Wikipedia: Vietnam War/Talk

There is just so much information that ought to go in this article. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre, the antiwar movement in the U.S., the Cambodian bombing, the Paris Peace talks....the list is endless. Maybe as I have time I will add more--this is just a rough outline and a first stab at expanding this article. This is a potentially contentious subject, so it is important to try to be objective.

Hey dude, great job starting it. I couldn't just stand to see this page left blank, even something small mentioning it is better than nothing. I hope it will get people going and they will add righteous material to it.

Vietnamization proved effective

: Huh ? It proved exactly opposite. Army of South Vietnam lost. Taw

: The article indicates that Congress reneged on Nixon's pledge of military assistance for "Vietnamization". The only thing proved here is that "Vietnamization" did not occur. Whether it would or would not have worked is a moot point in 2001.

: The point of Vietnamization was that Vietnam would fight its own wars, so if it was necessary for the US to intervene militarily, then I would say that the policy was a failure.

There are three issues here:

: 1. What exactly, is the definition of "Vietnamization" as proposed by the Nixon administration?
: 2. Was this policy implemented as defined?
: 3. If the policy was implemented as defined, was it successful or not?

Further discussion is pointless until these three questions are addressed.

Okay, I'll give it a shot:

Vietnamization was the process of increasing training of South Vietnamese troops to the point that they would be able to take over the roles being played by American troops previously.

This policy was implemented as defined here.

The policy was successful enough that American troops were able to withdraw from Vietnam in stages as the policy was carried out.

It was not intended by the Nixon Administration that this would be the end of US attention to the war, or the end of US support for the South Vietnamese government when Veitnamization was implemented. It just kinda worked out that way.

On a related note, information was added to this article incorporating the perspectives found in Richard Nixon's memoirs, with the intention of supporting the stated aim that Wikipedia ought not be biased. Those additions have either been edited away, or qualified, while other statements of opinion are not similarly qualified. This is an extremely emotional topic area, obviously. Trying to create a balanced article is going to be very difficult no matter what we do, and reacting emotionally to the changes that are going to come as we hammer this thing out isn't going to help all that much. There are many viewpoints on Vietnam, and this article needs to be open to them so long as they meet the standards of the project. Identifying disputed points is a very good idea, but keep in mind that many of the points stated are going to be disputed -- it'll be better to identify the varying positions than to simply edit them away.