Reply #26: Your comparison to ROK raises some interesting points [View All]

First of all, the original ROK government was set up by the US and was a dictatorship until No Teh Oo was overthrown. It really didn't have any legitimacy till then. Originally, the US avoided a national plebiscite because they knew the South governed by remnants of the Japanese collaborationist regime was extremely unpopular.

I haven't been in Vietnam but I have lived in Korea for three years during the end period from the decades long dictatorship. I still have strong cultural ties to the korean community. The government there was not considered legitimate by the nations top civilian political leadership even as late as after the Chun Du Won overthrow. I know because they told me. Their civilian professional class felt the same way. I know this from my personal social and political contacts with high ranking government officials in two separate ministries. I even met Kim Young Sam, S.Korea's first legitimate president, while he was campaigning for office at one point. All Koreans except the military class, resented the US supported Ministry of Defense dictatorships that had been ruling for four decades.

I agree that we lost both wars. However the loss in Vietnam was even more complete. We were driven out altogether. We were able to retain our colony in S.Korea because great power relations had accepted the principle of bifurcation of the peninsula since the late 19th Century. Attempts to control the entire peninsula were considered destabilizing threats to world peace by all concerned because of its pivotal position. There is no question that we remain in S.Korea today because of MOD and Korean business elites desire to have that insurance policy in case of a land war (and to offset potential Japanese aggression). The cause of popular distrust and antipathy toward American policy has two principal causes, although there are many others.

The first is American support of brutal military suppression of democracy movements by MOD during the dictatorial period. The second and more recent is American sabotage of the unification movement, the sunshine policy, and the 1994 agreed framework. W's sabotage of the agreed framework and his snub of President Kim Dae Jung in 2001 will never be forgotten. The US as honest broker isn't so honest.

There is a saying in Korea, "Ten thousand years is not too long a time to avenge a grudge." However, Koreans are a highly pragmatic people. "Son et son gap go, byawk ul nam aw saw." The South Koreans saw the collapse of the iron curtain years before American analysts.

I was trained as a historian during the Vietnam war and joined the military as an officer during its final breakdown. Because of my military position, i was fortunate to have access to classified sources to complement my own open source research. I worked with hundreds of military officers and a few POWs who were in Vietnam for years. I also had two close friends who worked at the embassy during the early and middle stages of the American involvement, respectively. I believe that my characterization of the conflict there is more objective than your own. For example, I recently saw the history channel program that tried to portray the air war over Vietnam as a success, this is a misrepresentation of the facts. I know this from my access to classified government analyses of statisical and technical data kept during the air war and also from talking to many of the pilots who fought there. I am not saying however that my point of view represents their opinion. For example, John McCain was there and he learned the completely wrong lesson from Vietnam, the same one that Ed Meese expressed. This is analagous to the stormtrooper feelings in Germany after WWI, that they would have won WWI except for the democrats, socialists, communists, and other effete intellectuals and politicians who "betrayed" them and the war effort while they were fighting in the field. While these feelings are understandable, they are completely wrong. It is not just coincidence that such sentiment leads to the deconstruction of democratic government at home.

One of my close friends was a high ranking intel officer who did two combat tours in Vietnam as a grunt before he became a high ranking intel officer during desert storm. He agrees with your perspective. He calls his authority for his view, "been there, done that, got the tee shirt." In the navy the statement is the same, except it ends, "got the belt buckle." We had a running virtually daily dialogue going during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. This very high ranking intel officer (30 years plus) was wrong on virtually every point he made. He even admitted it to me, but not in writing.

Being a primary source doesn't make one's analysis correct.

edited for usage and grammar as usual.