Why do so many Americans think they won Vietnam?
It’s the new revisionist history: it’s not that we DID win Vietnam, it’s that we COULD HAVE had we just stayed in forever. It’s how they deal with the obvious Iraq parallel: just lie about the past. In Neo-con world, everything is open for debate: Joe McCarthy was a hero The current crop of Neo-cons won World War II North Korea disarmed not because we entered into the very bilateral talks that John Kerry suggested in 2004, but because Bush stared them down. John Kennedy was a terrible president, even though he prevented nuclear war by being the tough guy that Bush thinks he is. Ronald Reagan was our greatest president even though he sold arms to Iran in return for hostages. Good thing that never bit us in the butt. Everyone agreed on Iraq, even though the only people who had unredacted information cooked the books to trump up the cause. George Bush was elected in 2000. See, all you have to do is keep saying something, and sooner or later, other people will believe it’s true.
Vietnam is more complex than whether or not we won or lost. Saigon didn’t fall to the north until almost 5 years after US withdrawal. 5 years later! The role of the US in Vietnam was to hold off the north until the SVA could equip and build a competent Army to fight their own war. And we only entered at the request of the French who were failing at the same goal. The US did this but in the end the SVA lost their fight. So if you want to pick a loser, you have to go with the South Vietnamese Army; however, the US was their ally and supporter. Incidentally, the US never lost a battle in the entire conflict. The US never had to give up ground or relinquish control. We did lose 50,000 troops but the NVA estimates their casualties at around 1.2 million. I’m not saying the US won, because clearly it didn’t. Its just hard to call the US a loser of the war when it saw nothing but success until its pullout.
I don’t actually think that Americans are told the truth by their media. You just have to read some of the stuff they come up with. “The economy is in great shape” “Bomb Iran” “Bush is a great president” etc. All tosh EDIT: Don’t blame us for talking about America its Yahoo’s fault not properly separating the UK and US sites so we have loads of you on UK site talking American stuff so we get drawn in.
Our POLITICIANS and fat assed bureaucrats lost the war for us, not our troops. Point of fact that has come to light in the past year or so, …the Viet Cong and the NVA were so demoralized and short manned that they were literally months away from capitulation. Our troops fought valiantly to the last and every one of them should have received a hero’s welcome home We lost Viet Nam for the same reason we will eventually lose in Iraq; it was a lost cause from the beginning. If the PEOPLE of a sovereign country want their government a certain way or to follow a certain doctrine, who are we to tell them otherwise? Our government got on their high horse after World War I and hasn’t gotten off it. In Iraq, George W. Bush just needed an *** to kick after 9-11, and Saddam Hussein did a good job of presenting his.
