Since you have disgarded your whirlwind romance with logic and have embraced ideology again WD I would submit the following argument...

In war there are NO winners, everyone loses.

Originally Posted by bulldogg

In war there are NO winners, everyone loses.

You should try telling that to Cesar, or a bunch of other Roman Emperors, or Atilla the Hun, or Alexander the great, or the fathers of the American revolution...

Try telling that to a veteran, winner or loser.

True

Loss, but as I have said before and will continue to say, this war was lost by the American people, but after the war they attempted to pin the loss on the military. The American people have obligations to the military just as the military has obligations to the people. One of those obligations is supporting the troops during war, as Tom Daschle found in 2004 you can not get away with criticizing the president or our military in a time of war. We also lost because LBJ, who was many things, was definetly NOT a war President and he felt that we could win the war by..... Deleted (language), I don't know what the hell he was thinking but he really Deleted (language) the pooch.

Mod edit: Please be more careful on the forums, thanks.

Originally Posted by bulldogg

I also took your statement that way Dean. It makes perfect sense as long as people realise that Vietnam is playing the US for its own benefit in an effort to increase its overall economy and also the US is being played against China by Vietnam as they have a longer list of grievances with the Big Red Chicken than Uncle Sam. The hatred between these two bastions of Asian communism is something to behold when you get one of them wound up on bai jiu and then begin spewing forth.

Vietnam, economically speaking, is between a rock and a hard place. Yes, they are right beside China, and for most countries, that should be enough for them to radically jump-start even the most moribund of economies. The reason why it did not happen was not really Vietnams's fault, but rather China's. Most people forget that these two peoples don't like each other... at all! They have been hereditary enemies since time immemorial, and most people forget that they fought a very nasty war in 1979 during which the Chinese People's Liberation Army was soundly trounced by the Vietnamese. The result was a cold war that is showing only minor signs of thawing even now. And don't try to tell me about the normalization treaty that the two signed last year. I have yet to see one benefit of that treaty other than a slow de-militarization of the border, which remains incomplete. AFAIK, there have been very few if any economic spin-offs resulting from that treaty, and I do not hesitate in saying that it will be many years before there are any. In that part of the world, memories are too long.
Now, China did indeed support Vietnam militarily during the Vietnam war, but their support was lacklustre to say the least. Most of the military and economic support actually came from the USSR, and in the post Vietnam-US war perod, it was the USSR that propped up Vietnam's economy. With the fall of the USSR, Vietnam's economy collapsed, which in the great scheme of things, this was simply a noise heard around the corner. That left them two possible trade partners, France and the US. France does not really have a market for Vietnamese goods, and the market that did exist at the time was being well served. Nonetheless, any expansion of those markets, and subsequent improvement of Vietnam's economy, was not going to happen.
This left the US. For the US, there are some big advantages to trading with Vietnam. The main one is that it gives them more influence in that area of the world, and the influence is quite positive. While they are China's largest trading partner, the US has little influence in that country. Trade with Vietnam, OTOH, would allow the US a great opportunity to gain more influence in an area of the world where they have been losing it steadily since the end of WW II.
At the end of WW II, the US instituted the Marshall Plan, whose effect was to re-build a devastated Europe. This action made the US a major player in Europe for 50 years after the end of the war. Needless to say, the manner in which the US left Vietnam and the subsequent fall of South Vietnam meant that US influence in that part of the world was effectively zero, zilch, nada, nothing, and rien. However, this trade treaty and normalization of relations gives the US a real opportunity to regain influence in SE Asia, and it gives Vietnam the one thing they have never had... a real trade partner. The best thing of all is that it will cost the US nothing. The result: The US loses the Vietnam war, and wins in the end.

A healthy, happy and prosperous New Year to all.

Dean.

Nice and smart analysis, I agree with you and share your hopes.

lol, I like the last line there. "The US loses the Vietnam war, and wins in the end." From my understanding that is kind of how the war went, we won the battles but lost the war. Khai Sahn(sp?) is a great example of that, the Marines held out undersiege until relief arrived, won the battle, yet only months later quietly evactuated the base, allowing the VC to march in unopposed.

That wasn't exactly how it happened. Khe San was an attempt by the NVA (not the VC) to do to the US what they did to France at Dien Bien Phu. The siege of the firebase started in January 1968 and lasted until April of the same year. 5 regiments (~5,000) of US Marines repelled repeated attempts to overrun the base by 20,000 to 40,000 NVA.
Once the weather cleared, US air power was brought to bear and in April 6th, the base was reinforced by US Army (2nd Cav). Two days later the 2/7 Cav linked up with the 26th Marines to officially relieve the base. The NVA was forced to withdraw and give up the notion of taking the base.
The base was indeed abandoned but it was in June of '68 and because the base had no further military value to the US and there was nobody left to "march in unopposed". It's amazing how the facts can get twisted and tweaked over time.
It's also interesting to note that nearly a quarter of all television news was devoted to covering the battle, and was even higher for some. For example, CBS devoted half of their news shows to the siege. The intensely televised coverage was one of the hallmarks of Vietnam conflict in general.
Just thought I'd interject some facts about Khe Sahn at this point in the discussion.

Thank you for straightening things up and providing a clarification on Khe San, DTop.