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A number of the older people I met were definitely from the French regime. I remember speaking with one old gentleman, this would have been about 1978/9 and he would have been in his seventies then and he was speaking French with our translator (my schoolboy French failed me beyond a simple greeting). Our translator spoke Vietnamese (the southern version), French and English thankfully (actually her father was a bigwig in the French colonial government). The old gentlemen told me about the French regime and explained the genesis of the resistance, he even referred to the "Viet Minh". Really interesting man to talk to and very well educated to boot.
Gunny, I was referring to the possibility raised by someone else that China might start a nuclear war if we invaded North Viet Nam. I believe that opinion to be false. That's why I said there was no way that China would exchange the protection of Hanoi for the obliteration of Beijing. If the Chinese had crossed over the border with a conventional attack into North Viet Nam in response to a US invasion from the South, then we would have defeated them. Do you disagree?You mean like we obliterated Beijing when a million chicom troops poured across the Yalu River into N Korea because we got too close to their border?
History disagrees with you.
Gunny, I was referring to the possibility raised by someone else that China might start a nuclear war if we invaded North Viet Nam. I believe that opinion to be false. That's why I said there was no way that China would exchange the protection of Hanoi for the obliteration of Beijing. If the Chinese had crossed over the border with a conventional attack into North Viet Nam in response to a US invasion from the South, then we would have defeated them. Do you disagree?
Ah ... you mean the Viet Minh who were Vietnamese nationalists fighting to throw off centuries of colonial rule? The ones we chose to not support, instead siding with our age-old "ally" France?
IMO, when you remove the superficial ideological struggle and Cold War fearmongering and political allies, seems to me Ho represented American idealism FAR more than Diem did.
I was born in the year that the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. I will never call it Ho Chi Minh City. If age had anything to do with the ability to derive lessons from history, then Rumsfeld would have been a great Defense Secretary. Did I need to be at Cold Harbor to know that Grant was incompetent? Does the fact that my father flew from a Thai airbase give me any more credibility? I am not going to discuss my military, education, and work background, because this is hardly the venue for that. The point is, I have listened to my father about the Cold War, I have studied it, and I know military officers that lived through it. The opinion that I have expressed about winning in Viet Nam in the mid 60s by invading the North is not one that I hold alone.I criticize your statement because you don't have a true appreciation for Cold War politics, and the games that were played. This of course would lead me to ask how old you are. Not to criticize, but to point out that the Gunny and I are rougly the same age and grew up watching Cold War politics and Vietnam on the evening news. CSM was THERE. My father was military and he was there. It behooved me to know what was going on.
Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.Very interesting point, especially about Ho, he was first and foremost an anti-colonialist and I suppose in that way yes, very much - at least in motivation, if not politics - similar to the Founding Fathers of the US.
What if the Chinese did go to the CCCP? The Soviets were not going to risk nuclear war over Hanoi. What other options did the Russians have? None. They certainly were in no position to contest an American invasion of North Viet Nam by conventional means. I disagree about China. Allowing material used to kill Americans, Australians, South Koreans, and South Vietnamese, to tranship the country was indeed the action of an enemy. Those supply lines should have been attacked. And the port of Haiphong should have been reduced. If you tie your hands behind your back, and do not attack enemy supply lines, how can you ever hope to win? Which, in the long run, we did not. Sometime during the period 1965-7, we should have used air power to directly attack North Vietnamese supplies and “civilian” support for the VC and NVA. After a strong air campaign, we should have launched our ground forces in an invasion of the North. The moment the Chinese came across the border, if they did, they would have been repelled with B52s, naval air power, and short-range surface to surface conventional missiles. Then the remaining Chinese and NVA could have been engaged with ground forces. The Chinese would not have introduced nuclear weapons (or any other WMD) because it would have meant the end of Beijing, Shanghai, etc. No amount of Vietnamese ground would have been worth that. The military cards were in Johnson's favor, but he did not have the nerve to play them. Instead he chose to confine American military activity to the South, thereby guaranteeing a slow blood and treasure draining defeat. You say we won Tet '68, but the North Vietnamese base was still intact, NVA civilian supporters still untouched, and the supply trains were still running. If Johnson had invaded the North before Tet, there would have been many unforeseen consequences. But how could SE Asia have turned out any worse that it did? If the US had invaded the North and prevailed, then Pol Pot could have never gotten away with genocide. Not with strong US forces on the Cambodian border.The reality is that if we began beating the Chinese they would have gone to the Soviets. Thats where the threat lie. Also the Chinese allowed the Soviets to ship material through China to North Vietnam. hardly the action of an enemy. Though Mao had ulterior motives. he had his youth supporters loot material and weapons from those trains.
I was born in the year that the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. I will never call it Ho Chi Minh City. If age had anything to do with the ability to derive lessons from history, then Rumsfeld would have been a great Defense Secretary. Did I need to be at Cold Harbor to know that Grant was incompetent? Does the fact that my father flew from a Thai airbase give me any more credibility? I am not going to discuss my military, education, and work background, because this is hardly the venue for that. The point is, I have listened to my father about the Cold War, I have studied it, and I know military officers that lived through it. The opinion that I have expressed about winning in Viet Nam in the mid 60s by invading the North is not one that I hold alone.
Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.
Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.
Incorrect. Absolute military power can bring a civil war to a halt, and keep i that way so long as the force remains to enforce its will.
After extensive preparation, if the US had invaded the North in '65, the DMZ would have moved to the border of China and a geographically unified Viet Nam. Unlike Korea, we would have been prepared for any Chinese incursion, and the vast majority of their forces would have been destroyed at or near the border. There is no way that Chinese ground forces could have held up under a massive B52 and naval air campaign. How could they get their supply lines out from underneath a continuos rain of 2000lb bombs? Where would the Chinese troops hide? In holes in the ground? How could they stop advancing US troops by doing that? Obviously the US ground invasion would not have started at the old North-South border. But much further up the coast near Hai Phong, so that the port could be captured early and used for support. Ho would have fled to China, or back to his pals in Moscow. After some period, elections would have been held. The North had no culture of communism, it was after all under the influence of the French until 1954. It is far from clear that communists would have won in a countrywide general election, in fact it is more likely that they would have been defeated. Not just communists would have sported the nationalist banner. Anyway, the mass of US forces would have left after the election, except for those forces necessary to keep the Chinese from crossing the border, and prevent supplies from reaching any potential insurgents. Most of our forces might have been withdrawn by '68-9. Moreover, we might have been able to accomplish the reunification of Viet Nam with fewer than the 50,000+ killed that we suffered in a useless police action confined to the South that lasted until 72.My point was not to attack your age itself, and I stated as much. It is to question what you have been taught.
Invading N Vietnam would have accomplished nothing but shuffling the DMZ around a bit for awhile.
After extensive preparation, if the US had invaded the North in '65, the DMZ would have moved to the border of China and a geographically unified Viet Nam. Unlike Korea, we would have been prepared for any Chinese incursion, and the vast majority of their forces would have been destroyed at or near the border. There is no way that Chinese ground forces could have held up under a massive B52 and naval air campaign. How could they get their supply lines out from underneath a continuos rain of 2000lb bombs? Where would the Chinese troops hide? In holes in the ground? How could they stop advancing US troops by doing that? Obviously the US ground invasion would not have started at the old North-South border. But much further up the coast near Hai Phong, so that the port could be captured early and used for support. Ho would have fled to China, or back to his pals in Moscow. After some period, elections would have been held. The North had no culture of communism, it was after all under the influence of the French until 1954. It is far from clear that communists would have won in a countrywide general election, in fact it is more likely that they would have been defeated. Not just communists would have sported the nationalist banner. Anyway, the mass of US forces would have left after the election, except for those forces necessary to keep the Chinese from crossing the border, and prevent supplies from reaching any potential insurgents. Most of our forces might have been withdrawn by '68-9. Moreover, we might have been able to accomplish the reunification of Viet Nam with fewer than the 50,000+ killed that we suffered in a useless police action confined to the South that lasted until 72.
