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I've never thought much of that narrative argument against the Apollo space program, since the Vietnam War cost at least 4X as much as the Apollo program, with
by photochemsyn 3y ago
I've never thought much of that narrative argument against the Apollo space program, since the Vietnam War cost at least 4X as much as the Apollo program, with much less to show for it and far more negative social effects (e.g. all the homeless Vietnam vets with unrecognized PTSD, etc.).
- actionfromafar 3y agoThe true, multi-faceted cost of Vietnam sort of crept up slowly though, especially in the 70s. Weren't many armed gangs started by 'nam vets for instance? (Not even counting what it meant for south east asia.)
- avgcorrection 3y agoHow could killing people on the other side of the world over ideology achieve anything (show for it)?
- reducesuffering 3y agoAsk the South Koreans
- avgcorrection 3y ago“Some of you Vietnamese will die... but that’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make.” Something like that?
- philwelch 3y agoSouth Korea is a modern, developed country with a high tech manufacturing economy and a high standard of living. And it only exists today because many countries including the United States defended it from a communist invasion, just as the United States attempted to defend South Vietnam.
- avgcorrection 3y ago> And it only exists today because many countries including the United States Bombed North Korea to the Stone Age?
- reducesuffering 3y agoYou asked how "killing people on the other side of the world could achieve anything," and clearly South Korea is an example of a successful contrast to North Korea given the same people. If you think North Korea is only where it is because the US bombed them, comrade... Also, Germany, Japan, Serbian conflicts, etc. You'd have to never have seen a world map to think history never "achieve[d] anything [positive]" from interventions "on the other side of the world."
- avgcorrection 3y ago> If you think North Korea is only where it is because the US bombed them, comrade... You called? I think it is very relevant, but somehow it never, ever gets brought up that the cartoonishly authoritarian regime was bombed to hell in that war. That Germany lost WWII is certainly relevant to its last 80 year history, for example. > Also, Germany, Japan, Serbian conflicts, etc. You'd have to never have seen a world map to think history never "achieve[d] anything [positive]" from interventions "on the other side of the world." You dropped “ideology”, liar. In the case of WWII: I have never seen anything to make me believe that the allies fought the Nazis because they were anti-fascists (ideology).
- philwelch 3y ago> In the case of WWII: I have never seen anything to make me believe that the allies fought the Nazis because they were anti-fascists (ideology). In the sense that “anti-fascist” is a dishonest euphemism for “communist”, of course not. But the Allies were ideologically opposed to fascism, Nazism, and Japanese imperialism.
- 3y ago
- qwytw 3y agoExcept the war in Vietnam was fundamentally different to that in North Korea. It was a direct outcome of the French colonial war in the early 50s which the US decided to support for semi-absurd reasons ("domino theory"). Geopolitically China was always a much bigger threat to Vietnam than anyone else so had the US made the right choices in the 40s and 50s it would've been easy to turn it into a state which was friendly or at least neutral towards the US (like Yugoslavia for instance).
- badpun 3y agoE.g. by stopping a spread of said ideology?
- avgcorrection 3y agoI thought taking a hardline anti-Vietnam war stance in 2023 would be a slam-dunk but apparently not.
- badpun 3y agoI'm not a historian, but my understanding is that Vietnam was a failure for the US because it wasn't executed properly. Eventually, US lost heart and fled the country. The goal itself (stopping comunism from spreading to another country), was in US' interest, at least as long as US wanted to be maintain its status as a global hegemon.
- avgcorrection 3y agoVery realpolitik.
- wolverine876 3y agoMy understanding from historians is that, whether or not the goal was right, it may have been an impossible situation. Wars are politics and end only with a stable political settlement; without that, they can go on indefinitely - such as in Afghanistan recently. Like Afghanistan, there was nobody in Vietnam that could run the country, politically, except the North Vietnamese. All the US could do was build someone else's capability, which wasn't working (in Vietname or Afghanistan) or fight indefinitely.
- qwytw 3y agoThe US effectively lost the war before it even started. They decided to support the French during their colonial war due to the so-called 'domino theory,' which ignored the fact that the Vietnamese hated or feared China more than anyone else. After the French were gone, China would have been the biggest geopolitical threat to Vietnam. If the right choices had been made in the 1940s and early 1950s, it wouldn't have been that hard to turn Vietnam into an East Asian equivalent of Yugoslavia, if not an actual US ally