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Was Vietnam a just war?

Was Vietnam a just war?

  • Need more info

    Votes: 2 4.8%

  • Yes, it was just

    Votes: 10 23.8%

  • No, it wasn't just

    Votes: 30 71.4%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
OldFatGuy said:
My father was a lifer, shot in the head during WWII and survived. Went back for more in Korea, got shot in the head again, and survived. From those head wounds, he suffered multiple strokes annually until he passed because of those strokes. He made his four sons swear they would never enlist. Three of us did enlist. One died, one came back wounded and emotionally shattered, drugged and drank himself to death. I came back a mess from friendly fire. My youngest brother was too young to enlist during the war is SE Asia. My father was right. Those young men who were unwilling to engage in that war, in a land few Americans had heard of, and for which no one could supply good reasons, were correct to refuse to enlist and avoid the draft. It was a waste of American blood, for nothing more than the paranoia of old rich men who themselves never fought in any wars. They were not spoiled brats, they were young men and women who saw injustice. They saw the fascism my father fought against take hold among our trusted politicians.
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I had several uncles wage war in WW2. One a cook in the officers mess when in the Army transferred to the New Air Force since that was his job in the Army. One was in the Tank Crew under Patton and those and t he youngest uncle came back from WW2. The youngest decided to stay in the Army and ended up in Korea and after blowing a bridge, he was shot by the North Koreans. He enjoyed talking about war to those who wanted to know about war.

The uncle in the Air Force was in for Korea and Vietnam as well when he retired as an E-9. He told them he would go back to Vietnam if they left his son out of the war. The Son also was sent to fight in Vietnam, my cousin. 3 tours in Vietnam for that uncle.
 
OldFatGuy said:
My father was a lifer, shot in the head during WWII and survived. Went back for more in Korea, got shot in the head again, and survived. From those head wounds, he suffered multiple strokes annually until he passed because of those strokes. He made his four sons swear they would never enlist. Three of us did enlist. One died, one came back wounded and emotionally shattered, drugged and drank himself to death. I came back a mess from friendly fire. My youngest brother was too young to enlist during the war is SE Asia. My father was right. Those young men who were unwilling to engage in that war, in a land few Americans had heard of, and for which no one could supply good reasons, were correct to refuse to enlist and avoid the draft. It was a waste of American blood, for nothing more than the paranoia of old rich men who themselves never fought in any wars. They were not spoiled brats, they were young men and women who saw injustice. They saw the fascism my father fought against take hold among our trusted politicians.
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First off, I respect that you went when called, and thank you for your service. Second, I don't think that the Vietnam War was an unjust war. I think that your going over there did serve a higher purpose. If not for Vietnam, what might the USSR and China have done? You guys were a warning to our enemies. And let's be honest, the USA has a checkered past, but we don't come close to the horrors of the USSR and Communist China.

Now, if you are against war, I can understand that. I can respect that. I just don't agree with it. FWIW, I agree that the USA has been in unjust wars. And many unscrupulous businessmen have benefited from this. However, if you look, almost every country has a checkered past. I don't like the USA bashing going on in this forum. Name a country that doesn't have a history of slavery and warmongering.
 
I have to agree with gino above that the answer to the question is much more complex than most would think. Modern access to information archived in Vietnam tells us much that we didn't understand during the war. We are now about 60 years past the beginning of the war and many more histories have been written.

Much as folks would like to simplify the war as one of anti colonialism that was pretty much over after the French lost at Dien Bien Phu. The peace conference formed two governments for North and South Vietnam, much as the Korean settlement had done. There were guarantees that people could move back and forth to the area of their choice. More than a million moved from the north to the south. Far fewer moved from the south to the north. It was clear that the population of the south were not prepared to exchange the French for the Communists of the north. Gross mismanagement and the loss of crops created a massive famine and starvation in the north. At least 3000 of those who moved north did so for training and were returned to the south to form the backbone of what would become the National Liberation Front. This is the time in the countries history you should become aware of Le Duan. Duan would later become the head of the communist party of Vietnam and he actually ran the country eventually making Ho Chi Minh a figurehead whose decisions were rejected. Many members of the communist party who opposed him disappeared or were transferred to positions where they had no influence.

Le Duan began as the effective head of the National Liberation Front in the south and he used that position to gradually gather more and more political power around himself. Basically, you all know how the war went. It was an invasion of South Vietnam whose people had developed a much more robust economy than the north under communism and who really wanted to be left alone in spite of the usual corruption of government there.

To the north, there was not a unified stance for continuing the war which was hurting the economy. Ho was one of those who thought a peaceful settlement might be better for the north. Le Duan who's growing power depended on the continuation of the war scrapped any thoughts of peace.

Meanwhile, North Vietnam was also in the process of attempting an invasion of Laos, and was taking charge of a good portion of Cambodia.

So, was it a just war to defend a country that asked for our assistance in warding off an invasion?
Were we justified in supporting one or more corrupt governments there?
Did we mismanage the war either through incompetence or a very real fear that we would end up with another Korea and Chinese involvement?
Were our politicians just asshats using the war for their own gain?
Were there North Vietnamese politicians being asshats and using the war for their own gain?
Were our citizens justified in protesting the war or were they defending brothers and friends from the draft?

There are never complete answers to questions like these. All I can tell you is that history has not been kind to the Vietnam War. Much of what was written about the war was written by ivory tower historians with some preconceived notions about what was right and wrong.

As I stated at the beginning of the post however there are some new histories being made available by a younger generation of historians more interested in fact.

If you are interested I can recommend as a starting point "Haoni's War, an international history of the war for peace in Vietnam" by Lien-Hang T Nguyen who was given unprecedented access to the North's records of the war as well as US records. It's a tough dry read that has you flipping back to reread what you thought you understood the first time through. It's not complementary to either side. It's a lot of history about the war that you hadn't heard before.

Sorry for the long post. This was "my war" and I've been studying it for almost 50 years.
 
We fought the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. Our doctrine was to oppose the Soviet Union wherever the Soviets went. We fought the Cold War to prevent WW3.

We won the Cold War. The Soviets are all gone and we're still here.

Vietnam was a French colony for a hundred years. The French colonized Vietnam by befriending a small faction, the Vietnamese Catholics, and putting the Catholics in charge of the Buddhists. The Buddhists made up 80% of the country. The French put the Catholics in charge of the Buddhists. The Catholics got all the jobs, all the education and so on.

The thing you have to understand about Vietnam is that it was a civil war, much like our civil war.


history-education-pss-vietnam-hochiminh-source_0.jpg



Ho Chi Mihn asking America to help him get rid of the French. I wish we would've.

Unfortunately Ho had gone communist by this time. America thought the communists were invading Vietnam. They weren't, it was a civil war, but the communist thing clouded it.

Then De Gaul threatened America, hinting that France would align itself more closely with the Soviets if the Americans didn't help France keep it's colonies.

America gave France like $500 million to fight the Vietnamese. The French lost.

So America decided to try to achieve what it had in Korea, split the country. But what made it impossible is that the Vietnamese could move through neighboring countries like Laos and send supplies to the South. It was called the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. It made it almost impossible to win the war.

Both Soviet and Chinese communist governments provided North Vietnam with money, men, equipment and training.

Things were escalated a few times.

Like 6 North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a US naval ship, doing no damage. The Americans used that incident to escalate the war. This was Gulf of Tonkin. You can find interviews with the North Vietnamese torpedo boat crewmen.

Things turned into a mess. America decided to pull out.

A few years after that. The Russians pulled out of Vietnam and the Vietnamese economy crashed hard, with like 700% inflation.

Today, because of Chinese aggression, America and Vietnam are on friendly terms.


You can watch Ken Burn's Vietnam here The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

Great documentary.
 
ecofarm said:
Without superpower willingness to project power around the globe, fledgling democracies would never have been safe to get on their feet.
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So if the French military was worth a darn we would not have had to get involved in Vietnam. Of course the French have never won a war on their own have they?
 
Robertinfremont said:
Thank you for the faulty history lesson. One major correction. The native tribes did not understand land ownership.
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They certainly did, and they fought wars between each other over territorial boundaries. That they saw themselves as more as conservators of the land, rather than individual title holders merely varied from the western laws we created here. Our land laws were not theirs, that does not translate as a lack of understanding of land ownership, only a lack of willingness to adapt western based land laws.

The Iroquois Confederation had internal treaties which specified which tribes controlled not only specific lands, but specific domestic waterways and riparian rights. Our governing laws of riparian rights, inclusive of not denying downstream neighbors of waters by damning, is adopted from their laws. The same held true for neighboring member tribes whose lands were bordered by streams and rivers, ponds and lakes, granting equal riparian rights to both, inclusive of harvesting wildlife rights from those bodies of water.

You've shown the only faults here are your own.
 
dave8383 said:
I said this before but I'll say it again. Those are meaningless comparisons. In Vietnam for example out of 500,000 US troops at the peak of the war only about 50,000 were actually out in the bush fighting and they did most of the dying. With Covid-19 you're talking about out of a population of 325 million or so.
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It's a comparison of numbers, nothing more. The statistical numbers of deaths during those conflicts. Don't you understand it's a gauge, a way to make people think of the seriousness of this pandemic and the cost of human life in the span of just a few months. It's not meaningless at all, it's very symbolically meaningful.
 
swing_voter said:
Was Vietnam a just war?

I'll withhold my opinion until the first couple of pages so as not to influence posters.
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That probably depends whether or not one takes the Vietnam within the context of the times it was fought or in the context of a lot of today's thinking. One must also put the events of that time into their proper place to understand the point in time when there became no other choice. So much of history is taken out of it proper context, thus it becomes impossible to understand it or the reasons that lead up to such events. There are thinks that were totally unrecognizable to those at the time of the event, but later become recognizable. Also things get twisted and bent to suit the perceptions of those today vs. the perceptions of those who lived through the events and knew the proper context into which to put them.

This being the case, no one is going to convince those today who think it was unjust, that it was just and vice versa. That in my opinion becomes a fools game and each side will never listen to the other or give what each side says some deep thought. Thus understanding eludes all of us as we all are stuck in our preconceived perceptions. Not to be changed even if one were to put oneself back into the shoes using the same context of the time to understand it all.

One thing is for certain, the United States misjudged and failed to understand the situation and the countries and people involved at that time. The United States never did understand what type of war it was until it was over and hindsight kicked in. The United States never understood the people involved and like always, were busy fighting this war using the last war's tactics and strategies. Unlike WWII, we never adjusted to the new realities.

Just or unjust, people have their minds made up about that. Only a fool would try to change the unchangeable.
 
OldFatGuy said:
They certainly did, and they fought wars between each other over territorial boundaries. That they saw themselves as more as conservators of the land, rather than individual title holders merely varied from the western laws we created here. Our land laws were not theirs, that does not translate as a lack of understanding of land ownership, only a lack of willingness to adapt western based land laws.

The Iroquois Confederation had internal treaties which specified which tribes controlled not only specific lands, but specific domestic waterways and riparian rights. Our governing laws of riparian rights, inclusive of not denying downstream neighbors of waters by damning, is adopted from their laws. The same held true for neighboring member tribes whose lands were bordered by streams and rivers, ponds and lakes, granting equal riparian rights to both, inclusive of harvesting wildlife rights from those bodies of water.

You've shown the only faults here are your own.
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And you agreed with me they did not recognize land ownership. They had territory for sure, but not as owners.

Also the white man deeded property to indians known as reservations and paid millions of dollars to the tribes as agreed compensation.

Reservations are nations inside the USA.
 
swing_voter said:
We fought the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. Our doctrine was to oppose the Soviet Union wherever the Soviets went. We fought the Cold War to prevent WW3.

We won the Cold War. The Soviets are all gone and we're still here.

Vietnam was a French colony for a hundred years. The French colonized Vietnam by befriending a small faction, the Vietnamese Catholics, and putting the Catholics in charge of the Buddhists. The Buddhists made up 80% of the country. The French put the Catholics in charge of the Buddhists. The Catholics got all the jobs, all the education and so on.

The thing you have to understand about Vietnam is that it was a civil war, much like our civil war.


history-education-pss-vietnam-hochiminh-source_0.jpg



Ho Chi Mihn asking America to help him get rid of the French. I wish we would've.

Unfortunately Ho had gone communist by this time. America thought the communists were invading Vietnam. They weren't, it was a civil war, but the communist thing clouded it.

Then De Gaul threatened America, hinting that France would align itself more closely with the Soviets if the Americans didn't help France keep it's colonies.

America gave France like $500 million to fight the Vietnamese. The French lost.

So America decided to try to achieve what it had in Korea, split the country. But what made it impossible is that the Vietnamese could move through neighboring countries like Laos and send supplies to the South. It was called the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. It made it almost impossible to win the war.

Both Soviet and Chinese communist governments provided North Vietnam with money, men, equipment and training.

Things were escalated a few times.

Like 6 North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a US naval ship, doing no damage. The Americans used that incident to escalate the war. This was Gulf of Tonkin. You can find interviews with the North Vietnamese torpedo boat crewmen.

Things turned into a mess. America decided to pull out.

A few years after that. The Russians pulled out of Vietnam and the Vietnamese economy crashed hard, with like 700% inflation.

Today, because of Chinese aggression, America and Vietnam are on friendly terms.


You can watch Ken Burn's Vietnam here The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

Great documentary.
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Unfortunately Burns and a good many Americans side with the Communists of Ho Chi Minh.
 
gino said:
First off, I respect that you went when called, and thank you for your service. Second, I don't think that the Vietnam War was an unjust war. I think that your going over there did serve a higher purpose. If not for Vietnam, what might the USSR and China have done? You guys were a warning to our enemies. And let's be honest, the USA has a checkered past, but we don't come close to the horrors of the USSR and Communist China.

Now, if you are against war, I can understand that. I can respect that. I just don't agree with it. FWIW, I agree that the USA has been in unjust wars. And many unscrupulous businessmen have benefited from this. However, if you look, almost every country has a checkered past. I don't like the USA bashing going on in this forum. Name a country that doesn't have a history of slavery and warmongering.
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I find it insincere and insulting to receive rote thanks for my service. Such thanks are shallow, serving as a political meme with no real respect or understanding of that service. Members of my family have fought for this nation since the French/Indian wars, on both sides of both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Our family was a military family long before arriving here, and some who arrived later, fled military service in the lands they came from.

Frankly, I don't care what the USSR and China might have done. The Vietnamese people proved that as an erroneous concept for contemplation when the went to war against the Chinese to maintain their hard won independence.

No nation I am aware of possesses a past free from war and all its wrongness. Not even Tibet or Monaco. That remains irrelevant to the reality that with this nation's relatively short history it has known only 17 years without war. That deserves a good bashing. This is a nation built on greed, and other vices. What has occurred elsewhere is not significant to me. I am concerned with here, this nation and its future as it effects my family. Let others enslave, rape, pillage and murder each other, so long as they leave us out of their internecine struggles. I do believe in my nation, right when it is right, to be fixed when it is wrong.

As far as I know, there is no competition for counting horrors, tho some here take pleasure in body counts, real and unreal. Being honest with ourselves about our past can make for a better future. If you cannot face up to the wrongs of our past, you cannot create solutions that will make for a better America for Americans. Get used to the criticisms leveled here against out nation and its leaders, the purpose is improvement of our human condition. No one is twisting your arms to read what you don't want to own up to, and you are free to use your time otherwise. Be thankful you have the choice.

Humans have always profited from wars, such is the human condition, whether or not scrupulous was in their vocabulary or intent. Eating chipped salted beef and hard tack sucked. Those who supplied it made fortunes and established long lived businesses from doing so. Think about that next time you eat some Amour hot dogs.
 
HumblePi said:
It's a comparison of numbers, nothing more. The statistical numbers of deaths during those conflicts. Don't you understand it's a gauge, a way to make people think of the seriousness of this pandemic and the cost of human life in the span of just a few months. It's not meaningless at all, it's very symbolically meaningful.
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Well, I'm not going to debate it with you because I know you mean well.
 
vegas giants said:
That's nice


We had no beef with vietnam
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North Vietnam made a blunder by going communist.

I saw myself what communism does to nations and what freedom does is much better. As Vietnam finally started to use part of our system, they began to come out of poverty.

Still today Vietnam is not free. It has a group of under 500 bosses running the place.
 
Robertinfremont said:
North Vietnam made a blunder by going communist.

I saw myself what communism does to nations and what freedom does is much better. As Vietnam finally started to use part of our system, they began to come out of poverty.

Still today Vietnam is not free. It has a group of under 500 bosses running the place.
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Sounds like the US
 
HumblePi said:
It's a comparison of numbers, nothing more. The statistical numbers of deaths during those conflicts. Don't you understand it's a gauge, a way to make people think of the seriousness of this pandemic and the cost of human life in the span of just a few months. It's not meaningless at all, it's very symbolically meaningful.
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I hope you never have to experience war first hand, however if so, you will quickly recognize and distinguish harm caused intentionally by the hands of men as incomparable to that indiscriminately caused by pathogens.
 
Robertinfremont said:
And you agreed with me they did not recognize land ownership. They had territory for sure, but not as owners.

Also the white man deeded property to indians known as reservations and paid millions of dollars to the tribes as agreed compensation.

Reservations are nations inside the USA.
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No, I am not agreeing with you in the slightest. Different definitions of ownership do not signify justification for idiocy and bigotry.
 
OldFatGuy said:
I hope you never have to experience war first hand, however if so, you will quickly recognize and distinguish harm caused intentionally by the hands of men as incomparable to that indiscriminately caused by pathogens.
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Jesus Christ 'Old Fat Dude' do not ever dare to even hint that I don't know anything about wars. I know what the effects of war are, dead husbands, fathers, brothers, friends. And let me tell you right now, do not ever even attempt to diminish the losses both me and many others suffered during the Vietnam era. I lost many, many long time personal friends and classmates because of that stupid, ridiculous conflict. I don't need to have my boots on the ground to understand what pain, suffering and sorrow comes as a result of stupid unnecessary wars.

The end result of deadly pathogens does exactly the same thing as a war does. It indiscriminately erases the lives of people we know and love.
 
Robertinfremont said:
FDR would have fought the Communists had he lived so Truman took it over for him once he died.
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Horse manure. Harry was trying to prove he had a pair. He wasn't called, throughout his life, a sissy for nothing.
 
Robertinfremont said:
And you agreed with me they did not recognize land ownership. They had territory for sure, but not as owners.

Also the white man deeded property to indians known as reservations and paid millions of dollars to the tribes as agreed compensation.

Reservations are nations inside the USA.
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As soon as something of value was found on those reservations, the boundaries were redrawn...
 
HumblePi said:
Jesus Christ 'Old Fat Dude' do not ever dare to even hint that I don't know anything about wars. I know what the effects of war are, dead husbands, fathers, brothers, friends. And let me tell you right now, do not ever even attempt to diminish the losses both me and many others suffered during the Vietnam era. I lost many, many long time personal friends and classmates because of that stupid, ridiculous conflict. I don't need to have my boots on the ground to understand what pain, suffering and sorrow comes as a result of stupid unnecessary wars.

The end result of deadly pathogens does exactly the same thing as a war does. It indiscriminately erases the lives of people we know and love.
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Cry, cry, cry and whine. Your hype over Covid 19 has accomplished murder. People who you have frightened have died rather than seek therapy they need from hospitals. You continue to create a climate of fear, paranoia that is causing more deaths than the virus.

I am old, and smart enough, experienced enough to mock my skinny old bones, while you are not humble at all.
 
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