I'm probably going to be mixing the Vietnam War with the Korean War, and generally string together sentences that don't pose historically accurate questions. But here goes.......
I have learned about Vietnam War from school in my freshman year of high school, but there was never a discussion on the politics or anything controversial and of course there was probably a very leftist view in the way it was taught to me. Through my searching on google I could not find any books that said they explicitly discuss the dirty side of it all. I've heard that liberals forced us to end the war and directly led to the end of the peace we created in Vietnam and there was something like over a million people who died because leftists refused to honor the agreements we had with he more peaceful side of the Vietnamese.
I just know so little. Are there any good books that are well cited along the lines of FDR's folly. I've only been awakened to this stuff in the last couple of years and now I'm 30, lol.
Good question, considering most of us were in the Military during Nam, so for most of us it's just a part of life, so books on the subject tend to be opinion pieces with an agenda.
The short answer, and yes, you are so far correct. The French got us in this shit, JFK got involved, the French left him holding the bag, he inserted a shit load of advisers, JFK dead, LBJ starts an all out war, Commies use it as a wedge in America, create protests on campuses around the nation, Nixon is elected and ends the war started by Dims.
That's the very abbreviated version/timeline. Fact is, those leftist tools of the 60s era campus protests lead the Dim Marxist party of today, and yes, they are a full blown Marxist party.
I'm sure that there are literally thousands of books out there about the war, but what you are looking for depends on how you want to approach your research. What Solar said is accurate, but the why's of JFK's involvement is probably a good start, as well as the French involvement.
Good luck on your quest and let us know how you turned out in your research.
We should also not forget there was prevailing sentiment at the time about the spread of communism and we were sold this was necessary because of the "domino theory". The politicians and diplomats told us we had to stop communism in Vietnam in order to stop communism in that part of the world. Then when LBJ ramped up the war we were lied to about what was going on. At that point we only had the MSM for information. By the time the people figured out what was going on it was too late. Unfortunately, over 56,000 of our heroes died for the nonsense.
Quote from: tac on March 01, 2016, 10:00:49 AM
I'm sure that there are literally thousands of books out there about the war, but what you are looking for depends on how you want to approach your research. What Solar said is accurate, but the why's of JFK's involvement is probably a good start, as well as the French involvement.
Good luck on your quest and let us know how you turned out in your research.
Good idea, in fact, we could make it the official Nam thread, one where we hammer out truth from leftist bull shit (Walter CONkite).
Quote from: supsalemgr on March 01, 2016, 10:33:28 AM
We should also not forget there was prevailing sentiment at the time about the spread of communism and we were sold this was necessary because of the "domino theory". The politicians and diplomats told us we had to stop communism in Vietnam in order to stop communism in that part of the world. Then when LBJ ramped up the war we were lied to about what was going on. At that point we only had the MSM for information. By the time the people figured out what was going on it was too late. Unfortunately, over 56,000 of our heroes died for the nonsense.
Exactly!!!
In hindsight, we should have told the french to fuck a frog.
Fact is, communists know no borders, as evidenced by our own Marxist Dim party.
So getting involved in Nam was an excuse by the elites to line their pockets via military establishment/corporate connections.
Quote from: Solar on March 01, 2016, 11:20:19 AM
Good idea, in fact, we could make it the official Nam thread, one where we hammer out truth from leftist bull shit (Walter CONkite).
That should prove to be a worth while goal. As you said, many of us are Viet Nam vets, that have lost friends and family members in a political war that never should happened.
Here's a brief overview of the war, with detailed historical data at the site.
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/vietnamwar/summary.html
Quote
Summary of Events
Imperialism and Colonialism
The Vietnam War has roots in Vietnam's centuries of domination by imperial and colonial powers—first China, which ruled ancient Vietnam, and then France, which took control of Vietnam in the late 1800s and established French Indochina. In the early 1900s, nationalist movements emerged in Vietnam, demanding more self-governance and less French influence. The most prominent of these was led by Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who founded a militant nationalist organization called the Viet Minh.
The First Indochina War
During World War II, when France was occupied by Nazi Germany, it lost its foothold in Vietnam, and Japan took control of the country. The Viet Minh resisted these Japanese oppressors and extended its power base throughout Vietnam. When Japan surrendered at the end of World War II in 1945, Ho Chi Minh's forces took the capital of Hanoi and declared Vietnam to be an independent country, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Michael Medved wrote a pretty good book about the Vietnam War called the Three Big Lies About the Vietnam War. I'm not a huge fan of Medved, especially since he has started using the Eleventh Commandment to wipe his *ss. But I've read some of the book and it's great.
Just BTW, Pat Conroy wrote about Vietnam at length in his best selling book, "Beach Music," in a profoundly insightful way, although it is from a more personal POV and does not deal with politics hardly at all except in showing how some callous people reacted to it with hate for soldiers that was barbarically misplaced and immoral.
Also, it might be interesting to note that Vietnam spawned the dawn of the something that R. Buckminster Fuller called "soft warfare". That is the use of words as munitions, a strategery (sic) that has proven very effective to this very day. The Chicoms and their proxies the North Vietnamese used this as an effective way to counter an adversary geo-politically which could not be defeated by blunt force military power. Fuller wrote about it at some length in his magnum opus "Critical Path" in 1982.
Fuller also predicted the Wall Street bailout by tax payers 30 years before it happened and pointed out how the U.S. government collaborated with the investment banking industry to use the pretense of the Dust Bowl to effectively usurp for multinational corporate interests, tens of thousands of small family-owned farms through usurious loan policies.
It sounds like you are looking for the politics of the war. I don't read books on the war so can't recommend any. But if you want to learn a little about it from people who were there, you can spend some time with the Texas Tech Vietnam Center on-line: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/ Texas Tech has by far the largest, most complete collection of information on the war.
One of the best things they have done is a huge number of interviews with Vietnam veterans to get first person oral histories. Look at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/oralhistory/interviews/browse/ These include people who were in all kinds of roles in Vietnam, including quite a few from combat veterans, whose experience is very different from the large majority of Vietnam vets, who can give you a feel for what it was like to actually be in the bush.
I suggest if you want to learn about the Vietnam war you don;t read books but instead go seek out the veterans and the men and women who were actually there. I stopped reading books on the war I fought in about 30 years ago when I decided most of them were based on political bullshit written by people who were out to make a buck and give America a black eye in the process.
Many of the things that were discussed back in the day about the evils of communism did come to pass. The domino theory (or the attempt) The murder and rape of Cambodia (which continues today) the intended goal of destroying America.....which is happening before our eyes and the role of China as a world leader.
Books written by 'grunts' everyday American GI's who were just a bunch of kids really are more factual, more varied and a better read.
Here's the problem. A guy gets recognized for a work he does, with far a few critics to critique his work or the accuracy of it, the players were already dead, or too old to care. He's awarded some kind of accolades for condensing a huge work into a moving, tear jerking, several hour long piece, as the definitive work on the entire subject, "you wanna understand WW2, just watch THIS, and you got it."
Big mistake. Same mistake these short movies make, there's just too much information in so many geographically diverse theatres of combat, and non-combat areas to just neatly condense. OK, so here goes... Viet Nam.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/16/ken-burns-vietnam-war-got-some-facts-wrong/
QuoteBy Oliver North - - Monday, October 16, 2017
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
When Richard Nixon was in the White House, I was in Vietnam and he was my commander in chief. When I was on Ronald Reagan's National Security Council staff, I had the opportunity to brief former President Nixon on numerous occasions and came to admire his analysis of current events, insights on world affairs and compassion for our troops. His preparation for any meeting or discussion was exhaustive. His thirst for information was unquenchable and his tolerance for fools was nonexistent.
Mr. Nixon's prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia is poorly told by Ken Burns in his new Public Broadcasting Service documentary "The Vietnam War." That is but one of many reasons Mr. Burns' latest work is such a disappointment and a tragic lost opportunity.
It's sad, but I've come to accept that the real story of the heroic American GIs in Vietnam may never be told. Like too many others, Ken Burns portrays the young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of the Vietnam War as pot-smoking, drug-addicted, hippie marauders.
Those with whom I served were anything but. They did not commit the atrocities alleged in the unforgivable lies John Kerry described to a congressional committee so prominently featured by Mr. Burns. The troops my brother and I were blessed to lead were honorable, heroic and tenacious. They were patriotic, proud of their service, and true to their God and our country.
To depict them otherwise, as Mr. Burns does, is an egregious disservice to them, the families of the fallen and to history. But his treatment of my fellow Vietnam War veterans is just the start. Some of the most blatant travesties in the film are reserved for President Nixon.
Because of endless fairy tales told by Ken Burns and others, many Americans associate Richard Nixon with the totality and the worst events of Vietnam. It's hardly evident in the Burns "documentary," but important to note: When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, he inherited a nation — and a world — engulfed in discord and teetering on the brink of widespread chaos. His predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, was forced from office with a half-million U.S. troops mired in combat and fierce anti-American government demonstrations across the country and in our nation's capital.
Ken Burns may not recall — but my family remembers: It was Lyndon Johnson who sent my brother and me to war. It was Richard Nixon who brought us home. It is very likely we are alive today because Mr. Nixon kept his word.
That's not the only opportunity for accuracy Mr. Burns ignored. He could have credited Mr. Nixon with granting 18-year olds the right to vote in July 1971 with the 26th Amendment to our Constitution. (Does Ken even recall the slogan, "Old enough to fight — old enough to vote!" He should. Mr. Burns turned 18 that same month.)
I remember that as, "Old enough to
vote die — old enough to vote!"
Well, it's a PBS documentary, you can probably guess... they probably animated that long dead newscaster, Walter Cronkite to narrate the 'embarassing to America' parts, like he did for years on CBS... turning victory into defeat.
Thank God we have an alternate Media than the MSM these days... and a few Patriots like, Oliver North. Oh, BTW... just in case you forgot, John Kerry was in Viet Nam, he had himself filmed himself there, as proof.
Burns is a known leftist revisionist historian, and now he tackles the lefts Nam, yes, Nam is owned by the left.
I wonder if he'll expose Cronkite for the traitor he was? I won't hold my breath, nor will I watch this POS leftist rewriting of history, a history we all lived through.
Quote from: Solar on October 18, 2017, 06:12:58 AM
Burns is a known leftist revisionist historian, and now he tackles the lefts Nam, yes, Nam is owned by the left.
I wonder if he'll expose Cronkite for the traitor he was? I won't hold my breath, nor will I watch this POS leftist rewriting of history, a history we all lived through.
"The most trusted man in Amerika" - Walter Cronkite. We got fed his CRAP in grade school, "The 21st Century" series, 16mm movies about how Utopia was just around the corner... little did we understand it was Communism around the corner. My parents HATED Cronkite.
Quote from: Hoofer on October 18, 2017, 06:38:01 AM
"The most trusted man in Amerika" - Walter Cronkite. We got fed his CRAP in grade school, "The 21st Century" series, 16mm movies about how Utopia was just around the corner... little did we understand it was Communism around the corner. My parents HATED Cronkite.
Now there's a real documentary, how the leftists rewrote history in the making, and make Cron-sleight the focus of the documentary.
If there's ONE thing I'm sure of, War is brutal, and the Victor gets to wrote the history... until a revisionist figures out a way to tell a more palatable tale to a willing audience.
Want to read a truly good and accurate novel of war in Vietnam? Then may I suggest to you, "Matterhorn" by Karl Marlantes.
Enjoy, if that is the right word.
Involvement in Vietnam goes back to Pres Truman and Pres Eisenhower, and in a real sense earlier as the great powers had a way of sticking their nose everywhere. Soviet radio once announced, "We cannot predict the future, but the past is changing before our very eyes." That is much of American (ideological) history today. The Domino theory held sway then and if you want more proof read about McCarthy sometime. Oh those Dominoes held such power over the mind, over the policies. Truth got lost as it does today in much of our commentary. Many think Kennedy would have got out? Could we have won? No one I know who was there or studied it says we could. But again if you need proof of lost escapades look only a Afghanistan or even Iraq. Oh and no one spit on me during the late sixties, but one Nam friend said they did in Philly where I too lived. Timeline below is excellent.
Timeline: https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-timeline
Best books:
6. A Bright And Shining Lie, Neil Sheehan "If you ever read just one history of the Vietnam war, read this one."
7. Vietnam: A History, Stanley Karnow "The most complete account [of the Vietnam war] to date."
8. Everything We Had, Al Santoli "If I had to recommend only one book as a guide to stepping into the skin of a Vietnam veteran, [this] would be it."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/feb/05/catchofthedaywhichisthe
And more:
Nonfiction recommendations: "'Chickenhawk,' by Robert Mason; 'Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam,' by Nick Turse; 'The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War,' by Frederick Downs; 'Pharoah's Army: Memories of the Lost War" by Tobias Wolf; and 'Street Without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946–1954,' by Bernard Fall."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/books/20-must-read-books-on-the-vietnam-war.html
I would add Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest".
"Marine Sniper" one of my favorites about Carlos Hathcock. By Charles Henderson
"Guns Up" by Johnnie M. Clark
"The Bridge at Dong Ha" by John Grider Miller