Viet Nam.. What is your opinion?

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I beg to differ. South Vietnam was a political invention of foriegners, poorly led and managed by neo-colonial clients of the French, overwhelmed by the greater causes of nationalism (co-opted by the Communists before the creation of South Vietnam in 1955) and collectivism, a major element of Communist doctrine which coincided with the Confucianist thought that so powerfully influenced Vietnamese culture for centuries. The alien nature of South Vietnam, as a socio-economic and political venture, was underscored by the unwillingness of the South Vietnamese to fight for their new country. They almost literally did not know what they were fighting for, as the foundations of that society were so vastly different from those of the greater nation to which they had always belonged. Re-designing the social landscape anywhere is always a dangerous gamble. We gambled and lost. Hopefully it won’t happen again in Iraq.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Before there was a “Vietnam”, there were at least three different peoples. Of them, there were those previouslly known as Annamese (southerners) and those previously known as Tonkinese (northerners). Also there were people in the highland areas, commonly referred to as Montagnards, who are very different from the first two, and don’t even speak the same language.
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Except in the case of the Montagnards, Chinese thought and culture had a strong tendency to unite SE Asia. These peoples weren’t as disparate in lifestyle and outlook as one might conclude from your post.
 
The war in Vietnam probably could’ve been avoided when at the end of WWII, after the British had defeated the Japanese there, had Churchill and Truman met with Ho Chi Minh and negotiated on his behalf with the French, to give Vietnam their independence.

Instead, Churchill refused to meet with Ho Chi Minh and even called him “a peasant,” and the British turned the country back over to France. This gave Ho Chi Minh no other choice but to accept help from the communist.

Jim
 
Hmm…

As I said earlier, emotions run high when discussing Viet Nam. And there is much misinformation floating around mixed with factual information and spun to reflect the speaker’s overall belief.

The more pejorative the language, generally speaking, the less factual it is.

It is unlikely that honest and truthful information will every be published about this war.

Let me conclude by saying that all wars are great tragedies, whether they be just, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, or not.
 
KingAlfred said:
Except in the case of the Montagnards, Chinese thought and culture had a strong tendency to unite SE Asia. These peoples weren’t as disparate in lifestyle and outlook as one might conclude from your post.
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Except, of course, that if you talk to South Vietnamese about it, as I have done, they will tell you there are significant differences between them and No. Vietnamese. Of course, there are different groups within the South Vietnamese as well.
 
Randolph said:
IThese are my thoughts. If there are different opinions out there, I will be happy to entertain them. Please keep it civil. God Bless.
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thank you… too bad we don’t learn more about this kind of thing in our public schools… or even in college…
 
KingAlfred said:
I beg to differ. South Vietnam was a political invention of foriegners, poorly led and managed by neo-colonial clients of the French, overwhelmed by the greater causes of nationalism (co-opted by the Communists before the creation of South Vietnam in 1955) and collectivism, a major element of Communist doctrine which coincided with the Confucianist thought that so powerfully influenced Vietnamese culture for centuries. The alien nature of South Vietnam, as a socio-economic and political venture, was underscored by the unwillingness of the South Vietnamese to fight for their new country. They almost literally did not know what they were fighting for, as the foundations of that society were so vastly different from those of the greater nation to which they had always belonged. Re-designing the social landscape anywhere is always a dangerous gamble. We gambled and lost. Hopefully it won’t happen again in Iraq.
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I’m not sure I would classify South Vietnam as a political invention by foreigners. That is partly true and I don’t think the South Vietnamese people would completely agree. My wife is Vietnamese and I know very well about her family’s escape from the Communists and many other stories.
It’s bit unfair to say that the South Vietnamese were unwilling to fight. I think one of the reasons they did not fight well is because the U.S. had fought for them for so long. The North had adapted very well to the harsh conditions. I think the North had been bombed nearly to defeat, but it’s difficult to say.

On another note, I visited Saigon about 5 years ago and while the Catholic population is still comparably small, there was a big attendance at Mass. At one Church there were so many people they were standing outside in the streets.
 
distracted said:
was it right for the Communists to violate… first??
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JimR-OCDS said:
Well being they are Vietnamese, who did they invade?

Jim
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distracted, I thought it was actually American who had invaded first before there were even South and North Vietnam. Then later, the country got divided into North and South. By law, the North should not have invaded after this point, but they did. But again, who started the War in the first place?
 
water said:
distracted, I thought it was actually American who had invaded first before there were even South and North Vietnam. Then later, the country got divided into North and South. By law, the North should not have invaded after this point, but they did. But again, who started the War in the first place?
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I believe the country was already divided into North and South before the U.S. got invovled. The North started it. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
 
There were communist groups in the South that were being funded by the North. These groups were part of an insurgency. The leadership in the South was not very popular.
 
The US wanted to get the war started. Remember the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US claimed that the North Vietnamese shot unprovokedly at a US ship. This made big news in the US. Based on this incident, I forgot either Kenedy or Lyndon Johnson went on national television vowed to take appropriate military action. So the US military build up in South Vietnam began. Years later in his own book, Robert McNamarra admitted to the North Vietnamese General Giap that the US made up this story so it could began the war. Nothing happened at the Gulf of Tonkin. You should read his book. I believe the name of the book is “Inretrospect”.

I am still puzzled and baffled by the notion that South Vietnam was a fake. Can we get serious for a second?. People have lived in that land for thousands of years before the French arrived. They still do. Irrespective of what happened at the Geneva agreement in 1954, people and cultures had existed in what was then declared as South Vietnam. The Nguyen dynasty had ruled that land. And there were others that ruled before them. It’s laughable to assert that the land where these people had lived was an invention of foreigners.

Whether or not the South Vietnamese government or its military peformed well another issue altogether. In my judgment, the government was highly corrupted and the military did not perform well at all. They could have and should have done much better, but they did not. Keep in mind. The Vietnamization process did not start until after Nixon took the presidency. This means that not until about 1969 that the training and the recruitment of the South Vietnamese military actually began. The US ended its military engagement in 1973 and the South Vietnamese fought on until 1975. Keep in mind South Vietnamese had no experience in warfare as the North Vietnamese did. The North had fought the Japanese, the French and the Americans. The South had none. Not to mention, South Vietnamese military inherited a mess left by the US military. The population was now very hostile to them. After 1973, the US failed to supply the South with the supplies and aides it had promised. Meanwhile, North Vietnam received increase supplies and aides from both China and the Soviet Union. You could fill in the outcome from here.
 
Randolph said:
The US wanted to get the war started. Remember the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US claimed that the North Vietnamese shot unprovokedly at a US ship. This made big news in the US. Based on this incident, I forgot either Kenedy or Lyndon Johnson went on national television vowed to take appropriate military action. So the US military build up in South Vietnam began. Years later in his own book, Robert McNamarra admitted to the North Vietnamese General Giap that the US made up this story so it could began the war. Nothing happened at the Gulf of Tonkin. You should read his book. I believe the name of the book is “Inretrospect”.

I am still puzzled and baffled by the notion that South Vietnam was a fake. Can we get serious for a second?. People have lived in that land for thousands of years before the French arrived. They still do. Irrespective of what happened at the Geneva agreement in 1954, people and cultures had existed in what was then declared as South Vietnam. The Nguyen dynasty had ruled that land. And there were others that ruled before them. It’s laughable to assert that the land where these people had lived was an invention of foreigners.

Whether or not the South Vietnamese government or its military peformed well another issue altogether. In my judgment, the government was highly corrupted and the military did not perform well at all. They could have and should have done much better, but they did not. Keep in mind. The Vietnamization process did not start until after Nixon took the presidency. This means that not until about 1969 that the training and the recruitment of the South Vietnamese military actually began. The US ended its military engagement in 1973 and the South Vietnamese fought on until 1975. Keep in mind South Vietnamese had no experience in warfare as the North Vietnamese did. The North had fought the Japanese, the French and the Americans. The South had none. Not to mention, South Vietnamese military inherited a mess left by the US military. The population was now very hostile to them. After 1973, the US failed to supply the South with the supplies and aides it had promised. Meanwhile, North Vietnam received increase supplies and aides from both China and the Soviet Union. You could fill in the outcome from here.
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The U.S. was already involved before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, with boots on the ground. All the resolution did was pretty much give Johnson a free hand in what he did; something that was not clear before.

Indisputably, though, the U.S. dropped the So Vietnamese on their heads when we “cut and ran”. The irony was that the overall situation had improved after the Tet Offensive, which was a near-disaster for the North, and was much worse for the indigenous South Vietnamese Viet Cong, which was hardly a force worth considering after that. The North set the VC up for a slaughter, from which the VC never recovered. Even before Tet, U.S. forces had seriously damaged communist forces in the Mekong Delta.

Some of the So Vietnamese units were very good, and showed it during Tet. Some were very bad. Much of the So Vietnamese army was infiltrated by communists, and were not trusted by American commanders because of it. But one should not dump on the So Vietnames too much. They were not that bad when it came to fighting the local Viet Cong. But they were (mostly) no match for the No Vietnamese. It must be remembered that No Vietnam was a communist country, with political commisars throughout the army. If you were told to charge the fortified machine gun nest, you did it, because you would be killed by the commisars if you did not, and your family would be lucky if all that happened to them was to be arrested and put in a slave labor camp. As inept as they are in running an economy, communists have historically proved very effective in running armies, because the soldiers fear them more than they fear the enemy.

The end of the war (for the U.S.) was pretty much due to a loss of resolve on the part of enough Americans that the politicians felt they could accept a defeat politically, and get out. Most definitely that loss of resolve was related to a significant degree to the network news, which was even more unrelentingly negative than they are now about the Iraq war.
 
JimR-OCDS said:
So it was a civil war between them, not us.

Jim
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I don’t know if was considered a civil war. I was thinking they were two separate governments. Would it be like South and North Korea fighting for control of the territory. Would that be a civil war?
 
SCALCO said:
I don’t know if was considered a civil war. I was thinking they were two separate governments. Would it be like South and North Korea fighting for control of the territory. Would that be a civil war?
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Would it be a civil war if the U.S. conquered Canada? To most of the world’s people, Americans and Canadians are indistinguishable except for the fact that we have different governments. And, of course, we were both once ruled by the same colonial power.
 
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