How the war ended.

[flamin lib]

Another time, another war. December 1974 the Democratic congress cut Vietnam funding from $1.26 B to $700 M forcing the pull out of all US troops. The supporters of the war effort predicted that Vietnam would be overrun by the Communists, there would be a bloodbath, every other SE Asian country would fall and soon they would be crossing the Mexican border. We were, after all, fighting them over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here.

The Communists did overrun the South and there was a blood bath. Things like that happen when outside forces keep a war going for 20 years. Wholesale killing for two decades tends to build up some hard feelings. Once all the scores were settled the Communists set about rebuilding. They didn’t have a lot to work with; forests were so full of shrapnel the trees couldn’t be harvested, much of the country’s rice fields were dead from defoliation and there were so many mines left by both sides that it wasn’t safe to move around the countryside. There was no domino effect and the VC never made it to our shores. Thirty years later they are a sought after trading partner to the US.

Those who supported the war, most of whom didn’t actually take part in it, still recite the mantra that we could have won if we just tried. We dropped 500 pounds of high explosive for every man, woman and child in that tiny country. We lost 56,000 lives and five times that many wounded. We killed three million Vietnamese, military and civilian. If that isn’t trying to win I hate to think what the cost of really trying might be.

The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are stunning. Both based on a lie, both botched militarily and diplomatically, neither had a defined mission and it looks like both will be ended because a Democratic Congress cut funding. The country will be left with no infrastructure, polluted with un-exploded ordinance and poisoned with radioactive waste. The educated and middle class have fled leaving none of the leadership at the community level necessary to rebuild. Maybe in thirty years they will have a new country and we can trade with them like we do the Vietnamese butI think it will take a lot longer because we’re so much better at tearing things up and killing people than we were back then.

[underpants]

1. Claiming that you know what the future holds tends to illustrate that you forgot about the past

The same type people who got us into this war now are just certain they know what is about to happen, just like they told us they knew what was going to happen in the war.

The odd part is that the people who actually officially ended the Vietnam war were......John Kerry and John McCain. I'll bet none of them predicted that.

[RC]

2. Too bad this won't fit on a bumber sticker.

"Those who supported the war, most of whom didn’t actually take part in it, still recite the mantra that we could have won if we just tried. We dropped 500 pounds of high explosive for every man, woman and child in that tiny country. We lost 56,000 lives and five times that many wounded. We killed three million Vietnamese, military and civilian. If that isn’t trying to win I hate to think what the cost of really trying might be."

[scarletwoman]

3. k & r -- Damn. I can't think of anything to add. Great post! (nt)

[wicket]

6. Amen!

:kick:

[Bucky]

4. "no domino effect"

Not unless you count Laos and Cambodia, which both fell to communist insurgents in 1975. Cambodia's communist regime ended up committing the worst genocide since the Jewish Holocaust.

The parallels are pretty limited, however, since Iraq's function in world is to act as a buffer between competing Sunni and Shiite power bases in the Gulf region. The people who will win in Iraq when we leave--as we must eventually--are not the people we're actually fighting against. Domestically the parallels are eerie. Over there our withdrawal will be bad for a short time, but I don't see any major changes of regime happening. Our emplaced puppets will de-democratize a bit, but are already poised to ally with Iran the second we depart.

[flamin lib]

7. Cambodia doesn't meet the domino definition. The US funded

Pol Pot in his war with Vietnam. Yes the Khmer Rouge were communists, but they were "our" communists. Laos maybe, but one or even two countries in the far east is far from the doom & gloom predicted by the war supporters.

[truedelphi]

5. HERE is one difference

We spent about $ 10,000 (dollars US) per person in Vietnam. Took us over a decade, but that's what we did.

Now Iraq ironically had about the same population as vietnam* during Spring 2003 - before the first American bomb fell.

But we have spent about $ 242,500 per Iraqi person in only four years.

**If you take the numbers for Vietnam's population from statistics in late sixties and Iraq during late nineties.

[flamin lib]

8. That is one stunning statistic. I'll be filing that for future use. nt

[pigpickle]

9. kick

[flamin lib]

10. Thanks and welcome to DU. nt

[lfairban]

11. I remember my father . . .

. . . a stanch Republican, talking about the bloodbath that we "knew" would happen if we pulled out of Vietnam.

I assumed he meant a bloodbath by the North Vietnamese, who we were fighting, not the Khmer Rouge who we were backing.