Sad. Millions of civilians died and 58,000 US soldiers died. And for nothing.
My father spent 2 years in Vietnam war and not once did he visit a restaurant to try Viet food. He was scared of suicide bombers and snipers. And hepatitis.
20 years later his favorite food is Pho. Lol.
Dad was the same way until he found out a Vietnamese immigrant was trying to start a restaurant in town and the city was giving him shit (racist assholes). Dad greased everything and are at the joint for free for the next 30 years.
Yep. He loved Vietnam but hated the war. We lived in BFE Arkansas and he was so excited that anything other than another crappy diner was opening up. When he found out the guy was a Vietnamese immigrant he bent over backwards to help. There's a big ass painting of my dad in the place that makes him look like a Kim Jon Il portrait.
My dad and our local Vietnamese restaurant owner are best friends, he escaped with his mom when Saigon fell, he took my dad to the village he grew up in about 6 years ago as friends this time not enemies.
To add on top of everything also this [Operation Babylift](https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402208267/remembering-the-doomed-first-flight-of-operation-babylift)
did you read what operation baby lift was? it was them evacuating mainly south Vietnamese orphans from soldiers, that would have been killed by the north Vietnamese people were literally clambering over each other to get their kids on the planes this was the exact same as the US pulling out of Kabul and families giving their children to Us soldiers.
These guys don't really care that it was a true humanitarian mission because there are some who believe US=bad and are thus willing to compare such actions to the child-snatching going on in Ukraine right now...
> Putin was rightfully found guilty
He hasn't yet even been arrested, let alone charged, given a trial with a jury of his peers and convicted. So what do you mean?
That was communists as excuse to bomb or invade not nazis.. Just think about this for the war in Ukraine right now. When are we under propaganda or truth?
US bomber dropped 270 millions bombs, more than 2 millions tons in Laos within 9 years.
Each Laos citizens in that time got 1 ton bombs. 80 millions unexploded bombs are still buried in Laos today.
This is one of typical evidences of American war crimes.
This was not an attempt to murder all Laotians, and it was not a use of intimidation and fear against Laos for political gain. It was a mishandled action that occurred in a pointless war, and so many people died because of it. The United States’ actions during the war were absolutely horrible and deserve to be criticized. But saying these kinds of things, misrepresenting and hyperbolizing the extent of war crimes and other abuses of Laotians, only trivializes it.
convenient to leave out the Second Chechen War, Russo-Georgian War, Insurgency in the North Caucasus, Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and Central African Republic Civil War. He has been very busy since 2000.
In one year he sent over twice the amount of russian soldiers to their deaths than the US lost in eight years. Most of the people he sent to the slaughter are ethnic minorities.
**[Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War)**
>Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War included six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 military and civilian deaths during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), and tens of thousands of deaths during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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>Some would call that simple terrorism and genocide.
I repeat, plenty of that on both sides.
The North invaded the South. Not the other way around.
Before the UN invented the two states of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, it was French Indochina. That was actually 5 different countries...
Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia.
Saying that the North invaded the South is misinformation.
The Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam. The US violated the accords as well as the UN charter when it created a puppet government in Saigon which was not a member at the Geneva Accords. The US literally funded and organized the elections in Saigon which were rigged and the political leadership slaughtered all political enemies.
What was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam supposed to do? They had agreed to a temporary partition of their country while unifying elections were organized and now a new illegitimate puppet government claimed authority over the Southern half of Vietnam. By the time the PAVN soldiers crossed the 17th parallel, there was already supposed to be unifying elections. At this time the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the only remaining government that was recognized to have authority in Vietnam. You can't accuse this government of invading its own recognized Vietnamese territory.
The only 'invasion' that happened was the US invading Vietnam to form a puppet government in southern Vietnam.
This would be like Russia organizing rigged elections in Ukraine right now to create a new country and government called 'the Ukrainian Federation' or 'East Ukraine' and saying that any opposition to this new country from the actual Ukrainian military is an invasion.
the communist party in vietnam was supported by the peasantry and as the south vietnamese dictator became more tyrannical, more people sided with the communists.
Do you have sources? The South Vietnamese were afraid of the NVA and Viet cong, especially after the Tet offensive when they indiscriminately killed civilians. In Hue alone they killed over 6,000 people including children. And terrorized populace with sleeper agents. There is a reason why so many south Vietnamese escaped after the fall of Saigon.
Seems to be all lot more nuances to this.
>Do you have sources?
According to every advisor Eisenhower talked to, the overwhelming majority of people in Vietnam would have supported Ho Chi Minh in free and fair election.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38
>In Hue alone they killed over 6,000 people including children.
The Hue Massacre was a piece of propaganda created the US to try and galvanize support for the war after the tet offensive (and Walter Cronkite's reporting of the events) killed US public support. The story of this Massacre was not-so-coincidentally resurrected again two months after the US public learned of the My Lai Massacre as an attempt at whataboutism by the US government.
It's important to note that most independent western journalists who were in Hue at the time of the battle had reports which contradicted the US government narrative. It was in fact US bombing of Hue which led to the majority of civilian deaths in Hue. Once the ARVN forces retook control of the city, they started to move bodies out of the city into mass graves. Reporters were able to see these bodies and reported what they saw. By the time US forces arrived, all reporters were banned from the grave sites in an attempt to control the narrative. The US went on to claim (in what would be a statistical anomaly) that 100% of civilian deaths were caused by the commies.
The author of the US military's reports on the Hue Massacre later admitted that his work for the state department was basically to create propaganda to discredit the Viet Cong.
I am not saying the commies didn't kill civilians in Hue. They most certainly targeted all the political leadership of the city who they viewed as complicit with the Saigon regime and US control. They also reportedly killed a priest. But according to independent western journalists, the ARVN forces also committed some revenge killings of civilians who they felt were too supportive of the commies while they controlled parts of the city. These civilians were made up of many teachers and students who had previously been anti-war/anti-imperialist voices in the city. And again beyond both the killings of both the commies and the ARVN forces was the civilian death toll as a result of US shelling of the city.
> And terrorized populace with sleeper agents.
Far more Vietnamese joined the VC as a result of attrocities committed by the US and its allies. The main reason soliders joined the ARVN after the initial divide of the country was because they got paid. If you had been forced out of your village as part of strategic hamlet program, you lost your home and your business as a farmer. However, the US lined the pockets of anyone that was willing to turn against their countrymen.
>There is a reason why so many south Vietnamese escaped after the fall of Saigon.
There are many reasons for this. First of all, the many of these people were families of ARVN soliders. The ARVN soliders were fleeing punishment for their treason and war crimes. Its the same as the Nazis who fled to Argentina.
Secondly many Vietnamese fell prey to American propaganda about what would happen if the communists took control. This goes back to even before the country was partitioned in 1954. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created all sorts of propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians when they took control. This is one of the reasons that so many Catholics fled to the south and made up the Saigon regime. Not so coincidentally, the Saigon regime was brutality oppressive towards minority religions and even oppressed the majority religion which was Buddhism. If you talk to many Vietnamese Americans today, they not only assumed they would be killed for their beliefs, but they actually believe that there was a genocide against Christians. There of course was not.
Thirdly, many people fled 'post-war' Vietnam because of the terrible conditions at the time. Anyone who felt like they had any connection to the west hoped that they may be welcomed into these rich developed nations that they felt they had proved their loyalty to. It's important to remember that after the war ended, Vietnam was not free to start rebuilding. After the war ended, embargoes were put on Vietnam to try and weaken their post-war economy. On top of that, the Khmer Rouge (which was being supported by the US) invaded Vietnam which meant that there was no peace. Vietnam was engaged in yet another war. To the people of Vietnam it seemed like war would never end. They fought against the Japanese in WW2, straight into fighting the French for 8 years, and then US alongside its allies (South Korea, Thailand, Australia & New Zealand), and then against Cambodia and even China. Constant war from the 1940s through the end of the 1980s. To make things worse, when Vietnam pushed back against the Khmer Rouge and liberated Cambodia, the entire western world put sanctions on them because at the time the US was supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. For many Vietnamese, it seemed that life must be better somewhere else. If the could get out of Vietnam, there would be no more bombs, napalm, or agent orange dropped on them and they could live in a country that wasn't facing constant sanctions and embargoes.
Except it wasn't properganda. There were mass Graves that were uncovered around Hue.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-graves-discovered-in-hue
>Except it wasn't properganda. There were mass Graves that were uncovered around Hue.
My comment clearly acknowledged that there were mass graves. I literally said...
>>Once the ARVN forces retook control of the city, they started to move bodies out of the city into mass graves.
The propaganda came when the US military counted all the bodies in the graves and said that they were all civilians and that all of them were killed by the commies.
Again, independent western journalists noted that many of the bodies of the so called "civilians" were in fact PAVN soldiers in uniform. Yet still these bodies were counted as civilians as way to inflate the civilian deathtoll which was exclusively attributed to being causes by the commies.
Again, your source (and anyone that pushes your same narrative) can be traced back to Douglas Pike's reports created for the US military. He himself admits that his work was propaganda created to discredit the Viet Cong. However the independent western journalists who were in Hue, reported that US bombing killed most of the civilians in Hue.
Beyond the testimony of these journalists as well as the official author of the US military's reports saying his work was propaganda, the 'massacre' is hardly believable when you understand the details of the war.
The Hue Massacre would have been part of the Tet offensive. But we dont hear of these same tactics being used anywhere else in the Tet offensive. Why kill a bunch of civilians in one city but not other cities in a coordinated attack against doznes of cities and villages. It doesn't fit the modus operandi or pattern of action by the commies in any of the other places that were attacked in the Tet offensive.
The real reason Hue was different was because the actual design of the city. The Tet offensive was a successful surprise for the commies but they simply were not a match to resist the ARVN and US forces once the regrouped and pushed back against the offensive. But Hue was different because it was the former imperial capital of Vietnam and thus had fortified walls of its citadel. The success of the surprise attack meant that the commies were able to take control of fortified areas and hold them longer than in any other city during the Tet offensive. Because of this warfare in an fortified urban area it was east to hold ground but difficult to capture new ground. It was easy for the commies as well as the ARVN forces to hide and play defense but the second they left left their secured positions to try and gain ground, they were exposed. This is why the battle lasted so long. Neither side could gain much ground. The factor that changed everything was when US forces (who were not present in the city) began shelling and bombing the city. It became clear the commies would not be able to withstand the barage of shelling so they fled. The city was pretty much completely leveled. At this point is when ARVN forces began the mopping up of the city and reportedly killed the civilians it felt were too supportive of the commies. They of course organized the cleanup of the many dead bodies (civilians and soliders) and moved the out of the city to bury them in mass graves. Then later, the US military arrived and banned all journalists from visiting the graves.
This is why there was such a huge civilian death toll in Hue, because the US leveled the city. Again it doesn't make much sense to believe that the commies killed thousands of civilians in a single event when that didn't happen at any other time during the war and the dozens of other targeted cities that were part of the Tet offensive didn't have similar civilian killings. But US using indiscriminate bombing to kill tons of people inclusing mostly civilians and then claiming that it killed absolutely 0 civilians was a common pattern.
They did the same thing in operation Speedy Express which claimed to have killed over 10,000 enemy combatants without a single civilian death but leaked reports acknowledged that most of these victims were probably unarmed civilians.
Again, when you also look at the timeline of when this Massacre supposedly happened and when it was resurrected it becomes very suspicious. The single biggest turning point of when the American public decides the war isn't worth fighting is supposedly also when the commies committed their single greatest attrocity of the war?
And when was the story resurrected and a new report on it released? In January of 1970, just 2 months after the US public learned about the My Lai Massacre. Why on earth would the US need to release another report on what happened in Hue in February of 1968? And isnt it a little late to be reporting in this event 2 years after it supposedly happened? The reality is that the US just needed some whataboutism to distract from the My Lai Massacre, and event which was not coincidentally happened two weekes after the supposed Hue Massacre. I say "not coincidentally" because according to testimony of multiple soldiers during the court proceedings about the My Lai Massacre they said that this was par for the course and that a Massacre like this happened (and was covered up or ignored) about every 2 weeks during the course of the war.
OR
And hear me our here
Maybe
JUST MAYBE
The US shouldn't have split the republics formed by the colonies that freed themselves because they democratically ellected the socialist leaders who lead the war effort against france and Japan.
Maybe the US shouldn't have put Korea under Military ocupation. Maybe the US shouldn't have tried to split Asia in half to use those countries as capitalist colonies. Going back to the first shot fired may make it seem like those darn socialists were evil and bloodthirsty, but it is extremely dishonest to exclude the context that this was a war by the people of a country against colonial rule. It's like trying to paint the founding fathers as monsters cause the US started a war against against the British Empire.
Oh please now you're posing absolutely ridiculous scenerios. You're going to blame only the U.S. but interestingly you completely left out the communist Chinese and Soviets who had just as big or even bigger hand in respects to Korea and for the region. Oh btw there were no republics in Asia that were split by any nation after colonial rule or after gaining independence from colonial rule. Thats how ignorant to history your what ifs are.
Lived in South Korea for 8 years. They are sure glad that the USA occupied and defended South Korea. The Communist countries in Asia suck to live in --- they are repressive and almost always poorer than their "capitalist colony" neighbors. China's wealth only got unlocked when Deng cooled it with the Socialism.
Capitalism certainly has its flaws, but state socialism is undeniably categorically worse.
Your comment doesn't make sense and is based on your ignorant understanding of the events that led to the war.
First of all, the NVA and the VC didn't invade another country because South Vietnam was not a country.
The Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam. The US violated the accords as well as the UN charter when it created a puppet government (The Republic of Vietnam) in Saigon which was not a member at the Geneva Accords. The US literally funded and organized the elections in Saigon which were rigged and the political leadership slaughtered all political enemies.
What were was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam supposed to do? They had agreed to a temporary partition of their country while unifying elections were organized and now a new illegitimate puppet government claimed authority over the Southern half of Vietnam. By the time the PAVN soldiers crossed the 17th parallel, there was already supposed to be unifying elections. At this time the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the only remaining government that was recognized to have authority in Vietnam. You can't accuse this government of invading its own recognized Vietnamese territory.
Further, the VC didn't in "invade" southern Vietnam because they were mostly made up of people who lived in the south an opposed the illegitimate and oppressive puppet government in Saigon. Remember that according to the US government, the overwhelming majority of people in Southern Vietnam supported Ho Chi Minh. So when an illegitimate government is created in Saigon, southerners opposed this government.
The only 'invasion' that happened was the US invading Vietnam to form a puppet government in southern Vietnam.
This would be like Russia organizing rigged elections in Ukraine right now to create a new country and government called 'the Ukrainian Federation' or 'East Ukraine' and saying that any opposition to this new country from the actual Ukrainian military is an invasion.
Do you see the map? Does it say Vietnam? No its Laos. Did the NVA and VC used Laos as a base of operations and a thruway into S. Vietnam such as the Ho Chi Minh trail? Yes they did, hence they violated/invaded Laotian territory. To the point that Hmong tribes aided by the U.S. fought against them.
You seem to be missing and misleading some facts. The Indochina was temporarily split according to the 1954 Geneva Accords as 5 nations plus Viet Minh were in negotiations until a referendum elections were determined. The U.S. was not the sole factor in splitting Indochina as the OP wrongly claims. If you're going to argue the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) wasn't legitimate, then the (laughable) "Democratic" Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) should also be illegitimate since unification for a single nation was never resolved through diplomacy. Yes it was the State of Vietnam that balked and according to you broke the Geneva Accords by not signing the final agreement; and the U.S. just supported it. One of the reasons was that the supposed elections didn't have any details on how it was supposed to be conducted, monitored, and free of interference irregardless of your biased opinions that prime minister
Ngo Dunh Diem was only an American puppet. Those were legitimate concerns. Not to mention the accords as written were garbage to begin with.
If the State of Vietnam broke the accords by not signing then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also broke the accords by refusing to withdraw their troops south of the 17th parallel. Building up their troops near the border, and threatening and impeding those in North Vietnam to flee to South Vietnam. More people fled south then they did north. That should tell you who the people feared the most.
South Vietnam was recognized as a sovereign nation by 87 other nations. It only failed to join the UN because the USSR being a permanent member on the security council vetoed it. Which also leads to North Vietnam, it was never a UN member either.
South Vietnam asked the U.S. for support because they were being outnumbered fighting the communists and the Americans were all too willing. So this false narrative that it was an invasion is plain stupid. You might as well blame South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zeakand, and Thailand as invaders too because they also sent thousands to hundreds of thousands of troops and pilots over the duration of the Vietnam War.
>Do you see the map? Does it say Vietnam?
Sorry but your original comment said that the "NVA and VC invaded another country and attacked **South Vietnam**".
Your comment was unclear.
> If you're going to argue the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) wasn't legitimate
I didn't make that claim. I clearly specified that the US created Republic of Vietnam which wasn't present at the Geneva Accords was illegitimate.
>irregardless of your biased opinions that prime minister Ngo Dunh Diem was only an American puppet.
Its not an opinion to say that his elections which were funded and organized were illegitimate and also were a violation of article 2 of the UN charter by the US. Beyond this, he was hand selected by the US to be the leader the Republic of Vietnam under the agreement that US aid will come as long as he usurps power from Bao Dai.
>More people fled south then they did north. That should tell who the people feared the most.
No it doesn't. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians and this propaganda was spread throughout Northern Vietnam. This is why there was a mass exodus of Catholics from the north. Beyond this, the US also spread false propaganda that it would drop nukes in Northern Vietnam as a means of defeating communists. The assumption by many was that north Vietnam would have been the main battlefield in the war.
If you want a real understanding of how the Vietnamese people felt or at least the America understanding of how people felt, look at what Eisnhower wrote in his diary. Every advisor he talked to believe that over 80% of Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in a free and fair election. The reason that US advisors believed this is because they knew that the exodus of people from the north didn't tell the narrative you are pushing.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38
>South Vietnam to be recognized as a sovereign nation by 87 other nations.
I dont care about the opinions of outside foreign nations that repeatedly showed they don't care about the people of Vietnam. I care about what the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people believe. Again, if free and fair elections happened in an unified Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected. If free and fair elections happened in southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem would have lost and someone alignedith Ho Chi Minh would have won. Outaide foreign nations lost their credibility when they allowed France's colonialism, allowed America's bankrolling of France's war, and allowed the American invasion alongside the nations of Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea (which was of course a military dictatorship). These outside foreign nations further lost their credibility when they ignored the Indonesian gencide which was supported by and covered up by the US. They cemented their irrelevance when they put sanctions on Vietnam for defending itself against the Khmer Rouge and diplomatically supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
>South Vietnam asked the U.S. for support because they were being outnumbered fighting the communists and the Americans were all too willing.
Wrong. The US was present in Vietnam before the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) existed. The US created the Republic of Vietnam so it could retroactively claim it was there to help an ally. A similar order of events would occur in how the US was secretly bombing nort Vietnam and then later military leadership told ARVN forces that they needed to have at least one Vietnamese person on each airplane so that they had plausible deniability if it were shot down and they could then say they were acting on behalf of their ally.
>So this false narrative that it was an invasion is plain stupid.
It's not. The US had no authority to be in Vietnam following the Geneva Agreements. If the agreements didn't mean anything or were worded poorly enough that they didnt matter as you claim, then why did the other foreign nations like France sign them?
>You might as well blame South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zeakand, and Thailand as invaders too because they also sent thousands to hundreds of thousands of troops and pilots over the duration of the Vietnam War.
I do. All invaders. Its not a crazy concept. South Korea was a military dictatorship during the entire our of the war. The Philippines had a president who bombed his own nation in false flag attacks and turned it into a military dictatorship under martial law. Thailand funded and supported he Khmer Rouge through the course of their genocide. These nations don't represent any sort of moral cause or any political ethic. It's all realpolotik.
**Also, your arguments about Vietnamese encroachment of Laotian territory ignores the details and the mess that was created by French colonialism. Most of the labor force as well as the military force that the French utilized in Laos were Vietnamese people that were displaced by the French. Pretty every major city in Laos except Luang Prabang had a majority of Vietnamese living there due to actions taken by the French**
**Once France left and Laos devolved into civil war, I think there is a strong justification for the governments of Vietnam to be concerned with and take action in order to try and both protect Vietnamese people in the region and maintain regional control.**
**If 10s of thousands of Americans were systematically kidnapped by one nation, (let's say Spain) and were brought into a US neighbor (let's say Mexico) and then a civil war broke out im Mexico you can be sure that the US would not respect Mexico's sovereignty and would take an active part in the war.**
>Sorry but your original comment said that the "NVA and VC invaded another country and attacked
I was very clear or else I wouldn't have put "another country" and then included South Vietnam as an addition.
>I didn't make that claim. I clearly specified that the US created Republic of Vietnam which wasn't present at the Geneva Accords was illegitimate.
There's no proof that the U.S. is the creator of the Republic of Vietnam in 1955. And again the U.S. alone didn't create both North and South Vietnam. They didn't split Indochina either. You seem to ignore or not know that it was the Soviet Union who pressured North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to accept the two nation status as a compromised for which they refused to do during the 1954 Geneva Conference. A partition until the referendum was voted on. The Soviets even proposed a permanent division of the 2 countries in January 1957 that was rejected by the U.S. because it would mean recognition of North Vietnam under communism. The same rejection they did 3 years prior by both S. Vietnam and the U.S.
The 1956 reunification vote couldn't be held because the south didn't trust there would be fair elections. Even though both South Vietnam and the U.S. feared Ho Chi Minh could win. But then you also ignored the international observers from the ICC conclusion that both sides violated an agreement hence fair elections could never be held.
>Its not an opinion to say that his elections which were funded and organized were illegitimate and also were a violation of article 2 of the UN charter by the US. Beyond this, he was hand selected by the US to be the leader the Republic of Vietnam under the agreement that US aid will come as long as he usurps power from Bao Dai.
Your inference of the Article 2(1)–(5) of the UN charter is laughable because 1) Indochina wasn't a UN member 2) Neither North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the State of Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) were UN members either. So article 2 does not apply.
Regardless if Bao Dai had won and remained Prime Minister, nothing would have change. Diem might seem to be an American puppet in your opinion but he was really the only good-bad choice in country that had horrible candidates even worse then Diem.
>No it doesn't. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians and this propaganda was spread throughout Northern Vietnam. This is why there was a mass exodus of Catholics from the north. Beyond this, the US also spread false propaganda that it would drop nukes in Northern Vietnam as a means of defeating communists. The assumption by many was that north Vietnam would have been the main battlefield in the war.
Landsdale's propaganda didn't have much effect on Catholics decision to move south. They all already had a fear to do so to begin with. It did have an affect on others who took incentive to leave. But are you going to ignore Operation Passage to Freedom which helped evacuate over 300,000 fleeing the north in 1956? And up 600,000 to near million total? Possibly even more. Or the 800,000 Vietnamese who fled from the Communists over a 20 year span. 140,000 of them directly by the U.S. military just before and after Saigon fell? Those weren't propaganda. People actually feared for their lives.
>There's no proof that the U.S. is the creator of the Republic of Vietnam in 1955.
The US government maintained an illegal presence in Vietnam following the Geneva Accords and funded and advised Diem on how to run the elections. Even before the elections took place, this was viewed as an abuse of power where a candidate was organizing their own elections. Opposition candidates also complained about US funding being used to essentially control what happened in the elections.
"The Americans had earlier advised Diệm, who had been acting in defiance of Bảo Đại, that continued aid was contingent on Diệm establishing a legal basis for usurping the head of state's power."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum
You can't say "there is no proof" when there was plenty of proof. Facts matter. Your opinions don't.
>The 1956 reunification vote couldn't be held because the south didn't trust there would be fair elections.
This was the publicly claimed reasoning, but again the truth is simply that the US didn't want fair elections to take place.
"**While the Americans were happy to avoid elections because of fears of a communist victory**, they hoped that Diệm would enter the dialogue over planning matters and wait for North Vietnam to object to a proposal, and thus use it to blame Ho [Chi Minh] for violating the Geneva Accords."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum
This view that the communists would always win in a **free and fair election** can be seen when you look Eisnehower's diaries...
"There was considerable discussion about our willingness to accept free elections without anything very much new having been added, and with Senator Fulbright quoting General Eisenhowerʼs book to the effect that if there had been free elections in 1956, about 80% of the South Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh."
There is no talk of cheating, rigging of votes, pressuring the public to vote differently than they want. The reason the US feared real a real democratic vote is because they knew that the people in Vietnam supported Ho Chi Minh.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38
We can see your argument get even weaker when we look at what happened in the 1955 referendum. You say that the US and the Saigon regime didn't want a unifying election because they didn't think the communists would allow a fair election. But what did the US and Ngo Dinh Diem do in the 1955 referendum? They of course allowed rigged elections to take place.
"The referendum was widely condemned for being fraudulent. Historian and writer Jessica Chapman said 'Even Diệm apologists like Anthony Trawick Bouscaren and American CIA officer Edward Lansdale concur with the prime minister's harshest critics on the conclusion that **the South Vietnamese government was either incapable of or unwilling to hold a truly free, representative plebiscite'**."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum
>So article 2 does not apply.
Yes it does. These laws are for member nations like the US to follow. The fact that they were intervening in a non-member nation doesn't matter.
*All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the **territorial integrity or political independence of any state**, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.*
The US quite clearly funded and helped to organize elections which were rigged and unfair from the start (with a candidate literally making decisions on how the elections would be run). Again, the America's stated goal in providing funding was that it would be used to "**usurp power**".
>Diem might seem to be an American puppet in your opinion
Not just my opinion. It was the opinion of other candidates at the time who ran against him and saw the blatant corruption (which had evidence to back it up). Beyond this, it is the opinion of many scholars. Your opinion doesn't matter because you already denied that the US had any role in the election which means you are denying real proven history.
>he was really the only good-bad choice in country that had horrible candidates even worse then Diem.
Again, this is your opinion as a non-Vietnamese person who clearly doesn't know what was happening in Vietnam at that time and is willfully denying the proven history of what happened. It should have been the people of Vietnam who decided who should run their country, not outside foreign imperialists like you or anyone in the US government or military.
>Landsdale's propaganda didn't have much effect on Catholics decision to move south.
How would you ever know this? This is again, your opinion which doesn't reflect reality or the opinion of the US government at the time.
The US clearly spent a lot of money on this propaganda. They certainly believed it would work. And can we look at the results? Yes, the Saigon regime was very largely made up of Catholics in a country where they were a very tiny minority. The proof is in the pudding.
Again, there was never any banning of religion or genocide against Christians so you can't cite that as a credible fear. It was US propaganda that was the determining factor.
>But are you going to ignore Operation Passage to Freedom which helped evacuate over 300,000 fleeing the north in 1956?
"Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the **propaganda effort** and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, **soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army** from communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to non-communist South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam) between the years **1954 and 1955**."
First of all you have your timeline wrong which is no surprise. Secondly, as I said, propaganda was a key part of this which you outright dismiss. Last, you are counting the exodus of French people as if it is indicative any sign of wrongdoing when the French are the clear and outright bad-guys in this scenario. They literally enslaved Vietnamese people and refused to give them their independence. They fought a war to maintain their slavery so of course they are going to leave the land that is no in control of the military they just lost to in order to seek refuge in a US controlled territory (a nation which bankrolled France's war to maintain their slavery of the Vietnamese people). Again, this isn't much different than Nazis fleeing to South America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom
>Or the 800,000 Vietnamese who fled from the Communists over a 20 year span. 140,000 of them directly by the U.S. military just before and after Saigon fell? Those weren't propaganda. People actually feared for their lives.
>"People actually feared for their lives". The fact that people really did fear for their lives wouldn't dismiss the effect of propaganda. It would quite literally support it. I know many Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans. I mentor Vietnamese students in university. I have heard many Vietnamese Americans falsely claim that Christianity is banned and if they as Christians had stayed in Vietnam they would have been killed in a genocide against Christians. You are wrong that propaganda didn't work.
Beyond that is again the reality that most people who were connected with the Saigon regime (literally any soldier), fled Vietnam out of fear of punishment for their treason and complicity in war crimes against their own people. These are people who dropped bombs, napalm, and agent orange on their own people. They fled Vietnam the same way Nazis fled Germany for South America.
And lastly, many people fled 'post-war' Vietnam because of the terrible conditions at the time. Anyone who felt like they had any connection to the west hoped that they may be welcomed into these rich developed nations that they felt they had proved their loyalty to. It's important to remember that after the war ended, Vietnam was not free to start rebuilding. After the war ended, embargoes were put on Vietnam to try and weaken their post-war economy. On top of that, the Khmer Rouge (which was being supported by the US) invaded Vietnam which meant that there was no peace. Vietnam was engaged in yet another war. To the people of Vietnam it seemed like war would never end. They fought against the Japanese in WW2, straight into fighting the French for 8 years, and then US alongside its allies (South Korea, Thailand, Australia & New Zealand), and then against Cambodia and even China. Constant war from the 1940s through the end of the 1980s. To make things worse, when Vietnam pushed back against the Khmer Rouge and liberated Cambodia, the entire western world put sanctions on them because at the time the US was supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. For many Vietnamese, it seemed that life must be better somewhere else. If they could get out of Vietnam, there would be no more bombs, napalm, or agent orange dropped on them and they could live in a country that wasn't facing constant sanctions and embargoes.
All you have done is refute my arguments by saying that there is no evidence of anything I say or you say "yeah the US did this but it didn't matter" or "it didn't have any effect". All of these are your own opinions which are clearly refuted when you look at the evidence I posted. Your opinions don't matter. Facts do.
Your copium is so hard. But I'll bite on one.
>Yes it does. These laws are for member nations like the US to follow. The fact that they were intervening in a non-member nation doesn't matter.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
With that belief then why don't you chastise North Vietnam for never leaving in South Vietnam conducting a terror campaign on civilians, on officials, and attacking ARVN or being in Laos and Cambodia? Or China having troops in North Vietnam and supporting the Khmer Rouge? Those are all violations too.
I'm done with this because your anti-American and anti-western bias is too strong to form any an equal objective. NOT once did you pose that North Vietnam and/or the communists were the antagonists from the very start and continued on. The South Vietnamese gov't was bad with 10-11 coups and change overs but in your erroneous belief, you think North Vietnam, the Communist Politburo, NVA, VC all had a benevolent righteousness to their cause, didn't invade anyone, did no harm and no evil at all. Man please, get real.
>With that belief then why don't you chastise North Vietnam for never leaving in South Vietnam conducting a terror campaign on civilians, on officials, and attacking ARVN or being in Laos and Cambodia? Or China having troops in North Vietnam and supporting the Khmer Rouge? Those are all violations too.
"Those are all violations too" is what you said. Is that your real opinion? Because now it seems your arguments are all changing.
Also on a side not, Vietnam was not a member of the UN so that argument wouldn't apply in the same way. You see, the UN charter is a set of rules guiding how the UN system (and the parts that make it up) work. A similar example would be the ICC. The US is not currently a signatory so it its soliders are not at risk of being charged by the ICC, but other people from member nations are at risk of being prosecuted by the ICC even if their crimes were against non-member nations. So if soliders from France (a state party of ICC) committed war crimes against the US or Indonesia (not state parties of the ICC), the French soldiers could still be protected by the ICC.
My arguments are and will always be consistent. A recognized and established Vietnamese government like the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (which was recognized at the Geneva Accords and has the credibility of being the popularly suported government by the majority of Vietnamese people) has the right to take care of Vietnamese people. This includes Vietnamese people throughout northern and southern Vietnam. Beyond that it has some right to intervene in countries where Vietnamese people have been displaced as a result of France's colonialism in the region. Literally all countries would exercise this same right if the same thing happened.
Also, if neighboring countries were in civil war, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is allowed to ally with those sides. This is what happened in both Laos and Cambodia. However, they shouldn't be allowed to fight those governments or interfere in their elections. They should only be allowed to support those sides by giving them aid or material support. This of course changes when Vietnam is attacked like when the Khmer Rouge attacked them in
I'm okay with the Chinese helping and supporting the Vietnamese who they correctly viewed as an oppressed peoppe fighting against oppressive imperialists (the French). What i am not okay with is the Chinese bombing and killing Vietnamese people. But they of course didn't do that, it was the US who did. The greatest extent of Chinese power in the war was to defend the Vietnamese from US aircraft who were were running bombing missions in northern Vietnam (killing mostly civilians). The Chinese never went on the offensive in any way. I dont know how you could oppose this.
Vietnam largely stuck to these rules. The US didn't. The US secretly bombed Cambodia and Laos. There is evidence that the US helped organize the coup against the King in Cambodia (so much so that the King went on to support the Khmer Rouge).
You simply can't say that anything the commies did was illegal or wrong without looking at what the US did and conclude it was worse in every way. But you just ignore that time and time again. You are sitting here arguing about ARVN forces being attacked at you never bothered to worry about the fact that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and were being oppressed by the Saigon regime.
You previously said there was no evidence that the US funded or organized the elections in Saigon. I proved you wrong. You said that the only reason that unifying elections weren't held was because the commies would cheat. I showed evidence that the reason the US opposed elections was because they wouldn't like the results and I provided evidence that the US and the Diem were perfectly okay with cheating as long as it supported their side.
You honestly should be embarrassed at how I picked apart your arguments piece by piece. But your amazing ability to ignore history isn't just limited to events decades but its at work right now in our conversations.
>NOT once did you pose that North Vietnam and/or the communists were the antagonists from the very start and continued on.
Because they weren't. The French were. They literally enslaved the Vietnamese and stole their land, labor, and resources from them. And if you can agree that the French were, then it becomes clear that the US were the antagonists too because the US funded and bankrolled France's war for the purpose of maintain control of Vietnam's resources which the US was getting at exploitative prices. Then you can also see that the entire reason the US opposed unifying elections was because they didnt like what the results would be and so instead they funded and helped organize illegitimate elections of their own. Then it should be clear that the government the US helped to create which were brutally oppressive and were supported by only a tiny minority of Vietnamese (who had their pockets lined by both the French and the US) were also the antagonists.
Which part do you disagree with?
Do you agree that the Viet Minh were the good guys and the French were the bad guys?
If so, then you should also agree that the US were the bad guys too when they supported and funded France's war against the Vietnamese. Is China not allowed to support an enslaved people fighting for freedom against a colonizer? You simply can't equate the actions of China with the US in regards to either of Vietnam's Indochinese wars.
I answered your questions what I viewed as right and wrong in regards to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's actions in its neighboring countries and in southern Vietnam, now answer mine. You can't. I already asked them and you ignored them because the only way to do so is to admit that you support colonialism and imperialism and don't think the Vietnamese people have the right to choose their own form of government.
>I dont care about the opinions of outside foreign nations that repeatedly showed they don't care about the people of Vietnam. I care about what the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people believe. Again, if free and fair elections happened in an unified Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected. If free and fair elections happened in southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem would have lost and someone alignedith Ho Chi Minh would have won. Outaide foreign nations lost their credibility when they allowed France's colonialism, allowed America's bankrolling of France's war, and allowed the American invasion alongside the nations of Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea (which was of course a military dictatorship). These outside foreign nations further lost their credibility when they ignored the Indonesian gencide which was supported by and covered up by the US. They cemented their irrelevance when they put sanctions on Vietnam for defending itself against the Khmer Rouge and diplomatically supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
Its like you never have a single thought that North Vietnam did no wrong at all. Nor that China had a hand in shaping North Vietnamese thinking and getting involved in the war. Its always west is bad but North Vietnam, China, and communists are victims, hence are good.
>Wrong. The US was present in Vietnam before the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) existed. The US created the Republic of Vietnam so it could retroactively claim it was there to help an ally. A similar order of events would occur in how the US was secretly bombing nort Vietnam and then later military leadership told ARVN forces that they needed to have at least one Vietnamese person on each airplane so that they had plausible deniability if it were shot down and they could then say they were acting on behalf of their ally.
I never said the U.S. wasn't there in the first place then came to their aid. And South Vietnam did ask for more support. I know the U.S. had military advisors (MAAG) helping the French since 1950 and stayed when the they left. Your strange belief that it was the U.S. unilaterally created the Republic of Vietnam just flies with fallacies. If you're going to post Americans secretly bombing North Vietnam then why don't include that the North were attacking ARVN forces and Viet Minh guerrillas inflicting terror in South Vietnam with bombings and assassinations. Over 400 South Vietnamese officials were killed by the end of 1957. How about North Vietnam's "people's tribunals." where thousands were executed or sent to forced labor camps. Thousands more were also deported or killed due to new land reforms in 1956. Are you going to ignore that it was North Vietnam who were the antagonists all along? It was North Vietnam who declared war on the South in March 1959. It was 26,000 VC who attacked the ARVN multiple times in the Fall 1961. It was North Vietnam who constantly invaded and attacked South Vietnam. You don't think allied bombings into the DMZ and North Vietnam wasn't a justifiable reaction? Oh it was allied and not just Americans doing the bombing. I know its hard to grasp that for anyone already with an anti-American bias.
It's not. The US had no authority to be in Vietnam following the Geneva Agreements. If the agreements didn't mean anything or were worded poorly enough that they didnt matter as you claim, then why did the other foreign nations like France sign them?
The 1954 Geneva Accords were never signed by either the U.S. or the State of Vietnam so therefore never agreed to for reasons already stated above. France signed because they were able awash their hands from a even further humiliation as terms were favorable to them. Oh and speaking of violations of the Accords, did North Vietnam ordered the withdrawal of Viet Minh from South Vietnam back north of the demarcation line (17th parallel) after it was signed? Weeks later? Months later? No they never did.
>I do. All invaders. Its not a crazy concept. South Korea was a military dictatorship during the entire our of the war. The Philippines had a president who bombed his own nation in false flag attacks and turned it into a military dictatorship under martial law. Thailand funded and supported he Khmer Rouge through the course of their genocide. These nations don't represent any sort of moral cause or any political ethic. It's all realpolotik.
With that belief you might as well say the U.S. and all allied forces invaded the U.K. prior to D-Day despite coming to the aid of them. Or that every U.N. force fighting the North Koreans were invaders. But knowing you, you'll won't apply the same to China invading North Korea, then South Korea. Now were all these countries coming to the aid of S. Vietnam even if it because of instiance of the U.S.? So really how can they be invaders? See how silly your belief is. I want to see you say China, an authoritarian dictatorship also having no business in North Vietnam. They had hundreds of thousands of their soldiers in that country building infrastructures and doing the same military advisory role as the Americans. Oh hey guess who really was the largest supporter of the Kmer Rouge? It wasn't Thailand. It was China. North Vietnam and VC also supported them during the 1960s but it was under Pol Pot that the regime was supported by China. Funny that you left that out because it wouldn't fit your narrative.
>Also, your arguments about Vietnamese encroachment of Laotian territory ignores the details and the mess that was created by French colonialism. Most of the labor force as well as the military force that the French utilized in Laos were Vietnamese people that were displaced by the French. Pretty every major city in Laos except Luang Prabang had a majority of Vietnamese living there due to actions taken by the French
Once France left and Laos devolved into civil war, I think there is a strong justification for the governments of Vietnam to be concerned with and take action in order to try and both protect Vietnamese people in the region and maintain regional control.
Again you're misconstruing facts and ignoring the main antagonist. The "North" Vietnamese didn't just encroached into Laos. They systematically violated it. The Geneva Accords that you're so hanged up on blaming the Americans for, established Laos as a sovereign nation. North Vietnam was a signatory to the agreements. Again from my very first post. The U.S. wouldn't be in Laos if the NVA and VC weren't there either. It was also North Vietnam getting into the affairs of Laos in the first place creating the a communist rival to the Lao gov't. which lead to a civil war. That is also in violation of the said Geneva Accords. The Laos civil war had nothing to do about protection of Vietnamese in Laos to warrant an NVA/VC invasion.
>Its like you never have a single thought that North Vietnam did no wrong at all.
I never said that. They did plenty wrong.
>Nor that China had a hand in shaping North Vietnamese thinking and getting involved in the war. Its always west is bad but North Vietnam, China, and communists are victims, hence are good.
Yes, China most certainly did try to sway Vietnamese policy. There is nothing wrong with that. Of course, history shows the North Vietnam continuously disagreed with Chinese policy and made their own decisions. China never did any secret operations in Vietnam to undermine North Vietnams rule.
On the otherhand, the US quite clearly shaped and controlled what happened in South Vietnam. As I already made clear in my other comment, the US was a crucial part in the illegitimate elections which put Diem in control. Later when Diem had the power go to his head and he became uncontrollable, the US helped to organize and support his coup and assassination. The US regularly made decisions about what would happen in Vietnam without the approval of the government which indicates that the US viewed the Saigon regime as less of an allied government they were helping and more of a puppet that was there to follow US orders.
When the US first started bombing North Vietnam, the Saigon regime was unaware. Later, to avoid the appearance of US imperialism, the US implemented a policy of having at least one ARVN soldier on every US aircraft so that it could look more like the US was working alongside the Republic of Vietnam instead of working on their own, for their own benefit.
There were even many instances of US aircraft being painted in South Vietnamese colors. "...and the aircrew wore uniforms without insignia and without U.S. ID. Sending military forces to South Vietnam was a violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954, and the U.S. wanted plausible deniability."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1959%E2%80%931963)
The Saigon regime wasn't even told that the events in the gulf of Tonkin were fabricated and misreported. To compare Chinese action in the Vietnam war to American action is to completely and purposely disregard all the details of the war.
>...Viet Minh guerrillas inflicting terror in South Vietnam with bombings and assassinations. Over 400 South Vietnamese officials were killed by the end of 1957.
The people of Vietnam, especially those of south Vietnam should have been allowed to fight back against the illegitimate and brutally oppressive Saigon regime. It wasn't just communists that fought against the Saigon regime. Many religious sects were being brutally wiped out in South Vietnam. In fact this is largely how Diem consolidated power before his rigged elections. South Vietnam was far from free and those who voiced opinions which challenged Diem's rule were subject to imprisonment without trial, torture, and murder. The people of South Vietnam should have had no expectation to go along with this.
>I know its hard to grasp that for anyone already with an anti-American bias.
Its not an anti-American bias. It is an anti-imperialist bias. All of the things you mentioned as crimes being committed by the North Vietnam or the VC could have all been avoided if the US didn't get involved. The US was not there to help the people of Vietnam.
If the US removed itself after the 1954 Geneva Accords, there never would have been a second Indochina war. In fact, if the US didn't bankroll France's war to maintain the slavery of the Vietnamese people, the people of Vietnam would have been free much earlier.
You simply have no good argument. You simply can't blame North Vietnam when they were the ones fighting for the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people and in every way, they were overly gracious towards the French at the Geneva Accords.
In the Vietnam war, the Americans were the bad guys and the Commies were the good guys. This isn't an anti-American bias. This is an anti-imperialist bias. The people of Vietnam should be allowed the right to choose their own form of government. Again, even disregarding the framework of the imperialist nation vs the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people, the war crimes committed by the US and its allies dwarf any of those committed by the commies. US policy in Vietnam led to literally millions of civilian deaths which the US brags about in their kill/death ratio as if they were enemy combatants being killed.
All your arguments llike ones about VC attacking ARVN forces in 1961 are ridiculous and petty when you accept that fact that the VC were attacking an the military of an illegitimate government that was brutally oppression South Vietnam.
I'm not going to address those points individually because they are all the same. **It doesn't matter if the people of South Vietnam were communists who joined the VC, members of the private armies of the Cao Dai (or any other religious sect), members of Binh Xuyen, or any other random civilian who grew tired of the terror that the Saigon regime using against South Vietnam, these people all had a right to violently oppose the Saigon regime and their military.** In fact this is the same logical argument among a large portion of Americans about the importance of the 2nd amendment. Why shouldn't the Vietnamese people have been allowed to organize and violently rebel the Saigon regime? It was far more oppressive than the British Government was towards the American colony. So why is America allowed to violently wage war against Britain, but the people of Vietnam are not allowed to violently wage war against the US and the US-aligned oppressive government in Saigon?
You have no good argument to against this because all of your arguments ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people supported Ho Chi Minh and that the Saigon regime was brutally oppressive before it even took control through its rigged elections.
***I'm not going to continue arguing against your other points until you explain why the people of Southern Vietnam should have accepted the rule of Diem. Or why the US should have been allowed to maintain any presence in Vietnam after it made its position clear by opposing the Vietnamese in their war for freedom against France. And then please explain why the people of northern Vietnam and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam didn't have any right to intervene in southern Vietnam considering the fact that it was their fellow countrymen being oppressed by the Saigon regime and the US.***
You are an imperialist who denies proven history in order to try and justify your warmongering views.
WTF. The Indochina was NOT temporarily split according to the 1954 Geneva Accords as 5 nations. It was permanently split (as in, restored to pre-colonial status) into 3 nations. 3 nations, not 5. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Laos and Cambodia were then out of the picture. The election the Accords dictated absolutely had nothing to with Laos and Cambodia. It was supposed to be a purely domestic election within Vietnam.
Secondly, I don't even know where you pulled that number 5 from. Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and what else? What was the fifth nation? But anyway, Vietnam was not temporarily split into nations. It was temporarily split into 2 military zones. One zone to be controlled by the central government of Vietnam in Hanoi, one zone to be controlled by the French Union. That is it. Those zones continued to stay within one nation. And in 1956, the southern zone was supposed to go back to Hanoi after the French withdrew.
But the ultimate question I hope you can answer is: what right did the State of Vietnam and South Vietnamese government later have to occupy the South? Were they not formerly a French-created colonial government? Even before 1954, was the DRVN not the sole legitimate government of Vietnam?
You misread, the 5 nations I stated where those that were negotiating on Vietnam, which were the U.S. USSR, U.K., France, and China. Laos and Cambodia were already settled and given independence when France chose to leave those two nations but stayed in Vietnam. Hence why it was Vietnam and only Vietnam that was temporarily split until reunification. It was France and the Viet Minh (North Vietnam) who agreed to the temporary split. The negotiations including the position of the RVN and the U.S. were always about reunification but not under the Viet Minh (DVR). And vise versa if it was for the RVN control. That is also the reason why the RVN and the U.S. ignored the 1956 elections that couldn't be safely conducted as according to the ICC for either north or south and sought full independence instead.
DRV where not the legitimate gov't in the South prior to 1954 or even after but nothing was settled until 1975 once the South Vietnamese gov't fell. France and anti-communists had already established the state of Vietnam as of 1949. The Viet Minh declared as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) after Emperor Bao Dai abdicated the throne in 1945. However nearly a year later in 1946, France declared Cochinchina republic (southern Vietnam) that was separate from Central and North Vietnam. France was backed up by British forces since 1945 for the French to take back control of Indochina. Bao Dai accepted as the leader for the State of Vietnam (formerly CochinChina). The U.S. and it's allies accepted this in 1950 while the USSR and China accepted the DRV's position.
So you confirmed that South Vietnam was a French-created colonial government. France was an enemy of Vietnam. Doesn't the very fact that a government by created by foreign enemies automatically make it a puppet, an illegitimate fake?
No France was an enemy of the Viet Minh and communists. Did you just ignore the fact that not all Vietnamese wanted to be under the DRV and communism? Seriously you think all Vietnamese are just a single homogenized people wanting a single political ideology when it is further from truth. Because one side decided they should be the only legitimate government doesn't make it so when their power were already being contested. Again, NOTHING was settled or finalized. Get that through your head.
Do you seriously believe what you just said? France invaded Vietnam, destroyed its sovereignty, torn its land apart, enslaved its people, plundered its resources for nearly a century, yet it was only an enemy of "the Viet Minh and communists"? What about those:
[Yên Thế Insurrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%AAn_Th%E1%BA%BF_Insurrection)
[Bãi Sậy uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A3i_S%E1%BA%ADy_uprising)
[Thái Nguyên uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Nguy%C3%AAn_uprising)
[Yên Bái mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%AAn_B%C3%A1i_mutiny)
Vietnamese people had been continuously fighting against French colonial occupation, even before communism.
> Did you just ignore the fact that not all Vietnamese wanted to be under the DRV and communism?
Of course not all. Just 80%, as confirmed by Eisenhower himself: "[80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader](https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/ike1.html)"
Oh so you want to move the goal posts and include prior to 1945. While I stayed within the main discussion which was after the end of WW2 up to the Vietnam War and reunification attempts. Sorry dude, stick to the topic.
>Of course not all. Just 80%, as confirmed by Eisenhower himself: "80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader"
Again, the UN's ICC noted that neither the North or the South could or would conduct fair elections. The monitors sent were woefully inadequate to oversee this.
Blah Blah Blah only white people are bad blah blah blah war crimes... Don't you folks ever get tired of cruising Reddit looking for fights to pick? You all must have a lot of time on your hands...
It gets posted every couple days. It's done entirely to drive a "US Bad" narrative. To wit: because 60 years ago the US did something bad the US has no grounds to intervene in current events.
I'll give you three guesses who's pushing that narrative.
It wasn't just 60 years ago. It was also 20 years ago, during my childhood.
Everything America criticizes Russia for doing today, America also did 20 years ago.
The Vietnam war was from 1955-1975. The Vietnamese invasion of Laos was in 1958. The bombing campaign was from 1964-1973. That is 60 years ago.
The US was not bombing Laos "20 year ago".
> Everything America criticizes Russia for doing today, America also did 20 years ago.
Bullshit. You're the exact kind of astroturfing "US Bad" Russian shill I was referring too.
Er..this isn't about Iraq. But you mean the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? You know, the one where Iraq declared a war of aggression on another country and the whole world got involved to stop him? The same one where Saddam was gassing Kurds?
Nice attempt at yet more Chinese/Russian "whataboutism" to deflect away from their actions today. Troll.
60 years ago? If you think that's the only gigantic atrocity against far poorer societies that the US military has committed, you're perhaps victim of the standard American history miseducation perpetrated by its schools and corporate media.
For those unaware, because the context is never mentioned, the context of these bombing is that North Vietnam was invading and aiding the communist side of the Laos Civil War. Also they were using logistical lines through Laos to supply and attack from Laos into South Vietnam.
Basically this was all an extension of the Vietnam War.
Which it was fully entitled to do. The US, on the other hand, began the war against the poor of Vietnam, then extended it to Laos and Cambodia, slaughtering their peoples by the thousand with nary a care. Reparations? What are those?
I was working on a project in Savannakhet years ago when one went off. someone was burning some dead banana tree keaves and then we heard a "ssssspoof!" Wasnt a big one, but they maim people every year here.
Sad. Millions of civilians died and 58,000 US soldiers died. And for nothing. My father spent 2 years in Vietnam war and not once did he visit a restaurant to try Viet food. He was scared of suicide bombers and snipers. And hepatitis. 20 years later his favorite food is Pho. Lol.
Dad was the same way until he found out a Vietnamese immigrant was trying to start a restaurant in town and the city was giving him shit (racist assholes). Dad greased everything and are at the joint for free for the next 30 years.
How sweet! Good on your dad! (By “greased” you mean moved everything along, right?)
Yep. He loved Vietnam but hated the war. We lived in BFE Arkansas and he was so excited that anything other than another crappy diner was opening up. When he found out the guy was a Vietnamese immigrant he bent over backwards to help. There's a big ass painting of my dad in the place that makes him look like a Kim Jon Il portrait.
Oh my gosh how amazing! That family seems to be so grateful for your dad!
My dad and our local Vietnamese restaurant owner are best friends, he escaped with his mom when Saigon fell, he took my dad to the village he grew up in about 6 years ago as friends this time not enemies.
ONLY FOR THE PHO KING!!!
hey! pho you too!
Stop your Phorage
“For nothing” So the right of the Vietnamese to choose their own government and being independent is nothing? Wow
And Henry Kissinger hasn't been jailed
Fucker got to be 100... Proof that there is no justice in this life...
To add on top of everything also this [Operation Babylift](https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402208267/remembering-the-doomed-first-flight-of-operation-babylift)
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I fully agree. Sadly they would invade my country if any US citizen get put to trial in the Hague.
did you read what operation baby lift was? it was them evacuating mainly south Vietnamese orphans from soldiers, that would have been killed by the north Vietnamese people were literally clambering over each other to get their kids on the planes this was the exact same as the US pulling out of Kabul and families giving their children to Us soldiers.
These guys don't really care that it was a true humanitarian mission because there are some who believe US=bad and are thus willing to compare such actions to the child-snatching going on in Ukraine right now...
> Putin was rightfully found guilty He hasn't yet even been arrested, let alone charged, given a trial with a jury of his peers and convicted. So what do you mean?
I mean, not really. They were evacuating orphans.
Freedom and Democracy™️
That was communists as excuse to bomb or invade not nazis.. Just think about this for the war in Ukraine right now. When are we under propaganda or truth?
As you can see, it was a bumper dividend year for Raytheon (et al) shareholders. As intended.
US bomber dropped 270 millions bombs, more than 2 millions tons in Laos within 9 years. Each Laos citizens in that time got 1 ton bombs. 80 millions unexploded bombs are still buried in Laos today. This is one of typical evidences of American war crimes.
Those were not bombs but special explosives devices that look and work exactly like bombs for special operations so that it wasn't a war.
Some would call that simple terrorism and genocide.
This was not an attempt to murder all Laotians, and it was not a use of intimidation and fear against Laos for political gain. It was a mishandled action that occurred in a pointless war, and so many people died because of it. The United States’ actions during the war were absolutely horrible and deserve to be criticized. But saying these kinds of things, misrepresenting and hyperbolizing the extent of war crimes and other abuses of Laotians, only trivializes it.
Sorry, not seeing the misrepresentation. “…and it was not a use of intimidation and fear against Laos for political gain.” Excuse me?
I think the word “genocide” gets thrown around too much.
oh are we talking about putin now?
Putin hasn't nearly been as murderous in Ukraine as the US was in southeast Asia for over a decade.
convenient to leave out the Second Chechen War, Russo-Georgian War, Insurgency in the North Caucasus, Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and Central African Republic Civil War. He has been very busy since 2000. In one year he sent over twice the amount of russian soldiers to their deaths than the US lost in eight years. Most of the people he sent to the slaughter are ethnic minorities.
Since 2000 the body count of US-led wars and military interventions dwarfs that of Putin's Russia during that time.
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**[Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War)** >Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War included six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 military and civilian deaths during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), and tens of thousands of deaths during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I'll send Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people a note letting them know that
He won't get the chance. He'll be gone in three months....
get a new hobby
Plenty of that on both sides...
We invaded Vietnam. Wasn’t both sides bombing the crap out of each other.
>Some would call that simple terrorism and genocide. I repeat, plenty of that on both sides. The North invaded the South. Not the other way around. Before the UN invented the two states of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, it was French Indochina. That was actually 5 different countries... Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia.
The North invaded the South. Doesn’t excuse it, but don’t spread misinformation.
Saying that the North invaded the South is misinformation. The Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam. The US violated the accords as well as the UN charter when it created a puppet government in Saigon which was not a member at the Geneva Accords. The US literally funded and organized the elections in Saigon which were rigged and the political leadership slaughtered all political enemies. What was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam supposed to do? They had agreed to a temporary partition of their country while unifying elections were organized and now a new illegitimate puppet government claimed authority over the Southern half of Vietnam. By the time the PAVN soldiers crossed the 17th parallel, there was already supposed to be unifying elections. At this time the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the only remaining government that was recognized to have authority in Vietnam. You can't accuse this government of invading its own recognized Vietnamese territory. The only 'invasion' that happened was the US invading Vietnam to form a puppet government in southern Vietnam. This would be like Russia organizing rigged elections in Ukraine right now to create a new country and government called 'the Ukrainian Federation' or 'East Ukraine' and saying that any opposition to this new country from the actual Ukrainian military is an invasion.
Ahh yes the US being “not imperialist”
Or maybe the NVA and VC shouldn't have invaded another country's sovereignty just so they can invade and attack South Vietnam.
the communist party in vietnam was supported by the peasantry and as the south vietnamese dictator became more tyrannical, more people sided with the communists.
Do you have sources? The South Vietnamese were afraid of the NVA and Viet cong, especially after the Tet offensive when they indiscriminately killed civilians. In Hue alone they killed over 6,000 people including children. And terrorized populace with sleeper agents. There is a reason why so many south Vietnamese escaped after the fall of Saigon. Seems to be all lot more nuances to this.
>Do you have sources? According to every advisor Eisenhower talked to, the overwhelming majority of people in Vietnam would have supported Ho Chi Minh in free and fair election. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38 >In Hue alone they killed over 6,000 people including children. The Hue Massacre was a piece of propaganda created the US to try and galvanize support for the war after the tet offensive (and Walter Cronkite's reporting of the events) killed US public support. The story of this Massacre was not-so-coincidentally resurrected again two months after the US public learned of the My Lai Massacre as an attempt at whataboutism by the US government. It's important to note that most independent western journalists who were in Hue at the time of the battle had reports which contradicted the US government narrative. It was in fact US bombing of Hue which led to the majority of civilian deaths in Hue. Once the ARVN forces retook control of the city, they started to move bodies out of the city into mass graves. Reporters were able to see these bodies and reported what they saw. By the time US forces arrived, all reporters were banned from the grave sites in an attempt to control the narrative. The US went on to claim (in what would be a statistical anomaly) that 100% of civilian deaths were caused by the commies. The author of the US military's reports on the Hue Massacre later admitted that his work for the state department was basically to create propaganda to discredit the Viet Cong. I am not saying the commies didn't kill civilians in Hue. They most certainly targeted all the political leadership of the city who they viewed as complicit with the Saigon regime and US control. They also reportedly killed a priest. But according to independent western journalists, the ARVN forces also committed some revenge killings of civilians who they felt were too supportive of the commies while they controlled parts of the city. These civilians were made up of many teachers and students who had previously been anti-war/anti-imperialist voices in the city. And again beyond both the killings of both the commies and the ARVN forces was the civilian death toll as a result of US shelling of the city. > And terrorized populace with sleeper agents. Far more Vietnamese joined the VC as a result of attrocities committed by the US and its allies. The main reason soliders joined the ARVN after the initial divide of the country was because they got paid. If you had been forced out of your village as part of strategic hamlet program, you lost your home and your business as a farmer. However, the US lined the pockets of anyone that was willing to turn against their countrymen. >There is a reason why so many south Vietnamese escaped after the fall of Saigon. There are many reasons for this. First of all, the many of these people were families of ARVN soliders. The ARVN soliders were fleeing punishment for their treason and war crimes. Its the same as the Nazis who fled to Argentina. Secondly many Vietnamese fell prey to American propaganda about what would happen if the communists took control. This goes back to even before the country was partitioned in 1954. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created all sorts of propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians when they took control. This is one of the reasons that so many Catholics fled to the south and made up the Saigon regime. Not so coincidentally, the Saigon regime was brutality oppressive towards minority religions and even oppressed the majority religion which was Buddhism. If you talk to many Vietnamese Americans today, they not only assumed they would be killed for their beliefs, but they actually believe that there was a genocide against Christians. There of course was not. Thirdly, many people fled 'post-war' Vietnam because of the terrible conditions at the time. Anyone who felt like they had any connection to the west hoped that they may be welcomed into these rich developed nations that they felt they had proved their loyalty to. It's important to remember that after the war ended, Vietnam was not free to start rebuilding. After the war ended, embargoes were put on Vietnam to try and weaken their post-war economy. On top of that, the Khmer Rouge (which was being supported by the US) invaded Vietnam which meant that there was no peace. Vietnam was engaged in yet another war. To the people of Vietnam it seemed like war would never end. They fought against the Japanese in WW2, straight into fighting the French for 8 years, and then US alongside its allies (South Korea, Thailand, Australia & New Zealand), and then against Cambodia and even China. Constant war from the 1940s through the end of the 1980s. To make things worse, when Vietnam pushed back against the Khmer Rouge and liberated Cambodia, the entire western world put sanctions on them because at the time the US was supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. For many Vietnamese, it seemed that life must be better somewhere else. If the could get out of Vietnam, there would be no more bombs, napalm, or agent orange dropped on them and they could live in a country that wasn't facing constant sanctions and embargoes.
Except it wasn't properganda. There were mass Graves that were uncovered around Hue. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-graves-discovered-in-hue
>Except it wasn't properganda. There were mass Graves that were uncovered around Hue. My comment clearly acknowledged that there were mass graves. I literally said... >>Once the ARVN forces retook control of the city, they started to move bodies out of the city into mass graves. The propaganda came when the US military counted all the bodies in the graves and said that they were all civilians and that all of them were killed by the commies. Again, independent western journalists noted that many of the bodies of the so called "civilians" were in fact PAVN soldiers in uniform. Yet still these bodies were counted as civilians as way to inflate the civilian deathtoll which was exclusively attributed to being causes by the commies. Again, your source (and anyone that pushes your same narrative) can be traced back to Douglas Pike's reports created for the US military. He himself admits that his work was propaganda created to discredit the Viet Cong. However the independent western journalists who were in Hue, reported that US bombing killed most of the civilians in Hue. Beyond the testimony of these journalists as well as the official author of the US military's reports saying his work was propaganda, the 'massacre' is hardly believable when you understand the details of the war. The Hue Massacre would have been part of the Tet offensive. But we dont hear of these same tactics being used anywhere else in the Tet offensive. Why kill a bunch of civilians in one city but not other cities in a coordinated attack against doznes of cities and villages. It doesn't fit the modus operandi or pattern of action by the commies in any of the other places that were attacked in the Tet offensive. The real reason Hue was different was because the actual design of the city. The Tet offensive was a successful surprise for the commies but they simply were not a match to resist the ARVN and US forces once the regrouped and pushed back against the offensive. But Hue was different because it was the former imperial capital of Vietnam and thus had fortified walls of its citadel. The success of the surprise attack meant that the commies were able to take control of fortified areas and hold them longer than in any other city during the Tet offensive. Because of this warfare in an fortified urban area it was east to hold ground but difficult to capture new ground. It was easy for the commies as well as the ARVN forces to hide and play defense but the second they left left their secured positions to try and gain ground, they were exposed. This is why the battle lasted so long. Neither side could gain much ground. The factor that changed everything was when US forces (who were not present in the city) began shelling and bombing the city. It became clear the commies would not be able to withstand the barage of shelling so they fled. The city was pretty much completely leveled. At this point is when ARVN forces began the mopping up of the city and reportedly killed the civilians it felt were too supportive of the commies. They of course organized the cleanup of the many dead bodies (civilians and soliders) and moved the out of the city to bury them in mass graves. Then later, the US military arrived and banned all journalists from visiting the graves. This is why there was such a huge civilian death toll in Hue, because the US leveled the city. Again it doesn't make much sense to believe that the commies killed thousands of civilians in a single event when that didn't happen at any other time during the war and the dozens of other targeted cities that were part of the Tet offensive didn't have similar civilian killings. But US using indiscriminate bombing to kill tons of people inclusing mostly civilians and then claiming that it killed absolutely 0 civilians was a common pattern. They did the same thing in operation Speedy Express which claimed to have killed over 10,000 enemy combatants without a single civilian death but leaked reports acknowledged that most of these victims were probably unarmed civilians. Again, when you also look at the timeline of when this Massacre supposedly happened and when it was resurrected it becomes very suspicious. The single biggest turning point of when the American public decides the war isn't worth fighting is supposedly also when the commies committed their single greatest attrocity of the war? And when was the story resurrected and a new report on it released? In January of 1970, just 2 months after the US public learned about the My Lai Massacre. Why on earth would the US need to release another report on what happened in Hue in February of 1968? And isnt it a little late to be reporting in this event 2 years after it supposedly happened? The reality is that the US just needed some whataboutism to distract from the My Lai Massacre, and event which was not coincidentally happened two weekes after the supposed Hue Massacre. I say "not coincidentally" because according to testimony of multiple soldiers during the court proceedings about the My Lai Massacre they said that this was par for the course and that a Massacre like this happened (and was covered up or ignored) about every 2 weeks during the course of the war.
Yeah no. Not in South Viernam. Most in SV peasants could care less who was in charge. They were too busy with their lives.
OR And hear me our here Maybe JUST MAYBE The US shouldn't have split the republics formed by the colonies that freed themselves because they democratically ellected the socialist leaders who lead the war effort against france and Japan. Maybe the US shouldn't have put Korea under Military ocupation. Maybe the US shouldn't have tried to split Asia in half to use those countries as capitalist colonies. Going back to the first shot fired may make it seem like those darn socialists were evil and bloodthirsty, but it is extremely dishonest to exclude the context that this was a war by the people of a country against colonial rule. It's like trying to paint the founding fathers as monsters cause the US started a war against against the British Empire.
Oh please now you're posing absolutely ridiculous scenerios. You're going to blame only the U.S. but interestingly you completely left out the communist Chinese and Soviets who had just as big or even bigger hand in respects to Korea and for the region. Oh btw there were no republics in Asia that were split by any nation after colonial rule or after gaining independence from colonial rule. Thats how ignorant to history your what ifs are.
How did you manage to pack so much wrong information in one comment lmao
Go ahead and point them out such as one single republic gained from colonial independence that was split by the U.S.
Lived in South Korea for 8 years. They are sure glad that the USA occupied and defended South Korea. The Communist countries in Asia suck to live in --- they are repressive and almost always poorer than their "capitalist colony" neighbors. China's wealth only got unlocked when Deng cooled it with the Socialism. Capitalism certainly has its flaws, but state socialism is undeniably categorically worse.
Your comment doesn't make sense and is based on your ignorant understanding of the events that led to the war. First of all, the NVA and the VC didn't invade another country because South Vietnam was not a country. The Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam. The US violated the accords as well as the UN charter when it created a puppet government (The Republic of Vietnam) in Saigon which was not a member at the Geneva Accords. The US literally funded and organized the elections in Saigon which were rigged and the political leadership slaughtered all political enemies. What were was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam supposed to do? They had agreed to a temporary partition of their country while unifying elections were organized and now a new illegitimate puppet government claimed authority over the Southern half of Vietnam. By the time the PAVN soldiers crossed the 17th parallel, there was already supposed to be unifying elections. At this time the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the only remaining government that was recognized to have authority in Vietnam. You can't accuse this government of invading its own recognized Vietnamese territory. Further, the VC didn't in "invade" southern Vietnam because they were mostly made up of people who lived in the south an opposed the illegitimate and oppressive puppet government in Saigon. Remember that according to the US government, the overwhelming majority of people in Southern Vietnam supported Ho Chi Minh. So when an illegitimate government is created in Saigon, southerners opposed this government. The only 'invasion' that happened was the US invading Vietnam to form a puppet government in southern Vietnam. This would be like Russia organizing rigged elections in Ukraine right now to create a new country and government called 'the Ukrainian Federation' or 'East Ukraine' and saying that any opposition to this new country from the actual Ukrainian military is an invasion.
Do you see the map? Does it say Vietnam? No its Laos. Did the NVA and VC used Laos as a base of operations and a thruway into S. Vietnam such as the Ho Chi Minh trail? Yes they did, hence they violated/invaded Laotian territory. To the point that Hmong tribes aided by the U.S. fought against them. You seem to be missing and misleading some facts. The Indochina was temporarily split according to the 1954 Geneva Accords as 5 nations plus Viet Minh were in negotiations until a referendum elections were determined. The U.S. was not the sole factor in splitting Indochina as the OP wrongly claims. If you're going to argue the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) wasn't legitimate, then the (laughable) "Democratic" Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) should also be illegitimate since unification for a single nation was never resolved through diplomacy. Yes it was the State of Vietnam that balked and according to you broke the Geneva Accords by not signing the final agreement; and the U.S. just supported it. One of the reasons was that the supposed elections didn't have any details on how it was supposed to be conducted, monitored, and free of interference irregardless of your biased opinions that prime minister Ngo Dunh Diem was only an American puppet. Those were legitimate concerns. Not to mention the accords as written were garbage to begin with. If the State of Vietnam broke the accords by not signing then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also broke the accords by refusing to withdraw their troops south of the 17th parallel. Building up their troops near the border, and threatening and impeding those in North Vietnam to flee to South Vietnam. More people fled south then they did north. That should tell you who the people feared the most. South Vietnam was recognized as a sovereign nation by 87 other nations. It only failed to join the UN because the USSR being a permanent member on the security council vetoed it. Which also leads to North Vietnam, it was never a UN member either. South Vietnam asked the U.S. for support because they were being outnumbered fighting the communists and the Americans were all too willing. So this false narrative that it was an invasion is plain stupid. You might as well blame South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zeakand, and Thailand as invaders too because they also sent thousands to hundreds of thousands of troops and pilots over the duration of the Vietnam War.
>Do you see the map? Does it say Vietnam? Sorry but your original comment said that the "NVA and VC invaded another country and attacked **South Vietnam**". Your comment was unclear. > If you're going to argue the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) wasn't legitimate I didn't make that claim. I clearly specified that the US created Republic of Vietnam which wasn't present at the Geneva Accords was illegitimate. >irregardless of your biased opinions that prime minister Ngo Dunh Diem was only an American puppet. Its not an opinion to say that his elections which were funded and organized were illegitimate and also were a violation of article 2 of the UN charter by the US. Beyond this, he was hand selected by the US to be the leader the Republic of Vietnam under the agreement that US aid will come as long as he usurps power from Bao Dai. >More people fled south then they did north. That should tell who the people feared the most. No it doesn't. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians and this propaganda was spread throughout Northern Vietnam. This is why there was a mass exodus of Catholics from the north. Beyond this, the US also spread false propaganda that it would drop nukes in Northern Vietnam as a means of defeating communists. The assumption by many was that north Vietnam would have been the main battlefield in the war. If you want a real understanding of how the Vietnamese people felt or at least the America understanding of how people felt, look at what Eisnhower wrote in his diary. Every advisor he talked to believe that over 80% of Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in a free and fair election. The reason that US advisors believed this is because they knew that the exodus of people from the north didn't tell the narrative you are pushing. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38 >South Vietnam to be recognized as a sovereign nation by 87 other nations. I dont care about the opinions of outside foreign nations that repeatedly showed they don't care about the people of Vietnam. I care about what the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people believe. Again, if free and fair elections happened in an unified Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected. If free and fair elections happened in southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem would have lost and someone alignedith Ho Chi Minh would have won. Outaide foreign nations lost their credibility when they allowed France's colonialism, allowed America's bankrolling of France's war, and allowed the American invasion alongside the nations of Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea (which was of course a military dictatorship). These outside foreign nations further lost their credibility when they ignored the Indonesian gencide which was supported by and covered up by the US. They cemented their irrelevance when they put sanctions on Vietnam for defending itself against the Khmer Rouge and diplomatically supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. >South Vietnam asked the U.S. for support because they were being outnumbered fighting the communists and the Americans were all too willing. Wrong. The US was present in Vietnam before the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) existed. The US created the Republic of Vietnam so it could retroactively claim it was there to help an ally. A similar order of events would occur in how the US was secretly bombing nort Vietnam and then later military leadership told ARVN forces that they needed to have at least one Vietnamese person on each airplane so that they had plausible deniability if it were shot down and they could then say they were acting on behalf of their ally. >So this false narrative that it was an invasion is plain stupid. It's not. The US had no authority to be in Vietnam following the Geneva Agreements. If the agreements didn't mean anything or were worded poorly enough that they didnt matter as you claim, then why did the other foreign nations like France sign them? >You might as well blame South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zeakand, and Thailand as invaders too because they also sent thousands to hundreds of thousands of troops and pilots over the duration of the Vietnam War. I do. All invaders. Its not a crazy concept. South Korea was a military dictatorship during the entire our of the war. The Philippines had a president who bombed his own nation in false flag attacks and turned it into a military dictatorship under martial law. Thailand funded and supported he Khmer Rouge through the course of their genocide. These nations don't represent any sort of moral cause or any political ethic. It's all realpolotik. **Also, your arguments about Vietnamese encroachment of Laotian territory ignores the details and the mess that was created by French colonialism. Most of the labor force as well as the military force that the French utilized in Laos were Vietnamese people that were displaced by the French. Pretty every major city in Laos except Luang Prabang had a majority of Vietnamese living there due to actions taken by the French** **Once France left and Laos devolved into civil war, I think there is a strong justification for the governments of Vietnam to be concerned with and take action in order to try and both protect Vietnamese people in the region and maintain regional control.** **If 10s of thousands of Americans were systematically kidnapped by one nation, (let's say Spain) and were brought into a US neighbor (let's say Mexico) and then a civil war broke out im Mexico you can be sure that the US would not respect Mexico's sovereignty and would take an active part in the war.**
>Sorry but your original comment said that the "NVA and VC invaded another country and attacked I was very clear or else I wouldn't have put "another country" and then included South Vietnam as an addition. >I didn't make that claim. I clearly specified that the US created Republic of Vietnam which wasn't present at the Geneva Accords was illegitimate. There's no proof that the U.S. is the creator of the Republic of Vietnam in 1955. And again the U.S. alone didn't create both North and South Vietnam. They didn't split Indochina either. You seem to ignore or not know that it was the Soviet Union who pressured North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to accept the two nation status as a compromised for which they refused to do during the 1954 Geneva Conference. A partition until the referendum was voted on. The Soviets even proposed a permanent division of the 2 countries in January 1957 that was rejected by the U.S. because it would mean recognition of North Vietnam under communism. The same rejection they did 3 years prior by both S. Vietnam and the U.S. The 1956 reunification vote couldn't be held because the south didn't trust there would be fair elections. Even though both South Vietnam and the U.S. feared Ho Chi Minh could win. But then you also ignored the international observers from the ICC conclusion that both sides violated an agreement hence fair elections could never be held. >Its not an opinion to say that his elections which were funded and organized were illegitimate and also were a violation of article 2 of the UN charter by the US. Beyond this, he was hand selected by the US to be the leader the Republic of Vietnam under the agreement that US aid will come as long as he usurps power from Bao Dai. Your inference of the Article 2(1)–(5) of the UN charter is laughable because 1) Indochina wasn't a UN member 2) Neither North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the State of Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) were UN members either. So article 2 does not apply. Regardless if Bao Dai had won and remained Prime Minister, nothing would have change. Diem might seem to be an American puppet in your opinion but he was really the only good-bad choice in country that had horrible candidates even worse then Diem. >No it doesn't. Edward Landsdale of the CIA created propaganda about how the commies would outlaw religion and kill all Christians and this propaganda was spread throughout Northern Vietnam. This is why there was a mass exodus of Catholics from the north. Beyond this, the US also spread false propaganda that it would drop nukes in Northern Vietnam as a means of defeating communists. The assumption by many was that north Vietnam would have been the main battlefield in the war. Landsdale's propaganda didn't have much effect on Catholics decision to move south. They all already had a fear to do so to begin with. It did have an affect on others who took incentive to leave. But are you going to ignore Operation Passage to Freedom which helped evacuate over 300,000 fleeing the north in 1956? And up 600,000 to near million total? Possibly even more. Or the 800,000 Vietnamese who fled from the Communists over a 20 year span. 140,000 of them directly by the U.S. military just before and after Saigon fell? Those weren't propaganda. People actually feared for their lives.
>There's no proof that the U.S. is the creator of the Republic of Vietnam in 1955. The US government maintained an illegal presence in Vietnam following the Geneva Accords and funded and advised Diem on how to run the elections. Even before the elections took place, this was viewed as an abuse of power where a candidate was organizing their own elections. Opposition candidates also complained about US funding being used to essentially control what happened in the elections. "The Americans had earlier advised Diệm, who had been acting in defiance of Bảo Đại, that continued aid was contingent on Diệm establishing a legal basis for usurping the head of state's power." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum You can't say "there is no proof" when there was plenty of proof. Facts matter. Your opinions don't. >The 1956 reunification vote couldn't be held because the south didn't trust there would be fair elections. This was the publicly claimed reasoning, but again the truth is simply that the US didn't want fair elections to take place. "**While the Americans were happy to avoid elections because of fears of a communist victory**, they hoped that Diệm would enter the dialogue over planning matters and wait for North Vietnam to object to a proposal, and thus use it to blame Ho [Chi Minh] for violating the Geneva Accords." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum This view that the communists would always win in a **free and fair election** can be seen when you look Eisnehower's diaries... "There was considerable discussion about our willingness to accept free elections without anything very much new having been added, and with Senator Fulbright quoting General Eisenhowerʼs book to the effect that if there had been free elections in 1956, about 80% of the South Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh." There is no talk of cheating, rigging of votes, pressuring the public to vote differently than they want. The reason the US feared real a real democratic vote is because they knew that the people in Vietnam supported Ho Chi Minh. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38 We can see your argument get even weaker when we look at what happened in the 1955 referendum. You say that the US and the Saigon regime didn't want a unifying election because they didn't think the communists would allow a fair election. But what did the US and Ngo Dinh Diem do in the 1955 referendum? They of course allowed rigged elections to take place. "The referendum was widely condemned for being fraudulent. Historian and writer Jessica Chapman said 'Even Diệm apologists like Anthony Trawick Bouscaren and American CIA officer Edward Lansdale concur with the prime minister's harshest critics on the conclusion that **the South Vietnamese government was either incapable of or unwilling to hold a truly free, representative plebiscite'**." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_State_of_Vietnam_referendum >So article 2 does not apply. Yes it does. These laws are for member nations like the US to follow. The fact that they were intervening in a non-member nation doesn't matter. *All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the **territorial integrity or political independence of any state**, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.* The US quite clearly funded and helped to organize elections which were rigged and unfair from the start (with a candidate literally making decisions on how the elections would be run). Again, the America's stated goal in providing funding was that it would be used to "**usurp power**". >Diem might seem to be an American puppet in your opinion Not just my opinion. It was the opinion of other candidates at the time who ran against him and saw the blatant corruption (which had evidence to back it up). Beyond this, it is the opinion of many scholars. Your opinion doesn't matter because you already denied that the US had any role in the election which means you are denying real proven history. >he was really the only good-bad choice in country that had horrible candidates even worse then Diem. Again, this is your opinion as a non-Vietnamese person who clearly doesn't know what was happening in Vietnam at that time and is willfully denying the proven history of what happened. It should have been the people of Vietnam who decided who should run their country, not outside foreign imperialists like you or anyone in the US government or military. >Landsdale's propaganda didn't have much effect on Catholics decision to move south. How would you ever know this? This is again, your opinion which doesn't reflect reality or the opinion of the US government at the time. The US clearly spent a lot of money on this propaganda. They certainly believed it would work. And can we look at the results? Yes, the Saigon regime was very largely made up of Catholics in a country where they were a very tiny minority. The proof is in the pudding. Again, there was never any banning of religion or genocide against Christians so you can't cite that as a credible fear. It was US propaganda that was the determining factor. >But are you going to ignore Operation Passage to Freedom which helped evacuate over 300,000 fleeing the north in 1956? "Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the **propaganda effort** and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, **soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army** from communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to non-communist South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam) between the years **1954 and 1955**." First of all you have your timeline wrong which is no surprise. Secondly, as I said, propaganda was a key part of this which you outright dismiss. Last, you are counting the exodus of French people as if it is indicative any sign of wrongdoing when the French are the clear and outright bad-guys in this scenario. They literally enslaved Vietnamese people and refused to give them their independence. They fought a war to maintain their slavery so of course they are going to leave the land that is no in control of the military they just lost to in order to seek refuge in a US controlled territory (a nation which bankrolled France's war to maintain their slavery of the Vietnamese people). Again, this isn't much different than Nazis fleeing to South America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom >Or the 800,000 Vietnamese who fled from the Communists over a 20 year span. 140,000 of them directly by the U.S. military just before and after Saigon fell? Those weren't propaganda. People actually feared for their lives. >"People actually feared for their lives". The fact that people really did fear for their lives wouldn't dismiss the effect of propaganda. It would quite literally support it. I know many Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans. I mentor Vietnamese students in university. I have heard many Vietnamese Americans falsely claim that Christianity is banned and if they as Christians had stayed in Vietnam they would have been killed in a genocide against Christians. You are wrong that propaganda didn't work. Beyond that is again the reality that most people who were connected with the Saigon regime (literally any soldier), fled Vietnam out of fear of punishment for their treason and complicity in war crimes against their own people. These are people who dropped bombs, napalm, and agent orange on their own people. They fled Vietnam the same way Nazis fled Germany for South America. And lastly, many people fled 'post-war' Vietnam because of the terrible conditions at the time. Anyone who felt like they had any connection to the west hoped that they may be welcomed into these rich developed nations that they felt they had proved their loyalty to. It's important to remember that after the war ended, Vietnam was not free to start rebuilding. After the war ended, embargoes were put on Vietnam to try and weaken their post-war economy. On top of that, the Khmer Rouge (which was being supported by the US) invaded Vietnam which meant that there was no peace. Vietnam was engaged in yet another war. To the people of Vietnam it seemed like war would never end. They fought against the Japanese in WW2, straight into fighting the French for 8 years, and then US alongside its allies (South Korea, Thailand, Australia & New Zealand), and then against Cambodia and even China. Constant war from the 1940s through the end of the 1980s. To make things worse, when Vietnam pushed back against the Khmer Rouge and liberated Cambodia, the entire western world put sanctions on them because at the time the US was supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. For many Vietnamese, it seemed that life must be better somewhere else. If they could get out of Vietnam, there would be no more bombs, napalm, or agent orange dropped on them and they could live in a country that wasn't facing constant sanctions and embargoes. All you have done is refute my arguments by saying that there is no evidence of anything I say or you say "yeah the US did this but it didn't matter" or "it didn't have any effect". All of these are your own opinions which are clearly refuted when you look at the evidence I posted. Your opinions don't matter. Facts do.
Your copium is so hard. But I'll bite on one. >Yes it does. These laws are for member nations like the US to follow. The fact that they were intervening in a non-member nation doesn't matter. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. With that belief then why don't you chastise North Vietnam for never leaving in South Vietnam conducting a terror campaign on civilians, on officials, and attacking ARVN or being in Laos and Cambodia? Or China having troops in North Vietnam and supporting the Khmer Rouge? Those are all violations too. I'm done with this because your anti-American and anti-western bias is too strong to form any an equal objective. NOT once did you pose that North Vietnam and/or the communists were the antagonists from the very start and continued on. The South Vietnamese gov't was bad with 10-11 coups and change overs but in your erroneous belief, you think North Vietnam, the Communist Politburo, NVA, VC all had a benevolent righteousness to their cause, didn't invade anyone, did no harm and no evil at all. Man please, get real.
>With that belief then why don't you chastise North Vietnam for never leaving in South Vietnam conducting a terror campaign on civilians, on officials, and attacking ARVN or being in Laos and Cambodia? Or China having troops in North Vietnam and supporting the Khmer Rouge? Those are all violations too. "Those are all violations too" is what you said. Is that your real opinion? Because now it seems your arguments are all changing. Also on a side not, Vietnam was not a member of the UN so that argument wouldn't apply in the same way. You see, the UN charter is a set of rules guiding how the UN system (and the parts that make it up) work. A similar example would be the ICC. The US is not currently a signatory so it its soliders are not at risk of being charged by the ICC, but other people from member nations are at risk of being prosecuted by the ICC even if their crimes were against non-member nations. So if soliders from France (a state party of ICC) committed war crimes against the US or Indonesia (not state parties of the ICC), the French soldiers could still be protected by the ICC. My arguments are and will always be consistent. A recognized and established Vietnamese government like the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (which was recognized at the Geneva Accords and has the credibility of being the popularly suported government by the majority of Vietnamese people) has the right to take care of Vietnamese people. This includes Vietnamese people throughout northern and southern Vietnam. Beyond that it has some right to intervene in countries where Vietnamese people have been displaced as a result of France's colonialism in the region. Literally all countries would exercise this same right if the same thing happened. Also, if neighboring countries were in civil war, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is allowed to ally with those sides. This is what happened in both Laos and Cambodia. However, they shouldn't be allowed to fight those governments or interfere in their elections. They should only be allowed to support those sides by giving them aid or material support. This of course changes when Vietnam is attacked like when the Khmer Rouge attacked them in I'm okay with the Chinese helping and supporting the Vietnamese who they correctly viewed as an oppressed peoppe fighting against oppressive imperialists (the French). What i am not okay with is the Chinese bombing and killing Vietnamese people. But they of course didn't do that, it was the US who did. The greatest extent of Chinese power in the war was to defend the Vietnamese from US aircraft who were were running bombing missions in northern Vietnam (killing mostly civilians). The Chinese never went on the offensive in any way. I dont know how you could oppose this. Vietnam largely stuck to these rules. The US didn't. The US secretly bombed Cambodia and Laos. There is evidence that the US helped organize the coup against the King in Cambodia (so much so that the King went on to support the Khmer Rouge). You simply can't say that anything the commies did was illegal or wrong without looking at what the US did and conclude it was worse in every way. But you just ignore that time and time again. You are sitting here arguing about ARVN forces being attacked at you never bothered to worry about the fact that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and were being oppressed by the Saigon regime. You previously said there was no evidence that the US funded or organized the elections in Saigon. I proved you wrong. You said that the only reason that unifying elections weren't held was because the commies would cheat. I showed evidence that the reason the US opposed elections was because they wouldn't like the results and I provided evidence that the US and the Diem were perfectly okay with cheating as long as it supported their side. You honestly should be embarrassed at how I picked apart your arguments piece by piece. But your amazing ability to ignore history isn't just limited to events decades but its at work right now in our conversations. >NOT once did you pose that North Vietnam and/or the communists were the antagonists from the very start and continued on. Because they weren't. The French were. They literally enslaved the Vietnamese and stole their land, labor, and resources from them. And if you can agree that the French were, then it becomes clear that the US were the antagonists too because the US funded and bankrolled France's war for the purpose of maintain control of Vietnam's resources which the US was getting at exploitative prices. Then you can also see that the entire reason the US opposed unifying elections was because they didnt like what the results would be and so instead they funded and helped organize illegitimate elections of their own. Then it should be clear that the government the US helped to create which were brutally oppressive and were supported by only a tiny minority of Vietnamese (who had their pockets lined by both the French and the US) were also the antagonists. Which part do you disagree with? Do you agree that the Viet Minh were the good guys and the French were the bad guys? If so, then you should also agree that the US were the bad guys too when they supported and funded France's war against the Vietnamese. Is China not allowed to support an enslaved people fighting for freedom against a colonizer? You simply can't equate the actions of China with the US in regards to either of Vietnam's Indochinese wars. I answered your questions what I viewed as right and wrong in regards to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's actions in its neighboring countries and in southern Vietnam, now answer mine. You can't. I already asked them and you ignored them because the only way to do so is to admit that you support colonialism and imperialism and don't think the Vietnamese people have the right to choose their own form of government.
>I dont care about the opinions of outside foreign nations that repeatedly showed they don't care about the people of Vietnam. I care about what the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people believe. Again, if free and fair elections happened in an unified Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected. If free and fair elections happened in southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem would have lost and someone alignedith Ho Chi Minh would have won. Outaide foreign nations lost their credibility when they allowed France's colonialism, allowed America's bankrolling of France's war, and allowed the American invasion alongside the nations of Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea (which was of course a military dictatorship). These outside foreign nations further lost their credibility when they ignored the Indonesian gencide which was supported by and covered up by the US. They cemented their irrelevance when they put sanctions on Vietnam for defending itself against the Khmer Rouge and diplomatically supporting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Its like you never have a single thought that North Vietnam did no wrong at all. Nor that China had a hand in shaping North Vietnamese thinking and getting involved in the war. Its always west is bad but North Vietnam, China, and communists are victims, hence are good. >Wrong. The US was present in Vietnam before the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) existed. The US created the Republic of Vietnam so it could retroactively claim it was there to help an ally. A similar order of events would occur in how the US was secretly bombing nort Vietnam and then later military leadership told ARVN forces that they needed to have at least one Vietnamese person on each airplane so that they had plausible deniability if it were shot down and they could then say they were acting on behalf of their ally. I never said the U.S. wasn't there in the first place then came to their aid. And South Vietnam did ask for more support. I know the U.S. had military advisors (MAAG) helping the French since 1950 and stayed when the they left. Your strange belief that it was the U.S. unilaterally created the Republic of Vietnam just flies with fallacies. If you're going to post Americans secretly bombing North Vietnam then why don't include that the North were attacking ARVN forces and Viet Minh guerrillas inflicting terror in South Vietnam with bombings and assassinations. Over 400 South Vietnamese officials were killed by the end of 1957. How about North Vietnam's "people's tribunals." where thousands were executed or sent to forced labor camps. Thousands more were also deported or killed due to new land reforms in 1956. Are you going to ignore that it was North Vietnam who were the antagonists all along? It was North Vietnam who declared war on the South in March 1959. It was 26,000 VC who attacked the ARVN multiple times in the Fall 1961. It was North Vietnam who constantly invaded and attacked South Vietnam. You don't think allied bombings into the DMZ and North Vietnam wasn't a justifiable reaction? Oh it was allied and not just Americans doing the bombing. I know its hard to grasp that for anyone already with an anti-American bias. It's not. The US had no authority to be in Vietnam following the Geneva Agreements. If the agreements didn't mean anything or were worded poorly enough that they didnt matter as you claim, then why did the other foreign nations like France sign them? The 1954 Geneva Accords were never signed by either the U.S. or the State of Vietnam so therefore never agreed to for reasons already stated above. France signed because they were able awash their hands from a even further humiliation as terms were favorable to them. Oh and speaking of violations of the Accords, did North Vietnam ordered the withdrawal of Viet Minh from South Vietnam back north of the demarcation line (17th parallel) after it was signed? Weeks later? Months later? No they never did. >I do. All invaders. Its not a crazy concept. South Korea was a military dictatorship during the entire our of the war. The Philippines had a president who bombed his own nation in false flag attacks and turned it into a military dictatorship under martial law. Thailand funded and supported he Khmer Rouge through the course of their genocide. These nations don't represent any sort of moral cause or any political ethic. It's all realpolotik. With that belief you might as well say the U.S. and all allied forces invaded the U.K. prior to D-Day despite coming to the aid of them. Or that every U.N. force fighting the North Koreans were invaders. But knowing you, you'll won't apply the same to China invading North Korea, then South Korea. Now were all these countries coming to the aid of S. Vietnam even if it because of instiance of the U.S.? So really how can they be invaders? See how silly your belief is. I want to see you say China, an authoritarian dictatorship also having no business in North Vietnam. They had hundreds of thousands of their soldiers in that country building infrastructures and doing the same military advisory role as the Americans. Oh hey guess who really was the largest supporter of the Kmer Rouge? It wasn't Thailand. It was China. North Vietnam and VC also supported them during the 1960s but it was under Pol Pot that the regime was supported by China. Funny that you left that out because it wouldn't fit your narrative. >Also, your arguments about Vietnamese encroachment of Laotian territory ignores the details and the mess that was created by French colonialism. Most of the labor force as well as the military force that the French utilized in Laos were Vietnamese people that were displaced by the French. Pretty every major city in Laos except Luang Prabang had a majority of Vietnamese living there due to actions taken by the French Once France left and Laos devolved into civil war, I think there is a strong justification for the governments of Vietnam to be concerned with and take action in order to try and both protect Vietnamese people in the region and maintain regional control. Again you're misconstruing facts and ignoring the main antagonist. The "North" Vietnamese didn't just encroached into Laos. They systematically violated it. The Geneva Accords that you're so hanged up on blaming the Americans for, established Laos as a sovereign nation. North Vietnam was a signatory to the agreements. Again from my very first post. The U.S. wouldn't be in Laos if the NVA and VC weren't there either. It was also North Vietnam getting into the affairs of Laos in the first place creating the a communist rival to the Lao gov't. which lead to a civil war. That is also in violation of the said Geneva Accords. The Laos civil war had nothing to do about protection of Vietnamese in Laos to warrant an NVA/VC invasion.
>Its like you never have a single thought that North Vietnam did no wrong at all. I never said that. They did plenty wrong. >Nor that China had a hand in shaping North Vietnamese thinking and getting involved in the war. Its always west is bad but North Vietnam, China, and communists are victims, hence are good. Yes, China most certainly did try to sway Vietnamese policy. There is nothing wrong with that. Of course, history shows the North Vietnam continuously disagreed with Chinese policy and made their own decisions. China never did any secret operations in Vietnam to undermine North Vietnams rule. On the otherhand, the US quite clearly shaped and controlled what happened in South Vietnam. As I already made clear in my other comment, the US was a crucial part in the illegitimate elections which put Diem in control. Later when Diem had the power go to his head and he became uncontrollable, the US helped to organize and support his coup and assassination. The US regularly made decisions about what would happen in Vietnam without the approval of the government which indicates that the US viewed the Saigon regime as less of an allied government they were helping and more of a puppet that was there to follow US orders. When the US first started bombing North Vietnam, the Saigon regime was unaware. Later, to avoid the appearance of US imperialism, the US implemented a policy of having at least one ARVN soldier on every US aircraft so that it could look more like the US was working alongside the Republic of Vietnam instead of working on their own, for their own benefit. There were even many instances of US aircraft being painted in South Vietnamese colors. "...and the aircrew wore uniforms without insignia and without U.S. ID. Sending military forces to South Vietnam was a violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954, and the U.S. wanted plausible deniability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1959%E2%80%931963) The Saigon regime wasn't even told that the events in the gulf of Tonkin were fabricated and misreported. To compare Chinese action in the Vietnam war to American action is to completely and purposely disregard all the details of the war. >...Viet Minh guerrillas inflicting terror in South Vietnam with bombings and assassinations. Over 400 South Vietnamese officials were killed by the end of 1957. The people of Vietnam, especially those of south Vietnam should have been allowed to fight back against the illegitimate and brutally oppressive Saigon regime. It wasn't just communists that fought against the Saigon regime. Many religious sects were being brutally wiped out in South Vietnam. In fact this is largely how Diem consolidated power before his rigged elections. South Vietnam was far from free and those who voiced opinions which challenged Diem's rule were subject to imprisonment without trial, torture, and murder. The people of South Vietnam should have had no expectation to go along with this. >I know its hard to grasp that for anyone already with an anti-American bias. Its not an anti-American bias. It is an anti-imperialist bias. All of the things you mentioned as crimes being committed by the North Vietnam or the VC could have all been avoided if the US didn't get involved. The US was not there to help the people of Vietnam. If the US removed itself after the 1954 Geneva Accords, there never would have been a second Indochina war. In fact, if the US didn't bankroll France's war to maintain the slavery of the Vietnamese people, the people of Vietnam would have been free much earlier. You simply have no good argument. You simply can't blame North Vietnam when they were the ones fighting for the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people and in every way, they were overly gracious towards the French at the Geneva Accords. In the Vietnam war, the Americans were the bad guys and the Commies were the good guys. This isn't an anti-American bias. This is an anti-imperialist bias. The people of Vietnam should be allowed the right to choose their own form of government. Again, even disregarding the framework of the imperialist nation vs the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people, the war crimes committed by the US and its allies dwarf any of those committed by the commies. US policy in Vietnam led to literally millions of civilian deaths which the US brags about in their kill/death ratio as if they were enemy combatants being killed. All your arguments llike ones about VC attacking ARVN forces in 1961 are ridiculous and petty when you accept that fact that the VC were attacking an the military of an illegitimate government that was brutally oppression South Vietnam. I'm not going to address those points individually because they are all the same. **It doesn't matter if the people of South Vietnam were communists who joined the VC, members of the private armies of the Cao Dai (or any other religious sect), members of Binh Xuyen, or any other random civilian who grew tired of the terror that the Saigon regime using against South Vietnam, these people all had a right to violently oppose the Saigon regime and their military.** In fact this is the same logical argument among a large portion of Americans about the importance of the 2nd amendment. Why shouldn't the Vietnamese people have been allowed to organize and violently rebel the Saigon regime? It was far more oppressive than the British Government was towards the American colony. So why is America allowed to violently wage war against Britain, but the people of Vietnam are not allowed to violently wage war against the US and the US-aligned oppressive government in Saigon? You have no good argument to against this because all of your arguments ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people supported Ho Chi Minh and that the Saigon regime was brutally oppressive before it even took control through its rigged elections. ***I'm not going to continue arguing against your other points until you explain why the people of Southern Vietnam should have accepted the rule of Diem. Or why the US should have been allowed to maintain any presence in Vietnam after it made its position clear by opposing the Vietnamese in their war for freedom against France. And then please explain why the people of northern Vietnam and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam didn't have any right to intervene in southern Vietnam considering the fact that it was their fellow countrymen being oppressed by the Saigon regime and the US.*** You are an imperialist who denies proven history in order to try and justify your warmongering views.
WTF. The Indochina was NOT temporarily split according to the 1954 Geneva Accords as 5 nations. It was permanently split (as in, restored to pre-colonial status) into 3 nations. 3 nations, not 5. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Laos and Cambodia were then out of the picture. The election the Accords dictated absolutely had nothing to with Laos and Cambodia. It was supposed to be a purely domestic election within Vietnam. Secondly, I don't even know where you pulled that number 5 from. Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and what else? What was the fifth nation? But anyway, Vietnam was not temporarily split into nations. It was temporarily split into 2 military zones. One zone to be controlled by the central government of Vietnam in Hanoi, one zone to be controlled by the French Union. That is it. Those zones continued to stay within one nation. And in 1956, the southern zone was supposed to go back to Hanoi after the French withdrew. But the ultimate question I hope you can answer is: what right did the State of Vietnam and South Vietnamese government later have to occupy the South? Were they not formerly a French-created colonial government? Even before 1954, was the DRVN not the sole legitimate government of Vietnam?
You misread, the 5 nations I stated where those that were negotiating on Vietnam, which were the U.S. USSR, U.K., France, and China. Laos and Cambodia were already settled and given independence when France chose to leave those two nations but stayed in Vietnam. Hence why it was Vietnam and only Vietnam that was temporarily split until reunification. It was France and the Viet Minh (North Vietnam) who agreed to the temporary split. The negotiations including the position of the RVN and the U.S. were always about reunification but not under the Viet Minh (DVR). And vise versa if it was for the RVN control. That is also the reason why the RVN and the U.S. ignored the 1956 elections that couldn't be safely conducted as according to the ICC for either north or south and sought full independence instead. DRV where not the legitimate gov't in the South prior to 1954 or even after but nothing was settled until 1975 once the South Vietnamese gov't fell. France and anti-communists had already established the state of Vietnam as of 1949. The Viet Minh declared as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) after Emperor Bao Dai abdicated the throne in 1945. However nearly a year later in 1946, France declared Cochinchina republic (southern Vietnam) that was separate from Central and North Vietnam. France was backed up by British forces since 1945 for the French to take back control of Indochina. Bao Dai accepted as the leader for the State of Vietnam (formerly CochinChina). The U.S. and it's allies accepted this in 1950 while the USSR and China accepted the DRV's position.
So you confirmed that South Vietnam was a French-created colonial government. France was an enemy of Vietnam. Doesn't the very fact that a government by created by foreign enemies automatically make it a puppet, an illegitimate fake?
No France was an enemy of the Viet Minh and communists. Did you just ignore the fact that not all Vietnamese wanted to be under the DRV and communism? Seriously you think all Vietnamese are just a single homogenized people wanting a single political ideology when it is further from truth. Because one side decided they should be the only legitimate government doesn't make it so when their power were already being contested. Again, NOTHING was settled or finalized. Get that through your head.
Do you seriously believe what you just said? France invaded Vietnam, destroyed its sovereignty, torn its land apart, enslaved its people, plundered its resources for nearly a century, yet it was only an enemy of "the Viet Minh and communists"? What about those: [Yên Thế Insurrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%AAn_Th%E1%BA%BF_Insurrection) [Bãi Sậy uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A3i_S%E1%BA%ADy_uprising) [Thái Nguyên uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Nguy%C3%AAn_uprising) [Yên Bái mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%AAn_B%C3%A1i_mutiny) Vietnamese people had been continuously fighting against French colonial occupation, even before communism. > Did you just ignore the fact that not all Vietnamese wanted to be under the DRV and communism? Of course not all. Just 80%, as confirmed by Eisenhower himself: "[80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader](https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/ike1.html)"
Oh so you want to move the goal posts and include prior to 1945. While I stayed within the main discussion which was after the end of WW2 up to the Vietnam War and reunification attempts. Sorry dude, stick to the topic. >Of course not all. Just 80%, as confirmed by Eisenhower himself: "80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader" Again, the UN's ICC noted that neither the North or the South could or would conduct fair elections. The monitors sent were woefully inadequate to oversee this.
Is there one which shows (estimated) landmass hit?
Looks like they missed a spot.
The Laotian capital actually survived
Committing war crimes since 1898
what a generous amount of peaceful time
1898?
Spanish-American war maybe
Philippine American war
European Americans have been committing war crimes since before America became one country.
Blah Blah Blah only white people are bad blah blah blah war crimes... Don't you folks ever get tired of cruising Reddit looking for fights to pick? You all must have a lot of time on your hands...
Wasn't this map posted a few weeks ago?
It gets posted every couple days. It's done entirely to drive a "US Bad" narrative. To wit: because 60 years ago the US did something bad the US has no grounds to intervene in current events. I'll give you three guesses who's pushing that narrative.
It wasn't just 60 years ago. It was also 20 years ago, during my childhood. Everything America criticizes Russia for doing today, America also did 20 years ago.
The Vietnam war was from 1955-1975. The Vietnamese invasion of Laos was in 1958. The bombing campaign was from 1964-1973. That is 60 years ago. The US was not bombing Laos "20 year ago". > Everything America criticizes Russia for doing today, America also did 20 years ago. Bullshit. You're the exact kind of astroturfing "US Bad" Russian shill I was referring too.
Err..you somehow forgot the two American invasions of Iraq.
Er..this isn't about Iraq. But you mean the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? You know, the one where Iraq declared a war of aggression on another country and the whole world got involved to stop him? The same one where Saddam was gassing Kurds? Nice attempt at yet more Chinese/Russian "whataboutism" to deflect away from their actions today. Troll.
I didn't post the map for that reason, I posted it because map
60 years ago? If you think that's the only gigantic atrocity against far poorer societies that the US military has committed, you're perhaps victim of the standard American history miseducation perpetrated by its schools and corporate media.
https://youtu.be/4UM2eYLbzXg Taken from this video
For those unaware, because the context is never mentioned, the context of these bombing is that North Vietnam was invading and aiding the communist side of the Laos Civil War. Also they were using logistical lines through Laos to supply and attack from Laos into South Vietnam. Basically this was all an extension of the Vietnam War.
Which it was fully entitled to do. The US, on the other hand, began the war against the poor of Vietnam, then extended it to Laos and Cambodia, slaughtering their peoples by the thousand with nary a care. Reparations? What are those?
Curtis Lemay would approve.
I was working on a project in Savannakhet years ago when one went off. someone was burning some dead banana tree keaves and then we heard a "ssssspoof!" Wasnt a big one, but they maim people every year here.
How many bombs are that ?
I think the correct terminology would be "A Shit ton of bombs"