In message , Jarg
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
But wasn't the whole point of the US presence to prevent the North
grabbing the South? They kept fighting until the US withdrew, then moved
on to achieve their goal. Sounds like a success to me, even if the end
result wasn't the Socialist Worker's Paradise they'd hoped for.

Well, you could make the arguement that the US objective changed at the end.

So why change *at the end* if the original goal was so unimportant?

Perhaps: but by that argument, wouldn't the US victory be even greater
if back in the late 1940s it had told the French to get out of their
ex-colony and offered generous aid and support to Ho Chi Minh? Communist
or not, I'll bet he'd rather have sold rubber to Firestone and Goodyear
for hard dollars than to the USSR for roubles. (Fifty years of hindsight
applies, of course)

I never said the US won in Vietnam!

Sorry, Jarg - my comment was generic rather than particular and
certainly not aimed at you.

But if that is victory, I'm not sure it
was worth winning. I'm certain Vietnam would be a far better place had the
North lost.

The knee-jerk reaction is to insist you're wrong, of course. Which is
why it's rubbish. (Would a South Vietnam dependent on US supply and
still a proxy battlefield for the USSR and to lesser extent China, be
much more stable and prosperous?)



Thinking about it, the problem is getting support and consensus for what
'the national government of Vietnam' is doing. (Can't develop isolated
locations if you can't move supplies without dissident ambushes...) and
a clear win is needed for that - by either side, but one of them has to
show that There Is No Alternative.


It's too late and I'm too tired to put much more on that thought for the
moment. Willing to discuss it, but not right now. (Seriously, Jarg - if
it offends you, I'm sorry and let's leave it be. If you're interested in
it, very willing to debate)

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk