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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

#331

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…

> 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.

But Communism flourished in Vietnam. So if you want to argue domino theory (which was wrong anyways), they certainly didn't stop the Vietnamese domino. So they didn't win in Vietnam.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#332

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.

> The cost of victory was very high, but it was a pretty unambiguous success for the Vietnamese. N. Vietnam won, but that doesn't make war a success.

It was for the northern regime. They took control of the south, by force. That's pretty straightforward war-winning.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doubtful that this is really the best way to put it. The US escalated it's involvement until the early 1970's when via strategic bombing of the North (which the US was unwilling to do previously), decisively destroyed the North Vietnamese ability to fight. Then, the Americans left. A couple of years later, the North Vietnamese rehabilitated their forces, and invaded the South. The reality is such different perspe…

I'll happily accept 'if the US didn't pull out before winning, they might have won', but this isn't the same as 'the US won'.

The hilarious thing is, the entire time the US was in Vietnam, top leadership in the US admin was pretty much convinced they could never win, but had to put in a good show.

So they were never even "winning" in the sense that the US leadership thought they were winning.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#334

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. Vietnam had experience in dealing with a possible pandemic before: SARS.

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

To quote wikipedia:

> Urbani realized that Chen's ailment was probably a new and highly contagious disease. He immediately notified the WHO, triggering a response to the epidemic (principally isolation and quarantine measures) that would end it within five months. He also persuaded the Vietnamese Health Ministry to begin isolating patients and screening travelers, thus slowing the early pace of the epidemic.

The minister didn't cover up anything, did anything they could to stop the new deadly virus. Urbani later died of SARS and was hailed as a hero: https://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/news/Fifteen_years_af...

Vietnam maybe is a third world country but they are very serious about deadly flu pandemic.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/05/05/v...

> But by the end of the two-hour meeting, the vice minister of health, Nguyen Van Thuong, had agreed to allow WHO to summon an international team of experts. He also promised to organize a task force at the ministry that would review the situation daily.

> It was, Brudon said, a "turning point."

> Vietnam's response contrasted with that of China, which for weeks tried to conceal the extent of its outbreak. But a health official in Vietnam, Le Thi Thu Ha, said her country made a simple calculation: "We needed that technical assistance," she said.

> ...

> That week, the Health Ministry set up a task force. Days later, a dozen epidemiologists and pathologists had arrived from Britain, the United States, Sweden, Germany, France and Australia.

They asked for help when they needed help, not saving face like China's handling of COVID in 2019.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#335

"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 -…

> maximum military effort There was nothing, militarily, keeping the US from executing a full scale ground invasion of Hanoi and decapitate the North Vietnamese regime. It’s likely the US would have succeeded in that effort, much like it had 20 years earlier with invasions into German and Japanese held territories in WWII. Why then did the US not invade North Vietnam? The last major conflict the US took part in was t…

> There was nothing, militarily, keeping the US from executing a full scale ground invasion of Hanoi and decapitate the North Vietnamese regime.

hmmm, but then you say:

> When the US pushed far enough above the 38th parallel, 700k Chinese troops entered the country and put the war into a stalemate.

Sounds like a military impediment to me.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#336

"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 -…

Zinn's writings about the Vietnam war have been questioned and debunked for a long time now. > made a maximum military effort USA did NOT make a maximum military effort in Vietnam. If USA ever made a "maximum military effort" then the war would have been over in 3 months. That was the whole problem. They never did.

> If USA ever made a "maximum military effort" then the war would have been over in 3 months. That was the whole problem. They never did.

It doesn't matter what your imagination wants to have happened. It didn't. Why are you trying to put up your revisionist fantasy against a historical fact? We lost. Zinn's description is perfectly accurate.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#337
post #83

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.

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.

I think many people forget that it took until the Gulf War (90-91) to dispel those demons.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (no…

Have you watched any movies about the Vietnam War? Like Casualties of War (1989) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/, Apocalypse Now (1979), etc : https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000091595/ To argue that Americans have been 'heavily indoctrinated in the US to believe a ton of bullshit' doesn't square up with the coverage and popular media about Vietnam that I've seen since I've been alive. Virtually all of the movies and press are about disillusioned soldiers, brutality, violence, lost causes, etc.

The North had Hanoi Hilton and Desert Inn and plenty of places it kept and tortured political dissidents and American POWs in violation of the Geneva convention. The Vietnam War was a giant mistake, a huge blunder, however, as others have mentioned the Korean war was fought under similar pretexts and no one regrets the U.S. stepping in to save South Korea.

I don't know whether or not the U.S. made all the right choices in the Cold War against the U.S.S.R. Would you prefer a world in which the U.S. hadn't engaged at all against Russia or stayed completely out of Asia (as well as European conflicts)? I don't know if the world that exists today would be better or worse off, really hard to say.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#339

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

My recollection of how the conflict was presented was "We need to go to Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda" 20 years later we're still fighting that same war, which is how many people look at the situation and say that the US hasn't achieved it's goals (i.e., has been defeated) I suppose one could say that the US hasn't lost yet, but it's pretty tough to say that the US has won. Honestly, at this point it feels like any…

They definitely defeated Al-Qaeda, they just didn't wipe out the Taliban.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#340
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't characterize HN as left-leaning. Maybe liberal with a dash of libertarian techbro thrown in. Also to quote you: "I would hope CEO to protect someone saying “be safe from rioters and looters in BLM marches”, but that won’t happen. It’s easy to protect someone who is supported by the majority. " Is pretty borderline racist. Maybe not overtly so, but the fact that you equate protesting getting killed with loo…

Stupid HN denied me commenting "You're posting too fast". But it let you know that only when you submit the comment. So I'll post the comment from the fresh account. > the fact that you equate protesting getting killed with looting and rioting rubs Sorry, I could not understand that phrase. Who is getting killed, and what I equate to what? > Oh and then denying racist policies are, in fact, racist just because they d…

> Sorry, I could not understand that phrase. Who is getting killed, and what I equate to what?

People were out protesting the murders of black men by police, and you refer to them as looters and rioters in your prior comments - along with some defenses of Gab/Parler - both of which I was banned from for posting things that weren't right wing enough. Great freedom of speech there. I was cancelled by the right!

> Freedom of speech is far broader term than US constitution even in the US.

Right, that's why I said "in America" - which is commonly where people make up complaints about supposed leftists trying to get rid of it - when nearly every law limiting it in my lifetime has been proposed by either Republicans or Democrats - neither of which are leftist.

>"Cancelling" people for speech reduces that free speech even if it does not violate constitution.

No, it doesn't. If I choose to shop somewhere else because I think your products suck, or because I disagree with your views, I'm not reducing the total freedom of speech - I am using my right, in a semi-free market, to give business to whomever I choose. If you come into my house and say things I don't want being said in my house, it's my right to ask you to leave. If I go into a business with no shirt and no shoes - guess what - I get no service. I broke the rules, they don't have to serve me. This does not "reduce free speech" in any way. Free speech doesn't mean you get to do anything you want, and besides which, there are already limits on it - speech that incites violence, things like yelling "fire", making false statements under oath, threatening to kill someone, we had all kinds of anti-smut laws for decades here, on and on. I mean, do you bitch when AMC won't show a movie that isn't rated by the MPAA? Is that "censorship" or is it a business exercising their right to not show something they disagree with?

Political belief is not (and should not be) a protected class, therefore nobody is required to transact with you, they have a choice. It's also your choice to get butthurt and complain about being cancelled (on the very platforms that are supposedly doing the cancelling, just like Marjorie Green wearing a "censored" mask while speaking on national TV).

I get the the right has never really had to suffer any consequences ever, at least in America, for anything, so this may be a little disconcerting. Go ahead and look up how many right wing groups the FBI/CIA infiltrated just for being right wing, and compare that to America going out of it's way around the world to disrupt anything even remotely left of liberal. Or how many left wing publications have been targeted over the years by the government. Or how communism (as much as I disagree with it) was the biggest scare in the world and would get you blacklisted ("cancelled") here in the 50's for even being remotely associated or making someone think you might be associated with it, even if you were a famous physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb. Or you know, the Bush years, where I was teargassed and arrested for peacefully protesting the fact that my tax dollars were being used to bomb people who didn't do anything to me. Have you been teargassed or arrested for exercising your supposed right to free speech? I know the people arresting me DEFINITELY weren't spending their nights reading Chomsky, so if they weren't leftists "cancelling" me, then who were they?

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