Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 624 posts

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#341

Post by stolen_biscuit »

enraged_camel wrote: post #150
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.

I'm not a native-born American and don't feel like I have skin in that game. I just feel like in war, there may be victors, but there are no winners . Especially in the modern age, if you get in a war, all sides lose. Victory is just a matter of who manages to lose less.

I think WW2 had pretty decisive winners and losers

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#342

Post by cbHXBY1D »

pie420 wrote: post #283
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…

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. Desta…

> but of all the wars America has recently waged, this one is probably the most justifiable.

We now have strong evidence that both the Ghouta and Douma attacks were not chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government. In the case of Douma, the OPCW leaks have very strongly shown (in my opinion, conclusively) that it was staged and put on by the White Helmets, a US/UK funded organization. Senior OPCW officials then reedited their official's report to make it seem like the Syrian government used chlorine gas. Don't believe me? Listen to Noam Chomsky explain it. [1]

Why does this matter? It was used as a pretense for the Trump administration to bomb Syria, which it did a few days later. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_KgRcw7mag [2] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/opcw-leaks-syria/

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#343

Post by michelpp »

chewz wrote: post #328

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 stor…

> Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity. Has anyone considered crowd sourcing a translation? I'd chuck in 10 bucks to read it and there's certainly a lot of history buffs out there looking for a fresh perspective.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#344

Post by chewz »

michelpp wrote: post #343
chewz wrote: post #328

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 stor…

> Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English. Sounds like an excellent opportunity. Has anyone considered crowd sourcing a translation? I'd chuck in 10 bucks to read it and there's certainly a lot of history buffs out there looking for a fresh perspective.

Mind that Monika was reporting for largest communist daily in Poland - her books are good reporting, lots of focus on people involved in the war but there is also a propaganda narrative.

On the other hand her reporting angle is much better then some Western "useful idots"[1] like Tiziano Terzani [0] (der Spiegel), who had been calling Pol-pot 'great man with a vision for a nation' even on his deathbed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiziano_Terzani

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/231066

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#345

Post by michelpp »

chewz wrote: post #344
michelpp wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English. Sounds like an excellent opportunity. Has anyone considered crowd sourcing a translation? I'd chuck in 10 bucks to read it and there's certainly a lot of history buffs out there looking for a fresh perspective.

Mind that Monika was reporting for largest communist daily in Poland - her books are good reporting, lots of focus on people involved in the war but there is also a propaganda narrative. On the other hand her reporting angle is much better then some Western "useful idots"[1] like Tiziano Terzani [0] (der Spiegel), who had been calling Pol-pot 'great man with a vision for a nation' even on his deathbed. [0] https://en…

That's something that I think can be put into context with a short preface. I think propaganda is some of the most interesting parts of history.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#346

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

afterburner wrote: post #335
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The point is it invalidates the Zinn quote

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#347

Post by HellDunkel »

skzv wrote: post #100

I wrote a quick script the other day to colorize directories of family photos. I realized it would be cool to colorize these photos, too. Here's the album: https://imgur.com/a/aJbpMjf The script uses the Image Colorization API from DeepAi. Here's the repo for the colorizing model itself: https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify I don't think the DeepAi API allows you to adjust the model parameters, but you definitely can i…

You have successfully removed the visual excellence of those images.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#348

Post by kstenerud »

michelpp wrote: post #319
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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. That didn't happen. That's a militaristic fantasy. What Zinn is describing actually happened . This isn't a debate. > T…

Reminds me of the old Amiga strategy game Nuclear War, with your leader jumping up and down after the nuclear holocaust yelling "I won! I won!".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgFyxu2Ij8

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#349

Post by jlkuester7 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #220
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

What happened to all the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" thing then? At the end of 20 years, US indirectly had to negotiate with them. So the other way of looking at it is, a bunch of un-educated, poorly trained, poorly equipped mountain people, who themselves are divided into many warring factions, stood their ground against the mightiest nation on earth, for 20 year, and in the end US negotiated with them for…

Heh, you would think that after literal decades of (moderate) sustained success in resisting incursions from three superpowers (British, then Soviets and then the US) the Pashtuns would get a little more credit then just being called "a bunch of un-educated, poorly trained, poorly equipped mountain people."

Even Churchill said of them: "Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian."

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#350

Post by Taniwha »

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…

To be fair none of these actually involved a declaration of war, the US congress ha not declared war since ww2 - these have all been wars by stealth
Post reply on HN