Bless them for their service and sacrifice. Breaks my heart. I wept when I visited what I consider to be the largest headstone in America, the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C..
Did you know there is a soldier on that wall who is named, John Rambo?
I wonder of Sylvester Stallone knew that prior to writing his First Blood script.
The Korean war 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. North Korea was backed by Communist China and former Soviet Union while South Korea was backed by the UN and US.
The war was short and South Korea was able to repel North Korea in which ended in a Korean Armistice Agreement.
This same mindset was what led to the scare and choice to react in Vietnam. The communist China and Soviet Union began to back North Vietnam in their civil war with the South.
They first felt if South Vietnam fell into communism it would be like a domino affect and pull other countries into its grips. After seeing the push in the Korean war.
Everyone thought it would be easily won and just as short but lasted from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. A total of 19 years.
Unknown then what we know now it was a losing battle from the beginning. The South Vietnamese wasn't as trained, wasn't as motivated for liberty as the South Koreans were and the American leaders partly didn't want to admit defeat and partly it was politics as each President was trying to win over the anti war crowd and Americans at home telling them they could win and get our boys home.
But as time went by, Presidents failed, the anti war movement became worse, the soldiers began to lose patriotism and motivation. They was fighting a losing war with no true gauge of what victory looked like. And on top of that the anti war crowd at home treated them terribly due to media coverage that was showing the worst side of the war.
Classified or top secret Intel has long since been declassified that showed the top leaders intelligence was telling them from the start that the war wasn't the same conditions as the Korean war and looked like a lost cause. But the Red scare and politics fed into the start of a war that in thought it was justified to help but in reality our young boys was thrown into Hell even though they knew it was looking like a lost cause from the beginning.
Goes to show you can help people if they dont want to help themselves. South Vietnamese just wasn't truly ready to give it all in order to gain Independence. As result the Communist North militarily took over the South creating a sever refugee crisis.
Thanks for your elaborate response. Sasuga... yeah you guys should have never gone there. If a country is crazy enough to think communism is a good system, let them suffer and learn on their own skin. Nations are like people you can't make them choose what they don't want they have to grow up themselves.
Thanks for your elaborate response. Sasuga... yeah you guys should have never gone there. If a country is crazy enough to think communism is a good system, let them suffer and learn on their own skin. Nations are like people you can't make them choose what they don't want they have to grow up themselves.
Yes but to one degree I do share their worry after seeing effects of Hitler and the Axis powers, the devastation that brought on the world. They feared the front of communism would spread just as Hitler and the axis powers tried to take over the planet.
There is an excellent ten part series on the Viet Nam war put out by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick featuring testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides. It took six years to make and is comprised mostly of archival footage. I never understood why the war was started until I watched the first few episodes of it
Viet Nam pleaded with the United States over the course of many years for help to come out from under the colonial rule of the French, but the States turned a deaf ear and blind eye to their plight until Ho Chi Minh turned to the Soviets for help after being repeatedly snubbed by USA. France had occupied Viet Nam since the mid eighteen hundreds. Viet Nam had reason to hope for freedom after the first world war, but nope! Nobody would help them come out from under the oppressive yoke the French imposed on them while they were raped of their natural resources.
The States ran scared (of communism taking over Asia) after Soviet involvement. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense during the war, which he played a major role in escalating, and he has personally and publicly apologized for his part in it.
There is an excellent ten part series on the Viet Nam war put out by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick featuring testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides. It took six years to make and is comprised mostly of archival footage. I never understood why the war was started until I watched the first few episodes of it
Viet Nam pleaded with the United States over the course of many years for help to come out from under the colonial rule of the French, but the States turned a deaf ear and blind eye to their plight until Ho Chi Minh turned to the Soviets for help after being repeatedly snubbed by USA. France had occupied Viet Nam since the mid eighteen hundreds. Viet Nam had reason to hope for freedom after the first world war, but nope! Nobody would help them come out from under the oppressive yoke the French imposed on them while they were raped of their natural resources.
The States ran scared (of communism taking over Asia) after Soviet involvement. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense during the war, which he played a major role in escalating, and he has personally and publicly apologized for his part in it.
Ho Chi Minh was a very decent guy. He did not want the States to fear communism in Viet Nam just because the USSR took a stand with them to help unify the country when the USA repeatedly failed to do so, eventually installing a corrupt (Catholic) leader in the South while the north never gave up hope of removing the boundary between north and south. The war had been ongoing long before America put boots to ground. This is interesting too:
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".
More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.
For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
In June 2011, the entirety of the Pentagon Papers was declassified and publicly released.
Ho Chi Minh was a very decent guy. He did not want the States to fear communism in Viet Nam just because the USSR took a stand with them to help unify the country when the USA repeatedly failed to do so, eventually installing a corrupt (Catholic) leader in the South while the north never gave up hope of removing the boundary between north and south. The war had been ongoing long before America put boots to ground. This is interesting too:
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".
More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.
For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
In June 2011, the entirety of the Pentagon Papers was declassified and publicly released.
Yep much of the war was politics. In my opinion it started as a scare of communism but very quickly just became a political cause. As one President used it as a means to if voted in they would end it. But once voted in they each couldn't figure out how to end the war and make it look as a victory. It was overall looking back very sad that all those dog tags fought and died for a lost cause.
