To correspond with the what really happened, rather than the mythology believed on campus and by the media and the Democrats:

A...scathing critic of the VFW speech who held such views in 1975 is Stanley Karnow, author of an outdated but still widely read history of the Vietnam War. "The 'loss' of Cambodia," Karnow said, would be "the salvation of the Cambodians." Senator Christopher Dodd, then a member of the House, claimed in 1975, "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now."

Well, we know how well that turned out.

In response to the President's comments about abandoning Vietnam, some have argued that abandonment was not that important because Vietnam is now a nice capitalist country. This argument shows a callousness toward the loss of human life (in the late 1970s) and the harsh repression of political dissent (from 1975 to today) that is thoroughly out of keeping with how these people normally view international affairs. Hysterical hatred of the Iraq War and President Bush seems the only possible explanation for such an inconsistency. The present-day capitalist economy of Vietnam, moreover, is not reason to doubt the wisdom of U.S. involvement. Instead, it is reason to doubt the wisdom of North Vietnamese involvement. While America was fighting for capitalism in South Vietnam, North Vietnam was fighting to destroy it.

Can someone explain to me why we should be listening to these people now?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Of course there's no Media Conspiracy™. They're too incompetent to have a conspiracy.

They just guzzle their own bathwater.

Can someone explain to me why we should be listening to these people now?

Not the ones you reference. Handing the South Vietnamese to the communist North was, for lack of a suitable word, unconscionable. And I spent a year there so that was not an abstract injustice to me.

But I would separate that lot from those who opposed turning Vietnam into a war.

More on the subject: "Not surprisingly, Vietnamese Communists exploited that post-Diem instability and adopted a more aggressive and ambitious stance. Moyar argues that President Lyndon Johnson rejected several aggressive strategic options available to him, options that would have permitted South Vietnam to continue the war, either without the employment of US ground forces or by a limited deployment of US forces in strategically advantageous positions in the southern part of North Vietnam or in Laos."

Tracinski.

Well golly gee, that sounds much like a continuation of the Eisenhower policy.

It's going to be moot soon anyway. Unless the US extends tours to 18 months, calls on the national reserves, or brings back the draft, there simply aren't enough troops left to keep fighting at current strength. And extending duty tours will force more staff attrition and make matters worse.

Spin it however you want, but a partial withdrawl is going to happen in the next 12 months.

Adrasteia,
there are enough troops. We don't need troops cooling there heels in Europe or Japan any more.

Things could have been done better. But that's the case after the fact of almost every human endeavor. We don't need to walk away and create more problems for ourselves or for the Iraqi people.

Moyar argues that President Lyndon Johnson rejected several aggressive strategic options available to him, options that would have permitted South Vietnam to continue the war, either without the employment of US ground forces or by a limited deployment of US forces in strategically advantageous positions in the southern part of North Vietnam or in Laos."

The strategy that made the most sense was to go north of the DMZ about 50 miles and then cross over into Laos at the same level and then basically build a wall from the ocean across over to Thailand. This would have erased the Ho Chi Min trail and kept the arms and troops out of both Cambodia and South Vietnam. Johnson was an idiot and would not allow it to happen.

Rand,
You will probably really want to read the following, credits included.
Mike
Thanks to Stephen Green, http://vodkapundit.com/archives/009004.php, I found

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200708u/kaplan-vietnam