What civilians? You havent show me any source for your claim.

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Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Sorry, I dont count hypothetical deaths. If we did, then youd have to count how many live were hypthetically saved as well. The issue is more as to whether there really are any civilians. I dont think there are, except for those who have no mental ability to make choices, such as children. Lets take 911 for example. The people who died there were not civilians as they were american citizens who contributed to taxes which fund the govt. Same as in vietnam. All citizens in Vietnam who were enabling the enemy, are valid targets.

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Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

I'm talking about real deaths, but anyway this entire discussion is about hypotheticals (see below). All I'm saying is that even Vietnamese killed by other Vietnamese, not by Americans -- and I mean by Vietnamese on either side, those killed by the VC or the NVA, as well as those killed by the ARVN or the South Vietnamese secret police -- have to be counted as Vietnamese killed because the Americans were there. In that, if we hadn't been there, no war would have happened, hence no war deaths.

Actually the issue here has been lost. Let me see if I can revive it.

The point we are discussing is whether more or fewer Vietnamese would have been killed by now if we had continued occupying South Vietnam up to the present. This requires some hypothetical thinking. Sorry about that.

We can assume that the Vietnamese executed by the Hanoi regime or who died accidentally while trying to flee the country would have lived. We can also assume that many Vietnamese would have died in the continued war, who lived because the war ended. The first number is more or less available. The second must be conjectured. If you are not willing to do that conjecturing, then you are not able to provide a possible answer to the question and should withdraw from the discussion.

Two other questions have a bearing on the question of continued war deaths. Would the insurgency have continued indefinitely? And if not, at what point would it have ended?

I think a strong case can be made that the insurgency would indeed have continued indefinitely. The Vietnamese had already been fighting for their independence for roughly 100 years, against the French, the Japanese, the French again, and finally the Americans. What's more, if you look way back in Vietnamese history, the provided similar unending headaches for the Chinese once upon a time. They're just like that.

If in fact it would have continued indefinitely, then one way to calculate this is to take the number of Vietnamese killed in the war (2.2 million approximately) and divided it by the number of years the war went on (8, from 1965 to 1973). That calculation gives us 275,000 deaths per year. We have to guess at the number of Vietnamese boat people who died, but the total death toll postwar surely does not exceed 2 million, probably less than half that. If we use the figure of 1 million, which is probably not too far off, then projected war deaths would have exceeded that total in 1979. If the war were still going on today, the total casualty figure would now be in the range of 12 million, and this vastly exceeds even the most gruesome estimates for postwar deaths, and even if you include those killed by the Khmer Rouge massacres there's no comparison.

American casualties, meanwhile, if we make a similar projection, would now have reached 311,750, which is about the same as we lost in World War II, maybe a bit more.

What conclusion can one reach except that we were right to leave?,

TSGracchus
U.S. House Representative

Careful now ! It can be sinful to publish the truth !

Actually, it's not, and wouldn't be unless we were debating whether Jack Kennedy deserved either to be a liberal icon or to be canonized, or perhaps which party was most to blame for the mess that happened in Vietnam. Since instead we were debating whether leaving Vietnam was a good or bad idea at the time we did leave, who is to blame for the debacle is irrelevant and trying to steer the debate that direction amounts to a red herring.

For what it's worth, I would blame Lyndon Johnson (another Democrat) for the war more than anyone else, and it was a Republican (Richard Nixon) who ultimately pulled us out of there. So if you're trying to pin party blame, I think we can agree that it falls on the Democrats more than the Republicans.

Now, having established that, can we get back to the real subject of discussion? Thank you very much.

It was in response to somebody suggesting that putting the dude in power was a mistake. One might say we also took him out of power. Which, if either, had greater impact on our eventual exodus?

Exactly.

Neither had much to do with it, at all. That is where I was ultimately going with that before I was so rudely sidetracked...

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.

Yes, and it was totally avoidable, Kennedy’s political machinations and lack of understanding i.e. the Vietnamese character helped drive this idiocy.

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile....

Actually what I meant was he was corrupt under what context, as in comparable to who and what. The analogy I was going to draw is not necessary as we agree Diem being assassinated was idiocy.

__________________
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile....

Vietnam War Casualties

Contrary to what I said, this figure only represents Vietnam and does not include Laos and Cambodia.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

Kennedy's machinations, or Allen Dulles'?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

Geez, jviehe, for a guy who's as concerned about taxation as you are, I'm surprised to see you advocating for imperialism, which is a losing proposition from a taxpayer perspective.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

Then for all intents and purposes, you are saying that terrorism is an acceptable methodology.

Furthermore, why weren't the Vietnamese people entitled to decide for themselves which political model best suited them? Shall we throw out the concept of inalienable rights, as well, and if we do, what exactly does that leave us with in your estimation?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

Actually, both regimes understood from the beginning that the reunification elections were never going to be held. Hanoi knew Diem's regime would never allow elections, and didn't expect him to; they made a show out of the issue in public, but they never legitimately believed they were going to be held. In fact, they actually viewed a division of Vietnam as being to their advantage, as it would give them time to consolidate.

[quote]Recognizing S. Vietnam's independence without a Vietnamese vote was no different than the situation in Iran, the US backing a dictator for control of a country, which also eventually blew up in our face.[quote]

How, in your view, did we 'control' the country? If you want to argue that South Vietnam's dependence on American aid put them, de facto, under our control, then I suppose you could do that (though that's an extremely simplistic understanding of power dynamics). But, if you're going to make that argument, then you'd probably have to acknowledge that Hanoi's dependence on China and the USSR created basically the same situation.

But that really has nothing to do with what I asked you. I asked how it was that you considered assistance to an allied government against a domestic insurgency equatable to an attempt to 'conquer' the country. The election issue is a red herring as, like I said, both regimes understood they weren't going to be held. Whether or not you like the way that the division of Vietnam came about, the fact is that at the time, none of the major powers involved expected anything else. I'm still curious how this counts as conquest in your view.

See above.

Anyway, again, this really has nothing to do with what I asked you. You stated that Vietnam's history of fighting for independence indicated that there was never any way a peaceful solution could develop short of a unification. I responded that your argument could also be applied to Korea, but that a permanent division did, in fact, develop there (totally against the wishes of Korean nationalists). Why do you think something similar couldn't have occurred in Vietnam?

His regime was indeed reppressive (although by any reasonable standard the Hanoi regime was a lot worse), but Vietnam had an authoritarian political culture in which a ruler's legitimacy was in good part determined by their perceived strength, and had been so for 2,000 years. As for corruption, while individuals in the Saigon regime certainly were, Diem himself was not. He was, in fact, viewed favorably even by the Communsits (including Ho Chi Minh) for his austerity.

And really, why do you insist on calling him a 'puppet'? Diem's nationalist credentials weren't seriously challenged by anyone, the Viet Minh even invited him to join their government as Interior Minister (admittedly, this was at least in part to neutralize him as a potential rival, but the Viet Minh most certainly did respect him). Was there any particular action of his in which you feel his regime was unduly deferential to American pressure? Or do you simply assume in advance that any Cold War ally of the US in the developing world is going to be a puppet by definition, simply because that's your version of what the truth is supposed to be?

But, yet again, this isn't a response to what I said. I said that, in my view, a peace based on permanent division of Vietnam might have been possible at least up until 1963. Could you actually respond to that with something more sophisticated than 'Diem's regime sucked'?

I think that question can be easily answered by asking how long we'd have tolerated Diem if, for example, he were to have proven himself to be an unacceptable proxy?

I don't think there's any question that our support of him was conditional on his being amenable to US economic interests. From the standpoint of Vietnamese civilians, I'd say that amounts to being conquered, as their interests under such circumstances were unrepresented, making them de facto subjects of US economic hegemony.



Do you really think that Diem didn't understand that US support was conditional and that he was going to pay a price for it, like it or not?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

I dont see in here where it indicates that the US killed those civilians. More facts please.

__________________
http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.