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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

#321

Post by jerglingu »

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.

> 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.

An observation not lost to the ground forces. I was in the US infantry 10+ years ago. We were well trained and lethal. We had an overwhelming technological targeting advantage. We had the support of a sizeable amount of the local population that we generally stayed a few steps ahead of the lower and mid tier rungs of whatever insurgency we were fighting (Al Qaeda in Iraq [ISIS predecessor], the Taliban, whatever-local-Afghan-village-thugs-in-later-deployments). We understood the war wasn't purely militaristic in "kill counts" or territory sieged, and the lessons of irregular warfare (hearts and minds) were beaten in to us.

The biggest issue, at least for us that actually had to kill and be shot at, was that the progressively restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) defanged us, both from lethal and willpower standpoints. There were so many nested bullet points and gotchas and just a wide breadth of rules that no person that wasn't a lawyer could keep up with it. Arbitrary things like "if you are in a gunfight with insurgents and they fall back into a cave, no matter who the insurgent is or how many casualties they were lucky to have inflicted on your forces, you absolutely cannot roll grenades into the cave." Very specific, very arbitrary, very confusing. Furthermore, it was beat into us that the full weight of the law was to fall on our heads if we screwed these things up. Which makes sense from a humanitarian point of view, but that lingering legal guillotine built in a sizeable amount of self-doubt and apprehension in us where we weren't ever sure when or if we were allowed to be lethal.

I imagine a set of ROE was drafted, and enough bureaucrats scribbled in "small edits" that the overarching sense of direction was lost in the sea of Great Ideas by Smart People and nobody with both the political clout and common sense was able to get to these revisions before they were inflicted on us on the ground. Not dissimilar to scope creep you see in software, except parties involved couldn't just vote with their feet and leave. That, and those functioning as the wars' PM's weren't as much concerned with delivering results as they perhaps were with empire building and political posturing. Just a god damn mess

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#322

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

Maybe a nitpick, but it's weird to call "Vietnam" the winner in the civil war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#323

Post by anigbrowl »

badmadrad wrote: post #260
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

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.

Yes, the US lost. The government in Afghanistan doesn't have much institutional depth or very firm control of the country. It's not a military defeat in the sense of having your army crushed, but an occupation that never achieves peacetime status is a failure by great power standards. Don't feel bad though, the US is the 3rd empire to make the exact same mistake in Afghanistan. It'd be comical if there weren't so much human suffering involved.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#324

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

Tell someone in your social circle that you're considering a business deal with a company in Afghanistan and might be flying out there next month, see what sort of reaction you get.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#325

Post by anigbrowl »

xzlzx wrote: post #215
xzlzx wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, bring it down to the personal level - that's like losing a fistfight but comforting yourself that you could go and burn the other person's house down any time because you have a tank full of gasoline at home. I mean, you could, but that wouldn't unbloody your nose.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#326

Post by BelenusMordred »

badmadrad wrote: post #260
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

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.

Giving up isn't defeat? If this was sports would anyone accept that definition?

The US just signed a peace deal with the Taliban agreeing to and withdraw all their troops and release aligned 5000 prisoners, the Taliban are also allowed back in government. Technically they could be in power at the next election.

What actual goal was fulfilled here after two decades of war?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#327

Post by ClumsyPilot »

germandiago wrote: post #115
tasogare wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and North Korea current poverty is totally made by the international sanctions lead by the US. Vietnam is a great example that a communist country can open slowly if not bullied into a antagonistic position by the US.

Do not defend communism, man... you have too many history records to know it is a failure in all senses: poverty and lack of freedom. For the record, China and Vietnam is not what I would call communist. That is more North Korea or Cuba. In Vietnam even foreigners can buy property already nowadays. I do not recall the exact conditions but I know people who did it. It is a capitalist system, actually. With a lot of co…

"Everyone that has intellectual honesty knows that"

If we are into intellectual honesty, then North Korea does not match any features of Socialism or Communism I've ever read or heard of.

Tt is a totalitarian absolute monarchy bordering on "worship god emperror"

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#328

Post by chewz »

My ex-wife Grandmother had spent over 10 years (1964-1975) in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a reporter on the Vietnamese side during the Vietnam War and consecutive conflicts (Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia 1978).

She was the first European to walk all length of Ho Chi Minh trail, lived in Saigon undercover during American occupation and wrote couple of books about the Vietnam Wars.

She was telling a lot of stories and I remember some people from US visiting her in 90s hoping to use her contacts in order to find some lost American POWs.

Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monika_Warne%C5%84ska

https://www.amazon.com/PFADE-DURCH-DEN-DSCHUNGEL-Vietnam-Rep...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_trail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#329

Post by wrevock »

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…

Ehh no, we have history of thousands of years clashing with China so no we aren't that close to China. We might have some "co-operation" geographically and politically but the best depiction of our relationship is 2 guys shaking hands with knives on the other hand.

Oh and if you do some digging you will know that HCM sent a few letters to Trumman asking for US's aid, we could have been ally 70 years earlier, but no, the US branded him as a commie and the rest is history. Btw, the first line of our Proclamation of Independence is pretty much a paraphrase of the US's Declaration of Independence, that's to show how much we wanted the US to be ally.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#330

Post by dragonsky »

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…

One of the problems with how people consider the Vietnam war is that they don't understand that it was not the US military (and partners) against the North Vietnamese military, it was the US et el against the entire North Vietnamese population along with a lot of southern sympathisers.

If the aim of the US was to ensure that Vietnam did not end up being communist, then they had to convince the people not to become communist. What they did, in some of the most horrific ways possible, was to convince the Vietnamese people, and a lot of those in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos that the western democracies didn't care about them as people, they were just playing politics with their lives. This left the Chinese backed communists and easy road to winning the hearts and minds.

The US lost the military war because they lost the public relations war, both at home, and in the country they were trying to liberate.

If you look at later wars, Gulf War 2, Afghanistan, you could argue that they have learnt nothing. You will never win people over to your way of thinking by dropping bombs on them, that just ensures that they will never bow to your will.

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