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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

#561

Post by foobiter »

greedo wrote: post #540
marcusverus wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, the US fought itself to free millions of slaves in it's own Civil War. This is simply not true. The North prosecuted the war to preserve the Union. It was only afterward that it was re-imagined as a war of liberation. This reimagination makes perfect sense from a propaganda perspective. After all, the Confederacy was a democracy. Its people voted to leave the Union. The Yanks, for the stated purpose of…

A democracy? Not for Blacks in the South...

or people who didn’t own land, natives, or women… we’re still fighting to allow more people to vote today, it’s absurd

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#562

Post by pmoriarty »

dash2 wrote: post #450
TomSwirly wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most importantly, it defeated the USSR I just hurt my eyes from rolling them _so hard._ The USSR collapsed because it was a wildly inefficient system that was unable to provide goods and services to its people. In order to believe your wild statement you have to believe a lot of huge implausibilities, like the idea that the USSR would not have spent money on their military if not for the Americans, which would lite…

It is not at all implausible that competition with the US made the USSR spend more on arms. The reason empires throughout history spend money on arms, as you rightly say, is to compete with their neighbours. The US upped the ante. I'm not arguing either for or against Reagan. I merely point out that he was right about the USSR.

The USSR suffered a bloody revolution at the turn of the 20th Century which upended its social order. Then tens of millions of its people dies in WW2 and the country was devastated, tens of millions more died of famine or were killed, imprisoned, and/or enslaved by a totalitarian regime which terrorized its people. Much of its intelligencia (the creative lifeblood of any society) were themselves oppressed or exiled.

None of this had anything to do with the United States, but it did contribute greatly to just how broken the USSR was by the time it collapsed. The collapse wasn't only about this, but it certainly wasn't simply a defeat by the US either.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#563

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JPKab wrote: post #555
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"You do understand this right? At no point were the American public consulted by the intelligence agencies when they did these operations." German public was not informed of the gas chambers, and Soviet public didnt endorse the gulag. So thet don't count then?

The German public were responsible for what they knew of and had control of, just like the Soviet public. These were authoritarian regimes. Nobody is responsible for what they don't know about and are unable to learn about. In what world should they be?

Well, there are cases where you are legally responsible, like sex with minors and money laundering, because otherwise noone would ever face punishment

Whether this applies here depends on what you mean by 'responsible' in thos context, is it morally responsible?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#564

Post by cies »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #497
cies wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> goodwill the US had from ending WWII is sadly running out. Sadly? It's about time. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, most of Latin America, many places in Africa. They all have a US hangover. > US felt invincible after it and tried to do the right thing. Serious? What propaganda outlet do you read? They try to help their big biz make max profits. That's all. That's not "the right thing". Yeah sure they sell…

Yet the US is still the premier nation that everyone tries to immigrate to, because as a nation it actually works. The same can’t be said of many of the nations you mentioned, and that was before U.S involvement. The cool narrative of today is to point a finger at the west, but most people I think who espouse this view haven’t had the misery of living under the absolutely nuts regimes that exist in this world.

That the US (rich) rapes poor nations not something we can critique because people from the poo nations want to immigrate to the US.

This is such a bad argument I dont even know where to begin with unpacking.

Regimes being bad to their own people (US is also in this category, but not like some poorer countries), is separate from it behaving bad to other nations. Internal affairs vs foreign affairs.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#565

Post by whimsicalism »

selimthegrim wrote: post #514
kumarvvr wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not classify Gulf war II as a "war". It was a blatant incursion, which even Saddam knew would not last, hence the focus on looting the victim, rather than planning for an occupation. Saddam bet that if no ones does anything concrete, he can get away with it, else, he can return back. I would call than an "occupation" rather than a "war". Edit : I retract my comment. I meant Gulf War I, the occupation of Kuwai…

People in USA usually call the war from 1980-88 “Iran-Iraq War” after 1991

Ah yes, I misunderstood what they were saying. I was confused because the details didn't quite match up...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#566

Post by pmoriarty »

zhdc1 wrote: post #418
lenkite wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of wars in history have been won by invaders who chose near total genocide of the male population of annexed territories. Many nations opposed by a military-superior enemy have lost no matter their sense of righteousness. The Vietnamese won because they managed to inflict sufficiently large number of American casualties that the US lost the will to war. Some folks say wars are won by logistics and not tactics.…

> The Vietnamese won because they managed to inflict sufficiently large number of American casualties that the US lost the will to war. Some folks say wars are won by logistics and not tactics. But it seems that Vietcong guerrilla tactics were far superior to American ones at the time. It's also worth mentioning that the US had no reasonable way to "win". The threat of Chinese involvement prevented them from invading…

Not to mention that the US had a huge antiwar movement, a widely despised draft, and a media which actually did real reporting on the war.

Without these it's quite possible that the US might have used overwhelming force (like nukes) to "win" the Vietnam War.[1]

[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nixon-want...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#567

Post by cies »

JPKab wrote: post #520
cies wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say: > There is no 'right' and 'wrong' side of history. But then you conclude: > There was a lot of cruelty, bloodshed and lies. [...] The US could certainly have been much worse. So you do accept there's a gradient of right and wrong. > The US could certainly have been much worse. But also a lot better! > But there has not yet been anyone in history who avoided that while being large. What we've seen is next lev…

Bro you live in the Netherlands. I have numerous Dutch friends who are not as young and foolish, and your perspective is not the mainstream one in that country. Your nation was under occupation by the Nazis until the United States came in with the UK and made it otherwise. Obviously that doesn't mean the United States isn't imperfect and of course it has tremendous flaws and has yet to live up to its true ideals in i…

So confused.

"Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal." -- Immortal Technique

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#568

Post by pmoriarty »

sofixa wrote: post #397
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…

> How the US avoided international courts is something that should be better explained Might makes right, aka US foreign policy since its inception. The US has never recognised any court that could try them ( like the ICC) and have veto powers in the UN, so they can go about committing war crimes with impunity.

"The US has never recognised any court that could try them ( like the ICC) and have veto powers in the UN, so they can go about committing war crimes with impunity."

They don't have to recognize the court in order to be tried in the court, in absentia if need be.

It's interesting that despite the power to try alleged US war criminals, the ICC has chosen not to.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#569

Post by jairofloress »

pembrook wrote: post #443
cies wrote: post #398

The US is repeatedly on the wrong side of history. And they cannot even face that. Red scare. Supporting neo-liberal-to-fascist govts. Yelling democracy but then killing democratically chosen representatives when they do not "suit de US likings". Bitching about some "meddling" in their election when the history is full of US meddling in democratic process of other nations. Giving "foreign aid" to apartheid regimes. U…

Yes, the world is a chaotic reflexive system and trying to manipulate it always creates unintended consequences. The US absolutely does dumb stuff all the time, and power always gets abused. But for a contrarian view on the “US Bad” narrative, check out a book called The Accidental Superpower Here’s a good summary of the book: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-a... It presents an interesting…

Nice review! Thanks!

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#570

Post by dundarious »

dundarious wrote: post #353
chrisco255 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not ncfausti so I think most of this comment doesn't apply to me. Nevertheless, I don't agree with many of your conclusions. * The existence of films critical of the war does not imply that the mainstream "serious" political opinion of the day (that you would read in national newspapers, for example) went beyond calling the war a "quagmire" or "disaster", then with a justifying "but...", usually mentioning Domino…

I meant “civilians in South Vietnam”. Although the Jeju uprising massacres of leftists in post-war South Korea were unjustifiable also.
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