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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

#361

Post by coliveira »

dleslie wrote: post #213
coliveira wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people in the US never accepted that they were defeated. And the US media did a good job of never making this point (the defeat against Vietnam) clear. It is a version of the "lost cause" phenomenon of the US south.

It's not simply accepting defeat that poses difficulty; it's being anything but the best, and first, and most able. American exceptionalism isn't just a cliche, it's a cult of identity, a nationalist truth that cannot be abridged without violent opposition.

Well, exceptionalism is a cult that is part of American education and media since early childhood. It is not just nationalism (loving your country), it is ultra-nationalism that preaches the idea that they're superior to other countries.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#362

Post by hiram112 »

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…

>> ... Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia

>> ... American occupation [of Saigon]

> but there is also a propaganda narrative.

Yes you can see it explicitly from how he describes the two sentences above, one as an "intervention" and the other as an "occupation". I don't think most Cambodians considered the Vietnamese invasion in late '70's as an intervention, nor did the majority of the rest of the non-Soviet aligned world.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#363

Post by noslenwerdna »

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…

His point is that it, therefore, wasn't a "maximum military effort" as Zinn claimed in his sloppy prose.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#364

Post by emptyfile »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #313
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 -…

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.

Why aren't you Americans more embarrassed to post stuff like this?

Chest thumping about a war you lost 50 years ago...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#365

Post by gorgoiler »

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…

This is fascinating, thank you. It’s hard to explain my color blindness to people and I’m inclined to begin with this HN thread in future.

I can differentiate color mostly fine and have never mis interpreted grass as green, but clothing and fabric always pose problems, just as with your AI.

I’ve learned to be ok with things not looking real. Black and white is just as unreal to me as false color toning, but feels more honest and deliberate. The luma of the Armalite wielding guerrilla is amazing — it’s hard to beat black and white as a descriptor format.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#366

Post by somesortofsystm »

baybal2 wrote: post #351
dillondoyle wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There's the wider goal of not wanting to poke the Russia bear too much while simultaneously not letting Russia run too wild (arguably they are..). Excuse me, but the goal should be that exactly. Not leaving an inch of flesh of the bear unpoked. If you resign your emotions, and try to think about it seriously, it makes a lot of sense strategically to conduct a massive provocation. Right now, it's completely the othe…

Nonsense, NATO is literally surrounding its so-called 'enemies' with endless streams of base-building. NATO is not groveling or shivering - it is slowly invading proxy countries and extending the US empire, creep creep ..

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#367

Post by somesortofsystm »

darksaints wrote: post #355
Taniwha wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not really sure what the difference is between a declaration of war and an authorization of war, but we've had congressional authorization for a couple conflicts since then. I would argue that if Congress voted on it in the affirmative, it's not really a secret or stealthy war.

A declaration of war means that the government has to answer to the people for its war crimes, per international legal standards.

An authorization for war means that war crimes can be committed and war criminals can get away with it, because there is no legal basis for defining that war, except for what Politician-de-jour says it is.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#368

Post by dragonwriter »

darksaints wrote: post #360
kumarvvr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worlds most advanced, wealthiest and militarily powerful country did not obtain it's primary objective in the war, stopping the spread of communism.

What's really amazing is that we could have done nothing, and it still would have failed eventually. There aren't any communist regimes that have been truly successful. The Soviets succeeded in industrialization, but then ate itself from within. The Chinese succeeded in industrialization, but only after transitioning away from maoist communism and more towards state capitalism. Everything else basically failed outrig…

> The Chinese succeeded in industrialization, but only after transitioning away from maoist communism and more towards state capitalism.

Leninism and all its descendants, including Maoism, are, ab initio, state capitalism. What the CCP moved toward is more of xenophobic totalitarian corporatism than state capitalism; essentially fascism without, or at least with less, overt expansionism.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#369

Post by tinomaxgalvin »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #313
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 -…

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.

Must be nice to smoke what you are smoking. The "west" lost entirely in Vietnam. Just look at Afghanistan today... 20 years of war and they have been beaten again.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#370

Post by jollybean »

afterburner wrote: post #333
akdor1154 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm doubtful of your assertion that 'top leadership didn't think they could win' and especially in the context of 'put on a show'.

Which elements of 'top leadership' believed this?

For whom would that 'show' be for?

You'll have to state which individuals took that position.

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

This directly contradicts your first statement. Did US leadership think they were winning or not?

The data (i.e. 'body count') was initially misleading, but that lesson was learned quickly enough.

By 1965 , at the start major escalation, The Pentagon wanted to do strategic bombing of the entirety of North Vietnam. US political leadership wanted to avoid Hanoi and other targets for political reasons i.e. 'Rolling Thunder'.

Rolling Thunder failed.

Later, with political limitations removed, Op. Linebacker I and II (in 1970's) successfully dismantled N. Vietnam's ability to fight.

Imagine how history would have changed were, in 1965, the Pentagon were able to fight on it's own terms? The big rise in casualties to 1969 probably never would have happened, and the political repercussions would have been at least somewhat less.

Even the populist miasma is affected: when people are dying, it's one thing if 'major progress' is being made (think sicily and european campaigns against Hitler, once they started and were winning, it'd be impossible to bring them back until it was over), but altogether another if there's a stalemate or there isn't evidence of material progress.

But history is 20/20 and that's the whole point.

In 2021 we're still not done politicizing this war, the PBS documentary had some very good elements, but was still only one lens and entirely ignored the geopolitical aspects.

Macnamara v. Pentagon was realized 'All Over Again' with Maj. General Tommy Franks vs. Donald Rumsfeld. This time, the Army mostly go their 'Boots on the Ground and Overwhelming Power' to guarantee a fairly immediate collapse of the enemy. Too bad there was no plan for the occupation.

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