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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#111

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

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.

People in the US misunderstand the Vietnamese perspective on the war pretty badly. Interestingly enough one of the best sources you can look at to learn about this is the documentary interview with McNamara, Fog of War. He's surprisingly frank about his own mistakes in perspective, as well as talking about conversations he had with his counterparts in later years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YONEXPMVaQM

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#112

Post by dopeboy »

aantix wrote: post #60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hiNanqC5aQ My dad was a hospital corpsman on the USS Repose (hospital ship) during Vietnam. Having seen some of his operating room photos, I can't imagine that we were on the "winning" side. The video above is his amateur footage he took while aboard the ship. Probably 1968/1969. I had the film digitized after he passed in 2016.

This is really cool, what an honor to see. Thank you for digitizing the footage and sharing it to the world.

Couple q's if you're up for it:

* What camera did he have? Was it common in that era for cameras to not have a mic? (not complaining, just curious)

* Did he ever watch the footage, after the war? I know some veterans, depending on how they processed their experience, just block it all out.

* Can you share more on what he thought of his service there?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#113

Post by alephnan »

kiba wrote: post #80
alephnan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because I actually live in Tokyo. My family also owned a property next to a guy in Vietnam who owned a collection of 30 Ferraris. To suggest Tokyo's flooding problem is anywhere close to Saigon is disingenuous.

Tokyo's problem is caused by water flow impediment, because Tokyo is a concrete jungle. So water can't soak through the ground. They wouldn't need those massive underground tanks to store stormwater as much if they had chosen a different approach.

Many of the trusted infrastructure and construction projects in Vietnam are actually lead by foreign teams with Japan being a notable example ( bridges, etc.)

When it comes to drainage, Vietnam didn’t take the learnings of Japan who had to learn first hand this “tech debt” of a concrete jungle. In fact, the solution in Vietnam is often layering on more layers of concrete, so water floods anywhere but the streets instead ( people’s home, who foundation is now 10 feet below ground). This is the lowest cost solution while offering the politicians a kickback, until people build their barricades high and flood the streets again.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#114

Post by et-al »

DoctorNick wrote: post #33
amatecha wrote: post #21

What is the "winning" side? War comes at a massive cost for all participants. Interestingly the URL for the article implies the original name was "Vietnam war images from Vietnamese photographers" and was later changed to what it says now... I don't mean this as a slight to Vietnam whatsoever of course, I just don't understand using words "winning" and "losing" when anywhere from 1.5-4 million people died.

Really; More bombs in tonnage were dropped in three months than the entirety of WW2. The devastation wrought by the US on Vietnam is still being felt today, particularly the use of Agent Orange. The birth defects stemming from exposure are horrifying.

Dow Chemical was the real winner.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#115

Post by germandiago »

tasogare wrote: post #24
yongjik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, during and after the Korean War, South Korea was under a corrupt dictator who killed several hundred thousand civilians for being communist. Its economy didn't improve until 60s, and it couldn't be really called a democratic country until mid-90s. So it's a bit of a stretch to claim that South Korea became today's South Korea because it survived the war in 1953. One could equally say that Vietnam's economic dev…

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 control sometimes, but with market rules.

It is not about the sanctions. It is the system chosen. Everyone that has intellectual honesty knows that. There is a lot of literature about the problem of economic calculation in socialism systems proved by how russians did theirs, for example (black markets and copying countries budgets, the U.S. army compared to the russian one is an example of such a thing).

And do not make me started on the repression, that is the worst part. But all go hand in hand at the end.

Vietnam is developing, and I am glad it is. But what they are doing is not communism at all, do not sell us that. I have been living there for almost 10 years and I hope I can come back. It is a lovely country.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#116

Post by xsmasher »

vmception wrote: post #78

I saw a French movie about a French soldier in Vietnam set in 1945 I was also in France at the time when viewing the movie, it was very surreal in so many ways to be empathizing for a protagonist on one of the enemy sides - from an American perspective as I am an American. But I had never seen anything depicted about that war decades before the US got involved. I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywo…

What is the name of the film?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#117

Post by cpleppert »

emkoemko wrote: post #92
lightgreen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

USA took Iranian independence and that didn't do anything but give them a dictator who gave/sold oil for cheap to the US/UK; Afghanistan was better of before US took it... now Taliban controls more territory then they did before US came in... list of countries that depended on the USA that got totally screwed over is larger then the list of a few that USA let become rich and prosperous.

Iran sold oil at basically the same price and with the same legal structure as Saudi Aramaco did. That shouldn't be surprising, both countries reliance on western expertise and capital investment lessened dramatically in the decade following the initial concessions; and with it, Iran and Saudi arabia were able to overturn the initial legal framework that favored UK and US investors. Iran and Saudi Arabia certainly did not give oil away.

As for Afghanistan, the taliban has only recently expanded its territorial base before 9/11. The afghan government of today controls more territory than the soviet backed state ever did; whose control only extended to the major population centers and connecting arteries.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#118

Post by refenestrator »

wahern wrote: post #93
refenestrator wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US. It would have been over by the mid-1950s, otherwise. 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule.

There was huge ethnic and class component to the Vietnam conflict. In fact, in many ways it was far more important than the nominal communist character of the North, at least from the Vietnamese perspective. Here's a factoid I recently learned: something like 80+% of Vietnamese refugees were ethnic Chinese (Hoa people), despite constituting a minority of the population from which they fled. Rarely discussed in Americ…

I just googled when 'The Ugly American' came out. 1958! Nobody can say "noone could have known".

I'm not an expert on Vietnam, but I'll just say that whatever their problems with a Chinese merchant class, the problems with a Western burning-villages class were probably bigger at the time.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#119

Post by marcodiego »

trs8080 wrote: post #105
emkoemko wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA took Iranian independence and that didn't do anything but give them a dictator who gave/sold oil for cheap to the US/UK; Afghanistan was better of before US took it... now Taliban controls more territory then they did before US came in... list of countries that depended on the USA that got totally screwed over is larger then the list of a few that USA let become rich and prosperous.

people like the person you're replying to never want to understand why these countries became "shithole countries" in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

As a Brazilian, USA support in the 1964 military coup in Brazil is something that has negative consequences that endure to this day and will probably still last a few more decades.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#120

Post by stolenmerch »

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.

Completely agree with you about Vietnam reaching its military objectives. However, I only see a couple of commenters disagreeing with that, which is not "a lot". Only curious about this because I wonder how prevalent that viewpoint is versus the perception of that viewpoint being prevalent. Perhaps this is off-topic but it seems this disparity between perception is central to so much of America's hangups with this war 50 years later.
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