From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: VietNam Revisionism
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:45:39 GMT
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO

In article <16870AC5E.JHARTLEY@cmsa.gmr.com> JHARTLEY@cmsa.gmr.com writes:

The term revisionism usually applies to some of those who still support
US policy then.  For example, Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying it
was the communists who canceled the elections in the 1950's.  
Whatever one thinks about whether the elections _should_ have been
canceled, it was clearly the US side that canceled them.  This is
revisionism.

>It is somewhat puzzling to hear all the talk about VietNam these days.
>You hear people talking as if everything we did was wrong, that the real
>heroes were the ones who evaded the draft, that our intentions were
>nefarious, and so on.  Many of these posts and claims must be coming from
>people who were not very old at the time of the war, since the claims
>just don't mesh with facts.  I am not making any claims about Governor
>Clinton and his portrayal of his draft record, etc.  I am referring to
>those writers, speakers, and so on, who, in defense of Clinton, misrepresent
>the nature of the VietNam War - a war much too complex to capture in the
>soundbite mentality of today.  People tend to dismiss the facts of what
>happened to the South Vietnamese and Cambodians after the US left.  The
>sources of the war were not US or even French involvements.  Peking had
>a horrible plan for the VietNamese and they eventually fulfilled it.

I am not aware that China helped the North much.  Most assistance came
from the USSR.  The Vietnamese and Chinese don't get along so well.  The
fact that things have not turned out well in communist south-east Asia
does not mean that US policy was good.

>No-one talks credibly about the good reasons for our involvement in that
>war - reasons that were proven by the actions of the Chinese and North
>VietNamese after we left.  I can stomach people protesting the war.
>I cannot stomach people portraying those who went and tried to save the
>South VietNamese from their eventual fate as anything other than heroes.

If your point is that US soldiers didn't deserve the reatment they got,
I totally agree with you.  However, their good intentions and goals
does not make the policy good.  South Vietnam and its goevernment
were creations of the US with no legitimacy.  Its not enough to be
fighting against something that is bad.  You must be fighting for
something that is good.  While the ideological differences may be
clear to Americans, to most Vietnamese the US and its puppets were
the representatives of colonialism.  Until that connection could
be broken, the South could not win.

>Especially since they did not go "in order to maintain their political
>viability within the system".  I encourage those of you who have resolved
>the memory of that war into an "it was wrong" soundbite to consult history
>books about the cause and aftereffects of the war.  Those who fail to heed
>the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

The failure to prevent bring about a pluralist system in Vietname can
be traced back farther than the early 60's.  The afteraffetcs of the
war are fairly well known.  The causes are not.  This is waht needs
to be studied and it is what demonstrates that US policy could not
succeed.  
-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
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