WHAT A TRAGIC WASTE OF LIVES! In 1954, Vietnam defeated the French and the nation was temporarily divided into two sections, north and south. The people of the south chose Ngo Dinh Diem as their ruler and Ho Chi Minh ruled the north. Diem refused to go along with the planned elections in 1956 to unite the nation so the South created the Viet Cong, and the war between north and south for control of the country began. The government of South Vietnam requested military advisors from the United States to help train the South Vietnamese army. The Eisenhower administration provided South Vietnam with money and advisors to help stop the threat of a North Vietnamese takeover. In August, 1964, President Johnson reported to the nation that American ships had been attacked by North Vietnam gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin, in international waters. The Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the President the power to use whatever force necessary to protect our interests in the area. At the time, the truth was not reported. And that truth was that rather than being on a routine patrol on August 2nd, the US destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers—iin sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. In February, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked an American military base near Pleiku. Using the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, President Johnson sent in 3,500 Marines, the first official troops, to South Vietnam. By the end of the year, there were 200,000 US troops in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was the longest war ever fought by the United States. It lasted more than 15 years, from 1959 to 1975. It was also the first war that the United States lost. The United States entered the war to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. American leaders feared that Communist forces would gain control of Vietnam. After that, nation after nation might fall to Communism. Communism is a political and economic system that the United States strongly opposed. Vietnam had been split in half in 1954, after fighting a war to gain independence from France. When French forces withdrew, Vietnamese Communists gained control of North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the North Vietnamese Communists. South Vietnam had a non-Communist government. This government was weak. But the United States supported it in order to keep the Communists from taking control of all of Vietnam. The attempt by the U.S. to stop the spread of communism cost the lives of 58,209 young men and women, and every single one of them died for nothing! Not to mention the 153,303 soldiers that was wounded. The American Military decision makers decided to retreat after the fall of Saigon which occurred on April 30, 1975, and simply handed South Vietnam to the Communists on a silver platter. The Communists renamed the city after Ho Chi Minh. The retreat amounted to nothing short of a complete contradiction of the reason we were there in the first place. What a tragic waste of lives. I served in Vietnam in 1968/69 in the 5th Infantry Division at Quang Tri, near the DMZ. If I had it to do over again, I would flee to Canada. On President Carter’s first day in office in 1977, he fulfilled a campaign promise by granting unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by fleeing the country or by failing to register. We are now repeating history in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Overall, Iraq was far better off under Saddam Husseins rule than what it is today. Before the Americans invaded Iraq, most Iraqis had jobs, electricity, plenty of food and fresh water, and all Iraqi children were in school. Look at Iraq today. The city is in shambles. Tribal violence has caused far more deaths than Saddam ever did, many people are homeless; conditions are about as bad as they can get, and the new government is as corrupt as any Arab or African nation on earth. Since oil is now a commodity sold on the world market, where do our interests in Iraq lie? We have no interest in Iraq. If you think we do, name one! As for Afghanistan, if the Russians could not beat the Afghans after 15 years of trying, what makes America think it can? I view the Iraq and Afghan wars as nothing more than something so stupid as simply avenging the deaths of the 2977 people who died on 9/11 by sending another5500 people to their deaths and causing severe injuries to 38,000 others. Now that the Taliban has recaptured Falluja after U.S. Forces have left Iraq, one should note that many American soldiers fought and died to take Fallujah. Questions are being raised around the globe: Was it all for nothing? Click on this link below to view the latest Iraq/Afghanistan war casualties. statisticbrain/u-s-war-death-statistics/
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 19:59:46 +0000
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