...

 JF>>> We could have won that war if we 'wanted to'. Do you really

BK>>I agree. Only one major difference needed, we had to fight the
BK>>war for the benefit of the South Vietnamese, instead of for out
BK>>own purposes. If we weren't fighting it for them why were we
BK>>there in the first place?

 LL> "Peace with honor" was the only way we could leave Vietnam,
 LL> according to Richard Nixon.  That is why the war did not end

 Honor requires justice. Nixon did not seek that, so he could
 never have honor.

 ...

 LL> In summation, here is what happened -

 LL> Richard Nixon lost the war.  Richard Nixon then resigned
 LL> from office in disgrace.  Gerald Ford became our first
 LL> appointed President, announcing to the world, "Our long
 LL> national nightmare has ended." The world applauded.  Then
 LL> Ford went and pardoned Nixon.  What an idiot.

 The mistake that cost him the presidency. And Ford was a long
 experienced politician, he should have known better.

 JF>>> think we "lost" the war because the Viet Cong had  a more
 JF>>> formidable military the the U.S.? We could have wiped them

BK>>The US military won every major engagement, and pretty much all
BK>>the lesser ones.

 LL> Richard Nixon lost the war.  Not the US military.

 JF>>> out any time we pleased. Why didn't we? Do the math. It was
 JF>>> not economically feasible for the U.S. to pursue the war

BK>>That is the cost of a 10 year war.

 LL> It would have been a lot shorter, with more lives saved, had
 LL> Nixon agreed to end the war in 1969.

 Actually, since it began for the US in 1954, it was a 20 year
 war.

 JF>>> any further. The Viet Nam war was waged simply to gauge
 JF>>> Soviet response and to keep tabs on their military
 JF>>> capabilities.

BK>>That I don't believe. The SU was not giving the NVs enough early
BK>>enough to mean anything. By the time they did we had so far
BK>>outpaced them they were primative by comparison.

 LL> We had air superiority throughout the war.  We could have
 LL> bombed all their cities to smithereens had we chosen to do
 LL> so.  We could have deforested the countryside, had we
 LL> chosen to do so.  We could have made the whole place
 LL> totally unliveable, had we chosen to do so.  But none of
 LL> that would have won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese
 LL> people.  And that is what we needed to do, if ever we
 LL> wanted to do business with them.

 True. However, it's more than doing business. Too many have
 forgotten what they chose not to remember when it comes to
 Korea. North and South are one people. When you kill the
 Northerners, you are killing the families of the Southerners.

 Doing that to soldiers can be justified, doing so
 indiscriminately cannot.

 JF>>> During that war 100's of newly developed
 JF>>> weapons were beta tested. Esp as concerns the Air Force.

BK>>And that is what scared the hell out of the Soviets. Not only
BK>>did we put men and money into that war, developed tech and
BK>>training and experience that put us far ahead, but we did it all
BK>>the while keeping our home economy growing and even reduced the
BK>>debt to GDP ratio. All a measure of the superiority of our
BK>>system.

 LL> During that time period in history, the US had its client
 LL> states, the former USSR had their client states.  Each side
 LL> tried to hold on to its own, while stealing some from the
 LL> other side.  Neither the US nor the former USSR wanted a
 LL> nuclear war, as both would have been destroyed (along with
 LL> their client states and the rest of the world).  So the US
 LL> and the former USSR did the next best thing. Each side
 LL> tried to outspend the other building weapons and weapons
 LL> systems, etc.

 True, but the US did it so much better.

 ...

 BK>> Union. Our economy was so much better than theirs that they went
 BK>> broke trying to do what we did, and not even coming close. It
 BK>> took a couple decades, but it destroyed the Soviet Union.

 BK>> And that is something to consider when thinking about the
 BK>> Vietnam War.

 LL> Richard Nixon lost the war in Vietnam.  But the Cold War
 LL> continued. Fortunately for us, the former USSR blinked
 LL> first, having bankrupted itself into oblivion before we did.

 Well, they did it on weapons. We are doing it on medical costs.
 Not govt medical costs, all medical costs. Our medical spending
 is pushing 20% of GDP, compared to 8% for much of the rest of
 the world, and 12% for the most expensive national health care
 system in the industrial world.

 On top of that, it has been revealed that it isn't spending on
 the old as they are dying that is so costly, but everyday
 medical costs. Typically the US patient pays several times more
 for almost anything than the average patient under national
 health care systems. That "spends more" includes all spending,
 including the govt spending for the national health care
 patients in other countries. We just get hit with higher bills
 for the same treatment.

 LL> You do realize our economy tanked, never having recovered
 LL> from the events of 9-11?  I mean, where are those WTC

 9-11 had pretty well nothing to do with the economy tanking. The
 cost to the economy was actually trivial. Those WTC are the
 least needed construction you can think of.

 LL> Towers?  There is even talk of demolishing the WTC in New
 LL> Orleans, as nobody had or has the money to buy it ...

 Since the US sold out it's economy to foreign manufacturers with
 all the free trade agreements, esp the WTO and IMF and World
 Bank, why do we need trade centers?




BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Freedom is more precious than peace.
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