welsch (04/07/83)
Jan, Yes your analysis is overly simplistic. Here are some points. 1. There is an effective peace in Vietnam and that peace was established shortly after the American pull out which was negotiated. Also we expected the South Vietnam regime to collapse shortly after the pull out, but not quite a quickly as it did. 2. The main reason for the pull out was not the war protestors, but rather the American political untenability of the war. Remember we were watching Americans die every night on the television screen. Nearly every town in America had lost someone. And for what? No presidential politician, Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon, or Wallace ran on the basis that we were going to win in Vietnam. 3. All the regimes we supported were rotten to the core and we were constantly changing puppets. The CIA was responisible for the death of Diem. The "Communist" regimes may be worse, but that is hard to tell at the time. (For example was Reagan really better than Carter? Was Carter really better than Ford? When things are bad people want change, even if it for the worse.) Larry Welsch