One of your adversaries is missing...(merged)

[AtomKraft]

Chippy.
Well, I have got an interest, but I only have that casual interest in mil history that many ex soldiers have.

I've just taken delivery of 'Giap- The victor in Vietnam', but maybe after I've read that, I'll look at your suggestion.

As for the other stuff you've kindly posted up in support of your own arguaments, - sure most is new to me. But then your whole Aussie stance is new to me too. It's a shame your pm was not as wise as ours.....although I'm not a fan of anything else Wilson did, he called that one spot on.

I view threads like these as a chance to listen (and learn) as well as gob off on. Maybe you know ten times what I know- I wouldn't be surprised.

The views of others are often surprising, thoughtful and informative. I'd class Hanoijanes' as good examples. Wouldn't you?

In summary, I admire Giap because he stood up to and defeated two much larger countries that tried to force themselves on Vietnam.

The finer points of who did what to whom, and when are not really of such huge interest to me. In any case, much is disputed.

I'm not a 'hater' of the US. I'm just sick fed up of seeing them throwing their weight around all over the World, and at the same time always claiming to be in the right, and having won sort of victory, after having to scurry off home with the job half done or an even bigger mess in place than when they started.
We'll never have peace until they learn not to meddle in the affairs of others.

The Vietnamese WON in Vietnam. They deserved it.

The US- and it's few allies, LOST. They deserved it too.

Giap played his part, and I say well done.

[Mach Two]

Originally Posted by Haniojane

Please, Wholigan, don't start wailing about 'copyright'. Viet Nam is not a signatory to international agreements on such things. I already have screen shots of everything I need and I shall quote as I see fit.

Your dishonesty and abuse of PPRuNe members is, frankly, totally unworthy. I hope the following might help:
Does Vietnam have copyright laws?


Yes. Copyright issues in Vietnam are covered by the Law on Intellectual Property of 2005. Guidance on the Law on Intellectual Property is provided by the government Decree issued in September of 2006.
The documents are available here (in English):

Law on Intellectual Property 20/2005/QH


Decree no 100-CP of 21 September 2006

One of the most important and key points of the Law on Intellectual Property of Vietnam, is Clause 2 of Article 25. That states users will not be in breach of copyright if they use works for teaching purposes as set out below;

• Reproduce one single copy for the purposes of individual teaching
• Quoting from a work for teaching in schools without alteration of the contents and not for commercial purposes
• Copying a work for archives in libraries for the purposes of research
• Each and every use of a copyright work must include a reference statement.

In using a copyright work for teaching purposes in Vietnam you must ensure you do not publish or provide the materials to the public in any form either on the internet or as a part of a printed publication, the copyright work must only be provided to enrolled students for study purposes.


In any use of a copyright work for teaching purposes, you must ensure that you reference the work used, as per Clause 2 of Article 25. Standard referencing styles should be used. Each and every use of a copyright work must include a reference statement.

[melmothtw]

Your dishonesty and abuse of PPRuNe members is, frankly, totally unworthy.

Lighten up. This is a public and open source forum where everyone's contributions are entirely anonymous. Nothing that's written here is copyrighted, so the issue doesn't even come up.

[West Coast]

Atom

The mark of a student who is learning is listening and asking questions.

Jane

Happy trolling. I've seen little of any type of reasoning or persuasive powers that a journo has to have. Post the piece about the General if you have the balls.

[chuks]

Don't mention the war!

AtomKraft, let me whisper something to you, student of history as you fancy yourself to be: We had, arguably, no business becoming involved on the side of Great Britain in either of those "World Wars"!

What of that terrible, terrible Maggie Thatcher, who had no business in the Malvinas? Oh, sorry... Ronald Reagan put her up to that, right?

If you want to follow your own chain of logic, something on the order of "If your aunt had wheels, she would be a tea cart," then you might now be on a par with me, speaking German, just not from choice! That would have depended on us taking your whispers of wisdom seriously, I suppose. Foolish boy....

We had a treaty with the Republic of Viet Nam, and we thought we could help them win that fight with their Communist foes, plus put the frighteners on the Global Communist Conspiracy, so we gave it a shot, and, yes, we lost! Well, one can finesse that a bit to say that it was not our defeat, strictly speaking, but we certainly failed to achieve our aim, the continued existence of the Republic of Viet Nam, and that after many, many lives had been lost.

If Jane is a typical journalist for "the other side," then "Sleep well America!" Gawd! What a way to gather information! A fairly bright school child could find a better way than that to accomplish Jane's stated task! If he flies the way he writes....

[AtomKraft]

Chuks.

It wasn't the Brits that invaded the Falklands in '82- twas the Argies.
It wasn't the US that started WW2 either.

The Viets had got rid of the French, and the US should have left it at that.

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by chuks

We had, arguably, no business becoming involved on the side of Great Britain in either of those "World Wars"!

I will ignore the 2nd, but would be interested to know why you did become involved in the 1917-18 war.

[Lonewolf_50]

Try protesting in front of your local city hall and see how kindly you're treated in the land of the free. You'll be on the Homeland Security database before your ass hits the ground.

Nope. You are about as full of crap as a Christmas goose. I've done the peaceful protest thing outside of city hall five times in the past 12 years. I did a sign carrying deal outside the White House in 1970's. What you think you know, you don't know.

And, as Mr Snowdon has already revealed, your intention to protest will already be known to your security services if you arranged it via cellphone, landline or Internet. If only we had that level of population control...

Your countrymen prorably aren't interested in that: oh, and NSA doesn't mind read. I case you weren't aware, you typically file a notice to the local LE to ensure they are prepared for the traffic snarls. But hey, you are free to make stuff up from over there across the pond. Have a few more pints, and make up some more. I hear the Irish have a gift for that.

Pro Tip: the Tuatha Dé Danann were not real people.

Citizens of America! You have re-run the Vietnam war in the movies- and you won!

Maybe you need to watch a few of those Viet Nam movies and learn the difference between lost and won. Again, Atom, I note that you have waxed "as full of crap as a Christmas goose."
Here are four films for your consideration:

Go Tell the Spartans
Platoon
Apocalypse Now
Deer Hunter

There are others. In none of these is "we won the war this time" the theme.

[chuks]

Blame Woodrow Wilson, I guess! Well, him and the Zimmerman Telegram, Germany trying to get them Meskins all riled up to grab back what we stole fair and square.

Anyway, we won it, didn't we? Something like that, anyway....

[AtomKraft]

Yes Chuks. And that was the main thing.

Thanks first to the Russkis- then the US, then the rest....

[chuks]

Say what?

"Thanks first to the Russkis"?

Umm, you are aware that the war in question is the First World War, yes? "1917-1918," and all that. I think you will find that the Russians did not contribute to the Allied victory in that war, far from it, but you tell me!

I bet you think we started the Cold War, come to that! Yes, poor old peace-loving Uncle Joe Stalin, backed into a corner and forced to respond to American aggression.... If only that nice Henry Wallace had got the nod to continue as VP of the USA, instead of being shoved aside in favor of Harry Truman.

[AtomKraft]

Sorry Chuks

I was thinking of WW2- although you were writing about WW1....

[West Coast]

Iffin you want to thank the Ruskies, you better thank the Muricans first for there wouldn't have been a viable Soviet military without the lend lease agreement that gave so much equipment to them.

Don't take my word, takes Stalin's as he said it at the Tehran conference: "Without American production the United Nations [the Allies] could never have won the war"

Must grind your gears to know we saved you...again.

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by chuks

I bet you think we started the Cold War, come to that! Yes, poor old peace-loving Uncle Joe Stalin, backed into a corner and forced to respond to American aggression...

Thanks Chuks,

Regarding Uncle Joe I am not so sure. They were forced to sue for peace with Germany, then the revolution, followed by a concerted anti-revolutionary response by most countries in Europe and the USA virtually ringing European Russia in an attempt to crush the communist revolution.

I suspect only the war weariness post the 1914-1919 war negated the allied efforts. Then came Spain. Then finally a peace treat with Germany before they were stabbed in the back in 1941.

I then see the Soviet advance into Germany and a determination to crush Germany once and for all. Countering the Soviet advance was an allied thrust intended to halt the Soviets.

From Soviet eyes you might think that the west was again intent on crushing communism. The atom bomb was developed by the allies, or rather only two of the allies. In 1947 the US CoS crafted an extensive war plan postulating WW3 in 1957 and even considered a pre-emptive strike.

While attack is said to be the best means of defence, we can see it also leads to an arms race.

[West Coast]

Nav

I would imagine in 1947 there were war plans for just about any nation, not only in the West but sitting in a vault in the Kremlin as well. The Sov's certainly couldn't have been surprised to hear of it.

[chippymick]

Hi Atom,

You will probably enjoy reading it but McDonald’s biography of Giap has a few flaws.

Firstly, McDonald took at face value pretty much everything Giap told him.

Secondly, the book is extremely dated.

More recent works based on research in the Viet and Chinese archives contradict the narrative spun by Giap to McDonald. I’m thinking specifically of

Zhai’s ‘China and the Vietnam Wars 1950-1975’

Zhai’s ‘China and the Vietnam Wars 1950-1975’

and

Nguyen’s ‘Hanoi’s War’

Nguyen’s ‘Hanoi’s War’

. Even if you don’t read the books the Amazon reviews will give you some idea of which bits McDonald got wrong.

Much of the credit that McDonald gives to Giap in conducting the American War was actually due to Le Duan. It is probably worth looking at the Le Duan wiki article which, unusually for wiki, is pretty much on the money.

I hope that helps.

[chuks]

Here in Germany, battalions of soap-dodgers were raised to believe in the peace-loving DDR. Post-collapse, it came to light that the DDR was cocked and ready for a war of aggression against the German Federal Republic, right down to stocks of new street signs for major cities, along with vast stocks of munitions.

When we moved Pershings into West Germany, primarily to show that we were no longer planning to back off to Paris to fight off the raving Commie hordes, there again, that was taken as a sign of Western aggression against the peace-loving, etc., etc.

What our Jane led off with here is simply more leftist cant, albeit from a fresh angle... nothing new really. We did a rather poor job of fighting the Viet Nam War, and Giap got fresh kudos as its "winner," so, "Can you phrase that as a question, please?" That is to say, is there something new and unexpected in this full and frank exchange of views?

I remember a chilly day in Edinburgh, the day after we tried to turn Muammar into a grease spot. My hostess turned to me and said, with a perfectly earnest mien, "I think that the USA is a far greater threat to world peace than the Soviet Union." I simply thanked her for that insight into popular British opinion and carried on, thinking, no, wondering, what part of Londonistan she had been raised in.

[parabellum]

The Vietnamese WON in Vietnam. They deserved it.

The US- and it's few allies, LOST. They deserved it too.

AtomKraft - you should modify those statements. The American military won it's part in the conflict, when it left the NV had been given a very bloody nose, it was the corrupt South Vietnamese military who then gave up the fight.

[Pontius Navigator]

West Coast, the curious thing is that the US CoS in 1947 made assumptions on what Britain could bring to the party in 1957. It stipulated the number of bomber groups (aka sqns) and reconnaissance groups in UK, the Middle East and the Far East. What is curious is that this pre-dated any such bilateral agreements. This went in to fine detail such as 1 1/2 recce sqns in Malta being NATO assigned and 1/2 to CENTO. In Singapore purpose built accommodation was built for 2 UK medium bomber sqns (in addition to facilities for resident Canberra sqns).

It is possible however that the published war plan included later amendments after the UK plans were known.

[chippymick]

Hi parabellum.


The Case-Church Amendment passed by the US Senate in June 1973, prohibited any further US military action in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.

Not a single shot was fired, or bomb dropped by the US in support of the Republic of Vietnam after this date.

The last US combat troops had withdrawn in March 1973.

In 1973 the US archives record 68 and in 1974 only one death due to war service in Vietnam. I am told, but cannot confirm, that some these deaths occurred in Stateside hospitals as a result of combat prior to March 1973. A lag in the death rate due to serious injuries sustained in combat seems plausible to me. By comparison the US death rate peaked in 1968 with 16,899 deaths.

The two years before the fall of Saigon in 1975 were among the most peaceful that the citizens of North and South Vietnam had experienced since 1941.

It wasn’t until two years after the last US Combat troops had handed over to the ARVN that in April 1975 that the Communist North conquered the south in a combined arms action that rates as their best performance since 1954.

Anyway you cut it, the fact that the US had withdrawn for two years prior to the defeat of the ARVN falls well short of the ‘arse kicking’ that some folk like to imagine.

It is hard to have your arse kicked when your arse is elsewhere.

Also not there, not involved and completely disengaged from the final campaign was the man the western media credits with sinking the slipper in - Vo Nguyen Giap.

But, cut Atom some slack at least he is prepared to consider historical facts.

Cheers

Mick.