ho chi minh trail today

[goo]

i remember doing some civil engineering on that particular piece of infrastructure back in '69.

http://www.laosgpsmap.com/ho-chi-minh-trail-laos/

[John Sukey]

A friend of mine was a Misty FAC and for that matter most of the IP's in my air guard unit were also Mistys. I have the book written by one of them that covers all of the F-100 FACS.

Sadly a war we should never have gotten into except for Lyndon Johnson

[JBinIll]

i remember doing some civil engineering on that particular piece of infrastructure back in '69.

Was that construction work or de-construction work?

Interesting link.Thanks for posting.

[dave]

I think of the words of the NVA commander at the end of 'We Were Soldiers'.

[Guamsst]

Sadly a war we should never have gotten into except for Lyndon Johnson

Its a chicken and the egg thing. We got into it to stop the rampant spread of communism by force. We got out of it and the communist took over. In the end communism did not spread all over the world so some see it as pointless, others see it as being successful in making Russia/China less enthusiastic about pushing communism on other countries.

As with Iraq, my problem is not IF we should have gooten involved, but what we should have done once we got involved.

[pmclaine]

VN was initially a noble cause with poor planning/management. Everything that was thought bad of the NV taking over came to fruition - collectivization, reeducation, killing of the opposition and enslavement of the population. Mentioning this to my commie black jeans wearing prof in college all I got from him was "There were some abuses".

Now there is a professor out there claiming that Joe Stalin never murdered any of his people and he is getting cheered when he says it (not jeered I wrote it right). All just a big lie. Will those that usually get so indignant about "Deniers" be protesting where this professor speaks? Scary times.

Regards Iraq my only issue there was the basing the war so heavily on the weapons of mass destruction. We had the broken UN resolutions that violated the 91 seize fire, we had him screwing with the atomic energy invest, we had him lighting up our aircraft as they made their proscribed flights. These alone would have been enough. We had the opportunity to hold the UN to the fire and make a statement "Either enforce your resolutions now and show the world the UN means something or we leave this sackless waste of space organization" Not that we should fight every morally corrupt dictator out there but we certainly had the high ground to say if the world believes in the rights of the individual man and abhors seeing people in opression than Saddam has to go.

In any of these decisions as a parent that may have the worry of having a kid go off to a Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan I would base supporting that on the threat to the American way of life as guaranteed by the Constitution and the belief that the leaders making the decisions were as comiited to bringing my kid home safely as they were to the prosecution of the war. Currently I'm not sure there is commitment to the Constitution and Benghazi leads me to believe there is little care for the fighters.

[goo]

one thing vietnam taught me was how to be sensitive and politically correct.
hence, i find the following old quote (which use to be on the ordinance shop bulkhead in chulai in 1969) to be officially not funny anymore.

"you'll wonder where the yellow went
when you naphalm the orient."