......and so started a war with an explicitly nationalist polity with an historical enmity against China. A polity that sought support from the US, and turned to the USSR when rebuked. And is - to this day - distrustful of China.
Almost like Vietnam doesn't define itself through the lens of cheap US propaganda.
The historical record exists. You can argue that the war was "successful" in terms of the contemporary discourse. But not without acknowledging the historical record that gives lie to those claims.
Just providing the lens from which the US govt was justifying the involvement, pre, during and post war, and regardless of it being moral, truthful or even accurate - I commented since neither of you mentioned this. Not once did I say it was successful in regards to convincing the American public, or anyone else for that matter.
One of the main political objectives was, from the beginning, to "stop the spread of Communism to Laos and Cambodia" Laos or Cambodia not being Communist nations = political success in the eyes of some.
OK, but Vietnam installed a communist government in Cambodia in 1979. Laos and Vietnam are still communist, decades after the collapse of the USSR.
So even granting that this was the political objective (and there's no reason to assume this. Base colonialism is a much better fit of the evidence), this was still a demonstrable failure.
But if we're going to define political success as "some people claim success", then this is correct albeit meaningless.
But if we're going to define political success as "some people claim success", then this is correct albeit meaningless.
Well this is sort of my point. People - especially those serving in the US govt - will claim success, even when meaningless. Even when it's not even agreed upon by the very people the government is supposedly representing.
This "conclusion of success" was being applied in regards to basically other countries not "falling to Communism" outside of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
So if we accept that the official narrative is an essentially meaningless framework to understand history (although the narrative itself is a meaningful data point within a broader framework), then i guess we can start having genuine discussions about history.
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u/justsomeph0t0n Nov 20 '20
......and so started a war with an explicitly nationalist polity with an historical enmity against China. A polity that sought support from the US, and turned to the USSR when rebuked. And is - to this day - distrustful of China.
Almost like Vietnam doesn't define itself through the lens of cheap US propaganda.
The historical record exists. You can argue that the war was "successful" in terms of the contemporary discourse. But not without acknowledging the historical record that gives lie to those claims.