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Visiting Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the first time, their Vietnam War museums reminded me of the consequence of a tactical advantage (like air super
by spodek 15y ago
Visiting Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the first time, their Vietnam War museums reminded me of the consequence of a tactical advantage (like air superiority) in the context of a failed strategy (like invading without a good reason).
You lose wars.
The life and business on the streets there reminded me what happens when you don't invade for no reasons.
Capitalism flourishes.
At least from what you see on the street level, capitalism is doing better there than in the bailout-laden U.S.
Did I oversimplify? Of course. But until the U.S. shows some strategic intelligence like "don't invade countries without a reason" its tactical choices will always fail too.
By the way, they call it the American War there.
- hnhg 15y agoGiven a time when everyone was told there was a great threat from the aggressive expansionism of the Soviet Union and China, they felt they had a good reason. They thought Vietnam would result in a domino effect across the region. I don't think it was a great reason and most now don't, but then again I thought Afghanistan could never work, and there were very few of us who would say so. It's easy to get swept up by militaristic arguments it seems.
- darklajid 15y agoAnd Afghanistan did 'work'?
- toyg 15y ago"few of us" were actually quite a majority... Of people who knew what they were talking about. And we were right: Afghanistan cannot be "conquered" or "fixed", as 10+ years of failed occupation have proven.
- dabeeeenster 15y agoIt's more like 70 years of failed occupation...
- bergie 15y agoIt is even longer than that. The first British adventure there was in mid 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War
- hnhg 15y agoHow can you effect a change in culture down the barrel of a gun while claiming to be friends? That was the gist of the plan at the time. Anyway, we're probably straying too far from the point of the article...
- jakeonthemove 15y agoTry 20 - the USSR has been there for 10 years, with thousands of lives lost from every state in the union...
- newbie12 15y agoThe holocaust in Cambodia committed by the Khmer communists was one direct result of our failure in Vietnam. And it took the fall of the Berlin Wall and the broad collapse of communist ideology in the 1990s before Vietnam began to liberalize.
- jeltz 15y agoSome blame the American bombings, which started with Operation Menu in 1969, for giving Pol Pot the popular support he needed. I do not know enough of Cambodian history to tell if it is true, but at least it sounds like a plausible scenario.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y agoCorrelation is not causation. One could just as easily argue that it was the intervention of western powers (France and the US) in Southeast Asia that gave the communists legitimacy which then lead to the holocaust in Cambodia. Liberalization in Vietnam had more to do with changes in China and improved relations with the United States, than the Berlin Wall.
- philwelch 15y agoThe US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation, and never did actually invade North Vietnam. If they did, maybe the war would have gone differently.
- onetwothreefour 15y agoLOL. A bit of revisionist history never hurt anyone.
- philwelch 14y agoThere's the popular history everyone believes in regardless of its factuality, and then there's what actually happened. I have no problem revising the popular history when it's wrong.
- danssig 15y agoI wouldn't be so sure. It hasn't worked out well in Iraq or Afghanistan.
- philwelch 15y agoIt worked out fine in Iraq, people just didn't think it was worth the cost and the occupation took longer than people expected.
- smacktoward 15y ago> The US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation Oh come on. South Vietnam was an American client state from the word go. American advisors helped run Ngo Dinh Diem's campaign in the 1955 referendum that set up the South Vietnamese government. When Diem didn't turn out to be the man the U.S. government had hoped he would, American money helped finance the 1963 coup that killed him. > and never did actually invade North Vietnam No, we just bombed the holy hell out of them: see Operation Rolling Thunder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder) and Operation Linebacker II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II) for examples.