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Post by Swampy on Oct 23, 2012 9:05:06 GMT -5
Who did you help in Vietnam? If you had won, you would have helped the South Vietnamese and the Hmong - and you bought time for the rest of SE Asia to develop and destroy their own insurgencies.
As for Nazi Germany, if you had intervened in 1939, you could have prevented a monster from doing what it did.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2012 15:24:41 GMT -5
Hey Swampy. I hope those rose colored glasses help you. I think that most of us on this forum are a little more realistic in our thinking.
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Post by boxcar on Oct 23, 2012 15:59:35 GMT -5
>>There was nothing we could do about it. We didn't even know it was happening while it was.<<
That is not correct Don. I remember the situation well. We knew about it slightly after Pearl Harbor.
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Post by dontom on Oct 23, 2012 16:10:51 GMT -5
Who did you help in Vietnam? If you had won, you would have helped the South Vietnamese and the Hmong - and you bought time for the rest of SE Asia to develop and destroy their own insurgencies. But what we did do, is to get countless more South Vietnamese killed, by making the war last much longer than it would have otherwise. We also filled up Vietnam with Amerasian babies left to die. Also destroyed a lot of RVN in many other ways too. As for Nazi Germany, if you had intervened in 1939, you could have prevented a monster from doing what it did. At least when we went to war with Germany, it wasn't to try to help settle a civil war. We didn't even know about what was going on there with the Jewish when we went to war with them. And if we did go in sooner, perhaps that would have gotten even more of the Jews killed faster. "America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair." --Arnold Joseph Toynbee-Don Quoteman
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Post by Swampy on Oct 23, 2012 17:34:06 GMT -5
If you had protected South Vietnam, it would today be like South Korea; if you had intervened in Europe in 1939, you would have saved a lot of innocent Jews, gypsies, and, yes, Don, homosexuals.
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Post by dontom on Oct 23, 2012 18:52:37 GMT -5
That is not correct Don. I remember the situation well. We knew about it slightly after Pearl Harbor. Okay, I will accept that. But that's still after it happened and still do not see how we could do anything about it even if we knew about it in advance. -Don-
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Post by dontom on Oct 23, 2012 19:11:05 GMT -5
If you had protected South Vietnam, it would today be like South Korea; That was the mistake many made. Some assumed we could make a Korea out of Vietnam. BTW, I don't think we should have got involved with Korea either, even though it turned out better than I would have expected. Same goes for what was once Yugoslavia. I don't agree with us being the world's police in anything that even remotely resembles a civil war. When one larger country attacks another, such as Iraq in Kuwait, it's a different story. With civil wars, just let them all kill each other, and I wish all other countries would stay out of all such civil wars. if you had intervened in Europe in 1939, you would have saved a lot of innocent Jews, gypsies, and, yes, Don, homosexuals. I agree we got in that war late, but that wasn't a civil war. The USA often gets bit by their own stupid policies, being locked into such during situations that can greatly change what's best . -Don-
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Post by boxcar on Oct 23, 2012 20:14:04 GMT -5
>>With civil wars, just let them all kill each other<<
Bahrain could be considered a civil war, or better yet a religious war, Sunni against Shiite. The Sunni backed the royals but the Shiite were the in the majority. Iran backed the Shiite while Saudi backed the Sunni. A show of force by the Saudis quieted that situation down quickly.
We have a similar situation with Iraq, except there are three factions there, The Kurds being the 3rd. In my opinion, it takes a bayonet to rule Iraq.
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Post by Swampy on Oct 23, 2012 21:14:39 GMT -5
Korea, as we now know, was instigated by the Red Chinese to take over the peninsula, so it wasn't just a civil war. Same with Vietnam. And don't tell me the Cubans didn't have their fingers in Central America.
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Post by mcnoch on Oct 24, 2012 0:28:45 GMT -5
South-Vietnam was no democracy and was not even on the way to become one. So the Vietnam war was from this perspective not to defend a democracy but tho avoid another communistic regime, which is full in line with the policy of containment. The only thing you could have won in this war would have been the continuation of the situation as is, that is a position you tend to loose over a long period if you don't change the reasons for the desire for a regime-change in SV. That is why the US government never tried to "win" it or risk to go to a real war with the Sowjet Union or China about it.
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Post by Swampy on Oct 24, 2012 0:32:05 GMT -5
RVN was no democracy, but it was far better than PVN, as witnessed by the boat people who fled, and also witnessed by the hundreds of thousands who fled the North in 1954. And, like South Korea, it could have learned from its patron, the US, and eventually become a democracy. As for winning the VN war, that sounds like another thread. Interested?
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Post by dontom on Oct 24, 2012 2:49:56 GMT -5
Korea, as we now know, was instigated by the Red Chinese to take over the peninsula, so it wasn't just a civil war. Same with Vietnam. If that were true, why won't we fighting the Chinese? Where we too chicken to fight the real enemy or what? -Don-
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Post by dontom on Oct 24, 2012 2:55:07 GMT -5
That is why the US government never tried to "win" it or risk to go to a real war with the Sowjet Union or China about it. That is what pisses me off. Either we fight the real enemy or stay out of the situation as much as possible. If we do anything else, we have one hand tied behind our backs from the start. -Don-
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Post by Swampy on Oct 24, 2012 8:29:02 GMT -5
We did fight the Chinese in Korea, and we should have gone all the way to the Yalu and beyond. If we had done that, we would have liberated North Vietnam and pushed the Chinese back to their borders ... and beyond.
This is my lucky day - Don agreeing with a neoconservative position???
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Post by mcnoch on Oct 24, 2012 14:35:00 GMT -5
I can understand Don that he is angry, because not wanting to win is extremly ruthless against the soldiers who were willing to give their lifes to secure a victory for the good side. You shouldn't play with the lifes of people political games. This is unworthy.
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