March 26, 2003
NO MORE VIETNAMS:
AMERICA, THE MIDDLE EAST AND VIETNAM (Edward Driscoll)Since, as Rod Dreher recently noted, for the left, "every war is Vietnam", let's look at how Vietnam has led directly to our current state of affairs. Reading this recent post by The Volokh Conspiracy, and watching the protestors last night, I figured I'd discuss a geopolitical theory that I'm surprised I didn't post yet (and because this a blog, this is going to be grossly simplified--I'm just trying to connect the dots, not paint a detailed landscape): how Vietnam is related to our current war on terrorism.On TV last night, I saw a guy in his late 40s or 50s (he looked trim, clean shaven, with a nicely cut shock of graying hair) asked by an interviewer, "why are you here"? He replied, "Well, we made a difference during Vietnam, and I think we're making a difference now."
As for the latter, it's hard to say how--except, as Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds have recently noted, making your cause look distinctly bad to the rest of the country. As to the former, yes, you may have made a difference, but it wasn't the one that you think.
Its possible to tie 9/11 all the way back to Vietnam if you wanted to...
As Mr. Driscoll points out, what made a difference was Congress cutting off funding to our S. Vietnamese allies, who it's easy to forget hung on until 1975, even though we betrayed them. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2003 2:48 PM
No. We lost in Vietnam at Tet.
Remember, a few months earlier, the S. Viet
government, with the backing of the US, had
told its people that the situation was in hand,
that the cities were safe.
Numbers of naive patriots accepted this and
declared for the republic. At Tet they found out
the cities were not safe, and thousands of
them were murdered.
Eventually, the RVN and US attained a tactical
success by wiping out many VC units. But they
had lost the war right there, because after
Tet the mass of South Vietnamese were too
smart/frightened to support the RVN.
The rest was anticlimax. If the US had not propped
up the hollow regime at excessive cost, it
would have been gone by 1970.
1970 was the coda to the loss of Tet. Kent State
ended the antiwar movement. Nobody here
wanted to get killed on behalf of Madame Thieu's
racehorses, either.
So the draft was wound down, which made it
impossible for the idiots in Washington to
continue propping up a corpse in Saigon, and
eventually it all worked out.
You, Orrin, who put so much faith in the importance
of believing in your world system, ought to be
able to figure out that that works two ways --
the N. Viets won the ideological war. And
as usual, that translated into victory on the ground.
Harry:
It's tempting to view the world through the moment when you changed your mind about something, but that doesn't make it so. Tet effectively ended the usefulness of the Viet Cong and it was only seven years later that Saigon fell, after we stopped bombing the North and supplying the South.
Orrin is right, of course, and Harry is so wrong that one wonders. After we foreswore our committments to the RVN, the Reds invaded with more tanks than Hitler sent into France (tanks into France--Mmmmm.) You know this cowardice is costing us lives at this moment by delaying the collapse of the Iraqi regime. Iraqis who might have risen up against Saddam are not quite sure that we won't leave them hanging on to the helocopter skids.
Posted by: LouGots at March 26, 2003 6:03 PM