re: The Vietnam War (Ken Burns)

Just watched ep1. Very well done seeing points of views from many sides and at different levels. Great use of old photos and video clips to guide the program.

Ho Chi Minh was quite a man. I knew he spent time in France. No idea he was also in us, russia, china. His life purpose was Vietnam independence. I was in Vietnam earlier this year. I can see why his statues and portraits are everywhere.

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Washington assholes knew in 64 and 65 we couldn't win. WTF!?

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I wonder how long would the war be if these politicians had their sons in the Vietnam.

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These fricking Washington assholes knew in 64 and 65 we couldn't win. WTF!?


It is really unforgivable.

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Hearing the tapes of Kennedy and LBJ in the early to mid 60's is what's terrible. They knew that early that it was an unwinnable war in a shithole of their making.

Eerily similar to what is happening today. The death toll of today has one less zero on it and does not involve a draft. Thank god. The public could not possibly stand for a draft or a full scale war with 10's of thousands of casualties.

Being isolationist in the World Wars did not work, but neither has anything we've done since.

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These fricking Washington assholes knew in 64 and 65 we couldn't win. WTF!?

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We damn sure could have won. But we did not lose.

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Sure we did.

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Explain yourself. Name one battle we lost- in fact, all were victories on our side. We settled for a stalemate but didn't surrender. In fact, the peace accord was brought on by NV after the Linebacker II operations. So, just how did we lose?

We lost 58k lives, 303k wounded, $134b spent, gained nothing. That is a loss.

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We lost 58k lives, 303k wounded, $134b spent, gained nothing. That is a loss.

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Ok, tell me again how we were defeated.

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The US didn't achieve the objective. It was a loss.

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Once again, name one battle we were defeated in. Can't mark a loss due to objective. The war was lost by SVN because they couldn't/wouldn't stop the NV. We did. Every single time. The politicians sought a way out, which was started by the NV after Linebacker II...and the reasoning for that is NV was defenseless as a result.

Now, was the result wanted? No, but in now was the U.S. defeated or beaten. So don't pull that shite.

Got a peace treaty, pulled put, NV broke the deal and took over the south after we left.

We won militarily but we lost in the grand scheme.

Probably never should have been there but hindsight is 20/20 and you have to consider the Cold War prism in which the U.S. viewed this issue.

When they say they knew in '65 that we couldn't win but went ahead anyway that is B.S. We won and would have won in the big picture if the public would have been on board and our military's hands weren't tied.

Jane Fonda should still be in prison for her treason.