>
>      I agree with your articulate statement of the facts about Vietnam,
> Robert. It is too easy for Hawks and conservatives to oversimplify the
> Vietnam experience and put Third World struggles into a Cold War
> world-view that has no semblance of reality.
>
>                              Howard

Howard-

I don't really understand this. This movement for national liberation took
place within the context of the Cold War. There is, of course, more to it
than was revealed by the propaganda of either the US or the USSR at the
time (although a re-reading of contemporaneous Soviet critiques of the war
show a much more accurate representation of the facts and realities of the
situation than the US official line did); however, the fact of the Cold War
provided a context that a.) permitted the US leadership (even with
something as flimsy as the "domino theory") to rally public support
(successfully for a few years) for overt intervention and eventual (until
very recently)economic ostraciztion and b.) gave Ho and the Vietnamese
people at least an alternative source of (modest) economic and
(not-so-modest) strategic military support. Keep in mind the fact that
there was a decent amount of PUBLIC, not to mention military and
governmental, support for using nuclear weapons against Vietnam. Were it
not for the fact of the Cold War, this disaster might have happened.

Or not...

- Don DeBar