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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

#251

Post by kumarvvr »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #103
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.

I think if you're talking about the acute win/loss of the Vietnam war, then absolutely the North Vietnamese won. If the USA really wanted to win the war then they could have done it outright in 1967. But that would have been very ugly. Not an option. Did the Vietnamese people win the war? No. They've been living in poverty for 50 years and most of them still are in 2021, 50 years later.

They may be living in poverty, but they are living in self-respect. They have problems, but who doesn't. Do you think only money matters?

Such regressive thinking, that too about whole societies and nations. As if they are not human.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#252

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

postalrat wrote: post #236
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US misunderstand the Vietnamese perspective on the war pretty badly. Interestingly enough one of the best sources you can look at to learn about this is the documentary interview with McNamara, Fog of War. He's surprisingly frank about his own mistakes in perspective, as well as talking about conversations he had with his counterparts in later years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YONEXPMVaQM

The fog of war is an incredible documentary. I'd suggest it to anyone who is willing to watch it.

It and Iraq in Fragments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4) are the two most incredible documentaries I've ever seen on this topic.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#253

Post by publicola1990 »

vmception wrote: post #78

I saw a French movie about a French soldier in Vietnam set in 1945 I was also in France at the time when viewing the movie, it was very surreal in so many ways to be empathizing for a protagonist on one of the enemy sides - from an American perspective as I am an American. But I had never seen anything depicted about that war decades before the US got involved. I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywo…

"Centurions" movie and more importantly the novel by the same name on which movie is based, written by Richard Lopteguy, offers an incredible French perspective of Vietnam experience including the demoralising defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#254

Post by kumarvvr »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #4

These are some great photos! But I really do wonder if "the winning side" was _actually_ the winning side. It seems to me that nobody won, and it's very likely that the Vietnamese people ultimately lost bigtime. USA fought a similar war a decade earlier in Korea and now South Korea is one of the preeminent countries in the entire world. Imagine what could have been for South Vietnam? Instead the entire country has be…

Winning a war and living with the consequences are two very different things. Vietnam won the war. At great cost. Things might have been different if they lost.

But the US did lose the war, come out of the region and its primary objective of preventing a socialist govt. in Vietnam could not be achieved.

Was it worth it for Vietnam to win the war, that is a totally different question. Was it worth it for US to lose the war? Definitely not. The mightiest nation on earth could not overcome a peasant nation with guerrilla fighters and outdated equipment. That is a slap in the face.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#255

Post by badmadrad »

The US was fighting a proxy war with the soviet union. We had no interest in defeating the vietcong as much as stopping the spread of communism. Ho Chi Minh was a KGB agent and the communist revolution was largely born of soviet agitprop. So there is another layer to this conflict. Even though vietnam "won" they really were just puppets in a shadow war and it came at a huge cost for them. Much less than US.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#256

Post by teclordphrack2 »

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

You lost. Deal with it. The level of immaturity... coming up with stories to tell yourself.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#257

Post by kumarvvr »

marcodiego wrote: post #71

The photo https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-StC-dVAdOns/YK081DEgPdI/AAAAAAAAd... is probably a captured M16 since, AFAIK, Vietnam used AK-47. What impressed me the most: "Using home-brewed chemicals, they developed their pictures in the open air or in underground tunnels" if by chemicals to develop photos in open air means no need for a dark room, that is really not something easy to do with then available technology. It is…

The US avoided international courts because, technically, the chemical weapons were to clear forest covers and not intended for use on civilians and military personnel.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#258

Post by cloverich »

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.

> It’s a wild argument for gun rights.

Not really, because it changes the political calculus for exactly the reasons you mentioned. If the US government wants to forcefully take over, and they aren't aligned with gun owners, they have to go through them. In that scenario its more likely they are a shade of grey evil than "lets methodically exterminate all of our citizens". In the former, gun owners standing their ground would be a major political hurdle.

I'd actually argue pro gun rights are a bit silly because those same parties aren't pro encryption / privacy. So they give up the tools they'd need to defend themselves (encryption) from all but the most direct assault. And I'd consider a soft assault by violating their privacy much more plausible.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#259

Post by notsureaboutpg »

afterburner wrote: post #222
skzv wrote: post #100

I wrote a quick script the other day to colorize directories of family photos. I realized it would be cool to colorize these photos, too. Here's the album: https://imgur.com/a/aJbpMjf The script uses the Image Colorization API from DeepAi. Here's the repo for the colorizing model itself: https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify I don't think the DeepAi API allows you to adjust the model parameters, but you definitely can i…

This is really great. Even if the colours might be off from actual reality, it brings it to life nonetheless.

On the flip side it doesn't bring it to life for me because of the mistakes.

Several times you can see a hand is grey while the face is colorized to a peach type color. Wicker baskets are colored grey. All clothes are blue for some reason.

That kind of stuff just tells me it's making assumptions which are likely to be incorrect and I discount the colorization altogether.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#260

Post by badmadrad »

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

Agreed, We literally took over Afghanistan in a month and installed a government but somehow we lost? We just don't really have a dog in the fight anymore. This isn't defeat.
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