How we won the war in Vietnam

This article was sent to me by a good buddy who served in Laos with me. It certainly gave me a new perspective on Vietnam. Vietnam, just a battle of a much larger war, the cold war. Read it and let me know what you think.

O.D.

How we won the war in Vietnam
>
>
> By James Lewis
>
> I can just hear the sneers at this headline. Won? The senseless
> Vietnam War, which killed people for no reason at all? The answer is
> yes. We won the real war in Vietnam; that war was called the Cold War.
> It was fought to defend free peoples against the hyper-aggressive Soviet Empire. And I am not the
> only one who
> thinks so.
>
> Vietnam was a battle in the Cold War --- which wasn't all cold by any means.
> The United States fought two major proxy wars against the Soviet
> Empire and its allies, like Mao Tse Tung's China. One war was fought
> in Korea, and cost 34,000
> American lives. The other was Vietnam, and cost
> 58,000 American lives.
> Thousands and thousands of Koreans and Vietnamese died along with us, fighting as allies and friends.
>
> Those wars were pure hell, as General Sherman said. All wars are hell.
>
> Suppose we had not fought in Korea and Vietnam. The "Cold" War would
> have been lost. What would have happened? When America became involved
> in Vietnam, the Soviets and Chinese Communists were a single block,
> although tensions between China and the Soviet Union were rising.
> Eastern Europe was one great concentration camp. Soviet imperialism
> was on the march in Asia, Africa, South America, and Western Europe.
> Korea and Vietnam were bloody holding actions that allowed democracies
> to grow strong enough to outlast the enemy.
>
> Consider just how many people were killed domestically by the Soviet
> Empire and its allies over seventy years --- not in wars, but in
> tyrannical campaigns to control their own peoples. According to an
> authoritative team of French historians, Marxist
> > %3D2-2 /ref/104-5499140-0864723> regimes exterminated 100 million
> human beings in the 20th century. That is not even counting wars
> fought by those regimes against other countries.
>
> Just a reminder: Even in the last few years probably more than a
> million North Koreans have died from starvation and persecution, all
> because of their fat and paranoid Marxist dictator Kim Jong Il's
> economic blunders and refusal to open his country sifficiently to
> international aid. Communist Vietnam has killed tens of thousands of its people in "re-education camps"
> since the Vietnam War.
>
> We forget the relentless killing machines of Marxist tyrannies, their
> determination to wipe out entire classes of human beings, small
> capitalists, rich peasants, farmers who refused to be corralled into
> communes, dissidents. In Cambodia, Pol Pot killed people simply for
> wearing glasses; they might have been dissidents. We must not forget
> the biggest threat of the 20th century.
>
> In the fantasy world of the American Left, Vietnam was not worth
> fighting because the Cold War was only a fiction whipped up by the
> military- industrial complex. If only those 100 million dead souls
> could answer that lie. The American victory in the Cold War was dearly
> bought, but if the Soviet Union had not been stopped, its victims
> might now number --- how many? 200 million? 300 million? An endless
> number, as the Soviet Empire went from victory to victory?
>
> In truth, we should have parades celebrating the sacrifice of
> Americans and our Vietnamese allies in the Vietnam War. It was an
> agonizing battle. But it was thrust upon us, and there was no other
> way. Don't let the Left get away with lying about it.
>
> To really understand the last hundred years, we need to remember only
> two
> numbers: six million and 100 million. Six million Jews, Gypsies,
> homosexuals, Christians and handicapped people were deliberately
> exterminated by the Right Fascist ideology of the Nazis.
>
> But Hitler had only thirteen years in power. Over a period of seventy
> years, Left Fascism was able to destroy 100 million human beings.
>
> Left or Right, Fascism is Fascism.
>
> The next time you see a Vietnam vet, thank him or her from the bottom
> of your heart for winning the longest war of the 20th century.
>
> on "How we won the war in Vietnam"