Sen. John McCain diagnosed with brain cancer

[Dill]

(07-24-2017, 04:40 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I have to give you credit for the attempt, but there is a huge distinction between these two scenarios.  Vietnam was on the cusp of nationhood as we now know it.  It was not a country with an established history of self governance or sovereignty.  Unless you want to count their successive monarchies.  If you do then you're opening the door to arguing for their resumption after the overthrow of colonialism as the last legitimate sovereign government of Vietnam.

The United States was both a well established nation and had operated under the same form of government for close to a century.  Hence the South was the aggressor in the sense that they annexed United States territory in clear defiance of the well established government of the United States.

A quick note in response to these points. Vietnam was Annam before the French conquered in in the 19th century, along with rest of Indochina. And it was certainly self-governing. It was in fact the position of Bao Dai that he was the legitimate ruler of Vietnam as descendant of the Nguyen dynasty. But as a puppet leader of the French colonial state, he had no backers.

To the Confederates, the fact the the US was well established nation with the same form of gov. etc., hardly mattered, any more than the fact Great Britain was a well established nation when the colonies rebelled against it. The perceived grievances against state authority, along with "natural rights" to independence, dissolved legitimacy in their eyes. To the North, of course, the South was annexing US territory.  To the South, "US territory" was Virginia and Texas and South Carolina--their home states and first allegiance. I don't agree with that interpretation, so I reject the claims of northern aggression--even though the North plainly invaded the South as was the aggressor in their eyes. But the question of "aggression" in such cases is always and indissolubly linked to the question of legitimacy. One cannot separate them at all.

The legitimacy of countries like the Koreas and the Vietnams is not tied to how long they were countries. Rather it is tied to how the governments were formed after WWII and whom they represented. The DRV defeated the French, winning independence for Vietnam and the acclaim of the majority, but it agreed to a provisional partition so the French and their supporters could evacuate.  There was no other legitimate contender for statehood in 1954, only an agreement between them and the French, and then the UN for national elections. There was no State of Vietnam or Republic of South Vietnam, since the former was simply a French appendage and the latter non existent.

Diem's seizure of power, execution and imprisonment of thousands of opponents--especially the Vietminh who had liberated the country--was an act of aggression.  A rigged plebiscite in 1955 and his refusal to hold national elections supervised by the UN did not help his claims to legitimacy. The DRV had not the power to prevent Diem's takeover 1955, just as the US could not prevent the Confederate seizure of Ft Sumter in 1861.  When it could finally act, it did.

Ho Chi Minh saw the analogy between his defeat of the French and the US defeat of Great Britain during the Revolutionary War--colonies throwing off the yoke of colonization.  Do you find this analogy invalid?

The RVN, its army generaled by the very people who had fought the Vietiminh on the French side, certainly lacked the DRV's legitimacy to the mass of Vietnamese. Yet you see it as a legitimate government, or you would not be insisting the DRV was "clearly the aggressor" for continuing to unite Vietnam under one government controlled by no foreign powers, the goal of most Vietnamese. And you apparently don't see "clear aggression" in seizing power in a coup, killing and arresting opponents, and abrogating the French agreement to hold national elections. In your view, what is the source of the South's legitimacy? For whom did it exist? It would have fallen in '61 or '62 without US backing. Was it somehow legitimate without that backing?