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Message: [QUOTE="bags27, post: 2349036, member: 6761"] Perhaps. I hope that someday we can view the Vietnam War (our commonly accepted term) more benignly; otherwise, the continued bitterness of a spectacularly immoral waste of human beings. But in fact, it didn't seem to me, at least, to curtail radical nationalism (your phrase; not sure what it means: what is "non-radical nationalism"?): the Shah falls soon afterwards with enormous repercussions to American foreign policy (not to mention toppling a president); the USSR, believing in America's demonstrated weakness to follow through, invades Afghanistan; and China gains enormous prestige because of its support of Vietnam. And of course, both Vietnam (united now) and Cambodia became Communist--though the latter not permanently so. I take your point on the others you name (Thailand, etc), but was the debacle of Vietnam actually necessary for the U.S. to impose those regimes? The U.S. had been doing that in South America for the entire 20th C. Again, assuredly we (intellectuals, if you wish) can read positive things into the Vietnam War, but on balance I reluctantly continue to view it only as an unmitigated disaster in every conceivable way. [/QUOTE]