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It's not hard to make an argument for the Vietnam War. Compare it to Korea. How much would you pay to get another South Korea (GDP per capita something like 3
by hackeraccount 7y ago
It's not hard to make an argument for the Vietnam War. Compare it to Korea. How much would you pay to get another South Korea (GDP per capita something like 30,000) vs. Vietnam (GDP per capita something like 3,000).
Obviously it's a counter-factual. Maybe Vietnam was inherently unwinnable. Maybe victory would have left Southeast Asia just as messed up as defeat.
- HillaryBriss 7y agoI don't see it. Vietnam was not invading the US. Rather, they were trying to eliminate a long, ugly history of French colonialism. Ho Chi Minh at first actually thought the US would favor his movement, given the US's own history with British colonialism. A couple million people's deaths were caused by the US war in Vietnam and Cambodia. I don't see how I could argue in favor of that. Had it won, it's not clear that the US would have somehow turned the Vietnamese economy into the South Korean economy. That would have been mostly up to the people of Vietnam. I mean, in another light, consider the fact that the US cannot even turn its own economy into the South Korean economy.