Current Events > How do you think Vietnam war will be looked at in history 100 years from now?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean how will history judge USA?

Depends on who writes the history book.

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As a complete joke

for the most part it will be seen as a part of the cold war and part of many wars of liberation against colonialism during the mid-20th century

more esoteric analyses may also dedicate special attention to the demographics of the alignments in vietnam and implications of such, perhaps even within a much broader historical context, considering the cambodian-vietnamese war an extension of the conflict and perhaps even tying nam tien into the analysis

american historians may see it as marking the beginning of the end of the second american republic

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a colossal failure by the United States and pure arrogance.

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The United States attempting to preserve the brutal colonial rule of the French.

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berlyman101 posted...

a colossal failure by the United States and pure arrogance.

We could have won but the goverment lost support of the citizens back home.

USA lost to farmers Vietnam
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The_Creep_2020 posted...

The United States attempting to preserve the brutal colonial rule of the French.

As if the communists were better

I'd be surprised if the US even acknowledges it at all.

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coh posted...

As if the communists were better

Spoken like someone with no idea how brutal the French were in their rule of Vietnam

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USA will ignore it because they lost.

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Zikten posted...

We could have won but the goverment lost support of the citizens back home.

Describe to me what you believe American victory looks like in Vietnam.
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CW_McGraw posted...

Describe to me what you believe American victory looks like in Vietnam.

He voted for Trump lol

Zikten posted...

We could have won but the goverment lost support of the citizens back home.

i've encountered this argument from time to time

but i'm hard pressed to believe we could have won when the overwhelming majority of our troops' fighting in the war was not actually with the north vietnamese army - we were fighting a widespread asymmetrical insurgency (however with substantive communist backing) in the non-communist south to prop up an unpopular puppet government

the ceasefire was probably the best we were going to get

please correct any possible errors in my assessment

lurk posted...

He voted for Trump lol

who he voted for is irrelevant to this discussion

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The_Creep_2020 posted...

Spoken like someone with no idea how brutal the French were in their rule of Vietnam

We weren't even fighting to keep French rule

An abject failure

Zikten posted...

We could have won but the goverment lost support of the citizens back home.

Cope

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Obstacle2 posted...

An abject failure

Cope

@Obstacle2

for all you know i am against the war. I literally just said that we might have won if we had full support from the people back home. that is not a judgement of the war, or taking a political side on it. it's just a fact. the main reason we lost was nobody in the homeland wanted the war to go on. I don't give a fuck about the war itself. it happened like 20 years before i was born. don't tell me to cope, I don't need to. you massively misinterpreted what I was saying . not every discussion of a war means you are sad or upset about it. sometimes people are just chatting about history

CW_McGraw posted...

Describe to me what you believe American victory looks like in Vietnam.

@CW_McGraw

Managing to keep a foothold in Vietnam and not fleeing. maybe we wouldn't have TOTALLY won, but I think maybe we would have ended up with 2 Vietnams like north and south korea.

Aki_Sora posted...

USA lost to farmers Vietnam

Ehh, thats misleading. (Edit: but I get the sentiment.)
TheMikh posted...

but i'm hard pressed to believe we could have won when the overwhelming majority of our troops' fighting in the war was not actually with the north vietnamese army - we were fighting a widespread asymmetrical insurgency (however with substantive communist backing) in the non-communist south to prop up an unpopular puppet government

the ceasefire was probably the best we were going to get

please correct any possible errors in my assessment

Certainly the guerrila warfare caused problems with the way the US could effectively root out its enemies, but the US still dominated their battles. I think the biggest problem is the US greatly underestimated their enemies resolve. The North Vietnamese werent going to stop fighting and just go home, like the US ultimately did. They were home. They were going to keep fighting. So it did not matter if the US was outperforming the North by 5 to 1 or better. If you pack and up and just leave... you lose.

Its also important to note that the US largely did not try to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese they were supposed to be protecting. The insurgency made it difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and frankly I think the US underestimated the importance of that as well.

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The_Creep_2020 posted...

The United States attempting to preserve the brutal colonial rule of the French.

wrong.

Zikten posted...

We could have won but the goverment lost support of the citizens back home.

And rightfully so. We had no business there in the first place.

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The_Creep_2020 posted...

Spoken like someone with no idea how brutal the French were in their rule of Vietnam

you better not be a white boy socialist praising north vietnam...cuz chillllle stay in your lane

Zikten posted...

Managing to keep a foothold in Vietnam and not fleeing. maybe we wouldn't have TOTALLY won, but I think maybe we would have ended up with 2 Vietnams like north and south korea.

That just sounds like losing with more steps. If you look out how Vietnam turned out after we left, it's clear it was militarily correct to leave. They beat Cambodia and China over the next decade and are a reasonably capitalistic society today despite like a quarter of the men in their country dying over the course of the various imperialist wars they fought from the 40s into the 80s.

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Zikten posted...

for all you know i am against the war. I literally just said that we might have won if we had full support from the people back home. that is not a judgement of the war, or taking a political side on it. it's just a fact. the main reason we lost was nobody in the homeland wanted the war to go on. I don't give a fuck about the war itself. it happened like 20 years before i was born. don't tell me to cope, I don't need to. you massively misinterpreted what I was saying . not every discussion of a war means you are sad or upset about it. sometimes people are just chatting about history

@Zikten

That's not why you lost. America had been fighting that war for twenty years. You lost because you were totally unequipped for that sort of terrain and got your ass kicked by the locals.

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