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Bad ideas in military history

bignickel said:
Hey that reminds me: anyone have a single volume book on the Vietnam War they can recommend? Preferably starting with the French Army being let back in after WW2 ended.
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The ten thousand day war is pretty well regarded. Its only shortcoming is that it was written in 1981 and some later revelations may have come up since:

The Ten Thousand Day War : Vietnam 1945-1975: MacLear, Michael: 9780312790943: Amazon.com: Books

The Ten Thousand Day War : Vietnam 1945-1975 [MacLear, Michael] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Ten Thousand Day War : Vietnam 1945-1975
www.amazon.com
 
bignickel said:
How about Vietnam for “never get into a land war in Southeast Asia”?

Hey that reminds me: anyone have a single volume book on the Vietnam War they can recommend? Preferably starting with the French Army being let back in after WW2 ended.
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Everyone talks about Vietnam like the US lost on the battlefield. The truth is, the US won every decisive battle. Decisively. South Vietnam only fell after the US withdrew its forces for misguided political reasons. And the public has been misguided about Vietnam ever since.

bignickel said:
Asking for a friend, natch.
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Why you pronounce this nonsense?
 
theprestige said:
Everyone talks about Vietnam like the US lost on the battlefield. The truth is, the US won every decisive battle. Decisively. South Vietnam only fell after the US withdrew its forces for misguided political reasons. And the public has been misguided about Vietnam ever since.


Why you pronounce this nonsense?
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Yeah. If those misguided politicians had more sense young Americans could still be dying in southeast Asia to this very day! "Be the next one on your block to have your boy come home in a box".
 
theprestige said:
Why you pronounce this nonsense?
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Sorry, that was my little joke: I opened a thread asking for a Vietnam War book but didn’t get any responses for one. So thought I’d ask here.

(And “land war in southwest Asia” was “Princess Bride”; couldn’t resist ;) )
 
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theprestige said:
Everyone talks about Vietnam like the US lost on the battlefield. The truth is, the US won every decisive battle. Decisively. South Vietnam only fell after the US withdrew its forces for misguided political reasons. And the public has been misguided about Vietnam ever since.
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Turned out that South Vietnam was never worth propping up in the first place, and North Vietnam wasn't as bad and scary as it was made out to be. After we left, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled the genocidal Khmer Rouge (a good thing), and China and Vietnam ended up going to war with each other. The whole reason for the US being there in the first place was misguided.

Nowadays, you can travel to Vietnam, even as an American. It's not some sort of dystopia. Not saying it's perfect there. No place is perfect. But it's hardly the most tyrannical or dangerous regime. The whole war was a waste of blood and treasure for the US.
 
Back when I was a useful member of society, I managed international aid projects for deafblind people (on betala of SIDA and the Swedish Association of the DeafBlind) in a couple of African countries, which was nightmarish; I'd wake up, get to work, and realise that all the staff we had educated for the school for deafblind children we'd set up had been switched out for friends and relatives of the local politicians, and all the educated. There were lots of good, caring, committed people around, but the corruption destroyed pretty much everything, and most politicians didn't really care about improving things for their communities. We tried, and tried, but finally we had to give up on those schools.

Vietnam was wonderful in comparison - yes, there was corruption; we did have to have inside help to navigate our interactions with local politicians and civil servants - society as a whole supported and helped us, there were programmes for minorities, so it was easy to locate all deafblind kids, and the attitude towards us was incredibly positive, as was the readiness to continue our work when we left. And the schools are still there.

Kind of ot, sorry!
 
Puppycow said:
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Nowadays, you can travel to Vietnam, even as an American. It's not some sort of dystopia. Not saying it's perfect there. No place is perfect. But it's hardly the most tyrannical or dangerous regime. The whole war was a waste of blood and treasure for the US.
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That's still damn very relative. Still dictatorship with better PR
 
Klimax said:
That's still damn very relative. Still dictatorship with better PR
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So what though? South Vietnam was also a dictatorship with equally bad human rights. What were we fighting for? To stop the spread of communism. And yet, we could have been friendly with Vietnam if only we had realized that the communist world was not one united bloc all marching to the same tune.
 
In Vietnam the Western powers were propping up a corrupt dictatorship that was hardly an improvement relative to the communist dictatorship that they were fighting. It can be argued that it was the war that caused the communists to take a turn for the worse.
 
bignickel said:
How about Vietnam for “never get into a land war in Southeast Asia”?

Hey that reminds me: anyone have a single volume book on the Vietnam War they can recommend? Preferably starting with the French Army being let back in after WW2 ended.

Asking for a friend, natch.
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" A Bright Shining Lie" is very good. It's a bit more than just a biography. Even if it doesn't quite fit your bill


A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan | Goodreads https://share.google/sBtrvrvVppiOE5Kpr
 
steenkh said:
In Vietnam the Western powers were propping up a corrupt dictatorship that was hardly an improvement relative to the communist dictatorship that they were fighting. It can be argued that it was the war that caused the communists to take a turn for the worse.
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See the book I recommended just after your post.

John Paul Van wrote a memo saying that the North Vietnamese government was more closely aligned with the American Dream than the South Vietnamese
 
jimbob said:
John Paul Van wrote a memo saying that the North Vietnamese government was more closely aligned with the American Dream than the South Vietnamese
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I haven't read "A Bright Shining Lie" but I have read that the declaration of independence for Vietnam right after the Second World War was based on the US Declaration of Independence, complete with equal rights and democracy. Whether Ho Chi Minh ever intended to honour it, or if it was just propaganda to gain support, we'll never find out.

Before independence could be gained, there was a war to be fought, and I believe that the ruthless human wave attacks used were worse than the tactics used by the Russians in the Ukraine war. Dictatorships are more effective at wringing the last drop of blood out of the population.
 
There is also that after the US and France got out, China thought it would be a good idea to invade.

The Vietnamese were almost continuously at war from 1940 to about 1980.
 
Puppycow said:
Turned out that South Vietnam was never worth propping up in the first place, and North Vietnam wasn't as bad and scary as it was made out to be. After we left, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled the genocidal Khmer Rouge (a good thing), and China and Vietnam ended up going to war with each other. The whole reason for the US being there in the first place was misguided.

Nowadays, you can travel to Vietnam, even as an American. It's not some sort of dystopia. Not saying it's perfect there. No place is perfect. But it's hardly the most tyrannical or dangerous regime. The whole war was a waste of blood and treasure for the US.
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The Vietnamese are doing lots of good work in animal welfare.
 
jimbob said:
He was a humane, brave, brilliant man, who was somehow a civilian general. And also a horrible misogynist.
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I was curious what the hell a civilian general is so I looked him up. A civilian commanding troops, WTF? Why not just recall him to active duty rather than the weird sort of kind of recalled but not really?

As to the rest of it, sure, lots of humane brilliant folks in history who had blaring blind spots about women and others that they didn't see as quite equal.
 
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