Obama says Vietnam was a misunderstanding, >>mod edit<<

He was inspired more by the communist monsters in the Soviet Union.

 

Sorry, but when we're talking about tyrants who have murdered millions of people, the Hitler analogy is an accurate one.

If you don't like it, then tough titties.

 

I'm asking you to pick a different one. Surely you have a big enough repertoire to name another dictator?

 

He was inspired to have a Communist style government yes. But he was definitly inspired by the notion that a weak nation could in fact break away from a stronger one, and achieve independence.

 

Oh, there are plenty of dictators I could choose, but none more appropriate than the Hitler analogy.

I've obviously hit a nerve with you, which is exactly what I intended. Actually, it was quite a bit easier than I supposed it would be.

 

Yeah. I expect a certain degree of debating to happen before the Hitler card gets used. It degenerates a debate really quickly when you have to compare someone to Hitler.

 

Hitler is a horrible choice if you are trying to compare him to Ho-Chi-Min.

 

Lie, lie, lie, lie..............................................................lie.

 

Absodamnlutely. Ho repeatedly tried to get Truman and Eisenhower to support independence for Vietnam, even going so far as to offer the U.S. navel bases. But those admins decided to back France's attempt to re-establish their colonial rule. The reason that Ho wanted the U.S. as it's patron rather than Russia or China is that he deeply distrusted Stalin and did not like how the Soviet version of Communism worked. He was even more fearful of the Chinese, since they were traditional enemies of the Vietnamese. First and foremost, Ho was a nationalist, and he wanted to keep Vietnam as independent as he could and he knew that having the USSR or China as it's patron would come at a much higher price than would having the US as patron. Quite frankly our involvement in supporting the French in Indochina will go down as the biggest foreign policy blunder the U.S. made in the twentieth century.

 

I grew up during this time. We had the opportunity with China and Cuba. People at time look at everything communist as one entity. I am not talking about whether communism is good or bad. The thought at the time was that the Soviet Union controlled all communism. It wasn't true. Castro asked us to help them. Zhou Enlai wanted to work with us. It was foolish to think powerful leaders wanted to ruled by the Soviet Union. I can't say that our relations would have different with any of these countries but we did miss an opportunity to try.

 

He didn't start out as a communist leader.

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He was communist leaning 20 years before WW2. He wasn't in the Soviet camp until we said "(*)(*)(*)(*) your independence! You get to live under French Imperialist rule!"

We could have avoided 60,000 American deaths if we had told the French to shove it and actually stood by our principles of believing in liberty.

 

And that makes Ho one of us?

I don't think so.

 

Ho spent much of the time before WWII living and studying in the Soviet Union.

He was part of the worldwide communist movement from the very beginning.

 

Yet he didn't trust Stalin nor was he a Stalinist. We could have had a unified Vietnam as an ally, but instead we put "interests" over principles, and like every other time we have done that in our history, it bit us in the ass.

 

Normally I would agree, but we're already discussing a tyrannical despot who murdered millions of people, so Godwin's Law does not apply.

The comparison is appropriate, despite the fact that it makes you really really mad.

 

The joke is that we supposedly went to Vietnam to end oppression there but it was rampant here. Jim Crow was very much alive and roaming the country from border to border and coast to coast. If anyone needed invading at that time it was the USA.

 

Ho didn't live in 1775. He's not a framer of our country. But he is the Founding Father of his own.

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No it's not, and an insult to those who died.

 

Well, on the point of cowards and traitors. Bush was a coward who took up flying aiplane on some patrols over texas rather than seeing combat. But in Vietnam many left-leaning recruits would stick feet above trenches inviting enemy to shoot wound them so they would be sent home. Very common practice back then.

 

another example of distorted history.

HoChiMihn was a scholar and was deeply inspired by the declaration and the constitution, as he was a revolutionary fighting a colonial overlord.

And while he committed all kinds of "sins", the corrupt regimes of the South Vietnamese that the americans supported were equally as bad.
And what some may consider and even bigger hypocrisy the CIA thru operation pheonix simply murdered approximately 20,000 south viets for being suspected of being commie symps. Yep the home of the most famous and revered document in history, the land of civil and human rights, was fine with "out of town doesn't count".

don't start throwing stones about american anti-domino cold war commie paranoia. Its sins may not be quite as large, but they are just as numerous. And fyi carpet bombing hanoi and environs wasn't even the biggest sin.

And for all that lamentation of the tens of thousands of dead americans, the returning vets were spit on and called baby killers, they had to fight for VA benefits (cause it wasn't a declared war). they weren't welcomed home triumphant, despite never losing a single major battle, because in the end they lost the war.

(the best thing to come out of vietnam was a realization that the american armed forces were seriously screwed up. More officers died by fragging than were killed by the enemy. Inefficiency, ineptitude, corruption, and massive drug problems highlighted the condition of the army and underscored the almost total lack of moral.

A very very very big american clustermuck that even Iraq nor Afghanistan could compare to.

Its you that needs a lesson or two in history. qu'elle surprise.

 

Yep he was an avowed commie, studied/worked in the 20's in russia - but from there had a peripatetic life before returning to vietnam.. His actual commie "masters" were chinese not soviets, despite the chuck norris movies.

 

Why not view vietnam as a history lesson how both sides failed to achieve meaningful dialogue and instead tried to take advatage of the other's perceived weaknesses and by such gradually escalating the conflict, and a second thing to remember the vietnam conflict by is a litany of broken treaties.

 

Initially ho negotiated from a weak spot and wanted peace under threat of being cut off from aid by moscow and beijing who wanted freer hand in korea, but the frech rejected ho's general terms under threat of losing aid from the american side, a decision the french later regretted as they had to negotiate from the weak spot in 1954. In 1960 n vietnam decided to wage war onits southern neighbour which went against the geneva peace treaty, but they pretended to take advantage of a loophole by sending down only volunteers, the viet kong. This prompted the americans to stage the tolken incident and enter the conflict on pretext they would wage strictly a defensive war limited to s vitnamese territory.

 

Later the u.s. side launched bombers over n vietnam while n vietnam deployed regular troops. Ho chi minh wasvariously inspired but took marxist political education, while the french ruled vietnam through a puppet monarchy. Later, n vietnam was was communist with all the baggage, while the south was utterly corrupt. Stage was set, rest is history.

 

No surprise that Obama never mentioned America's support, encouragement and financing of genocide in the persons of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, after Cambodia was invaded by the hated Vietnamese who installed there a Vietnam-friendly government. US hypocrisy has no equal.

 

Obama has proven himself a moron time and again. He is in way over his head.