Reply #2: Garbage thinking [View All]

[EAMcClure]

The U.S. had a standing policy, via NATO, to use the nuclear option if the Communist threat invaded any aspect of interest, such as the Middle East. USSR was very familiar with the threat. It was the nuclear option on both sides which kept the war cold.

Viet Nam is often chalked up under the idea of containment. The U.S. had an obligation to contain any country that veered to sharply leftward and thereby enter the USSR sphere of influence.

The U.S. decided to enter Viet Nam in order to establish a functionary pro-West government in the southern state capable of redacting and ultimately defeating the leftist threat. Once Viet Nam was unified under pro-west (codeword: moderate) leadership, then Vietnamese resources could be plundered for cheap, as they were under French colonization.

In other words, Viet Nam was a colonial war designed to keep the entire country dependent on the colonizer. France could no longer afford the bill, and the U.S. offered to come in and used the USSR as the convenient scapegoat. Once committed, there was no easy way to back out. There never was a stable southern government. In fact, south Viet Nam was the territory most brutalized by U.S. arms. To this day children die from unexploded ordnance in southern Viet Nam.

To say the U.S. was willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of blue-collar children in order to intimidate the commies is a sick and evil argument. No less sick and evil than the real reason. Don't let your daddy use Hawk logic to steer you away from the truth of the matter.

Reccomended reading: A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

Year 501 by Noam Chomsky

Eric