MIT Rocket Scientist: White House Claims on Syria Chemical Attack “Cannot Be True”

[Crazy Eddie]

Again, the South Vietnamese did ask us for our help.

No they didn't. Ngo Dinh Diem asked for our help. We were, in fact, the ONLY ones he could have asked for help because WE were the ones who put him in power in the first place and nobody else -- including his own generals -- thought he could govern his way out of a wet napkin.

This with Syria is not the same thing. It is totally arbitrary.

It's not arbitrary at all. We have a geopolitical agenda that we supply to the world as a set of laws we expect them to follow. This America's will IS the law, and we expect them to obey it or suffer the consequences.

In Vietnam, the law was "You can't have communism. No, we don't care if your people voted for it. No, we don't care if a foreign power split up your country against your will and you're putting it back together under terms you all agreed to. No, we don't care if you think you have the right to govern yourselves. You can't have communism. Now shut up and buy my rifles."

Let me ask you this. If you are in a conflict with people who are truly out to kill you any way you can, are you going to sit by and let those people do what ever they want to, or are you going to fight them any way you can?

Of course not. Which is why the Vietnamese fought us as hard as they did and used the tactics they did. They wanted us OUT of their country, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make us leave. They eventually succeeded, we lost the war, and they wound up unifying the country under a single government.

Which is exactly what WOULD have happened if we hadn't intervened, except that if we hadn't gotten involved it wouldn't have taken 12 years and cost half a million lives, and arguably, probably would have prevented the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

I do agree that we weren't the good guys in Vietnam, but to ignore the other things that were happening and focus only on America. well. we really the bad guys you want us to be.

We invaded another country, bombed a bunch of their cities, killed hundreds of thousands of their people, assassinated hundreds of their leaders, poisoned their water, butchered their farmers, raped a bunch of their women and propped up every tin-plated asshole dictator we could find as long as he promised to fight communists.

That pretty much makes us the bad guys.

Whether or not any other side could be called good guys is what's debatable. It's not up for debate, though, that our involvement in Vietnam was not necessary, nor was our conduct ultimately justifiable.

Except on the matter of America being the world's police. It is not something I will support.

Evidently you DO, in some situations. Maybe you should be more specific?

 

[Rayschism]

No they didn't. Ngo Dinh Diem asked for our help. We were, in fact, the ONLY ones he could have asked for help because WE were the ones who put him in power in the first place and nobody else -- including his own generals -- thought he could govern his way out of a wet napkin.

This with Syria is not the same thing. It is totally arbitrary.

It's not arbitrary at all. We have a geopolitical agenda that we supply to the world as a set of laws we expect them to follow. This America's will IS the law, and we expect them to obey it or suffer the consequences.

In Vietnam, the law was "You can't have communism. No, we don't care if your people voted for it. No, we don't care if a foreign power split up your country against your will and you're putting it back together under terms you all agreed to. No, we don't care if you think you have the right to govern yourselves. You can't have communism. Now shut up and buy my rifles."

Let me ask you this. If you are in a conflict with people who are truly out to kill you any way you can, are you going to sit by and let those people do what ever they want to, or are you going to fight them any way you can?

Of course not. Which is why the Vietnamese fought us as hard as they did and used the tactics they did. They wanted us OUT of their country, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make us leave. They eventually succeeded, we lost the war, and they wound up unifying the country under a single government.

Which is exactly what WOULD have happened if we hadn't intervened, except that if we hadn't gotten involved it wouldn't have taken 12 years and cost half a million lives, and arguably, probably would have prevented the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

I do agree that we weren't the good guys in Vietnam, but to ignore the other things that were happening and focus only on America. well. we really the bad guys you want us to be.

We invaded another country, bombed a bunch of their cities, killed hundreds of thousands of their people, assassinated hundreds of their leaders, poisoned their water, butchered their farmers, raped a bunch of their women and propped up every tin-plated asshole dictator we could find as long as he promised to fight communists.

That pretty much makes us the bad guys.

Whether or not any other side could be called good guys is what's debatable. It's not up for debate, though, that our involvement in Vietnam was not necessary, nor was our conduct ultimately justifiable.

Except on the matter of America being the world's police. It is not something I will support.

Evidently you DO, in some situations. Maybe you should be more specific?

It depends upon the specific conflict and the causes of the specific conflict. Again, I do not agree we are the bad guys BECAUSE WE WERE ASKED TO BE THERE.

Some conflicts we were not the aggressors.

And ignoring those causes is ludicrous and seeing our actions, and criticizing only our actions while ignoring the actions of the other forces and people is just as ludicrous.

I have no more to say. Thanks for the conversation.

 

[bilby]

No they didn't. Ngo Dinh Diem asked for our help. We were, in fact, the ONLY ones he could have asked for help because WE were the ones who put him in power in the first place and nobody else -- including his own generals -- thought he could govern his way out of a wet napkin.


It's not arbitrary at all. We have a geopolitical agenda that we supply to the world as a set of laws we expect them to follow. This America's will IS the law, and we expect them to obey it or suffer the consequences.

In Vietnam, the law was "You can't have communism. No, we don't care if your people voted for it. No, we don't care if a foreign power split up your country against your will and you're putting it back together under terms you all agreed to. No, we don't care if you think you have the right to govern yourselves. You can't have communism. Now shut up and buy my rifles."

Let me ask you this. If you are in a conflict with people who are truly out to kill you any way you can, are you going to sit by and let those people do what ever they want to, or are you going to fight them any way you can?

Of course not. Which is why the Vietnamese fought us as hard as they did and used the tactics they did. They wanted us OUT of their country, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make us leave. They eventually succeeded, we lost the war, and they wound up unifying the country under a single government.

Which is exactly what WOULD have happened if we hadn't intervened, except that if we hadn't gotten involved it wouldn't have taken 12 years and cost half a million lives, and arguably, probably would have prevented the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

I do agree that we weren't the good guys in Vietnam, but to ignore the other things that were happening and focus only on America. well. we really the bad guys you want us to be.

We invaded another country, bombed a bunch of their cities, killed hundreds of thousands of their people, assassinated hundreds of their leaders, poisoned their water, butchered their farmers, raped a bunch of their women and propped up every tin-plated asshole dictator we could find as long as he promised to fight communists.

That pretty much makes us the bad guys.

Whether or not any other side could be called good guys is what's debatable. It's not up for debate, though, that our involvement in Vietnam was not necessary, nor was our conduct ultimately justifiable.

Except on the matter of America being the world's police. It is not something I will support.

Evidently you DO, in some situations. Maybe you should be more specific?

It depends upon the specific conflict and the causes of the specific conflict. Again, I do not agree we are the bad guys BECAUSE WE WERE ASKED TO BE THERE.

By a small clique of unrepresentative people who wanted control of the country in direct contradiction of a democratic vote.

Some conflicts we were not the aggressors.

You were in Vietnam.

And ignoring those causes is ludicrous and seeing our actions, and criticizing only our actions while ignoring the actions of the other forces and people is just as ludicrous.

I have no more to say. Thanks for the conversation.

If the Chinese Army invaded the USA and declared Jill Stein President, Would that not count as an act of aggression by China, if they were asked to be there by Ms Stein?

The American people would be up in arms, and would throw the Chinese out by whatever means they could, even if the Chinese were to use overwhelming force in their attempt to establish Stein as the ruler of the USA.

Now replace Stein with Ngo Dinh Diem, the USA with Vietnam, and China with the USA, and you have an almost exact analogy with the Vietnam War - the only difference being that the US military is not far smaller than the Chinese, while the NVA was utterly dwarfed by the US military. But they still won.

 

[barbos]

So did the Vietcong backed by the soviet Union.

Again, the South Vietnamese did ask us for our help.

This is not the same thing.

The similarity though is congress did not declare war on Vietnam which is why it was called a police action.

But, it was also a part of the Indochina wars and our cold war conflict with the former Soviet Union.

This with Syria is not the same thing. It is totally arbitrary.

Let me ask you this. If you are in a conflict with people who are truly out to kill you any way you can, are you going to sit by and let those people do what ever they want to, or are you going to fight them any way you can?

You may want to be honorable, but how can you be honorable when they will resort to any dirty rotten trick they will?

I do agree that we weren't the good guys in Vietnam, but to ignore the other things that were happening and focus only on America. well. we really the bad guys you want us to be.

With Syria there is no cold war going on. To the best of my knowledge, it is not part of a larger war. To the best of my knowledge, it is not backed by another superpower. I might be wrong on this, but I don't think so. So, i think that we'll have to agree to disagree. At least for now.

Except on the matter of America being the world's police. It is not something I will support. On this specific part I think we both agree.

I speak about the things America did because I am American and I care about what is done in my name. It is my duty as a citizen in a democracy, where we are ethically responsible for the actions of our democratically elected leaders. The war in Vietnam was us wading into a conflict that for the Vietnamese had roots 1000 years old dating from their struggles with independence from China. The French were relative new-comers to being foreign rulers over the Vietnamese people. We supported the French in their efforts to maintain Imperial dominion over the Vietnamese, and when they were finally thrown ousted, we install and back Diem in the South because he was rabidly anti-communist, not for any humanitarian considerations. But Diem had no legitimacy, and he himself murdered thousands of political opponents. His reign was so unpopular that people were burning themselves alive in protest. But this is the man we decide to back. And when we invaded, we were just another in a long line of tyrants seeking to rule over the Vietnamese. It was a struggle we were never going to win, born out of historical and cultural ignorance and naivety. The Vietnamese had no desire to be ruled by Moscow or Beijing, as our policy makers had assumed. I was told as much by Robert McNamara himself, and he made similar claims on record in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." There is also an excellent documentary about the him called Fog of War which every American should watch, about McNamara and the lessons he thinks America needs to learn.

But back to Syria. Syria is currently backed by Russia, and has been their strategic allies for decades. The US State Department and CIA has been wanting to topple the Assad regime for decades to (surprise surprise). It's the same stupid thinking that got us into Vietnam, that we must counter Russian influence everywhere by any means possible, given to us by essentially the same people. It leads us to ignore the local context of the conflicts.

But yes, we agree that the US shouldn't be the world's police.

Both sides were running around signing up allies during Cold War
The difference is, USSR with their socialism had wider support among people in these countries, whereas US and their imperialism had to rely on dictators and assholes. But USSR did support few assholes in Africa. Surprising part is that US just kept doing after whey won the Cold War. They still consider Russia an enemy which has to be undermined at every step.

 

[fromderinside]

Both sides were running around signing up allies during Cold War
The difference is, USSR with their socialism had wider support among people in these countries, whereas US and their imperialism had to rely on dictators and assholes. But USSR did support few assholes in Africa. Surprising part is that US just kept doing after whey won the Cold War. They still consider Russia an enemy which has to be undermined at every step.

Idealogues in places where there is nothing, unlikely to be anything, and without ambition to work within their country for change always clamor support from People's states, if for no other reason their title has 'people' in it. Those who have some working institutions tend to look more favorably on those states that have working institutions and people who know how to start them, build them and assure they work. As it turns out states from both ilks went to both this and that bipolar struggler.

Funny thing is that states that people fear other states because they seem to destabilize do destabilize and states that people see as having stable institutions do have stable institutions. The proof of the pudding is that the USSR collapsed for want of stable institutions while the US became the greatest power on earth because of it's stable institutions. The jury is out on China, but, it may be that they have sufficiently stable institutions to become the second greatest power, perhaps the greatest power, on this planet.

 

[J842P]

I speak about the things America did because I am American and I care about what is done in my name. It is my duty as a citizen in a democracy, where we are ethically responsible for the actions of our democratically elected leaders. The war in Vietnam was us wading into a conflict that for the Vietnamese had roots 1000 years old dating from their struggles with independence from China. The French were relative new-comers to being foreign rulers over the Vietnamese people. We supported the French in their efforts to maintain Imperial dominion over the Vietnamese, and when they were finally thrown ousted, we install and back Diem in the South because he was rabidly anti-communist, not for any humanitarian considerations. But Diem had no legitimacy, and he himself murdered thousands of political opponents. His reign was so unpopular that people were burning themselves alive in protest. But this is the man we decide to back. And when we invaded, we were just another in a long line of tyrants seeking to rule over the Vietnamese. It was a struggle we were never going to win, born out of historical and cultural ignorance and naivety. The Vietnamese had no desire to be ruled by Moscow or Beijing, as our policy makers had assumed. I was told as much by Robert McNamara himself, and he made similar claims on record in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." There is also an excellent documentary about the him called Fog of War which every American should watch, about McNamara and the lessons he thinks America needs to learn.

But back to Syria. Syria is currently backed by Russia, and has been their strategic allies for decades. The US State Department and CIA has been wanting to topple the Assad regime for decades to (surprise surprise). It's the same stupid thinking that got us into Vietnam, that we must counter Russian influence everywhere by any means possible, given to us by essentially the same people. It leads us to ignore the local context of the conflicts.

But yes, we agree that the US shouldn't be the world's police.

Both sides were running around signing up allies during Cold War
The difference is, USSR with their socialism had wider support among people in these countries, whereas US and their imperialism had to rely on dictators and assholes. But USSR did support few assholes in Africa. Surprising part is that US just kept doing after whey won the Cold War. They still consider Russia an enemy which has to be undermined at every step.

Yes. In both countries, hardliners were pushing aggressive foreign policy and acted incredibly paranoid of foreign threats. It really is not shocking given the backdrop of two world wars and a global economic depression. Nevertheless, it was misguided, unnecessary, and dangerous. I do think the only reason we avoided full-blown atomic war was because of stupid luck, a few good people on both sides in key positions of power, and the fundamental fact that both sides wanted to continue existing. It is a shame that the same psychological anvils continue to weigh us down in the 21st century. I have a hope that through greater communication between peoples we will be able to avoid overt, mass confrontation on the scale of the Great Wars of the 20th century.

Fundamentally, I think WW2 created very similar nationalistic, hero-myths in both nations. And I do not say myth to denigrate the very real heroism that occurred during WW2 for both nations. But I use the word in the sense of a national mythos. And fundamentally, both sides bought into their own propaganda. It is a frightful tendency of human group behavior. These hero-myths drove the politics on both sides.

Currently, the US sees itself as having Won the Cold War, as if such a thing were possible. It wants to see Russia as just another European country under it's sphere of influence. That's the problem with buying your own bullshit, that it makes you pursue ineffective policy because you cannot sympathize with your outgroup -- sympathize in the sense of being able to understand their motivations, which is critical for navigating human social interactions, especially on the critical, mass, scale of nation states.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A variation on Niven's law about time machines and I'm pretty sure Niven was much earlier.

If time travel to the past is possible and history can thus be altered then a time machine will never be invented. The thing is, if you can travel into the past there will always be things in history that people want to change. You'll have an eternal series of changes to the timeline until you reach the one stable state--the one where nobody invents a time machine.

Note that this does not apply to time machines causing a fork in time and it does not apply to time machines that can't travel into their own past. I don't think they should truly be called time machines, but rather time roads. You can only use the road that exists, you can't go beyond it and thus you can never block it's creation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's absurd that you think America just unilaterally decided to invade Vietnam without any kind of motivation. We were not the bad guys in Vietnam.

And we are going off topic. The topic is Syria and Trump wanting to be the world police.

I didn't say we invaded without any motivation, just not a humanitarian motivation.

We certainly were the bad guys in Vietnam. We murdered 100,000s of Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians, not to mention we used chemical weapons en masse.

And it is certainly relevant to the current discussion regarding Syria, vis a vis humanitarian concerns, and the the rank hypocrisy of supporting our own Assad in the Kingdom of Saud and their current adventures in Yemen (where 10,000s of civilians have been killed).

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

Yemen is yet another front on the eternal Sunni/Shia war. Don't blame us for it.

 

[barbos]

I didn't say we invaded without any motivation, just not a humanitarian motivation.

We certainly were the bad guys in Vietnam. We murdered 100,000s of Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians, not to mention we used chemical weapons en masse.

And it is certainly relevant to the current discussion regarding Syria, vis a vis humanitarian concerns, and the the rank hypocrisy of supporting our own Assad in the Kingdom of Saud and their current adventures in Yemen (where 10,000s of civilians have been killed).

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

None?

 

[Deepak]

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

None?

Much like in the Garden of Eden, lions and tigers were vegetarians before the US came to be.

 

[barbos]

None?

Much like in the Garden of Eden, lions and tigers were vegetarians before the US came to be.

US prolonged and spread civil war there.

 

[Deepak]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

None?

Communist takeovers are normally quite bloody.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I didn't say we invaded without any motivation, just not a humanitarian motivation.

We certainly were the bad guys in Vietnam. We murdered 100,000s of Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians, not to mention we used chemical weapons en masse.

And it is certainly relevant to the current discussion regarding Syria, vis a vis humanitarian concerns, and the the rank hypocrisy of supporting our own Assad in the Kingdom of Saud and their current adventures in Yemen (where 10,000s of civilians have been killed).

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And how many would have died had we not intervened?

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed. History says the answer is probably a lot of people.

 

[bilby]

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed. History says the answer is probably a lot of people.

Well given that his side won, this is not a hypothetical that needs a guess based on an analysis of other similar events; How many people did Ho Chi Minh's Communist Party actually kill when the war was over? Is there any reason to think that the number would have been far larger if they had gained power prior to HCM's death? Is there any reason to think that the number of Vietnamese killed by the war, plus the number killed by the CPV, gives a lower total than the number that would have been killed by the CPV had they not fought a war first? It seems unlikely to me.

Essentially, almost everyone who HCM would have killed ended up being killed (either by the CPV, or during the war); and as not all those Vietnamese killed during the war were on the CPV death list, the war can only have increased the final total of casualties. The number of Vietnamese who successfully fled the communists during and immediately after the war, surely doesn't outweigh the number killed during the war. I don't have any figures for that to hand, but it seems implausible that the total number of refugees exceeds the total Vietnamese war casualties. (And of course, there would have been some refugees who successfully escaped even had the war not occurred).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed. History says the answer is probably a lot of people.

Well given that his side won, this is not a hypothetical that needs a guess based on an analysis of other similar events; How many people did Ho Chi Minh's Communist Party actually kill when the war was over? Is there any reason to think that the number would have been far larger if they had gained power prior to HCM's death? Is there any reason to think that the number of Vietnamese killed by the war, plus the number killed by the CPV, gives a lower total than the number that would have been killed by the CPV had they not fought a war first? It seems unlikely to me.

Essentially, almost everyone who HCM would have killed ended up being killed (either by the CPV, or during the war); and as not all those Vietnamese killed during the war were on the CPV death list, the war can only have increased the final total of casualties. The number of Vietnamese who successfully fled the communists during and immediately after the war, surely doesn't outweigh the number killed during the war. I don't have any figures for that to hand, but it seems implausible that the total number of refugees exceeds the total Vietnamese war casualties. (And of course, there would have been some refugees who successfully escaped even had the war not occurred).

Many of the deaths would be during the war, don't only look at the ones after it.

 

[bilby]

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed. History says the answer is probably a lot of people.

Well given that his side won, this is not a hypothetical that needs a guess based on an analysis of other similar events; How many people did Ho Chi Minh's Communist Party actually kill when the war was over? Is there any reason to think that the number would have been far larger if they had gained power prior to HCM's death? Is there any reason to think that the number of Vietnamese killed by the war, plus the number killed by the CPV, gives a lower total than the number that would have been killed by the CPV had they not fought a war first? It seems unlikely to me.

Essentially, almost everyone who HCM would have killed ended up being killed (either by the CPV, or during the war); and as not all those Vietnamese killed during the war were on the CPV death list, the war can only have increased the final total of casualties. The number of Vietnamese who successfully fled the communists during and immediately after the war, surely doesn't outweigh the number killed during the war. I don't have any figures for that to hand, but it seems implausible that the total number of refugees exceeds the total Vietnamese war casualties. (And of course, there would have been some refugees who successfully escaped even had the war not occurred).

Many of the deaths would be during the war, don't only look at the ones after it.

I wish I had thought of that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed.

Exactly as many as he killed when he took control of North Vietnam, somewhere around 15,000 over three years.

So if you combine Ngo Din Diemh's violent purges with Ho Chi Minh's land reform, the cost of the revolution BY ITSELF was about 30,000 dead, 40,000 seriously disenfranchised or imprisoned.

The U.S. war in Vietnam, on the other hand, cost both sides over one million casualties and twice that number of civilians.

In other words, NOT getting involved would have seen the communists completing their land grab at the expense of another twenty to thirty thousand lives and a lot of villagers having their farms and livelihoods confiscated, lots of investments rendered null, and lots of otherwise very wealthy people being thrown out on their ass or possibly imprisoned for life. And yet, our complete failure to prevent that exact thing from happening cost them an extra four million lives.

So if we HADN'T gotten involved, nothing would have changed, except those four million people would not still have been alive. In other words, trying to justify Vietnam on the basis of "Communists are terrible!" is like a cop opening fire on a 2nd grade classroom to keep their teacher from molesting them... except in this case, he MISSED, ten kids died, the teacher molested the survivors anyway.

That's the real bitch of it. Forty years later, Vietnam is still communist. The people there aren't eating each other alive, they don't have raw sewage running in the streets, they aren't lining up women and children and machinegunning them in schoolyards, and they're still really glad that they beat us.

 

[LordKiran]

None. It was a conested but otherwise peaceful democratic process before we got involved. It didn't become a full on shooting war until Ngo Din Diem started violently purging communists from his government. 10,000 were rounded up and executed, another 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.

The Viet Cong didn't even formally exist until 1960, by which time Ngo Din Diem had already been in power for five years.

If we simply hadn't gotten involved AT ALL, France would have retreated in disgrace and Ho Chi Minh would have taken power in an ordinary democratic election.

These aren't just peaceful situations that we have stuck our nose into, but rather situations where someone else has already stuck their nose into a big degree.

In Vietnam, that "someone else" was the French, and they were in the process of getting the hell OUT of that clusterfuck when we decided to get involved. You could say the Russians and the Chinese were involved too... that wouldn't be the truth, but you could say that.

But the question is how many Ho Chi Minh would have killed.

Exactly as many as he killed when he took control of North Vietnam, somewhere around 15,000 over three years.

So if you combine Ngo Din Diemh's violent purges with Ho Chi Minh's land reform, the cost of the revolution BY ITSELF was about 30,000 dead, 40,000 seriously disenfranchised or imprisoned.

The U.S. war in Vietnam, on the other hand, cost both sides over one million casualties and twice that number of civilians.

In other words, NOT getting involved would have seen the communists completing their land grab at the expense of another twenty to thirty thousand lives and a lot of villagers having their farms and livelihoods confiscated, lots of investments rendered null, and lots of otherwise very wealthy people being thrown out on their ass or possibly imprisoned for life. And yet, our complete failure to prevent that exact thing from happening cost them an extra four million lives.

So if we HADN'T gotten involved, nothing would have changed, except those four million people would not still have been alive. In other words, trying to justify Vietnam on the basis of "Communists are terrible!" is like a cop opening fire on a 2nd grade classroom to keep their teacher from molesting them... except in this case, he MISSED, ten kids died, the teacher molested the survivors anyway.

That's the real bitch of it. Forty years later, Vietnam is still communist. The people there aren't eating each other alive, they don't have raw sewage running in the streets, they aren't lining up women and children and machinegunning them in schoolyards, and they're still really glad that they beat us.

Alternatively, we could have helped him overthrow french rule after WW2 and establish a democracy modeled after our own principles, which is what he was asking for from the very beginning and then nobody would have died.