Should the US have become involved in conflict in Vietnam?

Chris wrote:

Should the US have become involved in conflict in Vietnam?

Absolutely not.

I still haven't figured out what that whole damn mess was about. This was the first time that I know of, where the American public was so widely lied to about the war, the troops were NEVER told there was going to BE a war, they were told they were just going over to 'Nam for training and that would be it. Then you have the fact that the Vietnam War was never addressed AS a war, why the hell not? You've got millions of teenagers going over there and training them how to blow people's brains out and set them on fire and you don't think war is an approprite title but a police sanction instead or whatever the hell it was?

Anybody who went over there didn't come back right and even 40 some years later they STILL aren't right, which is evident in the number of Vietnam Vets who are imprisoned or have criminal histories and who still appear to suffer from PTSD or some other disorder resulting from the traumatic events of being in that hellhole through the 60s and 70s.

On Paul Hardcastle's song "Nineteen" which covers the fact that Vietnam's most common age of soldier was 19, in comparison to WWII where they were 26, you hear one guy saying they were wearing people's brains because the guy next to them got his head blown off, and you see that at 19 and that's NOT supposed to effect you, and what worried him was the idea of sending thousands of 18 year olds over to a place like that, and putting them in a situation like that and to have them NOT be effected by it, that's what he finds more horrifying.

Chris wrote:

Should the US have become involved in conflict in Vietnam?

You used the right word "conflict" War was never declared on Vietnam by the United States and no, they should not have been involved.

Every war the US has been involved in over the last hundred years was silly on the US's part to me. None of them have proposed any real threat to the safety of America, it was always a case of us trying to police the world.

AtownPeep wrote:

Every war the US has been involved in over the last hundred years was silly on the US's part to me. None of them have proposed any real threat to the safety of America, it was always a case of us trying to police the world.

Granted, in WWII with the Holocaust going on can you blame them for that one?

Shale wrote:

Whoa!! Back that cart up a bit.

World War II was within the last 100 years. If you consider that Germany was mugging Europe and Japan was mugging Asia, then yes the US was being the "police."

Yeah, sorry Atownpeep, you have that one wrong. Tell that to a survivor of 12/7/41.

I think WWII and Afghanistan (although that one comes off like a skipping 45) was the only justifiable conflict the US has been involved in. Everything else: WWI....Korea....Vietnam (my uncle was drafted at 19, came back shell-shocked and was never right in the head again)....Iraq/Dessert Storm/Gulf....Iraq-2...has been a bunch of nonsense that, IMO, the US didn't need to be tangled with.

Vietnam? Probably not. Thanks Johnson. But I am not anti-war and think most of the past century's conflicts have been largely justified.

Marc wrote:

I think WWII and Afghanistan (although that one comes off like a skipping 45) was the only justifiable conflict the US has been involved in. Everything else: WWI....Korea....Vietnam (my uncle was drafted at 19, came back shell-shocked and was never right in the head again)....Iraq/Dessert Storm/Gulf....Iraq-2...has been a bunch of nonsense that, IMO, the US didn't need to be tangled with.

U.S. involvement in WWI and Korea was more justifiable than Afghanistan. WWI was going on for three years before the U.S. got involved in 1917. There was still an isolationist foreign policy even after the Germans sunk the Lusitania (although I believe it was later revealed that she was carrying arms to England) in 1915 killing 120 Americans. Germany curtailed their use of unrestricted submarine warfare until 1917 when they ended diplomatic relations with the U.S. in an attempt to eliminate the threat of American involvement in Europe, Foreign Minister Alfred Zimmerman attempted to provoke Mexico and Japan into attacking the United States with the promise of German assistance after the European front was conquered. A message containing Zimmerman's intent was decoded by the British and sent to the US. Now, could the British have doctored the contents of that message because they needed the U.S. to enter the war on their side? Possible but tragically irrelevant as we were still responding to what we believed to be a threat to us, not just Europe.

With Korea, you can argue that we shouldn’t have been there to stop the spread of the Soviet Union but the “police action” began when the Soviet backed North invaded the South across the 38th parallel. Technically, that war never ended and could start up again any time.

I remeber seeing a poster in a record shop in the early 70's. It was a shot of row after row of perfectly aligned headstones at Arlington National Cemetary with the caption, WE ARE THE UNWILLING LED BY THE UNQUALIFIED DOING THE UNNECESSARY FOR THE UNGRATEFUL. That pretty much sums up Viet Nam for me.

This picture sums it up on the homeland during Vietnam:

Personally, I feel that the Vietnam war was a civil war which the U.S. never should have bothered with. But, given the fact that Kennedy had given the "support any friend, oppose any foe" speech, we had really precious few options in the matter. If our country didn't back up that statement and help the Vietnamese, we would have been seen as a disingenuous country of liars.