Where there any positive outcomes in Vietnam?

Does anyone have some info on any positive aspects of the Vietnam War? I need to be able to back up the Vietnam war for a debate in class. Im sure its hard to find information that will back up the war, but if anyone has some stuff it would be greatly appreciated.

Military Point of view

Political Point of view

thanks

There was nothing positive about that war. NOTHING! Just a lof of young men (60,000) dead for no reason. We accomplished NOTHING there!

Good luck finding anything positive. You'll need it.

Ya I figured there was nothing "good" that came out of Vietnam, except for some benefits politicians, Gov't officials, and war factories got.

Could someone help me understand why Politicians and Military official actually wanted to go to war in Vietnam? Where there motivations behind their decisions. Any links would be great

Thanks

Actually, from a purely Military perspective there WAS some good to come out of Vietnam. There were some very important lessons learned in the way to NOT fight a war. If it hadn't been for Vietname our present war fighting doctrin would be completely different and GW1 and the other fights we've been in recently might have been a lot more disastrous.

ok, well how about prior to the war, What benefits where there in fighting? How did people benefit from the start of the war? Politicians?? Military Officials?? I'm having a hard time finding out who benefited in the early stages of war.

I appreciate the replies.

Nobody. The entire point of the Vietnam was was to stop the spread of Communism in Asia. The beneifit was supposed to be that we would have a free and independant South Vietnam who would be our best buddy for "saving" them.

Originally posted by Excitable_Boy
There was nothing positive about that war. NOTHING! Just a lof of young men (60,000) dead for no reason. We accomplished NOTHING there!

Good luck finding anything positive. You'll need it.

I begged to differ, it woke people up in the suburbs to the fact that the people in power for certain can't be trusted and that the middle class NEEDS to watch it's back. Because when the goverment gets more power, no one will care these days.

Alright well I know that people did benefit, obviously big factories who were producing weapons, vehicles, equipment etc... But there had to be some important people seeing perks. Im going to do some more searching and see what I can find, even though I doubt it will be much.

Really? Many say that the war was lost at home because of a severely biased media; the likes of Rather and Cronkite. The inability to trust the news media was a lesson that whould've been learned as well.

The war was not one to be won, the U.N. charter pretty much made that clear. Yes, it was a U.N. sanctioned war, by the way, and was a war fought just as the U.N. wants wars to be fought.

Positive outcome? It helped drain the Soviets, as they were a major backer of the North Vietnamese.

Edited because I am the world's worst typist and didn't stay awake in typing class.

[edit on 30-11-2005 by Thomas Crowne]

Good luck man! May the Backstreet/ATS power be with you.
- People always make me cry when they do searches like this.- I promised myself, I wouldn't cry.

Well, we stopped the spread of Communism...and that led to us winning the Cold War.

Boat, it didn't stop teh spread of communism. the NVA won, they were the communists. the NVA then proceeded to take chunks out of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. If anything, it slowed the spread of Communism in SE Asia for a few years.

DE

Originally posted by nonpoint
Does anyone have some info on any positive aspects of the Vietnam War? I need to be able to back up the Vietnam war for a debate in class. Im sure its hard to find information that will back up the war, but if anyone has some stuff it would be greatly appreciated.

Military Point of view

Political Point of view

thanks

A lot of "cons", very few "pros". One I can think of was great music.

Since 1975 when the U.S. military withdrew, the U.S. military's reputation was ruined and had low morale and the NCO corps was pretty much disarrayed and many Americans didnt want to join the military. Much of the military equipment and tactics were outdated. People would say the U.S. military became a paper tiger or hollow army.

But since 1975 and so on, the U.S. military vow to rebuild itself from scratch. We pretty much should thank General Creighton Abrams for helping to reform our military. They found out the importance of speed and mobility when they watched the Israeli-Arab war of 1973. Quality was important, the U.S. Army dropped the draft, well Nixon did that, but anyways the U.S. started going for all volunteer force. Many Americans join the military as pay and benefits were pushed up to increase recruiting. The introduction of the Army Training and Evaluation Program designed to test the military skills of troops. Morale started going up. The U.S. Navy for example learning from the failure of Navy pilots that didnt seem to be performing well in combat created Top Gun to increase the ration of kills that was better during WW2 and Korean War. U.S. Air Force also copy the Navy by creating Red Flag. The Army also created I believe in 1980 the National Training Center at Fort Irwin using the Military Integrated Laser Engagement System thats like laser tag to reveal who killed who as realistic as possible and to help units to learn how to fight as a team and to learn mistakes they made while in realistic training. In technology, the U.S. military started investing stealth and smart bombs, of course the first smart bombs were used in Vietnam in the early 70s, but the war was already lost anyways. New tank like the Abrams named after the General Abrams as well as the Bradley fighting vehicle. New tactics, importance attention to the Special Forces. New strategies. Also a unified command from all the branches of the military. New organization. The introduction of the Air Land Battle doctrine. Improving intelligence as well. Especially the importance of counterinsurgency. And finally the importance of setting the objectives and following it instead of changing the objectives that would be too complex and confusing.

The two biggest lessons we learned were to keep the politicians out of the decision making, and if you're gonna fight a war, fight the freaking war, don't sit there and say "If we don't hit this target, they're realize that we don't want to kill lots of civilians, and they'll do the same thing."

Off the top of my head:

> 1,000,000 dead communists

"1,000,000 dead communists" Good point

From some of the research I have been doing we first went to Vietnam in May 1950 to aid the French who were having problems retaining their Indochina colony (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). When the French were defeated by the Vietminh forces in Dienbienphu they were going to let North Vietnam become communist (the land north of the 17th parallel) and leave the non-communists south of that parallel. We had no plans of accepting this plan and Eisenhower made it his goal to educate the South Vietnamese politically, and militarily. The U.S. now got in the drivers seat and let France move on. Throughout the war all U.S. presidents were against any arising communist countries, for they did not want to be smeared with this on their records and the fact that a domino effect could ensue once a country becomes communist. Now I'm not sure if these presidents benefited by staying in the war. But it was obvious they did not want to be disgraced as the president who let communism spread further. They might have benefited in the electoral college vote from staying. There were way too many unnecessary deaths in the war, but had we not fought communism a domino effect might have caused boardering countries to become communist. This in turn might have created more wars and more deaths. I'm clearly not a specialist in political science but for every negative there is a positive, it just might not always be discernable to all.

Could someone help me understand why Politicians and Military official actually wanted to go to war in Vietnam?

Politicians wanted the war because they made a ton of money off of it. A lot of major corporations made money off of it and lined the pockets of politicians to keep it going. Why do you think it lasted so long? They had no plan to win it....just a plan to make it last so the moeny would keep rolling in. One of the reasons JFK was shot, he was going to take our troops out of there. He said "It's not our war." And it wasn't....

Actually, from a purely Military perspective there WAS some good to come out of Vietnam. There were some very important lessons learned in the way to NOT fight a war.

Really? Then why are we doing the exact same thing in Iraq now?

The entire point of the Vietnam was was to stop the spread of Communism in Asia.

This was the "cover" story. This was a lie. This is what was told to the American people to scare them into thinking we needed to go there. It was a lie. It was only fought to make the mega-rich richer and again, to line the pockets of many politicians with the blood of our young men.

But there had to be some important people seeing perks

Yes. Richard Nixon being the biggest. Johnson wanted out of the war too and because of the pressure put on him not to get out of Vietnam, he didn't run for a second term (else he probably would have been killed also...like Kennedy). FYI....Nixon was involved in the JFK assassination. That's mainly what Watergate was about. A lot of information on the famous Nixon tapes was about the assassination, but they called it "that bay of pigs situation" instead on the tapes.

Really? Many say that the war was lost at home because of a severely biased media; the likes of Rather and Cronkite.

What a load of dung this is. The media caused us to lose the war. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?

Well, we stopped the spread of Communism...and that led to us winning the Cold War.

What? Where do you get your information? We did nothing. North Vietnam remained communist and still is to this day. So what the frig are you talking about?

1,000,000 dead communists

Not worth the lives of 60,000 of our young men, and most of those 1,000,000 didn't want to be there any more than we did. They were victims also. Victims of their own stupid government.

It guarenteed the safety of Washington DC for the rest of the Cold War. I mean why nuke the guys who will give you your best chance to win a war. Nuke DC and the military leadership might fall to someone who knows what they are doing.

Well, the French got shafted in Vietnam, that's always a good thing

In all seriousness, though, not much good came out of this war, or pretty much any other. Another generation learned how horrible war was. We learned how awful Agent Orange was, and hopefully smartened up enough never to use that stuff again, or anything like it.

Originally posted by Intrepid
A lot of "cons", very few "pros". One I can think of was great music.

Yeah, pretty much my sentiments, too. Gotta love 'Paint It Black'... they always seem to play that song in any TV show where Vietnam comes in.