Forty+ years after withdrawal from Vietnam it is interesting to look back.
There is no doubt that ADF did not win and that ADF, if it had fought alone, could not have defeated Vietnam.
But, the war glorifiers ignore the fact that ADF were in fact defeated and left before the war intensified. If ADF had not left, the ADF losses would have been more severe when North Vietnam overran the country.
Whitlam's withdrawal from Vietnam brought the wrath of USA on him and USA later deposed Whitlam.
Arthur Calwell's 1965 speech predicted that South Vietnam would not be saved and USA would be humiliated.
On the other hand, the counter-arguments were also strong, and they deserve much closer attention than they commonly receive today.
Calwell's reply to Menzies' announcement on May 4, 1965 remains one of the greatest parliamentary speeches in our history, and there is perhaps no better way to mark this anniversary than to Google it, and read it for yourself. It sets out all the issues that were to dominate the debate over the coming years, and the resonances with many of the issues we face today are extraordinary.
In a remarkable reminder of the days when our political leaders used Parliament to present arguments and debate issues, Calwell set out the case against Menzies' decision with great clarity and precision. He did not contest the seriousness of Australia's strategic situation, but with extraordinary prescience he foresaw precisely why the commitment of western forces to combat operations on the ground would not save South Vietnam, and why it would humiliate the US.
But despite the power of Calwell's argument, it is not clear as we look back today that he had all the right on his side. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, another Vietnam-era statesman who has recently passed from the scene, used to argue that the United States' and Australia's fight in Vietnam won time for the newly independent countries of south-east Asia to find their feet, and thus contributed vitally to the emergence of the stable, prosperous south-east Asia in the 1970s and 1980s.
And while the US certainly was humiliated in Vietnam, just as Calwell predicted, that was not the end of the story. In one of history's strangest switchbacks, military failure in Vietnam led Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972, when the deal he did with Mao laid the foundation for Asia's post-Vietnam order. Far from withdrawing, the US emerged after 1972 as the uncontested leader of that order, ensuring Asia's and Australia's security ever since. No one on either side of the Vietnam debate could have predicted that.
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http://www.theage.com.au/comment/vietnam-the-other-war-we-need-to-remember-20150... 
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