The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was justified.

1)The draft You miss my point completetly. I was not disputing that at the moment the draft has not been ruled unconstitutional or a violation of basic human rights. I am not arguing that it is illegal . I am arguing that the draft is morally wrong and an incredible violation of individual rights. You never refuted my actual arguments so I will extend it. Also, your examples of historic implementations of the draft are not relevant. This claim is the same as saying that because out of the 6 million or so Jews Hitler exterminated, chances are at least one of them was a murderer who had gotten away with the crime. Therefore if the Holocaust had not taken place, that murderer would have gone unpunished. My point is that while the outcome may have been positive, the means to acheive that outcome were unwarranted and wrong. 2)We lost So you are saying that we went in and defended South Vietnam for how ever many number of years and then right after we left, everything we had worked for during the war was lost. But that was not a loss? Over 58,000 American soldiers died over the course of that war. And you are claiming that the only reason hundreds of thousands of men were forced to travel halfway across the world to fight in hostile territory where more than 50,000 of them died was so that we could keep North Vietnam out of South Vietnam for a measely ten years? The Vietnam War was a collosal failure if I ever saw one. 3)Dead, wounded My opponent hear only mentions the American casualties in the Vietnam War by stating that "The U. S. goal was accomplished with 58,000 U. S. deaths while killing up 1.1 million communist soldiers ". Is this supposed to make up for the loss of American lives simply because at least we took them with us? My opponent does not seem to think that this is much of an argument in that he believes that the Americans were successful in their involvement which is of course false. Allow me to use an analogy to illustrate my point. Let's say you were walking down the beach one day. Let's say you saw a man drowning in the watere. So you ran and dove into the water to save him by keeping the drowning man's head above the water, but only for a few minutes. After about five minutes you decided that your objective had been fulfilled so you let go of the drowning man and swam back to shore. This man drowned but it wasn't while you were trying to save him. So does that mean that your rescue attempt was a success? My opponent argues that the Vietnam War was a successs because we successfully defended the South Vietnamese while we were there. However this makes no sense in that just two years after we left the North Vietnamese took over. My opponent seems to think that as long as S. Vietnam didn't fall under our watch everything is okay. 4) The atocities committed after the U. S. left Vietnam My opponent believes that I have contradicted myself in the last round. However this is simply due to a miscommunication and I will be glad to clarify below. These are the two statements which my opponent believes I have contradicted myself with. "We are putting ourselves in the shoes of American leaders before they made the decisino to go into Vietnam" "We will not be looking at this event through the eyes of one alive at the time of the war, but we will look back on it using hindsight" In the first comment I was stating that we would be taking into account the entire history of the Vietnam War and the subsequent fall of South Vietnam after the U. S. withdrew and not be looking at the War with the same information as leaders did before the decision was made to involve ourselves. In the second comment I was stating that we were looking at the decision to involve ourselves in the same way that leaders did before we involved ourselves. We would be looking at the information to come to an informed decision as to if involvement in Vietnam would be justified. In the first comment I meant we would be looking at the situation with more information and in the second comment I meant that we would come to our decision in the same way as our leaders did before we involved ourselves(namely utilizing all information available we would conclude whether involving ourselves in Vietnam was justified). I hope I have cleared up this misinterpretation of my previous statements. My opponent concludes by statng: "Using hindsight we now know of the multiple atrocities committed against humanity after the U. S. left Vietnam. Millions of Cambodians were massacred, millions more were poverty stricken, thousands of South Vietnamese supporters were sent to concentration camps, hundreds of thousands were forced to evacuate and Vietnam is still oppressive against political, sexual and religious minorities. " I am not disuting that these events occured. I am disputing that our invlolvement helped other than to simply delay the North Vietnamese take over and to kill 50,000 American soldiers. To voters, I urge a con vote. Pro did not show that when looking at whether involvement in Vietnam using modern information and knowledge one would be justified in concluding that our involvement was effective. First, in order to keep up demand for troops, Congress again used the draft which is a huge violation of individual liberties, Second, though 50,000 soldiers died all that occured due to our involvement was a delay in the inevitable North Vietnamese takeover, and Third, that the huge number of American casualties was worth the ten extra years that South Vietnam was given before they were eventually taken over by communist North Vietnam.