I wish people would stop comparing US coronavirus deaths to the Vietnam war. The comparison is intended to increase the perceived gravity of coronavirus pandemic - "Remember that war 50 years ago which had massive cultural & social impact? This is just as big!" - but implying the Vietnam war's impact was based on American bodycount is just wrong at best and appalling at worst.
The Vietnam war had such an impact because the US military went on such an insane spree of war crimes and civilian massacres that America permanently lost its standing as a moral authority gained in WW2. Two million Vietnamese civilians paid the ultimate price for America's geopolitical theorizing, and the disaster was prolonged for an entire decade because the country was too proud to admit it was in over its head. McNamara and then Nixon knew the war was unwinnable, but the US could not appear defeated. And so the atrocities continued. Many in the US realized all of this and became permanently disillusioned with their country.
Apologies for the off-topic rant but this comparison has been making its way through a lot of circles that really should know better. If you find yourself wishing you knew more about this topic, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War or the book Kill Everything that Moves.
> Two million Vietnamese civilians paid the ultimate price for America's geopolitical theorizing
It was a civil war, initiated by the North, in which mostly Vietnamese killed other Vietnamese. The Americans intervening was absolutely a shit-show (and of course colonial history), but for the central point of your rant to stand, you’d need to show fewer Vietnamese would have died without American intervention, and that’s not a simple given.
You should spend some time talking to American Vietnamese with families who were persecuted in the immediate aftermath of the war, or who were lucky enough to escape.
The US didn't "intervene" what? Vietnam was colonized by France. Northern Vietnam was fighting for unification and liberation from French colonial power. The US lent their support to France in Vietnam because France was flirting with the Soviet Union in post-WW2 as the cold war took shape. France slowly withdrew as the US took on more and more of a role in the conflict, first as advisors then in active combat roles and finally as a full military force.
The Vietnamese were largely supportive of Ho Chi Minh and there was supposed to have been a democratic reunification vote, which didn't happen. That's how the civil war started, and North Vietnam would have easily steamrolled the South (since they managed to steamroll both the South and the USA). Most civilian casualties came from horribly targeted anti-insurgency or massive American bombing raids. It's a pretty easy argument there would have been many, many fewer civilian casualties without US involvement.
You appear to be conflating the two Indochina wars, and seem to be claiming I said America didn’t intervene when I used the expression “American intervention” so I’m not sure we’re even going to be able to find a common fact base to discuss this.
> It's a pretty easy argument there would have been many, many fewer civilian casualties without US involvement.
The history of Communism in Asia would like a word with you.
I'm not conflating them, it's just impossible to talk about one without the other; it was pretty much just one long war with America steadily increasing its involvement.
Given that communism actually won in Vietnam, we don't even have to work with hypotheticals. There were certainly deaths but nothing to the level of the death toll American military power exacted on the populace.
Regarding the word intervene what I meant is that I believe it is not a good descriptor of what the US did. Makes it sound like some kind of spontaneous humanitarian mission rather than them undemocratically propping up a failing state.
> Given that communism actually won in Vietnam, we don't even have to work with hypotheticals. There were certainly deaths but nothing to the level of the death toll American military power exacted on the populace.
Have you ever heard of the Khmer rouge in Cambodja, and how north Vietnam played a fundamental role establishing it?
You are jokig, right? I mean, the Vietnam and China-backed communist regime of neighboring Cambodja, who murdered millions implementing the same political reforms that killed millions in communist China, is only guilty of crimes against humanity because the US bombed them? Is that your argument?
And yet it was Vietnam that overthrew the Khmer Rouge, which was supported by China and the US. The ideology of the Khmer Rouge was very different from that of the Viet Minh. It was an ideology that demonized industry, cities and workers - all very much the opposite of the ideology of the Viet Minh (and of most of the Communist Party of China). It's not for nothing that the Khmer Rouge ideology has been called "Stone-Age Communism."
Vietnam was concerned Cambodja's regime was too China-friendly, but the millions being killed under the banner of advancing socialism did not featured as a pressing concern by neither China nor Vietnam.
The Khmer Rouge's ideology had almost nothing in common with the ideology of the Vietnamese Communists, or really any Marxist movement. It's difficult to see how an ideology that is intensely hostile towards all forms of industrial society and even towards the very existence of cities has anything to do with an ideology that has rapid industrial development as one of its central pillars. After the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge, they put a very different type of government in place.
There were, of course, geopolitical calculations on all sides, which is why the United States and China supported the Khmer Rouge. I don't think moral revulsion alone often leads any government to declare war on another.
> It was a civil war, initiated by the North, in which mostly Vietnamese killed other Vietnamese.
No. It was initiated by the South, when it refused (with US support) to participate in a national UN-monitored election, which Ho Chi Minh would likely have won.
Edit: Statement of Eisenhower, from Wikipedia:[0]
> I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bảo Đại. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bảo Đại was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for.
Some years before the war started, the factions that became the North (majority) and South (minority) participated in negotiations at Geneva. The deal stipulated national elections, with interim partition (North and South) after a delay to allow migration. But the South faction, realizing that it would lose, declined to participate. And that's what precipitated the conflict.
It's crucial to keep in mind that it was the North faction that had been fighting for independence from France. And that the South Faction comprised largely the colonial bureaucracy and Catholics.
> The Vietnam war had such an impact because the US military went on such an insane spree of war crimes
I agree with this. But, while this is before my time (my parents' generation), my understanding is US attitudes against the war were partly self interested in the short term: many boomer teenagers and 20somethings didn't want to get sent off to participate in such massacres, and much more they didn't want to die for it. Their parents didn't want them killed either. A lot of people knew somebody who had been killed.
If there had been no conscription there would have been less antiwar sentiment.
A similar scenario played out in the 2000s in Iraq, but without conscription.
> "Remember that war 50 years ago which had massive cultural & social impact? This is just as big!" - but implying the Vietnam war's impact was based on American bodycount is just wrong at best and appalling at worst.
But the impact of the Vietnam war on the US was primarily due to the number of casualties, wasn't it?
I mean, you wouldn't see many protests if the US government was sending college kids to southeast Asia to chill and soak in the sun, wouldn't you? Their sons arriving dead or maimed had something to do with it.
Americans by and large don't mind sacrificing their young as long as they get good value for it. With Vietnam they saw soldiers sacrificed for utterly pointless things like defending Khe Sanh or taking Hamburger Hill (both were abandoned right after victory), all while their leadership was telling them they weren't even seeking military victory. Meanwhile half the country was calling the troops babykillers (not without reason) and young people being drafted into the mess were faced with the moral choice of going to prison or running away to Canada (with the associated accusations of cowardice and shame brought on their family by idiots) or turning off their conscience and shipping off to Vietnam to kill some people posing absolutely no threat to their freedom or way of life. No matter how you look at it, it's way more complicated than boiling it down to US deaths.
I don't think the comparison is trying to describe the Vietnam War's impact in terms of body count, but instead to describe the pandemic's impact in terms of an enormous societal issue, which IMHO it is. People have a hard time with large numbers (remember Stalin saying one death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic). So having markers to help with comparison is normal.
The Vietnam war had such an impact because the US military went on such an insane spree of war crimes and civilian massacres that America permanently lost its standing as a moral authority gained in WW2. Two million Vietnamese civilians paid the ultimate price for America's geopolitical theorizing, and the disaster was prolonged for an entire decade because the country was too proud to admit it was in over its head. McNamara and then Nixon knew the war was unwinnable, but the US could not appear defeated. And so the atrocities continued. Many in the US realized all of this and became permanently disillusioned with their country.
Apologies for the off-topic rant but this comparison has been making its way through a lot of circles that really should know better. If you find yourself wishing you knew more about this topic, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War or the book Kill Everything that Moves.