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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

#301

Post by slacktide »

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.

Amazing... my aeromedical examiner, Dr Richard Pellerin, served as a special forces medical corpsman in Vietnam in 1969/1970. He also filmed his own observations and recently digitized/uploaded about an hour worth, along with narration. Powerful stuff. https://youtu.be/87Dd7GSNAPM

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#302

Post by azernik »

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…

Legally, whether something is a "chemical weapon" depends on whether it's used to attack people, or is used in population centers where many people will be directly injured regardless of intent.

See also the legal wrangling around US use of white phosphorous, which is 100% legal if used as an "illuminant" [https://treaties.unoda.org/t/ccwc_p3] (i.e. for flares), but not as a weapon against people.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#303

Post by teclordphrack2 »

badmadrad wrote: post #262
teclordphrack2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We didn't lose though.

Who is pulling out? Who's puppet government is already falling? Who is taking back control of every area we pulled out of? What did you "win". Do you really like getting kicked in the nuts?

Al-Qeada and other groups just shifted to other unrested regions and even caused unrest. At a global scale the war only caused other countries harm.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#304

Post by yossarian1408 »

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…

Depends on what you think the objectives were. Did the USA want to add another star to the Star Spangled Banner? Then yeah, they lost.

But if the objective of the USA was to prevent a domino of communism taking over all of South-East Asia, we can pretty clearly see where the advance of communism was stopped.

And if an American and a North Vietnamese communist from 1955 could see into the future 70 years, taking a tour around Hanoi or Saigon, I don't know if either would be so certain on their verdict of who 'won' or 'lost'. It might have been the North, but it certainly wasn't the communists.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#305

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

Ah yes, Afganistan, where Operation Cyclone funelled weapons to mujahadeen, which they used indiscriminantly against civilians. What could possibly go wrong?

And once USA took control of Afganistan, how has the situation improved?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#306

Post by vmception »

trop wrote: post #229
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…

> I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywood. Or a director with primarily french influences producing a war movie. Not sure if the stipulation is a war movie about Vietnam, or just plain a war movie. But certainly here's a list of some non-U.S. 20th century war movies, very vivid, biased towards France: The Battle of Algiers (French, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) Come and See (Russian, Elem Klimov, 1985) I…

Thanks! These are new to me

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#307

Post by azernik »

knz_ wrote: post #224
Baeocystin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China was not on friendly terms with the north. They invaded Vietnam shortly after the Americans left, in response to Vietnam's actions in Cambodia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

This is some propaganda for sure. ho chi mihn was a political prisoner and figurehead of the CCP state, similar to kim il-sung. The vietmanese state has been an extension of the CCP since the 70s. This isn't up for debate, it's objective fact.

Except for the Vietnamese invasion of the Chinese satellite regime in Cambodia, and the literal shooting war between China and Vietnam immediately afterwards.

The Sino-Soviet split was a Very Big Deal, and Vietnam was firmly on the Soviet side of that split.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#308

Post by p_j_w »

ncfausti wrote: post #58
nguyenkien wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without USA & France we wouldn't suffer from that war

I lived in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of months (before the pandemic). Vietnam is probably my favorite country I have ever visited. I hope to come back soon. When I was in HCMC, I visited the The War Remnants Museum. It is on the same level as Auschwitz in my mind. It made me physically ill. I was so unbelievably ashamed for my country and it's awful leaders during that time. The more I've learned about…

>When I was in HCMC, I visited the The War Remnants Museum. It is on the same level as Auschwitz in my mind. It made me physically ill.

I'm generally pretty stoic about these sorts of things, but that museum really did a number on me. I felt emotional and choked up most of the time and it put a damper on the rest of my day. I'm glad I went, though.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#309

Post by dundarious »

chrisco255 wrote: post #96
ncfausti wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of months (before the pandemic). Vietnam is probably my favorite country I have ever visited. I hope to come back soon. When I was in HCMC, I visited the The War Remnants Museum. It is on the same level as Auschwitz in my mind. It made me physically ill. I was so unbelievably ashamed for my country and it's awful leaders during that time. The more I've learned about…

Weird, because I grew up in the 80s and 90s and there was nothing but negative press about the Vietnam War. Consensus has been that it was a giant mistake for most of the past couple decades.

I think you're right it was quickly viewed as a "blunder", even just before the war's end, but I think GP might feel that "mistake" is underselling it to a shocking extent. The Strategic Hamlet Program amounted to herding people in South Vietnam into concentration camps -- no, not as awful as those of the Nazis, but concentration camps nonetheless. There were many other brutal policies inflicted on non-combatants (not just spontaneous outbursts, policies).

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#310

Post by vmception »

yossarian1408 wrote: post #304
vmception wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depends on what you think the objectives were. Did the USA want to add another star to the Star Spangled Banner? Then yeah, they lost. But if the objective of the USA was to prevent a domino of communism taking over all of South-East Asia, we can pretty clearly see where the advance of communism was stopped. And if an American and a North Vietnamese communist from 1955 could see into the future 70 years, taking a tou…

I don't think anybody indoctrinated with marxist teachings is satisfied with any current or attempted version of communism. So in that regard I would agree, I still say its an impossible standard not used for other conflicts.

Even the last massacre in China was because the protestors wanted to democratically have more communism instead of the liberalization of the markets and private ownership. That gets reduced to “students wanted democracy”, geopolitically it would have even been worse. (It is sad they were killed and that unity in that country relies on never mentioning it or any other strife)

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