If Iraq is all about oil what was Vietnam about?

[Toots]

Was it just War Profiteering by replacing war machinery and armament as quickly as it was used up or was there some vital resource only available to us from SE Asia? What was our main motive to be in Vietnam. Was it really a political battle against Communism or just money and power. I realize that military personnel usually are on the fast track to promotion during combat and the Military has tremendous pull. What was it truly all about?

[durutti]

1. Preventing the spread of true independence throughout Asia. n/t

[deutsey]

3. Drug trade was another factor

[cobaindrain]

2. ask Lyndon Johnson

he might just unzip his pants...

[lala_rawraw]

4. War is about money for the corporations

The longer the war, the more they get. Think about it, we go in and knock everything down and then Halliburton comes in to help rebuild. Same with Vietnam.

[Jara sang]

12. KBR built Cam Ranh Bay

It was the navy's base of operation for So. Vietnam and from where they launched Operation Market Time, which used the Navy "Swift Boats" to patrol inland waterways.

[FreedomAngel82]

17. Yep

If you haven't visit http://www.informationclearinghouse.info and watch "The Carlyle Group."

[knowbody0]

5. the war machine

makes the economy go round

[nevergiveup]

6. The "Domino Theory"

[Jacobin]

7. Similar to the tiddly winks theory

but much more deadly.

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. I think it was mainly about a weak Democratic...

president... first JFK and then LBJ... being afraid to hand the Republicans a foreign policy issue; as in "Who lost Viet Nam"?

Remember, Kennedy took office a scant six yrs. after McCarthy's peak and this red-scare mentality was the rule throughout the US political culture. Politically, it made sense for the DEMS to neutralize the anti-communist ( and xenophobic) issue while bashing the GOP successfully over social security, tax and labor issues...on all of which the DEMS had the majority sentiment.

[BrendaStarr]

21. Oh hey, Kennedy was killed less than 3 years into his term.

He had on his desk a paper that would take 1000 advisors out of S Vietnam by the end of 1963.

And plans to take the rest out by the end of 1965. He said he didn't care how unpopular it made him.


This has been shown by cabinet meeting records.

He also had no plans to ever put in combat troops.

[Wilber_Stool]

9. Rubber

There was a time in the early days when the VC would escape into the rubber plantains because soldiers weren't allowed to fire into the rubber trees. Wouldn't want to damage the product.
Michelin was really pissed when the French got kicked out.

[ibid]

10. in 1954 -Not letting Ho win an election in the South, in 61 the possible

oil leases in coastal waters

In 48 not letting the French get too mad at us for not joining in the battle to keep a colony the French rather liked controlling.


The GOP "no one has ever elected a communist government" line would have been F'd up if the agree on election had taken place in the South in 54. Thank God Dulles broke down the peace agreement - he deserves to have the airport next to Reagan!

[catnhatnh]

11. I believe Vietnam was a confluence...

...of policy (opposing communism) and the initial uprising of the fascism that Eisenhower defined as "the military industrial complex).Keep in mind that in the early 50's the fact that the Vietnamese had whipped the French (see-Dien Bien Phu) was in no way seen as a deterrent following the events of WWII....Vietnam was seen as a way of taking the "Domino Theory" out on a test ride on the cheap.Militarily, we could test a few theories and have an easy combat shakedown of the officers corp while blowing off excess Korean munitions and tuning up a few new systems.The assumptions of an easy victory in Vietnam were totally dashed and never resurrected until our recent Iraq debacle....

[Rob Conn]

20. Both sides are customers

The comments posted by catnhatnh are the best of the bunch. I think he or she is only missing the fact that we were trying to decimate the proud cultures of Southeast Asia. All of them. Dominance is the general theme, and selling weapons and re-construction to both sides is the goal. - R.C.

[murdoch]

28. I agree, and it was more about Indochina

It was a number of factors as said - the military-industrial complex wanted to get some money, and there was also a desire to prevent Indochina from slipping out of the hands of the colonial powers.

If one reads the memoirs and memos of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the concern was more over changes in Indochina than Vietnam specifically. The US might just have easily "taken a stand" in Laos instead of Vietnam. The US also had major operations in Cambodia, and not just along the Vietnamese border.

I think Iraq is the same deal - it is about the oil but the US could just as easily have invaded Iran. For various reasons, Iraq looked better at the time.

[kineneb]

13. Hell, no, we won't go. We won't fight for Texico.

So went the chant in the 60s...oil, power balance, the usual...can't have them fall to the commies, you know...

[LuPeRcALiO]

14. I think it was a proxy war against China and the USSR

who were supposedly collaborating to take over the world, meaning threatening to keep us from taking over the world, or at least SE Asia, which turned out to be a profitable source of cheap labor, oil, and other resources.

[nashbridges]

15. It was

a misguided force against "expansionism". They thought communism was attempting to break into other countries. Otherwise, we never would have been there. That's why we lost.

[ProudDad]

16. Oil

phosphates, coal, manganese, bauxite, chromate, offshore oil and gas deposits and the continuation of the permanent war economy...

[Lexingtonian]

18. just plain fighting

The Cuba business in 1960/61 and 'loss' of China in 1949 was really very hard to take and people wanted to fight 'Communism' in some very concrete way.

Fighting in the mud distracts people from the absurdity of their overall situation and its imaginary terrors. Kubrick made 'Dr. Strangelove' in those years.

The wave of support for fighting Iraq in 2002/03 was sort of a cleanup on Vietnam finally going disasterously. Hussein was a Stalinist kind of dictator, easy to project hatred on, and Iraq was a desert and had a relatively small population- no elusive Ho Chi Minh, no jungle fighting, no Asian magnitudes of enemy fighters. Iraq was one low risk fight for 'freedom' (i.e. against Stalinism) that all the old Cold Warriors were going to start, for a change, and win, for a change....

[Smarmie Doofus]

23. And they ( the cold warriors) couldn't even get THAT right.

Good analysis, BTW.

[FrenchieCat]

19. Fighting the "Red Menace".....

via proxy.

[ReadTomPaine]

22. 20 replies and few agreements! That war really knocked us for a loop..

Here we are, 30 years after it ended and it's still a factor in elections and still nebulously understood. What a mess.

[leesa]

24. My understanding is that Vietnam was going for independence and

starting to make it happen...sort of like the Venezuela 'problem'. They were on their way to becoming a financial success...and we can't have that

[ClassWarrior]

25. It's always about power and profit.

NGU.

[kentuck]

26. There was a lot of oil off the coast of Vietnam...

and huge pipelines for JP4 (jetfuel)... I would not be surprised that oil was not a factor in the invasion of Vietnam.

[Toots]

27. Where did the pipelines originate?

Surely you are not suggesting that refined diesel fuel came from offshore drilling and no refinery?