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I wanted to post a reply to the 'Vietnam War' thread in the history section but I am forbidden for reasons unknown, so I'll create my own thread.
It wasn't worth our time. We should have left the French to extract themselves from the colonial mess they got themselves into. Unfortunately, they fucked it up so bad, they left a vacumn, and a potential communist takeover.
It was the right thing to do, at the time. Most of vietnam was not "communist", nor did they have any urge to go red. We were stopping the
communists. There was a clear progression, and Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand were all on the agenda.
Well... our politicians royally fucked up that war. It was the right war, at the right time, but was so bungled, and mismanaged, we had no hopes of winning, right up until the end. In retrospect, it was a good war, that we got into because another "western" ally fucked up, we could have won it, but our politicians fucked it up so bad, we would have had to get out, and start all over again, to do it right. So we just got out.
The benevolent Communists, having kicked our ass, proved after the fact, why we were there in the first place, with upwards of 3 million more of their own countrymen, or neighbors being killed after we left.
Landslide Lyndon (liberal) and Tricky Dicky (conservative)?
Reminds me of the folks who say that Leninism was a "good idea" but "Stalin fucked it up".
No, you could not have "won that war" because your conscript army refused to fight...and your cannon-fodder refused to show up for induction.
A lesson that you may well have to learn again.
Try to pay attention this time.
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
Can't refute the historical facts eh redstar? I noticed how you didn't bother to even touch the other half of my post and specifically picked out whatever facts you can easily tear down. So let's see how knowledgeable (or propagandized) you really are?
And just because conscripts refused to fight (if this is even true), doesn't dispute the fact that it wasn't a wrong thing to venture into. Just look at what happened to Vietnam when we left? As an agricultural society, the war did very little economic damage to the North. Rubber was still exported in the same quantities, and they didn't need to import food.
The south however, constantly being under attack, suffered.
I'd also hesitate to call our troops finally going into Cambodia an invasion as some of you suggested that we did in the other thread. After all, they only penetrated far enough to intercept the HoChiMinh trail, and never actually held any territory. I'd be willing to admit to an "armed incursion", chasing foreign troops who also had no legal right to be there, but not an invasion.
In fact, the part of Cambodia that we did enter, was populated largely by the hill tribes, who were happy to see us. After all, they had been getting shit on by both Cambodians, and Viets, for centuries.
<span style=\'font-family:Arial\'>11:18 am, Greenwich Mean Time, December 21, 2012 AD.
"If you're talking about Xvall, I think it is some date when the world is supposed to get sucked into some blackhole or some crazy shit like that." - Fist of Blood
"Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE" - Bugalu Shrimp</span>
I didn't realize mental wards had access to the internet? Only in America I guess?
<span style=\'font-family:Arial\'>11:18 am, Greenwich Mean Time, December 21, 2012 AD.
"If you're talking about Xvall, I think it is some date when the world is supposed to get sucked into some blackhole or some crazy shit like that." - Fist of Blood
"Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE" - Bugalu Shrimp</span>
Let's relax on the spam please.
So, the point you are trying to make "lawyer" is that if it was you in charge of the "operation" then of course the good old USA would have most definitely "kicked some red ass" all the way back to the motherland right?
Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, I remember now....I have heard it on the lips of every conservative yanqui since 1975.
Try something new.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
Armchair General Lawyer,
you should spend some time with Nam veterans. You are hopelessly naive.
A few stories I learned from hanging out with 'Nam veterans:
Not only did many American conscripts refuse to fight, but many of them disassembled their weapons, shipped them back to the States piece-by-piece.
Why? In their own words, to shoot the pigs.
Some American units (heard this story more than once) made arrangements with the People's Liberation Army to avoid each other on patrol. Some even claim to have given material assistance to the Vietnamese PLA.
The USA actually had a sound strategy: to deny the PLA guerillas the jungles to hide in, squeeze their supply routes, etc. So your uneducated silly analysis of why the war went wrong is wrong.
'...the proletariat, not wishing to be treated as a canaille, needs its courage, its self-esteem, its pride, and its sense of independence more than its bread.' Marx...★
★...★
........★....★
..........★..★ Starry Plough Magazine
'From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers' - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Stop Killer Coke
What about the other points that I enumerated?
These in particular:
Most of vietnam was not "communist", nor did they have any urge to go red.
The benevolent Communists, having kicked our ass, proved after the fact, why we were there in the first place, with upwards of 3 million more of their own countrymen, or neighbors being killed after we left.
But yet, Diem cancelled national elections because it was widely accepted that 80% were going to vote for Minh.
There is an excellent analysis and history of Minh, Diem, and the rest here:
Link
Verily poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world? A democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all
-Emma Goldman
IWW
Naturally, I picked out your central thesis and demolished it.
Your side points then become irrelevant. There's no need for me to argue against them.
A number presumably borrowed from some reactionary web site -- which is to say drawn forth in splendor from somebody's rectal orifice.
I wonder when people will realize that "body count" arguments are fruitless. No one is standing around "keeping score".
The war against Vietnam is a perfect example of this; remember how the dummyvision used to report "enemy casualties" every night on the "news"? All guesswork or outright fakery.
Make up any number you like, and I'll match you number for number...and your number and my number will be supported by the same amount of evidence: zero!
The only time that we know how many people have been killed in a particular event is when someone is on the scene with an interest in determining the exact number...usually these are isolated incidents involving a few hundred or a few thousand deaths at most.
Consider something completely "a-political"...like the Chicago week-long heat wave of 1995. Researchers from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta eventually determined that the "excess deaths" that week numbered more than 700. So, the heat wave "killed 700".
Or did it? After all, an average weekly death total is just that...an average. Sometimes more die, sometimes fewer.
We don't know if many of those people who died that week might have died anyway...perhaps from causes entirely unrelated to the temperatures.
Now, let's return to Vietnam...where a pious Vietnamese Catholic who hates "godless communism" boards a small unpowered craft to escape to "freedom". He is intercepted in the South China Sea by pirates, robbed, killed, and perhaps cooked and eaten.
Do you add him to your total of people "killed by communists"?
How could you? There's no record of his existence or his demise.
Here's something for you to ponder: how many people are murdered in the U.S. every year?
The answer is: we don't know.
We know how many reported murders take place every year. But unreported murders, at best, are just recorded as "missing persons". And that's only if someone bothers to report them as missing.
In a place like Vietnam, with primitive or non-existent methods of keeping track of people, saying that "communists killed three million people" is simply babble with no possible evidence to support it.
Someone's guessing...and you're just repeating their guess because it makes you feel "righteous" and "justified" in your opposition to the Vietnamese -- who, by the way, were really nationalists, not communists (as the last decade has demonstrated).
All body-count "arguments" are deeply suspect...it's "too easy" to arbitrarily inflate the numbers beyond all credibility.
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
Thank you redstar2000 for finally pointing this out. This is a accepted fact. Ho Chi Minh went to France, and when he lent of communism, he used it as a tool to free his people, to unite them. It was a nationalist movement. You do realise that the Viet Minh refused help from the outside (including the USSR, China, and Cuba - except about a dozen advisors), as the wanted to fight this themselves. If it really was a communist movement, there would not have been any distinction, but there clearly was.
[formerly Cthenthar]
Revolutionaries don't spend all day on a messageboard. Action is realisation of the polemic.
"When the lie returns to the mouth of the powerful, our voice of fire will speak again." - quote EZLN
“Development develops inequality.” ― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Wow
What the hell is happening in the US?
Suddenly it's hip to support the vietnam war, and those who argued against it (e.g., John Kerry) are the enemies again.
It's as if the US isn't just speeding towards the radical right but it's trying to go back to the fifites as well.
For thirty years, Vietnam has been a national shame... untill, it seems, now.....
I know that secretly the right has never admitted that they were wrong to, well, illegally invade a sovereign nation that had done nothing to them, but they could never really speak about it. The people had spoken, and through sheer effort managed to force one of the most reactionary presidents in American history to acceede to their wishes. It was a great day... one people seem to have forgotten.
I'm getting the bizzarre feeling that the right is trying to go back and erase the sixties from history....
WATCH OUT WOODSTOCK!!
I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do, so I leave it up to you...
The sad irony of it was that Mihn respected america and asked them to help.
'Ho (Chi Mihn) proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with himself as head of a provisional government. Ho based his speech on the American Declaration of Independence, but the Americans did not take the hint and offer recognition. The French wanted their colony back...'
'By 1950 the Viet Mihn had control of the countryside, where their land reforms
made them popular with the peasantry, while the French ere barricaded into the citites and towns. Ho reasserted Vietnamese Independence; this time he gained the recognition of the Solviet Union and China.. But he had given up hope of gainin American approval, ofr they were now caught up in the Cold War, alarmed by the 'loss' of China and inreasingly preoccupied with the Korean War. The US feared Communism more than it opposed colonialism, so it decided to back the French with arms and economic aid...'
There was later a ceasefire agreement tied to French withdrawl, and elections to be held.
'since it was clear that these election could bring Ho to power, non- Viet Mihn elements feared their consequences. So did the United States, which guranteed support for the Catholic leader Ngo Dihn Diem'
Diem seized power in the south.
so much for democracy aii...
'I'm not proposing we should all get naked and be neandertals,
But we can live a simpler life - one that might take us away from the materialism that destroys our air, our water, and each other." - Possuelo
'man is born free and everywhere he is in chains' - Rousseau
property is theft
www.savehappyvalley.org.nz
War is trendy and the US is in one of their war moods,so all wars were good and true or something, which is why all these people like the Vietnam war I guess
"Tell your mom, that your joining the Nation of Islam and that you can no longer associate yourself with her, see how she reacts to that."
-Codyvo
"The kids may go hungry...but the village priest always eats well."
-redstar2000
I don't think that war is trendy right now. War has always been constant, as far as American affairs seem to be conscerned. We are always at war with something. Terrorism. Drugs. Tyranny. Whatever.
<span style=\'font-family:Arial\'>11:18 am, Greenwich Mean Time, December 21, 2012 AD.
"If you're talking about Xvall, I think it is some date when the world is supposed to get sucked into some blackhole or some crazy shit like that." - Fist of Blood
"Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE" - Bugalu Shrimp</span>
Alright i dont agree with communism.. but most of vietnam was actully communist.
it has done no good for vietnam. but the only good it has seemed to do.
is make america realise that america is beatable buy poor farlmers with pitchforks and pre-world war 2 guns. - and i think it hurts for america to be reminded of the utter shambles of vietnam.
You forgot 'communism'.
Oh, there was also that war on poverty.
[formerly Cthenthar]
Revolutionaries don't spend all day on a messageboard. Action is realisation of the polemic.
"When the lie returns to the mouth of the powerful, our voice of fire will speak again." - quote EZLN
“Development develops inequality.” ― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
You forgot 'communism'.
Oh, there was also that war on poverty.
[formerly Cthenthar]
Revolutionaries don't spend all day on a messageboard. Action is realisation of the polemic.
"When the lie returns to the mouth of the powerful, our voice of fire will speak again." - quote EZLN
“Development develops inequality.” ― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
You forgot 'communism'.
Oh, there was also that war on poverty.
[formerly Cthenthar]
Revolutionaries don't spend all day on a messageboard. Action is realisation of the polemic.
"When the lie returns to the mouth of the powerful, our voice of fire will speak again." - quote EZLN
“Development develops inequality.” ― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
