Quote:
Originally Posted by Billybob
Is it really so difficult to admit it when you haven't a clue as to what you're talking about?
With regard to the positions of the geopolitical players of the day you can learn much if you actually read Patti’s book, Why Viet Nam?: Prelude to America's Albatross and it’s contemporaneously generated documentation of Lt. Col A. Peter Dewey, the first post WWII US casualty in Indochina. The position of the US was ambivalent and had been to do nothing to support or contradict British and French colonialism.
With regard to Uncle Ho’s “only allied with the USSR out of desperation” it must be noted that it is documented that Ho had been a communist since before WWI as a member of Comintern, and more than 25 years later still declared himself a communist in 1945. So turning to the USSR was less an act of desperation than the solicitation of support from a like-minded wealthier fellow traveler.
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And why do you suppose communism appealed to Ho and gang? Mightn't the horrible treatment they received at the hands of capitalists have had something to do with it?
The British and the French were our most closely related (culturally speaking) allies in WW2. We (under Truman anyway) were unlikely to go against them to support some group of independence minded gooks with commie leanings. FDR supposedly wanted to make a new start in Indochina but didn't live long enough.
Truman was an admirable guy in many respects. He like most Americans had terminal commie phobia. It got us into one of the most distasteful wars in our history in Korea and garnered him lifelong hatred from many Americans. But I'm not going to make the absurd reach that things would have been any different under an Rr admin. McArthur (R) wanted to take the war to China. Oh hey, can you say "quagmire" boys and girls?
Many US Rrs supported MacArthur in that. Truman came before Ike? Give this boy a lollipop. Do you have anything to say that actually matters here? Are you implying that Ike's hands were tied by what Truman had done 4 to 6 years previous? Or that Nixon simply had to bomb Cambodia even further into the dark ages because LBJ had tied his hands?
It's all crap. The war in Nam was assinine and had to stop and finally did stop. Get over it.
01-06-2010, 05:35 PM
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