"If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting [communists] in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco."
--lyndon b. johnson, scaring the public into believing a withdrawal from vietnam would incite violent communist repercussions. we eventually left vietnam, and nothing happened. if anything, the communist tensions eased up a bit
"we're fighting [the terrorists] over there, so that we don't have to fight them here"
--george w. bush, scaring the public into believing a withdrawal from iraq will lead to violent repercussions. if anything, in all likelihood, the terrorism problem would decrease after a withdrawal from iraq, seeing as the terrorist problem has gotten worse since the war began, and seeing as the problem has only gotten worse in countries that support the iraq war. ironic, huh?
2007-11-05 12:28:13 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
taken in context, obviously i meant nothing happened to us, not nothing happened in vietnam
2007-11-05 12:35:29 · update #1
We left Vietnam and nothing happened?????? What about the 100,000's of people slaughtered in the killing fields? Communists tensions eased up? The Cold War continued through the 80's. This is revisionist history. How dare you make light of the genocide that occurred after we left Vietnam.
2007-11-05 12:32:21 · answer #1 · answered by MEL T 7 · 8⤊ 6⤋
Definitely. Vietnam was a war fought by the military, but lost on the homefront. Iraq (and the broader, ill-concieved, 'war on terror') is turning out much the same.
But, it's not like "nothing happened" when Vietnam fell to communism. Communist revolutionaries kept at it all over the world right through the 80s, until the fall of the Soviet Union.
2007-11-05 20:33:12 · answer #2 · answered by B.Kevorkian 7 · 6⤊ 1⤋
These parallels are pretty lame.
You are aware, I assume, that the government of South Viet Nam did not fall until AFTER we withdrew - and the killing fields and resulting slaughter didn't take place until AFTER we withdrew. I'm sure you are also aware that the United States defeated the North Viet Namese militarily, but they won the anti-war, public relations war on our home front.
The North Viet Namese did not adhere to an ideology of hatred and world domination and they did not purposely target innocent men, women and children to try and further their cause. They never attacked us on our own soil nor did they ever threaten to.
Perhaps you feel we should have continued with our policies of no effective response to the terrorists' attacks against Americans all over the globe, policies which arguably led to the events of 9/11.
Sometimes confrontation is necessary - we cannot always remain passive regardless of the provocation or possible consequences.
2007-11-05 21:10:17 · answer #3 · answered by LeAnne 7 · 5⤊ 2⤋
You are leaving out too many variants..
No, the Vietnamese did not infiltrate America...but radical Islam is already here.
No the Vietnamese have not attacked us with dirty bombs....hacked our computers or used cell phones to plan our demise...the technology did not exist then.
And as far as I know...there is no communist "religion"...that mandate killing us.
Prime example of comparing apples to oranges.
2007-11-05 21:25:11 · answer #4 · answered by Lilliput1212 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The tatic sounds close but we do have evidence that they have come here and attack us twice. WTC attack #1 and 9/11.
Vietnam we didn't.
2007-11-06 07:05:45 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The most ironic parallel is that in both wars, the people that gained the most were the owners of the companies that reaped the profits from the weapons and other military support contracts. The people that lost the most were the soldiers that were sacrificed for those profits and their families.
2007-11-05 20:37:15 · answer #6 · answered by redphish 5 · 2⤊ 4⤋
Your question brought me face up to another question....
If we are so upset with the communists and terrorists,
why are we trading with China????
I like the way you think, and you are so very right about
the scare tactics used by leaders to get their way with us.
Fear is the most basic mode of manipulation used against
citizens.....failure of leaders to be honest and truthful is
so imbedded into our system that we have grown apathetic...
Again that opens the door for 'them' to motivate us by causing
fear and panic.
Anyway this whole war is not about terrorists, it is about oil.
the bearer of the god of this world, money.
2007-11-05 20:37:13 · answer #7 · answered by mabzar 2 · 3⤊ 3⤋
3 Texas presidents 3 useless wars, 2 quagmires and a drive by. I remember every day we were seeing the progress until the Tet. and people stopped believing, this time no Tet, but people are sick to death of lies, decades of them.
2007-11-05 20:44:43 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 3⤋
there are big parrallels and if you look at many of the right wing groups that back bush, these groups are full of people who think that we should have never left vietnam even if it meant that we still had 50,000+ troops there to this day. the work that the hippie generation did has been competely perverted by the modern warhawks/chickenhawks who use the same sorry arguments for the same kind of dead end war of choice.
2007-11-05 20:33:55 · answer #9 · answered by 22steve5150 3 · 4⤊ 5⤋
Yea kind of like this "Global Warming" huh...
2007-11-05 20:53:08 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 1⤋