4 ms·

How could killing people on the other side of the world over ideology achieve anything (show for it)?

by avgcorrection 3y ago

reducesuffering 3y ago
Ask 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 ago
    South 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 ago
        You 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.
        avgcorrection 3y ago
        > In the sense that “anti-fascist” is a dishonest euphemism for “communist”, of course not. Give me a fucking break. I meant as in: they fought the war because they had to, not because of being anti-fascist. America thought Nazis were such an existential threat that they remained neutral until Pearl Harbor.
        philwelch 3y ago
        > Give me a fucking break. Stop parroting commie talking points and I won’t assume you’re a communist. > America thought Nazis were such an existential threat that they remained neutral until Pearl Harbor. You’ve spent this entire thread criticizing the US for foreign military interventions and now you turn around and criticize the US for not intervening soon enough? I’m sorry they didn’t do more to bail out your beloved Soviet Union in the seven months between Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor. (Not really)
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Also, most importantly, a free country.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        To be fair it only became a free country decades after being liberated... The non-communist regime in South Korea was about as brutal as the Northern one during and after the war.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        But today, there is no comparison.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - qwytw 3y ago
      That's almost an apples to oranges comparison. The situations in Korea and Vietnam were only similar on a very superficial level so it's a very disingenuous argument.. Also at the time the South Korean regime was about as brutal and oppressive as the Northern one. The situation barely improved in the 50s and 60s, after all South Korea only became a democracy in 1987 after all...
      - corimaith 3y ago
        But South Korea was pursuing rational economic policies. Especially that Vietnam and China eventually turned to capitalism anyways, what was the point really of fighting a bloody civil war over communism and enduring decades of stagnation? If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier.
        qwytw 3y ago
        It wasn't exactly that obvious at the time. IIRC North Korea outperformed the south in the 60s and didn't really fall significantly behind until decades after the war. After the war South Korea was both extremely poor and ruled by a very brutal and oppressive regime. Which if we're being fair was not that that different compared to the North (which actually had a stronger economy at the time due to Soviet support). > If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier. It's not like they really had a choice? Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh in the 40s and later the US stayed neutral until deciding to back the French in their colonial war in Vietnam. Communist countries were willing to help the Vietnamese to fight for their indepence (well.. oversimplification but the French were pretty brutal and they South Vietnamese regime they put in place after the withdrawal was dominated by Catholics who were only ~10% of the population) so it was pretty much their only choice unless they wanted to remain a colony.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Except 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 ago
E.g. by stopping a spread of said ideology?
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  I thought taking a hardline anti-Vietnam war stance in 2023 would be a slam-dunk but apparently not.
  - badpun 3y ago
    I'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 ago
      Very realpolitik.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      My 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 ago
      The 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

How could killing people on the other side of the world over ideology achieve anything (show for it)?

reducesuffering 3y ago

Ask 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 ago
  South 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 ago
      You 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.
        avgcorrection 3y ago
        > In the sense that “anti-fascist” is a dishonest euphemism for “communist”, of course not. Give me a fucking break. I meant as in: they fought the war because they had to, not because of being anti-fascist. America thought Nazis were such an existential threat that they remained neutral until Pearl Harbor.
        philwelch 3y ago
        > Give me a fucking break. Stop parroting commie talking points and I won’t assume you’re a communist. > America thought Nazis were such an existential threat that they remained neutral until Pearl Harbor. You’ve spent this entire thread criticizing the US for foreign military interventions and now you turn around and criticize the US for not intervening soon enough? I’m sorry they didn’t do more to bail out your beloved Soviet Union in the seven months between Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor. (Not really)
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Also, most importantly, a free country.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      To be fair it only became a free country decades after being liberated... The non-communist regime in South Korea was about as brutal as the Northern one during and after the war.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        But today, there is no comparison.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - qwytw 3y ago
    That's almost an apples to oranges comparison. The situations in Korea and Vietnam were only similar on a very superficial level so it's a very disingenuous argument.. Also at the time the South Korean regime was about as brutal and oppressive as the Northern one. The situation barely improved in the 50s and 60s, after all South Korea only became a democracy in 1987 after all...
    - corimaith 3y ago
      But South Korea was pursuing rational economic policies. Especially that Vietnam and China eventually turned to capitalism anyways, what was the point really of fighting a bloody civil war over communism and enduring decades of stagnation? If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        It wasn't exactly that obvious at the time. IIRC North Korea outperformed the south in the 60s and didn't really fall significantly behind until decades after the war. After the war South Korea was both extremely poor and ruled by a very brutal and oppressive regime. Which if we're being fair was not that that different compared to the North (which actually had a stronger economy at the time due to Soviet support). > If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier. It's not like they really had a choice? Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh in the 40s and later the US stayed neutral until deciding to back the French in their colonial war in Vietnam. Communist countries were willing to help the Vietnamese to fight for their indepence (well.. oversimplification but the French were pretty brutal and they South Vietnamese regime they put in place after the withdrawal was dominated by Catholics who were only ~10% of the population) so it was pretty much their only choice unless they wanted to remain a colony.
qwytw 3y ago
Except 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 ago

E.g. by stopping a spread of said ideology?

avgcorrection 3y ago
I thought taking a hardline anti-Vietnam war stance in 2023 would be a slam-dunk but apparently not.
- badpun 3y ago
  I'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 ago
    Very realpolitik.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    My 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 ago
    The 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