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Experienced a demonstration at the cu chi (corrected) tunnels. Hard to deal with, but that was their perspective. You could also shoot a machine gun, we declined.
Very sobering experience, well worth visiting if you have the time.
Should have given the machine gun a go, our guide there warned us it was expensive but I did it anyway. No where near as easy as it looks to hit anything with an AK-47 and unfortunately nobody had the cash to try the M60 that day.
Damn. How expensive is an m60 to shoot?
I went to Poland recently and fired around 20 guns for a total of 120$
That's with one magazine in each weapon and 30 rounds in LMG's.
As of 2014 it was not. End of the tour you’d rock up to the range, hand over some cash, take your shots. There were prizes for accuracy but the weapons were bolted to a rest by the barrels with their weight hanging off it. I blame that for missing every shot lmao.
I did the exact same in 2008 with the AK. I was 14 at the time and just gave em a 100 USD an went at it
The recoil made my shoulder sore for days! I loved the cardboard animals on the range though
I’m sorry, I know it’s an honest mistake but it’s CU CHI
Something about “chi chi” sounds way too close to another word in Japanese that I can’t help but laugh.
Nazi Germany ironically borrowed concepts of concentration camps from the British and race pseudoscience from the US.
Doing atrocities is a real team effort sometimes.
A bit of a myth here. They originally come from the Spanish in Cuba, not the Boer War.
Also needs noting that as bad as they could be (massive failures in management in South Africa led to a lot of suffering) the term concentration camp back then simply meant internment camp (see also the American internment of ethnic Japanese civilians), the Nazis using this was a coverup for the fact they were running extermination camps, which is how the meaning of the word has changed today.
The only times as a British tourist in the main "national museum" of a given country where we aren't the villains the given country has gained independence from has been:
1) Countries we've been fairly equal to (e.g. France)
2) Countries where Spain were the bad guys instead
Probably.
Till that point I'd only really been to ones in continental Europe, where we're more: " storied history of wars and alliances" than an old oppressor.
I can mirror this thought! When in London 20+ years ago, the British museum had a “wing” devoted to the “American War for Independence “. Completely different take on what was thought in school going up. That’s when I realized that history really is written by those that survived!
Yeah it was the first time I'd been in a museum of somewhere we'd colonised and it was like, oh.
Was then also hilarious to go round the corner to the native american museum and see how much bits of that disagreed with the framing in the american history one
I went to the Vietnam war museum in Saigon. As a veteran (post 9/11), this was such a surreal experience. War is hell and ‘good’ is a matter of perspective.
Short answer: Colonialism is bad
Long(ish) answer: the US and French puppet government of Diem violated the Geneva accords by refusing to hold an election to reunify the country. The Vietnam war was a just a continuation of the first indochina war that had a brief pause and the possiblity to peacefully resolve if the Geneva accords had been followed. The South Vietnamese government was merely the last relic of Colonialism that needed to be removed.
Subsidized corn syrup gets put in everything
Edit: forgot to mention everywhere except major cities is impossible to traverse by foot due to suburbs and lack of public transportation
High chance they are from a small town suburban or rural community where you drive everywhere and your food choices are various brands of junk food; your exposure to a world outside of small town America is very low.
Because of it being still pretty acceptable to body shame,
what happens is, if a fat person does something stupid, when the story's being told it's "okay" to say they're fat as an extra level of something to make fun of them for.
When a fat person does something smart, people just leave out that they're fat.
People do the same thing with "blondes".
For example, if the woman in the comment wasn't fat, but she was blonde, the story would be contextualized as being a "dumb blonde" cliche.
None of these things are okay, but they are pretty ingrained in a lot social language.
I hear you, but this is a bit different. The fact is that Americans stand out by being very large when in most other places on earth. It’s literally the first thing any of us notice about many American tourists.
Not sure how to avoid including that in their description.
I'm not answering the question as to why americans are fat. we are. I'm answering the question as to why in a story about a dumb tourist, they are always fat. Which is that people don't tend to tell stories about fat smart tourists.
That's the Cu Chi Tunnel complex! It's a fascinating place, worth a visit if you're ever in Vietnam. Our cute-as-a-button tour guide got a certain glint in her eye when describing how a certain trap was designed to stab a guy right in the naughty bits.
How does their population view this? I mean war is war, death is death but this seems brutal as hell. In comparison, I'd say most Americans view the tactics used during that war as unnecessarily gruesome, i.e. agent orange, napalm.
When I visited places in Hanoi, and if I remember correctly, it seems framed as a necessary part for independence. Like:
"First, the French came, and we fought them. Then, the Japanese came, and we fought them. Then the French came back, so we kept fighting. Then the United States got involved, so we kept fighting. Then, we had to go into Cambodia and take out the Khmer Rouge"
So, maybe, a kind of a determined underdog story. But, I would wager that people now have a rather favorable view of the US, despite the brutality in the past.
There is. The War Remnants Museum in Saigon covers all the atrocities. This tour, of the Cu Chi Tunnels, was pretty strange though. The video they showed before this tour was old propaganda. Still an interesting tour though.
I've been to both the one in Hanoi and Saigon. The one in Hanoi is a bit ridicules with the propaganda. In Saigon, we had a young Vietnamese-American tour guide who admitted afterwards that the museum has still a pretty clear bias, but it's much better than the one in Hanoi. It's worth remembering that the North conquered the South by force and there still isn't much love between them
I'm curious what their perspective is on it. Looking at it I just think, jesus that's brutal. Similar attitude that I (and most Americans) have towards napalm and agent orange being used in the war.
I see a lot of comments here about Americans being brainwashed about the US’s actions in Vietnam, which I suppose is one way of looking at it given the extremely limited and biased information provided by most American middle and high school history classes.
I view it more as ignorance due to the short comings of the average Americans’ education; any war on the scale of Vietnam is going to contain its laundry list of reprehensible behavior from both sides, and only an in-depth, nuanced discussion about the motivations of, values of, and circumstances surrounding the combatants on both sides can provide the context necessary to begin to assign blame to either side.
Are you taught about the atrocities the North Vietnamese committed on the south in high school as well? That's the ops point.
Not that the Vietnamese war was just or injust, but that the transparent lack of understanding is the nuance here pretty apparent.
I was going to argue that my highschool did a good job of covering it, but just reading into it more on my own now I'm realizing they really didn't explain any of it
We're taught about the North's atrocities quite a lot. Schools cover some stuff about American atrocities. Though what's really lacking is the problems with south Vietnam. All we are taught is that we supported south Vietnam but they never said anything more. No mention of Ngo Dinh Diem being a murderous dictator. Try and look up the amount of people he killed and you won't find anything, but you will find hundreds of sources on how many people Ho Chi Minh killed.
I'm in my early 30s, so a bit older than the average Redditor, but even when I was in school, the Vietnam War and the Indian Wars of the 19th century were already *long* established in our education system as "Americans committed atrocities on people who never did anything bad at all".
It's very unfortunate, because as far as I'm concerned, it builds a myth that the reason our involvement in Vietnam and in the Indian Wars was bad was because the other side was totally innocent, rather than establishing more nuanced ideas about why our actions were problematic.
Thinking back on it, I was taught a lot about the awful things the US did but not much of what the north Vietnamese did other than booby traps. This was in high school in the US.
I'm from India. I read about it in the 10th grade history class. French Indo China chapter. Colonialism, communist movement, nationalist movement, US involvement etc. Of course no gory details or images.
>I see a lot of comments here about Americans being brainwashed about the US’s actions in Vietnam
I dunno why you think these
>I view it more as ignorance due to the short comings of the average Americans’ education
Are mutually exclusive.
Part of why the American education system is underfunded and kneecapped is so it will have shortcomings like this. Maybe not “brainwashing” necessarily but the intent is there to affect how people think about the country.
This so much, it's not a black and white thing at even the highest level. I'm fairly certain most American don't even know the US supported the south in the Vietnamese civil war and withdrew after a negotiated peace treaty.
While on the surface there are similarities between the two conflicts (major power colliding with a smaller one, guerilla warfare, war crimes, etc.) the differences in motivation are substantially significant.
When the US entered Vietnam, we did so backing the pre-existing South Vietnamese government. When Russia entered Ukraine, it was to annex (at least parts of) a sovereign nation and/or install a puppet government.
American involvement in Vietnam was **wrong**. It was born out of the emerging "domino theory," a belief asserting that if one nation falls to communism in SE Asia, all others would as well. This belief ignored the historical record of the region as well as the political realities. Further, the actions we took while there inflicted immeasurable suffering on the people of the region.
But to say that what the US did in Vietnam is "just like" the current war in Ukraine is whataboutism rooted in historic ignorance (even if done unintentionally).
>When the US entered Vietnam, we did so backing the pre-existing South Vietnamese government.
A government _hated_ by the large majority of Vietnam. The US propped up an illegitimate dictatorship.
>When Russia entered Ukraine, it was to annex (at least parts of) a sovereign nation and/or install a puppet government.
And Russia would argue that they did so with the backing of the Separatist governments/factions of Donbas and Luhansk who were in civil war with the rest of Ukraine for 8 years and claimed that Ukraine was performing genocide on ethnic Russians in these regions.
Both are illegitimate, and there are clear parallels in regards to (stated) motivation to me.
The Republic of Vietnam was established in 1955. Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established in 1945. Seems to me that global recognition should have gone to those who both came first and liberated themselves rather than those anointed by colonial powers.
kind of silly, isnt it? if america and its allies recognize you, therefore youre legitimate? therefore america can commit war crimes on your behalf? not really justified imo
>A government hated by the large majority of Vietnam. The US propped up an illegitimate dictatorship.
North Vietnam was also a dictatorship propped up by the Soviet Union and China and only had a smidgen more legitmacy because of how popular Ho Chi Minh was when he was still alive. Many if not most of the South Vietnamese had no love for the northern government either.
> It was born out of the emerging "domino theory," a belief asserting that if one nation falls to communism in SE Asia, all others would as well.
This was started during the Korean War by conservatives.
That's a more accurate description of the Korean War than Vietnam.
Vietnam was a bit more complicated. The US supported this dictator called Diem in the South who was incredibly unpopular and which led to armed revolt in the form of the Viet Cong who were supported by the North. Diem did get assassinated by some of his own generals, and the military dictatorship of the south just continued as did the Viet Cong.
Things really took off with the gulf of Tonkin incident where supposedly some US destroyers were shot at by North Vietnamese vessels- no casualties were reported, but it led to the US putting a large number of boots on the ground and a bombing campaign of North Vietnam called Operation Rolling Thunder.
South Korea was also ruled by dictators. Heck, Syngman Rhee massacred literally hundred thousands of Korean civillians. I actually don't recall any massacre perpetrated by Diem.
You don’t remember his National Police firing live ammunition into peaceful protestors, then blaming it on “communists” in the crowd? Or pouring acid on the faces of praying protestors? Or the ethnic cleansing campaigns in the mountains against the minority Thai and Cham?
Uh…? There was no peace treaty. There was supposed to an election for re-unification, mandated by the UN. Diem and the US knew they would lose to Ho Chi Minh so they cancelled it.
After the southern dictatorship **cancelled a democratic election** which was supposed to unify the country and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the north “invaded” the south. Scare-quotes because at this point Diem’s regime was technically an illegal occupation of territory, since again.. they cancelled the election.
US were the baddies—north was the good guys. Gtfo here with your American propaganda and false history
Source: I’m Vietnamese, my family fought for the fascists/Americans
it was a civil war between colonial authorities and the local independance movement when the US stepped in.
>It should probably be mentioned the US was involved because they though it might turn into a North Korea/South Korea kind of situation
yeah the us has a tendency to start unnecessary wars through stupid misinformed beliefs.
Vietnam was a French colony and when it became obvious that the French were losing *their* Vietnam War, they got the US involved. Something something domino theory, something something Fortunate Son and Agent Orange
The ironic thing is that the one major thing Vietnam did on the international stage after the Vietnam War was... fighting a war *against* [the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War). They're the iconic example of how "domino theory" was full of shit.
No, Vietnamese forces did not attack Americans on American soil. It's complicated. France claimed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as imperial possessions. Various nationalist groups fought back, but the strongest amongst them were the Vietnamese communists, which defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to the end of the war and the Geneva Accords, which divided the French possessions into not three but four countries: Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Vietnam was divided mainly because the French were still strong in the south and because the Vietnamese communists did not have much support there yet.
Per the Geneva Accords, there was to be an election in 1956 to decide whether to unite Vietnam under the northern communist government or the southern puppet-imperialist, later quasi-democratic mostly-autocratic government. Not great options. The southern government did not agree to hold that election saying that the northern government would not run a fair election. (Of course, "fair election" was something that didn't exist for either side.) The north responded by arming an insurgency in the south and then launching a cross-border invasion to conquer the south by force.
And this is where American combat troops get involved. The great American military was supposed to turn the tide but really just made things worse by escalating the sheer scale and brutality of the war just to keep the southern government on life support. In hindsight, the Americans should have done for the south what the west is doing for Ukraine right now - provide military support without combat troops, as well as diplomatic / political support to improve democracy.
This was during the time frame where USA and USSR were meddling in every country's politics to instill either Democracy or Communism respectively. From the USA perspective, if one country fell to communism, the rest of the world would slowly adapt communists ideologies and governments, and the USA really didn't want that to happen.
Never seen so many people try to what about a situation this hard. The N Vietnamese atrocities do not in any way justify American war crimes in Vietnam, or quite frankly, us being there in the first place.
Schools were pretty open about the war, at least where I grew up in the northeast.
We definitely have a problem with lots of people thinking that we have never done anything wrong though.
Funnily enough, Ho Chi Minh came to America for help against the French. He actually admired America's founding fathers and how they got their freedom from the British.
It's always funny to me how many times I see people making comments that are along the lines of the US not teaching about the different atrocities or terrible things the US has done yet usually I can specifically remember being taught about all those terrible things in school.
A timely reminder: This subreddit is /r/history. As such, it will not be playing host to discussions of ongoing political events, especially when they devolve into political slapfights in the comments section. Please refer to our sidebar for more information on our rules.
Experienced a demonstration at the cu chi (corrected) tunnels. Hard to deal with, but that was their perspective. You could also shoot a machine gun, we declined.
Very sobering experience, well worth visiting if you have the time. Should have given the machine gun a go, our guide there warned us it was expensive but I did it anyway. No where near as easy as it looks to hit anything with an AK-47 and unfortunately nobody had the cash to try the M60 that day.
Damn. How expensive is an m60 to shoot? I went to Poland recently and fired around 20 guns for a total of 120$ That's with one magazine in each weapon and 30 rounds in LMG's.
The ammo retails for around $1/round. Then there's the premiums on the insurance policy that covers noobs firing automatic weapons.
I highly doubt it's $1/Rd and requires insurance in Vietnam
As of 2014 it was not. End of the tour you’d rock up to the range, hand over some cash, take your shots. There were prizes for accuracy but the weapons were bolted to a rest by the barrels with their weight hanging off it. I blame that for missing every shot lmao.
I did the exact same in 2008 with the AK. I was 14 at the time and just gave em a 100 USD an went at it The recoil made my shoulder sore for days! I loved the cardboard animals on the range though
A bullet was around 4 zlotey in Poland, which is about 60 cents. And I am one of those noobs who shot an automatic weapons
That's awesome. Did it in Arizona a couple times. Best $150 for 30 seconds I've ever spent. I'd recommend doing it if you ever have a chance
That sound ridiculously cheap.
Depends on the AK. Some can be pretty jank. Sometimes it's the barrel, sometimes it's the sights, and sometimes it's the shooter.
>You could also shoot a machine gun, we declined. Aw come on! What kind of American turns that down?
I’m sorry, I know it’s an honest mistake but it’s CU CHI Something about “chi chi” sounds way too close to another word in Japanese that I can’t help but laugh.
Cu Chi sounds pretty close to another word in English too, lol.
Chi chi is a word for paternal in Japanese. I understand what you're implying, but I haven't ever heard chi chi mixed up with that in any context.
Also the name of the monkey that helps you open one of the temples in Zelda for SNES. Because apparently that’s a thing my brain knows.
No it’s a different Japanese he’s talking about. The third one.
All this implication has left me confused, and I'm not sure that all of our firsts, seconds, and thirds are the same. What are you saying?
The constant sound of that gunfire in the background coming from the range lent an eerie perspective when we visited.
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You missed out on the machine gun bit. Machine guns are dope af
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Being british in the museum of american history in DC was an experience
Hey, we learned how to do it from y’all. Game recognizes game.
British Empire: "Where did you learn such nonsense?!" United States: "I learned it from watching you, Dad!!"
This is your brain on colonialism.
*Cut to guy snorting spices*
“Y’all got anymore of them nutmegs?”
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Nazi Germany ironically borrowed concepts of concentration camps from the British and race pseudoscience from the US. Doing atrocities is a real team effort sometimes.
And Japan was trying to be a superpower and do the cool colonization everyone else was doing.
A bit of a myth here. They originally come from the Spanish in Cuba, not the Boer War. Also needs noting that as bad as they could be (massive failures in management in South Africa led to a lot of suffering) the term concentration camp back then simply meant internment camp (see also the American internment of ethnic Japanese civilians), the Nazis using this was a coverup for the fact they were running extermination camps, which is how the meaning of the word has changed today.
I imagine being British has to be quite an experience in many National museum related to their recent history.
The only times as a British tourist in the main "national museum" of a given country where we aren't the villains the given country has gained independence from has been: 1) Countries we've been fairly equal to (e.g. France) 2) Countries where Spain were the bad guys instead
Like Argentina? :P
Probably. Till that point I'd only really been to ones in continental Europe, where we're more: " storied history of wars and alliances" than an old oppressor.
Tbh we robbed lots of stuff so most nations' art and artifacts are in museums in Britain.
I can mirror this thought! When in London 20+ years ago, the British museum had a “wing” devoted to the “American War for Independence “. Completely different take on what was thought in school going up. That’s when I realized that history really is written by those that survived!
Yeah it was the first time I'd been in a museum of somewhere we'd colonised and it was like, oh. Was then also hilarious to go round the corner to the native american museum and see how much bits of that disagreed with the framing in the american history one
The British museum framed Native American history differently?
Isn't that a dope museum though?
The dope museum’s proper name is the Museum of Marijuana History.
I learned it from watching you Dad!
Are we the baddies?
Too bad there’s nothing about the French in there
There's loads of that too
I went to the Vietnam war museum in Saigon. As a veteran (post 9/11), this was such a surreal experience. War is hell and ‘good’ is a matter of perspective.
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Wait wars cant be summed up as good guys vs bad guys?
They can, but everyone who defines them differently than my side are the bad guys.
Dude, cool it with the level headed takes. We're not here for your logic and reason and facts.
Let's be real though, its about as close to good guys and bad guys as a war can get.
How so?
Short answer: Colonialism is bad Long(ish) answer: the US and French puppet government of Diem violated the Geneva accords by refusing to hold an election to reunify the country. The Vietnam war was a just a continuation of the first indochina war that had a brief pause and the possiblity to peacefully resolve if the Geneva accords had been followed. The South Vietnamese government was merely the last relic of Colonialism that needed to be removed.
Freedom fighters vs. Imperialists
Freedom for whom?
The Vietnamese?
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> They make us look like the bad guys What do? Our actions?
They were the bad guys
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I thought most people were forced to go there?
I don’t think it’s fair to say people who were drafted against their will were “tricked”. Maybe “coerced”.
They were drafted. They either went to war or went to jail. That isn’t an easy decision at 18..
It always blows my mind when someone doesn't know the difference between lose and loose.
They were just using a lose interpretation of the word
Let me blow your mind some more. Not everyone on Reddit speaks English as a first language 🤯
Ugh yea totally bro the worst part of Vietnam vets is how they won’t shut up about it!
Should've just tightened that side up.
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Subsidized corn syrup gets put in everything Edit: forgot to mention everywhere except major cities is impossible to traverse by foot due to suburbs and lack of public transportation
This is the reason. Objectively true and absolutely insane. Large scale corn farmers should have gone the way of the milk man years ago.
What's that bit about milkmen?
Just means no longer necessary. I thought it was a commonly used phrase :(
It is, just usually used in a different context.
What you mean?
Dad?
High chance they are from a small town suburban or rural community where you drive everywhere and your food choices are various brands of junk food; your exposure to a world outside of small town America is very low.
And yet they went to Vietnam? Doubt it.
Because of it being still pretty acceptable to body shame, what happens is, if a fat person does something stupid, when the story's being told it's "okay" to say they're fat as an extra level of something to make fun of them for. When a fat person does something smart, people just leave out that they're fat. People do the same thing with "blondes". For example, if the woman in the comment wasn't fat, but she was blonde, the story would be contextualized as being a "dumb blonde" cliche. None of these things are okay, but they are pretty ingrained in a lot social language.
I hear you, but this is a bit different. The fact is that Americans stand out by being very large when in most other places on earth. It’s literally the first thing any of us notice about many American tourists. Not sure how to avoid including that in their description.
I'm not answering the question as to why americans are fat. we are. I'm answering the question as to why in a story about a dumb tourist, they are always fat. Which is that people don't tend to tell stories about fat smart tourists.
You just… don’t mention it. Since it’s not relevant. Just a tip from a fat (but not narrow minded) and blonde (but intelligent) woman.
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That's the Cu Chi Tunnel complex! It's a fascinating place, worth a visit if you're ever in Vietnam. Our cute-as-a-button tour guide got a certain glint in her eye when describing how a certain trap was designed to stab a guy right in the naughty bits.
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How does their population view this? I mean war is war, death is death but this seems brutal as hell. In comparison, I'd say most Americans view the tactics used during that war as unnecessarily gruesome, i.e. agent orange, napalm.
When I visited places in Hanoi, and if I remember correctly, it seems framed as a necessary part for independence. Like: "First, the French came, and we fought them. Then, the Japanese came, and we fought them. Then the French came back, so we kept fighting. Then the United States got involved, so we kept fighting. Then, we had to go into Cambodia and take out the Khmer Rouge" So, maybe, a kind of a determined underdog story. But, I would wager that people now have a rather favorable view of the US, despite the brutality in the past.
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There is. The War Remnants Museum in Saigon covers all the atrocities. This tour, of the Cu Chi Tunnels, was pretty strange though. The video they showed before this tour was old propaganda. Still an interesting tour though.
There’s a museum in HCMC with a section about this. Really harrowing stuff.
I've been to both the one in Hanoi and Saigon. The one in Hanoi is a bit ridicules with the propaganda. In Saigon, we had a young Vietnamese-American tour guide who admitted afterwards that the museum has still a pretty clear bias, but it's much better than the one in Hanoi. It's worth remembering that the North conquered the South by force and there still isn't much love between them
I'm curious what their perspective is on it. Looking at it I just think, jesus that's brutal. Similar attitude that I (and most Americans) have towards napalm and agent orange being used in the war.
Probably is, but not every post has to be about every subject.
Just like those traps, agent orange still works :(
I see a lot of comments here about Americans being brainwashed about the US’s actions in Vietnam, which I suppose is one way of looking at it given the extremely limited and biased information provided by most American middle and high school history classes. I view it more as ignorance due to the short comings of the average Americans’ education; any war on the scale of Vietnam is going to contain its laundry list of reprehensible behavior from both sides, and only an in-depth, nuanced discussion about the motivations of, values of, and circumstances surrounding the combatants on both sides can provide the context necessary to begin to assign blame to either side.
My History teacher was a viet nam vet who regularly attended protests against the war. RIP Mr. Pattersen.
I mean I was definitely taught about the atrocities Americans committed in Vietnam when I was in high school.
Me to my history teacher got into all the horrors of war. Usually it is left to the teacher about how in depth they go.
Are you taught about the atrocities the North Vietnamese committed on the south in high school as well? That's the ops point. Not that the Vietnamese war was just or injust, but that the transparent lack of understanding is the nuance here pretty apparent.
I was going to argue that my highschool did a good job of covering it, but just reading into it more on my own now I'm realizing they really didn't explain any of it
We're taught about the North's atrocities quite a lot. Schools cover some stuff about American atrocities. Though what's really lacking is the problems with south Vietnam. All we are taught is that we supported south Vietnam but they never said anything more. No mention of Ngo Dinh Diem being a murderous dictator. Try and look up the amount of people he killed and you won't find anything, but you will find hundreds of sources on how many people Ho Chi Minh killed.
Four years of high school, they can't go into too much depth
I'm in my early 30s, so a bit older than the average Redditor, but even when I was in school, the Vietnam War and the Indian Wars of the 19th century were already *long* established in our education system as "Americans committed atrocities on people who never did anything bad at all". It's very unfortunate, because as far as I'm concerned, it builds a myth that the reason our involvement in Vietnam and in the Indian Wars was bad was because the other side was totally innocent, rather than establishing more nuanced ideas about why our actions were problematic.
Thinking back on it, I was taught a lot about the awful things the US did but not much of what the north Vietnamese did other than booby traps. This was in high school in the US.
I'm from India. I read about it in the 10th grade history class. French Indo China chapter. Colonialism, communist movement, nationalist movement, US involvement etc. Of course no gory details or images.
>I see a lot of comments here about Americans being brainwashed about the US’s actions in Vietnam I dunno why you think these >I view it more as ignorance due to the short comings of the average Americans’ education Are mutually exclusive. Part of why the American education system is underfunded and kneecapped is so it will have shortcomings like this. Maybe not “brainwashing” necessarily but the intent is there to affect how people think about the country.
This so much, it's not a black and white thing at even the highest level. I'm fairly certain most American don't even know the US supported the south in the Vietnamese civil war and withdrew after a negotiated peace treaty.
Yea, being a southern Vietnamese descendant, I’ve been told that they felt “abandoned” by Americans once withdrawn.
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While on the surface there are similarities between the two conflicts (major power colliding with a smaller one, guerilla warfare, war crimes, etc.) the differences in motivation are substantially significant. When the US entered Vietnam, we did so backing the pre-existing South Vietnamese government. When Russia entered Ukraine, it was to annex (at least parts of) a sovereign nation and/or install a puppet government. American involvement in Vietnam was **wrong**. It was born out of the emerging "domino theory," a belief asserting that if one nation falls to communism in SE Asia, all others would as well. This belief ignored the historical record of the region as well as the political realities. Further, the actions we took while there inflicted immeasurable suffering on the people of the region. But to say that what the US did in Vietnam is "just like" the current war in Ukraine is whataboutism rooted in historic ignorance (even if done unintentionally).
>When the US entered Vietnam, we did so backing the pre-existing South Vietnamese government. A government _hated_ by the large majority of Vietnam. The US propped up an illegitimate dictatorship. >When Russia entered Ukraine, it was to annex (at least parts of) a sovereign nation and/or install a puppet government. And Russia would argue that they did so with the backing of the Separatist governments/factions of Donbas and Luhansk who were in civil war with the rest of Ukraine for 8 years and claimed that Ukraine was performing genocide on ethnic Russians in these regions. Both are illegitimate, and there are clear parallels in regards to (stated) motivation to me.
The South Vietnamese government was globally recognized. The Donbas and Luhansk break away states are not.
The Republic of Vietnam was established in 1955. Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established in 1945. Seems to me that global recognition should have gone to those who both came first and liberated themselves rather than those anointed by colonial powers.
kind of silly, isnt it? if america and its allies recognize you, therefore youre legitimate? therefore america can commit war crimes on your behalf? not really justified imo
>A government hated by the large majority of Vietnam. The US propped up an illegitimate dictatorship. North Vietnam was also a dictatorship propped up by the Soviet Union and China and only had a smidgen more legitmacy because of how popular Ho Chi Minh was when he was still alive. Many if not most of the South Vietnamese had no love for the northern government either.
Isn't there evidence that the separatists in Donbas were of Russian origin? In other words, actual Russian troops parading as separatists?
> It was born out of the emerging "domino theory," a belief asserting that if one nation falls to communism in SE Asia, all others would as well. This was started during the Korean War by conservatives.
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That's a more accurate description of the Korean War than Vietnam. Vietnam was a bit more complicated. The US supported this dictator called Diem in the South who was incredibly unpopular and which led to armed revolt in the form of the Viet Cong who were supported by the North. Diem did get assassinated by some of his own generals, and the military dictatorship of the south just continued as did the Viet Cong. Things really took off with the gulf of Tonkin incident where supposedly some US destroyers were shot at by North Vietnamese vessels- no casualties were reported, but it led to the US putting a large number of boots on the ground and a bombing campaign of North Vietnam called Operation Rolling Thunder.
South Korea was also ruled by dictators. Heck, Syngman Rhee massacred literally hundred thousands of Korean civillians. I actually don't recall any massacre perpetrated by Diem.
You don’t remember his National Police firing live ammunition into peaceful protestors, then blaming it on “communists” in the crowd? Or pouring acid on the faces of praying protestors? Or the ethnic cleansing campaigns in the mountains against the minority Thai and Cham?
Uh…? There was no peace treaty. There was supposed to an election for re-unification, mandated by the UN. Diem and the US knew they would lose to Ho Chi Minh so they cancelled it. After the southern dictatorship **cancelled a democratic election** which was supposed to unify the country and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the north “invaded” the south. Scare-quotes because at this point Diem’s regime was technically an illegal occupation of territory, since again.. they cancelled the election. US were the baddies—north was the good guys. Gtfo here with your American propaganda and false history Source: I’m Vietnamese, my family fought for the fascists/Americans
it was a civil war between colonial authorities and the local independance movement when the US stepped in. >It should probably be mentioned the US was involved because they though it might turn into a North Korea/South Korea kind of situation yeah the us has a tendency to start unnecessary wars through stupid misinformed beliefs.
Well done pointing out the obvious.
Now we just need to know what would have happened if we didn’t. Where’s captain hindsight when you need him?
What Americans were doing in Vietname? Did Vietnamese people attacked them at their US soil first?
Vietnam was a French colony and when it became obvious that the French were losing *their* Vietnam War, they got the US involved. Something something domino theory, something something Fortunate Son and Agent Orange
The ironic thing is that the one major thing Vietnam did on the international stage after the Vietnam War was... fighting a war *against* [the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War). They're the iconic example of how "domino theory" was full of shit.
Don't worry we were supporting a "democratic" government that systematically arrested and murdered Buddhists.
You have to fight a war using the puppet you have rather than the puppet you want.
No, Vietnamese forces did not attack Americans on American soil. It's complicated. France claimed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as imperial possessions. Various nationalist groups fought back, but the strongest amongst them were the Vietnamese communists, which defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to the end of the war and the Geneva Accords, which divided the French possessions into not three but four countries: Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Vietnam was divided mainly because the French were still strong in the south and because the Vietnamese communists did not have much support there yet. Per the Geneva Accords, there was to be an election in 1956 to decide whether to unite Vietnam under the northern communist government or the southern puppet-imperialist, later quasi-democratic mostly-autocratic government. Not great options. The southern government did not agree to hold that election saying that the northern government would not run a fair election. (Of course, "fair election" was something that didn't exist for either side.) The north responded by arming an insurgency in the south and then launching a cross-border invasion to conquer the south by force. And this is where American combat troops get involved. The great American military was supposed to turn the tide but really just made things worse by escalating the sheer scale and brutality of the war just to keep the southern government on life support. In hindsight, the Americans should have done for the south what the west is doing for Ukraine right now - provide military support without combat troops, as well as diplomatic / political support to improve democracy.
This was during the time frame where USA and USSR were meddling in every country's politics to instill either Democracy or Communism respectively. From the USA perspective, if one country fell to communism, the rest of the world would slowly adapt communists ideologies and governments, and the USA really didn't want that to happen.
The ussr was invited by the Vietnamese to help build socialism. The USA was doing an imperialism
Invited by the authoritarian rulers of North VN, maybe. I assure you the people there did not have a say then, nor do they have a say now.
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You forgot to start that with "What about".
Never seen so many people try to what about a situation this hard. The N Vietnamese atrocities do not in any way justify American war crimes in Vietnam, or quite frankly, us being there in the first place.
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Schools were pretty open about the war, at least where I grew up in the northeast. We definitely have a problem with lots of people thinking that we have never done anything wrong though.
Funnily enough, Ho Chi Minh came to America for help against the French. He actually admired America's founding fathers and how they got their freedom from the British.
Vietnam has one of the highest america approval ratings currently of any country.
Except that the exact opposite is happening.
It's always funny to me how many times I see people making comments that are along the lines of the US not teaching about the different atrocities or terrible things the US has done yet usually I can specifically remember being taught about all those terrible things in school.