This gets old.
<it is naive to believe that Korea and Viet Nam, along with other hotspots in Asia and the Americas, had nothing to do with the ambitions of China and the Soviet Union.>

Korea did, and the North only invaded after the "Truman Doctrine" left South Korea out of the US sphere of interest. (Sort of like after the US Ambassador, April What's-her-name, told the Iraqis we didn't care what happened to Kuwait.)

The interests of the Russians and Chinese in Vietnam seemed to be the same as the interests of the Chinese and Americans when the Russians invaded Afghanistan - bleed 'em. The Russians and Chinese knew the Vietnamese would be fighting them, too, if they moved in.

<Do you really think that North Vietnam had nothing to do with Soviet expansionism?>

I do not believe the Russians had any interest in expanding into Vietnam, and I believe history would bear that out.

<But it's not true that we were just dealing with little civil wars here. The communists, particularly the Soviet Union, had the specific ambition of taking over the planet, and pushed into many nations with this goal in mind. Pretending it ain't so isn't going to change anything.>

The USSR has historically been invaded, over and over. In WW II I think I remember 20 million USSR lives were lost. They've been invaded and slaughtered over and over, by Mongols, Germans and whoever. I think their armaments and history has shown they were primarily in a defensive mode. For instance, how long did it take them to make aircraft carriers to "project" power? They had the US almost on their borders. They were not on the US borders, until Castro was driven into their arms. (That'll get your blood pressure up.)

They may have had "world domination" on their minds, but their focus was on defense. That's hard to see if your worldview is "I'm friendly, but I need to be able to shoot you, but if you can shoot back you're one hostile SOB.

<Did we do the right thing in these conflicts to keep the communists in line? Did we waste lives for nothing? Should we have left them all alone and stayed home?>

We needed to be in Korea. Vietnam was another story. We could have learned from the British and the American Revolution. Or from the French in Vietnam, a fight, by the way, which was entirely financed by the US. We wasted lives, American lives, Canadian lives, Australian lives and Vietnamese lives for nothing, zero, zilch, for squat. Period. I think history bears that out, too, or did I miss something?

I'm tired. You'd do yourself a favor if you'd read the sentences rather than have a knee-jerk reaction to various words. And it would be a favor to me.

That's all for tonight.

Arf