Europe, are you nuts?

Most Americans today would say that Vietnam was a well intended mistake.

The domino theory never quite worked out. Though our active opposition may have had something to do with it, communism's chief problems were/are internal and significantly economic.

You and I have had long exchanges on socialistic approaches that probably don't need to be repeated here. However, the USSR's relatively quick rise and fall had little or nothing to do with the fact that it was a central dictatorship that denied human rights. Those kinds of governments have survived for centuries in the past. Their collapse was because economic socialism doesn't work.

 

You're right, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, the voters have decided that they want to run several generations of Americans through it.

 

I don't have too much argument with where you want to go Jim... just with the practicality of how you want to get there.

 

Scott
"So you think that European countries could have simultaneously provided their own adequate defense against the Soviets and built their welfare state?"
"
Nuclear bombs are cheap (comparatively) and a modest welfare state isn't that expensive.
Now for winning a conventional war against the Warsawpact, that's where US quantity is needed to compensate for Russian quantity.

 

Scott
"communism's chief problems were/are internal and significantly economic."
"
Absolutely. I suspect however that in the past some capitalist policy makers the world over have said this with their mouths but did not believe it with their hearts. Which is sad really.

 

Can't go north by driving south.

 

Can't change direction without slowing down and turning the car. We got here incrementally. We'll either go back the same way or else collapse into civil war.

If the CP could get control of the White House then refuse to execute un-constitutional programs you would likely see the people rise up against them. Almost everyone in America has an entitlement mentality... only a few are willing to risk the insecurity of losing those entitlements to regain their liberty and rights.

People have to see again the value of these things weighted against the false security of government welfare.

 

BTW, you can't go north by stomping on the accelerator while headed south either... which is exactly what would happen if enough conservatives voted CP at this point to hand victory to the Dems.

 

At the time, all Americans, including the Kennedys, were saying that Vietnam was vital. There was no debate on the subject. It was merely LBJ who wanted to run the war himself and who hesitated (he who hesitates is lost) when he should have all-out attacked.

If Eisenhower--I like Ike--was wrong that it was a domino, no one was wrong about what life would be like in Vietnam under the communists. When we left, millions died at the hands of the communists. There is no substitute for victory.

 

It wasn't hesitation. It was calculation.

They feared that an attack on the north would bring in the Chinese and Soviets and expand the war. The problem is that you cannot win in war without taking and holding ground. "Success" in Vietnam would have been a Korea-like outcome- a tie.

In retrospect, we can see the fallacy in this approach but at the time it was seen as a continuing geo-political matter rather than a real war.

 

The GOP has it floored, now that they know for sure that the Evangelicals are political suckers.