Veitnam and teh TET offensive

[icenine]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

In all of this I believe we woefully underestimated the grit of Vietnamese people to rid themselves of foreign occupiers.

We looked and saw a thin, small guy in sandals and straw hat and said this
should be easy.

The mistake we made was trying to be like the French under Napoleon, who tried to export the French Revolution across Europe. We were trying to bring the New Deal and Sears to a country that wanted to rid itself of all foreign colonial powers. Ho Chi Minh was Communist but more importantly a nationalist.

I am sure the Vietminh under Ho killed many thousands of Vietnamese political opponents. But so did we.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

In all of this I believe we woefully underestimated the grit of Vietnamese people to rid themselves of foreign occupiers.

We looked and saw a thin, small guy in sandals and straw hat and said this
should be easy.

See the epilogue to the movie 'We Were Soldiers,' where Mel Gibson as Lt. Col Hal Moore figures that out. Having studied the diary of a Vietnamese soldier he himself killed (in the movie at least), Gibson's character makes the pithy observation, "He had a life worth living, and he threw it away in an instant." The Colonel thus realizes that they were indeed up against the committed nationalism you mention, and that the US was committing itself to a war that could not be won.

But whether the real Hal Moore reached that thought at that time or not, it certainly made no difference.

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by icenine

The mistake we made was trying to be like the French under Napoleon, who tried to export the French Revolution across Europe. We were trying to bring the New Deal and Sears to a country that wanted to rid itself of all foreign colonial powers. Ho Chi Minh was Communist but more importantly a nationalist.

I am sure the Vietminh under Ho killed many thousands of Vietnamese political opponents. But so did we.

"so did we" re political opponents, is usually buried in our history books.

Of special note: the president of South Viet Nam, Diem, after he fell out of favor with US, was assassinated as a result of a President Kennedy backed coup.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by icenine

The mistake we made was trying to be like the French under Napoleon, who tried to export the French Revolution across Europe. We were trying to bring the New Deal and Sears to a country that wanted to rid itself of all foreign colonial powers. Ho Chi Minh was Communist but more importantly a nationalist.

I am sure the Vietminh under Ho killed many thousands of Vietnamese political opponents. But so did we.

Our motives were not so idealistic. Just our rationalizations were.

In that, at least, we were indeed quite like Napoleon.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Our motives were not so idealistic. Just our rationalizations were.

In that, at least, we were indeed quite like Napoleon.

Yes

I remember when I was kid most of the people in my church were subscribers to the domino theory...we meant well. But the consequences were terrible.


Is LBJ guilty? Yes...but the vast majority of Americans did not really oppose the war. I believe Kennedy and Nixon on either ends were operating in the same cold war paradigm. When the nation began to realize the quagmire it was we already had a 500,000 troops there. I have not googled it but I think the number of dead on the Vietnamese side for the 10 years we where there was about a million.

Tonkin and the insertion of thousands of troops without really telling America about it was probably the worst thing LBJ did.


anyone here remember the Johnson Administration and the build up of the war?

were Americans aware of Da Nang in 65?

Boreas you there?