Was Vietnam a just war?

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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Swing_voter:

No.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

avatar said:

Unfortunately there are fictional movies like Air America very loosely based on embellished fact floating around that give a different impression.

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Here's a different impression for you from a non-fictional movie - and, I dare say, from as close to the source of those decisions as anyone can ask for. It's worth sitting through every minute of it - and it's FREE to watch!

Of particular note is Robert McNamara's description of his meeting with North Vietnam's foreign minister.

The Fog of War (2003) | Watch Free Documentaries Online

Enjoy.

MamboDervish said:

Here's a different impression for you from a non-fictional movie - and, I dare say, from as close to the source of those decisions as anyone can ask for. It's worth sitting through every minute of it - and it's FREE to watch!

Of particular note is Robert McNamara's description of his meeting with North Vietnam's foreign minister.

The Fog of War (2003) | Watch Free Documentaries Online

Enjoy.

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Still, getting one's information from movies real or fictional does not replace study from many sources. McNamara was one of the worst actors of the Vietnam War, occupying the equivalent place that Donald Rumsfeld had during our invasion of Iraq.

Jredbaron96 said:

Sure, and you can read “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy” and then we can compare notes.

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Having already completed the introduction and boilerplate I already like this author. The first difference is one of style, where Hanoi's war is a pretty dry rendition of information gleaned from documents and study by an academic, this author has a lot more color and feel and experience to bring to the narrative. Thank you. Ir will be a good read using modern information now available.

MamboDervish said:

Here's a different impression for you from a non-fictional movie - and, I dare say, from as close to the source of those decisions as anyone can ask for. It's worth sitting through every minute of it - and it's FREE to watch!

Of particular note is Robert McNamara's description of his meeting with North Vietnam's foreign minister.

The Fog of War (2003) | Watch Free Documentaries Online

Enjoy.

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They give McNamara a hard time for staying positive, but you can't expect a general to be negative. He's not going to say, "we don't have a chance of winning this thing." It would destroy morale and motivate to the enemy, getting more American troops killed.


Besides, if you listen to the Johnson tapes, other people were telling Johnson we didn't have a chance of winning this thing. Johnson has this conversation with former president Eisenhower and the two talk about it.

avatar said:

Still, getting one's information from movies real or fictional does not replace study from many sources.

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If you're intent on NOT learning what MCNAMARA, the ARCHITECT of the Vietnam War says about it, then . . . what can I say. Your opinion is irredeemably deficient!
I've led a horse to water. Drink. Don't drink. I've ceased to care.

swing_voter said:

They give McNamara a hard time for staying positive, but you can't expect a general to be negative. He's not going to say, "we don't have a chance of winning this thing." It would destroy morale and motivate to the enemy, getting more American troops killed.


Besides, if you listen to the Johnson tapes, other people were telling Johnson we didn't have a chance of winning this thing. Johnson has this conversation with former president Eisenhower and the two talk about it.

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McNamara wasn't a general.

MamboDervish said:

If you're intent on NOT learning what MCNAMARA, the ARCHITECT of the Vietnam War says about it, then . . . what can I say. Your opinion is irredeemably deficient!
I've led a horse to water. Drink. Don't drink. I've ceased to care.

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Perhaps you don't understand the derision we held McNamara then and now. He was a numbers guy who thought that we could bring the north to the peace table by moving the bomb line a couple of miles north each day till they saw reason and gave up. He attempted to direct the war from Washington instead of allowing his Generals do what they knew how to do best. Frankly he was an ass. You've led the horse to a cesspool.

MamboDervish said:

McNamara wasn't a general.

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You're right, I'm thinking of Westmoreland.

McNamara was overly positive too, though.

avatar said:

Perhaps you don't understand the derision we held McNamara then and now. He was a numbers guy who thought that we could bring the north to the peace table by moving the bomb line a couple of miles north each day till they saw reason and gave up. He attempted to direct the war from Washington instead of allowing his Generals do what they knew how to do best. Frankly he was an ass. You've led the horse to a cesspool.

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?? HUH. ?? I certainly understood the derision. I derided him myself - just as I mocked everyone who appeared to advocate for what was clearly an absurd war in which we had no business being. I was draft age during Vietnam, and like so many other educated Americans, knew better than to buy into all the feeble pretexts given for being there. We should not have been - period - so there's certainly no attraction to becoming a retro-revisionist on the subject, and masturbating to tales about how we should've/could've/would've won - "if only . . . ". That history won't be rewritten. What did we gain from Vietnam?

That is - besides having 8 times as many Vietnamese nail technicians working in the country as we have people employed in the coal industry . . . . . that Trump claimed we desperately needed to save. (lol - I slay me!) :roll:

avatar said:

One of the best ways to get world wide support for an invasion is to create the appearance of a civil war. North Vietnam spent the latter part of the 50's establishing a revolutionary network in South Vietnam before beginning more serious efforts in 1960. While there was unrest in the South it's doubtful that without outside interference the people would have begun their own "civil war".

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And over the next decades, over 2 million fled after South Vietnam was conquered.

That was over 10% of the population of South Vietnam.

Much like what was seen in Germany, huge numbers who opposed Communism fled to the South as the countries were being created, If people there had really wanted Communism, there was nothing stopping them from moving to the North.

MamboDervish said:

?? HUH. ?? I certainly understood the derision. I derided him myself - just as I mocked everyone who appeared to advocate for what was clearly an absurd war in which we had no business being. I was draft age during Vietnam, and like so many other educated Americans, knew better than to buy into all the feeble pretexts given for being there. We should not have been - period - so there's certainly no attraction to becoming a retro-revisionist on the subject, and masturbating to tales about how we should've/could've/would've won - "if only . . . ". That history won't be rewritten. What did we gain from Vietnam?

That is - besides having 8 times as many Vietnamese nail technicians working in the country as we have people employed in the coal industry . . . . . that Trump claimed we desperately needed to save. (lol - I slay me!) :roll:

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I don't understand your attempt to get me educated about the war by a man that you now say you also derided?

avatar said:

I don't understand your attempt to get me educated about the war by a man that you now say you also derided?

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Perhaps if you watched the Documentary, you would understand. The fact that he was derided in no way disqualifies his experience or his perspective. Unless you're among those people who completely dismisses any message that comes from a messenger you don't like. In which case . . . that says more about you than it does about the messenger, and none of it good. You can't judge the veracity of what he says if you refuse to even watch him saying it.

But if your mind is closed on the subject - well - it wouldn't be the first time I've run into that.

MamboDervish said:

Perhaps if you watched the Documentary, you would understand. The fact that he was derided in no way disqualifies his experience or his perspective. Unless you're among those people who completely dismisses any message that comes from a messenger you don't like. In which case . . . that says more about you than it does about the messenger, and none of it good. You can't judge the veracity of what he says if you refuse to even watch him saying it.

But if your mind is closed on the subject - well - it wouldn't be the first time I've run into that.

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I watched the documentary. It was McNamara trying to rebuild his image.

I can see why you run into that idea that others have a closed mind a lot.

Americans 58,000

S Vietnamese 250,000 You can't say they didn't fight.

N Vietnamese & Viet Cong 1,000,000 They just wanted it more.

Civilians 2,000,000


I'm watching the Ken Burns documentary again.

avatar said:

I watched the documentary. It was McNamara trying to rebuild his image.

I can see why you run into that idea that others have a closed mind a lot.

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There's certainly truth to your observation of McNamara trying to rebuild his image. Under the circumstances, no surprise there. And also equal parts of genuine introspection, contrition, and a tendency to overly intellectualize the events - also no surprise. But what I found particularly telling was his recount of his meeting, decades after the war, with the Vietnamese Foreign Minister, which very credibly reinforced his contention about our total failure to understand the Vietnamese. And if you really don't know your enemy in a war, you are unlikely to be able to defeat him. If you're mistaken about what motivates him, then you're unlikely to know what will make him surrender. To North Viet Nam, surrender was never an option. (As I recall, that segment is somewhere between the 1:15 and 1:20 time signature of the film.)

The foreign minister says, in effect, that there was no way to defeat the North because, as their history should have told us, they had been fighting the Chinese for 1,000 years, never surrendered, and would have literally fought to the last man that which was perceived as our colonialist intentions - just as they had the French before us. The country is also riddled with many very large caves, about which we knew nothing, making it impossible to bomb them out of existence.

The point is, engaging in fantasies about how we might have won that war is beyond any mere exercise in futility - it's downright ignorant in the extreme. And any expectation that the American electorate would have stood for interminable hemorrhaging, of both blood AND treasure, is also beyond mindless.

That war was a totally lost cause the moment we undertook it.

The first 35 military advisors where sent to Vietnam under Truman in 1950.

French lost over 100,000 men.

Cordelier said:

That misses the bigger picture, though. If the US hadn't supported Saigon, then how credible do you figure our support for the 30 September Movement in Indonesia would have been? Without in intervening in Vietnam, there would have been an unbroken chain of pro-Communist nations from the Asian coast to New Guinea. Astride the oil supply routes to Japan from the Middle East. I don't think I need to explain what kind of leverage that would have given China. Plus, there would have been a lot of temptation for China to make trouble in Northern Thailand, where there was a lot of simmering anti-Bangkok feelings (as evidenced in the 1973 uprising.) By making a stand in Vietnam, it forced Mao to turn the Cultural Revolution inward... but it didn't have to turn out that way - all of those red book waving mobs could have been sent South if we had given them the opportunity to do so. All in all, I think we would have been drawn into a conflict somewhere in Southeast Asia at some point in the 60's.

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Your viewpoint perfectly illustrates America's complete misunderstanding of what was happening in Indochina at that time. Vietnam was a nationalistic struggle for independence to cast off Western colonialism. The reason Laos and Cambodia fell to the communists was because Vietnam invaded them due to the fact that they needed to supply their troops in the South.

Ho Chi Minh was actually trained by the OSS, and he fervently believed that America would help Vietnam achieve its independence. If Truman's government (FDR had actually promised Minh to support his independence movement, but he died) had sided with Vietnam instead of the French, Laos and Cambodia would not have fallen over to the communists, and maybe even Vietnam would have ended up as a US ally eventually.

Oh, and the Vietnamese have always considered China as their age old enemy- the only reason they turned to China for help during that time was because no one in the West wanted to help them. But eventually they fought against each other and the resentment continues to this day. America could have used Vietnam as a bulwark against Chinese influence, because of that rivalry.

swing_voter said:

The first 35 military advisors where sent to Vietnam under Truman in 1950.

French lost over 100,000 men.

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The first 7 American military advisors landed in Vietnam during 1943 under FDR. They landed along with 3 Australian Marines, from a British submarine. After a few sporadic radio reports, none of the ten were heard from again until 1952, when one survivor showed his head working as merc for one of SE Asian warlords, and that sighting was not officially confirmed.

swing_voter said:

Americans 58,000

S Vietnamese 250,000 You can't say they didn't fight.

N Vietnamese & Viet Cong 1,000,000 They just wanted it more.

Civilians 2,000,000


I'm watching the Ken Burns documentary again.

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You weren't there, neither was Ken Burns. Every patrol brought back an inflated body count, even when there were no bodies. Orders of the day. One must ask, how many South Vietnamese were murdered by the SVA?

PoS said:

Your viewpoint perfectly illustrates America's complete misunderstanding of what was happening in Indochina at that time. Vietnam was a nationalistic struggle for independence to cast off Western colonialism. The reason Laos and Cambodia fell to the communists was because Vietnam invaded them due to the fact that they needed to supply their troops in the South.

Ho Chi Minh was actually trained by the OSS, and he fervently believed that America would help Vietnam achieve its independence. If Truman's government (FDR had actually promised Minh to support his independence movement, but he died) had sided with Vietnam instead of the French, Laos and Cambodia would not have fallen over to the communists, and maybe even Vietnam would have ended up as a US ally eventually.

Oh, and the Vietnamese have always considered China as their age old enemy- the only reason they turned to China for help during that time was because no one in the West wanted to help them. But eventually they fought against each other and the resentment continues to this day. America could have used Vietnam as a bulwark against Chinese influence, because of that rivalry.

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I understand what you're saying, but I think your argument is skewed because it doesn't take the broader geopolitical picture into account. First off, if Truman had undercut the French Government by supporting the Vietminh, then it would have played into the hands of the French Communist Party, which was already the single most powerful party in the early years of the Fourth Republic. Think about the ramifications of a possible Communist-dominated Government in Paris in 1946.

Secondly, as the Sino-Soviet split started to take hold in the late 50's, the North Vietnamese leadership was also split. Ho Chi Minh and the Old Guard actually had relatively close relations with Mao, both sharing common ground as revolutionaries. Le Duan and the Young Turks, on the other hand, leaned more to the Soviet Union, seeing them as a counterweight to China. If the US had removed itself from the region, it's hard to imagine either of those factions allying themselves to it, especially given the Red Hysteria prevalent in US politics at the time. If you want to play your cards, you have to have a seat at the table, don't you think?

Cordelier said:

I understand what you're saying, but I think your argument is skewed because it doesn't take the broader geopolitical picture into account. First off, if Truman had undercut the French Government by supporting the Vietminh, then it would have played into the hands of the French Communist Party, which was already the single most powerful party in the early years of the Fourth Republic. Think about the ramifications of a possible Communist-dominated Government in Paris in 1946.

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LOL America played directly into French propaganda- De Gaulle was never going to let France go communist. They used our fear of communism to play us for military aid and support. The fact is they wanted to keep Vietnam because they could continue to exploit it economically. Our biggest mistake was in supporting them.

Secondly, as the Sino-Soviet split started to take hold in the late 50's, the North Vietnamese leadership was also split. Ho Chi Minh and the Old Guard actually had relatively close relations with Mao, both sharing common ground as revolutionaries. Le Duan and the Young Turks, on the other hand, leaned more to the Soviet Union, seeing them as a counterweight to China. If the US had removed itself from the region, it's hard to imagine either of those factions allying themselves to it, especially given the Red Hysteria prevalent in US politics at the time. If you want to play your cards, you have to have a seat at the table, don't you think?

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Incorrect. Ho Chi Minh was never loyal to China, he was always for Vietnam, and so were the others in his party, including Le Duan- the Chinese and the Soviets were a means to an end for them. If only America had lent support for a united Vietnam instead of stealing the South right from under them and giving it to Diem, I firmly believe that things would have turned out much better for us.

This guy is the real villain of the war. President Diem. He was in the Catholic faction, the small minority the French favored.

Every Vietnamese at the beginning hated the French and wanted to see them gone. Even the Catholics, a small minority who depended on the French for protection.

100,000 French soldiers died in Vietnam. The French communists, and there were a lot of them, started favoring Vietnam's communist faction. The French soldiers were finally withdrawn from Vietnam. Somehow Deim got credit for their leaving.

Vietnam was filled with hundreds of factions, each with their own agendas. 80% of the country was Buddhist, but the communists started taking over the Buddhists.

Diem favored the Catholics and persecuted the Buddhists which just led to a bigger split in Vietnam. Diem attacked a lot of the other factions as well. A mafia ran the bigger cities and Deim wiped them out.

The CIA said Diem held America hostage. What they meant is that Diem knew America couldn't have him fail. So we became Diem's unwilling ally.

Diem visited America and President Eisenhower met him at the airport, a big honor.

Dayton3 said:

I know that. As I said on another forum people don't realize how much historically that the "draft" and "volunteering" worked hand in hand.

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Ok, but it wasnt really relevant to what I said. The war was technically just, but many of the processes in it were unjust. Like forcing citizens to fight it.

Oozlefinch said:

And over the next decades, over 2 million fled after South Vietnam was conquered.

That was over 10% of the population of South Vietnam.

Much like what was seen in Germany, huge numbers who opposed Communism fled to the South as the countries were being created, If people there had really wanted Communism, there was nothing stopping them from moving to the North.

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Of the two million who fled, more than half were children under age 15, with their families. Almost all the progeny left behind by French and American soldiers also left, the targets of discrimination for not being pure Vietnamese (bigotry exists everywhere), and the entire Montagnards mountain tribes who had allied themselves with the US, they themselves totaling more than 350k. The Montagnards, more akin to Tibetans by ethnicity than Vietnamese, and not descended from Chinese Han peoples, were hated in Vietnam since the dawn of time. They were viewed as backwards religious zealots, an anathema to the new guard of communists.

Of the two million who fled, less than 800k were allowed entry into the US, tho today after generational expansion they have grown to 1.3 million or so. Almost the entire balance ended up in France, Taiwan, and Australia, with a fairly large community in Sao Paulo Brazil. Almost all of the French Vietnamese community is Catholic, those in the US mostly Buddhist.

That South Vietnamese did not desire communism is an irrelevant issue for most of the South Vietnamese people. Almost all the Buddhists were opposed to Diem and did not want him governing them either. Remember those searing images of Buddhists protesting the Diem regime self immolating themselves in protest to his rule? Nothing in this life is so simple. Like here, were it not for the war, most Vietnamese were apolitical and wanted only to live their lives in peace.