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I think it is crucial to understand the motivations and principles of the people involved, in order to shed more insight unto the matter. Regardless of the pol

I think it is crucial to understand the motivations and principles of the people involved, in order to shed more insight unto the matter. Regardless of the political overhead, from my personal experience the vast majority of the Vietnamese people at the time, already being Spartan like in certain manners and living in times of turmoil, saw the 'war of Resistance against America' (as the Vietnam War is called in VN)as the continuation of resistance against foreign superpowers, dating back thousands of years. The US, after, Japan, France, the Mongols, China was seen as yet another invader in a long line, albeit arguably the one with the most overwhelming strength. The average North Vietnamese person did not care about Communism, Capitalism, Political theories or world politics. They only cared about them in so far how they could help them achieve their goal: To be free! Sovereign in their own land. This mindset coupled with the history of Vietnam is important to understand where the dermination of these units came from. Yes, the US military would 'win', as in being the last party to remain with living soldiers in an all out war until the very end no discussions, hands down. That is because, similar to the Japanese the morals of these Vietnamese guerilla peasants fighting would fight till the end. In that regard, especially when seeing discussions here and mostly on reddit going back and forth about who 'won' the war, people forget that they might talk with completely different defnitions of winning in mind. (Or they are just American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.) It is a great tragedy in the end, because in the end, absurdly in a certain way, both sides fought for the same thing: Freedom. The US won the battle, but lost the war.

whelp 11y ago
> ... both sides fought for the same thing: Freedom. Not really. The US government doesn't give a crap about freedom. What they want is influence and hegemony. Freedom/democracy are only PR excuses for american public consumption when it's convenient. Ordinary american people are nice people though.
- seivan 11y ago
  That's not always true. I agree that pure altruism isn't the modus operandi, but you're ignoring a lot of non-Americans who're appreciative of any help in the past.
- narutouzumaki 11y ago
  I wrote that more to emphasise the irony. Obviously whether the US as a whole has worked and contributed towards 'freedom' as one of their main goals is open for debate.
Tloewald 11y ago
'North' Vietnamese? The partition is a colonial construct. And what "battle" did the US win? As a military exercise it was a debacle from start to finish (much like our more recent efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan). Wrong war, wrong reason, wrong plan, incompetently executed (strategically). And the comparison with 'Spartans' is off too. The Spartans were pretty weird (not just by our standards, but by contemporary standards too) and their society was entirely wrapped around military tradition. Despite centuries of foreign occupation and resistance, Vietnamese culture was and is basically Confucian (in which the soldier is pretty much the bottom of the totem pole).
- cageface 11y ago
  Actually the cultures of north, central, and south Vietnam are quite different. The accents vary so much that people from one section of the country struggle to understand people from another. They have been ruled by different rulers for much of the last thousand years. Speak to many southern Vietnamese even today and they'll tell you the war was an illegitimate land grab of the more fertile and valuable land in the south by communists in the north wrapping themselves in nationalist ideology.
  - Tloewald 11y ago
    South Vietnamese ex-pats are not an especially unbiased source. (Consider the Cuban ex pat population, which again tends to be descended from people who backed the anti Castro forces. Not saying Cuba or Vietnam are perfect, but the people who flee a regime aren't the best people to assess it. Our strategy in Iraq was informed by information from Iraqi ex pats.) North, South, and Central Vietnam are traditionally distinct regions, yes, but the war wasn't between the north and south, it's just that the south started out occupied.
    - cageface 11y ago
      I've discussed this subject with Vietnamese, in Vietnamese, all over the country, including Hanoi. Anti-communist sentiment runs strong everywhere. People are smart enough to understand how much the communists have held back the development of their country.
pikzen 11y ago
Aside from "American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.", is there anyone that considers the Vietnam War as a victory for the US ? It was hands down the biggest military failure of this century for the US. Also, as a french, I'm contractually obligated to do this: We warned you guys, we told you this wasn't going to work out, we tried :^)
- mmustapic 11y ago
  Yes, it was a victory for the US. The objective was telling any country in the world "look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us". Saying "we lost" while ignoring the millions of vietnamese dead, civilian and military, north and south, the millions of wounded, the forests and infrastructure destroyed, the consequences of that war today (Agent Orange, unexploded bombs), is an exercise of imagination that baffles me. A victory for the US would be what, the same destruction plus a parade of US forces in Hanoi?
  - pikzen 11y ago
    >look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us So if you side with the wrong guy, you force the world's biggest army to get in, wave it's dick around then force it withdraw and manage to establish a communist regime anyways ? Ho Chi Minh would consider that a pretty good deal. >north and south You do know the US was fighting WITH the South Vietnamese army, right? >the forests and infrastructure destroyed, the consequences of that war today (Agent Orange, unexploded bombs), A war happening in your country does that. It's not particularly special. We've had this little thing take place around here called World War I & II. The marks still exist, we find unexploded bombs rather regularly. It tends to happen when you bring explosives and various kinds of weapons and shoot them around. Are antipersonnel mines OK in your book too? But hey, if you're happy that civilians died by the thousands (you know, that thing that almost every single country on the globe has agreed to not kill in the case of a war) as an example, that chemical weapons were used against populations and that hundreds of war crimes were commited in the name of "look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us", good for you. Muh freedom. In the mean time, every single source I can find, the history I learned puts the US as the loser. ---------------- As an aside, our set of people who think the Vietnam was was a victory is now {"American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.", mmustapic}
poof131 11y ago
The saddest part of it all is that we were allied with Vietnam in WW2 with OSS operatives in assistance.[1] Ho Chi Minh reached out to the United States for our support at the end of the war. Unfortunately, the French wanted back their pride and their colonies and refused to support the Marshall plan without them. So we turned our back on a people who wanted to be independent for politics and a desire to buttress Western Europe against communism.[2] We then followed the French in after their fiasco at Dien Bien Phu to fight the spread of the communist menace. For the longest time I thought the Vietnamese were the biggest losers in this. They got their independence, but down a path closer to North Korea instead of South Korea after much loss of life. But now I think America was the biggest loser. We lost a cornerstone of our culture: military service. We killed the draft and a generation has been inoculated with the attitude military service is for poor people without other options. The military has begun to privatize and isolate itself from America. Fewer and fewer people serve. Many people serving in Iraq were paid, foreign contractors. Debate about the military is nonexistent. Everyone “supports the troops,” but the wars are either patriotic or evil, with little discussion of execution and goals. It saddens me and makes me think of Rome at the end of the Republican period. [3] [1] http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=france+marshall+plan+vietnam&source=bl&ots=vDtuRho66J&sig=jos6boLUTCwZiwaultjTJdg5pdI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidzoiWiebKAhUH92MKHR77BL0Q6AEILTAC#v=onepage&q=france%20marshall%20plan%20vietnam&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=P... [3] http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm
- nickff 11y ago
  The draft is government-run slavery; there is no significant moral or ethical difference between conscription and slavery. Good riddance to the draft, I hope that it is gone forever.
- narutouzumaki 11y ago
  Exactly! Here is a telegram Ho Chi Minh sent Truman on the 28th of February, 1948. A piece of history you can touch. (well you would have to break into the archive or work there, but theoretically hehe) http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-february-28th-1946-this-telegram-was-sent http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-febr... Published by the national archives, it shows that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist and independence seeker first, and Communist second (or even third) In fact, having spent time in Paris, Boston, Moscow and Hongkong working menial jobs and getting in contact with western philosophies in his youth he actually chose to quote "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" this from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in his independence speech after French occupation. The course of history might have been slightly different...
vacri 11y ago
> In that regard, especially when seeing discussions here and mostly on reddit going back and forth about who 'won' the war Only the most blinded, foaming patriots try to spin it that the US won the Vietnam war in any way, even with scare quotes. They were kicked out of the country, and at the end of their involvement had achieved none of their objectives. It doesn't matter how many victorious battles you can point to, if at the end of the war you have lost all your land, extracted nothing of value to you, and greatly tarnished your own reputation both foreign and domestic, you have lost.

whelp 11y ago

> ... both sides fought for the same thing: Freedom. Not really. The US government doesn't give a crap about freedom. What they want is influence and hegemony. Freedom/democracy are only PR excuses for american public consumption when it's convenient. Ordinary american people are nice people though.

seivan 11y ago
That's not always true. I agree that pure altruism isn't the modus operandi, but you're ignoring a lot of non-Americans who're appreciative of any help in the past.
narutouzumaki 11y ago
I wrote that more to emphasise the irony. Obviously whether the US as a whole has worked and contributed towards 'freedom' as one of their main goals is open for debate.

Tloewald 11y ago

'North' Vietnamese? The partition is a colonial construct. And what "battle" did the US win? As a military exercise it was a debacle from start to finish (much like our more recent efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan). Wrong war, wrong reason, wrong plan, incompetently executed (strategically). And the comparison with 'Spartans' is off too. The Spartans were pretty weird (not just by our standards, but by contemporary standards too) and their society was entirely wrapped around military tradition. Despite centuries of foreign occupation and resistance, Vietnamese culture was and is basically Confucian (in which the soldier is pretty much the bottom of the totem pole).

cageface 11y ago
Actually the cultures of north, central, and south Vietnam are quite different. The accents vary so much that people from one section of the country struggle to understand people from another. They have been ruled by different rulers for much of the last thousand years. Speak to many southern Vietnamese even today and they'll tell you the war was an illegitimate land grab of the more fertile and valuable land in the south by communists in the north wrapping themselves in nationalist ideology.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  South Vietnamese ex-pats are not an especially unbiased source. (Consider the Cuban ex pat population, which again tends to be descended from people who backed the anti Castro forces. Not saying Cuba or Vietnam are perfect, but the people who flee a regime aren't the best people to assess it. Our strategy in Iraq was informed by information from Iraqi ex pats.) North, South, and Central Vietnam are traditionally distinct regions, yes, but the war wasn't between the north and south, it's just that the south started out occupied.
  - cageface 11y ago
    I've discussed this subject with Vietnamese, in Vietnamese, all over the country, including Hanoi. Anti-communist sentiment runs strong everywhere. People are smart enough to understand how much the communists have held back the development of their country.

pikzen 11y ago

Aside from "American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.", is there anyone that considers the Vietnam War as a victory for the US ? It was hands down the biggest military failure of this century for the US. Also, as a french, I'm contractually obligated to do this: We warned you guys, we told you this wasn't going to work out, we tried :^)

mmustapic 11y ago
Yes, it was a victory for the US. The objective was telling any country in the world "look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us". Saying "we lost" while ignoring the millions of vietnamese dead, civilian and military, north and south, the millions of wounded, the forests and infrastructure destroyed, the consequences of that war today (Agent Orange, unexploded bombs), is an exercise of imagination that baffles me. A victory for the US would be what, the same destruction plus a parade of US forces in Hanoi?
- pikzen 11y ago
  >look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us So if you side with the wrong guy, you force the world's biggest army to get in, wave it's dick around then force it withdraw and manage to establish a communist regime anyways ? Ho Chi Minh would consider that a pretty good deal. >north and south You do know the US was fighting WITH the South Vietnamese army, right? >the forests and infrastructure destroyed, the consequences of that war today (Agent Orange, unexploded bombs), A war happening in your country does that. It's not particularly special. We've had this little thing take place around here called World War I & II. The marks still exist, we find unexploded bombs rather regularly. It tends to happen when you bring explosives and various kinds of weapons and shoot them around. Are antipersonnel mines OK in your book too? But hey, if you're happy that civilians died by the thousands (you know, that thing that almost every single country on the globe has agreed to not kill in the case of a war) as an example, that chemical weapons were used against populations and that hundreds of war crimes were commited in the name of "look, this happens if you side with the wrong guys, that is, not us", good for you. Muh freedom. In the mean time, every single source I can find, the history I learned puts the US as the loser. ---------------- As an aside, our set of people who think the Vietnam was was a victory is now {"American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.", mmustapic}

poof131 11y ago

The saddest part of it all is that we were allied with Vietnam in WW2 with OSS operatives in assistance.[1] Ho Chi Minh reached out to the United States for our support at the end of the war. Unfortunately, the French wanted back their pride and their colonies and refused to support the Marshall plan without them. So we turned our back on a people who wanted to be independent for politics and a desire to buttress Western Europe against communism.[2] We then followed the French in after their fiasco at Dien Bien Phu to fight the spread of the communist menace. For the longest time I thought the Vietnamese were the biggest losers in this. They got their independence, but down a path closer to North Korea instead of South Korea after much loss of life. But now I think America was the biggest loser. We lost a cornerstone of our culture: military service. We killed the draft and a generation has been inoculated with the attitude military service is for poor people without other options. The military has begun to privatize and isolate itself from America. Fewer and fewer people serve. Many people serving in Iraq were paid, foreign contractors. Debate about the military is nonexistent. Everyone “supports the troops,” but the wars are either patriotic or evil, with little discussion of execution and goals. It saddens me and makes me think of Rome at the end of the Republican period. [3] [1] http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=france+marshall+plan+vietnam&source=bl&ots=vDtuRho66J&sig=jos6boLUTCwZiwaultjTJdg5pdI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidzoiWiebKAhUH92MKHR77BL0Q6AEILTAC#v=onepage&q=france%20marshall%20plan%20vietnam&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=P... [3] http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm

nickff 11y ago
The draft is government-run slavery; there is no significant moral or ethical difference between conscription and slavery. Good riddance to the draft, I hope that it is gone forever.
narutouzumaki 11y ago
Exactly! Here is a telegram Ho Chi Minh sent Truman on the 28th of February, 1948. A piece of history you can touch. (well you would have to break into the archive or work there, but theoretically hehe) http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-february-28th-1946-this-telegram-was-sent http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-febr... Published by the national archives, it shows that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist and independence seeker first, and Communist second (or even third) In fact, having spent time in Paris, Boston, Moscow and Hongkong working menial jobs and getting in contact with western philosophies in his youth he actually chose to quote "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" this from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in his independence speech after French occupation. The course of history might have been slightly different...

vacri 11y ago

> In that regard, especially when seeing discussions here and mostly on reddit going back and forth about who 'won' the war Only the most blinded, foaming patriots try to spin it that the US won the Vietnam war in any way, even with scare quotes. They were kicked out of the country, and at the end of their involvement had achieved none of their objectives. It doesn't matter how many victorious battles you can point to, if at the end of the war you have lost all your land, extracted nothing of value to you, and greatly tarnished your own reputation both foreign and domestic, you have lost.