"David Looser" wrote in
message

No you didn't! The US could (and should) have stayed well
out of it. There was absolutely no reason for the US to
go charging in when the French had very sensibly decided
to withdraw. The phrase "fools rush in where angels fear
to tread" comes to mind, it sums up the US decision to
take over the colonial role of the French extremely well.
In the end, of course, it was the poor old Vietnamese who
had to sort out the mess when the Americans finally left.

I agree that the US should have handled Vietnam differently. For example, Ho
Chi Minh had made overtures to the US, but we were too interested in
remaining friends with the French to follow up on them. Note that we handled
Egypt differently.

We came out of the Vietnam war with vast stocks of
ordinance, some of which we worked off in Kuwait. We
never ever gave Vietnam our all.

Not in terms of US industrial production, no. But, with
the exception of nuclear weapons, there was no
war-fighting tactic or technology left untried.

I'm sure this is an error of omission on your part, but we had both chemical
and biological weapons on hand that we never used in Vietnam.

What we failed to do is give it our full-court press in terms of volume and
strategy.

What we actually see is a military, frustrated at
being unable to defeat a supposedly inferior enemy,
resorting to almost any tactic to try and "win".

No, we did not use *any tactic*.

Near enough.

Not near enough to win! ;-)

It's understandable that some US troops, trained to
regard the Vietnamese as barely human, resented having
any rules imposed on them at all.

You're speculating wildly.

Am I? I don't think so.

I was trained to fight in Vietnam and knew many returnees. There was no such
training.

But it's also understandable that
politicians, all too well aware of the devastating
effect news of each new massacre was having on both domestic
and international public opinion, wished to keep such
massacres to a minimum.

The fact is that massacres are not effective.

True, which is why rules of engagement are instituted to
try and stop them happening. But with the sort of
conflict that the Vietnam war was, they happen.

And did. But not so many.

Since it was public opinion that eventually forced the
US government to throw in the towel it's arguable that
had those rules of engagement not been in place the US would
have been forced to concede defeat sooner.

Thanks for admitting that due to poltical considerations
we never were able to give the war our worst.

I don't know what you mean by "your worst".

Now discussed above.

The US tried
it's damndest to win that war, and failed.

Not our damndist. Not even near.

It didn't lose because it wasn't trying, it lost because it had the
wrong troops and the wrong strategy.

The troops were at least adequate. It was the wrong strategy that ruined our
effort, but more effective strategies were known to us.

Not having rules of
engagement would not have made a difference to the final
outcome.

That makes me believe that you don't understand how limiting rules of
engagement can be and in this case, were.

Not using nukes serves our own purposes, because within
a week, fallout from anyplace falls on us.

And within a day the far more important fallout of
international opinion would have made a little matter of
radioactive fallout seem insignificant. Whether the US
likes it or not (and it frequently gives the impression
that it doesn't) it is, actually, just one nation
amongst many on this planet, and does have to co-exist with the
others.

World opinion does not kill.

If it resulted in military action being taken by another
power?

Who is going to take the US over against our will?

Sticks and stones and all that. Fall out does kill.
Worrying what happens tomorrow is not as compelling as
worrying about what happens for the rest of your life,
particularly when that means that you're dead in a
month.

You claim to be a Christian, yet I haven't spotted a
hint of regret on your part at the considerable death,
destruction and suffering that the US inflicted on
Vietnam.

It happened against my will. I sacrificed to not be a
direct part of it. It clearly would have happened even
if I burnt myself to death on the steps of the White
House.

I'm not asking you to burn yourself to death. I was just
hoping that you'd agree that the Vietnam war was as much
the result of stupidity and arrogance as Hitler's
invasion of Russia was.

I think that in both cases the option to simply not go there existed, and
both parties were foolish to not exercise that option.

Its interesting to see that left to their own devices, the Vietnamese have
become friendly enough with us.

And before you accuse me again of "UK
chauvinism" I'd mention that I am every bit as critical
of much of British policy in acquiring and administering
the "British Empire", as I am of US foreign policy in
the post-WW2 era.

I'm not faulting that. I'm faulting the false idea that
the US wasn't a deciding factor in WW2. Note: "a
deciding factor", not "the deciding factor". We tried
hard to keep WW2 from happening, but Europe had to go
its own way. We worked hard to pick up the pieces when
it was all done, and give them back to the Europeans.
The Europeans did learn and did better.

When did I say that the US wasn't a deciding factor?

If you never meant to give that impression then that is a good thing.

Clearly the US was *the* deciding factor in the Pacific
war, in Europe it was *a* deciding factor. All I
challenged was the idea that, without US involvement,
"we'd all be speaking German".

Whether you'd be actually speaking German or speaking to Germans when ever
you wanted to wipe you tooshies, not such a big difference in my book.

Leaving aside the quaint
idea that the inhabitants of Europe would have all
started speaking German simply because Hitler wanted them
to, I simply argued that, even without US involvement,
the Soviet Union could, and would, (eventually) have
defeated Germany.

I don't think that the current collected undrstanding of of historians go
that far.

I'm not sure what you mean by "We tried hard to keep WW2
from happening".

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

"The United States took a more conciliatory view toward the issue of German
reparations. Before the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson, along with
other American officials including Edward M. House, put forward his Fourteen
Points, which he presented in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference. The
United States also wished to continue trading with Germany, so in turn did
not want to treat them too harshly for these economic reasons."

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_nations

/
There were a lot of Nazi sympathisers in
the US before the war, proportionately even more than
there were in Britain, and the only American efforts to
stop WW2 from happening that I know of came from them.

And I regard your comment "The Europeans did learn and
did better" as patronising. How long did it take the
Americans to learn that they should never have gone to
war in Vietnam?

Many in the US knew that well before the actual war began! Many more knew
that in the middle of the war and by the end of the war just about everybody
knew that.