HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wolfone@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Patrick Chester)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Domino Effect (was Re: Did We Lose?)
Date: 6 Oct 92 08:40:58 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <1992Sep30.131901.26729@iplmail.orl.mmc.com> markb@iplmail.orl.mmc.com (Mark Bower) writes:
)In article <1992Sep28.175539.8155@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
)Dave Kohr writes
)>> In any case, my point is that the original US objective of avoiding the
)>> Domino Effect was largely successful in the sense that the governments of
)>> the large majority of the countries which mattered the most economically to
)>> the US and its allies in Southeast Asia (such as Thailand, Singapore,
)>> Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia) did not fall to popular (read
)>> "Communist")  insurgencies (despite the presence of insurgencies in many of
)>> them at the time).
)
)The most relevant answer to "Did the US achieve it's objectives?", IMHO. Vietnam
)showed to all "popular" movements that a giant, capitalist power _could_be_
)defeated. It more clearly showed how terribly high the cost of such a victory
)would be.
You forgot to add one major component to defeating a giant capitalist power:

Another great power sympathetic to your "popular" cause to supply your fighters
with massive amounts of military supplies. Also, a totally clueless Secretary
of Defense on the capitalist's powers Cabinet to run the war. No, McNamara
didn't lose us the war on his own, but he was no real *help* to us.

Things to consider.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Chester            |"The earth is too fragile a basket in which to keep
wolfone@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu |  all your eggs." Robert A. Heinlein
Politically Incorrect      |"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us
Future Lunar Colonist      |  are going to the stars." Anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: How could the United States have won?
Date: 2 Oct 92 18:04:17 GMT
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO

In article <1992Oct1.204108.19992@emr1.emr.ca> knguyen@emr.ca (khanh kim nguyen) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.142421.19188@vexcel.com> Dean Alaska,
>dean@vexcel.com writes:
>
>>I think it is generally believed that Castro never intended to have a
>>western-style democracy in Cuba.  He used the US.  Supporters of Ho like
>>to point to his declaration that is modeled after the US Declaration of
>>Independence, while others point to his training in communist countries.
>>We will never know for sure what kind of country Vietnam would have
>>been if the French had not returned.  I don't believe that it would
>>have been a social democracy but I also believe that it would have
>>been very independent of the USSR, in spite of his training. 
>
>------------
>Didn't you see all declarations of independence of communist countries
>like
>Vietnam ? Ho-chi-Minh, basing US declaration of Independence, put down on 
>his.  Castro maybe do the same thing. It is no surprise. It does not mean
>that they are going to accept your democracy. Nope ! 
>
>The first and most important task of Ho-chi-Minh is how he can gather of 
>types of people aroud him. Being oppressed by Frech, they feel those words
>moral and logical. Castro would use the same tactics. That is what we 
>called brainwashed.
>
>Yes, *human being* is born to be free and equal; every country has its 
>right to be free and independent;.....
>
>After taking the power, they are the boss of their country; the country is
>independent. But, freedom becomes dictatorship; equality becomes 
>unequality. Did you see my point ? They, from this to another would-to-be
>communist leaders, tell lie skillfully. How do those ordinary people can
>guess what they will end up with. Our two generations are told lie
>
>The whole beutiful words from them are just lie. What you called reforms,
>sometimes loose sometimes tight, is just one goal to ease the resentment
>of their own people. 
>
>Again, don't trust what they say, but watch what they did.

I am not suggesting that Ho would have been the best possible leader.
I am suggesting that had he been able to set up his government after
WWII, the result would have been less totalitarian that what did
actually result.  Even many committed Stainists in the 3rd world did
not want to become puppets to the Soviets but US policy drove them
that way.  Today we see that the remaining communist regimes,
with the exception of China, are those that were fought most
strongly by the US.  Maybe the US unwittingly helped these
governments become intrenched.  I think that opening up trade to
Vietnam and Cuba would help them move towards a pluralist society
faster than the current policy of isolation does.
-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: gerth@watson.ibm.com (John Gerth)
Subject: What Did We Lose?
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 01:13:36 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

In article <1992Sep26.095620.27928@doug.cae.wisc.edu> mccullou@cae.wisc.edu (Mark McCullough) writes:
>
>Sounds to me like you haven't looked at what caused the US to have problems.
>It directly links in to why we had so easy a time with Iraq.  No, I am not
>talking about a military reason, anyone who bothers to check their facts
>realizes that the US did not lose any major battle in all of vietnam.  
>What I am talking about is the %(##!&^ Press.  How many times in Vietnam did
>the press come in and accompany soldiers on _patrol_!  How often did they
>steal military vehicles to go and see the _real_ story.  Look at how
>the Tet offensive was reported.  Tet, a major victory for the US, was
>reported as a crippling defeat by one certain reporter whose name I need
>not mention.

My memory may be faulty, but I don't think there was ever any doubt that
Tet was a major US victory - your unnamed reporter notwithstanding.  The
problem that Tet caused was deep, powerful, and quite shocking, but it had
nothing to do with the situation on the ground in Vietnam.   The problem
was with the US Government.  In Nov-Dec '67, the politcal and military
leaders of our country assured us that the enemy was broken, disorganized
and it was now just a matter of time, even if a long time, mopping up.
(This may even have been the time of the famous "light at the end of the
tunnel", but middle age makes the memory suspect).  So imagine their
credibility when a short time later major uprisings break out all over
the "safe" areas of our ally.

Perhaps this had been an honest mistake of over-optimism, but as time
went on the government continued to get caught in promises unfulfilled
and predictions contradicted.  The government's (not the military's)
reaction was always to "double its bet" and hope for the best.  Cynicism
amoung the populace pretty much tracked the increasing deception so that
the end of this century pretty much began to mirror the Gilded Age of
the last.

Tet has no military significance.  It only serves to mark the beginning
of a continuing political debacle which is now nearly a quarter
of a century old.  And we have only ourselves to blame now.


-- 
John Gerth	 gerth@watson.ibm.com		(914) 784-7639
From: agbrooks@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au (Zoz)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Did we lose?
Date: 6 Oct 1992 01:21:26 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

In article <1992Oct3.105750.203@doug.cae.wisc.edu>, mccullou@cae.wisc.edu (Mark McCullough) writes:
|> In article <5373@gold.gvg.tek.com> mikea@zorba.gvg.tek.com (Michael P. Anderson) writes:
|> >Now we can go through this over and over until the supporters of Vietnam
|> >get it right. This war should never have been fought; it was conceived
|> >by the boards of corporate America who saw their selfish interests
|> >in the far east being jeopardized, and they were willing to win, once
|> >they started, at any price.
|> >
|> What major corporate interests did we have?  Vietnam has no major resources
|> that I have heard of, produces no major products that can't just as easily
|> be made elsewhere.  And we certainly not take the attitude of win at any

Rubber, for one. American tyre companies had huge rubber plantations etc.
in Vietnam.
-- 
     ______        _____________    ______________________          ______
    /\####/\      /            /   /                     /         /\####/\
   /  \##/  \    /_______     /   /    _     ______     /         /  \##/  \
  /____\/____\          /    /   /    / \    \    /    /         /____\/____\
  \####/\####/         /    /____\    \_/    /   /    /_______   \####/\####/
   \##/  \##/         /                     /   /            /    \##/  \##/
    \/____\/         /_____________________/   /____________/      \/____\/

                     agbrooks@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au

Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: pd@sics.se (Per Danielsson)
Subject: Re: Did We Lose?
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science
	<1992Sep30.210635.7530@news2.cis.umn.edu> <1992Oct1.234404.7583@ntmtv>
	<1992Oct02.033053.100646@watson.ibm.com> <1992Oct2.192025.17678@ntmtv>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 01:29:36 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.192025.17678@ntmtv> harthc@ntmtv.UUCP (Howard Hart) writes:

>and the Viet Cong ended up occupying a blasted, devastated
>country, with an economy that still hasn't recovered. Not much of 
>a trade-off, was it.

Well, they haven't really tried to make the economy work, have they?
(Except for the last few years, perhaps).
--
Per Danielsson				pd@sics.se
Swedish Institute of Computer Science, PO Box 1263, S-164 28 KISTA, SWEDEN
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: sooz@iastate.edu (Susan F Bradley)
Subject: Re: Tim O'Brien
Organization: Dept of English -- IOWA STATE UNIV
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 07:46:54 GMT

A previous poster asked about Tim O'Brien saying that fiction can communicate
an experience better than truth sometimes, etc. I've not read other fiction
on Vietnam, but would like to comment on "The Things They Carried."  I don't 
usually read books on the subject, watch films about it, etc. It's just not an
"interest" of mine, but we were required to read TTTC for an American Lit class
last spring. I must say that it was one of the most emotional responses I've 
had to a book im my memory. It was, indeed, difficult for me to sort out fact
and fiction in some sense. It has changed the way I look at that episode in our
history and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether they're interested in
Vietnam or not. 

Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: gerth@watson.ibm.com (John Gerth)
Subject: Purpose of the press
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1992 02:59:53 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

The notion of the press as either some righteous pillar
of democracy or an all-powerful oligarchy and even sometimes both
seem to me to be a peculiar lunacy of our times.

The heroic side, in particular, has a pretty spotty tradition.
Most of the pre-WWII movies I've seen that have the press in
them show reporters as some sort of morally ambiguous folk
who, although usually ranking above petty, but lovable, criminals
are also seen as somewhat suspect by the police.  They're
cynical, hard-drinking egotists who deal in speculation and
sensationalism.  The notion of the press as heroes reached an
undeserved peak around Watergate (the press really was ready
to forget it all until Judge Sirica stopped the plea bargain)
Anyway I don't think you want really good people in the press 
since reporting is essentially a passive rather than active
task.  It doesn't take your best people to do it.

As for the all-powerful-press theory, that didn't start with television.
Why, they even accused Hearst of starting the Spanish-American War
to boost circulation. With regards to Vietnam, those who claim that
an all-powerful press tricked the people need to explain things
like Nixon's two victories and the popularity of the press-bashing
Agnew with his calls to silence the "nattering nabobs of negativism".

Make no mistake, television is a cultural disaster, but the fault
dear Brutus lies not in the stars but ....


-- 
John Gerth	 gerth@watson.ibm.com		(914) 784-7639
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 02:22:31 EDT
From: <MSH109@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Vietnam Oral History and Folklore Project

>Sunday's horoscope...
What sign was it listed under?
--Mike
From: khanh@edison.seas.ucla.edu (Khanh V. Nguyen)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: NGO DINH DIEM
Date: 28 Sep 92 18:34:13 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: SEASnet, University of California, Los Angeles

The biggest mistake America has made in the Vietnam war is the plot to
overthrown South Vietnam's first President NGO DINH DIEM.
(paraphase from R. Nixxon's "No More Vietnam")

For most Americans, President Ngo Dinh Diem is seen as an oppressive dictator.
But for millions of Vietnamese, he is a national hero, a brave leader who
devoted his life for the welfare of his country.

President Diem always opposed the use of foreign military forces in Vietnam
(except for advising purposes). That is why he was eliminated by the coup
directed by CIA to open the way for US's direct involment in Vietnam. Under
his leadership, the South Vietnam Army has only about 100,000 personels, but
South Vietnam was in firm control. Ten years after Diem's death, the Army
grew ten folds in man power, with extensive US's military aids, and with the
help of more than one millions US soldiers. Yet, South Vietnam became more
and more insecure. Most Americans never know this fact.

President Diem was a Catholic, but he never practiced systematic discrimination
against other religions as most Americans believe. Most of his Generals were 
Buddish, same is true for his cabinet's ministers. Under his government, all
people were free to practice their religion. Although there were conflicts 
between Diem's goverment and the Buddish movement, these conflicts actually 
rooted in politics. They were part of North Vietnam's plan to destable the
South. 

President Diem did have many mistakes. He lacked flexibility in handling
sensitive problems. But as the first elected president of Vietnam, he has
transformed South Vietnam from a French colony to an independent nation.
Unfortunately, American and Communist intervention stopped him from
finishing his grand plan.

Khanh Nguyen.

Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: smittie@beach.csulb.edu (Smittie)
Subject: Re: Did We Lose?
Organization: Cal State Long Beach
	<1992Sep30.053341.10600@den.mmc.com><1992Sep30.124440.28171@doug.cae.wisc.edu>
	<5373@gold.gvg.tek.com> <PD.92Oct6023521@horus.sics.se>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:55:23 GMT

>What's immoral about fighting communism?

What's moral about it? Communism has been elevated to a level such that we
think of it as the culmination of all things evil. Communism is simply a form
of government. There is nothing inherently good or evil about communism. The
human rights violations of the former Soviet Union and China are not instrinsic
to communism, they are the result of human greed for power.

Trying to find a moral cause in war seems a rather odd endeavour to me. I think
the fundamental error committed by first France and then perpetuate by the US
was to try and force the installation of a government against the wishes of the
local population. Had they been given the chance, the Vietnamese people would
have veto in the Ho Chi Min government. The US government cancelled the
elections because they knew they would lose. So in fact the US chose to force
upon a people, a government they did not want. That is probably within
someone's definition of immoral.

I further agree with a previous post stating that our true mission soon became
killing. Body counts instituted a macabre kind of scoring for a game that we
knew we couldn't win given the political climate at home.
smittie
--
___________________________________________________________________________
GEnie, MCI, AOL:Smittie   All of these accounts except MCI will die on or
smittie@beach.csulb.edu   about Dec 31. UNIX will be forwarded for 2 weeks.
___________________________________________________________________________
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: jerry@MicroUnity.com (Jerry Kreuscher)
Subject: Re: VC strength after Tet
Organization: MicroUnity Systems Engineering, Inc.
Date: 26 Sep 92 11:45:06

In article <6291@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> cwvst+@pitt.edu (Charles W Van Keuren) writes:
   The comment about the "removal" of the revolutionaries is interesting and     
   logical, but I've never read any academic or anecodotal evidence of it?

   (That should be a period after that last sentence).

   Do you have any evidence of this practice?  Or can you offer any reading that
   discusses this?  

	[ ... ]

If you can find "A Viet Cong Memior" by Troung Nhu Tang, ISBN
0-394-74309-1, the author claims that's exactly what the NVA did with
the NLF.  Tet consumed almost all of what was left of the NLF, which
left the PRG irrelevant from then on.

I'm interested to hear what others think of this book.  The author
seems to have spent time on all sides of of several issues and is
bound to have enemies and detractors from any point of view.

Jerry		(jerry@microunity.com)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: fishkin@parc.xerox.com (Ken Fishkin)
Subject: Re: Why didn't anyone learn from the French experience ?
Reply-To: fishkin@parc.xerox.com (Ken Fishkin)
Organization: Xerox PARC
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:29:38 GMT

In article <1827@sousa.ltn.dec.com>, secrist@kxovax.enet.dec.com (Strong datatypes for weak minds.) writes:
> 
> After footing much of the monetary bill for the French for so long,
> why does it seem we learned so little from the French experience ?
    In the previously discussed Hackworth autobiography, Col.
Hackworth describes being posted to the Pentagon in 196(8?) or so,
and finding that the French after-action reports on their military
performance had never been checked out of the library!
    His answer to "Why not?" would be simple: hubris.

-- 
Ken Fishkin	fishkin@xerox.com
From: glenn@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: What Did We Lose?
Date: 27 Sep 92 17:44:13 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory


  In article <l0gz#7j@rpi.edu> whangj@aix.rpi.edu (Junho Whang) writes:
  >Rather than contrasting vietnam with Iraq, try comparing with 
  >Korean war.

In modern terms, this may be a reasonable comparison; however, I think
that the history of conflict between the Vietnamese and the Chinese is
much more relevant.  After nearly a millenia of military occupation by
China, the Vietnamese finally ejected the Chinese in the 10th century.
The sustained effort that went into this fight over such a long period,
and the insistence on determining their own fate, is much more telling
in trying to understand the fierce reaction to colonizers that has long
held among the Vietnamese.  The overwhelming odds in both technology and
manpower that the Chinese possessed, was, in the end, not adequate to
control the Nam Viet.  The sure knowledge of their own historical
ability to overthrow oppressive conquerers was enough to make the task
that America faced very daunting, if not quite impossible.

Glenn Adams




Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: tuan@lgc.com (Tuan Nguyen)
Subject: Re: Did We Lose?
Organization: Landmark Graphics Corporation
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 19:23:58 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.124440.28171@doug.cae.wisc.edu> mccullou@cae.wisc.edu (Mark McCullough) writes:
>
>A lot of people seem to not have understood what I meant when I condemned the
>behavior of the press in the Vietnam War.  What I am condemning is how the
>press reported things in such a one sided manner.  For an excellant example,
>there was a leader of the VC who was captured (I believe this was around the
>Tet offensive).  He was bound and blindfolded.  A South Vietnamese soldier
>berated him about how this VC had killed his family, etc.  He pulls his
>sidearm and points it at the VC, but doesn't fire.  Next day, the press
>shows this beatiful picture of a South Vietnamese soldier executing a POW.
>

Is this just an "example" or fact?  It just happened that there was actually
another instance where a "South Vietnamese soldier" who happened to be
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese National Police Chief, personally
executed an alleged VC terrorist in front of photographers and camera men.
There was film footage of the execution captured by an Australian crew besides
the Eddie Adams (sp?) picture.  I somehow managed to see the footage that
was shown on PBS a few years ago.  The whole thing was so gruesome that I
still remember almost every little detail of it: General Loan waving off 
bystanders, the pointing of the pistol at the temple, the explosion of the 
back executed's head, blood squirting in stream, the body going limp while 
falling to the ground.

It could be possible that the executed was a VC terrorist who had just
massacred the family of one of General Loan's men.  In the chaos that
was going on around him and given the brutality of the alleged crime, 
General Loan just did what his instinct probably told him to do: kill.
Which was exactly what everyone else was doing at the time.  There 
were probably numerous such executions during Tet by both sides, yet,
only one was recorded to remind us all of the terrible crime that
only we can do to ourselves that is war.

If reporting the realities of war--its brutality and disregard for
human dignity, should not be "the behavior of the press," then what is?

Sincerely,

Tuan Nguyen





Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Lost the War?
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 06:53:18 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.230503.3431@doug.cae.wisc.edu>
mccullou@cae.wisc.edu (Mark McCullough) writes:
>Instead of saying that we either lost or we won, why not simply admit that
>though we didn't _win_ we didn't really lose?
>Why does this have to be a two valued system?

A good point.
A good contrast little remembered except by people of that time was
Henry K's call to immediately send US troops to Angola.  So we never went.
Did we "lose" there?

P.S. on the glossary, one more thing, the C-141 ain't a helicopter.

Time to leave now 'u'.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Acting Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Seeking Books to buy:	Bongard, Pattern Recognition
			Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation
			Books on or by Benjamin Whorf
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
From: dzik@access.digex.com (Joseph Dzikiewicz)
Subject: Purpose of the press
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 17:59:30 GMT

This is a little off topic, but since we are discussing the press, let
me add a thought.

The decision makers of any government need intelligence in order to
make their decisions.  Thus we have the CIA and other intelligence
agencies.

In a democracy, the people are decision makers for the government.  They
too need intelligence.

It is my belief that a primary function of the press in a democracy is
to act as the people's intelligence service.  In many ways, journalism
is akin to spying.

And let us never forget that intelligence services often get in the
habit of telling their customers what they most want to hear...

Any thoughts on this?

Joe Dzikiewicz
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam