Tuesday, April 06, 2010

So who won the Vietnam war really?

William Thompson, who teaches public administration at UNLV. makes a provocative and fairly persuasive case that insofar as "we wanted to demonstrate the viability of free enterprise capitalism in competition with state ownership of commerce," the US. -- or at least free enterprise -- won the war. He recently visited his son, who is a teacher at the South Saigon International School and noticed almost nothing but vibrant capitalism going on. After the communist takeover of the South, which did lead to great loss of life and liberty -- and to the enrichment of the cultural landscape of Orange County as an unintended byproduct -- and a fair amount of warring, communist ideology did what people predicted. It led to economic stagnation, shortages and spreading poverty. So the leaders, while still calling themselves communist, started to permit more freedoms, to recognize private property. Now they havebustling markets, capital investment, manuifacturing and export development.

This squares with what my former colleagues Steve Greenhut and Mike Shelton found when they visited Vietnam five years ago or so. The Communist Party still rules, but the ideology is generally capitalist. So who won the war? Or perhaps more pertinent, wouldn't this development have come on more quickly if we hadn't prolonged the war or maybe not fought it at all?

68 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its a moot point who WON the war. But I'll tell you WHO LOST IT. All those poor 58,000 guys who were shipped off there to fight and died. To say nothing of god only knows how many Vietnamese and others. And now its still happening in Iraq and elsewhere...

Menchen said...

The US won the Viet Nam War. Anyone who knows what we fount for knows that. The ones wondering around in a drug induced stupor asking "What are we fighting for?" don't know that, but then they are disqualified as they don't really understand much of anything past their next hit.

We fought to stop the spread of international communism, sometimes in this context referred to as the Domino Theory. The dominoes ceased to fall and Communism burned itself out in Cambodia.

Communism destroyed many lives, still does, but it is not the force it once was. Anonymous above has taken the approach that someone died, so nothing was worth it. Freedom is costly, many like Anonymous do not like to pay the price -- or as Voltaire said, "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

Menchen said...

*fought

It is so irritating to make a typo!

Anonymous said...

Menchen, here's something to think about. About a month ago it was announced that the 40,000 Vietnamese farmer died since the end of the war, while hitting an old land mine. 40,000. Add that to the 2 million, 3 million or 4 million, Vietnamese killed during the war. Killing folks who never attacked you is insane.

Anonymous said...

Menchen:

The Vietnam war had nothing to do with "freedom". I feel sorry for you that you believe such nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Who used the word freedom?

Anonymous said...

Reply to Menchen:

What would have happened if the USA had NOT interveend in 1965? South Vietnam would have fallen to the north within a year. As it actually did do so in 1975. All America's foolhardy intervention "achieved" was to allow a corrupt, inept government supported by very few people to linger on another nine years. Even if America had saved South Vietnam as it did South Korea, the cost wouldn't have been worth it. Your "global communist boogyman" is nonsense. You probably also believe in the "global Islamo-fascist terrorist" that "hates us because we are free" too baloney.

Anonymous said...

Most of the Anonymous responses are just variations of the old slogan "War is not healthy for children and other living things."

While true statements, they really do not rise above rote repetition of slogans with no context or meaning. No more than interesting phrases repeated to make oneself feel good about themselves.

Are we supposed to be petrified at the cost of tens of thousands of lives spent to stop Communism which is responsible for tens of millions of lives?

It is appalling, harsh choices, but it's a real world. Sending negotiators out to secure peace in our time is not necessarily more effective in anything other than increasing the real costs paid for the eventual peace.

And yes, I do believe Osama bin Laden is a real person and heads a real group call Al Qaeda. This real group is composed of religious extremists who identify their religion as their motivation. Their politics are classic fascist, look it up. What would you think they should be called? Do you think we should negotiate with them? What do you think they want? Cookies and milk?

You can certainly argue our current tactics are ineffective, that does not mean they do not exist.

--Menchen

Anonymous said...

Menchen;

The intervention in Vietnam didn't "stop communism". America LOST that war. The Vietnamese were "communists" in name-only. They were motivated by nationalist spirit. The NVA fought hard and was patriotic. The ARVN folded like a cheap lawn chair despite being lavishly trained and supplied by Uncle Sap.

By the way the USA (neoconservatives wet dreams notwithstanding) didn't "win" the cold war. The USSR lost by default. It simply imploded from ethnic divisions and technological backwardness. I can make a case the Russo-Ukrainian people never really recovered from WW2 alone. America invented a communist boogyman to justify its parasitic military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans about this a full fifty years ago. And he would certainly have been in a good postion to KNOW.

Your knee-jerk "peace in our time" comment (an obvious reference to Chamberlain) is also misguided. Chamberlain's TRUE MISTAKE was not Munich but the INSANE pledge to Poland. It altered an impending Russo-German war into an eventual WW2.

As for Islamic terrorism, it is primarily the interventionist foreign policies of the USA and its most one-sided support of Israel that is the principal factor motivating them. Why wasn't Mexico or Canada targetted on 9/11 if the terrorists "hate us because we are free"? This doesn't justify the acts or preclude punishment or acts of retaliation or defensiveness but we need to understand the underlying dynamics shaping realities not make up our own ones.

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