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The Vietnam War
#1

The Vietnam War

I've just finished watching 'The Vietnam War' by Ken Burns on Netflix and immediately searched for a Vietnam thread on here to get more info. I'm sure it's been discussed all over the board but I couldn't see a specific thread, so here goes;

The documentary was an eye-opener for me. State education failed me (and I don't even recall Vietnam getting a mention anyway) and most of my knowledge of the war comes from old Chuck Norris and Stallone movies.

Firstly, I had no idea it dragged on for as long as it did. When people talked about the US being sucked in, I assumed they meant for 5 or 6 years, not 20! Shameful not to know this, I know, but I've run this by a few people and they were as ignorant as I was.

Secondly, I was surprised by how much the US justification for involvement in the war seemed sensible (at first). The Commie threat was real and plausible at the time. Whatever happened afterwards (the political lying, war crimes and betrayals), I feel the beginnings were valid taken at face value.

Thirdly, the chaos of the period was incredible. The social upheaval and all the background stuff going on puts the present in perspective. The assassinations; Kennedys, MLK. The anti-war activists, civil-rights activists, militant groups, weathermen, black panthers etc. The bombings and shootings in the US. As crazy as the present US scene looks, it's miles away from how it was in the 60s/70s.

The American officers interviewed had immense respect for the fighting ability of the VC and North Vietnamese soldiers. One said he 'wished he had 200 of them'. Nonetheless, I can't help feeling aligned with those US troops who alleged that the US was badly undermined by orchestrated opposition at home. To what extent did this hamstring the campaign? Or rather, how much was genuine and how much was the creation of 'enemies of the US'?

So, while I enjoyed the documentary and would recommend it, I'm certain that a lot was left out. Many board members here have an excellent knowledge of history and politics, so tell me what your thoughts are on the war and what we can learn from it?

Also, many here will have relatives who fought there, so I'm sure you'll have anecdotes that don't find their way into mainstream documentaries!

‘After you’ve got two eye-witness accounts, following an automobile accident, you begin
To worry about history’ – Tim Allen
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#2

The Vietnam War

The total involvement in Vietnam was actually much longer- 30 years- 1945-1975. The French Indochina colonies were occupied by the Japanese in WWII and US troops were involved in the clean up / repatriation. We never really left. We were heavily involved in the 1950s. In the 1960s it turned into a major conflict and by 1973 we brokered a cease fire. In 1975 North Vietnam broke the cease fire and that was the end of the Vietnam saga for us.

That may sound like a long time, but have you ever stopped to consider the modern day version of Vietnam? We’ve been in Afghanistan nearly 17 years with no end in sight.

During the conflict president Johnson was afraid of provoking the Chinese. He was deathly afraid of having a re-run of the Korean War where the Chinese invaded when we got too close to the border. This would be the case throughout the war as we never really put ground troops in the north. There were actually a few cases of Chinese troops and officers being found on the battlefields in the 1950s. It’s not clear if any Chinese served in combat against the US in the 60s and 70s, but I think you can assume there were probably a few. After the Tet Offensive in 1968 the US could have landed an army in the north and marched the few miles to Hanoi with very little resistance- but we were scared of the Chinese. We also never attacked the Ho Chi Minh trail with ground troops- we were scared of aggravating the neighboring countries and had to respect their borders (sounds crazy but even when the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan, all the weapons that were bleeding then dry cane from Pakistan. They could have shut that down in a day. They took no action and never violated the Pak border).

In 1968 the war is pretty much over. The north was exhausted and they are ready to give up and reach a peace treaty. Nixon is running for president and knows that if a peace treaty is reached then he will lose the election. President Johnson is illegally monitoring and wire tapping Nixon. Nixon meets with the south Vietnamese and engages in treason against the United States. He convinces them to pull out of peace talks and continue the war so he can get elected. He tells the South Vietnamese he will give them a better deal. All the deaths after 1968 were due to Nixon.

Johnson is now stuck. He wants Nixon arrested and executed for treason, but his evidence was illegally obtained and he would incriminate himself. He decides he will run for president after all and reveal this information to the mass public. The democratic convention was going on in Chicago and there were thousands of rioters outside. Mayor Daley and the Chicago PD tell Johnson they cannot guarantee his safety and that he might get assassinated. Johnson decides to bag the whole thing and never reveals the Nixon treachery.

The only time the US took the gloves off during the war was when we wanted to get out. In 1973 we were negotiation peace talks and North Vietnam walked away from the table. Nixon ordered every available B-52 to bomb the shit out of Hanoi in the heaviest aerial bombardment since Berlin in WWII. After about two weeks of bombing the north was ready to negotiate. If we would have done that on day 1 the war would have been over in a month in the mid 1960s.

The other interesting part is that Australia, NZ, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan all sent troops to the conflict. You don’t hear about it much, but the first “tunnel rats” were actually Australian.

The Vietnam war didn’t really “end” in 1975. Pol Pot plunged Cambodia into chaos and started disputing the border regions with Vietnam. Then he started killing everybody. Vietnam invades to push him out and takes over Cambodia. China invaded northern Vietnam to punish them for the invasion of Cambodia(Sino- Vietnamese war). Vietnam occupies Cambodia for the next decade and Thailand and Vietnam have frequent and violent border clashes up until the late 1980s.

And don’t forget the opium war- another fascinating piece of history. The Chinese nationalists in Yunnan Provence crossed into Burma in 1949 to escape the communist army. They kept their heavy weapons and turned into drug lords. They controlled the opium trade. So then in the late 1960s you have an undefeated Chinese nationalist army from WWII / Chinese Civil War, running around with all their WWII weaponry, and controlling the drug trade (supplying US troops in Vietnam). Then this Burmese drug lord tries to move some product without paying the Chinese their tax, so they go full Walter White on the Burmese when they cross into Laos. Then a general in the Lao army decides he’ll jump in and fight both sides and steal the drugs for himself- so now you have Burmese drug smugglers battling WWII Chinese Nationalist Army battling the Lao army with modern American guns and helicopters. The Chinese were defeated and the Lao Army took all the drugs (the CIA was very involved in drug running at this time).
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#3

The Vietnam War

Excellent stuff frozen-ace. I didn't realise so many other nations sent people there (on the quiet). What you say about the US only taking the gloves off in 1973 gets to the crux of something I was feeling all through the documentary; that the US was fighting with one arm tied behind it's back a lot of the time. Like you say, perhaps with an eye on repercussions with China.

It must be so difficult for a democratic government these days to fight a 'just' war. This war seemed so vague that some of the poor souls interviewed were even more confused than I am now about it. Many said that they were looking forward to the opportunity to do their bit and fight for their country like their parents had in WW2. But the reality on the ground turned out so different for them and they struggled to maintain the idea of themselves as the 'good guys' the more things got ugly.

From the North Vietnamese point of view, I found it amusing and telling how many of the North soldiers and civilians just blanketly referrred to the American soldiers as 'French'! In their eyes they were just continuing the old war against colonial oppressors.

‘After you’ve got two eye-witness accounts, following an automobile accident, you begin
To worry about history’ – Tim Allen
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#4

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 07:28 AM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  

Excellent stuff frozen-ace. I didn't realise so many other nations sent people there (on the quiet). What you say about the US only taking the gloves off in 1973 gets to the crux of something I was feeling all through the documentary; that the US was fighting with one arm tied behind it's back a lot of the time. Like you say, perhaps with an eye on repercussions with China.

There's a bit more to it than that. For a start, the US Army itself, and in particular its command, was no longer oriented on victory by the time Vietnam rolled around. Around the time of the Korean War its focus went from being an army of conquest (as it had been in WW2) to a garrison force. Korea was the first time stupid, asshole decisions like reprimanding troopers for losing rifles in the middle of combat first got started. It was when the Army became a career option for public servants and also the moment at which the war was going to be lost.

If you want to see how bad the US Army got by the point of Vietnam - and how bad it still is - I recommend to you About Face by Col. David Hackworth, also known as the most decorated US Army officer in the 20th century, which chronicles Hackworth's career in the US Army from the end of WW2 right through to the end of the Vietnam War. If you want someone still alive who is mercilessly frank about how shit the US Army was during the Vietnam War, try the website of John T. Reed and start with his military articles.

In part it was also because the purpose of the engagement was bad. When you look at the order given by FDR to the US Army ahead of D-Day, it was straightforward: paraphrasing, it was "Land in France and fuck the shit up of the entire Germany military and don't come back until you've won." That gave a simple goal and a pretty damn powerful motivation for every poor fucker conscripted for service in WW2 to get the job done so they could go the fuck home.

Nothing like that in Vietnam. Giving young men the idea that they just had to complete a "Tour of Duty", for all its wonderful associations, is a shit way to run a war. It suggests "Just keep your head down and 12 months from now you'll go home." It fed incompetence, it fed the hurry-up-and-wait attitude of the Army, and it meant that cowards who stayed over in Berlin in noncombat postings shinnied up the command tree a shitload faster than their fellow combatants who went over to Vietname to actually risk getting shot at.

Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm
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#5

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 07:48 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

In part it was also because the purpose of the engagement was bad. When you look at the order given by FDR to the US Army ahead of D-Day, it was straightforward: paraphrasing, it was "Land in France and fuck the shit up of the entire Germany military and don't come back until you've won." That gave a simple goal and a pretty damn powerful motivation for every poor fucker conscripted for service in WW2 to get the job done so they could go the fuck home.

Yeah, having a clear do-or-die goal basically accounts for most military victories in history. For our people the story line was pretty damn simple: the white men (French and US) came to took our land, divided the country in half, enslave and kill our people. Drive them off and take back our lands, free our people or die trying.

That's how you got the ENTIRE population motivated for war, and you ended up with this and not rainbow colored feminist:

[Image: 06hermanIntro-master315.jpg]

My mom still told of how all her friends went to war, she wanted to go too but some people gotta stay home and support the war efforts. Everybody on my dad's side also went, he was the only one spared because he was studying abroad at the time. My older aunts also told stories on how girls disguise as guys to go to the front line. Everyone was big on "killing the invaders".

The war from the Vietnam's side is pretty much different though, not sure if it's of any interest to you guys.

Ass or cash, nobody rides for free - WestIndiArchie
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#6

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 08:09 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  

Yeah, having a clear do-or-die goal basically accounts for most military victories in history. For our people the story line was pretty damn simple: the white men (French and US) came to took our land, divided the country in half, enslave and kill our people. Drive them off and take back our lands, free our people or die trying.

That's how you got the ENTIRE population motivated for war, and you ended up with this and not rainbow colored feminist:

Looking at it like that (and I'm quite certain you are right), the US had no chance. Some great insights there! What you wrote reminds me of an interview with a Vietnamese soldier, who said that they were 'puzzled at all the US desertions and fragging of officers'. He went on to say that when the North Vietnamese wanted to go home, they just did! They would go back through the lines, spend some time with their families and then go back to the fighting! They seemed to do this autonomously and naturally like it was no big deal.

‘After you’ve got two eye-witness accounts, following an automobile accident, you begin
To worry about history’ – Tim Allen
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#7

The Vietnam War

^The Vietnamese are no strangers to war, and genetically and historically are one of the most aggressive people. We are talking about the same people who beat back the Chinese several times, the Mongols who conquered half the world, the French and the USA, 2 of the biggest military powers at the time.

I don't really know how to put this but for most people fighting the war (read: everyone) it wasn't something out of the extraordinary. There was a lot of propaganda involved, but the morale of the population remains high and in their mind this war was basically the general state of affair. It wasn't going to end soon and it was the "thing" of their time. So people would go to fight, go back work the farm, see their families, and rotate tours of duties between themselves (as far as logistics allowed)

The HQ at the time was deep in the forested mountains, something out of adventure horror films for most US troops. Yet most of our troops live there daily, as well as under the tunnels at Cu Chi. Shit they even gave birth and held classes for children in tunnels less than 1m high. These are also the people who HAND HAULED artillery pieces up the mountain ancient Egyptians style. Read up on the battle of Dien Bien Phu to see just how far the Vietnamese were willing to go to to boot out some holed up French dudes. Logically you could just leave them there to rot but no, our guys just have to go all the way into the deep mountains and make sure every last French is dead [Image: lol.gif] After that they were like "Fuck this shit we're out, good luck to you Yankees".

Just a few examples to give you an idea that the Vietnamese were fighting a long war, in one of the more hostile tropical terrains in the world where they excel (plus matériel from Chinese and Russian comrades). While the French/US were occupational forces on unfamiliar terrain, with no clear goal despite their superior military. That was why the US had to use the southern Vietnamese forces to fight against their own, but killing your own homies ain't exactly good for morale and the southern soldiers were absolutely pathetic. That's when US started sending their own boots on the ground.

Ass or cash, nobody rides for free - WestIndiArchie
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#8

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 05:10 AM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  

The documentary was an eye-opener for me. State education failed me (and I don't even recall Vietnam getting a mention anyway) and most of my knowledge of the war comes from old Chuck Norris and Stallone movies.

Are you saying this masterpiece doesn't suffice?






I think the first knowledge I had of Vietnam was through the A-Team
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#9

The Vietnam War

This series was fan fucking tastic, I was looking forward to this being released just like I did with every Ken Burns docuseries.

I learned so much about the Vietnam and the VC.

The majority I knew about, but what they did give an insight to is the chaos that was happening the US at the time as well.

The little battles and major military fronts was something else, forgotten hills, blood on the Mekong, etc.


Studying a war on both sides should be mandatory.

I just finished watching a 12 part docuseries for WW1 which was fantastic also!
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#10

The Vietnam War

Other perspectives:









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#11

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 07:01 PM)kaotic Wrote:  

This series was fan fucking tastic, I was looking forward to this being released just like I did with every Ken Burns docuseries.

I learned so much about the Vietnam and the VC.

The majority I knew about, but what they did give an insight to is the chaos that was happening the US at the time as well.

The little battles and major military fronts was something else, forgotten hills, blood on the Mekong, etc.


Studying a war on both sides should be mandatory.

I just finished watching a 12 part docuseries for WW1 which was fantastic also!

Yeah, all the Ken Burns documentaries I've watched so far have been awesome; The Civil War, The West, The Roosevelts, and now The Vietnam War. I've just checked Wikipedia and it turns out he's an Obama fan and lifelong Dem. Nevermind, you can't have everything, he still does good documentaries, I'll give him that.

If there's political bias in his work, it's been pretty subtle. I found The Civil War in particular to be very even-handed.

‘After you’ve got two eye-witness accounts, following an automobile accident, you begin
To worry about history’ – Tim Allen
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#12

The Vietnam War

Politics and geography aside, I have great respect for Vietnamese people. They integrate well wherever they go, and though their history has been packed with brutal warfare and bloodshed, it hasn't turned them into mindless savages like Afghans.

"Imagine" by HCE | Hitler reacts to Battle of Montreal | An alternative use for squid that has never crossed your mind before
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#13

The Vietnam War

The Vietnamese should of just let the Americans take over. Not sure about their IQ, buth they could of been like Japan or S. Korea.

Don't debate me.
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#14

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-29-2018 06:56 AM)frozen-ace Wrote:  

The total involvement in Vietnam was actually much longer- 30 years- 1945-1975. The French Indochina colonies were occupied by the Japanese in WWII and US troops were involved in the clean up / repatriation. We never really left. We were heavily involved in the 1950s. In the 1960s it turned into a major conflict and by 1973 we brokered a cease fire. In 1975 North Vietnam broke the cease fire and that was the end of the Vietnam saga for us.

That may sound like a long time, but have you ever stopped to consider the modern day version of Vietnam? We’ve been in Afghanistan nearly 17 years with no end in sight.

During the conflict president Johnson was afraid of provoking the Chinese. He was deathly afraid of having a re-run of the Korean War where the Chinese invaded when we got too close to the border. This would be the case throughout the war as we never really put ground troops in the north. There were actually a few cases of Chinese troops and officers being found on the battlefields in the 1950s. It’s not clear if any Chinese served in combat against the US in the 60s and 70s, but I think you can assume there were probably a few. After the Tet Offensive in 1968 the US could have landed an army in the north and marched the few miles to Hanoi with very little resistance- but we were scared of the Chinese. We also never attacked the Ho Chi Minh trail with ground troops- we were scared of aggravating the neighboring countries and had to respect their borders (sounds crazy but even when the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan, all the weapons that were bleeding then dry cane from Pakistan. They could have shut that down in a day. They took no action and never violated the Pak border).

In 1968 the war is pretty much over. The north was exhausted and they are ready to give up and reach a peace treaty. Nixon is running for president and knows that if a peace treaty is reached then he will lose the election. President Johnson is illegally monitoring and wire tapping Nixon. Nixon meets with the south Vietnamese and engages in treason against the United States. He convinces them to pull out of peace talks and continue the war so he can get elected. He tells the South Vietnamese he will give them a better deal. All the deaths after 1968 were due to Nixon.

_ . _ . _

Huh? Can you cite a source for this [in bold], because I've never heard this calumny?

I hold few briefs for Nixon - but seriously! And I've heard and read many smears of the man. But I've not heard this claim before and I seriously doubt that it has any truth.


I was active in the resistance to re-instituting the military draft registration, an act by President Carter in "response' to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Because of this political agitation, a friend of mine served 18 months in federal prison for refusing to register (Reagan kept the policy, despite advice against it - but then again, he was also bent on ending the Cold War, which was still on...ergo...keep it on the books even though it does not matter, right).

I got to know several protest players from the 1960s and my organization's efforts were rendered to the Archives in the State of Wisconsin, where much of that era's domestic protest legacies remain on record.

The Constitutional argument is that the military draft is clearly an instance of "involuntary servitude" outlawed by the post-Civil War Amendment to the Constitution. Clearly it is, and it was (but that's a concluding point for a different post).

Thus, I saw several familiar tropes in Ken Burn's "authorized" version of the Vietnam War history. It is completely familiar, yet wrong in the most important respects.

Why? Because it's largely stripped of the Cold War context. As the now college-aged daughter of a law-prof friend says, "Slavery ended yesterday, but the Cold War ended a million years ago." And that's what she learned about Vietnam War era; and how distorted is the "history" being taught today."

This HS-grad's hyperbole is intended as the indoctrinated "Truth" intended for Moronielles by socialist teachers. Why? Because if the young remain ignorant of the Cold War and world-wide communism, then they are easily manipulated by today's propaganda. (Cf, "thepeoplescube.com" by a group of ex-Soviet agit-prop artists, dismayed and outraged to move to the US, seeing how Marxist ideas, policies and values are being rooted within the popular culture in the US. If you don't know anything about Soviet communism and the Cold War, you won't get the satire there. SEE the all red "peoplescube" version of the cube once a popular game during the 1980s and 1990s by Hungarian Erno Rubic, who also approved the parody... I'll post it at the end.)

But back to Burns "documentary" Vietnam film - where was the Cold War? .Conventionalism says it was all a clusterfuck, a tragedy, and an evil war by the US against anti-colonials, namely against the French. Similar arguments were made against the British getting control of Greece after the Baltics were ceded to the Soviets after WWII.

But on Roosevelt's deathbed, he regretted giving away so much to Stalin's odious reach, such as the 10s of millions in Poland - which is what Churchill had warned him against at the post-war planning conference in Yalta.

By 1946, Churchill - in a speech in Fulton Missouri - warned of the rise of an "Iron Curtain" of Soviet led isolation of Eastern Europe from the West. Thereafte, a foreign service officer in Moscow, George Kennan, warned of the spreading menace of communism after WWI by Stalin. He argues that only a policy of firm and persistent pressure against the Soviet Union he dubbed as "Containment" could counter the threatening power of the newly nuclear communist state from expansion. (SEE https://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist...department)

And expand it did, to encompass roughly half the world, 60% at its height, through direct support and Soviet "allies."

During the 1950s, the US helped pockets of resistance - the Berlin Air Lift, the War in Korea, as well as negotiating an end to post-war occupation of Vienna (which was ruled jointly like Berlin after WWII by Western allies and the Soviets).

Now let's get back to Burn's mythography "The Vietnam War" by an American who was in Saigon during the early 1970s before it fell to the communist North.
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[Burns]’s narrative begins with nineteenth-century French colonial rule of Indochina, allegedly a “mission civilisatrice” but actually a system of resource exploitation, racial oppression, cultural imperialism, and slave labor, all in collaboration with sinister “Mandarin” puppet emperors. [Burns] point out that French colonial rule was displaced in World War II by Imperial Japan’s colonial rule, and then by the restoration of French colonialism, which in turn was supported by the United States until, after the French defeat in 1954, the Americans themselves became the world’s leading imperial power.

This storyline is essential to the [Burns] line of argument. In their view, the Cold War plays no role in the Vietnam story. The sole international issue of the twentieth century, they believe, was decolonization, the Third World’s struggle to cast off the colonialist powers of the West, the latest of which would become the United States.

Thus the Cold War, the great global contest between international Communism and the U.S.-led free world, has no comfortable place in the Burns-Novick story where it is a vague, evanescent apparition at best. The Greek Chorus in the person of the distinguished American ambassador Donald Gregg intervenes to explain that we saw the Vietnam War as a defeat for the Free World—“a misreading of the end of the colonial era.”[b]

And this is the central trope of the New Left's version of history - the US was the villain in this story, and there's no room for valor or honor in it. (Let the anti-American New Left's most prolific writer and thinker (through a half-dozen award-winning books, and editor of the New Left's most important magazine called "Ramparts") - David Horowitz - who turned against them by the 1980s, set you straight on this; he himself contributed to some of this confusion, as he will admit. SEE him on Youtube, his March 2017 interview with David Rubin is most current and relevant introduction: "Communism, Trump, and Leaving the Left" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DD_8SJKAjc)

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In the early post World War II years, Communism was emerging as a world force following the victory of the Soviet Union in Europe and Mao’s victorious takeover of China. In Indochina, Ho Chi Minh, who had joined the Communist Party in 1920 and thereafter served as a Comintern operative in Russia and China—a career unmentioned in the series—set up a coalition of nationalists, the Viet Minh, and brought it under Communist control.

Having just led the Allies through a brutal world war to defeat the Third Reich in Europe and Imperial Japan in Asia, the United States suddenly awakened to the advance of Communism—a violent ideology designed for world domination—on several continents. By the early 1950s, the American hope to “contain” the Communist advance had been powerfully tested in Germany, Korea, and China. In each case the Communist side had militarily pushed into a nation divided between the Communist “East” and the American-backed “West,” and in each case the United States had to act to maintain the divided line and defend the doctrine of containment. When the Soviets moved to take full control of four-power-occupied Berlin in 1948, the United States responded with the“Berlin Airlift. When the Korean War was launched by the Communist North’s invasion across the 38th parallel in an attempt to conquer the South, a U.S.-led coalition restored the partition of the country. When Mao’s Communist forces took mainland China, the Nationalist Republic of China, backed by the United States, held on to Taiwan.

Vietnam would be the next divided nation challenge—one that no American president could turn away from. If Communism took Southeast Asia, then Japan, which had deep economic ties to the region, would accommodate itself to the international Communist bloc. France, profoundly weakened by the Nazi occupation and on the brink of succumbing to “Eurocommunism,” was in Vietnam endeavoring to stop the Viet Minh advance.

In fact, while France asserted neo-colonial claims om Vietnam, the US resisted, just as Roosevelt resisted Churchill's wish to do the same after World War II ended. Reluctantly, in Vietnam, the US reversed itself. Why?

Quote:Quote:

The Cold War was in fact World War III, a gigantic contest over which form of world order—ideological Communism or pluralistic liberalism—would shape the future. It was “cold” in the sense that dangerous maneuvers maintained a central strategic balance that deterred a nuclear conflagration. But the Cold War was “hot” on the regional front. North Vietnam’s war to conquer the South demanded American opposition. Independently and in collusion with Communist China and the Soviet Union, the North aimed to destroy, first by subversion and insurrection and ultimately by direct invasion, any future possibility for maintaining a power balance among the states of one of the world’s most geo- and economically strategic regions.

The Burns['s...] version of the Vietnam War’s beginnings revives the left-leaning interpretation that Mao’s fighters in China really were nothing more than “agrarian reformers,” and that Ho’s cadres in North Vietnam were themselves innocuously busy with land reform. There is no doubt that giving land to the peasants was an objective of both men, but it would be done to obliterate the class enemies of the Revolution as the keystone of Marxist ideology for international transformation.

[Burns] erasure of the Cold War is the hinge in the next phase in their story. The Cold War was a mirage—decolonization was the reality, and the United States, deluded, had it all backward.

So, that is in essence, the argument that Ken Burns advances in his recent documentary. But what else does he leave out?

Again, let's hear it from my source, Charles Hill at the Hoover Institution on War and Peace at Stanford University, who was on the ground in South Vietnam in the few early years before Saigon government fell:
Quote:Quote:

The vast Communist uprising that was Tet Offensive of 1968 may be briefly summarized as a devastating defeat for the Viet Cong but a political-psychological victory for Hanoi, owing to its immediate portrayal by the American media as proof that prior U.S. claims of the war going well had been lies.

[b]The documentary asserts that the war should have been ended then by negotiations, an absurd idea in view of what actually happened at Tet and what would be the North’s demonstrated contempt for serious negotiations in the years ahead. The Viet Cong were virtually obliterated by the Hanoi-ordered offensive; it would take some years before the North could recast its strategy and strike again. The North would never have negotiated under such conditions of weakness.

At this point in the film’s arrangement of its story, significance is given to the charge that after the Tet Offensive, then presidential candidate Richard Nixon signaled to President Thieu of South Vietnam that better terms could be had if Thieu rejected negotiations until after Nixon was elected. This calumny was not invented until a generation later, by a professional polemicist aiming to blame Nixon for continuing the war when it could have come to an end in the Sixties. The film’s producers leave its viewers assuming it was true.

And here's where we get to expose the lie from ABOVE:"Nixon meets with the South Vietnamese and engages in treason against the United States. He convinces them to pull out of peace talks and continue the war so he can get elected. He tells the South Vietnamese he will give them a better deal. All the deaths after 1968 were due to Nixon." A sheer defamatory invention from a generation later! Not based in fact.

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Like American journalism in general between 1969 and 1975, the 2017 film also studiously avoids reporting on what actually happened on the South Vietnamese battlefield in the war’s final years as that reality did not and does not fit their preferred rendition.

Books, articles, films, documentaries, and wartime journalism produced after 1968 have conveyed little or nothing about what actually happened on the ground. The Viet Cong were devastated; Hanoi needed time to regroup and prepare a new phase. On the U.S.–South Vietnam side, a “one-war” strategy was put into effect militarily by General Creighton (Abe) Abrams and diplomatically by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker.

The growing capabilities of The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN, went unchronicled as reporters wrote only about their desertions and corruption. The South was pacified through tactics that would later be called “clear, hold, and build,” providing security under the protective cover of artillery pieces and helicopter pads in “firebases” that began to dot the land like leopard spots. Into these securely defended territories, Vietnamese people came to settle, away from the Communist threat. The film covers none of this; its later episodes reiterate the condemnations of earlier segments; the Greek chorus [of tragic evils] is called on again and again.

I arrived in Vietnam at the start of the 1970s after turning against the war when I was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s East Asia Center in 1970. When the U.S. bombing and incursion of Cambodia took place to deny the North Vietnamese the sanctuary of that border area, I witnessed the Harvard student uprising which entirely shut down the university while humiliating the school’s administration and eminent professors.

When I arrived in Saigon on assignment to the Mission Coordinator’s office as a U.S. foreign service officer, I was stunned at the city scenes I saw: a mailman on his rounds, laughing schoolgirls on their way to class, shopkeepers going about the day’s work, a population that felt protected from the Communists they wanted nothing to do with. A few weeks later, two colleagues and I drove a civilian car from Saigon to Da Nang and back, unarmed, with no sign of checkpoints or danger. This was nothing remotely like the pictures of horror and devastation I had viewed on Boston television evening news. Before long, I petitioned to bring my family to Vietnam and soon my two little daughters were going to a Saigon pre-school and telling me in the evening that they had seen a “Hippa-Hoppa” (a UH-1 “Huey” helicopter) overhead that day.

The major battle of the post-Tet ’68 years would come when Hanoi launched its multipronged invasion of the South in April 1972; we called it “The Easter Offensive.” It is important to understand what [Burns] do not tell their audience about what kind of assault this was.

Burns (and Lynn Novick) make the peculiar, indeed ridiculous, claim that Nixon’s February 1972 visit to China and contacts with the Soviet Union so alarmed Hanoi that the North felt it had to invade the South to attract Beijing’s and Moscow’s attention and continued support. The Easter offensive had been years in preparation and of enormous military significance; Hanoi had lost its Viet Cong insurgency strategy and as a result was compelled to launch a full-scale conventional war to conquer the South. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) division-strength troops invaded the republic of Vietnam across three international boundaries: the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the north, the Laos border in the Central Highlands, and the Cambodian border in the South where three NVA divisions drove toward An Loc, the provincial capital sixty five miles from Saigon. There were no U.S. combat troops left in Vietnam; all had been withdrawn long before; there was still American air support however and plenty of it. If An Loc fell, an entire province would be under Hanoi’s control and the South would be done for.

The invading Communist army far out-powered the ARVN. The NVA came in with T-54 tanks and with 130 mm long-range artillery. Fierce fighting raged for weeks. North Vietnam, General Abrams said, was “holding nothing back.” On the DMZ front, President Thieu installed Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, South Vietnam’s best field commander, and the enemy drive was stopped.
SOURCE "On 'The Vietnam War' [Burns and Lynn] by Charles Hill, Nov 2, 2017
https://www.hoover.org/research/vietnam-war

By then the cumulative exhaustion of the home front in the US, combined with Nixon's resignation, and the consequent Democrat control of Congress meant that millions of people in Vietnam and Southeast Asia were going to soon die because American arms would not come to the anti-communists ally's defence, unlike in South Korea, or Berlin and Vienna and Greece, and Taiwan.

In other words, millions of people were killed because of the Democrat's perfidy and betrayal of a US treaty.

And thus the claims you see in the Prager University videos are supported by many facts. (I believe Dennis Prager himself was an MA student in a Columbia University graduate program in Russian and Arabic studies, and he gained fluency in those languages but did not complete his degree.)

Far from a tragic failure - and there were many of those in the course of the long Vietnam War - the war was actually won after the 1968 tet offensive. But a hard-won security for the South was pissed away by US domestic perfidy as well as the perfidy of irresolute Democrats.

Like today and Bernie Sanders versus Trump, Democrats had embraced a socialist for US President in 1972's Senator from South Dakota McGovern, who won only two states (Massachusettes and Minnesota), as Nixon romped to re-election. Only later in life when he went into business did McGovern learn that Reagan was right! Too much damn government regulations made it impossible to succeed.

And therefore the claims that Burn's documentary makes - that the Vietnam War was a Greek Tragedy and irrelevant to the Cold War - is false.

I read online a comment - one posted amid a long discussion and debate over the War and about Burn's documentary - about the American born son of a Vietnamese "boat people" couple who barely escaped from the communist invasion by the North, when Saigon fell. Grownup now, asked by others who were curious, also asked his uncle in Hanoi (the capitol of old North Vietnam, communist Vietnam), "Who won the war?" His uncle replied, "look around" at the McDonalds restaurant; at Wendy's and Burger King, etc. "They did (the US)." Capitalism defeated communism in Vietnam.

People tell me that Vietnam today is barely less capitalistic than New York is today (whose mayor DeBlasio is an avowed Marxist-socialist), who is going to say that the Vietnamese-American's uncle in Hanoi is wrong?

I'm sure facts like these, concluding this criticism of the film, fit nowhere within the purvue of the Ken Burn's or the filmmaker's grasp.

[Image: attachment.jpg39894]   

"Guaranteed Equality"

“There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag!” -DJT
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#15

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-30-2018 06:57 AM)Orson Wrote:  

Why? Because it's largely stripped of the Cold War context. As the now college-aged daughter of a law-prof friend says, "Slavery ended yesterday, but the Cold War ended a million years ago." And that's what she learned about Vietnam War era; and how distorted is the "history" being taught today."

I'm fresh from the series, and you're absolutely right - there was little to no Cold War context now that you mention it. This is exactly why I started the thread, to get insights like this. Stuff I missed myself.

These documentaries are great, but I instinctively know that they omit stuff and can't help but suffer from conscious or unconscious bias. I can live with it as bias is natural and inescapable. I simply use these documentaries etc. as 'starting points' with which I can use to go off and do my own research. Take what is useful, discard the rest.

That clips above (from beta_plus) showing the similarities between 'Nam and Korea were interesting. With hindsight, it was all a shit-show, but you can easily see how they would have taken Korea as a template and (quite reasonably) have assumed they could get it to work again, that it was justifiable.

‘After you’ve got two eye-witness accounts, following an automobile accident, you begin
To worry about history’ – Tim Allen
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#16

The Vietnam War

A great book about that period, even more about the Indochina war of French is from German - French guy Peter Scholl Latour. I hold him in high credit, he passed away a few years ago. He was a soldier also in Indochina and came back there as a reporter.
Der Tod im Reisfeld [Death in the Rice-fields] is an amazing book about this period.

We will stand tall in the sunshine
With the truth upon our side
And if we have to go alone
We'll go alone with pride


For us, these conflicts can be resolved by appeal to the deeply ingrained higher principle embodied in the law, that individuals have the right (within defined limits) to choose how to live. But this Western notion of individualism and tolerance is by no means a conception in all cultures. - Theodore Dalrymple
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#17

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-30-2018 06:16 AM)Pride male Wrote:  

The Vietnamese should of just let the Americans take over. Not sure about their IQ, buth they could of been like Japan or S. Korea.

That's apples to oranges man.

Japan was an imperialistic power who invaded others first and were savages.

We literally nuked them twice to neuter them, sure they're modern, but have you seen their feminized men?

Vietnam was being invaded by imperialistic powers on all fronts but always beat them back.

S.Korea was a bloody conventional war backed hugely by the Chinese. It's still a stalemate with no peace treaty, and the North screaming reunification (with Trump trying to soothe the dragon).


Dalaran is right, the entire nation was motivated to kill the evil foreigners invading their country, no matter the cost.

You can't change that mindset, its a do or die mentality.

(Kind of like the Jihadi's of today)

Even without communist backing (and just only receiving arms and supplies) the war would be a very long drawn out war that the invading country would get sick of.

I personally don't think Vietnam would ever be like Japan or Korea even with western immersion. It's still a beautiful country to visit tho!
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#18

The Vietnam War

@ Orson

Our quote is too big for me to mess with on my phone. The NSA and FBI were running a wiretapping scheme on the south Vietnamese leadership in South Vietnam and in the US.

President Johnson taped and recorded everything he did so that historians would have day-to-day insight into decisions that were made. He believed in creating a detailed historical record. The tapes were to be sealed for 40 or 50 years. They were opened up a few years ago.

BTW after Watergate the White House got rid of taping everything so that historical insight only lasts for LBJ and part of Nixon.
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#19

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-30-2018 06:16 AM)Pride male Wrote:  

The Vietnamese should of just let the Americans take over. Not sure about their IQ, buth they could of been like Japan or S. Korea.

And turn into a hentai cesspit with a dying population and vegetable men (Japan) or develop a K-pop culture where the boys are girlier than the girl (Korea), with also one of the highest suicide rates in the world? No thanks for trolling. Not that it would happen anyway because this is a belligerent people who despises being ruled over and told what to do. The French had their chances for 30+ years trying to pacify the country and fail.

You would think after the war was over the people would happily go back to farming rice and making nuoc mam, but no, they just had to get involved in a ton of minor conflicts.

The country is now one of the fastest-growing in South East Asia and ironically tons of Westerners are heading over here to enjoy their vacations and fleeing the destruction of the West.

Funnily enough, if conflict with China ever blow up, Vietnam will be one of the first allies with USA.

Ass or cash, nobody rides for free - WestIndiArchie
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#20

The Vietnam War

An excellent book about the Vietnam Conflict is An excellent book about the Vietnam Conflict is [url=An excellent book about the Vietnam Conflict is 'A Bright Shining Lie'. The book was maddening at times to read, as it detailed just how horribly the war was managed. https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Shining-Am...ning+lie]A Bright Shining Lie[/url]. The book was maddening at times to read, as it detailed just how horribly the war was managed. ]. The book was maddening at times to read, as it detailed just how horribly the war was managed.
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#21

The Vietnam War

I have to wonder if the standard narrative of Vietnam (evil government constantly lies and callously kills Vietnamese civillians) was kinda due to leftist bias by most historians (like pretty much all other academia) and the leftist/SJW/Hate America movement was def born of the anti-war protests.

There are some revisionist historians who think Vietnam helped tamp down the other communist movements in Southeast Asia so while Vietnam was lost it let the other anti-communist regimes stay afloat when they were the most vulnerable.

One book that I found interesting Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam. If the US government had withdrawn but still given money and weapons to South Vietnam in the last stages of the war they may have been able to hang on. Once the anti-war sentiment got so bad and the US just withdrew troops and all support to the South Vietnamese that was pulling the chair from under them which opened the narrow window of opportunity (when S.Vietnam was most vulnerable) for North Vietnam to do a (conventional) invasion and take over S.Vietnam.


The way the US withdrew was the worst of both worlds for S.Vietnam, they were dependent on US cash and troops and superior firepower then it was taken away and their whole defense was dependant on that.

Fun fact: South Korea provided a large number of troops for the Vietnam War at US behest, South Korea government got a ton of money for that (the korean soldiers who actually fought didn't get the money) which they used to industralize (in addition to reperation money from Japan). That is what allowed S.Korea to boost their economy and lead to the rise of Samsung and Hyundai and those other korean companies.
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#22

The Vietnam War

I still think the cold war was a giant hoax. I believe America could have crushed the Soviets any time if they really wanted to.

Don't debate me.
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#23

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-30-2018 06:16 AM)Pride male Wrote:  

The Vietnamese should of just let the Americans take over. Not sure about their IQ, buth they could of been like Japan or S. Korea.

They tried. They reached out to us before the communists, and asked if we would support their independence against the French (as was common after WWII and we were supporting everyone else's colonies in their quest for independence). We went to war against to try and keep the French happy of a all things. They only went Communist after we turned them down.
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#24

The Vietnam War

Quote: (08-30-2018 11:35 PM)Pride male Wrote:  

I still think the cold war was a giant hoax. I believe America could have crushed the Soviets any time if they really wanted to.

For much of the Cold War, this was very true, but what would be the point? We were winning the stalemate anyway, if we "crushed" the Soviets but even a few of our cities got nuked, what would be the point?
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#25

The Vietnam War

I'm really interested in this series now, would like to see more views of the story.

As a Vietnamese whose family was harmed in so many ways by the VCs... the Viets would've fought the French and the Americans to the bitter end anyway. We are an unruly people, as best described by a Chinese ambassador to Vietnam from a few centuries ago. It's hard enough for Vietnamese to rule Vietnam, and we do not want to be ruled by foreigners, period. One brief look at Vietnam's history would've settled that notion. Yet Vietnam would've been an ally of the US from back then if the US didn't fuck up on so many fronts with their bad foreign policy. The domino theory was complete bullshit. There was no way Vietnam would join China, unless someone forgot 3000 years of wars between those two.

Quote:Quote:

Funnily enough, if conflict with China ever blow up, Vietnam will be one of the first allies with USA.

They already are. That's why Trump visited Vietnam first in his recent trip to that part of the world. Vietnam would ally with anyone over China, to keep China out once again. If you talk to people on the ground (even in the North) about what they think of America, you'd never realise that there was a bloody war between Vietnam and America still in living memories. Now ask them what they think about Chinese. [Image: biggrin.gif]

When modern Vietnam became a country in 1945, it was all set up to be an American ally, even the declaration of independence speech was a direct copy-pasta of the American one, and the first goal was to kick the Japanese out. The US was supportive of Vietnam regaining independence from France initially. However, for whatever reason, America abandoned Vietnam to the French, and that's when the Chinese communists stepped in to provide weapons and supplies, and eventually take control. There are plenty of talks, even recent books written, that Ho Chi Minh (leader of North Vietnam) was "replaced" by a Chinese bootlegged version. He had a different name before, a very Vietnamese name, yet he replaced it with "Ho Chi Minh" which is a very Chinese one for vague reasons. He would suddenly refuse to even meet his own family or close friends, probably from fearing that they would recognise that he's not who he claimed to be.

Regarding the war itself, it could've ended a lot sooner in a much better manner if the CIA had not assassinated President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. The North was very afraid of him, and he would've defeated the commies and their propaganda, and reunited the country. Under Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnam gov was quite good, and was seen as working for the people. The South was prospering, at one point Saigon was the Pearl of South East Asia, doing better than Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok etc of that time. The North's propaganda that the Southern Viets were suffering under American oppression was falling apart as news leaked from people travelling back and forth. People were starving under the VCs, they didn't really want to go fight their brothers. Then after Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination, the South gov went down hill. The officials were getting richer and the people were getting poorer. Essentially that gave the VCs a huge morale boost and the Southerners the opposite.
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