Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side • Hacker News Board

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#281

Post by gota » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:56 AM UTC

ufo wrote: post #206

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask you something. Do you think a south-east asian country with ~100,000,000 people only had 50 people die from the COVID-19 virus? Answer honestly

The CDC currently rates Vietnam's covid levels as "Low" https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/covid-1/coronavirus-vie... It's generally seen as having as effective response against the pandemic. They closed borders early and have employed an effective testing and tracing strategy. Their data appears to be transparent and is corroborated by neighboring countries.

I just read this, posting the reference in another reply, seems to be a good enough summary:

"One of the reasons Vietnam was able to act so quickly and keep the case count so low is that the country experienced a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 and human cases of avian influenza between 2004 and 2010. As a result, Vietnam had both the experience and infrastructure to take appropriate action. Vietnam makes many key containment decisions in a matter of days, which may take weeks for governments in other countries to make. Although Vietnam is a highly centralized country, a number of key decisions were made at the local level, which also contributed to the swift response."

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-exemplar-vietnam

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#282

Post by objektif » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

badmadrad wrote: post #274

mort1merp0 wrote: post #164

I have a friend who served as a tank gunner in Vietnam. Has was wounded and sent home. He ended up with 4 teeth left after his jaw has been shot. He refused to accept that the US lost. No amount of reasoning would make him budge on that opinion. I dropped the subject as it was a risk to our friendship. I understand where he is coming from though. To have lost so many friends in addition to his personal injury, it wou…

it wasn't all for nothing. there was time when Americans cared about advancing a free world. Free from soviet style communism. And this was an ideal worth sacrificing for. Unfortunately, Americans have been demoralized by propaganda to the point of seeing freedom as something not worth dying for.

It is not your business or anybody's business to dictate what type of world people should live in. DropPing napalm on children is definitely not the right way to convince people on your vision of free world.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#283

Post by pie420 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #168

ska wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impressive how deep some of these psychological things run nearly 50 years on. It was such a blow to self-image that, let alone all the related domestic political fallout, people still have a hard time accepting what happened. The sheer amount of ink and celluloid spent trying to come to terms with this is awesome, and a little depressing.

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…

Korean War: won, South Korea was transformed into an american colony a la Japan, and is now used as a platform to counter China in the east as well as trading partner and military base.

Vietnam: countered Soviet expansionism and prevented Vietnam from becoming a communist regional superpower, Vietnam has not done much besides be a trading partner for the US since.

Grenada: won

Gulf wars: overwhelming victories. Destabilized the middle east, provided an opportunity for american megacorps to heavily profit and exert massive influence. Led to Arab spring which further destabilized the middle east. The middle east is essentially no longer in the picture in the game of global hegemony, and in large part has to rely on American refineries and american corporations to handle oil extraction.

Afghanistan: success, stimulated the American economy, very successful unemployment program (provided jobs for America's high school dropouts for 20 years), justified further weapons development plans, allowed america to build tons of bases to help counter China's Silk Road initiative by destabilizing the region.

Syria: mostly a failure at this point. The hope was to break Syria and build the Qatar gas pipeline to hurt Russia's hegemony on european energy supplies. Looks like that is a lost cause at this point, but of all the wars America has recently waged, this one is probably the most justifiable.

The world is no longer about winning wars and conquering territory. It's about destabilizing rising threats to your power. It's about toppling dictators and installing democracies, which are much easier to bribe. It's about countering your enemies/competitors (Russia, china, the middle east) initiatives and causing chaos in their neighborhood.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#284

Post by JCharante » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #7

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…

Leaving aside the question of whether anyone won that war, have you been to Vietnam? The country is developing extremely rapidly.

My jaw dropped the first time I went to Royal City in Hanoi. I hadn't seen anything like that in the US.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#285

Post by blackoil » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #189

ghostly_s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

Never tell someone to not do things like this. If it increases the audience all the better. It's the way people learn things. When you declare things as taboo it only hurts liberty.

There is a valid concern that people may learn/infer wrong things. Liberty isn't end all catch phrase.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#286

Post by pie420 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

dillondoyle wrote: post #228

whimsicalism wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say we won Gulf war II, we've definitely lost Syria by now, Afghanistan probably lost. That said, many of the well-known, long haul conflicts that the US are involved in are the ones they are most likely to lose. The ones they win they usually win quickly and are less well known. There are plenty of interventions post-WWII that have been quick successes for the US, esp. in Latin America.

Yeah Syria is interesting The problem with all these conflicts is winning is so poorly defined or multi-goal. What's winning in Syria? Getting rid of assad and then leaving? We could probably do that in a week or less and utterly demolish the country if we wanted. The consequences of 'winning' that war under that definition would probably be pretty horrible. But that doesn't seem to be the goal right now? There's the…

Winning in Syria was helping Qatar build their Qatar gas pipeline to Europe, but Russia stepped in and didn't let that happen. It was too big of a threat to Russia's most crucial export monopoly: energy to Europe.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#287

Post by kiliantics » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

cloverich wrote: post #270

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…

they dropped more bombs in Vietnam than in WWII, I'd say that sounds pretty maximal

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#288

Post by akdor1154 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #175

jimmies wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say the government is super evil and they covered up 99 deaths every 100 deaths for some reason, although we have no evidence that they did. They lost 50,000 people. The US lost half a million. Are you happy now?

Let me ask you something. Do you think a south-east asian country with ~100,000,000 people only had 50 people die from the COVID-19 virus? Answer honestly

Yes, absolutely. They have an authoritarian though somewhat benevolent government, and a culture of following public health advice.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#289

Post by dundarious » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

badmadrad wrote: post #255

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.

My understanding is that Ho Chi Minh was agitating for French socialists to join Lenin's 3rd International in the 1910s. I don't think he was a Soviet "agent" in any way, and had his own beliefs, aligning with Bolsheviks, certainly. However, you can definitely argue Vietnam was a client state of USSR.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#290

Post by open0 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #189

ghostly_s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

Never tell someone to not do things like this. If it increases the audience all the better. It's the way people learn things. When you declare things as taboo it only hurts liberty.

So, be like the guy that applied some shitty style-transfer algorithm to the Tuol Sleng concentration camp photos, which made some of the victims start smiling?