Mollydukes asks what I mean by the US buying 10 years via the war. When Kennedy first committed troops many of the boardering states were in no position to withstand a determined communist offensive. Had the south fallen in the mid '60s many other states would have been under the pump. The war gave the US and the west 10 years to shore up those states so that by the time the war was lost the boardering states (sans Cambodia) were in a position to resist.

Mollydukes also tells us that the states that fell under Marxism in the 1970’s did so without “influence of the Marxists from China or the Soviets”. So the massive Chinese material support for Pol Pot, the Cubans in Angola, the Russian “advisors’ in Ethiopia, half the Russian army in Afghanistan – these had no influence? The fact is that, after the US defeat, as predicted by the domino theory, the Soviets saw the tide of history turn in their favour and they sought to export revolution everywhere they could. Until Reagan the US was impotent to stop them.

Mark, the influence from the 'communists' would have had little effect if the people in those vulnerable countries had believed there was any other alternative to the miserable lives that they were leading.

The question is why were they so unaware of the relative benefits of communism and free-enterprise systems and why did they not understand that they too could participate in the sort of economy that the first world enjoyed?

LOL, what do you mean ‘the Soviets saw the tide of history turn in their direction’? That is very impressive histrionic rhetoric but quite meaningless.

Poor Ronnie, no need for me to point out his failings. You'd have to be a ‘true believer’ to attribute the fall of the Soviet Union to him and his incompetent military exploits.

You write ‘they sought to export revolution everywhere” - as if revolution was a package that can just be carried into a country and lo and behold everyone rises up and institutes some loony dictator who will make their lives even worse?

I do wonder why you are so unsure of the power of capitalism. Do you not understand that communism needs the fertile soil in which to flourish and the promise of economic wealth is a much more powerful weapon with which to kill the seeds, than an army?

Mollydukes “You missed the whole point of my sentence and you also seem to be imagining things. I must have used invisible ink when I referred to you as a bigot, or was you dreamin’?”

I am not sure how you can pretend you did not suggest something, when up this page you write

Posted by Mollydukes, Wednesday, May 04, 2005 7:26:53 PM
”Col your analysis of the links between European Communism and the communism in SE Asia is quite ignorant. Are you basing your assessment on any reputable historical account or your own amateur, bigoted ideas?”

In which part of "amateur bigotted ideas" do you not suggest I am a bigot - maybe you were deluding yourself that you did not write it - but then you do not have opportunity to follow Stalins way and erase all history of people who offend you as he did - just as you cannot erase your own hypocrisy when it suits you.

Now if you had a clue about anything and appreciation of what happens beyond the distance of your own nose, you would realise that the war in Vietnam, as several other posters, as well as myself, have indicated was not simply about “Vietnam” but about stemming the tide of communism.

One of the things you seem enjoy indulging in is "freedom of expression" of your views.
I can only assume you would be one of the first to complain at the censorship of individual views and choices under the oppressive socialist regimes – the exact type of political system you seem to whimsically support and would have us all “indulge” in. That is hypocrisy and humbug, the delusions of the ignorant, and those too shortsighted to see how dark the shadow is cast by the “nanny state”.

Oh dear,
The anonymity of the internet post is definitely getting in the way of intelligent debate here folks.
I hate to be a bureacrat - a system incidentally which is common to both "capitalist" and "socialist" governments (actually a place where power accumulates under almost any form of governance, forgive my ignorance otherwise) - but we did all sign up to a few rules of engagement:

- Please keep responses on topic.

- Do not flame.

- Do not "shout" (use capital letters excessively).

The third rule is certainly a bit restrictive, my reading ears were blasted by the incendiary language and abusive rhetorical techniques being employed by more than one poster in the Suter chain on Vietnam using lower case letters...
To be honest, the first rule is where we are all losing the plot really. Let's keep comments about the individual poster off limits for the sake of our obligations under the agreement, and also human decency, and stick to the subject matter please.
Are the administrators awake? Some of the posts in this chain are offensive.
We are here trying to discuss the problem of the aggression of nations while we openly exhibit extremely aggressive behaviour to one another. Luckily we are not facing one another with a modern military arsenal.

Vietnam the war (of words) still lingers.

Any war is terrible and wasteful– the war against the Nazis and their allies was horrific but it was necessary unless we all wanted to live in under barbarian slavery. There is no doubt that the punitive policies of the Versaille Treaty following WW1 along with the social destructive impact of the Great Depression provided a fertile ground for the rise Hitler and his Nazis and all the atrocities that followed.

It is obvious by some of the comments posted there is very little knowledge of the world as it was then, so I can only suspect that most of the commentators are young. The rise of Communism as a world revolutionary movement not unexpectedly found appeal amongst the exploited in the colonial dominated nations of the world.

Ho Chi Minh learnt Communist myths, first in France, then in the Soviet and from his experience with the Maoists in China, he applied them in Vietnam. First against the French Colonisers, in which he earned brownie points in the eyes of many Vietnamese, but the brutality of the revolutionaries scared many others, hundreds of thousands who fled south in 1954.

Ho Chi Minh and his cohorts backed by both the Soviet Union and China, started the war against his fellow countrymen in the South of Vietnam (who were in turn backed by the Americans), after Geneva in 1954. Yes I know the arguments both for and against ‘the elections’ that were mooted at Geneva and the pros and cons of the domino theory – there are protagonists on both sides. To the arguments put forward in Keith Suter’s article, there are equally strong and pertinent arguments that oppose his, and on either side there are many suppositions that can never be tested. History shows that Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos succumbed to Communism, millions died under Pol Pot, millions fled from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, similar numbers suffered imprisonment, torture, on occasions death in the re-education camps scatted through out Indo-China. Hundreds of thousands died in their escape from those three sad countries.

Bagsy

Vietnam was an unecessary war.If America wasn't there in the sixties and seventies,Vietnam would have converted to the free market system many years ago.With all the good intentions of the US, it was the worst decision to be there,both for the US and the peoples of Vietnam and Cambodia.Too many have suffered and died for no result.How could the US have supported Pol Pot who murdered over a million directly and was responsible for another two million starving to death in Cambodia?

It is not only Japan who should admit their mistakes,but also America and China who should come clean,since they will be destined to repeat their errors without some act of contrition.