Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
doesn't imply a great victory.

Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

"The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of
the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military
casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These
figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists
to avoid demoralizing the population. "

A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN
and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed
during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian
deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming
reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of
civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of
american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).

Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's numbers war. If you
wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side won and lost,
then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because they killed far
more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN achieved their
goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't
achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit
we might get, i.e. we lost.

snip

I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.

You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.

Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain
the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia,
including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people?
Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to tell them
that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its faults, provides
a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving the way it
is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay that
movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist inefficiency,
corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier). Vietnam
probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s,
if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war hadn't been
fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed like
compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time.

Guy