I appreciate his effort on Vietnam given my repeated efforts to get people to recognize that America won the Iraq War. But judging Vietnam is complicated.
This is a worthy effort:
The United States sent 2.7 million men and women to South Vietnam to help preserve the Democratic Government of that nation. Nearly sixty thousand were killed and/or missing in action. Ignoring the truth concerning winning of that War is disrespectful and a slap in the face of those who served and a disgraceful epitaph to those who were killed and those still missing in action.
For about ten years I have been trying to get this Nation to acknowledge the fact that the United States military won the Vietnam War.
It is a worthy effort because Vietnam veterans went to war and did their duty yet were denied a recognition of their honorable effort even if in the end the country we defended was defeated and destroyed.
But it isn't as simple as convincing people America won the war.
One, it is true that South Vietnam stood when we pulled our troops out. So technically we won the war we were in. And I have great sympathy for that military-centric view. Our military did defeat enemies and build up local allies to hold when we left.
But America fights wars and not the military. So the failure of Congress to allow America to support South Vietnam with supplies or fire support meant that America failed to secure the battlefield victory. Are we really going to rest a debate over victory on whether we truly had a "decent interval" between leaving South Vietnam and the fall of South Vietnam?
Two, victory also depends on the level you look at. Was it the Vietnam War that is judged on its outcome narrowly? Or was it the Vietnam campaign in the Cold War against the USSR and communism in general?
Even if you think America lost the Vietnam campaign, I think the fight there helped win the Cold War. When America first entered the fight, the region from India to Southeast Asia was weak and vulnerable to communist subversion. The decade America bought for those countries by holding the line in South Vietnam probably kept them in the Free World. The dominoes that fell after South Vietnam were limited to Laos and Cambodia. In 1965, the repercussions could have gone all the way to India.
Further, the willingness of America to lose 60,000 troops in defense of South Vietnam had to have an effect on deterring the Soviets from attacking the far more important NATO Europe. What would we do to hold Europe if we were willing to lose 60,000 in South Vietnam?
Three, the military itself contributed to the image of defeat in Vietnam by wrecking the Army as it withdrew it from South Vietnam. It feels right that a decimated Army reflects a loss in the field.
My guess is that if the Army had been ordered to withdraw as units instead of shuffling units which destroyed unit cohesion in order to send the longest-serving troops home first that Vietnam would not be seen as a defeat of the Army.
And four, given this self-inflicted it is somewhat dangerous to speak of Congress losing the war that the military won. I don't want the Army to develop a "stabbed in the back" attitude toward civilian leadership.
Fortunately, the battlefield successes in the Long War, including the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns that did not involve wrecking the military in the process, has--along with 45 years of distance--moved the military beyond that old potentially festering wound of Vietnam. I think we can safely admit that America lost the Vietnam campaign when a conventional North Vietnamese Army conquered South Vietnam despite the earlier battlefield victory over the Viet Cong insurgency and their NVA friends/masters (and yes, it was a blend of insurgency and conventional warfare despite the shorthand) which failed to hold the support of enough people in South Vietnam to overthrow the Saigon government.
So good luck. But convincing Americans to recognize that America won the Iraq War--and so be willing to defend the battlefield victory--is a higher priority right now.
