Vietnam Vets your opinion desired.?

Question

Looking back would you say the war was worth the cost of lives and how did the protests against the war affect you?

Answer 1

Other than strategic bombings like “Rolling Thunder,” U.S. war policy treated North Vietnam as an enemy only so long as they were in the south. So many argued then, and still today, such as the commentator Chris Matthews, that the war could not have been won in any circumstances. Do they really believe that the country which defeated the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese Navy could not achieve a tactical conquest of North Vietnam? How long could Hanoi hold off a siege against even five U.S. Armies with the full support of the American people? Days? Weeks?
But we weren’t at war with North Vietnam -- the South Vietnamese were; and we were simply providing support within a limited scope. And when they didn’t want victory desperately enough, then neither did we. This thinking paved the way out of the war. Since we hadn’t really been in a war with North Vietnam, then we didn’t really lose that war. We simply curtailed our support of the South Vietnamese regime: We snatched up our toys and went home like a petulant child. Millions were slaughtered throughout Communist Southeast Asia in the power vacuum left in the wake of our “honorable” withdrawal. The perpetrators go unpunished to this day. Victory against North Vietnam wasn’t within our scope.
By the time of Vietnam, the offspring of “The Greatest Generation” had reached adulthood and the spoiled few, plus those they could infect, made the regrettable decision to “Change the world.” While they knew that mainstream America would never accept their pro-Communist views, they were able to poison the well and obfuscate the facts of the Vietnam War sufficiently enough to create a substantial anti-war voting block which even included Americans who were inclined against Communism, but sadly were still harboring enough racism to care less if some “Gooks” from some country in some hemisphere were losing some freedom. Disagree? If North Vietnam invaded Caucasian Australia, can you really believe the U.S. would ever have stopped short of total victory regardless of cost? In the name of color? No. In the stated name of Freedom alone. But sadly for the people of southeast Asia, too many Americans wanted to “Give peace a chance” and cowardice was sold as “Conscience.” One wonders how the survivors of the postwar communist purges or the children of its victims view our national “Conscience?” How does the Dalai Lama like communism now?

A curse on "Hanoi Jane" and all those who gave aid and comfort to the most evil regime since Chairman Mao's!

Answer 2

As a Vietnam Veteran, I'd like to answer you, but first you need to understand the circumstances of the era. Both the Chinese Commies and the Soviet Union supplied the North with supplies, equipment. They did it through the harbor of Hanoi. I know this because the units I was in, found many caches with Chinese Communist supplies and allot of Soviet supplies in some of the tunnels we tried to clear. NOW, Think about this! If you we a country handing out "foreign aid" to a other country and your ships get blown out of the water. What would you do? So we (America) tried very hard not to spread the war into another WW III.

Since we have a civilian control over our military(by design) The politician's decided that they would be the generals for the war. Every day the White House had to approve the target list for the next day. Many of those decisions were very wrong. Every day Westmoreland and then Abrams had to wait for the "go ahead" for battle plans to be approved by the Pentagon, and often lag in time made the plans stale, especially when you consider that this was a guerrilla war.

So to make a long story short, was it worth the cost? This is not the real question one needs to ask. Why not ask questions like:

1. What happened to the South Vietnamese lands after the war?
2. Why did the entire Vietnamese population start experiencing birth defects, stillborn births, and many early deaths to those who fought alongside the US?
3. Why did an entire generation in the North not have very many old folks twenty years after the war?
4. Why did the politicians think that they were better battlefield commanders than the Generals who trained for just such events?
5. Did the war cause communism to take note and become much more afraid of spreading their theology to the rest of the world?
6. Why when we finally pulled out, Wht did the entire Vietnamese Army suddenly become the fourth best equipped Army in the world?

In the ensuring years I've come to reconcile that on the battlefield even with the poor morale and the seemingly lack of support from our country, we were victorious, but in the end we may have won the battle, but we did loose the war.

On a personal note, I still carry the roster of faces that I held in my arms as they died. I carry with me the things that men do in battle to survive, only to ask unendingly "Why did I survive?

Yet? In one of those protests I found the love of my life across a barricade and have come to appreciate her views. With 38 years of discussion with each other, we have come to find that we both wanted the same thing, but just didn't know how to get it. And so it is with our country, we both wanted the same thing, it was just the methods in getting there, that we all argued about.

Answer 3

The politics of the time required helping allies then confronting the communist expansion in South East Asia as we confronted Japans expansion during WW2. The "Cold War" was a confrontation against the Soviets. Life is a contact sport. There will always be confrontations especially as natural resource become scarce and the military is only as good as the most recent conflict. Without veterans, we are all in danger. Many protesters just did not want to be drafted because being in college was just to much fun. If you do not have your countries support, you feel that your efforts are wasted.

Answer 4

I am not a vet but I do recognize what the protests did to the men serving, especially when they returned...they were genuine heroes doing what their government asked of them...but, that said, the "protests" stopped the war and the death count at 50 thousand plus..if the protests had not been a part of the war, then the body count would have been double, triple whatever...would that have been better..of course not...so the protests were both good and bad but it was sad that the men who were caught up in it were not treated better upon their return..like I said: They were heroes.

Answer 5

i don't know if this will make sense to you but in 1970 when i was there it was worth fighting the war. it is never desirable to lose lives though. but what made me feel bad was the lives that were lost became nothing to our government when the powers to be in washington said that is enough and let america come in second place in the vietnam war games. how the protests affected me was when i came home and my folks didn't believe what i was trying to tell them of my war adventure. our government should never have let the college kids destroy campuses and govenment buildings and should have shot or hanged jane fonda for the stupid things she did and the lives that were lost while she was in hanoi. my honest opinion after the fact was that the media got away with to much in that they fed the protesters untruths that were happening in the war. folks back home got the news as it happened from nam but that didn't mean that all was what it seemed from their cameras and news bites. the media should never be allowed in a war zone because war is blowing up things and killing people. not all the killing is kept to the enemy ie civilians unfortuneatly get killed as well. this opinion of mine goes for the war in iraq our government needs to let our military win this war and be damned of the consequencses that go with war. thank you for letting me blow off some steam ssgt usaf mr doodles.

Answer 6

That was a disgraceful drug-related war as everyone knows. There is little difference between the Vietnam and present war in Iraq - the Government sends out a huge amount of young men who do their bit for their nation whilst at home the general public begin to doubt the legality of it all with the result that the soldiers return in shame with their future careers in shatters.

Answer 7

Well, obviously SOME of those who TRIED to answer are clueless. General Giap said that, in TWO particular instances, N. Viet Nam was close to surrender. IF we had continued to bomb Hanoi without stop they would have surrendered. During the Tet offensive of 1968, if we had not had to play political games, N. Viet Nam would have their butts kicked and surrendered. These weren't the only instances, but if you want to know the TRUTH of what Gen. Giap said, do your research. Instead of a political pull out, we would have been victorious and Viet Nam would not be run by greedy communists today.
(USN, retired/in-country Viet Nam vet)

Answer 8

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Answer 9

I was a medivac helicopter pilot in vietnam. Over the past thirty seven years or so since I left vietnam, my feelings and thoughts on the war have changed dramatically. Several times in fact. Without going into all of my mind changing, here's where I am today.

Whether any war was worth the cost of lives lost is an impossible question. Either the war was worth fighting, or it wasn't. Period. Lives will be lost in war. Every time. But we're talking about vietnam aren't we. As I look at the world today one thing is strikingly clear to me that most people seem to have forgotten. And that one thing is that we are no longer in a cold war with the Soviet Union. In fact, there is no longer a Soviet Union. That means that the world is no longer a hair trigger away from nuclear holocost. That means that a large super power, the USSR, is no longer trying to dominate the world with it's brand of government, communism. That also means that more than any other time in history, the US is in a position to really influence world economics and world politics. We're talking about vietnam remember so don't get me going on Iraq or the war on terror.

Had the US and it's allies not made a stand in Korea and Vietnam, I am convinced that a great deal of the pacific rim would be under some form of communist domination today. With it's build up of allies in asia and the pacific, the USSR would have been even more emboldened and with their increased resources might not have come to the financial ruin that finally happened in the late eighties. You see, that's the point. What if the Soviets had not had to spend the arms, supplies, manpower and machines necessary to bolster the governments of North Korea and North Vietnam? What if they didn't have to spend the money matching the US submarine for submarine, ICBM for ICBM, tank for tank in eastern Europe. It all added up. And Vietnam was part of their cost of playing the game. But we won that game. Just because of Vietnam? Of course not but suppose after the french bailed out after having their asses handed to them at Diem bin Phu we had allowed Ho and his boys just to march into Saigon? I know, you'll say that they did that anyway. Yep. But it took them another twenty years at great cost. So from where I sit, the argument can be made that the Vietnam war and our participation in it has helped, if only a little bit, to make this world a safer place for all of us to live.

Having said all that, not one of the lives of my buddies that I lost could be said to have been "worth it." Don't ask me to explain such a contradiction to what I've said above. I can't. You'd have to have been there to even begin to understand. Which brings me to the second part of your question. I am often amused today when I hear people say that they support the troops but not what they're doing. Oh really? When I ask them how they go about supporting the troops very few seem to have an answer. The only difference from 2007 and 1967 are the sound bites. Very few who were vocal about it back then supported the troops and very few who are vocal today support the troops. Regardless of what they'll tell you today that sounds so different to you than what was being said in the sixties.. They just don't get it. It's impossible for them to get it unless they've been away from home in a foreign land just doing their best to keep themselves and their buddies alive. That's it you see. Every soldier, sailor, marine and airman is concentrating on one thing, watching their squad mates back knowing that someone is watching his. Nobody has time to think about what the fine folks back home really think. They get the same media reports that you and I do. And when those reports say that americans are linning up by party platform to voice their opposition or support for the war, they don't have time to give it much thought as to why such partisan politicing is going on while they're over there trying to kick some butt. That's what we told them we would pay them for when they signed up. Now they're doing their job and half of their employers can't agree with the other half whether or not their paychecks should keep comming. I don't like this war either and I sure didn't like Vietnam. But I think we could have made an even bigger difference in Vietnam had a great many of our countrymen and women not done everything in their power to cause those that run wars, the elected officials in our government, to hesitate. Had Ho Chi Minh seen resolve in the american public and not disention after TET 1968 and had we pressed the war like our commanders on the ground were pleading, uncle Ho would have sued for a peace similar to what we have in Korea today. Not the best outcome but far better than what we ended up with. And the war would have been over seven years sooner. I'll leave it to you to do the math concerning how many US and Vietnamese lives would have been saved.

Nope. Not much has changed folks. The weapons are different. So are the uniforms. But the guys and gals that are wearing those uniforms and carrying those weapons are no different than me and my buddies four decades ago. And neither is the american public from what I see.

Answer 10

yep..."An Inconvenient actuality" swayed my opinion international warming. can we end it from happening no; can we do issues now to sluggish it down, yep. there is one element interior the action picture that truly made me take a seat up and take observe. the melting of the glaciers on Greenland and Antarctica. not so as that they are melting, yet while a huge chew of the two a sort of glaciers ought to come sliding off into the sea it will make the tsunami that hit interior the Indian ocean appear as if a small ripple on a pond.