re: Lessons of Viet Nam--everyone should watch the PBS series--

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Interesting fact from last night many here didn't know I suspect is that China invaded North Vietnam shortly after the war. They sent 85000 troops into North VietNam.

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Yes - the war in Indochina didn't end when the U.S. pulled out. The north didn't conquer the South until '75....and then China invaded the North. Also, the Vietnamese eventually fought and defeated the Khmer Rougue in Cambodia. The fighting didn't stop until about 1980.

I was a college student during Vietnam and I was paying very close attention since I was engaged in debates on the subject and doing copious amounts of research. There were a LOT of different opinions and I discussed and wrote papers clearly stating my position. It was this:

"I sincerely hope the US prevails and wins. I don't think we will and therefore we should withdraw. My reasoning has to do with the history of nations intervening to 'save' other nations from aggressors. Those interventions are successful when the people being 'saved' want to be saved and are actively participating in the effort.

I do not believe the vast majority of the South Vietnamese villagers (SV) either want to be saved or think they can be. Regardless, I don't think they are willing to actively participate in assisting in the effort either due to fear or lack of political will.

I do not believe our soldiers can trust SV to give them meaningful intelligence on NV movements. This lack of assistance from the people who you are risking your life for has to be demoralizing to our troops. We should withdraw."

That was my position about 50 years ago. Today, I think I was correct.

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He committed treason. He was not a great man or president but for Watergate. He possessed the worst qualities of a politician which ultimately led to his demise. Richard Nixon is a stain on the Presidency.

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The sabotaging of the talks for purposes of the election was
treasonous, no doubt.

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Now, I will grant that we went into the war on bad intelligence, much like the Iraq War. But, if we really wanted to win that war, again, much like the Iraq War, we could've and would've unequivocally. The best way to do war is end it quickly, we fricked around and fricked around for years over there, if you want to do war, you need to make it as quick and as violent as possible. We ended up leaving in disgrace and in turn fricked the South Vietnamese and left them to their fate.

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Crazy isn't it? Are we seeing a pattern here?

Well, first of all, as much as I love Ken Burns' work, he could use an editor to cut that thing down by at least a third.

Secondly, over air networks used to air such documetaries occasionally and they were well received and had big viewership.

Thirdly, cable channels and cableless channels (Netflix, etc.) have shown a willingness to put extended mini-series out there, and I don't see why a quality extended documentary would be any less well received.

It was an incredible series. The Vietnam war showed what bad assumptions flawed analysis and outright duplicity by our politicians can do....58,000 Americans dead and what was achieved in an overall strategic sense?

In Vietnam, we basically went in there in the early 1950's because the French essentially extorted us by saying that if we did not help them recover their overseas colonies they may have no choice but to possibly fall into the Soviet orbit as that there was a sizeable Communist movement there.

We saw how the French were unable to pacify the country. After the war with the French and after partition, Kennedy actually went to Saigon when he was a new Senator and had come to the conclusion that the West should just let the place be and limit aid to the South because he determined that the South was corrupt. So what did he do when he became President? He doubled down on stupid and started sending dozens if not hundreds and then thousands of military "advisors"

In 1964-65 McNamara and the brain trust had already come to the conclusion that victory there was not possible. But he and LBJ dobled down and by 1966-67 we had half a million troops there. We would go into full fledged battles , waste lives and money to take a hill , drive the VC and NVA off the hill only to abandon the piece of real estate a few days after. We had known for years that the ARVN Army at least on the command officer end was corrupt and possibly infiltrated and thus very much ineffective which cost the lives of many ARVN troops.

Vietnam was a war for national liberation overall. The Soviets and the ChiComs were just opportunists in the war....notice they were not willing to let their people die for Vietnam.

Good music came out of that era though

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From where I sit, there's a lot of stain to go around. Hell, I rank Reagan as the best President since Washington and he was far from perfect in the office. The 20th Century had an especially bad run - I like Teddy, Truman (on a good day), Ike (mostly), JFK (on a good day), and Reagan (mostly). After that? You can have the lot of them for cheap.

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Nixon probably thought that Clark Clifford was going to allow South Vietnam to get the shaft at the peace talks in Paris, so he thought that if the South would hold off on attending prior to the election, he could get them a more "honorable" deal than the one that Humphrey ( LSU grad) would get them.

If you leave Watergate out of Nixon's Presidency, you would find that overall he was one of the more competent people in the White House in the Twentieth Century. He understood the issues, understood the process and understood the art of the possible. Not just internationally but even domestically. Democrats hate him, but Nixon was more of a Progressive than Clinton ever was - he created the EPA and DOE. He began the drawdown of US forces in SVN almost at the beginning of his Presidency. I think in the first year he withdrew more than 100,000 men from the place. He did invade Cambodia, but IMHO Cambodia had it coming to them by allowing the NVA to operate on its side of the border to move men and material into the South . From a military point of view, that move was solid....politically, not so smart

He did end the draft.

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Let's raise at least one generation that does not go to war.

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Never happen. Next fricking war? North Korean and Iranian nuclear warheads raining down on us. All courtesy of our pals Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama and funded by your U. S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

The populace of SV did not support the corrupt government we were backing.