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baldeagle
PO2
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 362
Location: Grand Saline, Texas
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 Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:24 am Post subject: Kerry: "Beware the Revisionists" |
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Senator Kerry: Vietnam Could Not Have Been Won
| Quote: | | We must dispense with a dangerous myth. In an effort to pressure the president to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, armchair commanders have dusted off the old canard that "we could have won in Vietnam if only … " |
http://www.newsweek.com/id/221623
note: Subject edited to reflect article title iaw forum policy/me#1
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:22 am Post subject: |
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With officers like Kerry supposedly leading us, he's right, we couldn't have won it.
Otherwise, even the North Vietnamese have said we didn't do what we needed to do to win, indicating even they knew we could have.
Then again, how much actual research did Newsweek do to get the date of Kerry's treasonous testimony off by 8 years? Or, was it Kerry himself who captioned his own photo as "John Kerry testifies against the Vietnam War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1979" since he authored the piece?
Kerry's earlier quotes on Afghanistan, John Kerry Undermines American Troops In War…. Again
Why anybody would listen to this buffoon is beyond me.
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Last edited by LewWaters on Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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TEWSPilot
Admiral
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 1235
Location: Kansas (Transplanted Texan)
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| Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:28 am Post subject: |
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| Well, maybe they meant to say he was AGAINST the Vietnam war BEFORE he actually testified that he was AGAINST the Vietnam war...or something just as absurd... |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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While Jean Fraud's Newsweek polemic on the purported "dangerous myth" of Vietnam "revisionism" and it's self-promoting, self-serving attributes are nothing new, perhaps we should make note of the framework in which it is presented.
This commentary on the issue's cover story appears to suggest an approach to "history" that is, at least on the surface, at odds with Kerry's premise of the inevitability of defeat in Vietnam and Kerry's postulate that even toleration of any "further debate" on this subject "sells our country short".
All in all, a somewhat remarkable suggestion from an MSM warhorse that the "closed historical book" on Vietnam (and Kerry's would-be "legacy") may not be so closed after all...
| Quote: | Rethinking the Lessons of Vietnam
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 7, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Nov 16, 2009
Napoleon was not a particularly philosophical man, but an observation of his that has come down to us bears thinking about. "What is history," he once asked rhetorically, "but a fable agreed-upon?"
<snip>
America's war in Vietnam, the topic of our cover this week, is a case in point. Vietnam has been long understood as a -disaster, an object lesson in the perils of imperial overreach. But what if the reality of history is more complicated than the force of memory—the force of fables, in Napoleonic terms—would have it? The conventional wisdom is that Vietnam was an unmitigated debacle—the wrong war fought the wrong way by presidents who, through misleading the public, did wrong. The dominance of this interpretation is beyond dispute.
<snip>
...events once thought to be fixed forever in a certain place with a certain meaning can come to be seen differently with the passage of time or the changing of perspective.
<snip>
...the history of Vietnam is more complicated than many people believe, which means that the familiar lessons of the war should not be taken at face value.
<snip>
The argument is worth having, though, because in politics and in war, history, with all its complexities and contradictions, is ultimately of greater use than any fable.
Newsweek - cont'd |
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Wing Wiper
Rear Admiral
Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 664
Location: Oregon
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| Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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Well, if LBJ had launched an air campaign equivalent to Linebacker II against Hanoi in 1965 , instead of putting strategic targets off limits and fighting the war in the south, I really don't see how North Vietnam could have survived even a year.
From 1944-45 the Army Air Corp destroyed the infrastructure of the entire Empire of Japan using B-29's based much further from the target than our F-4's, F-105's and B-52's were, and with smaller numbers of aircraft.
What we could have avoided, had we had actual military leadership and the will to win, was 45,000+ US casualties, POWs held for up to 7 years, and a bloodbath for our "allies" after we sold them down the river.
But I only spent 2 years over there, so I'm sure Hanoi John, with his Harvard education would be a lot more enlightened and knowledgable about it.
Curtis LeMay might have a different opinion about the ability to win, if he were still alive to ask.
| Quote: | LeMay was disappointed that Lyndon B. Johnson did not order a sustained bombing campaign like the one he organized against Germany and Japan during the Second World War. Once again LeMay clashed with Robert McNamara. According to Daniel Ellsberg McNamara was the main person responsible from stopping LeMay "from firebombing or nuking Vietnam".
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LBJ and Robert Strange McNamera, in my opinion, should be rolled out of their graves each Veteran's Day and kicked around the Vietnam Memorial as a way of showing our appreciation for their service and leadership.
Luckily I'm not bitter, or I'd think up something worse.  |
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Deuce
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 589
Location: FL
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | But I only spent 2 years over there, so I'm sure Hanoi John, with his Harvard education would be a lot more enlightened and knowledgable about it. |
Vietnam was not only 'winnable' but mostly won, until sKerry and the Senate pulled the plug on aid to S. Vietnam, handing the key to the Country to the Soviets. Generals like Truong could easily have defeated the NVA with continued aid, even with the excess of 'princes' in the S. Vietnam military command. Highly recommend "It doesn't take a Hero" by Gen H. Norman Schwartzkopf, for those interested. Had Abrams put Schwartzkopf back in the 'field' instead of 'on staff' immediately on arrival during his second tour, Schwartzkopf and Truong coulda cleaned up in '69 and '70 without changing much else at all. That day in the Senate, early 70's defined the 'Birth of Communism' as a power in the USA. 'til then, commies were just a smelly 'pesky nuisance'. |
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TEWSPilot
Admiral
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 1235
Location: Kansas (Transplanted Texan)
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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When I arrived at DaNang in '72, I thought we were just about to finish mopping up. When I left in '73, I knew we were going to give victory away to the Communists. It felt like a year in the Southeast Asia Olympics; do your time, go home, and forget...not what I envisioned when I started my military service. How could the "Greatest Generation" produce such miserable politicians as to do this so soon after WW II?
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| TEWSPilot wrote: | | How could the "Greatest Generation" produce such miserable politicians as to do this so soon after WW II? |
I've said it before and I'll say it again. While the "Greatest Generation" won the war overseas, they collectively failed to safeguard our cultural heritage at home.
They allowed the ideologues of Marxism unfettered access to, and subsequent domination of, the machinery of cultural indoctrination...our institutes of higher learning and the media. McCarthy sounded the alarm...and was dismissed as a crackpot...probably the earliest and most notable post-war victim of the machinery of leftist propagandizing.
We saw that progeny emerge in the streets of America in the late 60's...and that same progeny now is in control of the highest levels of government.
As for the "Greatest Generation"? I'll take the mid to late 1700's or the era of westward expansion in the early/mid 1800's. |
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