Comment on The US Army was literally mutinying to get out of Vietnam
Rothe@piefed.social 2 days agoI think in another timeline it could have been one of the nation’s greatest accomplishments
How on Earth would an aggressive colonialist war ever have been one of the US greatest achievements in any way? The entire premise of the war was fundamentally flawed and wrong, a military and/or political victory would not have changed that in the slightest.
Vietnam was in the middle of a civil war between a brutal dictatorship aligned with the eastern bloc and a brutal republic aligned with France and the USA.
I will always stand against autocracy. The USA and France failed to protect South Vietnam.
In the good timeline, North Vietnam fell. In a better timeline they exist in careful balance similar to thr Korean peninsula.
Vietnam was in the middle of a civil war between a brutal dictatorship aligned with the eastern bloc and a brutal republic aligned with France and the USA.
That’s part of the issue, though - the ‘brutal republic’ was effectively a dictatorship for some of its time, and North Vietnam was never really a dictatorship, even when Ho Chi Minh was alive.
It was largely two terrible oligarchies fighting against each other - the difference is, North Vietnam had genuine popular support (though also genuine popular opposition), especially while Ho Chi Minh was alive, whereas South Vietnam really only ever had the fear of the (brutal) North Vietnamese reprisals to keep people on its side.
In the good timeline, North Vietnam fell. In a better timeline they exist in careful balance similar to thr Korean peninsula.
Would Vietnam be better off today if it was united under the south rather than the north? There are any number of brutal Cold War oligarchies who did not end up reforming a la South Korea. I think almost certainly Vietnam would not be better off split in two, compared to what it is today.
Currently, Vietnam is less repressive than China, US-aligned, and economically prosperous. I don’t really know that I would bet on a better outcome from South Vietnam winning.
Maybe they mean a timeline where they don’t even send troops to Vietnam
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 day ago
While I agree that there was no way the Vietnam War would have been an accomplishment instead of a shame, I must point out that the war was neither aggressive nor colonialist.
The war was a horrific crime, murderous in execution, vile ideologically, and utterly unnecessary from every angle.
But the notion that the war was colonialist was a major issue of (effectively) failed communication between the US and North Vietnam. And US involvement in the war was always oriented around the survival of South Vietnam, to the point where there was never a major offensive to take North Vietnamese territory.