We aren't as bad, but it is quite hypocritical of us, we were a colony, and we rebelled because we felt our rights were being talen away. When the Philippines want their rights, and we say no, then we are going against how are country was formed.
there is alot of talk about minh but i cant base an entire period among that one guy i need to know what his army {or communist militia, freedom fighters, rebels, terroist, and watever else you could call the people that followed him}. I need info on south vietnam which i know was a corrupt state where a "big brother" was present.
South Vietnam was kind of like the better version of today's Afhanistan.The leadership was unstable without foreigners interefearing,there were generals wanting to rule and really corrupt politicans doing military coups in almost every year. They shot people in sight who were accused of being the people of the VC or NLF.
Vietnam was just a shithole during that time, and now too, as a matter of fact. We shouldn't have been there. Or we at least should have invaded North Vietnam. None of that in between crap that allowed the dirty leftists to win.
Well I agree that we shouldn't have been in Vietnam. I've believed this for a long time. It was a war that we should have never got involved in and in the end we changed nothing. Nothing but wasted lives. My father fought in Vietnam and it fucked him up in the head as it did to quite a few others I imagine. Terrible war.
My dad said when he was a kid he found pictures of dead bodies in his dad's Vietnam stuff. Which is kinda fucked up.
My dad is pro american and anti-communist {anti-leftist in general} all the way but he said that vietnam was a terribe period. he even admits { this man was born and raised in cuba just so you know} that american soldiers were to busy surviving rather than fighting for the right reasons leading into what we know was a hellish battlefield {more than usual}. I beleive if we had the milatary we have today and modern equipment that we could have at least gotten a better deal on the battle field in terms of losses but south vietnam would have fell due to its corrupt regime.
Guess what?!?!?! I'm doing about Vietnam in my history course right now :O. Essentially, my view is the following. Vietnam was a shiststorm of epic proportions triggered by a certain John F Kennedy who massively fucked up the path that America was going to take. His lack of ability to make a decisive act quite possibly cost America the war. The problem in Vietnam was then furthered by the fact that Johnson felt like he was locked into a commitment trap and that he believed he couldn't escape, his policies were fairly terrible as well, especially considering that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was almost definitely fabricated, which led to the Resolution giving him the ability to send American forces whenever he pleased. He also initiated Operation Rolling Thunder which was a profoundly terrible campaign designed to demoralise and damage Vietnamese infrastructure and industry, failing mainly to the lack of targets, unable to bomb population centres and too close to the Chinese border, as well as other places. The opinion of the American public was largely positive up until the start of 1968, due to the Tet Offensive. The offensive should almost definitely have been considered a failure for the North and an overwhelming success for the South and America. The reasons for this are as follows, it led to the death of almost 60,000 Vietcong troops, such and amount that they would never be decisive in the war again, and it shifted focus to the PAVN who, for the most part, were largely incapable of fighting the American forces due to the fact that they generally sucked at guerilla warfare and had to fight pitched battles. More importantly, however, is the fact that the communists failed to achieve any of their three primary objectives in their offensives, which were to liberate the South before Ho Chi Minhs death, to cause the downfall of the South Vietnamese government and to show such strength that the Americans gave up. They failed in all three. However, to the American public the Tet Offensive cast a lot of doubt over the war. It was at this point that the anti-war movement became a mass, anti-war movement and , due to the political pressure it made Johnson initiate the Paris Peace Accords. It was also at this time that Nixon changed his view and he used it effectively to get elected into office. I hope this in someway helpful, it was for me, and if you have any more questions ask and I shall try to answer.
I don't think it would have mattered much if the Americans had modern equipment. The problem wasn't really defeating the vietcong straight-up, they were quite capable of doing that. The problem is that the vietcong fought with guerilla tactics. Fighting an enemy like that is very, very hard, even today. The Americans resorted to using napalm, agent orange, massive strategic bombing, basically every weapon in existence except the atomic bomb, and it still wasn't enough. Modern weapons aren't that much deadlier than that. The Americans lost because the American public simply didn't support fighting in such a brutal way. It gets to a point where the supposedly free, civilized and democratic world fights in a way that you would only expect from absolute savages. The communist side suddenly becomes quite appealing when the capitalists greet you like this: (I just had to add that.. I love this picture) I'm not saying the communists were any better, but the Americans (and South Vietnam) didn't exactly win over any hearts and minds while fighting a war like that. Also, the Americans were already getting quite a good deal when it comes to kills vs losses. The Americans only lost around 50,000 men, while the North Vietnamese lost 1 million+ soldiers and around 2 to 4 million civilians. I'm not even counting the civilians that were killed in Laos and Cambodia, which is another couple hundreds of thousands...
Not to mention that agent orange hit our own troops as well. The American people had very good reasons to be against that war. We were killing our own soldiers and I'm sure dropping all that shit wasn't exactly good for the civilians of Vietnam.
Also that guy Ho Chi Minh was leading the Viet Minh, the rebel army back in the 1940-50s. Youre mixing him with the National front of the South-Vietnamese Liberation which in this case was the VietConq.
see in see even in the old soviet union you could easily say nikita kruschev, joself stalin, or breshnev {forgot his first name}. In the asian side hoe chi minh a name i cant even pronounce is just to foreign alont with remembering that the viet cong, north vietnam, and the kymer rouge were all diffirent forces.
They aren't that hard to remember: Ho Chi Minh: Leader of North Vietnam Vietcong: Guerilla Force in South Vietnam, only called VC by Americans. Called themselves NLF (National Liberation Front) North Vietnam: North of South Vietnam, south of China. Communist side Khmer Rouge: Not directly related, althouh perhaps strengthened by American bombing and were in Cambodia PAVN: Army of North Vietnam ARVN: Army of South Vietnam
I would blame mostly to the way both the American army and the South Vietnamese army approached their tactics. The American military tactic in Vietnam was that if they just killed enough Vietcong soldiers they would inevitably win the war. This was a war about body count rather than front line warfare compared to previous conflicts (eg. WWII). The military was brutal in their 'search and destroy' missions and the use of weapons such as napalm and agent orange. Then you have the South Vietnamese government, being very corrupt and misusing funds. The local government was more of a oligarchy than a democratic government and they also persecuted and oppressed Buddhist followers and monks. These factors drove many to sympathize with the North Vietnamese government.
Fun fact was operation babylift where vietnamese orphans were taken to the u.s along with families {not all were happy mind you}. I heard a story that my teacher's brother in law went back in as a green beret {Army special forces} after the war just so he could get permision to get the women he impregnated back. He left for a few months and then returned to alabama to have five more kids with here. Also she's a pediatrician {did i say that right?} from what i hear now.
The dirty red Vietnamese got their asses handed to them at every single stage of the war, but I suppose we have only ourselves to blame for believing that the vile communist scum would actually keep their word.
