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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#211

Post by alephnan »

jimmies wrote: post #19

I am a software developer in the US with a Vietnamese origin, so I am no historian and my views are probably skewed. I am among the minority Northern Vietnamese people in the US, most Vietnamese people in the Bay Area are (refugees) from the South. People can tell where one comes from with one's accent. It was undeniable that much suffering and injustice was done for Southern people, especially after the war ended. S…

As a south Vietnamese refugee, I think you make good points. I disagree here:

> The guy had lost everything, he had nothing left to lose. That was the moment I realized it was inevitable that the North would inevitably win

I think we can find many counterexamples of other peoples where the result did not turn out in their favor

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#212

Post by YinLuck- »

knz_ wrote: post #204
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe their soceity would have been more successful if it wasn't bombed to hell and back by the Americans then made a soft client state of the USSR and then boycotted by the West. If left to develop its communist government by itself, it could be like China today - a superpower that's going to overtake the USA by important measures. Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for…

> If left to develop its communist government by itself, it could be like China today - a superpower that's going to overtake the USA by important measures. Ho Chi Mihm was a puppet of china. There was no 'developing on their own'. > Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for them and the US should have left them alone. Yeah, letting Russia and China subjugate the world woul…

Imagine being an America. Confidently sprouting such nonsense. You can literally google what happened between China and Vietnam after the Vietnam War and disprove your entire narrative.

Go eat a big mac and overdose on oxy

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#213

Post by dleslie »

coliveira wrote: post #165
stolen_biscuit wrote: post #74

There's a lot of people in the comments saying that Vietnam didn't really "win" the war. Their political and military objectives were ultimately successful, those of the US/South Vietnam were not. That's what a victory is. The cost of victory was very high, but it was a pretty unambiguous success for the Vietnamese.

Many people in the US never accepted that they were defeated. And the US media did a good job of never making this point (the defeat against Vietnam) clear. It is a version of the "lost cause" phenomenon of the US south.

It's not simply accepting defeat that poses difficulty; it's being anything but the best, and first, and most able. American exceptionalism isn't just a cliche, it's a cult of identity, a nationalist truth that cannot be abridged without violent opposition.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#214

Post by kumarvvr »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #74

There's a lot of people in the comments saying that Vietnam didn't really "win" the war. Their political and military objectives were ultimately successful, those of the US/South Vietnam were not. That's what a victory is. The cost of victory was very high, but it was a pretty unambiguous success for the Vietnamese.

The worlds most advanced, wealthiest and militarily powerful country did not obtain it's primary objective in the war, stopping the spread of communism.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#215

Post by xzlzx »

xzlzx wrote: post #201
nine_k wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

IMO it’s a tad silly to say that the U.S. lost these wars. Can you really lose a war with a massive nuclear arsenal on your side? It’s crazy that this seems to never be mentioned. This seems quite similar to Americans demanding their gun rights to protect themselves from the government. Well, I hate to inform you of this, but the government could out gun you since time immemorial. It’s a wild argument for gun rights.

How can you “win” a war when the other country can press a single button and eliminate 100% of the people in your country?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#216

Post by peteretep »

refenestrator wrote: post #52
peteretep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t a war of independence from the US, it was a civil war the US was dumb enough to get involved in.

It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US. It would have been over by the mid-1950s, otherwise. 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule.

> It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US.

The Vietnam War is largely considered to be 1955-1975. The French were out by 1954, and American troops in any number were there from 1965 to 1973.

> 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule.

5x to 7x as many South Vietnamese troops died compared to Americans, who had combat troops there for less than half of those 20 years.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#217

Post by michelpp »

"From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country—and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."

A Peoples History of the United States - Howard Zinn

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#218

Post by mulmen »

trboyden wrote: post #196
aantix wrote: post #60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hiNanqC5aQ My dad was a hospital corpsman on the USS Repose (hospital ship) during Vietnam. Having seen some of his operating room photos, I can't imagine that we were on the "winning" side. The video above is his amateur footage he took while aboard the ship. Probably 1968/1969. I had the film digitized after he passed in 2016.

Quite a coincidence. My dad was an HM3 on the USS Frontier from 1964 to 1967. He also passed in 2016. He never talked much about his service though. I only remember one story he told where US soldiers were issued bullet proof vests for the first time, and they chose to try them out by shooting each other with M16s. The result wasn't pretty.

Fascinating. I wonder what the psychology is there.

I saw a Plymouth Superbird a couple years ago that had “original damage”. It looked like it had been stolen and taken on a joyride. No straight body panels, scratches everywhere.

The story went that some kid got drafted and figured he was never coming home so he spent his life savings on the fastest car he could and tried to have as much fun as possible.

I assume it is a similar state of mind to a terminal medical diagnosis.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#219

Post by bnegreve »

1123581321 wrote: post #160
xwdv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fake, and pretty soon people will not even want to entertain the idea of looking at photos or videos that are not in color.

It’s not entirely fake. These colorization processes exaggerate information about the grayscale tones that our eyes can’t pick up due to subtlety or unfamiliarity with the time, place or people depicted. So while the colorized photos are not entirely faithful, they do tell us more about the scene the photo captured.

> These colorization processes exaggerate information about the grayscale tones that our eyes can’t pick up

It is a machine learning model, so not really.

Instead, the model makes an educated guess of the most likely color, based on vast amounts of pictures sampled un-uniformly from very different areas of the world.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#220

Post by kumarvvr »

hooande wrote: post #210
nine_k wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

The goal of the US in Afghanistan was to deny Al-Qaeda the use of one third of a country to plan their operations. That required taking control of that territory from the Taliban, who were allowing Al-Qaeda to operate without restriction. The US did that. They harassed the Taliban and denied them complete control of territory for 20 years. Not sure how this could be viewed as a strategic defeat in any way

What happened to all the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" thing then?

At the end of 20 years, US indirectly had to negotiate with them.

So the other way of looking at it is, a bunch of un-educated, poorly trained, poorly equipped mountain people, who themselves are divided into many warring factions, stood their ground against the mightiest nation on earth, for 20 year, and in the end US negotiated with them for transfer of power.

Now, I see this as sheer political and administrative failure. Militarily, sure, the US has an upper hand and can pile up bodies like no other, But it failed to win the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. It could not change the govt., it could not bring stability and democracy to the region, it could not transform the society, and it could not even change the idea of itself in the minds of the Afghan people.

US is too powerful, militarily, to formulate effective strategies that further its goals. It is good in doing that economically, through sanctions, etc. But as a military force, it is too powerful for its own good.

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