Have you considered what the Ho Chi Minh Trail actually was?
Yes. I never claimed there was no military objective behind it.
Did it really never occur to you that the North Vietnamese Army might actually have been capable of a logistical effort that merited such a response?
Killing 100,000+ civilians in order to try to damage a supply line supportive of legitimate military action is not merited in my opinion. Nor was our invasion of North Vietnam in the first place.
Travis said:
If defending a sovereign nation from from an invasion
There was no invasion of South Vietnam. There was an insurgency against South Vientam's brutal government.
If you'd like to know more about the South Vietnamese government and how the insurgency started:
"The elections were held, with Diệm's brother and confidant Ngô Đình Nhu, the leader of the family's Can Lao Party, which supplied Diệm's electoral base, organising and supervising the elections.[12][13] Campaigning for Bảo Đại was prohibited, and the result was rigged, with Bảo Đại supporters attacked by Nhu's workers. Diệm recorded 98.2% of the vote, including 605,025 votes in Saigon, where only 450,000 voters were registered. Diệm's tally also exceeded the registration numbers in other districts.[12][14] Three days later, Diệm proclaimed the formation of the Republic of Vietnam, naming himself President."
"
Diệm's rule was authoritarian and nepotistic. His most trusted official was his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, leader of the primary pro-Diệm Can Lao political party, who was an opium addict and admirer of Adolf Hitler.
He modeled the Can Lao secret police's marching style and torture styles on Nazi designs.[18[16][17]"
"Diệm was also passionately anti-Communist.
Tortures and killings of "communist suspects" were committed on a daily basis. The death toll was put at around 50,000 with 75,000 imprisonments, and Diệm's effort extended beyond communists to anti-communist dissidents and anti-corruption whistleblowers.[26]"
"As opposition to Diệm's rule in South Vietnam grew, a low-level insurgency began to take shape there in 1957. Finally, in January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were being successfully targeted by Diệm's secret police, Hanoi's Central Committee issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South. On 20 December 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in order to overthrow the government of the south. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the government and were nationalists; and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regrouping of 1954 as well as those who had since come from the north, together with local peasants."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem
Lovely, eh? And by Eisenhower's estimate 80% of the Vietnamese would have voted with the north had the 1954 Geneva Convention elections taken place.
by a neighbor without a concurrent counterinvasion or specific policy of social/cultural group elimination is now considered "genocide" then I think that term has now lost all useful meaning.
I conceded not calling it "genocide".
All you might want to know is this: when did the boat people appear? While the US was there or after the Communists took power?
So more people started leaving Vietnam country after we blew it to ******
