How responsible is France for the Vietnam War?

Otis Mayfield

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Sep 17, 2021
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So France was humiliated during WWII. The Germans crushed France in a matter of days, with the French offering little resistance.

After WWII, France and Britain tried to keep control of the Suez Canal, the canal that joins the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific. Egypt wanted it and the Canal does run through Egyptian land. America sided with Egypt and Britain and France were too weakened by WWII to do anything about it so Egypt got the Suez Canal. This was another big humiliation for France.

France colonized Vietnam in the 1800's, occupying the country for over a 100 years. To stay in power, France played different factions in Vietnam against each other, "divide and conquer".

France took the minority Vietnamese Catholic population and put them in charge of the military, the police and other government functions, giving the Catholics all of the power in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese Catholics made up about 20% of Vietnam. 80% of Vietnam was Buddhist. To keep the Buddhists subjugated, the Catholics terrorized them with torture and prison sentences.

Meanwhile, like all colonizers, the French raped Vietnam for everything they could.

At the end of WWII, Vietnam wanted to overthrow the French. It asked American six times to help, but America was busy elsewhere or the message never made it to the right people.

But Russia helped the Vietnamese Buddhists out. Russia trained the Vietnamese Buddhists and gave them money and military equipment.

The Vietnamese drove the French out of Vietnam in a humiliating war for the French.

The Cold War was on. America was struggling against communism.

The Vietnamese Catholics pointed out the the Buddhists were communists.

And America got sucked into a war it knew it could win.
 
France was entirely responsible for the Vietnam War
The US was responsible for supporting French Colonial claims and supporting a corrupt S Vietnamese regime
 
France was entirely responsible for the Vietnam War
The US was responsible for supporting French Colonial claims and supporting a corrupt S Vietnamese regime
I think France was responsible right up to Dien Bien Phu. After their defeat..The US made their own choice to engage. The US Vietnam war was entirely the US's fault. The faulty Domino theory and a desire to make some money were our motives.
 
LBJ played with the facts to get us to escalate because he didn't want to seem "soft" on commies, and then Nixon illegally used Taiwan to torpedo any possibility of just ending in in 68.

Maybe the domino theory influenced JFK, or maybe he just saw it as a place to use a small number of US troops to kill Russian surrogates. But we made a mistake to step into an anti-imperialist insurgency. There was no way any viet govt with any ties to that past would ever have popular support.

Same as Afghan. It's like we keep trying to do the same thing to find a different outcome.
 
LBJ played with the facts to get us to escalate because he didn't want to seem "soft" on commies, and then Nixon illegally used Taiwan to torpedo any possibility of just ending in in 68.

Maybe the domino theory influenced JFK, or maybe he just saw it as a place to use a small number of US troops to kill Russian surrogates.
LBJ wanted no part of Vietnam.
But no way did he want to see it turn Commie on his watch
So he fell for the….Just send in a few more troops and we will wrap this thing up trap
 
LBJ and McNamara lied


They wanted to save Liberalism.

And W lied about Iraq.
 
Viet-nam is the price we paid to keep France out of the Warsaw Pact ...

Phaw ... if we had nuked China back to the stone age during the Korean conflict, we could have just nuked them again and settled the matter once and for all ...
 
When France fell to Germany, they abandoned Vietnam and left IndoChina to the Japanese

After the US defeated Japan, France demanded its Colonial Empire back.
The Vietnamese, led by Ho Chi Minh, wanted independence as the reward for fighting the Japanese.

The US sided with France because we believed yellow people were incapable of self government
 
So France was humiliated during WWII. The Germans crushed France in a matter of days, with the French offering little resistance.

After WWII, France and Britain tried to keep control of the Suez Canal, the canal that joins the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific. Egypt wanted it and the Canal does run through Egyptian land. America sided with Egypt and Britain and France were too weakened by WWII to do anything about it so Egypt got the Suez Canal. This was another big humiliation for France.

France colonized Vietnam in the 1800's, occupying the country for over a 100 years. To stay in power, France played different factions in Vietnam against each other, "divide and conquer".

France took the minority Vietnamese Catholic population and put them in charge of the military, the police and other government functions, giving the Catholics all of the power in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese Catholics made up about 20% of Vietnam. 80% of Vietnam was Buddhist. To keep the Buddhists subjugated, the Catholics terrorized them with torture and prison sentences.

Meanwhile, like all colonizers, the French raped Vietnam for everything they could.

At the end of WWII, Vietnam wanted to overthrow the French. It asked American six times to help, but America was busy elsewhere or the message never made it to the right people.

But Russia helped the Vietnamese Buddhists out. Russia trained the Vietnamese Buddhists and gave them money and military equipment.

The Vietnamese drove the French out of Vietnam in a humiliating war for the French.

The Cold War was on. America was struggling against communism.

The Vietnamese Catholics pointed out the the Buddhists were communists.

And America got sucked into a war it knew it could win.
...colonizers do nothing that the indigenous people don't do [ war/rape/displace/decimate/etc ]
..the US was not in it for the $$$$....we thought we were helping.
.....we should never have gotten involved.....
..what does France being defeated in WW2 have to do with it?
 
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When France fell to Germany, they abandoned Vietnam and left IndoChina to the Japanese

After the US defeated Japan, France demanded its Colonial Empire back.
The Vietnamese, led by Ho Chi Minh, wanted independence as the reward for fighting the Japanese.

The US sided with France because we believed yellow people were incapable of self government
1. link to beliefs about '''yellow'' people? [ BTW that's a racist term!!!!! = you are racist ]
'''we'' ????
2. they were incapable of something if they were RAPED, as the OP stated
 
LBJ wanted no part of Vietnam.
But no way did he want to see it turn Commie on his watch
So he fell for the….Just send in a few more troops and we will wrap this thing up trap

And his decision ended the Viet Cong as a power in the the South in less than three years. After that, the NVA had to take over after LBJ crushed the Tet Offensive; the Left adored the Commie murderers and rooted for them, which gave the Commies hope and led them to keep attacking.

The U.S. kept following FDR's policy of decolonizing countries after WW II. The Soviets and Red Chinese stepped up their imperial drive for colonies and puppet regimes.
 
When France fell to Germany, they abandoned Vietnam and left IndoChina to the Japanese

After the US defeated Japan, France demanded its Colonial Empire back.
The Vietnamese, led by Ho Chi Minh, wanted independence as the reward for fighting the Japanese.

The US sided with France because we believed yellow people were incapable of self government
I've never understood why we landed in vietnam. JFK just wanted to kill commies on the cheap. Can't call him a neocon, and there weren't neocons then. But I'm hard pressed to name ANY country that didn't have a post-WWII war of liberation against a western imperialist govt that didn't at least intially go commie. India maybe, but the Brits left without much of a fight, and Britain actually was pretty good at nation building amongst "the wogs."
 
Viet-nam is the price we paid to keep France out of the Warsaw Pact ...

Phaw ... if we had nuked China back to the stone age during the Korean conflict, we could have just nuked them again and settled the matter once and for all ...


I believe that is true.

It seems ridiculous now, but back in the 60's a lot of French were communists. They could've easily sided with Stalin.

Johnson knew the war was unwinnable in 1964 and everyone he talked to told him the war was unwinnable.
 
And his decision ended the Viet Cong as a power in the the South in less than three years. After that, the NVA had to take over after LBJ crushed the Tet Offensive; the Left adored the Commie murderers and rooted for them, which gave the Commies hope and led them to keep attacking.

The U.S. kept following FDR's policy of decolonizing countries after WW II. The Soviets and Red Chinese stepped up their imperial drive for colonies and puppet regimes.
The North had been fighting its war to unite the country for 25 years. They had already lost millions.
Tet was a minor military setback for the NVA but a major setback for US support of the war
 
Tet wasn't an NVA offensive, dumbass.


Mmmm, Tet was organized by the NVA. Both NVA troops and Viet Cong fought in Tet.

The Vietnamese leadership knew Ho Chi Mihn would be against Tet so they sent him on a diplomatic mission to China. They sent their best general to Bulgaria too.

They launched Tet, it was a huge failure.

But yeah, Tet was a good propaganda victory.
 

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