Was pretty disappointed in the series last night. Most of the time spent on disparaging US Govt. Personally I don't think we should have escalated it in the first place but you need to contact LBJ in whatever hell he's in, and ask him why he did. No, I'm not a big fan of govt officials then or now, but some of them were trying their best, and of course for some it was politics as usual.
Here's some things to ponder.
South Vietnam did not invade the North nor build a guerrilla Army within their country. It was the North that did that to the South.
The Viet Cong were not heroic volunteers trying to save their country. Most were forced. The VC would come into a village at night, gather up all inhabitants of fighting age, and tell them to either come with them or be killed along with all their family.
The North Vietnamese Army were also not heroic volunteers. Most were conscripts and were forced into the fight. They were also lied to about the status of the war and where they would be going. They believed in the slogans that all communist govts use.
We did commit some terrible atrocities of course, but the North and the VC were way ahead of us in that regard. I have seen what they did to their enemies when they over powered them. They slaughtered thousands. Think not, the series described what they did to govt officials teachers and public workers in the Hue in 68 Tet. When they took aver a village the first thing they would do is execute any village official, all school teachers, and any clergy including Catholic Nuns.
A great many anti war protestors were just like Antifa is today. They had a great time rioting and causing public damage along with showing disrespect to servicemen and women. From 1966 to 1983 I lived and worked around DC and Baltimore and I saw it first hand. Some was anti war and some was racial. None of the violence did anyone any good.
My last year in the Army I was stationed in Maryland and they were rioting in Baltimore. One day I had to go to Friendship Airport and on my way back I got into the middle of an Airborne Division on the way into the city. It didn't take them long to rein in the trouble makers. Here's one for you, we would on occasion fly supplies into the parks in Baltimore where the Airborne were bivouacked. Our helicopters were taking ground fire over Baltimore.
In 1967 I stood in Aberdeen Tower and watched Baltimore burn. A year later I stood on the roof of the FAA facility and watched DC burn. I also helped feed transport aircraft into Andrews AFB. A steady stream of C130s and C141s from Ft. Bragg. Once they had the division in place they opened the gates at Andrews and turned them loose. Problem solved.
To me I see nothing heroic in fleeing to Canada, burning your draft card, or anti war rioting. To me the real heroes were the ones who may not have agreed with the war, but did their duty to their country. Kent State was a very sad episode, but aside from that all those protests and demonstrations never exposed any of them to real live bullets, mortars, booby traps, Jungle diseases, ect. Nothing heroic here, move along.
I think Burns sees the whole thing through his liberal tinted glasses.
Or as a GI would say, "Don't mean nothing nohow anyway."
__________________
Jim and Carol Cooper with Oreo the Kitty
FAA ATC ret, VFW, AL, VVA, NRA
US Army Aviation, MACV Vietnam 65-66
2012 Journey 36M, Cummings 360hp
iRV2.com RV Community - Are you about to start a new improvement on your RV or need some help with some maintenance? Do you need advice on what products to buy? Or maybe you can give others some advice? No matter where you fit in you'll find that iRV2 is a great community to join. Best of all it's totally FREE!
You are currently viewing our boards as a guest so you have limited access to our community. Please take the time to register and you will gain a lot of great new features including; the ability to participate in discussions, network with other RV owners, see fewer ads, upload photographs, create an RV blog, send private messages and so much, much more!
>>>The real criminals then ard now are the leaders who lie to us and risk our lives to further their political lives.<<<
No sir. There real criminals were the draft dodgers, and AWOL types who fled to Canada. The United States involvement in the Vietnam war was based on stopping the communist "Domino theory". It was not to go there and kill our youth and drive up the stock of Corporations who supplied military hardware.
Going to war is easy, having an exit strategy is the hard part. In the end, it was Nixon who got us out of the war with his "Peace with Honor". Peace with Honor my butt, we surrendered! All those lives, All the bravery, all for not.[/QUOTE]
With you all the way brother.
__________________
Jim and Carol Cooper with Oreo the Kitty
FAA ATC ret, VFW, AL, VVA, NRA
US Army Aviation, MACV Vietnam 65-66
2012 Journey 36M, Cummings 360hp
No sir. There real criminals were the draft dodgers, and AWOL types who fled to Canada. The United States involvement in the Vietnam war was based on stopping the communist "Domino theory". It was not to go there and kill our youth and drive up the stock of Corporations who supplied military hardware.
Going to war is easy, having an exit strategy is the hard part. In the end, it was Nixon who got us out of the war with his "Peace with Honor". Peace with Honor my butt, we surrendered! All those lives, All the bravery, all for not.
With you all the way brother.[/QUOTE]
X2 brother. Salute Also, I had no problem with the cowards running away, but, my thought was stay in Canada. Never should have let them come back. I'm from the old school... make your bed... then lie in it.
Proud that I enlisted and served my country. Still have to fight an occasional demon, but, they're getting to be fewer all the time.
199th infantry guy here.
__________________
There's No straight lines make up my life, And all my roads have bends. There's no clear-cut beginnings,
And so far no dead-ends.
Enlisted in 1970 after high school and following training I went to Guam as an airborne firefighter (HH-43) during Linebacker II. My knowledge of current events then is a lot different than my knowledge of history now. I have to say the show on PBS is very good and I don't think it is a "left leaning liberal" point of view--I think it is a pretty accurate historical account. Even Macnamera (the architect of the war) realized it was unwinable long before Nixon was elected. VN was a terrible mistake for the USA--the show presents this on several fronts. The USA came very close to a 2nd civil war over it--we had troops open fire on US citizens protesting. I feel for those that suffer today with PSD or physical injuries and for those who lost a loved one during the war. I am not implying people serving didn't do so honorably. But in retrospect we should never have gone past the advisor stage. The SVNA and government was totally corrupt. People in our government were getting bad info from the brass and ambassador in country so they were making bad decisions, and the leaders in our country were giving bad information to our citizens as well as ignoring what the citizenry was saying to their government. In the early part of my career I thought the war was just, I thought we made no mistakes and the protestors were wrong, and cowards. It took a while to. Look back on it all and become better educated on the war for me to see it differently. I think the PBS series is doing a good job of putting all the years of that war in proper perspective.
__________________
Don Kostyal
CMSgt, USAF ret.
2012 Canyon Star 3856//2017 Corolla SE
Letter Posted At The Nixon Foundation By Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox
September 28, 2017
Dear Friends,
With the the airing of Ken Burns’ 10-part series, “The Vietnam War” drawing to a close, we want to share with you some of our thoughts about our father’s Vietnam policies and strategies that the episodes covering his presidency misrepresented. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served in the Nixon White House, once memorably observed, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” And that applies even to Ken Burns. So here are some facts.
It is not true that Richard Nixon torpedoed what some have maintained was a serious chance for peace announced by President Johnson in the closing days of the 1968 campaign. As William Bundy, a senior State Department official in the Johnson administration, later admitted, there was “no great chance for peace” in November 1968.
In fact, LBJ’s October 31st bombshell announcement gave North Vietnam a major military advantage. And before Johnson left office, the negotiations, that South Vietnam joined, succeeded only in reaching agreement about the shape of the conference table. Johnson’s “October Surprise,” just five days before the election, did, however, provide some voters with the false hope of peace, nearly swinging the election to LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey.
It is not true that President Nixon continued the war for his own political benefit. In fact, there’s no doubt that an immediate withdrawal of our 540,000 troops in Vietnam on the day he took office would have served his immediate political interests. But it also would have dishonored our commitment to the freedom of South Vietnam for which 37,563 Americans had already died. Furthermore, it would have devalued America’s credibility to friend and foe alike, with dire diplomatic and military consequences for Asia and the world.
It is not true that President Nixon widened the war. In fact, North Vietnam’s active military exploitation of Laos and Cambodia had widened the war years earlier. Our father’s bold and entirely justified actions to disrupt the enemy’s ability to wage war against our troops saved countless American lives. So, too, did the 60-day incursion into Cambodia our father ordered on April 30, 1970. This mission destroyed massive amounts of the enemy’s military supplies and disrupted the military sanctuaries that the Communists had been exploiting to kill American and South Vietnamese troops.
Ken Burns incorrectly maintains that President Nixon was, like presidents Kennedy and Johnson, responsible for the war. But it was JFK and LBJ who got us into the war; Richard Nixon got us out. Our father believed, however, that a hasty retreat from Vietnam would have led to a perilous American retreat from the world. Among those who agreed were Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and a majority of the American people.
In 12 televised “Addresses to the Nation” on Vietnam in his first term, Richard Nixon explained to the American people his plan for ending the war. He won the support of the “Silent Majority” of Americans; did what he said he would do; and never lost their support for his policy.
The Nixon “Vietnamization” strategy gave South Vietnam a chance to defend itself against Soviet and Chinese-backed Communist aggression. It also confirmed America’s bipartisan commitment, dating to the Truman administration, to resist Communist expansionism. His willingness to take strong action affirmed that America would keep its word, making possible his historic opening to China and ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Our father agonized over the war-driven divisions in our country. He understood that the anti-war passions were rooted in frustration with the war’s duration. But he also knew that their dissent made his goal of a lasting peace more difficult to achieve. It saddened him that so many clashed in America’s streets and on college campuses, and it angered him that some treated our troops returning home from the battlefield as pariahs.
President Nixon wound down America’s involvement in Vietnam to give the people of South Vietnam the chance to live in freedom. To suggest that he strung out the war is flatly wrong. To say that the reason for the war was wrong disparages the honorable service of those who fought in Vietnam, America’s most difficult war. And each of these false contentions dismisses the will of the American people, who re-elected our father with an historic 49-state majority over an opponent who vehemently opposed our father’s Vietnam strategy.
In 1973, as America’s role in the war ended and our prisoners of war came home, Richard Nixon’s vision of a wider, transformative peace was taking hold, a peace that ensured a generation of peace for the American people even as the world’s political order underwent enormous change.
These are the facts. Perhaps if Ken Burns had himself visited the Nixon Library he might have learned the real history of Vietnam during the Nixon years. Unfortunately, he did not. Fortunately, however, the tens of thousands who come to Yorba Linda – or follow the Richard Nixon Foundation on the web or through social media – will find that the truth resides there for all to see and learn from. And for that fact we are grateful to all those who support the Richard Nixon Foundation in its mission to promote the legacy of our father, the 37th President of the United States.
With the the airing of Ken Burns’ 10-part series, “The Vietnam War” drawing to a close, we want to share with you some of our thoughts about our father’s Vietnam policies and strategies that the episodes covering his presidency misrepresented. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served in the Nixon White House, once memorably observed, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” And that applies even to Ken Burns. So here are some facts.
It is not true that Richard Nixon torpedoed what some have maintained was a serious chance for peace announced by President Johnson in the closing days of the 1968 campaign. As William Bundy, a senior State Department official in the Johnson administration, later admitted, there was “no great chance for peace” in November 1968.
In fact, LBJ’s October 31st bombshell announcement gave North Vietnam a major military advantage. And before Johnson left office, the negotiations, that South Vietnam joined, succeeded only in reaching agreement about the shape of the conference table. Johnson’s “October Surprise,” just five days before the election, did, however, provide some voters with the false hope of peace, nearly swinging the election to LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey.
It is not true that President Nixon continued the war for his own political benefit. In fact, there’s no doubt that an immediate withdrawal of our 540,000 troops in Vietnam on the day he took office would have served his immediate political interests. But it also would have dishonored our commitment to the freedom of South Vietnam for which 37,563 Americans had already died. Furthermore, it would have devalued America’s credibility to friend and foe alike, with dire diplomatic and military consequences for Asia and the world.
It is not true that President Nixon widened the war. In fact, North Vietnam’s active military exploitation of Laos and Cambodia had widened the war years earlier. Our father’s bold and entirely justified actions to disrupt the enemy’s ability to wage war against our troops saved countless American lives. So, too, did the 60-day incursion into Cambodia our father ordered on April 30, 1970. This mission destroyed massive amounts of the enemy’s military supplies and disrupted the military sanctuaries that the Communists had been exploiting to kill American and South Vietnamese troops.
Ken Burns incorrectly maintains that President Nixon was, like presidents Kennedy and Johnson, responsible for the war. But it was JFK and LBJ who got us into the war; Richard Nixon got us out. Our father believed, however, that a hasty retreat from Vietnam would have led to a perilous American retreat from the world. Among those who agreed were Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and a majority of the American people.
In 12 televised “Addresses to the Nation” on Vietnam in his first term, Richard Nixon explained to the American people his plan for ending the war. He won the support of the “Silent Majority” of Americans; did what he said he would do; and never lost their support for his policy.
The Nixon “Vietnamization” strategy gave South Vietnam a chance to defend itself against Soviet and Chinese-backed Communist aggression. It also confirmed America’s bipartisan commitment, dating to the Truman administration, to resist Communist expansionism. His willingness to take strong action affirmed that America would keep its word, making possible his historic opening to China and ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Our father agonized over the war-driven divisions in our country. He understood that the anti-war passions were rooted in frustration with the war’s duration. But he also knew that their dissent made his goal of a lasting peace more difficult to achieve. It saddened him that so many clashed in America’s streets and on college campuses, and it angered him that some treated our troops returning home from the battlefield as pariahs.
President Nixon wound down America’s involvement in Vietnam to give the people of South Vietnam the chance to live in freedom. To suggest that he strung out the war is flatly wrong. To say that the reason for the war was wrong disparages the honorable service of those who fought in Vietnam, America’s most difficult war. And each of these false contentions dismisses the will of the American people, who re-elected our father with an historic 49-state majority over an opponent who vehemently opposed our father’s Vietnam strategy.
In 1973, as America’s role in the war ended and our prisoners of war came home, Richard Nixon’s vision of a wider, transformative peace was taking hold, a peace that ensured a generation of peace for the American people even as the world’s political order underwent enormous change.
These are the facts. Perhaps if Ken Burns had himself visited the Nixon Library he might have learned the real history of Vietnam during the Nixon years. Unfortunately, he did not. Fortunately, however, the tens of thousands who come to Yorba Linda – or follow the Richard Nixon Foundation on the web or through social media – will find that the truth resides there for all to see and learn from. And for that fact we are grateful to all those who support the Richard Nixon Foundation in its mission to promote the legacy of our father, the 37th President of the United States.
Sincerely,
Tricia Nixon Cox
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
This is extremely well written and even though the writer is defending her own Father, the facts she states are the truth. I lived through all of it and I remember it well.
__________________
Jim and Carol Cooper with Oreo the Kitty
FAA ATC ret, VFW, AL, VVA, NRA
US Army Aviation, MACV Vietnam 65-66
2012 Journey 36M, Cummings 360hp
People were young..they did not know that a very very small amount of events like Mi Lay have happened for centuries in all wars.
It was a heart wrenching time, and hard to take what was said personally.
The vietnam was was a mistake...the loss of lives was horrible..the US soldiers were really fighting for each other.. as brothers do, to survive.
we all have to move on and make sure noting like Vietnam ever happens again.
It already happened again. Our stupid leaders did the same thing in Iraq that they did in Vietnam. They didn’t learn their lesson, and our brave soldiers paid the price (again).
__________________
Marc and Jill, Wellington FL
2013 Entegra Anthem 44SL
2018 Lincoln MKX
I lived thru The 60's and 70's as it relates to VN. I served a tour in SE Asia and was spent many additional days there. I have a little different view, first hand.
Our leaders, LBJ and McNamara, did not commit to winning. In Iraq we did commit to winning, but then with a change of administration abruptly pulled troops out, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
You are right our "leaders" did not learn the lesson of a commitment to winning once troops are committed.
Our involvement was a direct result of SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization), A protection treaty made after the Korean War. We were bound by our word that we would come to members aid when asked. Part of the "stepping stones" policy to deny the communists a foot hold in south east Asia. I was an advisor with 2nd Co. 2nd Bat. SVN Rangers in what was to become the Cam Rhan Bay Facility. We had been fore warned by the French (who had been their for 7 years and beaten) Not to fight a defensive war with the North and cast our future when we let Politicians dictate War Policy, instead of letting the military do there job. We were afraid of China entering as in Korea and killing Russian Advisors in Hanoi thus bringing them into the war. Under those conditions it was almost impossible to be successful.
__________________
Richard "PONY", Virginia & the Cats (Benny & Joon) 2003 Monaco Dynasty. Fulltimers since 2005.
Linear Mode
