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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

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Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#261

Post by nsonha »

skzv wrote: post #159
ghostly_s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

I can understand the concern. It can mislead people about what the past really looked like. An example: this same model colorized the Golden Gate white: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/3487a03626fd86d4f8c814636... In my case I wasn't too concerned, since I was sharing the photos with my family, who understood they were artificially colorized. My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in…

what about photos that were taken in colors but then get edited to look a certain way (most of photos on the internet)?

and what about those space photos?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#262

Post by badmadrad »

teclordphrack2 wrote: post #256
hooande wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We didn't lose though.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#263

Post by crossroadsguy »

kumarvvr wrote: post #233
crossroadsguy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just how we Indians keep telling ourselves we didn’t really lose those wars against China. But we literally were thrashed at will and when they (China) kind of got tired or thought they taught us a lesson they stopped. Exactly the same way our close neighbours Pakistan keeps thinking they didn’t really lose any wars against us. Even the people who were not even a foetus during those wars. Emotion trumps facts it…

Totally agree. The narrative about China is mostly political tomfoolery, as the party that faced the war, was in power for decades after the war, giving it a tremendous opportunity to re-write history. They conveniently blamed some scapegoats and shut down the discussion, more or less. Nehru was more interested in appeasement than long term strategic thinking, when it comes to international affairs. I think it stems…

I agree to some extent but since you referred to the past I’m kinda doubtful where you’re going with it.

Nehru was quite a long-term thinker and a statesman. Hell it’s a miracle he navigated the country through the hell hole the cold war was.

Sad thing is he inherited a country and the people who just couldn’t rise above a certain level and that was where the Brits left us. On top of that the Brits ensured they left us broken and finished and deliberately at that I believe. I maybe wrong but I just can’t bring myself to look at the colonisers in any positive light. Trust me I’ve tried.

Again since you mentioned Nehru (while I’m not accusing you but it’s a pet “But Nehru” phrase used by the ultra nationalist right wing India of today[1]) and the past Govts, and yes they had their own follies and drawbacks, I just want to set the record straight that the current Govt has set India even further back by decades and I don’t see it recovering. Especially so as I majority will again elect current party for religious bigotry and things like temple.

While the past Govts could’ve done a lot lot better the current Govt has been successful in delivering the final blow.

[1] To others who aren’t familiar with the country and its pilots and scene today it’s actually funny. If something BJP the ruling ultra right wing party does and it fails and harms the public ;usually the case) the national chorus becomes “but what about Nehru”. Even if the intention was to fail or harm the public the chorus remains the same. Also Nehru died in 1964.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#264

Post by teleforce »

wahern wrote: post #93
refenestrator wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was huge ethnic and class component to the Vietnam conflict. In fact, in many ways it was far more important than the nominal communist character of the North, at least from the Vietnamese perspective. Here's a factoid I recently learned: something like 80+% of Vietnamese refugees were ethnic Chinese (Hoa people), despite constituting a minority of the population from which they fled. Rarely discussed in Americ…

Perhaps we can go back in history a little bit further.

The name Vietnam most probably based on Nanyue or Nam Viet a small little known kingdom created by Qin Dynasty deputy General, name Zhao Tuo or Tro Duo, a Han Chinese [1]. The indigenous or the native people of central and south Vietnam are not from China, they are mainly from Austronesian origin probably Taiwan so called Chams or Cham people [2]. They were the main inhabitants of the land for more than a thousand years (around 1500 years) and had a flourishing Champa kingdoms from 2nd to 16th century AD. The Chams mainly Muslim at the time, had been evicted just like the Moro in the Spain during the Spanish Inquisition or forced to convert. The eviction is completed after the Kinh people from the north displaced them during the Nam tien or "March to the South" and by doing that essentially tripled the original northern kingdom area size [3]. It's a kind of ethnic cleansing by today's standard.

The Kinh is originally ethnic Chinese intermarriage with local Tai-Kadai of the northern Vietnam. For about a thousand years they were essentially conquered and ruled by imperial China. As an analogy the Chams is like the Maya people of Vietnam, until they were eventually evicted rather than assimilated in around 16th AD by the Nguyen lords from the north to the other surrounding countries/areas towards the end of Nam tien movements.

The Chams has a proper civilization called Champa just like the Mayan civilization. The Chams' language is the pre-cursor to the modern Malay and Indonesian language. Their oldest writing on a stone tablet namely Dong Yeng Chau contains an old classical writing of Chams languages in the 4th century AD and was discovered recently in modern Quang Nam province, central Vietnam. It is amazingly still comprehensible if you know the modern language [4]. Interestingly the old name for Quang Nam is Simhapura or Lion City, and it is highly probable than the Cham people conquered Singapore (Singapura) and renamed it similar to their capital's name just like York in the UK becomes New York in the US.

[1]http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2018/05/ethnic-origin-of-...

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chams

[3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_ti%E1%BA%BFn

[4]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C3%B4ng_Y%C3%AAn_Ch%C...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#265

Post by tuan »

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.

Vietnam GDP historical data: https://tradingeconomics.com/vietnam/gdp

From https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview:

"Vietnam’s development over the past 30 years has been remarkable. Economic and political reforms under Đổi Mới, launched in 1986, have spurred rapid economic growth, transforming what was then one of the world’s poorest nations into a lower middle-income country. Between 2002 and 2018, GDP per capita increased by 2.7 times, reaching over US$2,700 in 2019, and more than 45 million people were lifted out of poverty"

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#266

Post by csours »

Rendello wrote: post #88
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…

I like this video about a soldier on the ground who realized quickly why the war was unwinnable. The cycle of killing and destruction left the people with nothing but anger and pain, leading them to fight even harder: > it became clear within three or four months, That my reasons for being in Vietnam were not clear. I mean this notion of defending the people against these invaders from North Vietnam. The people hated…

The US had no real conception of what 'winning' was, no real connection to the actual politics.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#267

Post by skzv »

nsonha wrote: post #261
skzv wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand the concern. It can mislead people about what the past really looked like. An example: this same model colorized the Golden Gate white: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/3487a03626fd86d4f8c814636... In my case I wasn't too concerned, since I was sharing the photos with my family, who understood they were artificially colorized. My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in…

what about photos that were taken in colors but then get edited to look a certain way (most of photos on the internet)? and what about those space photos?

Even every photo you take with a smartphone these days is altered by a machine learned model, put through some filter, and tuned in some way, even if it's subtle.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#268

Post by steve76 »

vmception wrote: post #87
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.

Yeah I dont really understand the cognitive dissonance people have over that war. Vietnam has a single party Communist Party that teaches Marxist ideals while having upgraded to state capital patches like every other marxist ideology worshipping party. They are geopolitically irrelevant enough for that never to bother anyone. The US was there to stop that specific thing from happening and didnt. US lost, Vietnam was…

[dead]

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#269

Post by kumarvvr »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #263
kumarvvr wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. The narrative about China is mostly political tomfoolery, as the party that faced the war, was in power for decades after the war, giving it a tremendous opportunity to re-write history. They conveniently blamed some scapegoats and shut down the discussion, more or less. Nehru was more interested in appeasement than long term strategic thinking, when it comes to international affairs. I think it stems…

I agree to some extent but since you referred to the past I’m kinda doubtful where you’re going with it. Nehru was quite a long-term thinker and a statesman. Hell it’s a miracle he navigated the country through the hell hole the cold war was. Sad thing is he inherited a country and the people who just couldn’t rise above a certain level and that was where the Brits left us. On top of that the Brits ensured they left…

This sounds suspiciously like whataboutism.

"That person may have done better, but what about the present person?"

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#270

Post by cloverich »

michelpp wrote: post #217

"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 -…

> a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs

That book is extremely pro communist (hence the title). This is a pretty poor take on the war for several reasons, not least of which "maximum military effort" and didn't use most powerful weapons are somehow in the same sentence. They literally did not use their maximum military effort (not just on the atomic bomb front). It was a political war full of mishaps that were capitalized on by North Vietnam. I also thought PRC and Russia backed North Vietnam which seems relevant. The general point that military might isn't the sole determinant of a wars outcome is true and important -- and also pretty obvious.

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