Sometimes I think in 1969 the US government was really hoping Ho’s successor would be good for North Vietnam just like mass-murderer Stalin’s Soviet successor was good for the terrible USSR.
I’m glad you rebooted this thread to basically repeat the same evidence-free speculation that you finished with a week ago.
Nevertheless, USA was the primary killer of civilians in Vietnam War – about a million civilians.
Vietnam War was fought between two sides both of which have done a lot of evil.
Here’s a counterargument. No, it wasn’t.
I was around in those days. It was current events. I studied the war in 1969, when a large body of literature on it already existed.
Communism was the enemy. Communism was bad, per se. Certainly it deserved to be called on the mass murders that seemed to be endemic in communist history. But home-grown communists who were responsible for no murders at all were equally demonized and prosecuted.
Political motives are always mixed rather than pure. The Cold War of the 1950s was a case of the U.S. wanting world supremacy. There was no sudden elevation of the USSR when Stalin died. To the contrary, the Cold War escalated after 1953. The U.S. could not stand losing anywhere at any time, far more because that was a loss of face than because of foreigners dying. We undermined too many counties who planned to democratically put socialist or communist leaders into office to allow that excuse ever to go unchallenged.
And Viet Nam was one of those countries. The U.S. got into the war in 1955 when a nationwide election was planned. It soon became apparent that Ho Chi Minh would be the elected winner. We interfered and put an autocratic dictator into place. Surprise, surprise, the Viet Cong resumed an active rebellion after that.
The U.S. started the entire quagmire before the murders you’ve been citing as the excuse. The U.S. escalated the conflict because southerners would not fight for their corrupt and brutal leadership. The U.S. threw in hundreds of thousands of troops to prove to the world that we were the stronger superpower. The U.S. finally left because even our own people grew disgusted at the government’s lies, incompetence, carnage, and deaths.
Did the people on the other side commit horrors and atrocities? Yes, unfortunately they did. Were they the most terrible horrors and atrocities? Not hardly. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was occurring right at the same time, killing an order of magnitude more victims. The U.S. did not take one step to stop it. We all know why. We couldn’t do anything and the U.S. would rather turn its face away from mass murder than appear to be weak. That reality undercuts your entire case. The truth about Viet Nam is exactly opposite to what you claim. You cannot rescue the good name of the U.S. from one of its saddest and wrongest episodes.
It does change the fundamental motivation. If you oppose communist mass murderers but support non-communist mass murderers, then you’re opposed to communism not mass murder.
Depends on what time frame you are looking at and who’s numbers you believe. I’ve seen estimates that the regime in Vietnam killed between 1.5-2.5 million executed or died in prison camps verse 1-2 million estimated civilian deaths due to the war (not just the US). The US certainly didn’t execute 1 million people during the war, most of the deaths you are attributing to the USA were military related (not that this means a lot to those who died).
Hear hear, here !
In my opinion these numbers are greatly exaggerated. In Stalin’s USSR, about 2.1 million people were either executed or died in GULAG. These are horrible numbers but not as high as some Cold War estimates.
2.1 million? That’s the lowest estimate I’ve ever seen.
The lowest estimate I’ve seen for Stalin was 10 million, and even that was a stretch. More realistic is something around 20-30 million. Still a piker compared to Mao, but puts him solidly at number 2.
In the context of things like the USSR or CCP Vietnam was definitely not in the same league, especially if we are talking about a single rulers body count like Stalin or Mao…even Pol Pot wasn’t in their league, though of course he had a fewer of his own people to kill.
Once the North Vietnamese overtook Saigon in 1975 they really began torturing and brainwashing and killing all over the place. Lost of SV’s became boat people.
cite?
So then why did we leave? Remind me.
Article at Ho Chi Minh Mixed Nationalism, Communism to Pursue 'New World Order' shows Ho killing many thousands right AFTER the land reform I wrote of.
You’ve exhausted the number of bumps. Closed.
[/moderating]