RUMMEL & TURNER: Real lessons of Vietnam

I always found it disgusting that the liberals who caused the demise of South Vietnam never mention the horrors their actions caused. You would hope they would be honest enough to admit such a mistake, so as to prevent it from happening again. A present day liberal is nothing more than a present day liar.

I always found it disgusting that dishonest neo-conservatives who caused the demise of Iraq never mention the horrors their actions caused. You would hope they would be honest enough to admit such a mistake, so as to prevent it from happening again. A present day neo-conservative is nothing more than a present day liar who supports high gas prices by allowing wild speculation on oil, supports bank failures by deregulating banks, and who thinks the financial crisis faced by honest hard working Americans is just "psychological" and that middle-class Americans are just "whiners." The sheer hypocrisy of this article is just galling. Talk about the mistakes in Iraq that have led to unnecessary deaths of thousands of American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

Is the author suggesting that we should have sent the U.S. military back to Vietnam in 1973 because by that time there was only a few hundred troops on the ground. The south collapsed two years later because the South Vietnamese army, in spite of the fact they had received hundreds of billions in weapons and training, ran instead of fighting for their country. The U.S. spent over 12 years, 58,000 lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to help the Vietnamese. If after that effort the people of Vietnam didn't think it was worth their effort to stand up for their freedom why should we have expended more lives and money to do it for them. As for Lebanon, it was the Reagan administration's decision to give the marines stationed there weapons without ammunition leaving them defenseless and had nothing to do with any "liberal" congressional action. The fact that Reagan ordered the military retreat from Lebanon with their tails between their legs was his decision and his alone. You would think that looking at history that some people would realize that getting into military conflicts is a whole lot easier than getting out. Apparently the author is more concerned about rewriting history to justify the mistakes of his party than learning the lessons of history so that American lives and treasure won't be squandered needlessly in the future.

Natsecblog A hallmark of present day liberals is their apparent inability to carry on a rational and intelligent discussion or debate on just about any issue, particularly if it involves war or our National Security. They would rather tell us about their "feelings",e.g, disgust. They cannot answer rational arguments, such as, the significance of the SEATO Treaty in the context of the Cold War or being able to distinguish North Vietnamese propaganda from the true, albiet, complex facts about the war in Vietnam. There may be rejoinders to the argument presented in the Rummel-Turner piece, but they will not be heard from the typical leftist-liberal. More on National Security issues on my Blog. Go to Blogspot.com and then to Natsecwhereto.blogspot.com

Excellent and accurate article, with one glaring exception....Bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11 (and there were no 19 Muslim hijackers). That aside, some excellent points are made. JOS is off-base (he/she obviously wasn't there) in blaming the exceptionally brave South Vietnamese people. They fought their hearts out, as those Americans who fought beside them can attest. The United States outfitted and trained their military forces and they fought valliantly after we left, until Congress stopped funding them. Even then they fought until they ran out of ammunition, spare parts, gasoline, etc. Rifles without bullets aren't much good against rifles with bullets. We won the Vietnam War by every military measure that can be applied to armed conflict. TET of 1968 saw us lose 3,800 while killing 50,000, it saw us all but completely wipe out the Viet Cong forces altogether....they never posed a credible threat to anyone thereafter. We were coming down the homestretch to the finish line when Congress and the American whiners, led by the likes of Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and cowards in Congress, pulled the rug out from under us. The media doctored footage shot in Hanoi and made it appear it was a victory parade in Saigon. The men behind the curtain never intended for us to "win" that war, they were only interested in financing both sides of it and extracting oil for 12 years. I'm proud of the nearly three tours I served there.