Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Dill]

(05-03-2024, 02:05 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Was North Vietnam less powerful than the South?  Who invaded who again?

Fascinating.  My father, a two and half year year Vietnam vet was good friends with a ARVN helicopter pilot who wouldn't piss in the face of a Vietnamese communist if their eyebrows were on fire.  You protested a war my father lived.  Anecdotal evidence being what it is, I'm giving the edge to him.

So who were the "oppressors" in that war? Apparently the vast majority of Vietnamese thought the US and the gov. of South Vietnam were.
Most of the 2 million civilians who died would be of that opinion.

Is that so? A source would be nice, preferably one prior to the "reeducation camps".  I've lived next to the largest community of Vietnamese diaspora in the world (Westminster, CA) since 1986, I'm willing to bet I've talked to far more of them than you ever have.

Sounds like an old fashioned Vietnam War "teach in" is needed here. To avoid trading anecdotes.

The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, which defeated the French colonialists to become the legitimate representative of the Vietnamese people, was most certainly less powerful than the RVN puppet state, which had the might of the US behind it. That's why you don't read of the North carpet bombing the South, or about 500,000 foreign soldiers on the ground fighting with its military.

Sources for what--the generally agreed upon casualty figures? https://www.britannica.com/question/How-many-people-died-in-the-Vietnam-War

Or sources showing that the majority of the people preferred their own government over the colonial remnant you know as the RVN? 
There were no polls of the Vietnamese back then, but Exhibit A here would be the US/CIA's 1955 assessment that Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote if the US allowed free and fair elections. https://veteranmuseum.net/research-vietnam-war/

 President Eisenhower himself acknowledged that, had the Vietnamese people been allowed to express themselves at the polls under the terms of the agreement, “‘Ho Chi Minh would have won 80 percent of the vote’–and no U.S. president wanted to lose a country to communism.”

Exhibit B would be the fact that the DRVN could send muster hundreds of thousands to fight for it for just the rice to keep them alive, while the RVN had to pay people wages to wear the uniform, and even with US air power and hundreds of thousands of US troops behind it, still could neither count on its soldiers to fight, nor inspire the loyalty of its people.  If the situation were reversed, and the South were able to defeat the North with 500,000 Soviet troops fighting for it and all manner of air support, then you'd have a case. Hmm. Maybe you shouldn't get that tie with the students. This isn't really that close.

On your side, prior to re-education camps, is the minority testimony of the defeated, the resettled ARVN in Orange County. 

(05-03-2024, 02:05 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: But American anti-communists would have been happy to sacrifice millions more to prevent their "oppression" by the Communists 
they would have elected to rule them if the US had allowed them to make their own choices in the first place.

Seeing as communism is the most murderess form of government ever devised by man that's a rather safe assumption.  Are you a communist btw?

The government of Vietnam doesn't seem very "murderous" to me. It's currently a silent US ally against China in South Asian politics.

Your "safe assumption" drove our biggest and most embarrassing foreign policy disasters during the cold war, including the toppling of Mossadegh in Iran.

Rather than listening to area experts, anti-communists always already knew what Communism was about, and how Moscow was behind the rash of
anti-colonial wars in 50s and 60s. Never mind what "radical leftists" said about the history and culture of Vietnam or Guatemala or Chile or Angola. It was the same conspiracy with the same goals and same blueprint everywhere. So no need for historical/cultural context.

After 9/11, "Islam" came to fill the role of Communist conspiracy in right wing foreign policy. Deja Vue: "OF COURSE Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Don't listen to radical left traitors and their talk of Shia Sunni Kurdish division and the history of colonialism! And once liberated, grateful Iraqis will form an American style democracy!" Not a night goes by that Fox commentators don't remind us that IRAN is really behind the Houthi and Hamas and Hezbollah the Syrian government because they provide financial support. The less one knows about conflict in the Middle East, the more likely one is to believe that explains its multiple conflicts

No. I'm not a "Communist." But you'll agree you are an anti-Communist, right? And the more one knows about "the ideology of Islam," the less one needs to know about any Israeli "occupation" or ethnic cleansing, right?