anus detector on

Shall we move this to a newsgroup where it is on-topic?

Doug Miller wrote:
In article . com, wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
...
The Paris peace accords decreed a
cease-fire in January 1973. The position of the US at that time was that if
the North violated the cease-fire agreement, we would resume bombing of North
Viet Nam. In August 1973, Congress voted to require the President to obtain
their approval before resuming bombing; the North invaded the South a few
weeks later. That was a *year* before Ford took office. My statement stands:
the Democrat-controlled Congress cut Nixon off at the knees.


I'll agree that weakened Nixon's ablity to
threaten North Vietnam, but the absence of
US air support was not the deciding factor
that lost the war. It was the loss of US
funding to South Vietnam that led to the
collapse of their military.

Wrong. As noted above, the cutoff of US bombing raids against the North in
August '73 resulted in an invasion of the South only a few weeks later. That
invasion led to the collapse of the South. The funding cutoff was simply the
final nail in the coffin.


First of all, there already were communist troops in
South Vietnam. The Cease-fire allowed parts of South
Vietnam to remain under their control. At the time
hostilities were renewed both sides accused the other
of violating the cease-fire. By then the Viet Cong
had nearly been obliterated by the US miltary, US
bombing had taken its toll on the North, South Vietnam
stil have about twice the population of the North and
the US had been 'Vietnamizing' the war for a number of
years. The idea that South Veitnam could not fend off
an invasion simply because it did not have US air support
doesn't hold up.

This is also reflected by the fact that it took two more
years of fighting before the North Vietnamese were
able to take Saigon to end the war.


Perhaps more accurately, it was the gross
incompetence, abject irresponsibility and
rife corruption of the South Vietnamese
government that lost them the war. Though
at the time I still thought they were less
oppressive and bloodthirsty than the communists.
In retrospect, perhaps they were just not
as well organized.

In retrospect it's very clear that the communists were *far* more oppressive
and bloodthirsty than any of the governments of the South, corrupt as they
were.

There is no question that they did inflict far more suffering.

--

FF