Erasing a "Mind Set"

The debate I mentioned in the last post has now ended. I spent a ton of time, several days, reviewing articles that I'd studied in the past and included a couple of new ones. For you history freaks, I will include them now.

1. The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire.
2. The Paris Peace Accords.
3. The War Powers Act of 1973.
4. The 1954 Geneva Accords.
5. "A Soldier Reports" by William Westmoreland.
6. "LBJ" a book written by 300 staffers from the Johnson Administration.

If you really want to get a grasp of the many different influences that affected or infected the War in Vietnam, you'll have to get all the pertinent information to understand it's intricacies. I have never understood the general population's conclusion the "WE" lost the Vietnam War. I totally understand and completely accept the fact that Saigon fell to the North and that the South Vietnamese no longer had their own Country. From that realization, I'm not in denial about the end result.

That's where my thought process transitioned from a concept where the media always said: "We Lost The Vietnam War" to one that asked the question: "Who is We"?

An in depth analysis to those questions brought about the reading list above. It's my belief that one can not make an intellectual decision without knowing ALL the facts. As I see it now, since the day Saigon fell, the entire main stream media fell into a mind set that regarded "WE" as the United States Military". Nothing could be farther from the truth. You may ask: "How in the world can Tim come up with something like that?". My answer to that question has a very simple answer. It's called "The Truth".

Statistically speaking, even the North Vietnamese don't argue the number of losses they suffered and we don't argue our's. That's a very strong beginning point to identify WHO did what. Wars of Attrition that use the number of men on each side that were killed in action, convert opinions to facts and the facts are quite demonstrable. They lost 1,100,000 killed in action and we lost over 58,000. Any sixth grade math student can give you the results from that statement. It's a 21 to 1 kill ratio. Every death we suffered, the North suffered 21 times that number.

If you categorize each agency, government, document or negotiation into separate categories, it's real clear that the United States Military did NOT lose the war. If you take out the military's participation and plug in the rest of the players, you will soon discover that the military won it big time and the "OTHERS" lost it.

I know it takes a long time to read the books listed above because I've read all of them. You can, however, go to google and type in item 2,3 and 4 above to get a great, quick read that will allow you to get a clean sight picture of the huge puzzle that Vietnam became.

I would suggest a quick review of the Paris Peace Accords and the War Powers Act as a beginning point if you want to find out where the losers are. Speaking as a Vietnam Veteran, let me say that "It ain't us". If you review those items, you will see why I titled this piece as "Erasing a Mind Set".