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

There is no doubt that Ho reached out to the US exactly as above. Begged us to use our influence to keep the French out after WWII. I doubt he would have embraced Democracy though. We was always a socialist.

I don't think anyone said he was a capitalist or believed in democracy. He clearly wanted to be our ally after WWII though. I have always felt that letting the French back in was a huge mistake. I think history has more than made that point.

I think Obama's words were a bit too generous though.

 

So????

That is the general concensus now. And it is certainly the history.

Ho Chi Minh did regard the American Revolution as inspirational.

And, Ho's human rights was terrible, but no worse than that of the puppet regiemes we backed. Nor was it any worse than the destruction we rained on that country in a futile attempt to keep the people of that country from having the leaders they actually wanted.

Ho beat the French in 1954, and was set to become president of the entire of Indo China. But the US thwarted that goal and got the UN to partition the country the next year. The government we backed, was one we installed.

That is what happened, and that is already the judgement of history.

I remember all of this very well, as I lived through much of it. I believed what Westmoreland and MacNamara were telling us, and I supported our efforts. It was only by the early 1970's that it became clear to me that what we were being told wasn't true.

The near total and immediate collapse of ARVN and the Tieu regieme after the US peace settlement proved that .

Ho Chi Minh is the George Washington of modern Viet Nam. He is a national hero.

Live with it.

 

That is certainly true. Truman made the error of backing the French, which would end up setting the stage for everything that came after.

Not that the US involvement in Viet Nam was inevitable.

After the French defeat at Diem Bien Phu, there was a serious debate in Washington about getting involved in Viet Nam. This was in 1954. Dulles wanted US involvement. He was pushing his ridiculous "domino theory", in those days. Fortunately, Eisenhower chose to listen the the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, who predicted that Viet Nam would be an unwinnable quagmire. (Taylor was the commander who bailed out MacArthur's sorry a$$ at Inchon)/

Alas, Johnson didn't have the same caliber of advisor.

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No, MacNamara, and Westmoreland handled that.

 

Every now and then a topic comes up that makes for otherwise strange bedfellows.

I can understand Truman's decision. It was the wrong one is all.

Kudos to Eisenhower, and even JFK, for having more sense about it. While JFK had put about 17,000 men there, he signed a memorandum to begin pulling them out in 1963. He was assassinated 2 days later. There's a conspiracy theory or two there .... I would fault LBJ more than any other single entity for the Vietnam War debacle, as he is the one that made the troop commitments, and then lied about it over and over.

While I think Obama shouldn't have ventured as far as he did with the comments, as they need more explanation, I also think a vast majority of Americans are uninformed about Ho Chi Minh, and Indo China in general.

 

Agreed.

I don't blame Truman either. At the time, he was wrestling with the reality that Stalin had re occupied all of Eastern Europe and had essentially re established and expanded the sphere of influence of Czarist Russia. He was busy fomenting unrest in Greece, and the Communists in France especially presented a potential threat. He needed to shore up the French government, and forcing them to divest themselves of their colonial empire was not on the table.

Eisenhower was smarter than a lot of his contemporaries and critics gave him credit for being.

It's hard to say where JFK would have gone. There is plenty of evidence that he was not going to get involved. But his adminstration did back the assasination of Diem, so there is some question.

 

Oh...why not. The left does it alot when they degenerate a debate using Bush when it doesn't even concern him. Guess its ok for the left to do it but when the right does it you make it sound like a sin.

 

We should have never helped a colonial power suppress another nation.

We should have never sent troops to Vietnam.

LBJ needs to be condemned thru out history for making that colossal mistake known as the Vietnam war.

 

this entire thread is

 

The Chickenhawk-lovers get embarrassed when I talk about my experiences there, so I tell what went on every chance I get. I knew one guy who purposely broke his finger so he'd be transferred out of the infantry. Another guy threw a grenade into his bunker when under attack, stepped outside under cover, and got enough shrapnel to get evacuated. Another came back from R&R and deserted in Danang, supporting himself by stealing things on the bases and selling them on the black market. He was a machinegunner; while he was AWOL, every machinegunner in his company got killed (59 out of the 150 marines died within a few hours). I don't know what his punishment was, but it saved him from certain death.

 

Indeed. Most don't know this, but after WW1, a young, and significantly less radical and bitter Ho Cho Mihn actually met with Woodrow Wilson in Paris and begged him to ask France to leave Vietnam. Wilson declined. half a century later we were battling his forces in the jungle.

The French were alsolute (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s to the Vietnamese, and (most people also don't know this btw), actually had the nerve to ask the United States TO NUKE HO CHI MIHN'S FORCES while they were still at least partially in control of the country. We considered it, and actually said we would if Britain signed off on the plan. Luckily Britain was the smart one in the room and Churchill said the plan was dumb as hell.

Soon after the French were forced out of Vietnam.

 

Bill Clinton is outraged over this?

 

When you have confirm Godwins law on the third page of a thread you know you have lost the argument.

 

We should pick only allies worth supporting. The South Vietnamese were crooks, cowards, and collaborators. If they hadn't been such worthless people, we would have won decisively. In fact, we never would have needed ground troops. The Vietnamese in the United States should be deported back to Vietnam. The Boat People were Chickenhawks.

 

ITT people hate on the Vietnamese government. Sure they were scumbags at first, but they got better over time. And I seem to remember it was them that toppled the horrifically genocidal Khmer Rouge, not us, and that they were brave enough to stand toe to toe against China and win at the same time. (China says China won technically, but seeing as they didn't get Vietnam to leave Cambodia, and they didn't permanently seize any territory, along with the fact they lost 10,000+ men, i would say they definitely lost).

 

So the more Americans die, the better?

Ahh, so you didn't understand what he he was talking about, that explains your position.
Ho Chi Minh worked as a dishwasher in Boston, he greatly admired the American political system, the Declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, is copied almost word for word from the US Declaration of Independence.
And if the US had supported Ho and the Viet Minh, history would have been very different.
But the European desk at the s State Department had more sway than the South East Asian Desk, and mollifying the French desire to restore their colonies became the policy of the US.

So now that you know what really happened, has your opinion changed ?

 

It was a win all around for our ruling-class Masters. They made a lot of money off the war, didn't have to sacrifice their gutless unpatriotic sons, killed or demoralized the bravest of the working class, and sent their brats out to pretend to be anti-war by being obviously snobs who hated the lower-class Americans who had to fight it in their place. The message of the preppy progressives to their Daddies was, "You told us that working-class people are lazy, stupid, and greedy. We'll go you one better: Their sons are baby-killers."

 

During WWII, DeGualle did not think much of America, Americans, Eisenhower or the British. To appease DeGualle and to get him to support the allied landing of Europe, Gen Clark, with President FDR's approval, assured De Gualle that when thw war was over France will retain its colonial possessions after WWII. And what pissed off Ho Ch Minh was that we knew this and never told him until the Soviets told him of our plans. It was at that point that Ho Ch Minh decided to accept a Marxist-Lenin political philosophy while we, America, continued to ignore Ho after WWII and the grievances he had wit hthe French.

 

Although I agree that things would have been very different, frankly, I am not sure how we could have supported Ho at that time. Regardless, Truman's decision did not really hurt us, as it was the French that ended up getting their asses kicked within 8 years. We could have still stayed out of supporting the newly created South Vietnam. While Eisenhower deserves credit for not entangling us to any real extent anywhere, he did support LBJ's actions as Johnson escalated the war..

 

Just another thread that shows the sheer stupidity of the right wing anti American losers of this forum. They are so devoid of any knowledge that even when someone says something that is factually accurate they have to attack because it doesn't conform with the history that they have been told to believe by their handlers. Get off the damn internet and open up a book losers.

 

Hey. Read the posts. At least two of your of your "right-wing anti American losers" have argued pro-Ho. I have also argued pro-Ho many times in the past here.

Your post makes you look like such a troll.

 

Good question.

That article is a lie. Obama never said that the Vietnam War was just from a "misunderstanding" or that Ho Chi Minh was "super awesome".

 

I believe Vietnam was a moral failure regarding Faith in Capitalism; a domino fallacy is no excuse for a domino "theory".

 

How many tyrannical despots did we back because they were on "our side"? Look at Central/Caribbean/South America, Asia and Africa.

 

Has anyone noticed that BestViewedWithCable has stopped posting on the thread that he/she tried to start to rant against Obama? When fools jump in ....

 

As I already explained, Godwin's Law does not apply when the discussion is already centered around tyrannical despots who have murdered millions of people.

If we're talking about George Zimmerman, the Spanish speaking Hispanic registered democrat with black relatives, and someone brings up Hitler, then yes that is Godwin's Law. But if the discussion is already centered on the most tyrannical, evil, murdurous thugs of the 20th Century then sorry, but Godwin's Law does not apply.