Thread 17819999

So many motherfuckers were wildin’ with this one. Literally, what the fuck was everyone involved thinking?

theres a lot, many books have been written and the cultural impact in America especially- and worldwide was profound, all before the destruction and millions of deaths that define Vietnam to this day
and the timing with the social issues, the evolution and emergenge of insergecy and proxy warfare that would be all over the next 50 years
the Vietnamese were fighting a decades long civil war conflated with a century long search for independence caught between the two focal points of the Cold War
so much of Vietnam's war is a microcosm of the 20th century's second half
you really could argue its 3rd, 4th most impactful event of the 1900s

>>17819999 (OP)
pew pew pew

>>17819999 (OP)
Reminder that the only way for the US to win was to nuke the South. Nuke every square mile of it, let nobody survive and make it completely inhospitable until 1990.

Because under all other circumstances, the country would come to exist within its historic borders again.

>>17819999 (OP)
>bro some literal who country in bumfuck nowhere is going to become communist, let's kill them
okay and? only nerds care about economics

>>17819999 (OP)
>what the fuck was everyone involved thinking?
It was a matter of prestige for the French, they were desperate to reclaim Indochina after losing control during WWII
How we got involved is hard to explain, the policy of the Truman/Roosevelt admins were specifically anti-colonial, yet somehow the French browbeat us into helping them in French Indochina
Our involvement started with transporting French soldiers to Hanoi via troopships and escorts, this was in 1945 and escalated from there
>>17820102
>Muh communism!
This was retarded propaganda/cope from the Eisenhower and Kennedy admins, very few people up high in the US government actually believed that Vietnam going full Commie was going to have any real effect on the politics of the region, let alone the world

>>17820096
The goal was to stop the Viet Cong and support South Vietnam. The US already had a military advantage, nukes wouldn't have been needed, they could've just carpet bombed the entire jungle and left, but going scorched Earth on the country would've immediately forfeit the primary goal of the war, which was to support the South against the Viet Cong. That's why Vietnam is seen as a failure in-spite of the US having an overwhelming military advantage, because there was nothing they could realistically do to support South Vietnam and defend Saigon. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink

>>17820117
They could’ve directly invaded North Vietnam and pray that China doesn’t get involved. Maybe if the US had done it while China was occupied with its border conflict with the USSR then the Chinese probably wouldn’t have intervened.