Did the Vietnam War help the cause of Communism...

[kiki]

...as much as the "war on terror" is helping the cause of international terrorism?

Discuss(ted).

[Independent_Liberal]

1. Yeah, I kinda agree...

I can see a lot of parralels between this Iraq war and Vietnam. They were fighting against communism in Vietnam. We're supposed to be fighting against terrorism in Iraq. Vietnam was an unpopular war, but I think Iraq may be even more unpopular. There were also a bunch of lies surrounding Vietnam that were sold to the public by the media.

[ThomWV]

2. No

Not really. If it had helped the Communist cause it might have then been taken as proof of the legitimacy of the "Domino Theory". Of course it was not the stepping stone to the ultimate in regional domination - which would be the occupation and subjugation of Australia and maybe New Zealand. Obviously neither happened and Communism has regressed as a major economic system in the world. With only Cuba, North Korea, and nominally China, now practicing Communism it is hard to say that our loss in Viet Nam was any sort of win for the other side.

[kiki]

6. But

did the Vietnam War galvanize support for the idea of Communism in other countries; did it act as a "recruiting officer" for communism in the same way the war on terror is doing for terrorism? Obviously it didn't work out to well for communism in the end, but did it get a boost at the time?

[moddemny]

14. "did the Vietnam War galvanize support for the idea of Communism....

.....in other countries"

Nope..... except maybe for a few che guevarra supporting flakes.

[kiki]

15. Yeah, those crazy "Che Guevara supporting flakes"...

...if only Cuba had been allowed to continue living under the benevolent democratic rule of this guy: http://progressivewritersbloc.com/DC/FriendlyDictators.htm#Batista

[moddemny]

22. Two extreme wrongs.......

don't make a right.

I'm sure cuba's poor a much better off with Castro that's why there are so many in Florida.

[kiki]

23. Well...

A lot of those who ran from Cuba were people who felt they "weren't free to make money". And Operation Northwoods spells out the US government's plans to blow up a couple'a boatloads of those patriotic souls for the sake of a "new Pearl Harbour".

The Cuban revolution wasn't about communism or capitalism, it was about Cuban nationalism: Cuba ruled by Cubans, for better or worse. Fidel's regime hasn't worked out too well - I'd like to see you run a country with the entire world striving to see you fail - but when the revolution was actually happening, those "Geuvara supporting flakes" made up the majority of the country.

Or perhaps you think a "tiny handful of extremists" somehow managed to seize control of the entire country, just like a "tiny handful of extremists" are resisting the occupation of Iraq right now...

[moddemny]

27. When I mentioned flakes.........

...... I wasn't specifically talking about cubans, the comment was aimed at the "chic radical" che supporters and others who are so quick to point out the ills of the United States yet at the same time make excuses for marxist mass murder and thuggery. I realize sadly for the cubans that they were not totally in it for the marxist cause. Communists are good at funneling resentment and duping people into their cause. Cuba went from bad to worse. Castro coming to power for so long was a tragedy for Cuba similiar to fall of the Iron Curtain over Europe.



Fidel had plenty of support up until 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Unions, enough to send troops on overseas expeditions in Africa to help the spread the fatal "revolution". Funny how quickly Communist utopias fall without outside support. The U.S. may not trade with Cuba but plenty of other countries do. It's not the first Communist regime to fall flat on it's face. If their systems were so great the countries of the Communist Bloc should have been able to survive independently of the west but once the Soviet Union fell it was the domino theory in reverse.


Operation Northwoods may have been planned by a few bad apples in the U.S. Government but it is something that never manifested while the ills of a totalitarian system created by Castro did. Your free to post about it here in America I wonder what would happen to someone like me who criticized Castro in Cuba? a trip to the "gaveta"?

[tocqueville]

25. and it galvanized an alternative society in Europe

it helped create a vast movement in Europe and the US. The difference in Europe was that it turned rapidly into a very leftist, maoist, trotskiist, anarchist movement (the hippies were in minority). That collapsed round 1975. But the impact was enormous

this was called the "May of 68" movement and the leaders and other followers became vey influent actors in society !

specially in the media (plenty of new media were created)
and in politics, some became VERY influent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_May

[EVDebs]

3. Yes, since Red China is now eating our lunch with Republican help LOL

[ThomWV]

4. Not Really

The China that is eating our ass alive is the new capitalist China. The war in Viet Nam was fought against the old, and still remaining part of China that was and is Communist. This is one of those rare times in history where an old economic (communism) system is gradually being replaced by a new (capitalism) without the aid of a change in the method of Governance at the same time.

[etherealtruth]

5. Exactly

[EVDebs]

7. Red China is still 'red' last I looked. Most 'capitalist' enterprises

there are majority state owned. Just look at who owns CNOOC for that matter. What's that line from Lenin, capitalist will sell you the rope that you'll hang them with later ...

BTW, they call it socialism and even most other countries provide national support for their budding industries or agricultural products to some degree.

In the US we have so much concentration of wealth in the 'top' 1% that we are outsourcing and offshoring our way into being a 3rd world country.

[Hardrada]

9. The term then actually should be State Capitalism

which also was what the USSR largely was tending to.

[EVDebs]

10. No, you're confusing National Socialism with Fascism

in general. We do have a fascist system that gives lip service to individual rights but worships corporations and their money, which is why we're offshoring jobs and capital like crazy but ignoring the national effects of what the multinational corporations are doing to the country.

No 'state' benefits to this mess that I can see. BTW, my job was Bangalored awhile back.

[Hardrada]

11. I meant China. I think.

I know we have no slightest socialist propensity here. The problem is that the fighting elements of the Left were eliminated here long ago with the connivance of the liberals like Hubert Humphrey which leaves the "Left" with only a polite and ineffectual bourgeois stratum. The system here must fall of its own weight as did Tsarist Russia.

[EVDebs]

12. You're right on the money. Sorry for the pun. Check the book

Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips, hardly a 'fighting element of the left' btw, and you'll see that the concentration of wealth in the US is inexorably destroying democracy here.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, 1973 on, incomes have stagnated in this country and the wealthiest few have rigged the game against everyone else. As Phillip's book shows us, all economic empires fall when the concentration of wealth becomes too 'top heavy' (to steal a phrase from Edw. Wolff).

[Doctor_J]

21. Which we're witnessing right now

the economic collapse, the corruption of the whole GOP machine, the voter fraud, the alienation of all of our allies all point to a major non-peaceful overhaul in the near future.

[Zenlitened]

13. Intersting phrase. I've never heard that used to describe China before.

Things that make ya go hmmmmm... :)

[mmonk]

8. No

but terrorism is a reaction or symptom of events and influences whereby communism was/is a system of governing. Apples and oranges.

[kiki]

16. You don't think Communism

was "a reaction or symptom of events"?

You think the Communist countries said "Hey, capitalism's an awesome cool system that's really doing a great job, but how about we try this instead, just for laughs"?

[goddess40]

17. Please stop calling it communism - it never fit the definition

Why do we allow people to clean up their bad acts calling them something they aren't? Vietnam was a dictatorship as is current day China but we stick our head in the sand and let them call it Communism, the closest this world has seen to real Communism are Israel kibbutz's.

Communism doesn't have a ruling class, everyone benefits and everyone is equal.

[Doctor_J]

18. Ask yourself this question

If we had won that war would it have "defeated Communism"? I don't think so. So losing it didn't help communism either. If it had "helped Communism", as you put it, then China, Viet Nam, andn the USSR would be one big alliance by now.

[Doctor_J]

19. I think the religious overtones of Operation Flight Suit are

what have caused terrorism to grow so much. That and the fact that Iraq was basically defenseless, and that we've killed so many civilians. Operation I'm a War President has been a total disaster on every level except for Halliburton's bottom line - the world hates us, we are viewed as criminals, we're broke, Al Queda is healthy, emboldened and angry, we're as divided as we've ever been as a nation, we're LESS secure than we were before the war, and we LOST both wars - Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Toots]

20. Are you asking if our Propaganda has gotten better?

It is all about Propaganda. If you believed what they said in the sixties how can you fit that belief into the 21st Century? Everything that was told this nation at that time has been proved false and I am sure the same is true now.

[tocqueville]

24. no but the Vietnam war showed that the US could be beaten

in a guerilla war where the sacrifice of millions doesn't matter

and the "war on terror" is initiating the same phenomenon again, different countries, same pattern

[Bigmack]

26. Exact parallel....

I once told a freep-type that the Viet war gave aid and comfort to our "real" enemy... the Soviets and Chinese. They didn't lose anything of value, and they watched us bleed ourselves out and turn our country into warring camps... and laughed their asses off. The freeper's head exploded.

We're bleeding ourselves dry in Iraq, and the real enemy is laughing their asses of at us.

Both of them... wrong war, wrong time, wrong place, wrong enemy.

[KG]

28. do some people still believe the VN war was about 'fighting communism'?

:eyes: