Quote Originally Posted by Torog
America??s cause in Iraq is just as noble as the Vietnam War, the loss of which led to millions being massacred, with the help of the US left, by communist fanatics and yet the left still take malicious pride in the holocaust they helped create.
Well, it's not a very popular thought, especially amoung the right-wingers who want to blame the loss of the Vietnam War on the left, but many experts in South East Asian history and politics will now say that our very presence in Vietnam virtually guaranteed the communist victory.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years, Vietnam had been controlled by foriegn powers. First China, then France, then Japan, then France again. In 1955, just when it looked like they might be their own country at last we had to go against the Geneva accords and set up a puppet government in the South led by an unpopular, Catholic (in a nation of Buddhists), president-Diem. Ironically we also back the coup that assinated President Diem 8 years later. By the mid '60's South Vietnam has essentailly lost it's independance and was controlled by the U.S.. To make matters worse, the money brought in by the U.S. soldiers created rampant inflation to the point that many Veitnamese could no longer afford goods which were inexpensive a few yaers earlier.

What happened is that for many Vietnamese, the war was not a question of Communism vs Capitalism. It became an issue of independence from yet another foriegn power. The Communist got the popular support not because of their political ideology, the got it because they were driving out the foreign invaders. If we really wanted to defeat the Communists, we should have signed up for their team.

Lets just hope the same thing doesn't happen in Iraq and Afghanistan.