Charlie Rose

Ernie8864  08/14/2011 05:56 PM Report

The point that Vietnam was not a military defeat is irrelevant. The thesis of the book is that the experience of Vietnam is part of every major foreign affairs decision at the White House.

A_COL  08/06/2011 01:40 PM Report

Just because the father-daughter Kalb tag team say it in a book doesn’t make it true – especially when coming from half of the Harvard-New York Times bred Bernard-Marvin Kalb elite team of revisionist historians. Such is the case here with the Kolb’s accretion that we “lost the Vietnam War.” Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t it Bernard that quit the Reagan Admin because he didn’t like how they were treating Libyan Dictator Gaddafi?

One only has to look at how the Kalbs participated in spinning what even the North considered a terrible 68 Tet defeat into a US loss to recognize they have an agenda here beyond selling books and making money.

Fast forward past the “Vietnamization” to Jan 73 and The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam." The communists had expected the terms would favor them but Saigon, bolstered by an aid surge just before the ceasefire, began to roll them back. But it was US politics and a Nov 72 Democrat take over of Congress that ultimately led to the US abandoning the South. The Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment in Jun 74 and in Aug Congress cut aid from $1B to $700M. The 74 midterms brought in Democrats even more determined to confront the president and immediately voted new restrictions culminating in a total funds cutoff. It was this and NOT any US Military defeat that doomed the South. In Jan 75 when a provincial capital fell, Ford desperately asked for re-supply funds before the South was overrun. Congress refused and this finally sealed the South’s fate. At the start of 1975, the South still had overwhelming military superiority but faced a well-funded North with material and financial support pouring in from the communist bloc. Abandoned by Congress, Saigon fell on 30 April 75.

The responsibility lies not with those who fought, but with Congress. The US Military was NEVER once defeated on the battlefield and left the South in a superior position where they could have prevailed with continued US financial support at least equal to that being received by the North.

By war's end, 58,220 US, ~250,000 South and 1.1 million North had been killed. With ~4 to 1kill ration, a record of never being bested on the battlefield and a US withdrawal leaving the South in a position to endure indefinitely only to be betrayed by a withdrawal of financial support by a Democratic Congress, should this be described as a US defeat?

It was certainly NOT a US Military defeat but it might be a defeat by a Democrat controlled Congress – possibly with an agenda to embarrass a Republican President. In retrospect, the Kalbs might have inadvertently hit on a lesson for Obama. Not the one they intended linking Afghanistan with Vietnam but rather the consequences of one party controlling Congress trying to embarrass a president of another party and the residual affects it has on the Country.

For a fuller history of how Congress lost Vietnam, visit my Blog at: http://old-soldier-colonel.blogspot.com/

charlizecourriers  07/29/2011 05:20 PM Report

The thimble still hasn't overflowed. Marvin was old enough to remember the Korean War (20 years old when it started), and I was old enough, talking to veterans of that war, to learn it was the first war we lost. Kalb is evading his personal experience in Vietnam so that he doesn't have to provide his judgement about why the USA lost the war. Thus his statement "whatever it was...." This is part of a greater evasion about the war-namely Rose's. Others might use the phrase "collusive denial." And sadly Rose gives the game away when he talks about Clinton's "personal experience with Vietnam." Not quite the "personal experience" that I and hundreds of thousands of other G.I.'s had in country. For every dodger, someone else went. But then, what is "personal experience" anyway?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/29/2011 01:47 PM Report

The real "haunting legacy" was the Mexican War. Polk took by force most of Mexico--California, New Mexico and most of the Southwest. Texas was also lost once and for all by Mexico during this war .

So look at all the illegal immigration (we spend $9 billion a year on border security) and all the Texas presidents that eventually resulted from this Manifest Destiny.

This war had a much, much bigger effect on America than any Vietnam War.

(As you can see this argument can go on forever with the results of our many, many wars.)

REMant  07/29/2011 11:44 AM Report

Germany did not go into a deep depression after WWI, or at least not much more of one than the Allied powers, and it came out of it fairly fast, doing better than Britain or France. The same pretty much with Japan and I am not at all certain, as often alleged, that MacArthur had much to do with it.

I am not sure you can say that Vietnam is the first war we lost either. We pulled out. We certainly didn't attain our immediate objective, but that had happened many times. China for one. The War of 1812 was no great victory. But a lot of our gunboat diplomacy, of which I think you can say Vietnam is just another instance. Not many wars are "won" in this sense. WWI wasn't. Nor the Civil War. "W" famously tried to declare victory in Iraq.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that Vietnam was involved in this admin's thinking. I had hoped it would be. Whoever wrote that we could have won that war by staying, is likely correct, as I felt in 1970. It would, however, have been an enormous drain on American resources, and IMHO not remotely worth it, except as a matter of honor. It was the wrong war, in the wrong place. The same seems true of Afghanistan, and Kalb is right that the Dems have included "savings" from pulling out of there in their debt cutting figures. He is also probably right about Libya. Politically Obama has broken it whether Qaddafi is the greatest fiend in world history or not.

REMant  07/29/2011 11:40 AM Report

Ms Pelosi is living in Winfreyland. If the middle-class has made so much progress in the past 50 years, to paraphrase my father, why aren't they rich? The only progress they can possibly be considered to have made is in their dependency on the Democratic party's Tammany Hall politics and allied compassionate conservativism, or the tenuous ownership of inflated assets. She no doubt clings to the outworn idea that homeownership is of more importance than being able to feed and clothe ourselves. It is nonsensical, self-serving and hypocritical, against which centuries ago Mandeville levied his wit and Smith his reason, and surely our repeated depressions have exploded. Poor baby.