is it possible that the threat of communism was magnified by politicians to propigate a personal agenda? I guess my point is this, we spent an unbelieveable amount of money and sacrificed many lives to fight an imaginary war on people who "hated our freedom" are we going to fall for it again?

Answer 1

That's precisely what happened. And you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of corporations provided much of the impetus to stay in Vietnam, costing U.S. citizens 58,000+ lost lives, hundreds of thousands of broken lives and billions of dollars in debt. Those are just some of the reasons people are now opposed to Dubya's misadventures in Iraq. He has made insignificant progress while squandering thousands of lives and this time hundreds of billions of dollars, many of which can't or won't be accounted for. With the new dogs now in control of Congress, we can expect a great deal more oversight both of this Administration and their profiteering corporate friends, and more criticism of Dubya's pitiful efforts to play soldier.

Answer 2

First, we not only didn't win convincingly in Vietnam, we didn't win at all. There are many reasons for this failure, most notably, the American government's (as well as the American public's) hesitation to escalate the war to surrounding nations who were giving aid and comfort to our enemies. We refused to fight anything other than a defensive war, which is no way to fight a war.

Regardless, Vietnam was only one battle in the Cold War. Other, less obvious and more diplomatic, battles were being waged at the same time. We held the Soviet Union proper at bay through the arms race, and fostered (if not engineered) suspicions between Marxist USSR and Maoist China. Later in the seventies and early eighties, the United States supported anti-Soviet rebels (the Mujahadeen) after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, funded and trained anti-communists in Central and South America, and finally, through the nuclear arms race, choked the Soviet Union to death.

The world didn't fall to communism after Vietnam because we never stoped fighting communism, even after losing in Vietnam.

Your use of the phrase "imaginary war" is telling. You think that the Soviet led Warsaw Pact would not have overrun Europe had it not been for NATO's efforts to counter them? Do you really think the Cold War was imaginary?

Now you imply the the "war on terrorism" is imaginary as well. No respected scholar doubts that we are engaged in a type of war against radical Muslims. The debate is whether Bush has diverted our efforts away from this "war on terrorism", or whether Iraq is indeed a part of that war.

I'm not going to argue one way or another. I supported the initial attack on Iraq, but I'm not too happy with the quagmire we're in now. My answer is intended to address your implication that the war in Vietnam was somehow contrived or unnessesary. We lost, perhaps had we fought the war correctly, we would have lost anyway. It was a difficult fight. But surely we had to try.

What would have happened if we had not involved ourselves in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, El Salvadore, Chile? Should we have just sat on our hands while the rest of the world fell to communist thugs?

Answer 3

I think they both won that war. The Vietnamese communists kicked the US out of their country but the US military killed so much of their population (estimated 2 Million people) they couldn't take over the rest of Southeast Asia. Vietnamese won their civil war and the US stopped the domino effect in SE Asia and that's all that either side really wanted anyway.

Answer 4

initially, Vietnam grew to become right into a French colony. while the French military lost for the duration of the conflict of Dien Bien Phu in1954 resulted interior the signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords. France agreed to withdraw its forces from all its colonies in French Indochina, at the same time as stipulating that Vietnam could be temporarily divided on the seventeenth parallel, with administration of the north given to the Viet Minh simply by fact the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the south starting to be the State of Vietnam nominally under Emperor Bao Dai, scuffling with Ho Chi Minh from gaining administration of the completed united states of america. The refusal of Ngo Dinh Diem to permit elections in 1956, as have been stipulated by the Geneva convention, could ultimately deliver approximately the 1st component of the 2d Indochina conflict, extra sensible difficulty-free simply by fact the Vietnam conflict in Vietnam (1959–1963).

Answer 5

We already did fall for it again.
Quite simply the Vietnam war had two goals:
1. to get rid of the poor, lowest common denominator, and dissidents of the US government. This is why no rich senators sons died in vietnam, and no Bush ever died there either.
2. to produce a new generation of men and women who were addicted to heroin. The CIA has funded itself since it's inception by creating markets for, importing, and selling illicit narcotics. In the 60's they propagated LSD through the community to pay for their operations. With the end of the 60's and the wane of interest in LSD, the CIA needed something that people would do, and couldn't put down. Thusly providing them with the necessary funding for decades, as well as huge government subsidies on the Methadone program, where they purposefully keep addicts addicted, but buying their dope directly from the government instead.
It worked. The CIA is still around, and still is part and parcel to the largest influx of illicit narcotics ever recorded.

Answer 6

>Is it possible that the threat of communism was magnified by politicians to propigate a personal agenda?<

Hmm, and I suppose 100 million dead victims is small potatos in your book?

Answer 7

We had no compelling reason to ever invade Iraq and there were many lies and falsehoods concerning our doctrine in Vietnam as well...only this time we have awakened a people who now have good reasons for implacable hatred of the US.
We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.

Answer 8

One could argue, but one isn't going to.. It's so over with...
Let go.. Move on..
Or do something use full for the families of the victims and vet's

Answer 9

Its looking pretty god for the propoganda boys! When will we ever learn?

Answer 10

The answer to all of your questions appears to be "yes".