Memorial Day 2025

@swirlie A terrible waste of lives on both sides.

@soar2newhighs
..but at the time, what did you think you were accomplishing?

@swirlie I accomplished doing my job( military MOS)

@soar2newhighs

I guess I should have been more specific because yes, you were doing your job, but what I was attempting to ask was, what did you think your country was trying to accomplish?

@swirlie My country ( mostly
Politicians, bureaucrats and those in the arms industry aka the military industrial complex ) I suppose wanted to secure a military victory.

@soar2newhighs
Secure a military victory for whom? The US was over there aiding south Vietnam from the invading forces of north Vietnam.

@swirlie For whom? Who do you think? What don’t you understand or appreciate about geopolitics?
A d if I might ask , your age?

@soar2newhighs
Sure you can ask how old I am! I'm 32. How old are you?

For whom? Who do I think? Well, certainly not a military victory for the south Vietnamese because they had nothing to offer the USA in return for America's military efforts.

Understand that the US doesn't get involved with any country militarily unless there's definitely something in it for the USA. This is to mean that the US just doesn't show up in some far-away place for humanitarian reasons alone and then go back home after they've fixed everything!

I believe the US was looking for a solid victory when they went into Vietnam in 1958 after having embarrassed themselves from the WWII debacle only 13 years earlier, but the US government sold Americans on the idea that they were fighting against the advancement of communism from Russia into south Vietnam and eventually into the USA, which of course was total bullshitte.

@swirlie it was Mr. Johnsons war. Should never have happened. Wasted the lives of 58 000 young men

@Patriot96

I think that's where I was going with soar2newhighs but he bailed on me.

I've met several ex-Vietnam Vets in my travels to the USA and Caribbean who still react in deep conversation that I initiate as if they were there yesterday. There are still Vietnam draft dodgers living in Canada who still think they'll go to jail if they ever return to the US. I actually talk to a few of them every time I visit my parents on their farm in southern Ontario.

@swirlie our involvement ended in 75. 18 years before you were born.
Our debacle in WW2 … a war your Canadian Countrymen also fought and died in? You delusional or what?

@swirlie I’m 75.

@swirlie The draft dodgers were give amnesty by Jimmy Cater.

I bailed on you? No I’m still here.

@soar2newhighs
Correct. The US retreated from Vietnam in 1975, 18 years before I was born, but they were fighting in Vietnam for 17 years before the US decided that they couldn't win that war, thereby retreating and going home.

Yes, WWII was your debacle, the great American embarrassment actually.

You forget that the US showed up for WWII two years late ..and then never went to war against Hitler, but instead declared war with Japan, but only after Japan bombed a bunch of parked ships sitting in dry dock in Pearl Harbor.

During WWII, the USA was at war with Japan while the rest of the free world was at war with Europe, despite Sir Winston Churchill trying to convince the POTUS that Hitler had subs sitting at the entrance to New York Harbor for 6 months prior to Japan taking a shot at Pearl Harbor.

The US then went into Vietnam 13 years later in 1958 in desperate search for a military victory, for no other reason than to patch up the perception the world had about the United States being the Isolationist Nation that it was in not wanting to join the war effort against Hitler, no different than was the global perception of the US during WWI in being an Isolationist Nation of not wanting to get involved.

You definitely talk like someone who's 75 years old who's had a chip on his shoulder his whole life who still has unresolved issues going on in his head that he's never dealt with.

Maybe it's time to grow up? ...and put on your big boy pants maybe?

@soar2newhighs

I know that but they don't know that.

@swirlie What? They don’t know that?? C’mon they damn well know it. But who gives a F?

@soar2newhighs
You obviously don't give a fukk but then again, that's understandable.

@swirlie Well glad you see it as understandable.

@swirlie The best explanation of what happened in Vietnam starts here:


Bodard's mistake was in believing that the US would not make the same mistakes that France did, but he left clues that the US would. Following WW2 and Korea, there was a general belief that the US had a superior insight into human justice and righteousness. Vietnam destroyed that myth.

I was in Saigon and had a ringside seat at the cease fire. The morning of the cease fire started with a rocket attack on Tan Son Nhut. The caption of the day as expressed by my Vietnamese friend during that rocket attack was: "Nice cease fire your country signed for us!"

@Heartlander
You do understand that the US retreated from Vietnam, don't you?

@swirlie yes. As bad as the US casualty count was, add the millions of SEAsians who perished because they trusted the US

The cease fire was a contrived US escape that left the Republic of Vietnam holding an empty bag as the US yanked the rug from under them.

To understand Vietnam you have to back up to the 1940s. and 30s. It was a civil war within a civil war within a civil war within a revolution.

I knew the Vietnam timeline months before and I almost became the first yank to fly from Saigon to Hanoi without being shot at. I was the proverbial fly on the wall.

@swirlie It was a weird mess , Vietnamese wanted freedom from French slavery and they got between Mao , Russians and Kennedy.

@Heartlander
About 5 years ago, I ran into an American fellow who was an ex-Vietnam Vet. I showed an interest in his life, so he shared it with me.

He told me that he was among the very first crew of guys to arrive in Vietnam from the USA in 1958. When they arrived there, they were the ones who basically got things set up (whatever that means) as the US began to set up shop as equipment started arriving.

For the first 18 months that he was there he said, there were no shots fired, there was no action happening and there was no real battle taking place anywhere that they were aware of. In truth he said, he wondered why they were even there?

Then came the end of his tour of duty (which I think he said was 18 months long?), at which point that first group's replacements were showing up from the US just as things were starting to get heated up involving the north Vietnamese.

He told me that from the time he left Vietnam in late 1959 until the present which was about 2020, he felt tremendous guilt all his life for having been there and having done absolutely nothing while he and his partners were there except unload trucks, compared to what those who came afterwards faced as he made his way back to the USA, never to return to Vietnam.

He told me that he was as mentally screwed up from that one tour of duty as were the guys who survived after experiencing significant action.

@swirlie I guess it was due to what communisms in China , Russia , Cuba was about . At that time the idea was to replace old feudal -colonial-westerns- royal -capitalist with something else , unfortunately equal brutal ideas.