Al Jazeera has an excellent three part documentary about French colonization that touches on Vietnam and other French colonised countries.
You are quoting and bolding a different study. The table the OP is referencing is a 1978 study by Guenter Lewy Deaths in Vietnam War (1965–1974). You left off the first sentence in the paragraph you are quoting:
A 1995 demographic study in Population and Development Review calculated 791,000–1,141,000 war-related Vietnamese deaths, both soldiers and civilians, for all of Vietnam from 1965–75.
So, it’s a different study, a demographic study, you left off the upper and lower range estimates it made and it also covers different years, and finally you left off the concluding sentence in the paragraph:
The study’s authors stated that methodological limitations of the study include imbalance between rural and urban areas and the potential exclusion of high mortality areas.[4] Another potential limitation is the relatively small sample size of the study.
American and Free World Allies casualties are generally relatively precise, subject to the vagaries of what is being considered a casualty of the war for any particular figure (are deaths in car or airplane accidents considered combat casualties? Deaths from disease? Is died of wounds being counted as KIA or WIA? etc.) while figures for Vietnamese losses are not very precise due to the war going on in the country leading to range estimates of casualties, made even less precise due to the definition when and where the war was going on producing different estimates from different sources. For example, the paragraph following the one you partially quoted:
In 1995, the Vietnamese government released its estimate of war deaths for the more lengthy period of 1955–75. PAVN and VC losses were reported as 1.1 million dead and civilian deaths of Vietnamese on both sides totaled 2.0 million. These estimates probably include deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and Cambodia, but do not include deaths of South Vietnamese and allied soldiers which would add nearly 300,000 for a grand total of 3.4 million military and civilian dead.
Note that it covers the years 1955-75, ‘probably’ includes PAVN and VC casualties in Laos and Cambodia, they’re estimates, and don’t count ARVN casualties as Vietnamese casualties, though oddly civilians both North and South are considered Vietnamese.
Note also the figure used in the 1978 study by Guenter Lewy only covers 1965-74, so the 416 Americans Killed in Action prior to 1965 wouldn’t be counted in it, nor would all of the ARVN casualties from both 1955-64 and in the final year of the war for them of 1975.
How does this figure into the number of Americans killed, which was not 280K as quoted in the OP and what I was responding to?
It’s an error that has already been pointed out to him, corrected and has been explained to him how he came to that error three times so far in a thread with 23 posts, and the quote you posted includes an estimate of Vietnamese deaths which also conflicts with the figure the OP gives on estimated Vietnamese deaths.
,wifh no
Is there a thread limit to responses that you’re in charge of? I was responding to the American deaths claim.
Re: the number of dead, let’s not get derailed by the specific number, 47K US soldiers dead from combat as per the main Vietnam page on Wikipedia is still a lot of people
Re: “died in vain”, I mean comparing to something like WWII, which seemed like a more existential threat. That is, if I had a friend or relative who died in WWII, I wouldn’t consider his death to have been in vain. If I had a friend or relative who died in Vietnam, I would consider his death to have been in vain and a crying shame.
If you lose a war, all your side’s deaths were in vain. That’s the whole point.
Were American deaths in WWI in vain? The US wasn’t facing an existential threat, and a bit over 20 years later Europe was at it again. How much of a victory was it for the US in the end?
Were American deaths in the Philippine-American War in vain? We won that one pretty well and granted the Philippines their independence 50 years later, surely an altruistic move. Then again, that was a pretty brutal war. The term ‘gook’ comes from that war, not Vietnam.
Were the deaths of all of the victors in WWI in vain? All the European nations faced existential threats in the war, and they won the war, only to face a resurgent Germany unleashing an even more vicious war than ‘The War to End All Wars,’ which WWI clearly didn’t accomplish. So were all the British, French, Russian, Italian, Serbian, etc. deaths in vain? How about the nations of the Commonwealth? Australia wasn’t facing an existential threat. All the colonial troops from Africa and India the French and British - and related to the question in the OP the colonial troops from what was then French Indochina who died in the war?
Were all the American and UN deaths in the Korean War in vain? That one turned into a draw, not a loss, so where do they fit on the spectrum? Partly in vain? What about the South Koreans? They were facing an existential threat and survived the war. Were their deaths in vain? Partly in vain?
If deaths in any war were ‘in vain’ is a subjective question, one could easily say all deaths in all wars were in vain. There isn’t an objective answer, and there is never going to be consensus or ‘currently accepted view’ on the matter.
Just a sample of many definitions of imperialism:
Imperialism is when one country exercises power over another through various methods of control. It describes an economic, political, and social system in which one country subjugates others, and brings them under its control. Motives for imperialism include economic, cultural, political, moral, and exploratory control.
No, the US was not attempting to establish a colony. But they were taking over from colonialists, and clearly seeking to extend US influence and counter China’s.
So, maybe not strictly imperialism, but darned close IMO. In direct response to the OP, yeah, they died in support of a mistaken and unsuccessful purpose. IMO, that supports that they were in vain. Same as any who died in Iraq since 9/11, or nearly all in Afghanistan during that period. (Perhaps one could somewhat justify the initial invasion - I wouldn’t. But any after were just pulp for the mill.)
Perhaps. Someone (I won’t say who) once (allegedly) described the occupants of an American WWI cemetery in France as “suckers and losers.” Although I don’t care much for that particular characterization, I do think there is a kernel of something in the idea that WWI simply was not worth fighting for anyone, and least of all for Americans, and that the only benefactors (such as there were any) were those wealthy individuals (patriarchs and capitalists, if you will) who personally profited from the war, while sending the poorest, most vulnerable, most easily exploited of their countrymen off to fight it.
So, yeah. I kind of do think American deaths in WWI were in vain, particularly as the end result did not significantly alter the systems of colonization, empire, and exploitation that led to it in the first place. It was not, in fact, the war to end all wars.
ETA: FWIW, I don’t buy into the idea that the Treaty of Versailles was necessarily too harsh (it’s at least debatable) or made WWII essentially inevitable. That lets too many people (mostly fascists, but also their enablers around the world) off the hook for their own willful actions and inactions in causing WWII.
The term “Coca-colonialism” was coined to describe the way US corporations, with the support of the US government and sometimes its military, moves into countries and exerts control over them. It’s different from other empires, but it may well fit into the definition above. Empire is not just about direct political control, but more importantly about access to markets, labour, and resources.
Way off-topic. Hidden by What Exit?
Getting away from the OP, but especially applies - IMO - to anyone who volunteered to serve after 9/11. They wanted to be involved in an inexcusable invasion, and having your life/health thrown away in not exactly an unforeseeable conclusion. No, I don’t honor THOSE vets. They were willing (or duped) pawns in an unjust cause.
Moderating:
Way off-topic. I will hide this for you. Please refrain from such again.
“All deaths. . .were in vain” is a pretty broad brush to paint with. Was the war stupid in retrospect? Yes, but a lot of things were. But since we were there, a lot of very brave people died saving others who may have also died. I would have to say that their deaths weren’t in vain. Now it can certainly be argued that if we had never been there, those folks wouldn’t have had to give their lives to save those others, but that becomes a circular argument.
I was there, on the ground. I didn’t want to be there, but I wasn’t brave enough to try to dodge the draft. I hated being there, hated wondering if the next stray rocket would have my name on it (nearly did), but I really hated the protesters burning flags back home. As years went by, I came to understand what a bullshit war effort it was and what the protests were about and what the government did to our national psyche by pursuing such a futile effort. But to say that all those deaths were meaningless would be to denigrate and trivialize those lives lost.
And included there is South VietNam also.
So, “only” about 55K American soldiers died there.
Why is that?
I disagree. I think it’s actually restorative, in a way, to consider that each individual life lost was in vain. Helps to emphasize the needless tragedy of it all. It’s why, for my blog’s icon, I adopted the white poppy in place of the red.
We do not truly honor those lives needlessly lost if we only allow ourselves the fantasy of believing that there was actually a point to their loss. Something worth dying over. There wasn’t.
We owe it to all the dead to stare into the abyss of a war like Vietnam and recognize it for what it was: an abyss. Whatever good came of it (the unification of Vietnam and the establishment of a stable nation-state) could have happened just as well (far better, actually) without the US committing millions of troops, of which tens of thousands died, and with hundreds of thousands or millions of Vietnamese perishing as well.
I wondered about that myself. All I can think of is that Vietnam shares its northern border with China, and that Hanoi and Haiphong are in its far north so it would feel the most menaced by China.
Why Vietnam would want to put itself into the position of being an antagonist of a country that has been an enemy of America for Vietnam’s entire existence is baffling, though. China was its leading helper and supplier during the war. Both were and are Communist. If any two countries in the world were natural geostrategic allies it would be those two.
The largest powers generally ally with small nations on the potential adversary’s periphery to keep the potential adversary bottled up. I can’t think of a good expert link for this now, but the idea is far from original.
One tell, of such a dynamic applying here, is that, four years after we were defeated by the communists, the Sino-Vietnamese War broke out.
Perhaps a more obvious way to say something similar – Vietnam is a traditional rival of China. That is more significant than that both nationals were, and still theoretically are, communist. And the U.S. is another rival of China.
I’m under the impression that Vietnam-China relations are OK right now, but that’s unusual. This is from 2020:
Why are you restating the point I was making to you? You were very clearly treating the problem with the figure by not actually looking at the table and realizing it was a table of deaths, not casualties:
Over the centuries Vietnam and China have traditionally had a rivalry, but the Sino-Vietnamese War was a bit of an oddity. The reason it broke out was because Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, which was oppressing, amongst a very long list of people in its autogenocide, Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge were a Chinese client, so China sent a ‘punitive expedition’ into Vietnam which bogged down very quickly. The US and China were actually on the same side of this issue, with the US government recognizing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia in the UN as late as 1993, and disputed allegations of covert US aid to the Khmer Rouge.
So, I agree with your point, but the example is an oddity, and I wouldn’t use the word ‘North’ in describing North Vietnam and the US as natural allies. The division of Vietnam into a North and a South was an unnatural and temporary affair. The US provided aid to Ho Chi Minh during WWII when the Viet Minh were fighting the Japanese, and he perhaps naively hoped to secure US backing against a return of French colonialism to Vietnam after the war.
Ho Chi Minh’s admiration for the US is most clearly seen in the language he wrote in Vietnam’s own declaration of independence, which he issued on Sept. 2, 1945, just as the Japanese empire was crumbling in defeat. The first line of that declaration is a direct quote from the American version: “All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It’s likely this was partly sincere, and partly a play for US help in decolonization, based on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s anti-colonial rhetoric.