Vietnam
Renegade
Old school Join Date: 2002-03-29 Member: 361Members
Old school Join Date: 2002-03-29 Member: 361Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">Freedom, or Farce?</div>Since there's been a lot of discussion about it in the Mandatory Service thread (apt as it is, it's still derailing), I thought I'd loosen the belt a bit and give it its <i>own</i> thread. Feel free to discuss your thoughts on it in here, if only for the sake of the poor, misguided Conscription thread.
And since I don't feel like leaving the topic with "Discuss!", I'll inject my own opinion; Viet Nam was a sham. Now, I mean no disrespect to the men who fought there, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mai_lai" target="_blank">even <i>if</i> some of them did some things we're not proud of.</a> Quite the contrary; I honor their sacrifice, even though it was in vain. I just feel that 'Nam was a pointless war that got a bunch of people killed for no good reason, and didn't serve to accomplish anything in the long run. Personally, I feel we would've been better off without it, even if we did get some kickass music from the counter-culture at the time.
So, yeah; <i>discuss!</i>
And since I don't feel like leaving the topic with "Discuss!", I'll inject my own opinion; Viet Nam was a sham. Now, I mean no disrespect to the men who fought there, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mai_lai" target="_blank">even <i>if</i> some of them did some things we're not proud of.</a> Quite the contrary; I honor their sacrifice, even though it was in vain. I just feel that 'Nam was a pointless war that got a bunch of people killed for no good reason, and didn't serve to accomplish anything in the long run. Personally, I feel we would've been better off without it, even if we did get some kickass music from the counter-culture at the time.
So, yeah; <i>discuss!</i>
Comments
Vietnam's one word.
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Sorry, habit; my dad always spelled it as two.
Here's an interesting question regarding this war - does anyone know why the U.S. went to war in Vietnam?
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To stop those "Commie mother f*ckers" expanding?
Or was it a trick question?
was i close?
To stop those "Commie mother f*ckers" expanding?
Or was it a trick question?
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<!--quoteo(post=1589995:date=Dec 18 2006, 07:42 PM:name=Black_Mage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Black_Mage @ Dec 18 2006, 07:42 PM) [snapback]1589995[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
"U.S. objectives and concept of operations [are] to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective."
was i close?
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You're both correct, and thanks.
Were we to succeed (which we did not) do you feel that the U.S. would be protecting it's own freedom? Wasn't this war an attempt to protect our freedom by preventing the spread of Communism?
also, communism is an economic model. fear our superior economy (and state healthcare) for it will crush you like the little capitalist pigs you are.
Were we to succeed (which we did not) do you feel that the U.S. would be protecting it's own freedom? Wasn't this war an attempt to protect our freedom by preventing the spread of Communism?
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Uh, no. Vietnam wasn't threatening us, in any way, shape, or form. Vietnamese terrorists didn't fly planes into the Twin Towers, they didn't bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City, and they didn't try to put nukes in Cuba. Vietnam was an out of the way country on the rim of the Pacific Ocean of no significance other than the fact that the North wanted to unite the country under a common banner of sovereignty and Communism. The only reason we went over there in the first place was to bail the French out of the mess they'd gotten themselves into by trying to hold onto it as a colony (last gasp of the French empire, and all that). It was a pointless war.
I don't know, I have a suspicion that Vietnam was more important than it seemed to be. Does anyone know where we could find figures on how many resources the USSR devoted to the country (even if some where sold) in weapons, munitions, equipment, vehicles, construction materials, training, personnel for management and interrogations, etc?
We know that not only were we fighting the USSR indirectly in Vietnam in the late 60's and early 70's, but we were also fighting them indirectly in Afghanistan in the 80's by supplying weapons and training in quite a role reversal. There may have been many other such instances where both super powers interfered with a smaller country's affairs, meeting in a clash of secret warfare.
I mean, how much strain would this have put on an economy which had been faltering since it was created?
Through most of the cold war, the Russian defense budget was something like <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget.htm" target="_blank">15-17%</a> of it's gross domestic product, while ours was less than 5%. For actual figures, consider $33 Billion estimated for operations and maintenance alone in 1988; experts figure the actual defense budget for the year as at least 10 times that amount. Their main battle tanks and other armor programs were quite superior to ours in those days, both in technology AND numbers, and you can bet your pretty behind that this was a major concern to our Chiefs of Staff.
In a major, open conflict, it probably would have been dicey. Even with the combined NATO forces, it would have been a hell of a thing for the Russians to throw their weight around. In a time of nuclear build up, our only alternative in such an event may have been total war, betting that our first strike capabilities outweighed theirs. It'd be like punting when your kicker has broken leg.
To keep this fire burning, the Soviets would have required a lot of raw materials, and strategic alliances. In the middle east there was oil, but the Soviets had vested interest in Vietnam for some reason. Whatever it was, it was worth exploiting the North's desire for victory to get it. One thing's for certain, we made both the North and Russia pay pretty dearly for it. At a cost of 230,000 Republic of Vietnam, 60,000 American, and 500 Australian troops, we inflicted some 601,100 military casualties. This excludes any economic stress we produced by destroying or capturing weapons and material, most of which was supplied from Communist countries.
Perhaps keeping the Soviets involved in minor conflicts all over the world and draining their economic reserves while also denying them access to as many new resources as possible using the "Containment" theory, we greatly accelerated their downfall, ending a nuclear standoff while also avoiding direct confrontation which we may not have won. Not to mention any direct conflict would no doubt have centered on Europe, an area still ravaged and rebuilding from the last war.
It's something to think about, anyway.
And Renegade, North Vietnam <b>WAS</b> threatening us.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How, exactly? So far as I've seen, you've yet to actually back this statement up with anymore more than "because I said so." If you're going to make an assertion like this, at least back it up with some evidence.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Simply consider what Rob has said, and the fact there were tremendous resources at the Communists disposal.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It might be worth noting that the USSR and China only dedicated themselves to helping North Vietnam <i>after</i> we were already there, not before. I suspect that if we'd never shown up, they wouldn't have cared. Same for Korea, too.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The war against the spread of Communism was just as relevant to the protection of our freedom as the war against terrorism is, plain and simple.
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Again: how? Communism never threatened <i>us</i> directly (and the Cuban Missile Crisis doesn't count; they were simply responding to our nukes in Turkey). Communism <i>might</i> have been a threat to the Capitalist way of life, but it was ultimately no match for it (though, in a war of economic chicken, few are).
While the general trend of reasoning may have been 'to prevent the creation of communist governments in other countries' (the often touted "Domino Effect"), it's my belief that US intervention is more a result of French aid and a technical continuation of the Korean War through other means. To some extent the fear of a spreading communism were warranted, such as Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (and ostensibly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Kampuchea" target="_blank">Pol Pot</a> - coincidently instated by the Vietnamese military in 1975 after the US withdrawal) and Laos (again with the Wikipedia, but easily accessible elsewhere: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Laos#The_period_of_the_Communist_governmet_.28the_contemporary_period.29" target="_blank">communist Laos</a> - also '75-'76). If your view of the war was the US's prevention of the spread of communism I'd say it was mostly successful, to the extent that hte US public destroyed the war effort, and only after US withdrawl did communist governments arise in neighboring countries.
As for Communist aid, it's important to realize that China and Russia weren't one giant front of communism and that viewpoints, despite being on 'the same side', differed greatly between the two countries. Historical knowledge on the subject of Chinese and Russian interaction are still quite fuzzy, since communist archives have only been available in Russia for the last 15 or so years. Another bit of geographich knowledge to note is that China and Vietnam have had a longstanding border dispute (going back centuries), which prevented completely unified action.
Reasons for the US's direct loss are fairly clear: poor public opinion of the war (similar to Iraq), mostly from rampant journalism that feeds off of bloody imagery and horror, which generally bear more headlines than simple victories and flawless campaigns. Imagine WW2 with video of the allies being slaughtered on Omaha beach, or the defeat at Kasserine Pass, or Bastogne - and not necessarily the absolute dominance of US morale and the "buy war bonds!" that we usually associate with it. From a simple attritional standpoint, the US was playing havoc with the populations of Vietnam, and war casualties were not that high.<a href="http://www.vietnam-war.info/facts/" target="_blank">Some info</a>
The Vietnam war is also similar to the current Iraqi war in a few other respsects (and opposite from the Korean and Gulf Wars): the full brunt of miltary firepower was not behind the soldiers, and the focus was simply on mobility and damaging the enemy, not on capturing and holding land. In the Korean War the entire effort of UN forces was used to push the North Koreans back from Pusan with the attack at Inchon in September of 1950, pushing to near the Chinese border, resulting in a very powerful counter-attack in November/December of 1950 that again enveloped Seoul and eventually resulted in the still-present DMZ of the 49th parallel. One history book gives "American emphasis on the application of military firepower led U.S. forces to demolish entire villages to kill single snipers." Although Vietnam does share some characteristics (heavy bombardment and attempts at deforestation to reveal enemy locations), the aspect of HK missions focusing simply on elimanting targets and then retreating to a centralized base is probably the greatest reason for the prolonged war. There existed an overall fear of using 'too much' firepower, which could potentially involve the Chinese (such as if the Americans had a ground war and approached/passed Hanoi) - and a war with China would, despite political disunity, still result in a combined Russian-Chinese counter-attack. Coincidently, the US army today restrains itself by limiting the use of firepower used against potentially civillian targets to attempt to create an aura of friendliness and aid - which weakens their efforts against actual insurgency - similar to Vietnam.
I guess that's kind of a question of how many casualties you're willing to present to the global community, and your willingness of extinguishing life to salvage a reputation of 'winning wars'; or if you feel that decimating the population would conceivably save more of your nation's citizens than the 'enemy'.
The Americans also weakened their position with the 'hunter-killer' squadrons by providing interaction with the Vietnamese only at certain periods. During the day the Americans would fly in and 'control' a village, forcing the population to appear 'American friendly', while during the night the North Vietnamese or Viet Minh could come in and require the village to appear in support of the North Vietnamese. To control the country it would be necessary to commit troops to garrisoning parts of it, and the US government just wasn't committed to such a policy (as it appears to be similar in Iraq today).
Hopefully that all shows some sort of relevance to the topic at hand, since I feel I've begun to wander off-topic with my desire to interconnect histories for a wider view of events.
[edit] For some reason I always type but instead of by, which can have a rather large impact on the comprehensibility of my sentences...[/edit]
How, exactly? So far as I've seen, you've yet to actually back this statement up with anymore more than "because I said so." If you're going to make an assertion like this, at least back it up with some evidence.
It might be worth noting that the USSR and China only dedicated themselves to helping North Vietnam <i>after</i> we were already there, not before. I suspect that if we'd never shown up, they wouldn't have cared. Same for Korea, too.
Again: how? Communism never threatened <i>us</i> directly (and the Cuban Missile Crisis doesn't count; they were simply responding to our nukes in Turkey). Communism <i>might</i> have been a threat to the Capitalist way of life, but it was ultimately no match for it (though, in a war of economic chicken, few are).
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War" target="_blank">This Wiki paragraph</a> sums it up fairly well.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Vietnam is the Place</b>
Back in Washington, the new administration of President John F. Kennedy remained essentially committed to the bi-partisan, anti-Communist foreign policies inherited from the administrations of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. During his first year in office Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba; the construction of the Berlin Wall by the Soviets; and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the U.S. to stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies, Kennedy realized, "Now we have a problem in making our power credible", he told reporter James Reston, "and Vietnam looks like the place."[7] The commitment of the defend Vietnam was reaffirmed by Kennedy on 11 May in National Security Action Memorandum 52 which became known as "The Presidential Program for Vietnam". Its opening statement reads:
"U.S. objectives and concept of operations [are] to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Read your history. The Geneva accords promised democratic elections and only France and Ho Chi Minh signed up to it, the US and the rest of the warmongers peddled partionist policies to south Vietnam to oppose the populist peasant uprising that had overthrown both French and Japanese dominance of the region. The US installed a puppet regime in South Vietnam and the rest is history. The Vietnam war was, from start to finish, a blunder of American foreign policy of monumental proportions. There never really was any chance of winning. You simply can't beat a nation into submission who are willing to die for their national freedom.
There was no domino effect. The Vietnamese communist movement was a peasant uprising drenched in socialist radicalism and needed to be left alone to sort itself out. The interventionist policies of the US wrecked the entire region. More bombs were illegally dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war than were dropped on Germany during WW2. This was in direct contravention to international treaties and American policy makers are still wanted as war criminals for their actions there ( especially Henry Kissinger ).
The really sad thing about it all is that even after the Secretary of Defence ( Robert S. McNamara ) laid the facts in front of the president and explained how the US could not win the war there, the US continued to fight for several years and thousands of deaths <!--coloro:orange--><span style="color:orange"><!--/coloro-->*snip*<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> And the sad thing is that the very same mistakes are being made again in Iraq today.
You guys who look at Vietnam through rose-tinted glasses need to wake up and read some objective material on SE-Asian history. You had no interest in freeing the populaces of SE Asia. You support Pol Pot and the Khmer Rogue. The entire campaign against an Indochina domino effect is one of the most brutal marks on US history. Don't even get me started on central and South America.
Don't even get me started on central and South America.
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You mean the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine? Yeah, that's messed up. It's basically been our own self-referencial vindication for all our illegal acts down there for the past 100 years.
I've been to the region a few times and the place is still reeling from the horrific sustained terror waged on them by the US. The Vietnamese were struggling for independence and had no interest in the cold war. It was first and foremost a peasant rebellion under a populist communist movement with one objective only: independence from foreign influence.
Read your history. The Geneva accords promised democratic elections and only France and Ho Chi Minh signed up to it, the US and the rest of the warmongers peddled partionist policies to south Vietnam to oppose the populist peasant uprising that had overthrown both French and Japanese dominance of the region. The US installed a puppet regime in South Vietnam and the rest is history. The Vietnam war was, from start to finish, a blunder of American foreign policy of monumental proportions. There never really was any chance of winning. You simply can't beat a nation into submission who are willing to die for their national freedom.
There was no domino effect. The Vietnamese communist movement was a peasant uprising drenched in socialist radicalism and needed to be left alone to sort itself out. The interventionist policies of the US wrecked the entire region. More bombs were illegally dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war than were dropped on Germany during WW2. This was in direct contravention to international treaties and American policy makers are still wanted as war criminals for their actions there ( especially Henry Kissinger ).
The really sad thing about it all is that even after the Secretary of Defence ( Robert S. McNamara ) laid the facts in front of the president and explained how the US could not win the war there, the US continued to fight for several years and thousands of deaths <!--coloro:orange--><span style="color:orange"><!--/coloro-->*snip*<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> And the sad thing is that the very same mistakes are being made again in Iraq today.
You guys who look at Vietnam through rose-tinted glasses need to wake up and read some objective material on SE-Asian history. You had no interest in freeing the populaces of SE Asia. You support Pol Pot and the Khmer Rogue. The entire campaign against an Indochina domino effect is one of the most brutal marks on US history. Don't even get me started on central and South America.
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So, you're giving France applause for signing on the dotted line to allow democratic elections, and ignoring the bit about them trying to hold Vietnam as a territory? If no one really cares about Vietnam, why did France want it? Why did Japan? Why did we help the French? I'm not convinced that we were just scratching the figurative back of France, nor did we expect anything in return. I think we probably liberated them during WWII because they were between us and Germany, not because it was the right thing to do.
As I stated before, I don't necessarily believe in right and wrong. I do believe in perception of right and wrong and motive to act. There was a reason for us to be there, you can bet your butt. And I figure someone who knows alot more about the situation than we do thought it was a pretty darn good reason.
Maybe the place is still in shambles because we were never allowed to go back in and rebuild anything? Or bring them into a world economy where any goods or services they did provide could be traded for things they needed? The North did win their independance, and how much better off are they now for it? They obviously haven't been able to put together any self-reliance, if you say you've been there.
Whatever the reason for going in, it was lose-lose, because we're damned either way. People like us will continually ###### and moan about how stupid everyone is, because we can't stand the fact that we don't know what's going on in the world. Running the most powerful country in the world is a pretty hard job, and damn anyone who would choose to make light of it.
What if there was a domino effect? What if we stopped it at Vietnam? What if had we not, we would have spiraled into thermonuclear war and EVERYONE would be dead? We can sit back now, nearly 40 years later, and try to place answers on these questions, but in the late 1960s, I'll wager that the leaders of nations had no idea how to begin to answer them, and they acted on what they understood about it at the time. Just like we all do every. Damned. Day.
<!--coloro:orange--><span style="color:orange"><!--/coloro-->The remainder of Rob's post became increasingly directed towards the now-removed segment of Puzl's post, so I decided to make an edit here too.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
You say that it is an insult to the veterans of the vietnam war to call the war poinless, should we not then extend the same courtesy to the Sovjet soldiers in Afghanistan, or the German people for WW2. They too should, if extending your logic, be insulted by us condemning those wars as pointless. They were no more responsible for the outrage those wars were than the american soldiers for the vietnam war.
But there is a huge difference between "not <i>having</i> a worthwhile goal" and "not <i>achieving</i> a worthwhile goal". Is it not possible to have the perfect motivations for a war, but fail to acheive your objectives due to military defeat? That would not be a "pointless" war, but merely an "unsuccessful" war. And likewise that is the best available description of Vietnam--Not pointless, but unsucessful.
But if it was pointless then it was pointless. Calling it anything else and lying to yourselves and to others about the war, praising the people who started the pointless excercise to begin with and say their decisions were justified, THAT is a disgrace not only to those who came home and are suffering from their experiences and have passed that suffering and those scars on to their children and them to their children after that. It is also an insult to all those American (with allies) and vietnameese soldiers who died during that pointless war, not to mention the countless civilians who's lives got taken from them, and an insult to those who still struggle to rebuild the region from the disaster that struck them.
You say that it is an insult to the veterans of the vietnam war to call the war poinless, should we not then extend the same courtesy to the Sovjet soldiers in Afghanistan, or the German people for WW2. They too should, if extending your logic, be insulted by us condemning those wars as pointless. They were no more responsible for the outrage those wars were than the american soldiers for the vietnam war.
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There are very few things that are pointless. To call any war trivial is to trivialize mankind.
[edit]Also, see cxwf's post: just because the US government didn't accomplish its goal, doesn't mean a goal didn't exist. [/edit]
I think a domino effect is somewhat apparent in the fact that after the US pulled out in 1975 and Laos and Cambodia both became communist afterwards.
<!--QuoteBegin-puzl+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(puzl)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You guys who look at Vietnam through rose-tinted glasses need to wake up and read some objective material on SE-Asian history. You had no interest in freeing the populaces of SE Asia. <b>You support Pol Pot and the Khmer Rogue.</b> The entire campaign against an Indochina domino effect is one of the most brutal marks on US history. Don't even get me started on central and South America.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not sure where you're getting this whacked out information from, but I've never seen information relating to the United States enstating or supporting Pol Pot's regime, the North Vietnamese army helped put him into power by fighting against the Cambodian government in 1971 - last I checked North Vietnam and the United States were not the same political entity or even allies...Unless you want to argue that the US bombing of Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge bases and military trails somehow constitutes support from the US government?
And while the primary goal of the US government may not have been 'the freeing of the populace' in Vietnam, effort was given to US supporters, displayed by the large and varied Hmong refugees from the Vietnam war that now have numerous settlement areas in the US (mostly in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin). Many of the refugees are Laotian and Cambodian, and at first only a few were granted asylum, but there are over 169,000 people of Hmong descent (the second generation of which is now high-school aged) in the US. And while this may not be adequate to represent an all out attempt at salvaging the populations of Southeast Asia, it does show that attempts have been, and are being, made to aid the peoples effected by the Vietnam war. Aside from that, the media's effectiveness at outraging the American populace due to military losses and civillian deaths seems like a decent example to point out that "no interest in freeing the populaces" is inherently skewed.
You act like no other country has invaded another country to set up a government loyal to their government. Now, I could prattle off a bunch of different instances of France, England, Japan or Russia (and the US) setting up loyal governments and conducting war to fulfill their own agenda, but I'm simply going to point out that the complete relocation of all native peoples to the American continent and the utter destruction of some cultures on Earth would probably be considered by many people far worse than the economic exploitation or political meddling associated with Vietnam.
"U.S. objectives and concept of operations [are] to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I still don't see how Vietnam was a threat to us. All I get from this article is Vietnam was our way of flexing our muscles to the rest of the world.
I still don't see how Vietnam was a threat to us. All I get from this article is Vietnam was our way of flexing our muscles to the rest of the world.
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The U.S. viewed the spreading of Communism as a threat to us and the rest of the free world.
But if it was pointless then it was pointless. Calling it anything else and lying to yourselves and to others about the war, praising the people who started the pointless excercise to begin with and say their decisions were justified, THAT is a disgrace not only to those who came home and are suffering from their experiences and have passed that suffering and those scars on to their children and them to their children after that. It is also an insult to all those American (with allies) and vietnameese soldiers who died during that pointless war, not to mention the countless civilians who's lives got taken from them, and an insult to those who still struggle to rebuild the region from the disaster that struck them.
You say that it is an insult to the veterans of the vietnam war to call the war poinless, should we not then extend the same courtesy to the Sovjet soldiers in Afghanistan, or the German people for WW2. They too should, if extending your logic, be insulted by us condemning those wars as pointless. They were no more responsible for the outrage those wars were than the american soldiers for the vietnam war.
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I've never understood how people can say that a war is pointless, and then tell the veterans of that war that they're not insulted by it when in fact they are. Who the hell are you to tell someone what the can and cannot be insulted by?
Can you tell an African American that he can't be insulted by that one particular word (you know the one), on the grounds that "it was a legitimate name for the race back in the 1800s?" Well, I guess you could, and then you'd be sued to oblivion.
But somehow, since it's popular; since it's <i>convenient</i> we're allowed to just call the war pointless, thereby saying that over 200,000 allied troops were killed for no reason. These people made the ultimate sacrifice and died in each other's defense. They put it all on the line for <b>us</b>. And then we go and say, "Oh, you didn't need to do that, it was pointless."
They gave us the gift of their own <i>blood</i>. If somebody gave you a gift for Christmas that you can't really use, do you look in their face and say, "That's pointless, why did you do that?"
If I called all those who fought in Vietnam child rapers, and said that they all personally participated in and have a responsibility for burning and killing innocent civilians, then I would be insulting them. Then you could be talking about the criticism being improper. That is not the same thing as questioning the validity of the war and the reasons behind it though.
Instead of defending a war that cost countless lives and disrupted the entire SE Asia, use that energy to make sure no such waste ever happens again.
The U.S. viewed the spreading of Communism as a threat to us and the rest of the free world.
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Yes, I know. It's ironic that a country born from revolution into a controversial form of government would turn around and suppress countries who try the same. National determination = bad!
Or to put it differently: I view this whole "I feel insulted by your words" business as an attempt to suppress the other side of the argument.