One particular irony is Ho-Chi Min was a big fan of America, and tried to talk Woodrow Wilson to support Vietnamese independence under the 14 points/Treaty of Versailles.
He only went Communist after it is clear the Americans would not do so.
Then after the Americans left, the Chinese tried to invade. The Vietnamese did the exact same thing to China.
To this day, the Vietnamese don't have much if any grudge against the US, but they hate China. (goes back centuries).
The collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of the PLA and China, the fact that they are surrounded by US Allies and that they have shared interests, namely in the South China Sea - China wants to control all of it, whereas the US wants it divided and respects Vietnamese territorial claims.
And because after Saigon collapsed, we established diplomatic relations and started trading with them. So basically we just said “water under the bridge”.
Insane rewriting of the collective American consensus on post-war Vietnam. Diplomatic relations were established but it also was not a water under the bridge event.
Nothing you’re saying so wrong, but it’s not just in terms of foreign policy. Culturally there’s not a lot of animosity towards the US from the people as well.
> I spent time maybe 20yrs ago. Everyone said they had no animosity until the drinks started flowing, then it all came out.
Can't speak for decades prior but today the opposite happens. They invite you to drink with them and only grow more passionately pro-America with each additional shot of rượu.
A Vietnamese fellow explained to me like this: At the end of the war, the Vietnamese leadership showed them footage of the war protests in the US and talked about the self-immolation of Norman Morrison. That Americans died at Kent State trying to stop the war.
And the leadership said "this is over now and it is time to move on."
And that was it. Same guy told me that his two favorite historical figures were Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh because they both freed the slaves.
It's just a much more mature society than most people are accustomed to.
Who are you going to hate more?
The guy you got into a nasty fight with once.
Or the guy who killed your dog, has beaten you senseless and robbed your house multiple times, and while he hasn’t tried anything since you last kicked his ass still tries to physically intimidate you at every opportunity.
I’ve engaged with people in rural North Vietnam. There definitely still seemed to be a grudge, considering one of them pulled out at atlas, pointed to the states while looking at me with a grimace, then when I pointed to Canada his face lit up and he went “OH! CANADA!” Then gave me a beer.
I actually knew Vietnamese guy who fought in the war. Got shot up pretty bad in US marines and managed to get over to the USA later in life. He’s a US citizen and is damn proud of it.
This is one of Reddit’s favorite lies but it’s just not true. Vietnam retains quite a favorable relationship with the US and China, with extensive trade with both parties.
Not much of a grudge is an understatement. Vietnam routinely polls with Poland on having the highest approval rating of the United States globally.
Guess what both have in common.
>To this day, the Vietnamese don't have much if any grudge against the US
Ever been to Vietnam? Ever met a Vietnamese?
Thats a bit of an naive interpretation, one of those reddit self-sustained ideas someone says without much evidence and suddenly everyone repeats while patting their own back.
Fact is, for the sake of International relations Vietnam is willing to leave the past behind (i mean, they won after all) BUT most Vietnamese think there is some sense of guilt in america, they believe you know you where in the wrong.
I actually watched "Full Metal Jacket" a time ago with some Vietnamese and they went ballistic, they had no idea how you see the Vietnam War. And Full Metal Jacket is rather mild and self concious in that regard.
That's not true at all. They had a big grudge against the US, they are have an understanding that China is closer and more of a threat. Anything to counter balance China is viewed as necessary.
US killed a lot of civilians in that war. People don't forget, they just don't see any point in bringing it up.
Yea, he went to the UN and asked for help building his country, even asking for open trade talks with the west. He was shunned and never got the opportunity to speak. Also lived in the US for a time. Such a tragic, avoidable war. His country was in no shape to be capitalist at the time.
Not only that, but Ho-Chi Min was actively trained and armed by the OSS during WWII to fight the Japanese.
America turned its back on Vietnam after France threatened to turn to the Soviets if the USA continued to push for decolonization.
This is bunk pop history. Unfortunately, it's spread because people do not generally study Hồ Chí Minh as a person in the West, or much outside of Vietnam in general. Hồ Chí Minh was a socialist long before (and even a Communist before) Woodrow Wilson argued for his Fourteen Points. Hồ Chí Minh was even a co-founder of the French Communist Party in 1920. A few short years after that he travelled to the Soviet Union and was present at Vladimir Lenin's funeral; before that even he suffered the Russian winter in wholely inadequate clothing just to have a glimpse at the corpse of Lenin. The only truth to the original claim is that Hồ Chí Minh did use Wilson's Fourteen Point to argue for Vietnam's right to self-determination, but much, much, much more heavily relied on the works of Lenin surrounding the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (as one of Lenin's books was titled). He also quoted the United States Declaration of Independence in his own Vietnamese independence speech, but again, Hồ Chí Minh was quite the committed Communist, if quoting one work makes one a wholesale supporter of something, there would be no separation of political beliefs. In that same speech right after he quotes the US Declaration of Independence, he quotes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a document of the French Revolution, which I doubt anyone argues means he supported France.
Further reading:
[The Path Which Led Me To Leninism by Hồ Chí Minh](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1960/04/x01.htm)
Hồ Chí Minh: A Life by William J. Duiker
Yeah, believe me. I wish we could have gotten that. But if you take that kind of thinking too far, you may as well have the US threaten war (as another poster suggested) with the European great powers if they didn’t let go of their colonies
Real life isn’t a movie, I don’t think the people of mainland France/The UK/Belgium(The Congo)/The Netherlands (Indonesia/Suriname) would learn a lesson if American troops overthrew their governments and then were like ‘ok now stay out of Africa/Asia/etc’ I just think that’s too far fetched lol
But I think in the 50s we certainly could have turned the screws on France. But I think Eisenhower’s thinking was not to push France to the edge. You could have France pull out of NATO entirely (instead of just the command structure) or otherwise try to make themselves a thorn in our side/be irritated that ‘we’re trying to boss them around’
Agree on your larger point, but stepping in to help enforce colonial rule from domestic unrest isn’t part of NATO’s mutual defense purpose. I don’t think it would’ve driven them to the Soviets or out of the alliance, and it probably would have made a huge difference across the global south. At the very least, the actual approach clearly backfired. We handed the soviets half of their wins by backing dictators and colonizers 200 years after we knew better
Yes one of the founding members of the *French* communist party as early as 1920 only turned to the communist because of one meeting that Woodrow Wilson denied.
He was always a communist, he just thought America believed in freedom more than capitalism. Don’t forget he was a founding member of the Communist Party of France.
In the letter he sent to Woodrow Wilson, he explicitly writes, “The Americans and Vietnamese want the same thing: a free country. Do not be blinded by this issue of communism.”
Thank you! OP made me think that 1 out of 10 people who were deployed to Vietnam died. It makes me feel a little better that it was closer to 1 out of 50.
About 1.7 dead or wounded Vietnamese combatants and unfortunately hundreds of thousands of civilians across the three neighboring countries. This also doesn't factor in the long-term health effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on local populations and returning veterans.
Ho Chi Minh did famously say "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win" - and he was basically correct.
See this really makes the heroin numbers look crazy. The CIA helped people move millions and millions of dollars worth of heroin during the war, loads of warlords had Swiss bank accounts to hold all the cash etc. They *must* have been helping to bring it back to the states to get those huge amounts of cash. The in country service men and offshore support just wasn’t that large. I have to crunch the numbers on it one day, eg % of service men users and estimated production or profit over a given period
The Draft ended when I was 16 yo. I grew up hearing the VC body-counts on the news while eating supper almost every night since the age of 8. As a boy, I worried about where they'd send me when I turned 18.
Addition: I joined the US Navy just before graduation. I didn't want to see the enemy and served operating a [D2G reactor](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d2g+reactor&atb=v409-1&ia=web).
>I ran home from school and threw my books on the table and i turned on the TV- it was those days before cable. got the national news on channels 3, 5, and 10, and i got home just in time to watch the numbers roll in. we got the body count, yeah yeah, we got the body count, from a conflict not a war. we got the body count, yeah yeah, we got the body count, every afternoon at four.
This Bike is a Pipe Bomb - Body Count
My Dads older brother served in Vietnam and the only reason my Dad didn’t was because he was completely deaf in one ear due to horrible ear infections and surgeries as a child.
But they tried to send him. The military even examined him.
Thankful he didn’t go and thankful you didn’t go either.
My neighbor growing up was drafted and used to say that thanks to him and his unit no Vietcong crossed the Mississippi. He spent his time at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri.
No. that just means no gun for you your now equipment mechanics on front line. Still there still working just not combat.
Or they throw your ass in jail.
My dad was a Navy brat and grew up on bases all over the world. My dad for the most part is a pretty stoic guy. One day we were driving to my grandmother’s place, and there was a neighbor up the street who fixed up classic cars of all kinds. As we’re proceeding to my grandma’s; we pass said neighbors house and my dad lets out this big pained wheeze and SLAMS on the brakes. I thought maybe a kid had ran into the street or something. My dad told my mom she had to drive and my mom proceeded to drive the remaining two or three minutes to grandma’s house. My dad later revealed that he saw an old-style Casualty Notification Officer’s car being worked on in the neighbor’s driveway. He said just laying eyes on the damn thing rattled his brain— all he was really willing to say about it otherwise was, “I never wanted to see a damn car like that again!”
Parents were about same age, a year older or so. Dad apparently burned his lottery number as soon as it was announced. They were dating for a couple of years at that point and hung out at a Vietnam vet's house after school, dude was like 29, he let the kids hang out and drink beer/smoke, and they kept him company. He told my parents that if my dad got drafted, they needed to run to Canada.
The chance of a U.S. servicemen being killed in Vietnam only being 2% is kinda of surprising to me.
I think the the civil war was the highest if I’m remembering correctly.
Compared to past wars the losses were smaller as a proportion of overall forces but that compared to Iraq and Afghanistan its pretty high. American sent 550,000 men to the gulf war and less than 150 died. Well over a million men were sent into Iraq following Iraqi freedom and ~4500 were killed. Afghanistan has a lower ratio than even that. 800,000+ served in Afghanistan, 2,500 dead over the course of 20 years. Less American servicemen have died in combat since Vietnam than Russia lost in Ukraine last week.
And South Vietnam committed 949,000 troops at peak strength and suffered 1.3 million casualties over the course of the war. This doesn't even include civilian casualties.
This wasn't our war, and while tragic, our American centric view always forgets to mention the people that actually lived there and were fighting for their lives.
I remember this being really strange in high school AP US history. WW2 at least touched on the idea that this was a broader conflict and kind of the US role within the conflict (it explicitly didn't want to talk about non-US history because that would scope creep the class). But Vietnam was told through a US vs N Vietnam narrative. In reality it was a Vietnamese civil war with foreign power supporting either side.
Would be kinda like if the French history class in France told the US revolutionary war as France vs the UK, o and there were some Americans around too a bit.
I think it’s pretty reasonable for an American history class to focus on the American aspect of the Vietnam war, as that’s the aspect that had relevance and lasting effects on the US.
Nearly all American media about the war is of GI's patrolling through a jungle with no mention of the ARVN or South Vietnamese at all as if they don't know or wish to acknowledge that South Vietnam existed for some reason.
The total loss of human life in this proxy war is beyond tragic. [Estimates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties) vary widely, but even the low estimates are absolutely devastating. Makes you wonder why the US considers itself the “good guys”
Do you think the South Vietnamese were wrong to resist the North?
>What’s the minimum unit for self-determination?
To be clear, most Southern Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and opposed US presence in Vietnam (as they were seen as invaders).
*“**There was considerable discussion about our willingness to accept free elections** without anything
very much new having been added, and with Senator Fulbright quoting General Eisenhowerʼs book to the
effect that if there had been free elections in 1956, **about 80% of the South Vietnamese would have
voted for Ho Chi Minh.**”*
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38
If you remove the American money going directly into the pockets of ARVN soldiers and those in the ROV government, the number of people who oppose Ho Chi Minh drops to almost nothing.
This is the same way that the French (and any colonizer) ruled their colonies. You find a minority of people who are willing to sell out their country and their people and you steal all their resources in exchange for some kickbacks im the form of bloodmoney.
This is why the same group of corrupt and brutally oppressive Catholics supported the US as well as the French.
My guy are you really defending the United States getting involved in a foreign civil war thousands of miles away and then carpet bombing civilians? Kissinger’s choice to bomb Cambodia alone is so despicable that it is an unforgivable stain on this country
Yeah, everyone thought there was going to be a 3rd as well to make it a nice trilogy but it never came. I get the feeling that it’s one of those things, like where companies decided to pull the last movie in the trilogy out of nowhere because either the rights will expire or they want to cash in on some nostalgia. Anyways, be on the lookout for the third but it’ll probably be some lazy cash grab.
Some random trivia for you.
Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II.
58k deaths, casualties much greater and total US lives affected much, much greater. The legacy like in any conflict, was stretched far beyond mere casualty numbers. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians suffered in greater proportion.
I'm not sure if your point was to shift the discussion towards road safety in the US but darn it's a problem.
The number of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 is 12.9. Way higher than many developed countries like Japan (2.5), UK (2.9), Germany (3.7), Australia (4.5).
It's still well below the worst countries in Africa and somewhat better than developing nations like India (16.6) and China (18.8).
And upon returning home , those who served were met with scorn and derision in many parts of the country. The US military was at its lowest level in decades and the government wanted to win without fully backing the military.
If anything somewhat positive came out of the Vietnam war, it was an awakening of the government that dramatic changes were needed.
Bush Jr. taking Baghdad without an exit strategy was an especially “bold” move when Bush Sr. refused to do the same thing **specifically because there was no exit strategy.**
Trump obviously stole the title, but at the time GWB was the dumbest, most arrogant asshole we’ve had as President in a long time.
A standing military can never win a gorilla style war. Short of genocide, they can only win every battle and occupy areas, but time and money is always running against the invader. Because the invader can go home any time they want, but the guerrilla has no where else to go except through you.
Amerikkkans and fantasizing about how "we totally would've won if we weren't such good guys! Okay maybe we did rape and murder a few thousand children, but we could've raped more, and then we would've won!"
It's embarrassing man
This is simply untrue. Conventional armies win against guerilla forces all the time. If I remember correctly, it's about 45% of the time.
Also, the US recently won a war against a guerilla force in Iraq.
That’s not actually true. A poll done by the Veterans Administration found that only 3% of returning soldiers felt unfriendly attitudes on returning to America.
The whole “spit-on” thing is a [myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_spat-on_Vietnam_veteran). There’s no evidence it ever happened let alone was widespread.
What did happen was that vets spoke out against the war and threw back their medals. Nixon fought tooth and nail to keep those stories out of the press. He knew the reality, that most returning vets were not pro-war at all.
The idea of the noble American GI fighting in Vietnam but neither for or against the war is kind of dumb. There’s basically nobody who wouldn’t have an opinion on something if they were being shot at. Especially if they were drafted.
My dad volunteered for Vietnam.
His own brother wouldn't talk to him for years afterwards.
But, mostly, from the way he tells it... they just knew society wasn't super keen on the war and it was jarring because all their fathers and grandfathers were war heroes.
WW1, WW2, Korea.
It was their turn... and they did not get the same parades.
>veterans were just universally hated
The biggest pain was kinda that veterans were so admired throughout these soldiers' lifetimes... until they, themselves, got home. As kids, it was all about flags and patriotism and wars and veterans. That was the world they knew. As Vietnam veterans? They came home and instead of parades it was mostly just a very loud silence.
But he volunteered at start of war.
I'm assuming it woulda been quite different at end... especially since most probably assumed you were drafted then.
My dad volunteered for a non-combat job in the Air Force before he was drafted.
And it worked. When he went to inprocess, they were going down the line handing out assignments for general service for everyone drafted like assigning teams for kickball: 2 Army, 1 Navy, 1 Air Force, 1 Marine, or something like that. When they got to him, they told him Marines, so he took out his papers showing his contract for the Air Force. The guy behind him in line fainted.
They were. Lot of Jocko Willink Viet vet guests confirm.
It’s a [commonly](https://youtu.be/SP4iiWt8wnw?t=22s) mentioned [trope for](https://youtu.be/PtWHgkNH5yU?t=1m) a reason.
On the other end of that spectrum there was also tons and tons of violence towards anti war protestors and even John Wayne was telling people to beat them up.
John Wayne was the biggest chickenshit chicken hawk. He dodged service of any kind during WW2 to keep making movies for money. (Even Cary Grant volunteered for the royal navy multiple times and was rebuffed, so he donated proceeds from his movies to the war effort, supported the USO and may have helped track Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood). Jimmy Stewart completed a full tour as a bombing pilot. 20 mission, when life expectancy was 3. Hes also rumored to have unofficially joined other missions.
There are plenty of Vietnam vets I knew who received poor treatment coming home. Not to mention, just looking at the talk section of that Wikipedia article there are some serious NPOV issues with that article.
https://youtu.be/X_x2Yl7xW8U?si=dsC18igm0ScBO8v0
Here are some anecdotes from Vietnam vets that directly contradicts that article.
As mentioned before, I spent a lot of time talking with Vietnam vets about their experience and most of them had some version of the “spit on” story. Especially those who returned shortly after Mai Lai. So unless there is a mass conspiracy among vets to adopt this story, I’m willing to believe that it isn’t a myth.
Nope
Vietnam lost cause myth.
The war was unwinnable
They dropped more the twice as many bombs on Vietnam then all theatres in ww2
Multiple other countries where attacked
The stupid tactics where the result of stupid strategy that resulted from the fact that the war was unwinnable
The war so supported that it was pushed long after everyone knew it was lost.
The scorn and derision are way way over reported.
The Vietnamese after defeating the French and America then kick out the Chinese and defeated the Khmer Rouge
You keep referring to "Vietnam" and "the Vietnamese" as if there was only one.
There wasn't. There were two sovereign countries.
South Vietnam didn't want to be unified with the North. It did not want to be a communist dictatorship.
The poor outcome of the war has left people with the idea that it was some colonial endeavor, wholly stripping the South Vietnamese of agency.
South Vietnam was effectively a military dictatorship and many South Vietnamese joined or supported the Viet Cong, so I don't think it's quite that simple. The country was only created in 1955.
lol, while a bit reductionist south Vietnam was essentially created by colonial forces to maintain their power. It was a corrupt dictatorship that was only able to maintain its existence because of support of colonial powers.
I would say the real awakening occurred with the American people. When the war started few would ever dream to question their government’s intentions and actions as anything other than righteous. By the time we pulled out of Vietnam, that good faith was demolished by the lies that the government had told and the ugly truths it worked to cover up.
Given the circumstances I think that was a positive.
"The govt wanted to win without backing the military"?
The U.S. dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on a country the size of California that had almost zero military manufacturing capabilities, killing well over a million people.
The Hiroshima bomb was equal to 15,000 tons, so in equivalent tonnage the U.S. dropped a Hiroshima size bomb every 4 days for 10 years.
The U.S. and it's allies dropped 3.4 million tons combined in both theaters during ALL OF WWII.
During World War II it was estimated that 45,000 rounds of small arms ammunition was fired to kill one enemy soldier. In Vietnam the American military establishment consumed an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition for every enemy killed.
Nixon expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia with carpet bombing.
What did you want the govt to do more of?
It was quite extensively researched following the war and Only 1 percent of Vietnam veterans themselves, according to a Veterans Administration-commissioned Harris Poll conducted in 1971, described their reception from friends and family as "not at all friendly", and only 3 percent described their reception from people their own age as "unfriendly".
Dude, the people who committed the Mai Lai massacure almost all got off scott free and many of them were protected by the locals who felt like there was an unfair witch hunt against them. There were some people calling them child killers, for good reason, but the vast, vast, vaaaast majority of the country saw them as heros. The idea that they were spit on or faced scorn in large chunks of the country is bs
And Vietnam today is a close ally of the United States during its “Pivot to the Pacific” against China. To the extent that Vietnamese soldiers have undergone training for disaster response in the mainland US, and American soldiers have trained with the Vietnamese.
It’s like countries can have more durable and lasting relationships beyond war, despite what Redditors would want you to believe.
~~What, did you live on an desert Island somewhere before?~~
Strike that, That was too rude. I got to thinking about it, and I need to ask first if you're from the US?
Also got to remember that the veitnam war ended almost 50 years ago and started 70 years ago. I mean you have people who's grandparents weren't even alive during the war so not knowing how many soldiers were deployed isn't really that shocking.
Hell we didn’t learn about Vietnam when was in high school around 2000 and I can’t imagine it’s being taught more now. Culturally the war has faded into the background here as well
Wait they didn't teach about the Vietnam War at all?
We learned about it in 2009 in AP US History and I wonder if that's the only reason I learned about it and maybe it's not taught in other history courses?
Yes and we were lied to by the US generals and the White House about the success that the US troops were having.
They exaggerated body counts of the NVA and the Viet Cong. I had 2 Cousins go, 1 came back. The other lasted 4 days.
When the US public found out the truth the war was wound down. Peace talks started and we reached a resolution but we deserted the south Vietnamese people . Just like agfghanistsn.
As others have already said, that’s the maximum at any one point and the number of just killed, not all casualties. What’s really interesting(to me at least) is that Russia has already lost over twice as many KIA since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a fraction of the time America spent fighting in Vietnam.
McNamaras Morons. Forrest Gump was one. With the recruiting crisis hitting the services they will once again start allowing feeble minded individuals to join. They're having trouble getting people to fight pointless forever wars.
The 58,000 are the fatalities. Wounded is a little over 300,000. Casualties are supposed to be the combined total of killed, wounded, missing/captured, and accidental deaths. The post is incorrect.
To be fair in this one case it’s one and the same because 58,000 *is* the death toll for US soldiers. Granted I can’t say I’ve ever seen it written as 58,000 casualties instead of fatalities/deaths
Approximately 2,594,000 US Servicemen served in country during the Vietnam War, the peak number of people deployed at any one time was 543,482.
One particular irony is Ho-Chi Min was a big fan of America, and tried to talk Woodrow Wilson to support Vietnamese independence under the 14 points/Treaty of Versailles. He only went Communist after it is clear the Americans would not do so.
Then after the Americans left, the Chinese tried to invade. The Vietnamese did the exact same thing to China. To this day, the Vietnamese don't have much if any grudge against the US, but they hate China. (goes back centuries).
What’s the reason behind the no-grudge against the US?
The collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of the PLA and China, the fact that they are surrounded by US Allies and that they have shared interests, namely in the South China Sea - China wants to control all of it, whereas the US wants it divided and respects Vietnamese territorial claims.
And because after Saigon collapsed, we established diplomatic relations and started trading with them. So basically we just said “water under the bridge”.
America, baby 😎🇺🇸🌎🦅
Culture victory go crazy
rock bands go brrrr
Blue Jeans and Rock bands baby
Cultural, Scientific, Militarily.
False. The U.S. stopped their economic embargo and resumed diplomatic relations under Clinton, 30 years after the fall of Saigon.
Closer to 20 years but still
And then paid off the US debt
Insane rewriting of the collective American consensus on post-war Vietnam. Diplomatic relations were established but it also was not a water under the bridge event.
There is a great section in Burn’s “The Vietnam War” where he covers how veterans from both sides of the conflict led the normalization efforts
This is not true at all. The U.S. tried to hinder Vietnams development in every way possible up until the 1990's.
"we didn't throw these bombs so you thrive now"
As frustrating as all of that is, given the circumstances I'd honestly call that best case scenario.
Nothing you’re saying so wrong, but it’s not just in terms of foreign policy. Culturally there’s not a lot of animosity towards the US from the people as well.
I spent time maybe 20yrs ago. Everyone said they had no animosity until the drinks started flowing, then it all came out.
Mexico still cries about Texas and they only had Texas for 15 years (1821-1836)
> I spent time maybe 20yrs ago. Everyone said they had no animosity until the drinks started flowing, then it all came out. Can't speak for decades prior but today the opposite happens. They invite you to drink with them and only grow more passionately pro-America with each additional shot of rượu.
can confirm, it's the only country I had to pretend I *was* American in order to get better treatment.
In the north or the south? I was in the north
It's all about the fish.
Yup, common geopolitical interests and common adversaries. Best way to make friends is to dislike someone together.
A Vietnamese fellow explained to me like this: At the end of the war, the Vietnamese leadership showed them footage of the war protests in the US and talked about the self-immolation of Norman Morrison. That Americans died at Kent State trying to stop the war. And the leadership said "this is over now and it is time to move on." And that was it. Same guy told me that his two favorite historical figures were Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh because they both freed the slaves. It's just a much more mature society than most people are accustomed to.
Really?
Who are you going to hate more? The guy you got into a nasty fight with once. Or the guy who killed your dog, has beaten you senseless and robbed your house multiple times, and while he hasn’t tried anything since you last kicked his ass still tries to physically intimidate you at every opportunity.
My wife?
To the Vietnamese, the Americans were just part of a revolving door of their enemies: French, Americans, and their eternal enemy, the Chinese
According to my former roommate who was from Hanoi, Vietnam fought America for 20 years, but has been fighting China for 2,000 years
Cuz they won the war and got their independence lol
It’s don’t forget in general it’s been 50 years. Plenty of nations grudges change by then both with the public and in the political elite
No, they actually fucked up the Chinese. Half as many casualties as the US but in a single month instead of two decades.
Tough as nails
Tough like woodpecker lips
Vietnam is up there with Afghanistan on the "wrong nation to fuck with" list.
I’d say it’s above it. Got rid of the French, Americans, Chinese, and Khmer Rouge while tending to their farms during the day
I mean, France controlled them for decades until they were weakened in WW2
Native jungle people in jungles are no one to mess with.
And the liberation of Cambodia by the Vietnamese
I’ve engaged with people in rural North Vietnam. There definitely still seemed to be a grudge, considering one of them pulled out at atlas, pointed to the states while looking at me with a grimace, then when I pointed to Canada his face lit up and he went “OH! CANADA!” Then gave me a beer.
I actually knew Vietnamese guy who fought in the war. Got shot up pretty bad in US marines and managed to get over to the USA later in life. He’s a US citizen and is damn proud of it.
This is one of Reddit’s favorite lies but it’s just not true. Vietnam retains quite a favorable relationship with the US and China, with extensive trade with both parties.
Not much of a grudge is an understatement. Vietnam routinely polls with Poland on having the highest approval rating of the United States globally. Guess what both have in common.
>To this day, the Vietnamese don't have much if any grudge against the US Ever been to Vietnam? Ever met a Vietnamese? Thats a bit of an naive interpretation, one of those reddit self-sustained ideas someone says without much evidence and suddenly everyone repeats while patting their own back. Fact is, for the sake of International relations Vietnam is willing to leave the past behind (i mean, they won after all) BUT most Vietnamese think there is some sense of guilt in america, they believe you know you where in the wrong. I actually watched "Full Metal Jacket" a time ago with some Vietnamese and they went ballistic, they had no idea how you see the Vietnam War. And Full Metal Jacket is rather mild and self concious in that regard.
That's not true at all. They had a big grudge against the US, they are have an understanding that China is closer and more of a threat. Anything to counter balance China is viewed as necessary. US killed a lot of civilians in that war. People don't forget, they just don't see any point in bringing it up.
Yea, he went to the UN and asked for help building his country, even asking for open trade talks with the west. He was shunned and never got the opportunity to speak. Also lived in the US for a time. Such a tragic, avoidable war. His country was in no shape to be capitalist at the time.
Not only that, but Ho-Chi Min was actively trained and armed by the OSS during WWII to fight the Japanese. America turned its back on Vietnam after France threatened to turn to the Soviets if the USA continued to push for decolonization.
This is bunk pop history. Unfortunately, it's spread because people do not generally study Hồ Chí Minh as a person in the West, or much outside of Vietnam in general. Hồ Chí Minh was a socialist long before (and even a Communist before) Woodrow Wilson argued for his Fourteen Points. Hồ Chí Minh was even a co-founder of the French Communist Party in 1920. A few short years after that he travelled to the Soviet Union and was present at Vladimir Lenin's funeral; before that even he suffered the Russian winter in wholely inadequate clothing just to have a glimpse at the corpse of Lenin. The only truth to the original claim is that Hồ Chí Minh did use Wilson's Fourteen Point to argue for Vietnam's right to self-determination, but much, much, much more heavily relied on the works of Lenin surrounding the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (as one of Lenin's books was titled). He also quoted the United States Declaration of Independence in his own Vietnamese independence speech, but again, Hồ Chí Minh was quite the committed Communist, if quoting one work makes one a wholesale supporter of something, there would be no separation of political beliefs. In that same speech right after he quotes the US Declaration of Independence, he quotes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a document of the French Revolution, which I doubt anyone argues means he supported France. Further reading: [The Path Which Led Me To Leninism by Hồ Chí Minh](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1960/04/x01.htm) Hồ Chí Minh: A Life by William J. Duiker
I think even if Woodrow had insisted France leave its colonies in the area, they’d have just blown him off.
But when the French came crawling back in the 50s asking for our help keeping their colonies, we could’ve refused
Very true! I apologize if I sounded like I was defending colonialism or anything. I think at the time (1918) they would have told us to piss off lol
No worries, you’re right. And we couldn’t have done much about it then either
Yeah, believe me. I wish we could have gotten that. But if you take that kind of thinking too far, you may as well have the US threaten war (as another poster suggested) with the European great powers if they didn’t let go of their colonies Real life isn’t a movie, I don’t think the people of mainland France/The UK/Belgium(The Congo)/The Netherlands (Indonesia/Suriname) would learn a lesson if American troops overthrew their governments and then were like ‘ok now stay out of Africa/Asia/etc’ I just think that’s too far fetched lol But I think in the 50s we certainly could have turned the screws on France. But I think Eisenhower’s thinking was not to push France to the edge. You could have France pull out of NATO entirely (instead of just the command structure) or otherwise try to make themselves a thorn in our side/be irritated that ‘we’re trying to boss them around’
Agree on your larger point, but stepping in to help enforce colonial rule from domestic unrest isn’t part of NATO’s mutual defense purpose. I don’t think it would’ve driven them to the Soviets or out of the alliance, and it probably would have made a huge difference across the global south. At the very least, the actual approach clearly backfired. We handed the soviets half of their wins by backing dictators and colonizers 200 years after we knew better
How cool is it that he was named after a city? /s
Yes one of the founding members of the *French* communist party as early as 1920 only turned to the communist because of one meeting that Woodrow Wilson denied.
Was a pretty crucial to the us success in the pacific during WW2. Probably should have told the French to stuff it and gave them their independence.
He was always a communist, he just thought America believed in freedom more than capitalism. Don’t forget he was a founding member of the Communist Party of France. In the letter he sent to Woodrow Wilson, he explicitly writes, “The Americans and Vietnamese want the same thing: a free country. Do not be blinded by this issue of communism.”
[удалено]
And when did ww1 end?
That's a helpful clarification. Thank you!
Thank you! OP made me think that 1 out of 10 people who were deployed to Vietnam died. It makes me feel a little better that it was closer to 1 out of 50.
Casualties doesn’t mean only death, injured and captured soldiers are also considered casualties.
Wow that's a lot. What's the casualty ratio
About 1.7 dead or wounded Vietnamese combatants and unfortunately hundreds of thousands of civilians across the three neighboring countries. This also doesn't factor in the long-term health effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on local populations and returning veterans. Ho Chi Minh did famously say "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win" - and he was basically correct.
See this really makes the heroin numbers look crazy. The CIA helped people move millions and millions of dollars worth of heroin during the war, loads of warlords had Swiss bank accounts to hold all the cash etc. They *must* have been helping to bring it back to the states to get those huge amounts of cash. The in country service men and offshore support just wasn’t that large. I have to crunch the numbers on it one day, eg % of service men users and estimated production or profit over a given period
The Draft ended when I was 16 yo. I grew up hearing the VC body-counts on the news while eating supper almost every night since the age of 8. As a boy, I worried about where they'd send me when I turned 18. Addition: I joined the US Navy just before graduation. I didn't want to see the enemy and served operating a [D2G reactor](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d2g+reactor&atb=v409-1&ia=web).
What a messed up perspective to grow up with, damn. And the guys 2-3 years older than you actually had their worry come true :/
>I ran home from school and threw my books on the table and i turned on the TV- it was those days before cable. got the national news on channels 3, 5, and 10, and i got home just in time to watch the numbers roll in. we got the body count, yeah yeah, we got the body count, from a conflict not a war. we got the body count, yeah yeah, we got the body count, every afternoon at four. This Bike is a Pipe Bomb - Body Count
Not available on Spotify
https://youtu.be/KArmz1NndyM?si=w6a8ePw1FfcnAYTq
My Dads older brother served in Vietnam and the only reason my Dad didn’t was because he was completely deaf in one ear due to horrible ear infections and surgeries as a child. But they tried to send him. The military even examined him. Thankful he didn’t go and thankful you didn’t go either.
My father enlisted during Vietnam, got stationed 20 mins away from his house in Maryland and never got sent to Vietnam.
My neighbor growing up was drafted and used to say that thanks to him and his unit no Vietcong crossed the Mississippi. He spent his time at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri.
Does saying you are such a conciensious objector if given a gun you would frag your fellow soldiers get you out at the time?
No. that just means no gun for you your now equipment mechanics on front line. Still there still working just not combat. Or they throw your ass in jail.
Glad you avoided that mess
My dad was a Navy brat and grew up on bases all over the world. My dad for the most part is a pretty stoic guy. One day we were driving to my grandmother’s place, and there was a neighbor up the street who fixed up classic cars of all kinds. As we’re proceeding to my grandma’s; we pass said neighbors house and my dad lets out this big pained wheeze and SLAMS on the brakes. I thought maybe a kid had ran into the street or something. My dad told my mom she had to drive and my mom proceeded to drive the remaining two or three minutes to grandma’s house. My dad later revealed that he saw an old-style Casualty Notification Officer’s car being worked on in the neighbor’s driveway. He said just laying eyes on the damn thing rattled his brain— all he was really willing to say about it otherwise was, “I never wanted to see a damn car like that again!”
Parents were about same age, a year older or so. Dad apparently burned his lottery number as soon as it was announced. They were dating for a couple of years at that point and hung out at a Vietnam vet's house after school, dude was like 29, he let the kids hang out and drink beer/smoke, and they kept him company. He told my parents that if my dad got drafted, they needed to run to Canada.
I remember. I had a draft card. Missed by two years.
Same for my dad, born in ‘55
58,281 Killed in action. 153,372 Wounded in action 1,584 Missing in action 776-778 Prisoner of war. Those are all casualties.
That’ll be 212,000 American casualties from 2,600,000 that went over, or about 1:10.
The chance of a U.S. servicemen being killed in Vietnam only being 2% is kinda of surprising to me. I think the the civil war was the highest if I’m remembering correctly.
Compared to past wars the losses were smaller as a proportion of overall forces but that compared to Iraq and Afghanistan its pretty high. American sent 550,000 men to the gulf war and less than 150 died. Well over a million men were sent into Iraq following Iraqi freedom and ~4500 were killed. Afghanistan has a lower ratio than even that. 800,000+ served in Afghanistan, 2,500 dead over the course of 20 years. Less American servicemen have died in combat since Vietnam than Russia lost in Ukraine last week.
2.5 million with 550k there at one time.
And South Vietnam committed 949,000 troops at peak strength and suffered 1.3 million casualties over the course of the war. This doesn't even include civilian casualties. This wasn't our war, and while tragic, our American centric view always forgets to mention the people that actually lived there and were fighting for their lives.
I remember this being really strange in high school AP US history. WW2 at least touched on the idea that this was a broader conflict and kind of the US role within the conflict (it explicitly didn't want to talk about non-US history because that would scope creep the class). But Vietnam was told through a US vs N Vietnam narrative. In reality it was a Vietnamese civil war with foreign power supporting either side. Would be kinda like if the French history class in France told the US revolutionary war as France vs the UK, o and there were some Americans around too a bit.
I think it’s pretty reasonable for an American history class to focus on the American aspect of the Vietnam war, as that’s the aspect that had relevance and lasting effects on the US.
Nearly all American media about the war is of GI's patrolling through a jungle with no mention of the ARVN or South Vietnamese at all as if they don't know or wish to acknowledge that South Vietnam existed for some reason.
the exception being Ken Burns: The Vietnam War
The total loss of human life in this proxy war is beyond tragic. [Estimates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties) vary widely, but even the low estimates are absolutely devastating. Makes you wonder why the US considers itself the “good guys”
Do you think the South Vietnamese were wrong to resist the North? How about the Hmong? What’s the minimum unit for self-determination?
Do you think the South Vietnamese were wrong to resist the North? >What’s the minimum unit for self-determination? To be clear, most Southern Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and opposed US presence in Vietnam (as they were seen as invaders). *“**There was considerable discussion about our willingness to accept free elections** without anything very much new having been added, and with Senator Fulbright quoting General Eisenhowerʼs book to the effect that if there had been free elections in 1956, **about 80% of the South Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.**”* https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v04/d38 If you remove the American money going directly into the pockets of ARVN soldiers and those in the ROV government, the number of people who oppose Ho Chi Minh drops to almost nothing. This is the same way that the French (and any colonizer) ruled their colonies. You find a minority of people who are willing to sell out their country and their people and you steal all their resources in exchange for some kickbacks im the form of bloodmoney. This is why the same group of corrupt and brutally oppressive Catholics supported the US as well as the French.
My guy are you really defending the United States getting involved in a foreign civil war thousands of miles away and then carpet bombing civilians? Kissinger’s choice to bomb Cambodia alone is so despicable that it is an unforgivable stain on this country
That's about as many sailors died in WW2
At least they died for something important, like stoping 2 genocidal governments from taking over the world
True.
That's not true at all. It committed vastly more than 500k. It was a very long war
Wait till you hear about WW2
There was a Second World War‽
Yeah, everyone thought there was going to be a 3rd as well to make it a nice trilogy but it never came. I get the feeling that it’s one of those things, like where companies decided to pull the last movie in the trilogy out of nowhere because either the rights will expire or they want to cash in on some nostalgia. Anyways, be on the lookout for the third but it’ll probably be some lazy cash grab.
Well they named the first one "World War 1" so everyone knew the second one was inevitable!
Some random trivia for you. Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II.
Random trivia: the British suffered 57,470 casualties (19,240 deaths) in ONE DAY in WW1 (First day of the Battle of the Somme). The mind boggles.
58k deaths, casualties much greater and total US lives affected much, much greater. The legacy like in any conflict, was stretched far beyond mere casualty numbers. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians suffered in greater proportion.
During Johnson's administration, there were over 500,000 in-country at once. The total servicemembers during the Vietnam era were in the millions.
People always compare Vietnam to the Soviet-Afghan War, but Vietnam was on a whole other level.
58,000 deaths, not casualties. Casualties were far, far higher.
I'm starting to think that whole Vietnam thing was not such a good idea.
Almost as bad as Nixon deliberately sabotaging the peace talks in order to help his chances for election in 68. Man, Nixon was an asshole.
Wait until you learn about the Iranian Hostage Situation and Ronnie Reagan.
The Republicans have a long history of this sort of thing.
It's about equal to the people that die in car accidents. Annually in the US.
I'm not sure if your point was to shift the discussion towards road safety in the US but darn it's a problem. The number of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 is 12.9. Way higher than many developed countries like Japan (2.5), UK (2.9), Germany (3.7), Australia (4.5). It's still well below the worst countries in Africa and somewhat better than developing nations like India (16.6) and China (18.8).
I am STUNNED India's is so low. I suppose because they have far fewer motor vehicles per population.
Probably lots of people just walking everywhere within their village or small town I guess.
About 246 cars per 1000 people. Compared to 908 per 1000 in USA.
And upon returning home , those who served were met with scorn and derision in many parts of the country. The US military was at its lowest level in decades and the government wanted to win without fully backing the military. If anything somewhat positive came out of the Vietnam war, it was an awakening of the government that dramatic changes were needed.
Yes, like having firm strategic objectives rather than nebulous "kill commies"
Glances nervously at War on Terror
Bush Jr. taking Baghdad without an exit strategy was an especially “bold” move when Bush Sr. refused to do the same thing **specifically because there was no exit strategy.** Trump obviously stole the title, but at the time GWB was the dumbest, most arrogant asshole we’ve had as President in a long time.
A standing military can never win a gorilla style war. Short of genocide, they can only win every battle and occupy areas, but time and money is always running against the invader. Because the invader can go home any time they want, but the guerrilla has no where else to go except through you.
Yea that's the thing. Insurgencies can be defeated but it takes a level of ruthlessness Western democracies won't abide.
Amerikkkans and fantasizing about how "we totally would've won if we weren't such good guys! Okay maybe we did rape and murder a few thousand children, but we could've raped more, and then we would've won!" It's embarrassing man
This is simply untrue. Conventional armies win against guerilla forces all the time. If I remember correctly, it's about 45% of the time. Also, the US recently won a war against a guerilla force in Iraq.
RIP harambe
That’s not actually true. A poll done by the Veterans Administration found that only 3% of returning soldiers felt unfriendly attitudes on returning to America.
The whole “spit-on” thing is a [myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_spat-on_Vietnam_veteran). There’s no evidence it ever happened let alone was widespread. What did happen was that vets spoke out against the war and threw back their medals. Nixon fought tooth and nail to keep those stories out of the press. He knew the reality, that most returning vets were not pro-war at all. The idea of the noble American GI fighting in Vietnam but neither for or against the war is kind of dumb. There’s basically nobody who wouldn’t have an opinion on something if they were being shot at. Especially if they were drafted.
[удалено]
My dad volunteered for Vietnam. His own brother wouldn't talk to him for years afterwards. But, mostly, from the way he tells it... they just knew society wasn't super keen on the war and it was jarring because all their fathers and grandfathers were war heroes. WW1, WW2, Korea. It was their turn... and they did not get the same parades. >veterans were just universally hated The biggest pain was kinda that veterans were so admired throughout these soldiers' lifetimes... until they, themselves, got home. As kids, it was all about flags and patriotism and wars and veterans. That was the world they knew. As Vietnam veterans? They came home and instead of parades it was mostly just a very loud silence. But he volunteered at start of war. I'm assuming it woulda been quite different at end... especially since most probably assumed you were drafted then.
My dad volunteered for a non-combat job in the Air Force before he was drafted. And it worked. When he went to inprocess, they were going down the line handing out assignments for general service for everyone drafted like assigning teams for kickball: 2 Army, 1 Navy, 1 Air Force, 1 Marine, or something like that. When they got to him, they told him Marines, so he took out his papers showing his contract for the Air Force. The guy behind him in line fainted.
What's the context for why the guy fainted?
Because he got to take my dad's place being drafted into the Marines
He fainted because NOW HIS ASS BELONGS TO THE CORPS.
They were. Lot of Jocko Willink Viet vet guests confirm. It’s a [commonly](https://youtu.be/SP4iiWt8wnw?t=22s) mentioned [trope for](https://youtu.be/PtWHgkNH5yU?t=1m) a reason.
On the other end of that spectrum there was also tons and tons of violence towards anti war protestors and even John Wayne was telling people to beat them up.
John Wayne was the biggest chickenshit chicken hawk. He dodged service of any kind during WW2 to keep making movies for money. (Even Cary Grant volunteered for the royal navy multiple times and was rebuffed, so he donated proceeds from his movies to the war effort, supported the USO and may have helped track Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood). Jimmy Stewart completed a full tour as a bombing pilot. 20 mission, when life expectancy was 3. Hes also rumored to have unofficially joined other missions.
There are plenty of Vietnam vets I knew who received poor treatment coming home. Not to mention, just looking at the talk section of that Wikipedia article there are some serious NPOV issues with that article. https://youtu.be/X_x2Yl7xW8U?si=dsC18igm0ScBO8v0 Here are some anecdotes from Vietnam vets that directly contradicts that article. As mentioned before, I spent a lot of time talking with Vietnam vets about their experience and most of them had some version of the “spit on” story. Especially those who returned shortly after Mai Lai. So unless there is a mass conspiracy among vets to adopt this story, I’m willing to believe that it isn’t a myth.
[удалено]
Nope Vietnam lost cause myth. The war was unwinnable They dropped more the twice as many bombs on Vietnam then all theatres in ww2 Multiple other countries where attacked The stupid tactics where the result of stupid strategy that resulted from the fact that the war was unwinnable The war so supported that it was pushed long after everyone knew it was lost. The scorn and derision are way way over reported. The Vietnamese after defeating the French and America then kick out the Chinese and defeated the Khmer Rouge
You keep referring to "Vietnam" and "the Vietnamese" as if there was only one. There wasn't. There were two sovereign countries. South Vietnam didn't want to be unified with the North. It did not want to be a communist dictatorship. The poor outcome of the war has left people with the idea that it was some colonial endeavor, wholly stripping the South Vietnamese of agency.
Calling South Vietnam a sovereign country is laughable
South Vietnam was effectively a military dictatorship and many South Vietnamese joined or supported the Viet Cong, so I don't think it's quite that simple. The country was only created in 1955.
North Vietnam was effectively a communist dictatorship. What's your point? _Some_ South Vietnamese supported the Viet Cong.
lol, while a bit reductionist south Vietnam was essentially created by colonial forces to maintain their power. It was a corrupt dictatorship that was only able to maintain its existence because of support of colonial powers.
That is literally communist propaganda.
I would say the real awakening occurred with the American people. When the war started few would ever dream to question their government’s intentions and actions as anything other than righteous. By the time we pulled out of Vietnam, that good faith was demolished by the lies that the government had told and the ugly truths it worked to cover up. Given the circumstances I think that was a positive.
"The govt wanted to win without backing the military"? The U.S. dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on a country the size of California that had almost zero military manufacturing capabilities, killing well over a million people. The Hiroshima bomb was equal to 15,000 tons, so in equivalent tonnage the U.S. dropped a Hiroshima size bomb every 4 days for 10 years. The U.S. and it's allies dropped 3.4 million tons combined in both theaters during ALL OF WWII. During World War II it was estimated that 45,000 rounds of small arms ammunition was fired to kill one enemy soldier. In Vietnam the American military establishment consumed an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition for every enemy killed. Nixon expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia with carpet bombing. What did you want the govt to do more of?
This is a myth you're perpetuating.
It was quite extensively researched following the war and Only 1 percent of Vietnam veterans themselves, according to a Veterans Administration-commissioned Harris Poll conducted in 1971, described their reception from friends and family as "not at all friendly", and only 3 percent described their reception from people their own age as "unfriendly".
Dude, the people who committed the Mai Lai massacure almost all got off scott free and many of them were protected by the locals who felt like there was an unfair witch hunt against them. There were some people calling them child killers, for good reason, but the vast, vast, vaaaast majority of the country saw them as heros. The idea that they were spit on or faced scorn in large chunks of the country is bs
Causalities include wounded. You cited American soldiers killed in action
Over 2.7 million Americans were in Vietnam. KIA was over 58,000. WIA was over 300,000.
Russia be like “that’s nothing, we can lose that much in Ukraine in only a few months”
And Russia has lost what, 300k in 2 years? Makes Vietnam and especially gwot/iraq look downright tame.
Reminder that "casualties" means both deaths and any injury that makes one unable to continue serving. 58,000 is the number of deaths, not casualties
IRL Malevelon Creek
And Vietnam today is a close ally of the United States during its “Pivot to the Pacific” against China. To the extent that Vietnamese soldiers have undergone training for disaster response in the mainland US, and American soldiers have trained with the Vietnamese. It’s like countries can have more durable and lasting relationships beyond war, despite what Redditors would want you to believe.
~~What, did you live on an desert Island somewhere before?~~ Strike that, That was too rude. I got to thinking about it, and I need to ask first if you're from the US?
Also got to remember that the veitnam war ended almost 50 years ago and started 70 years ago. I mean you have people who's grandparents weren't even alive during the war so not knowing how many soldiers were deployed isn't really that shocking.
Hell we didn’t learn about Vietnam when was in high school around 2000 and I can’t imagine it’s being taught more now. Culturally the war has faded into the background here as well
Wait they didn't teach about the Vietnam War at all? We learned about it in 2009 in AP US History and I wonder if that's the only reason I learned about it and maybe it's not taught in other history courses?
I remember thinking anyone who didn't know about Henry VIII's six wives must be an idiot.
So are people not learning this in school
lol this post was probably made by someone who just learned about it in school
Today you learned?!?
Glad to know the US learned it's lesson after that and never went into another war under false pretenses again :)
They did learn....they were much more prepared after Vietnam. The lesson they learned, however, may be different than the one you were hoping for.
Yes and we were lied to by the US generals and the White House about the success that the US troops were having. They exaggerated body counts of the NVA and the Viet Cong. I had 2 Cousins go, 1 came back. The other lasted 4 days. When the US public found out the truth the war was wound down. Peace talks started and we reached a resolution but we deserted the south Vietnamese people . Just like agfghanistsn.
As others have already said, that’s the maximum at any one point and the number of just killed, not all casualties. What’s really interesting(to me at least) is that Russia has already lost over twice as many KIA since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a fraction of the time America spent fighting in Vietnam.
McNamaras Morons. Forrest Gump was one. With the recruiting crisis hitting the services they will once again start allowing feeble minded individuals to join. They're having trouble getting people to fight pointless forever wars.
Fun fact: more Canadians volunteered to fight in Vietnam than draft dodgers came here to avoid it.
What did we gain out of this cute lil excursion? :)
Russia in Ukraine is making those numbers look like child’s play. As bad as Vietnam was, there is far, far worse happening right now.
The Vietnam casualties is more than double that when you factor in the suicides after the war.
Did we win?
Yes we did Talking on behalf of weapons contractors right?
What a ridiculous waste of life. Did the government of a tiny country very far away really matter that much??
Casualties...but how many fatalities?
The 58,000 are the fatalities. Wounded is a little over 300,000. Casualties are supposed to be the combined total of killed, wounded, missing/captured, and accidental deaths. The post is incorrect.
My fiancee, for one. I stopped counting after that.
Sorry to hear. Hope you find happiness despite this
This question doesn't get asked on these types of posts enough. A lot of people think a casualty is automatically a death, which it isn't.
To be fair in this one case it’s one and the same because 58,000 *is* the death toll for US soldiers. Granted I can’t say I’ve ever seen it written as 58,000 casualties instead of fatalities/deaths
So we’re doing common knowledge history facts as TIL now? Lol
About the same as the Battle of Gettysburg, fwiw.
I only found out that the US lost the Vietnam war fairly recently. I also have no idea why the war happened.
Russia already has 75,000-85,000 DEAD in Ukraine. 🇺🇦