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This Week in Veteran History

by on Apr. 03, 2010, under Politics, Veteran Pals, Veterans Global

On March 29th, 1973 the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam.  It took the lives of over 58, 2oo men. Some say nearly 110,000 thousand committed suicide after the war.

It was Richard Nixon who pursued the policy of drawing down forces starting as far back as 1969, with the intent of building up the South Vietnamese forces. The program was called Vietnamization. It hit some snags early on, but the Vietamese forces were able to hold their own because of  our intense air and naval support.

In 1972 Nixon ordered B-52′s to bomb the North Vietnamese in hope of bringing them to a peace agreement. Wild eh? Bomb for peace! Sound familiar?  After 35,ooo tons of bombs were dropped on the North. a peace agreement was reached in January of 1973. However the fighting continued for another two years.

I cannot imagine serving in Vietnam in those last years. The morale must have been horrible.

Have we learned anything from the Vietnam War?

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  • fortbuckley

    From history.com, on what has come to be known as the “Christmas Bombing.”  All emphasis added by me.  FB

    http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/north-vietnam-condemns-linebacker-raids.
    ………………………..
    On December 13, North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks in Paris with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

    President Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon’s demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. During the 11 days of Linebacker II, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties were flown. These planes dropped roughly 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong.
    Nixon was severely criticized both by American antiwar activists and in the international community for ordering what became known as the “Christmas bombing.” Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, China and the Soviet Union officially condemned the resumption of American bombing above the 20th parallel. The French newspaper Le Monde compared the attacks to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, when German planes from the Condor Legion attacked the Spanish city and caused great devastation and loss of life. In England, the Manchester Guardian called the bombing “the action of a man blinded by fury or incapable of seeing the consequences of what he is doing.” Pope Paul VI and United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim expressed concern for world peace.
    American antiwar activists charged that Linebacker II involved “carpet bombing”–deliberately targeting civilian areas with intensive bombing designed to “carpet” a city with bombs. Though the bombing was focused on specific military targets, it did result in the deaths of 1,318 civilians in Hanoi.
    The “Christmas bombing” was deemed a success by the U.S., since it caused the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table, where the Paris Peace Accords were signed less than a month later.

    ……………………………….
    I wish we had Precision Guided Munitions in 1973, but we didn’t.  Unfortunately, bombing campaigns of the early 1970s did result in large numbers of civilian casualties.  (That is one reason that the US government, with its slimy contractors, spend so much money nowadays on precision munitions designed to minimize civilian casualties as much as possible.).

    Given the intrasigence of the North Vietnamese negotiators, who were playing international public opinion (and the New York Times) expertly, I’m not sure what leverage Nixon had over the North Vietnamese besides a massive bombing campaign.  (I remember stories of North Vietnamese negotiators emphasizing our weakened negotiating position by reading anti-war stories from American newspapers to American negotiators during the Paris peace talks).

    While I was a child at the time, I DO remember that the US people wanted to get out of Vietnam as fast as possible. 

    Seems to me that, given those constraints, the options of the President of the United States were limited.

    • leftfield

      This seems to me the same logic that someone might use to justify the need to shoot a dozen or so people in the middle of a bank robbery in order to make good the escape.  The American Invasion of Vietnam was a criminal act and Henry Kissinger is simply a mass murderer.   It would still have been a crime if so-called ”smart bombs” had been around at the time.  You can’t talk about these deaths as simply a “cost of war” any more than a bank robber can talk about shooting people as simply a “cost of doing business”.  You assume a legitimacy that is just not there.

       

      • fortbuckley

        This seems to me

        I’m sure it does seem that way to you.

    • tiponeill

      Seems to me that, given those constraints, the options of the President of the United States were limited.

      Yes – so limited that he also was forced to bomb children in Laos and Cambodia (secretly of course). We can only be thankful that he didn’t exercise the “option” urged by the notorious crypto-fascist Buckley, who urged using Nuclear bombs on North Vietnam.
      Not that our brave (and evidently suicidal) soldiers would ever bomb children unnecessarily and we should be grateful to the mercenaries working so hard today to only bomb small wedding parties.
      Its so great now that our mercenaries

      • fortbuckley

        I’ll let your reasoning speak for itself, and reflect on you.

        • tiponeill

          I would hate for “my reasoning” to be the basis for readers deciding on the wisdom or morality of raining napalm and Agent Orange on civilian populations.
          I would prefer they listened to more respected sources.

    • santacruzsam

      And now we joyfully conduct business with a Communist country.  The moment the Trade Embargo with Vietnam was lifted in, I think 1989, with the combined effort of  John McCain and John Kerry, we were drilling for oil within 3 months.  I guess that makes up for the collateral damage. Don’t forget Rolling Thunder.

  • tiponeill

    Have we learned anything from the Vietnam War?
    This was just released today, but it seems applicable to your question. Yes, we have learned to cover up better it seems.
    The video, released by WikiLeaks, clearly shows our helicopter machine gunning down innocent civilians, including two Reuters reporters, and children.
    It is difficult to watch but really should be watched to the very end, so that you can hear our soldiers comment about the children – “well it serves them right for bringing kids to a battlefield”.
     

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