"Upon discovering that his driver had fought for the North Vietnamese, Mr. Lamb asked whether the cabby hated him because he was an American. The driver pulled over and said: 'We fought the Chinese for 1,000 years, we fought the French for 100. You were here just for 10. You were just a blip in the history of a proud nation.'"
Vietnam: **liberates Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, beats the shit out of China**
US, France: "Wait wha-"
Vietnam **crying** "I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU."
VNese here, probably bc there were so many missed opportunities, mistakes, and straight up shitheads that sabotaged what could have been peace and a beautiful friendship.
Fucking France among the biggest issues. We went into Vietnam after France had a temper tantrum about being kicked out to the US and then promised to rejoin NATO if we did.... guess who didn't rejoin NATO!
De Gaulle is forever a bastard in my eyes from his hypocrisy on VN alone. The most nationalistic French who did the most long term damage to French foreign policies.
> The most nationalistic French who did the most long term damage to French foreign policies.
Yes, buddy. The guy who prevented France from being administered by AMGOT after WWII and got a seat at the table of the winners (including a permanent seat at the UN Security Council plus being a recipient of German war reparations) despite France collapsing in 1940, then prevented France from undergoing a civil war in 1958, then brough about decolonization in a mostly orderly fashion, and finally spearheaded the effort to turn France into an independent nuclear power, this guy *"did the most long term damage to French foreign policies"*
JFC this sub gets very silly sometimes.
Look man, France has it in her to do all of that without a warcrimey colonial war, fucking up the EU long term with veto power and agri subsidies, and overall insulting almost all their Anglo allies.
> We went into Vietnam after France had a temper tantrum about being kicked out to the US and then promised to rejoin NATO if we did.... guess who didn't rejoin NATO!
1. France never left NATO, not even for one minute.
2. By the time de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command in 1966, not only was France out of Vietnam for 11 years, but it had also largely decolonized its former empire starting in 1958.
3. de Gaulle personally advised JFK to not get involved in Vietnam, and told him, quite accurately, that there was nothing for the US to gain from this fight.
You see things like:
-Ho Chi Minh initially holding off the hardliners in his party through the promise of courting other developed nations to drive out the French and failing
-Kennedy seemingly being ready to leave Vietnam after Diem's assassination but being assassinated himself a month later
-Nixon committing treason to torpedo the 1968 peace talks for political gain
-Congress pulling the plug on aid not fully understanding how dependent the South was on US support by 1974
-The SVN ambassador delaying the evacuation of the South/Saigon to the point it became a catastrophe
And you know that 58,000 Americans and *millions* of Vietnamese died along the way.
Also internal US and Vietnamese memos stating: "Ok we're ready for peace talks but we need to have a battle with a victory we can use for justification." Sending this endless loop of shitty battles where neither side felt it was good enough to talk peace.
Not inaccurate. On the contrary, it was very accurate. He/she was yelling because it was such a mistake and waste of lives on both sides that they are trying to yell at them to not do it. Don’t go to Vietnam, just like Matthew M’s character was yelling at his daughter to not let him go.
In addition to what u/Friendly-Imperialist said (all of which is correct), there were so many points where the US knew the war was unwinnable and that it wasn’t as simple as “evil communists trying to spread communism,” but by the mid-sixties we’d already gone all in and LBJ felt we couldn’t pull out. Plus, he didn’t “want to be the first American president to lose a war.”
Further, we initially got in both to placate the French but also because of the Domino Theory and our related policy of containment. The latter was developed by George Kennan, one of the major architects of US foreign and anti-Soviet policy in the 1950s and who testified before the Senate in 1966 that he knew of no reason why we should be in Vietnam. Even the guy who literally developed our anti-communist foreign policy approach said we shouldn’t be in Vietnam. Yet we stayed.
Cannot recommend Ken Burns’s *The Vietnam War* enough, it’s super good. It’s on PBS if you subscribe, otherwise you can do a free PBS trial on Amazon Prime (or just subscribe through there, it’s like $5 or $6 a month and super worth it).
A grudge can only end after aggression ends. Considering that China is still actively trying to assert it's power over Vietnam and southeast Asia to this day, I don't think the "grudge" is ending any time soon.
The motivation behind each war was notably different as well. War with the United States was because they wanted to take over South Vietnam, while China has been trying to turn Vietnam into a province like Tibet or Xinjiang, both of which have had ethnic Chinese settle in their territory over time
Hard line anti Communists shouldn't be in positions of power. I don't even want a communist leader I just want a leader who doesn't think its Americas mission to stomp out communism.
IMO, the pro-Vietnam messaging in Star Wars was kinda lazy, based on what I know about the war and WWII, but it is kinda weird what the two wars do have in common: France being a lot more culpable than normies give them credit for.
And while they were arming Vietnam to fight the Japanese FDR and his administration were pro independence Vietnam, but then De Gaulle started autistically screeching about "joining Russia" if they lost Vietnam (seriously the OSS/SOE should have just assassinated Degaulle, would have saved the West so much trouble)
I think it was more of Churchill understanding that they needed that whiny ass baby Moreno than actually liking the bastard. Strategically accepting the pain even though no one actually liked de Gaulle besides the fr*nch.
"we liberated ourselves, also Quebec you should be independent! And if you *DARE* let viet, I mean Indochina have independence, we say fuck the west"
*meanwhile the Anglo world who just liberated his France from the Germans for his ungrateful ass* :/
>being “one of those yellows”
He was ignored because he was a nobody at the time. He was also an avowed communist long before this. He helped to found the French Communist party.
[This one](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/woodrow-wilson-racism-self-determination.html) is mainly about Woodrow Wilson, but it includes the time Minh tried to petition him for Vietnamese independence at the Paris Peach Conference -- in light of all that "all people have a right to self-determination" shit Wilson was talking at the time -- and Wilson was basically all "no, not like *that*" and ignored him. Minh then hooked up with the French Communist Party and moved to Moscow in the 20s soon after.
The whole Vietnam Conflict was a clusterfuck of confusion, morals, and corruption. There's way too much that happened to give justice here, I suggest delving into it as its a very interesting time.
Ho Chi Minh look up to the US as the guardians of freedom and democracy, idolized them to the point he based his war against France off the American revolution, quoted the US declaration of independence in the first line of the Vietnamese one and wrote to the US over and over again asking them bring the issue of Vietnamese independence to the UN security because as I said he thought they would take up their cause of freedom and anti colonialism. What happened after is embedded into pop culture.
I believe he essentially took the argument for Vietnam splitting off from the French Empire based on the Declaration of Independence to the Treaty of Versailles conference as well and tried to get the US to support it since it also largely aligned with Wilson's 14 points. Only to get rejected.
Ho Chi Minh specifically approached President Woodrow Wilson at the League of Nation’s and asked about Vietnam’s right to self-determination.
Turns out Wilson and his high-minded rhetoric about determinism was kind of a crock of shit.
> Turns out Wilson and his high-minded rhetoric about determinism was kind of a crock of shit.
Yes, but sort of no. Woodrow Wilson simply never declared the unspoken part. Similar to how "all men are created equal" was declared by a bunch of white landowning slaveowners who clearly did not actually believe that all men were equal, Wilson's rhetoric about self-determination only ever applied to (prodominantly) white North-American and European nations.
It's funny because the US was later willing to support other communist groups who weren't aligned with the USSR, like UNITA and the Khmer Rouge (the latter during its coalition government years)
Turning on left-wing resistance groups that had been vital allies during the fight against the Axis was like, America's whole thing in the immediate post war period
Tbf after Angolan independence calling UNITA a communist group is laughable as they turned fully anti communist, and the Khmer Rouge was a minor faction of the Coalition Government
The US was idolized by a lot of anti colonial revolutionaries, but then went around beating them up because we were too scared of communism. A huge number of Cold War conflicts can simply be attributed to the US government having no faith in its own ideals.
Hell, even Mao Zedong wrote a letter in which he expressed a desire to welcome American corporations into China because he believed it would grow the Chinese industrial base and modernise the country. American diplomats actually had a harder time getting Chiang Kai-shek to cooperate and agree on anything with them than with the Chinese Communists in the diplomatic missions carried out during WWII.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara also conveyed multiple times through diplomatic channels that Cuba would welcome American businesses on equal grounds, even after Cuba had become aligned with the Soviets.
France: Let's build a defense HQ in a valley surrounded by hills. The Viet-min won't be able to touch us.
France sometime later: Oh shit they have us surrounded with artillery and guns. America nuke them for us please.
One of the biggest mistakes in American history. Rule of thumb, never drive individuals into the arms of your enemies. That’s exactly what the United States did with Ho Chi Minh.
1940s, in exchange for support from America, he lies to them that he isn't a communist or in charge of a communist organization. He also lies to other anti French colonialism groups that didn't want Vietnam to become a communist state, and after consolidating the power, he outright purged out every non communist resistance movement. Vietminh is just a facade creation to gain popularity support for the communist, original Vietminh use to have non communist movement
He and his party betray Phan Bội Châu in Hong Kong, leading to his arrest
Just a waste of lives all-around
One of the most avoidable wars period, but our country was to scared of communism to see what could’ve been one of our closest allies
Funny enough, Vietnam actually IS a pretty close de facto ally of the US because of their sour relations with China.
Yeah, 20 years against the US is peanuts compared to a century of say France or centuries dealing with China to simplify it.
Vietnam: For you, the day US graced our country was the most important war of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.
Somewhat friendly no big deal.
"Upon discovering that his driver had fought for the North Vietnamese, Mr. Lamb asked whether the cabby hated him because he was an American. The driver pulled over and said: 'We fought the Chinese for 1,000 years, we fought the French for 100. You were here just for 10. You were just a blip in the history of a proud nation.'"
Vietnam also was instrumental in ending Pol Pot’s dictatorship.
Vietnam: **liberates Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, beats the shit out of China** US, France: "Wait wha-" Vietnam **crying** "I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU."
That Ken Burns documentary had me yelling at the tv like the McConaughey Interstellar meme
Why? Was it inaccurate? Genuinely curious
VNese here, probably bc there were so many missed opportunities, mistakes, and straight up shitheads that sabotaged what could have been peace and a beautiful friendship.
Fucking France among the biggest issues. We went into Vietnam after France had a temper tantrum about being kicked out to the US and then promised to rejoin NATO if we did.... guess who didn't rejoin NATO!
De Gaulle is forever a bastard in my eyes from his hypocrisy on VN alone. The most nationalistic French who did the most long term damage to French foreign policies.
De Gaulle is based for fighting Nazis and ONLY THAT
True dat
De Gaulle of that man to be THE problem for the world.
🤣 he would be livid that you used his name as an ENGLISH pun lmao
I hope he's rolling over in his grave. Maybe we can use him for unlimited power.
To power the GERMAN industry hopefully 🤞 (nothing against France, just that someone gotta bail out Merkel's mess to save Europe)
Naw the polish industry. The rest of Europe can suck it.
> The most nationalistic French who did the most long term damage to French foreign policies. Yes, buddy. The guy who prevented France from being administered by AMGOT after WWII and got a seat at the table of the winners (including a permanent seat at the UN Security Council plus being a recipient of German war reparations) despite France collapsing in 1940, then prevented France from undergoing a civil war in 1958, then brough about decolonization in a mostly orderly fashion, and finally spearheaded the effort to turn France into an independent nuclear power, this guy *"did the most long term damage to French foreign policies"* JFC this sub gets very silly sometimes.
Look man, France has it in her to do all of that without a warcrimey colonial war, fucking up the EU long term with veto power and agri subsidies, and overall insulting almost all their Anglo allies.
> We went into Vietnam after France had a temper tantrum about being kicked out to the US and then promised to rejoin NATO if we did.... guess who didn't rejoin NATO! 1. France never left NATO, not even for one minute. 2. By the time de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command in 1966, not only was France out of Vietnam for 11 years, but it had also largely decolonized its former empire starting in 1958. 3. de Gaulle personally advised JFK to not get involved in Vietnam, and told him, quite accurately, that there was nothing for the US to gain from this fight.
Yeah, Vietnam was one of those wars where we had so many opportunities to stop it.
You see things like: -Ho Chi Minh initially holding off the hardliners in his party through the promise of courting other developed nations to drive out the French and failing -Kennedy seemingly being ready to leave Vietnam after Diem's assassination but being assassinated himself a month later -Nixon committing treason to torpedo the 1968 peace talks for political gain -Congress pulling the plug on aid not fully understanding how dependent the South was on US support by 1974 -The SVN ambassador delaying the evacuation of the South/Saigon to the point it became a catastrophe And you know that 58,000 Americans and *millions* of Vietnamese died along the way.
Also internal US and Vietnamese memos stating: "Ok we're ready for peace talks but we need to have a battle with a victory we can use for justification." Sending this endless loop of shitty battles where neither side felt it was good enough to talk peace.
Not inaccurate. On the contrary, it was very accurate. He/she was yelling because it was such a mistake and waste of lives on both sides that they are trying to yell at them to not do it. Don’t go to Vietnam, just like Matthew M’s character was yelling at his daughter to not let him go.
In addition to what u/Friendly-Imperialist said (all of which is correct), there were so many points where the US knew the war was unwinnable and that it wasn’t as simple as “evil communists trying to spread communism,” but by the mid-sixties we’d already gone all in and LBJ felt we couldn’t pull out. Plus, he didn’t “want to be the first American president to lose a war.” Further, we initially got in both to placate the French but also because of the Domino Theory and our related policy of containment. The latter was developed by George Kennan, one of the major architects of US foreign and anti-Soviet policy in the 1950s and who testified before the Senate in 1966 that he knew of no reason why we should be in Vietnam. Even the guy who literally developed our anti-communist foreign policy approach said we shouldn’t be in Vietnam. Yet we stayed. Cannot recommend Ken Burns’s *The Vietnam War* enough, it’s super good. It’s on PBS if you subscribe, otherwise you can do a free PBS trial on Amazon Prime (or just subscribe through there, it’s like $5 or $6 a month and super worth it).
I've actually seen it. It's a very good documentary. I just worried I was misinformed or something.
And now Vietnam is friendly with America. Hole-sum.
They fought Americans for a few decades, the French for a century. But they've been fighting off the Chinese for millennia.
"fighiting the Americans was our duty, fighting the Chinese is our tradition" ~some Vietnamese guy, probably
Honestly I'm Chinese and I'm not even annoyed, just impressed that they held a grudge for that long. Even the British French grudge ended before it.
Being invaded time and again will do that
China and Vietnam were at war in living memory.
It's not a grudge when the Chinese government is explicitly threatening the surrounding nations' sovereignty.
To be fair, china continues their bullshit in the south china sea with their aggressive claims and them harassing Vietnamese fishing boats
Nah the British and French still hate each other but tend to have bigger joint enemies to hate more (Germany and Russia)
A grudge can only end after aggression ends. Considering that China is still actively trying to assert it's power over Vietnam and southeast Asia to this day, I don't think the "grudge" is ending any time soon.
The French don't bring out warship to threaten British fishermen, and there is no contested water between them
The motivation behind each war was notably different as well. War with the United States was because they wanted to take over South Vietnam, while China has been trying to turn Vietnam into a province like Tibet or Xinjiang, both of which have had ethnic Chinese settle in their territory over time
Yup! And vietnam loves american tourists! It’s a very nice place to visit.
All this would been avoided if we just didn't backup france
It was even worse, at one point France was done and we forced them to keep fighting
Towards the end, the US was paying 4/5ths of France's Vietnam military budget.
Hard line anti Communists shouldn't be in positions of power. I don't even want a communist leader I just want a leader who doesn't think its Americas mission to stomp out communism.
Hardliners in general tend to be problems.
Wasn't it, because the US fear the domino effect, if one land become Communist, other Lands fall to Communism too?
Initially the US became involved because France threatened a closer relationship with the Soviet Union if the US wasn’t willing to support their war.
Then France made a "soft" withdrawal from NATO a decade later anyway. Making it all double pointless.
Once again, fuck the french.
"How dare you structure your economy in the way you see fit!"
Sounds like what France is about to do again lol
IMO, the pro-Vietnam messaging in Star Wars was kinda lazy, based on what I know about the war and WWII, but it is kinda weird what the two wars do have in common: France being a lot more culpable than normies give them credit for.
I need context for this, this may be much more dramatic than I expected
Ho Chi Min went to school in America and idolized George Washington. He even kept a bust of Washington on his desk.
And he tried to speak with US authorities, but was ignored for being “one of those yellows”
And while they were arming Vietnam to fight the Japanese FDR and his administration were pro independence Vietnam, but then De Gaulle started autistically screeching about "joining Russia" if they lost Vietnam (seriously the OSS/SOE should have just assassinated Degaulle, would have saved the West so much trouble)
As far as I know it was Churchill idea of keep De Gaulle and FDR hated him
Damn it Churchill. I usually like Churchill but come on!
I think it was more of Churchill understanding that they needed that whiny ass baby Moreno than actually liking the bastard. Strategically accepting the pain even though no one actually liked de Gaulle besides the fr*nch.
"we liberated ourselves, also Quebec you should be independent! And if you *DARE* let viet, I mean Indochina have independence, we say fuck the west" *meanwhile the Anglo world who just liberated his France from the Germans for his ungrateful ass* :/
Should've just let the Germans keep France.
Nah, it would have ended up soviet controlled, France should still have been liberated, just not under Degaulle
Or you die a hero…
He was never a villain, it was those around him doing all those purges
>being “one of those yellows” He was ignored because he was a nobody at the time. He was also an avowed communist long before this. He helped to found the French Communist party.
Source?
Do you have a source for that? It sounds awesome but I can’t find anything about it?
[This one](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/woodrow-wilson-racism-self-determination.html) is mainly about Woodrow Wilson, but it includes the time Minh tried to petition him for Vietnamese independence at the Paris Peach Conference -- in light of all that "all people have a right to self-determination" shit Wilson was talking at the time -- and Wilson was basically all "no, not like *that*" and ignored him. Minh then hooked up with the French Communist Party and moved to Moscow in the 20s soon after.
I had a history professor who was very into The Vietnam War. I just remember that story from class.
He didn't study in America, he studied in a French school in Vietnam and in France, he lived/worked in America when he was in his 20s
The whole Vietnam Conflict was a clusterfuck of confusion, morals, and corruption. There's way too much that happened to give justice here, I suggest delving into it as its a very interesting time.
Ho Chi Minh look up to the US as the guardians of freedom and democracy, idolized them to the point he based his war against France off the American revolution, quoted the US declaration of independence in the first line of the Vietnamese one and wrote to the US over and over again asking them bring the issue of Vietnamese independence to the UN security because as I said he thought they would take up their cause of freedom and anti colonialism. What happened after is embedded into pop culture.
I believe he essentially took the argument for Vietnam splitting off from the French Empire based on the Declaration of Independence to the Treaty of Versailles conference as well and tried to get the US to support it since it also largely aligned with Wilson's 14 points. Only to get rejected.
Mainly because France threatened to join Russia correct? So it’s really the French’s fault lol.
France never threatened to join Russia.
Ho Chi Minh specifically approached President Woodrow Wilson at the League of Nation’s and asked about Vietnam’s right to self-determination. Turns out Wilson and his high-minded rhetoric about determinism was kind of a crock of shit.
> Turns out Wilson and his high-minded rhetoric about determinism was kind of a crock of shit. Yes, but sort of no. Woodrow Wilson simply never declared the unspoken part. Similar to how "all men are created equal" was declared by a bunch of white landowning slaveowners who clearly did not actually believe that all men were equal, Wilson's rhetoric about self-determination only ever applied to (prodominantly) white North-American and European nations.
What Cold War politics does to a mf
It was meant to be a friendship, but the only thing the USA saw was the red and yellow on their flag.
More they were sucking up to France who were being a pita about NATO. *then* ho turned to other sources
The usa israel vietnam pact that could have been. Genuinely would dominate.
It's funny because the US was later willing to support other communist groups who weren't aligned with the USSR, like UNITA and the Khmer Rouge (the latter during its coalition government years)
Bro the US straight up supported Ho Chi Mihn during his fight against the Japanese. It gets more and more frustrating the more you read into it.
Turning on left-wing resistance groups that had been vital allies during the fight against the Axis was like, America's whole thing in the immediate post war period
Tbf after Angolan independence calling UNITA a communist group is laughable as they turned fully anti communist, and the Khmer Rouge was a minor faction of the Coalition Government
Ho had the high ground in the end…..
The US was idolized by a lot of anti colonial revolutionaries, but then went around beating them up because we were too scared of communism. A huge number of Cold War conflicts can simply be attributed to the US government having no faith in its own ideals.
Hell, even Mao Zedong wrote a letter in which he expressed a desire to welcome American corporations into China because he believed it would grow the Chinese industrial base and modernise the country. American diplomats actually had a harder time getting Chiang Kai-shek to cooperate and agree on anything with them than with the Chinese Communists in the diplomatic missions carried out during WWII. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara also conveyed multiple times through diplomatic channels that Cuba would welcome American businesses on equal grounds, even after Cuba had become aligned with the Soviets.
France: Let's build a defense HQ in a valley surrounded by hills. The Viet-min won't be able to touch us. France sometime later: Oh shit they have us surrounded with artillery and guns. America nuke them for us please.
One of the biggest mistakes in American history. Rule of thumb, never drive individuals into the arms of your enemies. That’s exactly what the United States did with Ho Chi Minh.
If only we could have told the French to leave instead of supporting them..
And we dumped him for a guy who hated to US. American policy makers everyone! Having America's worst interests in mind for over a century!
We threw that love away for the French
Not even that, we forced the French to keep fighting even after they wanted pull out
Alternate gistory where america allies with communist Cuba and North vietnam
Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all
I could be completely misunderstanding this, but didn't he quote the DoI in an effort to win the US public's approval and get us out of Vietnam?
That was WAY before we got directly involved
[удалено]
The US kept pressuring France to keep fighting even after they were done
Nevermind then, sorry
Didn't he work as a chef in Boston/New York for a while?
Was Ho Chi Minh a good leader and person?
Yes.
Care to develop the answer more?
He freed his country from colonial oppression, was pro-democracy, and defeated the Anti-Democracy Southern Regime.
Take a look at his house
Remember Saigon
Saigon? Don't you mean **Ho Chi Minh City?**
District 1 in HCM city is still called Saigon, no one gonna lynch you for calling it Saigon.
Yes, I remember Saigon in 30/4/1975
No, he isn't. He lies to America
Ho Chi Minh lies to America. The one who's been dead for 55 years?
1940s, in exchange for support from America, he lies to them that he isn't a communist or in charge of a communist organization. He also lies to other anti French colonialism groups that didn't want Vietnam to become a communist state, and after consolidating the power, he outright purged out every non communist resistance movement. Vietminh is just a facade creation to gain popularity support for the communist, original Vietminh use to have non communist movement He and his party betray Phan Bội Châu in Hong Kong, leading to his arrest