Revisionist History:The Vietnam War
July 16, 2006
REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)
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Revisionist history about Vietnam, one sorry war, is alive and well.
We made beaucoup mistakes in Vietnam, but it was not a civil war.
The concept of the overwhelming mistake of Vietnam: that we sided with the wrong side in a civil war is flat out inaccurate. Vietnam was not a civil war.
South Vietnam was a separate country. Even though its leadership was incredibly corrupt, they were legitimate. And, at the times, we had a foreign policy that was fighting communism and keeping smaller, more vulnerable countries from falling to the Communists. And, without stating it, hoping to forestall genocide in Southeast Asian. We were unsuccessful on all sides.
In all probability, it is questionable whether we should have attempted Vietnam. We didn't understand the consequences; and, in the beginning, we felt we had a moral imperative. We should have finished the job as painful as it might have been and could have with a fraction of the men we had. We should have kept the Special Forces soldiers in country, now called Special Operations.
In Afghanistan, we learned what highly trained, dedicated, and experienced soldiers can do. Our going to Nam was not the problem: The problem was there was no clear cut mission in why we were there and what we were going to do and when we were going to leave! Add the fact that we didn't have a clue as to the corruptness of the South Vietnamese government, not to mention how determined an enemy could be if fighting on its own soil.
It is understandable why many of us see Vietnam in Iraq. That having been said, let's don't have a revisionist history about Vietnam when discussing Iraq--not one and the same. JM
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