General Westmoreland

[Mindful]

Afghanistan wasn't always the Stone Age.

Only for the political elites who controlled the capital city.

The other 99% of the population lived in abject poverty. ...

It has a modern past. Not the Stone Age as you depict.

 

[Mindful]

Before the Soviets.

You live in a delusional fantasy world. ...

Like you'd know, with that facile statement?

 

[Sunni Man]

It has a modern past. Not the Stone Age as you depict.

.......

 

[Mindful]

It has a modern past. Not the Stone Age as you depict.

.......

 

[Sunni Man]

I like your surrender flag. ...

 

[rightwinger]

Westmoreland fought Vietnam as a conventional war using conventional tactics.

The US ignored the cultural and religious conflicts in Vietnam. Vietnam was primarily Buddhist with S Vietnam being run by minority Catholics

We thought we could buy the Vietnamese people off with the trappings of Western society. It didn’t work and the people looked at it as more evidence of Western Imperialism

 

[Mindful]

Will this self flagellation ever end?

 

[Sunni Man]

The US ignored the cultural and religious conflicts in Vietnam. Vietnam was primarily Buddhist with S Vietnam being run by minority Catholics

France was a Catholic country and installed the minority Vietnamese catholics in leadership positions to rule Vietnam for them.

Kennedy was the U.S. president when the French army was defeated in Vietnam and France lost its colony.

President Kennedy was a Catholic, and many people believe he was pressured by the Pope/Vatican to send American advisors (troops) to help keep the Vietnamese catholics in power.

And we all know how that turned out. ...

 

[Mindful]

The US ignored the cultural and religious conflicts in Vietnam. Vietnam was primarily Buddhist with S Vietnam being run by minority Catholics

France was a Catholic country and installed the minority Vietnamese catholics in leadership positions to rule Vietnam for them.

Kennedy was the U.S. president when the French army was defeated in Vietnam and France lost its colony.

President Kennedy was a Catholic, and many people believe he was pressured by the Pope/Vatican to send American advisors (troops) to help keep the Vietnamese catholics in power.

And we all know how that turned out. ...

So it's the Catholics' fault, is it?

 

[rightwinger]

The US ignored the cultural and religious conflicts in Vietnam. Vietnam was primarily Buddhist with S Vietnam being run by minority Catholics

France was a Catholic country and installed the minority Vietnamese catholics in leadership positions to rule Vietnam for them.

Kennedy was the U.S. president when the French army was defeated in Vietnam and France lost its colony.

President Kennedy was a Catholic, and many people believe he was pressured by the Pope/Vatican to send American advisors (troops) to help keep the Vietnamese catholics in power.

And we all know how that turned out. ...

So it's the Catholics' fault, is it?

In a way, it was

Catholics persecuted the Buddhist majority leading to massive protests

Pictures like this shocked the world and turned the Vietnamese population against the Catholic S Vietnamese leadership

.

 

[Sunni Man]

So it's the Catholics' fault, is it?

That is not what I said nor implied. ...

European colonial powers used the strategy of putting minority populations into leadership positions over the majority of the country's population as a means of control. It didn't matter if the country was buddhist, muslim, christian, hindu, etc.

That way the minority was submissive to the colonial power, and depended on them for money and weapons to stay secure from the much larger majority population who usually hated them.

This strategy proved to be highly successful throughout Asia, Africa, India, and the Middle East.

 

[Sunni Man]

Catholics persecuted the Buddhist majority leading to massive protests

The large Vietnamese buddhist population had despised the catholic Vietnamese leadership for decades.

Which explains why south vietnamese buddhists weren't eager to join the Americans in the fight against the north in order to keep the ruling catholics in power. And in reality they felt more kinship with the North Vietnamese who wanted rid their country of all foreigners. ...

 

[GLASNOST]

France created the whole mess through their colonialism

I think that we can forgive France for colonising Indochina because that was the thing to do "way back when" and every nation with the inclination & the possibility did it either in Asia or the Middle East or Africa or the Americas or even Australia. What we cannot forgive France for is that they FIRST prioritized the Catholic, Vietnamese "converts" against the Buddhists, and SECOND they were not sympathetic to the Vietnamese who sought freedom from France in THE VERY SAME WAY that France fought for their own freedom from the Nazi occupation in Europe and from the Japanese occupation of French-held Indochina.

The US got involved to prop up a corrupt and inept S Vietnamese government

Not that there ever was a "S. Vietnamese government" to begin with. But that is another point to discuss.

 

[GLASNOST]

Gee...that’s a tough one
How about their existing borders?

Yes, the US had legal jurisdiction. After WWII we were the ones involved in dividing up the booty. Part of that booty was Vietnam which we agreed to give back to France

A link on that point would be greatly appreciated if you happen to have one on hand.

 

[GLASNOST]

... The Vietnamese kicked out the French and was gearing up for Democratic Elections but the US prevented the elections and started a war instead. It is no more complicated than that. .....

Rubbish. You ideological clown acts are dumber than rocks. Teh FRench asked for U.S. intervention early on, and Ike refused. As for your stupid attempt at claiming 'free elections', that's a load of rubbish as well; commies don't participate in 'free elections', and they certainly didn't anywhere in the world. Give up the vodka and reading all those old issues of Pravda you're using for toilet paper; your frontal lobes are numb.

Your total knowledge-capacity on matters of politics (any principles at all) resembles a cylinder at the end of the exhaust stroke on a four-stroke combustible engine.

 

[whitehall]

Westmorland was just a figurehead. The CIA clerks and analysts were playing soldier and running the Vietnam war. LBJ set the rules so that we could win every battle and still lose the freaking war and he bailed out just when we needed leadership. True to form the media that never saw a democrat they didn't like blamed the generals.

 

[GLASNOST]

After the French left, the Vietnamese were offered free elections after two years to unify the country. Once it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would easily win, the US refused to allow the elections

Precisely.

 

[GLASNOST]

After the French left, the Vietnamese were offered free elections after two years to unify the country. Once it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would easily win, the US refused to allow the elections

Why should we have 'allowed' them? They wouldn't have been 'free elections', the Commies had their guns and foreign support.

What an idiotic response. Tell me, have you never read even a condensed post-WW II history of Vietnam?

 

[rightwinger]

France created the whole mess through their colonialism

I think that we can forgive France for colonising Indochina because that was the thing to do "way back when" and every nation with the inclination & the possibility did it either in Asia or the Middle East or Africa or the Americas or even Australia. What we cannot forgive France for is that they FIRST prioritized the Catholic, Vietnamese "converts" against the Buddhists, and SECOND they were not sympathetic to the Vietnamese who sought freedom from France in THE VERY SAME WAY that France fought for their own freedom from the Nazi occupation in Europe and from the Japanese occupation of French-held Indochina.

The US got involved to prop up a corrupt and inept S Vietnamese government

Not that there ever was a "S. Vietnamese government" to begin with. But that is another point to discuss.

Japan took over Vietnam in WWII and drove the French out who were being occupied by the Nazis
Happy to be rid of the French, the Vietnamese found that Japan brought its own oppression.
Vietnamese rebels fought against Japan and expected they would have their own country after Japan was defeated
They appealed to the US to intercede on the side of freedom. Instead we backed France regaining colonial control

 

[GLASNOST]

Westmorland was just a figurehead. The CIA clerks and analysts were playing soldier and running the Vietnam war. LBJ set the rules so that we could win every battle and still lose the freaking war and he bailed out just when we needed leadership. True to form the media that never saw a democrat they didn't like blamed the generals.

You may have a point about Westmoreland but the same can be said about LBJ who I think you over-rate enormously. The biggest difference between the two (in my very humble and unqualified opinion) is that Johnson was handsomely paid on a commission (piece-work) for the treachery he committed in Vietnam while Westmoreland was on the Army time-clock.