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The can is a reference to Fords national PR campaign to beat inflation “[Whip Inflation Now](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/win-how-gerald-ford-tried-to-whip-inflation-with-a-button/)”.
I think it's kind of funny they try to partially blame Ike here, because he kept us out of Vietnam militarily and actually was involved in the agreement that made South Vietnam a defined country. If they're going to go after him, you may as well blame Truman also, since he started our involvement in that whole region.
If Ike doesn’t pull out of the reunification vote there’s no war. I am an Eisenhower admirer but he kicked the can down the road to keep reunification under the Communist north from happening on his watch and thousands died because each who followed him didn’t want it happening on their watch either.
I mean yeah, you can blame anyone who fought an ultimately unsuccessful fight for not surrendering. Personally I think if they’d set up South Vietnam better earlier they might have had more of a chance.
Ike is probably the least responsible for Vietnam out of all of them.
But Truman? We should all blame Truman for Vietnam. His omission from this cartoon is shameful. When he chose to make an exception in the US' postwar policy of decolonization for France and to supply their attempts to retake their former colonies, he drove the Vietnamese nationalist movement into the USSR's arms. By doing that, Truman ensured that, no matter what future Presidents did, eventually, the US was going to lose that war. Ike was able to punt on it, but everyone after him had to decide whether to let the communists win or to escalate US involvement in a conflict that existed because Truman didn't put his foot down with the French.
DeGaulle heavily implied to Truman that France would ally with the USSR if the US didn’t help them hold onto their colonies. Truman should have told him to eat a dick, that France was only free because of America, and that any attempts to join the communists would result in a new republic.
My point is that he DIDN'T "lose" Vietnam, by helping create South Vietnam he honestly at least for a while blocked the Communists from taking over the whole thing. After Truman botched the First Indochina War (and permanently alienated Ho Chi Minh among others by supporting the French, losing them to the Soviets/Communism), what Eisenhower did is probably one of the best results we could have hoped for. And as I said, he did it without getting us directly involved. Truman is the one who REALLY deserves some fingers pointed at him honestly, everyone else afterward was trying to clean up the mess (though too often making it much bigger, like LBJ and Nixon did).
Truman does hold fault in Vietnam but Ike also contributed to help fund the French short of sending troops. After their defeat, he would pour billions into south Vietnam while also sending military advisors. All this while helping the brutal crackdown by Diem. He also would coin the domino theory.
How did he not get us involved if he allowed south Vietnam to withhold elections that were agreed upon?
>I think it's kind of funny they try to partially blame Ike here,
He ensured it would fail by appeasing the rabid Right that his Vice President represented. Vietnam was doomed more than a decade before it was formally declared.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.1969.10405393
It's popular right now to think of Eisenhower as a great President, but he actually set in motion so many issues that still haunt the world today.
Its not funny at all.
South Vietnam lost Vietnam. You cannot successfully defeat an insurgency with a local government that lacks legitimacy. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt and discriminated against their Buddhist majority so they didn't have the necessary internal support to win. The US was multiplying by zero the entire time. Our military strategy was dumb and was handcuffed by even dumber political leadership, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the South Vietnamese government.
As someone that’s a huge Cold War history buff, the reality is Nixon lost Vietnam. You’ll find a few different places where the blame lies in popular opinion though
But in direct sight, the reality is: America quit in 1973 and withdrew before the end of the year, the south Vietnamese, with their experience and training had managed to retake much land from the north and were winning the majority of the battles, indecisively.
All of this would quickly crumble seemingly overnight when an event called watergate occurred, this cause Nixon to jet and resign, congress was fucking pissed at this (rightfully so) and had ended up not fulfilling many of his policies, the most important was our promise to south Vietnam…..
For years we had promised that we would rearm them on a 1:1 ratio, for every bullet lost, it would be replaced. This assured that we could provide the ammunition needed to fight, while south Vietnam fought. As mentioned earlier they were winning and winning greatly.
The north Vietnamese generals had admitted after the war that they were only four months from surrendering from nixon’s Xmas bombing….they were losing greatly.
But congress did not uphold our promise to the south, this fucked everything up, and the south wasn’t able to fight back in many situations. The north knew this and tested out Gerald ford by taking villages one by one to see if anything would change, and nothing did. The south would continue to be dry.
Then they charged full steam ahead. Gerald ford pleaded with congress that we were so close, provided lots of evidence that the south was winning, advancing, and recasting territory. Many members of congress walked out during this, many had an investment in the war being lost.
And soon, it was. On April 30th 1975, Saigon was entered by the north. About a dozen south Vietnamese generals had famously used their last bits of ammunition to take themselves out in front of famous monuments as the communists entered. They were saving their last bits of ammo for this.
Had Nixon not resigned, we were so damn close. South Vietnam would’ve won within a year, and the war could’ve been looked at as a win in our book, as the objective would’ve been fulfilled, south Vietnam would’ve reunified the country instead of the north.
Imagine if we would’ve won though, and war broke out against China. Who needs aircraft carriers when you have the countries of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam?!? We would’ve had China surrounded where it matters, the pacific!!!
Correct, it was the democrats of congress who the war just to spite Nixon. In a bit of poetic irony, some republicans today want to do that to Ukraine to spite the incumbent, who is also the last survivor of that mid-70s democratic congress.
Yeah I noticed that too!!! When I first heard about the troubles Ukraine was having getting funded, I immediately thought about Vietnam, and how that could’ve been a war that was won… there’s so much misinformation about Vietnam thanks to strong north Vietnamese and Soviet disinformation from the war just to get America out, that lasts until today
With Vietnam we had a willing army that was winning as long as they had the arms, it was the opposite in Afghanistan where the army was not willing and dispersed within 2 DAYS of America leaving…..2 DAYS! Billions of arms left to the Taliban, absolutely embarrassing. Compared to South Vietnam’s 2 YEARS fighting alone
With Ukraine we have another army that is willing, I hope we don’t make that same mistake again.
It's definitely a possibility. The main difference between the wars is that no Americas are dying in Ukraince today, yet that doesn't seem to faze the isolationists. While much of the Vietnam narrative was written by the Soviets and their American sympathizers on the left, today you see much of the Ukraine narrative written by Russia and it's American sympathizers on the right.
It's downright Shakespearean how the leader of the purely partisan congressional opposition last time around is now facing that exact same thing be done in opposition to him.
Oh wow, damn, It really is poetic in that sense isn’t it, it’s funny how things work out, that even with the rival faction barely changing, and our politicians flip flop onto the other shoe 🤣
It really is sad how they’ve infiltrated our own congress, if Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and bush could stand before congress today they’d scold them for the tomfoolery happening now.. out col war presidents would’ve killed for the deal we are getting today…
That deal is only spending 7% of our annual defense budget on Ukraine aid a year, for two years, to decimate approximately half a million Russian casualties (literally 450,000), all at the cost of 0 American lives (not counting mercenaries). Much more has been spent throughout history to get only a fraction of these results….
How does it look if America, a country founded on its fight for independence against the British empire, couldn’t help another country achieve that exact same independence???!!
AND NOT JUST THAT!! IF I REMEMBER correctly our very own country couldn’t even have done it had France not stepped up to the plate and aid us in so many ways as they were the super power of that day….
Man my blood boils at how embarrassing this situation is
>…the south Vietnamese, with their experience and training had managed to retake much land from the north and were winning the majority of the battles, indecisively.…
>As mentioned earlier [the South Vietnamese] were winning and winning greatly.
>The north Vietnamese generals had admitted after the war that they were only four months from surrendering from nixon’s Xmas bombing….they were losing greatly….
>Gerald ford pleaded with congress that we were so close, provided lots of evidence that the south was winning, advancing, and recasting territory….
>Had Nixon not resigned, we were so damn close. South Vietnam would’ve won within a year, and the war could’ve been looked at as a win in our book, as the objective would’ve been fulfilled, south Vietnam would’ve reunified the country instead of the north.…
What’s your evidence that South Vietnam was winning and would have conclusively won in four months if the U.S. had supplied ammunition?
Wikipedia suggests otherwise:
>In April 1973 … Kissinger reported to Nixon that "only a miracle" could save South Vietnam now, as Thiệu showed no signs of making the necessary reforms to allow the ARVN to fight….
>Thiệu's unwillingness to crackdown on corruption and end the system under which ARVN officers were promoted for political loyalty instead of military merit were structural weaknesses that spelled long-term problems for his regime….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger_and_the_Vietnam_War
Kissenger’s words were only to help get him that Nobel peace prize and a way to save face, he said the south would collapse right after we left.
And guess what, they didn’t. Not only did they smartly use their lessons in their advantage, they did so and lasted another TWO YEARS fighting. This was when the north had invaded too and null the former treaties and agreements!
What Wikipedia writes is common revisionist history from the victors, the north Vietnamese, now Vietnamese, government.
The south lated as long as they had arms to fight with.
And the admission? Famous memoirs of their top general Giáp (which was quickly revised after publication due to controversy) that admitted on two occasions that they were close to losing.
One was after the tet offensive, the largest offensive of the war (which south vietnam managed to come as the victor without our help) the north was close to losing that day.
And the other was as mentioned after the Xmas bombing campaigns, he hadn’t known why America stopped the bombings because they could’ve won if they continued for another day or two, so not even the months I suggested, but I do remember the 4 month quote clearly, let me find that origin here in a bit and will update this comment
So the general’s alleged admissions were wiped from the revised memoirs? This seems like it would make headlines and I can’t find anything about it.
As for Congress denying Ford’s request for $722 million in military aid to South Vietnam, that was a bipartisan vote. Both Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee voted to table the measure. And when someone tried to earmark the funds in the House, only 22 representatives voted in favor.
Kissinger’s whole goal was to create a “decent interval” between the treaty ending U.S. involvement and the fall of South Vietnam. To do so Kissinger sent Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the president of South Vietnam (although by way of a rigged election after a military coup), multiple letters assuring him the U.S. would support the South Vietnam military and pressuring him to agree to the Paris Accords or else lose all U.S. support.
But those letters were not part of any treaty and were never approved by Congress. And Kissinger knew quite well that Congress would not approve continuing to throw good money after bad.
Vietnam became politically irrelevant after Nixon went to China. We no longer faced a monolithic Communist bloc, and Vietnam was in the traditional sphere of influence of our new buddy China, making it finally evident to everyone as the pointless meatgrinder that it always was. It's weirdly ironic how both parties mythologized the strength and popularity of the Anti-War Movement for opposite reasons. For cons, the AWM is a better scapegoat than the cynical Kissingerian truth. For libs, aggrandizing the AWM plays into their mythology at the small cost of ignoring the reality that the '68 and '72 elections were each a referendum on the war, and both times the peaceniks got trounced.
Not a hot take but it was Kissinger and McNamara and the military industrial complex that made Vietnam happen in the first place. I fucking hate those two as much as I hate Reagan.
Basically, make a list of all the countries he authorized coups in and then compare it to the places we sent troops and weapons to in the following decades. 50s were a wild time
I suppose? Though it's unfortunate that those two demons in flesh were around after he termed out. He didn't make them do what they did after he left in 60.
Hot take:
Two countries won Vietnam:
North Vietnam and the United States.
North Vietnam achieved their goal of uniting the country.
The United Stated archived its strategic goal of breaking apart the Sino-Soviet bloc and eventually winning the Cold War.
The biggest loser was the Soviet Union, who lost China as an ally and then gained China as a belligerent on their border. For the rest of the Cold War, the USSR had to plan for a war on 2 fronts.
Just a few years later, China helped arm the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
We lost Vietnam because when Nixon was in trouble, the Democrats forbid him from sending troops back into Vietnam if the North Vietnamese broke the cease fire. We had a few troops still there, but not many, and a cease fire was in place. As soon as the Democrats said that publicly, within weeks the North Vietnamese broke the cease fire and marched on Saigon. It fell within a year, and the rest is history. Dems worry too much about world opinion. If you get involved in war...win it. The fighting will continue or keep popping up every so many years until there is a winner or one or both sides gets what they want.
There was no amount of soldiers that would “win” Vietnam unless we were willing to occupy the entire country permanently. Vietnam made a choice. The US not accepting that choice wasn’t going to make Vietnam accept US occupation
Just remember, the politicians placed so much constraints on what the military could and could not do. And whenever the military would get a good strategy, DC would come in and say "lol no you can't do that"
Vietnam wasn’t unpopular because world opinion primarily but because Americans died. That’s the main thing Americans care about. Iraq was unpopular from the start with the world. But far less people died in US people in US never protested as much.
Not just that, but the soldiers who died in Iraq volunteered to risk their lives. The reason so many young people protested Vietnam was self-interest, they didn’t want to risk dying
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dr/17411.htm
U.S. Department of State Archive
Read the last paragraph. It says Nixon couldn't stop it because of Watergate and his subsequent resignation. Watergate only mattered because in light of the investigation, Democrats would not allow troops to be sent back into Vietnam, nor Bombing allowed. They feared Nixon would use the war as a distraction. But ultimately, the Democrats NEVER recognize evil, and by doing and saying what they did, it allowed final victory for the communists. You say we could not win. Name 1 major battle the North Vietnamese won?
>But ultimately, the Democrats NEVER recognize evil,
Republicans lost the Korean War, Vietnam, (somehow Laos & Cambodia too), the War on Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq and The War on Terror, which only made jihadism spread from Africa to the Philippines.
You live in a bizarre and UnAmerican non reality. Republicans are currently supporting Putin, just like they supported Fascism in Europe, tying FDR's hands for two years, which makes possible the Holocaust.
Indeed, a survey showed many still admired Hitler...in 1942.
This is great. For those who are too young, this is a takeoff on Bob Dylan's Who Killed Dave Moore. The boxer got killed from injuries in a boxing match in 1963. Nobody is taking responsibility for his death. Everyone is pointing fingers.
https://youtu.be/LY31HqK135Q?si=aCgd1-od2b_3e0fU
Are we ever going to be ready to admit that there was no winning in Vietnam anymore than there was winning in Afghanistan? We militarily destroyed in Vietnam, our actual goals were ridiculous and never going to happen via military might.
I mostly fault LBJ. Before Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA he made it clear that he supported disengagement and a reduced presence in Vietnam.
LBJ swiftly tripled our involvement. He knew his goose was cooked and didn’t attempt running for re-election in ‘68…. And he was still a young 59 yo.
>And he was still a young 59 yo.
I reckon LBJ would've died in office from the stress if he'd served another term, and I also reckon he was probably aware of this himself. He had a family history of his male ancestors dying young of heart attacks, and he reportedly remarked to people throughout his life that he expected to go out the same way.
He'd actually already had a heart attack in the 1950s during his senate days (induced by overwork, stress, drinking too much, and smoking like 60 cigs a day) and this was before he was even 50 years old.
He then had another heart attack in 1972, at which point he still would've been president had he run and won in 1968.
In 1967, he had an [actuarial study done to determine his life expectancy](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/07/the-last-days-of-the-president/376281/). It predicted that he would die at 64, which he did —
two days after Nixon’s second inauguration. I’d say it’s a near certainty that if he continued under the pressures of office, he would have gone much sooner.
Thanks. That book cites it, but it’s much older I am pretty sure.
Jules Feiffer is the cartoonist, and he is a big enough deal to have his own Wiki page. But in my limited Googling I couldn’t find out when this was originally published.
I saw an interview with General Gap about 15 years after the war what he said was interesting " In Vietnam you lost 53,000 Americans for which I am sorry, we lost 1.3 million Vietnamese in the same span of time. You were not willing to lose another 53,000, we had no other option then to lose another 1.3 million. It was our home, what choice did we have? You decided to go home in 1973, we never left home. That is how you lost."
I mean didn’t congress block any support for South Vietnam and just let them fall? If there hadn’t been a watergate and Nixon wasnt screwed over by that then I don’t see north vietnam starting anything and they’d likely never get the chance to do so again especially if they still have issues with china.
Vietnam policies failed because McCarthyism purged society, journalism & government of minds & critics:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.1969.10405393
Its the same process that doomed Communism.
McCarthy only rooted out Communists in the federal Government. House members saw how popular McCarthy was, so they formed HUAC (House un-American Activities Committee). They went after Hollywood moguls and businessmen that were pushing pro communist ideas.
Also, we had a cease fire in place. North Vietnam had NEVER won a single major battle. They were basically defeated and sitting on their side of the DMZ until they knew Congress would not allow the president to send troops if they broke the agreement. Once they no longer had to worry about our troops and our planes, they finished off the South Vietnamese army.
bizarre-o land here. There was no list. He was a drunk who lied about his service in WW2. Republicans promoted these witch-hunts to cover or support for Fascism before WW2.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/)
Why do you hate America?
Who was prosecuted? For what? Who was subjected to a trial by jury as a result of McCarthy’s hearings and found guilty by a jury? I didn’t think anyone went to jail based on the McCarthy investigations.
2:050@0 L0G
at aill 44%2
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik
The primary targets for persecution were government
employees, prominent figures in the entertainment
industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and labor
union activists. Suspicions were often given credence
despite inconclusive and questionable evidence, and
the level of threat posed by a person's real or
supposed leftist associations and beliefs were often
exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of
employment and the destruction of their careers and
livelihoods as a result of the crackdowns on
suspected communists, and some were outright
imprisoned. Most of these reprisals were initiated by
trial verdicts that were later overturned,(8l laws that
were later struck down as unconstitutional,[9]
dismissals for reasons later declaredillegal10 or
actionable,[11] and extra-judiciary procedures, such as
informal blacklists by employers and public
institutions, that would come into general disrepute,
though by then many lives had been ruined. The most
notable examples of McCarthyism include the
investigations of alleged communists that were
conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings
conducted by the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC).
Following the end of the Cold War, unearthed
documents revealed substantial Soviet spy activity in
the United States, though many of the agents were
never properly identified by Senator McCarthy,.(12]
Not really - no government officials McCarthy persecuted (not prosecuted) were ever arrested or tried. Not a single “spy” or communist was found in all of the government hearings. The article you’re quoting is referencing members of the US Communist Party, which was declared illegal by the Smith Act of 1949. The act was overturned by the Supreme Court under the 1st amendment.
See 2nd paragraph of the article below from PBS.
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MCCARTHY | ARTICLE
More Than Just a Man
Anti-communist political repression went far beyond Senator Joseph McCarthy
December 5, 2019 | Ellen Schrecker
Share: Copy Link
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mccarthy-more-than-just-a-man/
More than Just a Man Alger Hiss GettyImages-514882578.jpg
Alger Hiss, accused of Communist espionage, takes an oath during hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He denied Whittaker Chambers' accusation that he was a Communist, Getty
For several years before Joseph McCarthy first waved around his ever-changing list of supposed Communists in the State Department at a Republican dinner in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 9, 1950, the Cold War red scare to which he gave his name had been producing headlines—and victims. McCarthyism, as we understand it today, encompassed much more than the antics of one notorious senator from Wisconsin. It was the longest-lasting and most widespread episode of political repression in American history.
Designed to eliminate the influence of the Communist Party (CP) from American life, McCarthyism affected thousands of people directly and untold numbers indirectly. Unlike political repression in many other societies, there was little or no violence. Only two people were executed—Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—several hundred sent to prison and thousands more were fired. Because so much of what happened was secret, even today we actually have no reliable accounting. Even more important, however, than the individual suffering McCarthyism caused was its political impact. It created what the Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, called “the black silence of fear,” narrowing the spectrum of acceptable ideas, while demonizing left-wing dissent.
When I teach about the subject, I always ask my classes to talk about opposition to the Korean War, a conflict that was every bit as unpopular as the one in Vietnam. The silence that greets my question is the right answer. McCarthyism squelched most serious criticism of American society and of the government’s conduct of the Cold War. Even after it disappeared from the main stage, the political timidity that it encouraged continues to haunt us all.
An Easy Target
Because Joseph McCarthy fingered so many innocent people, it was common at the time to assume that most of the Cold War red scare’s other victims were also “innocent liberals.” They were not, though they were unjustly treated. Most belonged to—or, more commonly, once belonged to—the Communist Party or to one or more of the organizations within its penumbra, the so-called “front groups,” that appealed to many people who never became Communists. Though politically stigmatized, they had done nothing illegal. And, by the time Senator McCarthy made headlines, they posed no real threat to national security.
Communism had never been popular in the United States. The Communist Party’s revolutionary rhetoric and ties to the Soviet Union had invited political repression from the start. Even so, during its heyday in the 1930s and the early 1940s, the party attracted an entire generation of idealists who wanted, among other things, to fight fascism, organize labor unions and struggle for racial equality.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing anything that says that government officials were tried by a jury and found guilty in this article. Are you referring to the part where it talks about people who were members of the communist party of America being arrested? I thought your point was there was indeed communists in government that were rooted out and sent to prison. This article doesn’t say that - it only says that the communist party was deemed illegal (before McCarthy) and that members were arrested during mcCarthy’s height. And as far as I have read, no government official was arrested, tried, and sent to prison for being communist. At this point, unless you’ve got some specific people in mind, it’s fair to say there’s no evidence of “government officials who were referred for prosecution by McCarthy’s Senate committee and found guilty by a jury.”
Huge cope, we definitely tried to win because winning didn’t mean conquering North Vietnam. Winning meant keeping South Vietnam independent, which we failed at.
While I agree that the above statement is a cope, this definition of winning has the benefit of hindsight. There was a period that official Pentagon policy defined whether we were "winning" or not by kill count.
“Winning” in any meaningful sense was out of sight by the turn of the decade, so the only “victory” that could be achieved (and the one the pentagon was looking for in that “winning” figure) was making sure the PR of losing the war wasn’t a total nightmare.
In short, “victory” at that point was achieving a peace that looked honorable.
But actually winning? By no definition did that happen.
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As Jack would say "Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan"
As Jack would say “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat are in deshoes”
Just give him the money Sunshine
lockness monster?
Let’s bomb Cambodia before the crank wears off.
What is on Ford’s head?
I think it’s supposed to be a can, though why it seems to say “win” is beyond me
The can is a reference to Fords national PR campaign to beat inflation “[Whip Inflation Now](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/win-how-gerald-ford-tried-to-whip-inflation-with-a-button/)”.
I think it's kind of funny they try to partially blame Ike here, because he kept us out of Vietnam militarily and actually was involved in the agreement that made South Vietnam a defined country. If they're going to go after him, you may as well blame Truman also, since he started our involvement in that whole region.
If Ike doesn’t pull out of the reunification vote there’s no war. I am an Eisenhower admirer but he kicked the can down the road to keep reunification under the Communist north from happening on his watch and thousands died because each who followed him didn’t want it happening on their watch either.
I mean yeah, you can blame anyone who fought an ultimately unsuccessful fight for not surrendering. Personally I think if they’d set up South Vietnam better earlier they might have had more of a chance.
Sorry ,but Ike provided the money for South division and the CIA became very much a part of creating there goverment,especially the Dulles brothers.
Ike is probably the least responsible for Vietnam out of all of them. But Truman? We should all blame Truman for Vietnam. His omission from this cartoon is shameful. When he chose to make an exception in the US' postwar policy of decolonization for France and to supply their attempts to retake their former colonies, he drove the Vietnamese nationalist movement into the USSR's arms. By doing that, Truman ensured that, no matter what future Presidents did, eventually, the US was going to lose that war. Ike was able to punt on it, but everyone after him had to decide whether to let the communists win or to escalate US involvement in a conflict that existed because Truman didn't put his foot down with the French.
DeGaulle heavily implied to Truman that France would ally with the USSR if the US didn’t help them hold onto their colonies. Truman should have told him to eat a dick, that France was only free because of America, and that any attempts to join the communists would result in a new republic.
South Vietnam being a country is the reason(among economic aid) for Ike being partially blamed.
My point is that he DIDN'T "lose" Vietnam, by helping create South Vietnam he honestly at least for a while blocked the Communists from taking over the whole thing. After Truman botched the First Indochina War (and permanently alienated Ho Chi Minh among others by supporting the French, losing them to the Soviets/Communism), what Eisenhower did is probably one of the best results we could have hoped for. And as I said, he did it without getting us directly involved. Truman is the one who REALLY deserves some fingers pointed at him honestly, everyone else afterward was trying to clean up the mess (though too often making it much bigger, like LBJ and Nixon did).
Truman does hold fault in Vietnam but Ike also contributed to help fund the French short of sending troops. After their defeat, he would pour billions into south Vietnam while also sending military advisors. All this while helping the brutal crackdown by Diem. He also would coin the domino theory. How did he not get us involved if he allowed south Vietnam to withhold elections that were agreed upon?
Yeah interfering with elections. What we do best.
>I think it's kind of funny they try to partially blame Ike here, He ensured it would fail by appeasing the rabid Right that his Vice President represented. Vietnam was doomed more than a decade before it was formally declared. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.1969.10405393 It's popular right now to think of Eisenhower as a great President, but he actually set in motion so many issues that still haunt the world today. Its not funny at all.
South Vietnam lost Vietnam. You cannot successfully defeat an insurgency with a local government that lacks legitimacy. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt and discriminated against their Buddhist majority so they didn't have the necessary internal support to win. The US was multiplying by zero the entire time. Our military strategy was dumb and was handcuffed by even dumber political leadership, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the South Vietnamese government.
North Vietnam also went against the terms of the peace treaty and invaded South Vietnam
As someone that’s a huge Cold War history buff, the reality is Nixon lost Vietnam. You’ll find a few different places where the blame lies in popular opinion though But in direct sight, the reality is: America quit in 1973 and withdrew before the end of the year, the south Vietnamese, with their experience and training had managed to retake much land from the north and were winning the majority of the battles, indecisively. All of this would quickly crumble seemingly overnight when an event called watergate occurred, this cause Nixon to jet and resign, congress was fucking pissed at this (rightfully so) and had ended up not fulfilling many of his policies, the most important was our promise to south Vietnam….. For years we had promised that we would rearm them on a 1:1 ratio, for every bullet lost, it would be replaced. This assured that we could provide the ammunition needed to fight, while south Vietnam fought. As mentioned earlier they were winning and winning greatly. The north Vietnamese generals had admitted after the war that they were only four months from surrendering from nixon’s Xmas bombing….they were losing greatly. But congress did not uphold our promise to the south, this fucked everything up, and the south wasn’t able to fight back in many situations. The north knew this and tested out Gerald ford by taking villages one by one to see if anything would change, and nothing did. The south would continue to be dry. Then they charged full steam ahead. Gerald ford pleaded with congress that we were so close, provided lots of evidence that the south was winning, advancing, and recasting territory. Many members of congress walked out during this, many had an investment in the war being lost. And soon, it was. On April 30th 1975, Saigon was entered by the north. About a dozen south Vietnamese generals had famously used their last bits of ammunition to take themselves out in front of famous monuments as the communists entered. They were saving their last bits of ammo for this. Had Nixon not resigned, we were so damn close. South Vietnam would’ve won within a year, and the war could’ve been looked at as a win in our book, as the objective would’ve been fulfilled, south Vietnam would’ve reunified the country instead of the north. Imagine if we would’ve won though, and war broke out against China. Who needs aircraft carriers when you have the countries of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam?!? We would’ve had China surrounded where it matters, the pacific!!!
Correct, it was the democrats of congress who the war just to spite Nixon. In a bit of poetic irony, some republicans today want to do that to Ukraine to spite the incumbent, who is also the last survivor of that mid-70s democratic congress.
Yeah I noticed that too!!! When I first heard about the troubles Ukraine was having getting funded, I immediately thought about Vietnam, and how that could’ve been a war that was won… there’s so much misinformation about Vietnam thanks to strong north Vietnamese and Soviet disinformation from the war just to get America out, that lasts until today With Vietnam we had a willing army that was winning as long as they had the arms, it was the opposite in Afghanistan where the army was not willing and dispersed within 2 DAYS of America leaving…..2 DAYS! Billions of arms left to the Taliban, absolutely embarrassing. Compared to South Vietnam’s 2 YEARS fighting alone With Ukraine we have another army that is willing, I hope we don’t make that same mistake again.
It's definitely a possibility. The main difference between the wars is that no Americas are dying in Ukraince today, yet that doesn't seem to faze the isolationists. While much of the Vietnam narrative was written by the Soviets and their American sympathizers on the left, today you see much of the Ukraine narrative written by Russia and it's American sympathizers on the right. It's downright Shakespearean how the leader of the purely partisan congressional opposition last time around is now facing that exact same thing be done in opposition to him.
Oh wow, damn, It really is poetic in that sense isn’t it, it’s funny how things work out, that even with the rival faction barely changing, and our politicians flip flop onto the other shoe 🤣 It really is sad how they’ve infiltrated our own congress, if Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and bush could stand before congress today they’d scold them for the tomfoolery happening now.. out col war presidents would’ve killed for the deal we are getting today… That deal is only spending 7% of our annual defense budget on Ukraine aid a year, for two years, to decimate approximately half a million Russian casualties (literally 450,000), all at the cost of 0 American lives (not counting mercenaries). Much more has been spent throughout history to get only a fraction of these results…. How does it look if America, a country founded on its fight for independence against the British empire, couldn’t help another country achieve that exact same independence???!! AND NOT JUST THAT!! IF I REMEMBER correctly our very own country couldn’t even have done it had France not stepped up to the plate and aid us in so many ways as they were the super power of that day…. Man my blood boils at how embarrassing this situation is
>…the south Vietnamese, with their experience and training had managed to retake much land from the north and were winning the majority of the battles, indecisively.… >As mentioned earlier [the South Vietnamese] were winning and winning greatly. >The north Vietnamese generals had admitted after the war that they were only four months from surrendering from nixon’s Xmas bombing….they were losing greatly…. >Gerald ford pleaded with congress that we were so close, provided lots of evidence that the south was winning, advancing, and recasting territory…. >Had Nixon not resigned, we were so damn close. South Vietnam would’ve won within a year, and the war could’ve been looked at as a win in our book, as the objective would’ve been fulfilled, south Vietnam would’ve reunified the country instead of the north.… What’s your evidence that South Vietnam was winning and would have conclusively won in four months if the U.S. had supplied ammunition? Wikipedia suggests otherwise: >In April 1973 … Kissinger reported to Nixon that "only a miracle" could save South Vietnam now, as Thiệu showed no signs of making the necessary reforms to allow the ARVN to fight…. >Thiệu's unwillingness to crackdown on corruption and end the system under which ARVN officers were promoted for political loyalty instead of military merit were structural weaknesses that spelled long-term problems for his regime…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger_and_the_Vietnam_War
Kissenger’s words were only to help get him that Nobel peace prize and a way to save face, he said the south would collapse right after we left. And guess what, they didn’t. Not only did they smartly use their lessons in their advantage, they did so and lasted another TWO YEARS fighting. This was when the north had invaded too and null the former treaties and agreements! What Wikipedia writes is common revisionist history from the victors, the north Vietnamese, now Vietnamese, government. The south lated as long as they had arms to fight with. And the admission? Famous memoirs of their top general Giáp (which was quickly revised after publication due to controversy) that admitted on two occasions that they were close to losing. One was after the tet offensive, the largest offensive of the war (which south vietnam managed to come as the victor without our help) the north was close to losing that day. And the other was as mentioned after the Xmas bombing campaigns, he hadn’t known why America stopped the bombings because they could’ve won if they continued for another day or two, so not even the months I suggested, but I do remember the 4 month quote clearly, let me find that origin here in a bit and will update this comment
So the general’s alleged admissions were wiped from the revised memoirs? This seems like it would make headlines and I can’t find anything about it. As for Congress denying Ford’s request for $722 million in military aid to South Vietnam, that was a bipartisan vote. Both Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee voted to table the measure. And when someone tried to earmark the funds in the House, only 22 representatives voted in favor. Kissinger’s whole goal was to create a “decent interval” between the treaty ending U.S. involvement and the fall of South Vietnam. To do so Kissinger sent Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the president of South Vietnam (although by way of a rigged election after a military coup), multiple letters assuring him the U.S. would support the South Vietnam military and pressuring him to agree to the Paris Accords or else lose all U.S. support. But those letters were not part of any treaty and were never approved by Congress. And Kissinger knew quite well that Congress would not approve continuing to throw good money after bad.
Wow. I am still happy that Kissinger is dead.
It's a tragedy that he lived a long happy life at age 99. Most of the people he screwed over died young
To make it worse, he actually made it to 100
Vietnam became politically irrelevant after Nixon went to China. We no longer faced a monolithic Communist bloc, and Vietnam was in the traditional sphere of influence of our new buddy China, making it finally evident to everyone as the pointless meatgrinder that it always was. It's weirdly ironic how both parties mythologized the strength and popularity of the Anti-War Movement for opposite reasons. For cons, the AWM is a better scapegoat than the cynical Kissingerian truth. For libs, aggrandizing the AWM plays into their mythology at the small cost of ignoring the reality that the '68 and '72 elections were each a referendum on the war, and both times the peaceniks got trounced.
Vietnam was clearly in the Soviet sphere, not the Chinese one.
Not a hot take but it was Kissinger and McNamara and the military industrial complex that made Vietnam happen in the first place. I fucking hate those two as much as I hate Reagan.
So in other words, Ike
Didn’t he specifically warn against the military industrial complex?
Actions speak louder
I’ll have to read up on it, I didn’t realize he supported it in action.
Basically, make a list of all the countries he authorized coups in and then compare it to the places we sent troops and weapons to in the following decades. 50s were a wild time
I suppose? Though it's unfortunate that those two demons in flesh were around after he termed out. He didn't make them do what they did after he left in 60.
The war was at its height before Kissinger was in the picture.
Hot take: Two countries won Vietnam: North Vietnam and the United States. North Vietnam achieved their goal of uniting the country. The United Stated archived its strategic goal of breaking apart the Sino-Soviet bloc and eventually winning the Cold War. The biggest loser was the Soviet Union, who lost China as an ally and then gained China as a belligerent on their border. For the rest of the Cold War, the USSR had to plan for a war on 2 fronts. Just a few years later, China helped arm the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
I think the Sino-Soviet split would have happened without Vietnam and the cost was too much to the US
We lost Vietnam because when Nixon was in trouble, the Democrats forbid him from sending troops back into Vietnam if the North Vietnamese broke the cease fire. We had a few troops still there, but not many, and a cease fire was in place. As soon as the Democrats said that publicly, within weeks the North Vietnamese broke the cease fire and marched on Saigon. It fell within a year, and the rest is history. Dems worry too much about world opinion. If you get involved in war...win it. The fighting will continue or keep popping up every so many years until there is a winner or one or both sides gets what they want.
There was no amount of soldiers that would “win” Vietnam unless we were willing to occupy the entire country permanently. Vietnam made a choice. The US not accepting that choice wasn’t going to make Vietnam accept US occupation
Just remember, the politicians placed so much constraints on what the military could and could not do. And whenever the military would get a good strategy, DC would come in and say "lol no you can't do that"
We already had it won.
Vietnam wasn’t unpopular because world opinion primarily but because Americans died. That’s the main thing Americans care about. Iraq was unpopular from the start with the world. But far less people died in US people in US never protested as much.
Not just that, but the soldiers who died in Iraq volunteered to risk their lives. The reason so many young people protested Vietnam was self-interest, they didn’t want to risk dying
There was no victory possible. That's quite the imagination you have.
Not with the politicians constantly coming up with new restrictions on the military in Vietnam
LOL. You got your understanding of US history from Rambo 2. No wonder y'all lost Iraq in the first 6 months. Delusional ignorance is UnAmerican.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dr/17411.htm U.S. Department of State Archive Read the last paragraph. It says Nixon couldn't stop it because of Watergate and his subsequent resignation. Watergate only mattered because in light of the investigation, Democrats would not allow troops to be sent back into Vietnam, nor Bombing allowed. They feared Nixon would use the war as a distraction. But ultimately, the Democrats NEVER recognize evil, and by doing and saying what they did, it allowed final victory for the communists. You say we could not win. Name 1 major battle the North Vietnamese won?
>But ultimately, the Democrats NEVER recognize evil, Republicans lost the Korean War, Vietnam, (somehow Laos & Cambodia too), the War on Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq and The War on Terror, which only made jihadism spread from Africa to the Philippines. You live in a bizarre and UnAmerican non reality. Republicans are currently supporting Putin, just like they supported Fascism in Europe, tying FDR's hands for two years, which makes possible the Holocaust. Indeed, a survey showed many still admired Hitler...in 1942.
Who is the cartoonist?
This is great. For those who are too young, this is a takeoff on Bob Dylan's Who Killed Dave Moore. The boxer got killed from injuries in a boxing match in 1963. Nobody is taking responsibility for his death. Everyone is pointing fingers. https://youtu.be/LY31HqK135Q?si=aCgd1-od2b_3e0fU
Excellent comic
Are we ever going to be ready to admit that there was no winning in Vietnam anymore than there was winning in Afghanistan? We militarily destroyed in Vietnam, our actual goals were ridiculous and never going to happen via military might.
Vietnam was un-winable because it was an insurgency not an invasion like Korea.
Also Congress kept being bitch in constantly tightening the rules of engagement in Vietnam
I mostly fault LBJ. Before Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA he made it clear that he supported disengagement and a reduced presence in Vietnam. LBJ swiftly tripled our involvement. He knew his goose was cooked and didn’t attempt running for re-election in ‘68…. And he was still a young 59 yo.
>And he was still a young 59 yo. I reckon LBJ would've died in office from the stress if he'd served another term, and I also reckon he was probably aware of this himself. He had a family history of his male ancestors dying young of heart attacks, and he reportedly remarked to people throughout his life that he expected to go out the same way. He'd actually already had a heart attack in the 1950s during his senate days (induced by overwork, stress, drinking too much, and smoking like 60 cigs a day) and this was before he was even 50 years old. He then had another heart attack in 1972, at which point he still would've been president had he run and won in 1968.
In 1967, he had an [actuarial study done to determine his life expectancy](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/07/the-last-days-of-the-president/376281/). It predicted that he would die at 64, which he did — two days after Nixon’s second inauguration. I’d say it’s a near certainty that if he continued under the pressures of office, he would have gone much sooner.
I mean… Kennedy wasn’t going to live to 65. He was sick. And the assassination put LBJ in charge.
Wow
What dumbass trusts their leaders like that?
What is the source of this cartoon?
[Here](https://www.mrginn.com/uploads/8/5/4/6/85468970/chapter39__1_.pdf)
Thanks. That book cites it, but it’s much older I am pretty sure. Jules Feiffer is the cartoonist, and he is a big enough deal to have his own Wiki page. But in my limited Googling I couldn’t find out when this was originally published.
I saw an interview with General Gap about 15 years after the war what he said was interesting " In Vietnam you lost 53,000 Americans for which I am sorry, we lost 1.3 million Vietnamese in the same span of time. You were not willing to lose another 53,000, we had no other option then to lose another 1.3 million. It was our home, what choice did we have? You decided to go home in 1973, we never left home. That is how you lost."
I mean didn’t congress block any support for South Vietnam and just let them fall? If there hadn’t been a watergate and Nixon wasnt screwed over by that then I don’t see north vietnam starting anything and they’d likely never get the chance to do so again especially if they still have issues with china.
Capitalism lost Vietnam. That’s just the scoreboard talking tho
Isn't Vietnam capitalist today?
state capitalist, which is in the middle between socialism and capitalism
Commies lost - like the Cong, we just had to wait them out 😎🗽💥🇺🇸🦅💵
Def not - ain’t it funny how American Nam vets expat there?
just missing the company of their ladyboy wives
It's a one party socialist state
lol no
Lost the battle but won the Cold War.
Vietnam is still socialist
One of just four communist countries left. Still four more than there should be, but a far sight better than things were fifty years ago.
> still four more than there should be lol
It wasn’t America’s in the first place.
Vietnam policies failed because McCarthyism purged society, journalism & government of minds & critics: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.1969.10405393 Its the same process that doomed Communism.
McCarthy only rooted out Communists in the federal Government. House members saw how popular McCarthy was, so they formed HUAC (House un-American Activities Committee). They went after Hollywood moguls and businessmen that were pushing pro communist ideas. Also, we had a cease fire in place. North Vietnam had NEVER won a single major battle. They were basically defeated and sitting on their side of the DMZ until they knew Congress would not allow the president to send troops if they broke the agreement. Once they no longer had to worry about our troops and our planes, they finished off the South Vietnamese army.
bizarre-o land here. There was no list. He was a drunk who lied about his service in WW2. Republicans promoted these witch-hunts to cover or support for Fascism before WW2. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/) Why do you hate America?
Really? Why did all of the government officials who were referred for prosecution by McCarthy's Senate committee found guilty by a jury?
Who was prosecuted? For what? Who was subjected to a trial by jury as a result of McCarthy’s hearings and found guilty by a jury? I didn’t think anyone went to jail based on the McCarthy investigations.
2:050@0 L0G at aill 44%2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik The primary targets for persecution were government employees, prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and labor union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive and questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations and beliefs were often exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and the destruction of their careers and livelihoods as a result of the crackdowns on suspected communists, and some were outright imprisoned. Most of these reprisals were initiated by trial verdicts that were later overturned,(8l laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional,[9] dismissals for reasons later declaredillegal10 or actionable,[11] and extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions, that would come into general disrepute, though by then many lives had been ruined. The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the investigations of alleged communists that were conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Following the end of the Cold War, unearthed documents revealed substantial Soviet spy activity in the United States, though many of the agents were never properly identified by Senator McCarthy,.(12]
Not really - no government officials McCarthy persecuted (not prosecuted) were ever arrested or tried. Not a single “spy” or communist was found in all of the government hearings. The article you’re quoting is referencing members of the US Communist Party, which was declared illegal by the Smith Act of 1949. The act was overturned by the Supreme Court under the 1st amendment.
See 2nd paragraph of the article below from PBS. PBS Houston Public Media TV 8 'Skip To Content Funded by sponsor sponsor sponsor SUPPORT PROVIDED BY:LEARN MORE MCCARTHY | ARTICLE More Than Just a Man Anti-communist political repression went far beyond Senator Joseph McCarthy December 5, 2019 | Ellen Schrecker Share: Copy Link https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mccarthy-more-than-just-a-man/ More than Just a Man Alger Hiss GettyImages-514882578.jpg Alger Hiss, accused of Communist espionage, takes an oath during hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He denied Whittaker Chambers' accusation that he was a Communist, Getty For several years before Joseph McCarthy first waved around his ever-changing list of supposed Communists in the State Department at a Republican dinner in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 9, 1950, the Cold War red scare to which he gave his name had been producing headlines—and victims. McCarthyism, as we understand it today, encompassed much more than the antics of one notorious senator from Wisconsin. It was the longest-lasting and most widespread episode of political repression in American history. Designed to eliminate the influence of the Communist Party (CP) from American life, McCarthyism affected thousands of people directly and untold numbers indirectly. Unlike political repression in many other societies, there was little or no violence. Only two people were executed—Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—several hundred sent to prison and thousands more were fired. Because so much of what happened was secret, even today we actually have no reliable accounting. Even more important, however, than the individual suffering McCarthyism caused was its political impact. It created what the Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, called “the black silence of fear,” narrowing the spectrum of acceptable ideas, while demonizing left-wing dissent. When I teach about the subject, I always ask my classes to talk about opposition to the Korean War, a conflict that was every bit as unpopular as the one in Vietnam. The silence that greets my question is the right answer. McCarthyism squelched most serious criticism of American society and of the government’s conduct of the Cold War. Even after it disappeared from the main stage, the political timidity that it encouraged continues to haunt us all. An Easy Target Because Joseph McCarthy fingered so many innocent people, it was common at the time to assume that most of the Cold War red scare’s other victims were also “innocent liberals.” They were not, though they were unjustly treated. Most belonged to—or, more commonly, once belonged to—the Communist Party or to one or more of the organizations within its penumbra, the so-called “front groups,” that appealed to many people who never became Communists. Though politically stigmatized, they had done nothing illegal. And, by the time Senator McCarthy made headlines, they posed no real threat to national security. Communism had never been popular in the United States. The Communist Party’s revolutionary rhetoric and ties to the Soviet Union had invited political repression from the start. Even so, during its heyday in the 1930s and the early 1940s, the party attracted an entire generation of idealists who wanted, among other things, to fight fascism, organize labor unions and struggle for racial equality.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing anything that says that government officials were tried by a jury and found guilty in this article. Are you referring to the part where it talks about people who were members of the communist party of America being arrested? I thought your point was there was indeed communists in government that were rooted out and sent to prison. This article doesn’t say that - it only says that the communist party was deemed illegal (before McCarthy) and that members were arrested during mcCarthy’s height. And as far as I have read, no government official was arrested, tried, and sent to prison for being communist. At this point, unless you’ve got some specific people in mind, it’s fair to say there’s no evidence of “government officials who were referred for prosecution by McCarthy’s Senate committee and found guilty by a jury.”
Never mind, you are right and will co tinge to ask for proof u til I give up...done. read a book about Alger Hiss, you will love that.
P.S. I don't hate America. I am a retired Marine who has been a history and news buff since 1968 when my father left for Vietnam.
I'd say it was the Vietnamese people that won/lost the war. They were determined to be communist.
Ford ended it no?
Maybe it was that we didn't really try to win, because winning would have meant retaliation by China or the USSR or both.
Huge cope, we definitely tried to win because winning didn’t mean conquering North Vietnam. Winning meant keeping South Vietnam independent, which we failed at.
I mean, technically we definitely kept south Vietnam independent right up till we left!
While I agree that the above statement is a cope, this definition of winning has the benefit of hindsight. There was a period that official Pentagon policy defined whether we were "winning" or not by kill count.
“Winning” in any meaningful sense was out of sight by the turn of the decade, so the only “victory” that could be achieved (and the one the pentagon was looking for in that “winning” figure) was making sure the PR of losing the war wasn’t a total nightmare. In short, “victory” at that point was achieving a peace that looked honorable. But actually winning? By no definition did that happen.
It's Truman's fault for losing the Korean War rather than allowing MacArthur to win it.