Poor Baby….

those ideas probably come from the same place that tells you to learn about life from Oliver Stone movies.

Now, go ahead and feed that narcissistic compulsive desire to say the last thing, no matter how pointless, meaning less and irrelevant it is.

We lost 55,000 lives, physically and emotionally scared countless hundreds of thousands more and destroyed a large segment of southeast Asia – innocent men, women and children in a conflict which could not have been avoided due to a foreign policy which had nothing to do with the struggles of those in southeast Asia but with out own cold war with Russia and China.

Our men were fighting because we truly believed America was fighting a just cause, stopping the brutality of international communism that threated not just that small southeast Asian nation but the free world itself when it was really a case of people fighting for their homeland against foreign colonialism. They were not fighting for the Soviets, the Chinese – or the ideals of Marxism.

Will not get into the details of our flawed foreign policy that made such a tragic conflict in the world unavoidable except to point out that when countries signed the Geneva Accords in 1954 ending French Colonialism in Vietnam, it included recognition of Vietnam as one country, not a split one. The United States did not sign it. A year later a group of political and military leaders seized control of its southern portion and formed a dictatorship that was called South Vietnam in which the United States formally recognized as an independent country and the Vietnamese became engulfed in our own international and domestic political interests (as early as 1962 Maxwell Taylor on a fact finding mission concluded there was no threat to our dependence upon foreign resources or our military security in Vietnam).

We lost for no matter how much we were led to believe that fighting in Vietnam was for a noble cause, our valiant soldiers were, in actuality, fighting against a people defending their country on their own soil in defense against a foreign invader and that in itself is a force too much for anyone to defeat.

But what would you know about Business they don’t let the fry boy near the cash register…

And our generals weren’t willing to risk nuclear war over the idea that China or Russia wouldn’t get more involved against us. Especially when there really were no tangible gains to be had from the conflict in the first place.

But again who is to blame for that? Whose decision was it?

Comes back to the leaders not the Men…..

They were Arrogant in thinking just because we were there the enemy would eventually give up cause how could they beat us?

In either case the men that were there did what they were told to do and it failed because they were not told to do what would have won the war….

In the end the leadership made the men on the field suffer but it did not really hurt the leadership (and in some cases helped them) ….

Which in the Mets example, this long protracted build is hurting the players we had that were winning and accomplishing the mission they were given….
Dickey doing what he was asked to do what did he get for it? Traded and cut out of a Highlight reel!

But I agree with you no need for further political discussion the point I made was an analogy nothing more…

Men can do everything you ask of them and you can still fail if the leadership does not set the condition or come up with the strategy that wins the war…..

Thats true in any endeavor!

Business…War…and Baseball!

Not sure arrogance is the right word. Business and a little bit of ignorance would suit better, mainly b/c it had as much to do with how much money defense contractors were making from that war along with the exporting of heroin, than with actually trying to ‘win’ anything. It’s about the money…it’s always about the money….much like the Wilpons and the Mets right now.

Russia was never going to commit troops to them hell they wouldn’t even do it for Cuba where they had missiles based!

But that still wouldn’t nullify the very FIRST Mistake our leadership made which was to know that Vietnam was a most hated enemy of China and we could have avoided the whole thing is we had taken Minn at his word of wanting to build a government based on the US Constitution and backed him instead of the guy we did back and eventually had assasinated…

Still a failure of the leadership….

The men on the field won all the battles….
But the LEADERS lost the WAR…

Most Vietnam Vets agree with that….
We never invaded the north nor did we use our Airpower against them as much as we should have….

The men who put it out there completed every Mission….HOLD TERRITORY…
That Strategy is what cause the outcome, The Men accomplished the goals of the Strategy but the Strategy was not one that would WIN the war!

All because of the arrogance of Leadership thinking that if we just stop them when they attack and kill enough of them when they do so eventually we would win….

But if we had taken the fight TO THEM and invaded the North that war would have been won and years shorter….

Moving on…