Did Vietnam Draft Boost Clergy Careers?

I think avoiding that war by any means possible was common. That war was built on lies and was nothing but a waste of life. As Le Duan said, "Had they given us the money they spent on bombs alone, we would have been their greatest ally."

 

[QUOTE="Salty, post: 2385330, member: 5656"


I hold no grudge against any man who properly did not serve.

My concerns are those who left the country and particularly those who protested overseas.[/QUOTE]


Likewise. I have nothing but contempt for the cowards that ran.

 

I had a professor who told our class that in the very early 1970s a lot of "hippies" and people who were against the draft suddenly received "a calling" to ministry. Many of those persons didn't last past the end of the Vietnam War.

When he first started at the seminary, he and his wife were invited by other seminary couples to a wife swapping party. He kept thinking he was mishearing the invitation and asked several times about the purpose of the get-together since he was certain he was mishearing the details of the invitation. He declined and figured out who to whom to report this event to in the administration of the seminary, and they were already aware of it and were working out a way to sort the persons who naively-accepted from the ones who knew exactly what it was about. He said a lot of people ended up suddenly leaving the seminary that semester.

 

(Speechless)

 

[/QUOTE]


Likewise. I have nothing but contempt for the cowards that ran.[/QUOTE]
I am mixed on that one. If you want American men to shed blood, don't build the war on lies. Vietnam was nothing but a waste of life.

 

Likewise. I have nothing but contempt for the cowards that ran.[/QUOTE]
I am mixed on that one. If you want American men to shed blood, don't build the war on lies. Vietnam was nothing but a waste of life.[/QUOTE]

Everybody has an opinion and everybody has 20/20 hindsight.

Doesn't change a thing. Cowards they were and cowards they remain.

 

Carpo,
Some indeed were cowards, but some fully understood what was happening and wanted no part of it for moral reasons.
Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford were just flat out bald faced lying to the American people. Its not hindsight. Those with their eyes open could see it at the time. The war was built on lies and fought on lies. The people of Vietnam did not want anything except freedom from colonialism. They got arms from Communists because that is who they could get them from. We (USA) made the war about "the spread of Communism." Russia and China wanted no part of that war. We escalated it to the point they could not stay out. I fully honor the brave men who served there, but I fully understand why many would not go. If you could pick the chief coward and traitor from the war it would be a tough call between LBJ and Nixon. Blindly following is not patriotism.
The entire war was simply stupid. It all started because France wanted to keep a colony in virtual slavery. I am glad Vietnam overthrew French rule. We should have kept our 2 cents out of it.

 

You honor no one by stating their lives were "wasted". Instead you victimize them, just like the left has done for decades. If you ask the Marines that served there if they would do it again, even knowing how it would turn out, 90% of them say they would, most of them with one proviso...than it be with the same men. I value their opinion and none of them are victims. They understand why their friends died.

Cowards run to another country. Brave men stand and fight for what they believe, either in the military or out of it.

I can't stand LBJ and Nixon, but neither were traitors. The traitors were the likes of Jane Fonda and John Kerry and the cowards that fled to Canada.


A different view on the question by another who was actually there:

"First, in order for something NOT to be qualified as a 'waste', there has to be benefits, as in cost-benefits analyses. Appropriately, if there are no benefits, then in hindsight or post mortem analyses that something will be classified as a waste, as in expenditure of time and resources with no returns.

Now, if we are going to try to qualify the Vietnam War either a waste of time and resources or not, we have to ask, not just what benefits but also what kind of benefits were there. This is where contentions begins as each side strains to convince the other of its position.

For example, Lee Kwan Yew in his memoir stated that without US military involvement in Viet Nam, more of Asia's countries will fall to communism. In other words, in Lee's analysis, Singapore received unintended benefits from US military involvement in Viet Nam. Lee also said that the Vietnam War was effectively a halt to communism expansion in South East Asia LONG ENOUGH for the rest of the region to get their acts together on what kind of countries they want to be. Would Singapore be the country it is today if it fell to communism ? Not likely. But would Singapore fell to communism in the first place if the US was not involved ?

Benefits do not have to be tangible, measurable, quantifiable, and finally documented in order to be perceived as benefits. Speaking as an American and a USAF veteran, Americans take our rights and freedoms for granted only as long as threats to them are physically distant. But for those of us who actually faced those threats live and quite 'in your face' daily, it it tough not to see those rights and freedoms as benefits precisely because it is obvious that their loss can be so quick to happen.

Were there any TANGIBLE benefits to the US and her citizenry for US military involvement in Viet Nam ? No. But for many Asians during that time, they never had the kind of physical life Americans took for granted, so whatever INTANGIBLE benefits that came their way via US military involvement in Viet Nam, they will take them. Lee Kwan Yew understood that and was willing to speak on behalf of other Asian leaders who felt the same.

The statement that the US 'created' South Viet Nam in 1955 revealed an ignorance of the details that came before the Vietnam War. For starter, did the questioner know that it was Ho Chi Minh who asked France to return to Viet Nam ? Look up Ho-Sainteny Agreement. To use the cliche 'a journey begins with a single step' one could credibly argue that the deal between Ho Chi Minh and Jean Sainteny was the first step to war.

I fled communism when I was too young but when able, I did my part in resisting its advances in Europe. I had in my hand the navigation cartridge for an F-111 on Victor Alert. In MY analysis, had the US remained steadfast to South Viet Nam as did to South Korea, probably there would be tangible economic benefits to both US and South Viet Nam the way it is today with US and South Korea, and this question would not be posed."


Roderick Xuan, Vietnamese refugee from 1975 and student of the Vietnam War


As an aside, a few times over the years I have run into Vietnamese who were also there, one of whom served in the ARVN and another who narrowly escaped the slaught of 3000 civilians by the North Vietnamese in HUE during TET of '68. They can't thank me enough for doing what we did. I'll take that. Their opinion counts.

 

By the same token, many who served there say it was an unjust war and had they known then what they know now, they would not have served. The best end game would have been to humiliate France by demanding they Free Vietnam and abandon their colonial enslavement of the people. We would have then had a huge regional ally instead of a huge drawn out war. France was wrong. They condemned U.S. slavery, but they kept an equally vile system of slavery alive for another 100 years through "colonization."

 

More hindsight.

 

More like common sense. Many people saw it at the time. Re-study what both Ike and Kennedy's advisors told them about the war.

 

Not everyone is as clairvoyant, judgemental, and intelligent as you are.

Especially 18 yr old draftees. People who weren't there at all and didn't have to make any choices seem to be the ones that run their mouths the loudest and the longest.

 

Seems you result to insults and emojis when facts do not support your point of view.
As I said, study what IKe and JFK were told by their advisors. They were told what would happen and that is exactly what happened. That is not "hindsight."

The war in fact did more to advance Communism in the region than to slow it. That is hindsight.

By your faulty logic, we must no longer discuss The American Revolution and American War Between the States. All the men who fought in those wars are dead.

 

The facts do support my point of view. You , like all second guessers, have the benefit of hindsight, but refuse to recognize it as such. You didn't have to make decisions 18-20 year olds had to make, based on the information at hand. Instead you can sit back and tell us how stupid everyone was that served in Vietnam and how dumb it was to die there.

It's disgusting.

 

You have again made a faulty leap in logic. Read what I have actually said. I opened by saying I was mixed on the war. I then said that not all men who avoided the draft did so because of cowardice. Some did avoid it for that very reason. Some avoided it because they fully understood what they would be fighting for and refused to do so based on morality.
When you get mad, your reading comprehension skills go out the window.

 

Like running backwards much?

 

Read what I said. Use your reading comprehension skills to separate what I said from what you assume I said.