[Peace-discuss] Pander-Bear...Ack!

[C. G. Estabrook]

Good question. Three reasons, in ascending order of importance:

[1] the anti-war movement in the US: by the late 1960s, about 70% of Americans 
thought that the war was not "a mistake" but was "fundamentally wrong and immoral";

[2] the brave resistance to re-colonization by a peasant society against an 
industrial one, although we killed perhaps three million of them and all but 
destroyed their country; and

[3] the revolt of the American expeditionary force in Vietnam: we discovered 
what the French had discovered in SE Asia before us -- you can't win a colonial 
war with a conscript army (which is why the draft ended -- to be succeeded by 
"volunteers" and mercenaries).

It's important to note that the US won the Vietnam War, not in the sense of 
achieving its maximum war aim of imposing a biddable government in the South 
(which was always the prime US enemy, and where most of the fighting took 
place), but in that we destroyed the "threat of a good example" -- the 
possibility of independent economic development directed by the Vietnamese 
themselves.  That was the real "domino theory," and Vietnam is now thoroughly 
subordinated to US economic hegemony: they beg for Nike factories, as we meant 
them to. --CGE


John W. wrote:
> 
> So why aren't we still fighting in Viet Nam?  What exactly caused the 
> change in policy that resulted in Nixon pulling the troops out, rather 
> precipitously, citing "peace with honor"?