Centerfield

Good point.

Today's news has another parallel between Vietnam and Iraq: the government faked the intelligence about the second Gulf of Tonkin attack in order to rush Congress to an open-ended war declaration.

In more direct response to this post, I think if we had allowed a free election to go through, Ho would have won. However, if he won by election, within two elections there would have been a serious opposition party, which would have moderated their communism. Who knows, a moderated, elected communism in Vietnam might have put ideological pressure on China to moderate, even democratize, decades ago.

I think you are looking at it out of historical context. It was pretty clear that Ho was a communist at the time. We did not want communists to run governments. A few years before, in 1948, we intervened in the Italian elections to prevent a communist from winning and remember, Czechoslovakia had an elected government in which communists had participated and, essentially staged a coup. So, I think from the US government's point of view, having a communist in government and, particularly, leading the government was not likely to lead to a stable democratic regime.

Frankly, I don't think South Vietnam was much different from South Korea. South Korea was just as autocratic, if not more so, than South Vietnam. Eventually, it evolved into a stable democracy and maybe South Vietnam would have done so as well. In fact, if you follow the logic of many Iraq-war supporters, it probably makes no sense to expect third world countries to have finished stable democracies right off the bat.

The real issue was not whether Ho was a communist but whether he was a nationalist. The assumption at the time in the US was that all communists were part of this monolithic communist movement that was directed from Moscow, so that if a country went communist, it would automatically become a stooge of either the USSR or Red China. This was largely true in Eastern Europe, in large part because of the presence of the Red Army. But,ss we found out in later years, that wasn't necessarily the case in the Third World; Viet Nam hated the Chinese and, while they certainly received support from the Soviets, they were hardly a stooge for the Russians. Arguably, you can make the same statement even more about Cuba; it was never clear that Castro was a true Marxist; he disliked the United States and used anti US sentiment to shore up his rule in Cuba (much as Chavez is doing in Venezuela), but, he didn't really become a Russian stooge until the US isolated him.

In general, I think we (and the Soviets for that matter) put way too much importance on the Third World. In retrospect, at least, the Third World had little, if any, impact on the Cold War and both sides wasted a lot of money (and in the US case) lives on peripheral issues. Let's face it, Viet Nam went communist and now they are having tennis tournaments. It was bad for the citizens, no doubt, but it had little effect on the United States.

Interesting what-if, Gruntled. Maybe.

Note that the WMD was only one of several angles on the war resolution and Bush' speeches on the subject. I'm not sure why Saddam repeatedly firing at US military personnel (planes) DIDN'T come to play in speeches and GOP talking points, but that helped persuade me. Personally, what persuaded me were Saddam feeling himself to be at war with us, a high likelihood of his getting nuclear weapons quickly once sanctions were lifted, and the possible evasion of MAD via nonballistic delivery via Saddam's terrorist buddies. Other major factors included keeping the UN as a plausible actor and the spread of democracy.

Marc, I think you're right that we overvalued the struggle. Another angle is that Galbraith characterized both North and South as having shallow grips on their countries. He called them "airport regimes". Ho would've stayed weak without the war; he would've stayed that way unless he'd taken steps to keep his countrymen happy.

IMHO, it was only clear that Ho needed to go to the Soviets for support to kick out the French. They sure weren't getting it from us. Would he have been as oppressive without having to keep the Soviets happy, and being paranoid over the war? Could he have been?

I agree about keeping the events in context. If we had to redo things, of course we would not have done Vietnam. But with the reds controlling Russia, Eastern Europe, and China, and on the move in Latin America, Africa, and southeast Asia, it seemed Commies were going to overrun the world at the time. That's why so much effort was placed on containment and smacking down leftist governments, no matter how they originated.