More Troops, Less Troops, or.... Both?

[maineman]

is that clear? YOU are saying that the war would have been won in 3 more months... my 50K number was not based upon 3 more months. And read above....in order to take the number out of the question, I said, "what sort of a result would you have wanted to see that would have been worth ANY more dead Americans? "

 

[Battleborne]

What can I say....

again...you say that the lost their lives in vain..... how can you say that? what would a "victory" in Vietnam look like so that their lives would have any more meaning today than they already do? what was "in vain" about our efforts in Vietnam? Don't you think that if someone said that if we stayed and won the war, that thirty years later, we would be trading partners with out former enemies that you would have said that sounded like a nice outcome?

And regarding your "3 month" number.... I have NEVER seen anyone who is credible say that had we stayed three months longer than we did, we would have achieved total victory.

'You just can't handle the truth' hey we should have lost WWI, WWII,Korea and VN after all we are now trading partners with them all now! Hey look at all the lives of troops we could have saved...Good Lord Commander did you wear a 'Peace Symbol' on your helmut...and sing Kumbia...why the hell did you go in the military anyways...for a free college degree/retirement check or what...what the hell do people think the military is for...oh yeah they are just observers....Holy shit I am living in Never Never land...everyone stays the same age and lives forever...not in the real world commander...the military has only one purpose...they break things and kill the enemy..they fight at the direction of the elected commander in chief in the US that is...can vary from nation to nation...in your little world the military should be abolished...then we would not be having this discussion...hows that? sempre fi or anchors away...or whatever floats your boat!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Dixie...so...according to you, because we lost and didn't stick around a few more years and "win", we somehow failed to stop the spread of communism.

Not what I am saying. Our withdrawal from Vietnam dealt a serious blow to American credibility on the world stage. Our enemies knew, from that point forward, we did not have the will to fight a protracted war of attrition, that we would fold if the risk were too great. Our allies realized that we would not stand with them against Communist aggression, and thus, made them more susceptible to negotiating with Communists for their future. Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia, I believe, were a direct result of our withdrawal from Vietnam. Millions were slaughtered... but I guess they didn't mean anything to you, since they weren't Americans.

There is simply no way to know what might have been, had we won Vietnam... Perhaps Cuba would have fallen as well, maybe the Cold War would have ended sooner, or we could have possibly had to deal with the threat of Islamofascism in 1980, instead of 2001. It's impossible to try and discern what might have happened, but one thing is for certain, those who gave their lives for the cause, would have been justly honored for their sacrifice. Vietnam would have been remembered as a victory for America, not a disgrace.

 

[uscitizen]

I am curious as to how 3 more months would have made any difference in Nam ?
Well except for more lives and money flushed down the drain.

 

[Battleborne]

Beats me....

I am curious as to how 3 more months would have made any difference in Nam ?
Well except for more lives and money flushed down the drain.

How the hell do I know..i'm not a peacenick...tie dyed...hippy lib...y'all have the answers...ya tell me...i'm just a shell shocked vet...I know nothing and my opinion sucks...ask the deck commander he must have all the answers as he sure asks alot of questions...either he is full of it or he can give us all the answers to his questions...in the meantime y'all can play with each other...i'm done for now!

 

[Cypress]

How the hell do I know..i'm not a peacenick...tie dyed...hippy lib...y'all have the answers...ya tell me...i'm just a shell shocked vet...I know nothing and my opinion sucks...ask the deck commander he must have all the answers as he sure asks alot of questions...either he is full of it or he can give us all the answers to his questions...in the meantime y'all can play with each other...i'm done for now!

You said that "we were three months away from total victory in 1975"

that's a VERY specific prediction, within a short time frame, within a given year.

What made you say that? Or are you finally willing to admit you were talking out your ass?

 

[Battleborne]

Nope....

You said that "we were three months away from total victory in 1975"

that's a VERY specific prediction, within a short time frame, within a given year.

What made you say that? Or are you finally willing to admit you were talking out your ass?

Just tired of talking to 'ASSES'...now go away and get back to tie dying your t-shirts to sell on Capitol Hill!

 

[Cypress]

Just tired of talking to 'ASSES'...now go away and get back to tie dying your t-shirts to sell on Capitol Hill!

Your girlfriend Dixie not here to save you? I don't buy Dixie's spin.

You made a very specific assertion: that we WERE 3 months away from total victory in 1975

Explain what made you say this Mr. Vet....


****************************************************
-BB: First and foremost...we were within three months of total victory in VN ie 75'

Ten minutes later:

-BB: "I never said we were within three months of victory in (75)!"

 

[Battleborne]

Here maybe this will help you...

Your girlfriend Dixie not here to save you? I don't buy Dixie's spin.

You made a very specific assertion: that we WERE 3 months away from total victory in 1975

Explain what made you say this Mr. Vet....


****************************************************
-BB: First and foremost...we were within three months of total victory in VN ie 75'

Ten minutes later:

-BB: "I never said we were within three months of victory in (75)!"

Note ie=example it was placed before the 75 meaning the NVA had victory in 75 and it should have been ours...we were only 3months from victory in 73 before you libs screwed it up!
'I' said we were 3months from victory(Having been there prior to 73)...you put the spin on the year 75..It was already explained to you...but here you go Mr.Lib here are the facts....It will show how you libs caused our defeat...enjoy...a-hole


www.25thaviation.org/id275.htm


or from the mouth of Gen Bui Tin www.grunt.com/scuttlebutt/corps-stories/vietnam/north.asp

 

[maineman]

'You just can't handle the truth' hey we should have lost WWI, WWII,Korea and VN after all we are now trading partners with them all now! Hey look at all the lives of troops we could have saved...Good Lord Commander did you wear a 'Peace Symbol' on your helmut...and sing Kumbia...why the hell did you go in the military anyways...for a free college degree/retirement check or what...what the hell do people think the military is for...oh yeah they are just observers....Holy shit I am living in Never Never land...everyone stays the same age and lives forever...not in the real world commander...the military has only one purpose...they break things and kill the enemy..they fight at the direction of the elected commander in chief in the US that is...can vary from nation to nation...in your little world the military should be abolished...then we would not be having this discussion...hows that? sempre fi or anchors away...or whatever floats your boat!

That response is without merit. We did NOT lose those wars, and we needed to win those wars for a variety of reasons.... and had we not won those wars, the earth today would be totally different than it is... my point to you that you keep obfuscating and avoiding is: other than the word "victorious", how would our being "victorious" in Vietnam have made the world different or better than it it today? And how many more American lives would you have been willing to sacrifice in order to be "victorious"?

I have no problem with the military. I love blowing things up. I am not some hippie peacenik. I have asked you a very simple question and all you can do in response is throw up a giant smokescreen of false outrage. Just tell me what would the result of our "victory" in Vietnam be that would be any better than the result we have today and tell me again how many young men you would have been willing to have die toi achieve that "victorious" result? You cannot answer that question, and you should really do a little soul searching and abandon your pat answers and ask yourself what that really means about what the Vietnam war was really all about.

We were told it was about stopping communism from toppling freedom loving democracies across the pacific rim and that we'd have communists knocking at the Golden Gate Bridge if we did not stop them in Vietnam. Well.... did that happen? Did any other countries in the pacific rim have their freedom loving democracies toppled as a result of our not being "victorious" in Vietnam?

And you are close to right as to the mission of our military. It is, beyond defense of the homeland, the muscular arm of our nation's foreign policy. Do you really think that the domino theory was a legitimate part of American foreign policy in 1973? Do you really think that we were still operating under the illusion of communism as some centrally controlled monolithic force that would consume freedom in the world if left unchecked...if not stopped at all costs on the southeast asian pennisula????? That might very well have been a part of our foreign policy in 1945 when we participated in the division of southeast asia..and it may have been a part of our foreign policy when we stopped the russians from consuming Berlin with our airlift...and it may have been part of our policy when JFK took the world to the brink over Cuba..... but do you really think that the domino theory..which was the operative theory that formed our foreign policy in the early stages of the cold war... was really part of that foreign policy in 1973? AND IF IT WASN'T.... then why would we continue to use chew up the men and material of our military - trhe muscular arm of our foreign policy - when that part of the policy was no longer valid?

The job of the military is to go and destroy things with great efficiency until the suits in DC tell us to come home. We did that in Vietnam.... and then the suits in DC told us to come home.

And here you are suggesting that it would have been better if we had stayed and lost God only knows how many more americans and killed God only knows how many Vietnamese and flushed God only knows how many dollars down the shitter...just so YOU could claim we were "victorious"????? And you cannot even explain to me how the world would be any different or better today if we had?????

Yeah....you are some smart motherfucking patriot, you are.

 

[maineman]

Dixie...so...according to you, because we lost and didn't stick around a few more years and "win", we somehow failed to stop the spread of communism.

Not what I am saying. Our withdrawal from Vietnam dealt a serious blow to American credibility on the world stage. Our enemies knew, from that point forward, we did not have the will to fight a protracted war of attrition, that we would fold if the risk were too great. Our allies realized that we would not stand with them against Communist aggression, and thus, made them more susceptible to negotiating with Communists for their future. Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia, I believe, were a direct result of our withdrawal from Vietnam. Millions were slaughtered... but I guess they didn't mean anything to you, since they weren't Americans.

There is simply no way to know what might have been, had we won Vietnam... Perhaps Cuba would have fallen as well, maybe the Cold War would have ended sooner, or we could have possibly had to deal with the threat of Islamofascism in 1980, instead of 2001. It's impossible to try and discern what might have happened, but one thing is for certain, those who gave their lives for the cause, would have been justly honored for their sacrifice. Vietnam would have been remembered as a victory for America, not a disgrace.

wow.... you have some pretty weird "what if's" going on there. Basically... your rationale for our continuing to fight the war in Vietnam was to prove to the rest of the world that we were willing to continue fighting wars for prolonged periods of time? You have nothing to back up your what if concerning Pol Pot and your bullshit attempt to hang the victims of the killing fields on America's withdrawal from Vietnam (really weak and repugnant).... or Cuba or even the cold war.

I think just as valid a case could be made that Vietnam, and the damage it did to our military in terms of chewing up all of our hardware and infrastructure at an accelerated pace and in bankrupting our treasury, made it even harder to build capacity back up to face the REAL foes at the time, which were not a bunch of vietnamese in pajamas, but the russians. YOU look at how much time and money we spent on designing and developing hardware just for the southeast asian theater that could have been much more effectively spent in countering the soviet ballistic missile threat or the horrific threat posed by their nuclear submarine fleet. They were pleased as could be that we were chewing ourselves to bits in Vietnam..... every missile we fired, every bomb we dropped was one less they had to worry about..

And I don't know about where YOU come from, but in the north, we HONOR Vietnam war veterans and we honor those who died in Vietnam.

And I ask you, how many more American lives - not your own of course - would you have been willing to sacrifice to achieve this "victory" in Vietnam?

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Maine, your entire argument is, Vietnam ended up okay because everything is okay now, the sky didn't fall with our loss. You refuse to acknowledge anything positive that may have resulted with a Vietnam win, as if it would have made no difference at all. How can you be so utterly myopic? If Germany had won WWII, would you be preaching to us about how it's not so bad having to salute the Fuhrer each day, and hey... we don't have the troubles in the ME because we fixed that Jew problem! How could life possibly be any better than this? Would that be your take?

Has we been victorious in Vietnam, I doubt that Pol Pot would have been so bold as to slaughter millions in the fields next door, or that we, the victors of Vietnam, would have allowed it. We were simply not in a place to do a damn thing about it, and MILLIONS of people died. This is just ONE thing that happened in the aftermath of Vietnam, one could argue that many of the problems we are facing today, are a direct result of not finishing the job in Vietnam.

When you speak of wars in terms of victory and defeat, you must always consider, the consequences of war will effect all things that follow. There is no way to predict how things would have played out, if we had won in Vietnam, there are too many factors and ramifications that would have been entirely different with an American win.

 

[maineman]

Maine, your entire argument is, Vietnam ended up okay because everything is okay now, the sky didn't fall with our loss. You refuse to acknowledge anything positive that may have resulted with a Vietnam win, as if it would have made no difference at all. How can you be so utterly myopic? If Germany had won WWII, would you be preaching to us about how it's not so bad having to salute the Fuhrer each day, and hey... we don't have the troubles in the ME because we fixed that Jew problem! How could life possibly be any better than this? Would that be your take?

Has we been victorious in Vietnam, I doubt that Pol Pot would have been so bold as to slaughter millions in the fields next door, or that we, the victors of Vietnam, would have allowed it. We were simply not in a place to do a damn thing about it, and MILLIONS of people died. This is just ONE thing that happened in the aftermath of Vietnam, one could argue that many of the problems we are facing today, are a direct result of not finishing the job in Vietnam.

When you speak of wars in terms of victory and defeat, you must always consider, the consequences of war will effect all things that follow. There is no way to predict how things would have played out, if we had won in Vietnam, there are too many factors and ramifications that would have been entirely different with an American win.

If Germany had won? but Germany didn't win...we did...and we know what happened as a result of that win. We also know what our foreign policy that supported the Vietnam war was designed to prevent.... and I am saying to you that the domino theory was bullshit...and because we figured that out and left Vietnam, communism did not spread throughout the pacific rim...which is what we were fighting to prevent. Do you honestly think that getting in the middle of a civil war between the Vietnamese people who were fighting over an unnatural split imposed upon their countries by the west was a reason to commit all those troops and all that money for all those years? Of course not.... we fought in Vietnam because when we started fighting in Vietnam we believed that we needed to stop communism there or it would tumble democracies all the way to here. We used our military as a muscular arm of our foreign policy. When the policy is no longer valid, do you honestly think that keeping troops on the ground, dying, to support that no longer valid foreign policy is what engenders loyalty amongst the men in uniform? "We went to Vietnam to contain communism but even though we no longer think that our fighting and dying there will have any impact on slowing or accelerating world communism, since you're already there dying.... you might as well STAY there and KEEP dying"????? Just because you are too yellow to go fight for your country, let me tell you that going to fight a useless mission like that for nothing other than PRIDE is a pretty demoralizing thing to ask men to do.

An American win in Vietnam was as implausible as an American "win" in Iraq. We cannot "win" in such a way as the loser will be vanquished and surrender to our forces..... a victory in Iraq is as impossible on those terms as it always was in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were never going to stop wanting to unify the vietnamese people.... and the people and governments of the south never wanted a separate freedom bad enough to fight for it.

 

[maineman]

and your doubts about Pol Pot are your own and unfounded as a hindsight rationale for keeping Americans dying for a war that didn't serve our national interest.

 

[Battleborne]

Maineman....

Please revisit my post #109 above...click on the links and read...you have absolutely no Idea what the VN war was about or why we lost!
Iraq has now become the VN conflict reborne...In my opinion we should take out Irans Nuclear program...NOW! Before they have the capability to destroy not only the ME and Israel,but attack US cities as well...No matter though if y'all cowards are afraid...Israel has already said 'tonight' that they will act if necessary before the threat becomes real! I place you now in the same category and non respect as I have for 'Toy' General (retired) Wesley Clark!...over! Where the hell is General Westmorland when ya need him?

 

[maineman]

Please revisit my post #109 above...click on the links and read...you have absolutely no Idea what the VN war was about or why we lost!
Iraq has now become the VN conflict reborne...In my opinion we should take out Irans Nuclear program...NOW! Before they have the capability to destroy not only the ME and Israel,but attack US cities as well...No matter though if y'all cowards are afraid...Israel has already said 'tonight' that they will act if necessary before the threat becomes real! I place you now in the same category and non respect as I have for 'Toy' General (retired) Wesley Clark!...over! Where the hell is General Westmorland when ya need him?

look...you are an intellectual lightweight. I am done trying to coddle you. Sgt Grit????? that is a "link" you post to tell ME about the Vietnam war? Go fuck yourself. YOu have yet to answer a simple question because you do not have the intellectual ammunition to attempt it. ANd I think it is quite telling that you glorify Westmoreland who LIED to America at LBJ's behest for years..... I am not now, nor have I ever been a coward, and you would be wise not to repeat such an insult.

Now ...go away.... you are too infantile and illogical in your arguments to deal with...it is like arguing with a six year old.

 

[maineman]

for example.... the discussion is about the futility of the Vietnam war, your claims that we were three months away from total victory in '75, the fact that you cannot tell me what the world would look like if we had continued to waste human cannon fodder in VN.. and the correlation to Iraq now..... and to that discussion, you bring WWI and WWI and Korea and NOW, you bring Iran...... what the fuck does Iran have to do with the idiocy of getting ourselves in the middle of a civil war in Iraq that we started when we toppled the only guy around who could KEEP islamic extremists out of Iraq (we can't) and who could KEEP the sunnis and shiites from killing each other (we can't) and who could KEEP a lid on Iranian hegemony (we can't) and we did it because he supposedly had WMD's (he didn't) and some vague connection to 9/11 (he didn't)

What does Iranian nuclear capability have to do with any of that? or do you just smoke a bowl and then do some tripped out stream of consciousness writing?

really...go find some board where other morons congregate....

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Just because you are too yellow to go fight for your country... I am not now, nor have I ever been a coward, and you would be wise not to repeat such an insult.

I guess the Golden Rule doesn't apply to you, huh?

 

[Cypress]

Note ie=example it was placed before the 75 meaning the NVA had victory in 75 and it should have been ours...we were only 3months from victory in 73 before you libs screwed it up!
'I' said we were 3months from victory(Having been there prior to 73)...you put the spin on the year 75..It was already explained to you...but here you go Mr.Lib here are the facts....It will show how you libs caused our defeat...enjoy...a-hole


www.25thaviation.org/id275.htm


or from the mouth of Gen Bui Tin www.grunt.com/scuttlebutt/corps-stories/vietnam/north.asp

Dance for me monkey!

No amount of spin, is going to obscure the fact that you said we were three months away from victory in 1975. Which, is quite literally impossible, given the geopolitical situation on the ground in 1975.

Its pointless to argue with you. You're just like toby.

***********************************************************

1) BB: First and foremost...we were within three months of total victory in VN ie 75'

Ten minutes later:

2) BB: "I never said we were within three months of victory in (75)!"

 

[Battleborne]

You must have...

for example.... the discussion is about the futility of the Vietnam war, your claims that we were three months away from total victory in '75, the fact that you cannot tell me what the world would look like if we had continued to waste human cannon fodder in VN.. and the correlation to Iraq now..... and to that discussion, you bring WWI and WWI and Korea and NOW, you bring Iran...... what the fuck does Iran have to do with the idiocy of getting ourselves in the middle of a civil war in Iraq that we started when we toppled the only guy around who could KEEP islamic extremists out of Iraq (we can't) and who could KEEP the sunnis and shiites from killing each other (we can't) and who could KEEP a lid on Iranian hegemony (we can't) and we did it because he supposedly had WMD's (he didn't) and some vague connection to 9/11 (he didn't)

What does Iranian nuclear capability have to do with any of that? or do you just smoke a bowl and then do some tripped out stream of consciousness writing?

really...go find some board where other morons congregate....

Been at the bottom of your class at the Naval academy...at West point they have read about the VN conflict causes and results...if nothing else read in the other posted thread.... www.25thaviation.org/id275.htm click on "Two Letters to Diem-Eisenhower and Kennedy" it will show you how wrong you were! as for your calling Westmoreland a liar...I suppose you say the same to Kennedy and Eisenhower too...!