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Comment by peterfirefly

6 hours ago

> Vietnam

The US was actually on the right side in that one (just like in Korea). The Communists were not exactly the good guys and their "agricultural and personnel reforms" lead to drastically reduced food production and starvation and death.

Blame the US for real things instead, such as supporting the wrong side in Afghanistan in the '80s or ensuring the survival of the Soviet Union in the '40s.

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peterfirefly

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sampullman  4 hours ago

It's not so simple, the rampant corruption under Ngô Đình Diệm, misappropriation of aid, etc. shouldn't just be swept under the rug. Hindsight says remaining capitalist probably would have been better for the average person, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.

Johnson was a warmonger, exaggerating (or possibly faking) the Gulf of Tonkin engagements to justify full escalation was a crime that led to the death of 60,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands more with PTSD, and 2 million+ murdered Vietnamese civilians. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of birth defects caused by agent orange and the still ongoing effort to clean up dioxins from the environment.

kakacik  5 hours ago

Tell it to cca 2 millions civilians that died in Vietnam as a direct result of failed US invasion (I really mean just civilians mostly bombed into oblivion, entire human lives list is around 3 million). As in, vast majority of them would be alive is US didn't try their failed adventure. Tonkin gulf is a classic US made up war for power mongering reasons.

Telling 'we're the good guys' while regularly bombing entire villages into oblivion with napalm on some vague suspicions ('we heard some gunshot when flying around so we blasted them' scenarios). My Lai and many others.

If this is how US population views their past fuckups then no wonder we are where we are, objectivity ain't easy if one is on the wrong side, isn't it.

Supporting wrong side in Afghanistan? Against Soviet invasion? Sometimes, often even there are no good sides.

If you guys didn't support Soviet union in 40s (which they vehemently denied since then but its their inferiority complex, the issue with russian mentality since forever), there would be no massive eastern front with most german losses and wehrmacht spread out too thinly, and D day would be crushed like nothing. History would be very different in Europe and globally.