3 ms·

Can you elaborate more on the circumstances in which it happened?

lionhearted 15y ago
If you want a number of examples, contrast how the British treated the American complaints and dissent against them, vs. how Washington and the American leadership treated dissent and rebellion among their ranks. The Americans executed a number of people who rebelled against the Continental Congress / Washington's Command, whereas the British were lenient. A very thorough treatment of this can be found in Chernow's "Washington - A Life" which is a very thorough biography/history. You could also look at the Sengoku Era of Japanese history for many examples, you could compare Napoleonic France with the Neapolis Revolts in the same era. You could look at how Rome treated its protectorates and dependencies, as well as Britain (most of the time, America being a strange exception). Abraham Lincoln's treatment of the Confederacy would be another example. Crush them, then bring them back into the fold. Or compare the Pacific Theater of WWII vs. the Vietnam War from America's perspective... Japan was better-armed, better-trained, with superior forces than the Vietnamese, and the Americans were worse-equipped and more hastily trained at that point. The Japanese were easily equivalent guerrilla fighters to the Vietnamese. Yet America went total war and crushed the Empire of Japan (then rebuilt Japan intelligently - crushing without rebuilding creates a potential Nazi-Germany-after-Versailles situation)... whereas the American leadership tried some "moral leadership" insanity in Vietnam instead of total war. Again, I'm not advocating any of these things. This is meant to be more descriptive than prescriptive, but maybe I'm being sloppy with language. But treating Hanoi in the 1960's the way they treated Tokyo in the 1940's would have seems like it would have likely secured a demilitarized and protected South Vietnam from the Northern Forces. Maybe they couldn't have totally destroyed the communist forces and taken the North, but they absolutely could have fenced off the South and stopped the Khmer Rouge genocides from ever happening (they started the same year America withdrew - this isn't a coincidence). Millions of lives would have been better, more like South Korea than North Korea. The examples in history of this abound. Leniency and concessions provoke more unrest. Crackdowns without redress eventually lead to the dam bursting. Doing both together tends to resolve the situation most often.

If you want a number of examples, contrast how the British treated the American complaints and dissent against them, vs. how Washington and the American leadership treated dissent and rebellion among their ranks. The Americans executed a number of people who rebelled against the Continental Congress / Washington's Command, whereas the British were lenient. A very thorough treatment of this can be found in Chernow's "Washington - A Life" which is a very thorough biography/history. You could also look at the Sengoku Era of Japanese history for many examples, you could compare Napoleonic France with the Neapolis Revolts in the same era. You could look at how Rome treated its protectorates and dependencies, as well as Britain (most of the time, America being a strange exception). Abraham Lincoln's treatment of the Confederacy would be another example. Crush them, then bring them back into the fold. Or compare the Pacific Theater of WWII vs. the Vietnam War from America's perspective... Japan was better-armed, better-trained, with superior forces than the Vietnamese, and the Americans were worse-equipped and more hastily trained at that point. The Japanese were easily equivalent guerrilla fighters to the Vietnamese. Yet America went total war and crushed the Empire of Japan (then rebuilt Japan intelligently - crushing without rebuilding creates a potential Nazi-Germany-after-Versailles situation)... whereas the American leadership tried some "moral leadership" insanity in Vietnam instead of total war. Again, I'm not advocating any of these things. This is meant to be more descriptive than prescriptive, but maybe I'm being sloppy with language. But treating Hanoi in the 1960's the way they treated Tokyo in the 1940's would have seems like it would have likely secured a demilitarized and protected South Vietnam from the Northern Forces. Maybe they couldn't have totally destroyed the communist forces and taken the North, but they absolutely could have fenced off the South and stopped the Khmer Rouge genocides from ever happening (they started the same year America withdrew - this isn't a coincidence). Millions of lives would have been better, more like South Korea than North Korea. The examples in history of this abound. Leniency and concessions provoke more unrest. Crackdowns without redress eventually lead to the dam bursting. Doing both together tends to resolve the situation most often.