Subj : Clandestine activity is a holy cow of democracy To : BOB KLAHN From : Lee Lofaso Date : Tue Aug 20 2013 03:11:36 Hello Bob, BK>Son of a gun! John, so good to hear from you. I hope he sticks around for a while longer than last time. Even if he does get the (occasional) better argument ... ->>> ... ->>> Actually, American history books do not describe Vietnam as a ->>> victory for America. And we know the US lost the war. Not all ->>> know it, but most of us do. JF>> We could have won that war if we 'wanted to'. Do you really BK>I agree. Only one major difference needed, we had to fight the BK>war for the benefit of the South Vietnamese, instead of for out BK>own purposes. If we weren't fighting it for them why were we BK>there in the first place? "Peace with honor" was the only way we could leave Vietnam, according to Richard Nixon. That is why the war did not end in 1969 when LBJ left office. The deal LBJ had made with his Vietnamese counterparts was all in place, the only thing needed being Richard Nixon to sign on as President of the United States. But Nixon refused to go along, continuing the war for five more years, including expanding military operations to include illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia. The agreement that was finally agreed upon (in Paris) was essentially the very same agreement made in 1969 by LBJ. In summation, here is what happened - Richard Nixon lost the war. Richard Nixon then resigned from office in disgrace. Gerald Ford became our first appointed President, announcing to the world, "Our long national nightmare has ended." The world applauded. Then Ford went and pardoned Nixon. What an idiot. JF>> think we "lost" the war because the Viet Cong had a more JF>> formidable military the the U.S.? We could have wiped them BK>The US military won every major engagement, and pretty much all BK>the lesser ones. Richard Nixon lost the war. Not the US military. JF>> out any time we pleased. Why didn't we? Do the math. It was JF>> not economically feasible for the U.S. to pursue the war BK>That is the cost of a 10 year war. It would have been a lot shorter, with more lives saved, had Nixon agreed to end the war in 1969. JF>> any further. The Viet Nam war was waged simply to gauge JF>> Soviet response and to keep tabs on their military JF>> capabilities. BK>That I don't believe. The SU was not giving the NVs enough early BK>enough to mean anything. By the time they did we had so far BK>outpaced them they were primative by comparison. We had air superiority throughout the war. We could have bombed all their cities to smithereens had we chosen to do so. We could have deforested the countryside, had we chosen to do so. We could have made the whole place totally unliveable, had we chosen to do so. But none of that would have won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. And that is what we needed to do, if ever we wanted to do business with them. JF>> During that war 100's of newly developed JF>> weapons were beta tested. Esp as concerns the Air Force. BK>And that is what scared the hell out of the Soviets. Not only BK>did we put men and money into that war, developed tech and BK>training and experience that put us far ahead, but we did it all BK>the while keeping our home economy growing and even reduced the BK>debt to GDP ratio. All a measure of the superiority of our BK>system. During that time period in history, the US had its client states, the former USSR had their client states. Each side tried to hold on to its own, while stealing some from the other side. Neither the US nor the former USSR wanted a nuclear war, as both would have been destroyed (along with their client states and the rest of the world). So the US and the former USSR did the next best thing. Each side tried to outspend the other building weapons and weapons systems, etc. JF>> Same with the (then) U.S.S.R. What a wonderful world... BK> The USSR had to spend a fortune to try to keep up with us. BK> Before the war the Soviets were spending a lot more of their GDP BK> on the military, and they doubled it through the war. They BK> didn't spend it on weapons for the Nort Vietnamese, but on their BK> own weapons as they realized how far ahead we were. BK> Our military spending went up much less than double during the BK> war, and after the war our spending went back down to near what BK> it was before. The Soviet spending stayed up there, and didn't BK> come down until the mid 80s. *THAT* is what broke the Soviet BK> Union. Our economy was so much better than theirs that they went BK> broke trying to do what we did, and not even coming close. It BK> took a couple decades, but it destroyed the Soviet Union. BK> And that is something to consider when thinking about the BK> Vietnam War. Richard Nixon lost the war in Vietnam. But the Cold War continued. Fortunately for us, the former USSR blinked first, having bankrupted itself into oblivion before we did. You do realize our economy tanked, never having recovered from the events of 9-11? I mean, where are those WTC Towers? There is even talk of demolishing the WTC in New Orleans, as nobody had or has the money to buy it ... --Lee --- MesNews/1.06.00.00-gb * Origin: news://felten.yi.org (2:203/2) .