When did the Vietnam War Start?

Two I can think of off the top of my head. Lima 85 (or Phou Pha Thi as it's called in the local language) in northern Laos and the ongoing battles to control the movement of men and supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh trails.

Lima 85 was significant as it was one of the major guidance systems for Rolling Thunder. Lima 85 was also the highest single loss of life of USAF personnel. It was also the first time (and maybe the last) a helicopter shot down a fixed wing aircraft.

To add, America and its allies lost Vietnam because they failed in their objective to stop the spread of communism into South Vietnam and neighbouring countries.

 

No but the point is America failed in its objective.

 

Maybe you should tell the government they are wrong, huh? And I am correct, I showed you what the government agrees is the start of the VN war, everything else is just icing on that 1959 cake. You see, antecedents mean something. They don't change because you don't believe and and want to remain in denial of facts.

This joint resolution of Congress (H.J. RES 1145) dated August 7, 1964, gave President Lyndon Johnson authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam."

Once again, a government document, proving you are WRONG!! http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=98

So once again you are wrong. The GTR just let them escalate the 1959 ongoing VN war.

 

1859

That is when the French began their takeover of an independent nation with 2000 years of history, culture and nationalism.

2200 years ago, the first Nam Viet people migrated to the region. 1000 years ago, they began a long war of independence. 850 years ago, they fought the first of 9 wars against the Mongols and Chinese. But in all of those conflicts, no one tried to destroy their culture or religion. They had a saying; "The emperor may rule the land, but the emperor's power stops at the village gates". Sometimes, the Chinese were fought off. Sometimes, the Chinese stayed and were absorbed into the local culture when the Chinese government got tired of paying for an occupation force..

Then the French showed up in 1859. By 1865, they had conquered the region. They tried to "civilize the natives". They imposed western culture, graft and corruption. They imposed western religion on the Vietnamese people, who were Buddhists. They did not tire and leave. They were not absorbed into the Vietnamese culture. They stayed. They took what they wanted, and screamed for MORE!! They even changed the name to French Indochina.

Eventually, when the Japanese came, they were at first welcomed as liberators. But they were even worse than the French. So, with training from the American OSS, they fought the Japanese. Donavan, of the American OSS, rated them as "the most effective fighting force in the Pacific theatre". Yes, we trained Giappe and Ho Chi Minh, the guys we would eventually wind up fighting.

After the war, the French went back in like nothing had happened. So the Vietnamese began to fight the French again. Ho Chi Minh came to the US numerous times to beg the U.N. for help in removing the French. He was ignored. But others decided to help him.

By then, the cold war was in play. The Russians offered help. The Chinese offered help. So, with no one else to turn to, Vietnam accepted help from their age old enemy, China. That set the stage for the so called "communist" and "free" Vietnam. After they beat the French at Dien Bien Phu, the UN, in it's usual wisdom, divided the country in two. I'll bet no one there saw THAT coming.

Eisenhower was concerned about titanium and other such resources, so he sent in advisors to help the westernized South fight the communist North. Of course, if we had initially helped Vietnam rid itself of the French, then there would have been no communist North.

In the South, they maintained the prejudice against Buddhists. Want a good job? Be Catholic, or go scrub toilets. Want your kids to go to school? Be a Catholic. The French had done their dirty work well. The anger was set. Buddhists Monks began to set themselves on fire in public to protest the French puppet government. The war flared up again, and eventually, in 1965, we landed at Danang.

In 1975, the North won, and united the country once more. But the Vietnamese culture was destroyed. The dictatorship of the French was replaced by the tyranny of communism. After almost over 115 years of domination by foreign governments and foreign (to them) politics, there was little of the original culture left. I hope they get it back some day.

I was in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Not knowing all this history, I took great pride in trying to help an the Vietnamese avoid the tyranny of communism. Now, I wonder if "Animal" in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" had it right after all when he said "Well, if you ask me, we're killing the wrong 'Gooks'".

By the way, the first Americans killed in the Atlantic theatre in WWII were not killed by Germans. As we stormed the beaches of Morocco, our guys were getting slaughtered by FRENCH artillery, getting strafed by FRENCH machine guns. Yeah, our "friends"!

Just thought you ought to know.

 

It doesn't matter who's in the Whitehouse, presidents are mere window dressing and make no real decisions. The decisions are made by very powerful people who operate behind the scenes, controlling the purse strings. These are the same people who brought us the Federal Reserve and have now enslaved the entire globe! They have a long history of creating war for profit and they have been behind every war that we've had for the last 200 to 300 years! They will finance both sides in a conflict and then let the side that benefits them the most win!
This is also how the idiots and murderous lunatics get to be Presidents, Prime Ministers and so on, they make good yes men and will kill millions when they're told to. If they should develop a conscience and try to serve their people like Abraham Lincoln or JFK did, they are no longer an asset and are quickly done away with.
One thing you're absolutely correct about though, is G.W. Bush's war record! He went AWOL from the Air National Guard and had to have his Daddy fix things for him! LOL! Now we have a president that can't even prove that he's an American citizen and is getting away with it! Man, what a mess "we the people" are in!!!

 

It was the American people who got us out of Vietnam.
Followed by a balking Congress and lastly NIXON et al.
The NIXON administration was Not Leading on this issue, they were led.
This is the lesson we forgot to keep us out of Afghanistan/Iraq, etc.
The American Government likes war. And with the all volunteer army, it is so much easier.
Today America's corporate wars are fought by the gullible and the poor.
That certainly keeps the Vietnam like discontent of the public to a minimum.


Moi
I Marched Against Vietnam

View attachment 24921
America's next war.
Why not?​

 

You absolutely have no clue what you are talking about. There was no American military conflict prior to 1963 in Vietnam. Ike had 900 non-combat advisors in Vietnam. Kennedy. increased those numbers to16,000. And, If you want to get technical,the first advisors in Vietnam was in 1950. Who was president then? LBJ Americanized the Vietnam war, and that obvious to everyone but you. Democrats own the Vietnam war, period. So stop being a partisan hack and trying to revise history.

 

I wish I was five dollars for every time a confused con says that. Do you realize that when I went to VN in 67, we went as "advisors?" I have already shown the first combat casualties occurred in 1959, the beginning of the vn war, according to your own government sources, according to the VN veteran Memorial. Even MAAG-VN was put in place under Ike for those 900 advisors you say he had. Stay in denial and dishonor those dead combat veterans if you chose to. Facts are facts, I supplied them, you deny them. History on this subject isn't your friend.

Republicans own the VN war. See I can say that as well, you just can't say it with facts. lol! More bad news.............

Before MACV, the senior U.S. military command in South Vietnam was the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG-Vietnam), which was formed on November 1, 1955 to provide military assistance to South Vietnam. MAAG-Vietnam had U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps elements that provided advice and assistance to the South Vietnamese Ministry of Defense, Joint General Staff and corps and division commanders, as well as to training centers and province and district headquarters.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/macv-established

 

Great. This excuses Kennedy's and Johnson's continuation of it how?

 

Once again you are in denial.

You have proven nothing wrong you have only repeated what you have been proven wrong about.

Yes the link shows the date of the first casualties in Vietnam.

What the link says nothing whatsoever about is when the war begin.

Nothing in your link makes any mention whatsoever of an official start date or even starting year for the war in vietnam.

You are equating the first casuaties with the outbreak of the war and this is simply not valid.

As I have pointed out many wars start much later even years later as the first casualties such as the war for independance or the second world war. The start of killing and the start of the war are two different things and the war started under dems much as you wish to screech some other spin and revisionist nonsense.

Stop lying about offiical dates from the US government which you have never posted the links state no such thing.

 

The official government record, the vietnam veterans memorial give a date for the first casualties they do not give the dates you claim for the start of the war. Once again two different things.

You are quite dishonest about this and that casts doubt on your claims to being a veteran.

 

1945

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com...minh-to-communism/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Basically we could have avoided the whole thing if we had stuck to our core American principle of supporting freedom and letting people run their own country, regardless of the economic system they chose. What the Vietnamese wanted was Socialism Lite, the very thing we ourselves practiced both then and now. Ho admired Abraham Lincoln, while we ended up killing the South Vietnamese elected leader to put in a guy who said his greatest hero was Adolf Hitler.

And yes, we could have easily won at any time by just opening up the missile silos and turning Vietnam into a glowing arm of the South China Sea, but we lacked the "political will" to (a) kill all the people we were supposed to be rescuing and (b). start WWIII and very probably end all life on Earth. Oh, the infernal weakness of we liberals, always lacking the courage to commit suicide for the Glory of America.

 

Actually it was Ho Chi Minh who wanted socialism. He had to force it on the North vietamese while killing off about 100,000 or so people who disagreed. Then of course he had to invade another country ( South Vietnam ) to force it on them. He may have claimed to admire Lincoln for the papers but never paid any respects to his grave or the Lincoln memorial in person. According to his autobiography however he did fall in love with communsim at a very young age and made a pilgrimage to Moscow to view Lenins corpse. He got frost bite while waiting in line to see it.

None of this really justifies our long and costly war there in my opinion but it is a bit more accurate.

Most Vietnamese just wanted to be left alone they were not socialists or communists or capitalists but just rice farmers.

 

A social system encompasses the whole of society and the social relations between every person. You can not divorce a phenomenon as huge as the widespread poverty in our time from the social relations in our society. Poverty as a social phenomenon has not existed for most of history. There were no poor hunter-gatherers, there were no poor people in Inca civilization.

 

What is this nebulous 'country' made of if not the people who live in it? The south was filled with rebels struggling with their own government, a vicious dictatorship. The south had the material advantage and could not possibly have lost unless a large proportion of the population hated their government.

 

Yes all hunter gatherers were poor some more than others.

The Inca's and others had poverty as well your claim that they did not is delusional. The Inca's had rulers who likely had comfortable lives. They ruled over peasants who lived in poverty, again some more than others.

It is not divorcing anything from anything else.

The simple fact is capitalism did not cause poverty poverty predates capitalism. Poverty has in fact existed for ALL of human history.

Capitalism reduces it and minimizes it other systems increase it.

 

Capitalism historically has not reduced poverty, only in comparison with the dysfunctional feudal regimes which themselves only existed for a small period of history.

Your arguments are the delusional ones, which orifice did you pull "The Inca's and others had poverty as well" out of? They did not have poverty. When the Spanish first encountered the Incas they were shocked that their grain storage facilities were completely full. The Incas planned their economy, so each person had a house and food - no poverty.
For someone to call hunter-gatherers poor is truly delusional. Hunter gatherers were usually well fed, had homes if they wished and worked less each day than people do in modern capitalism - they were the original affluent society.

 

Um no the rebels were merely agents under the control of Minh and they were not filling up south Vietnam but only a small % of the population which is why he had to invade with his army to spread communism. The general population of the South Vietnam were simply not on his side or supporting him even if they did not particularly support any other government. The people of South Vietnam did not hate our government either but we still lost.

 

You are simply wrong. Capitalism has historically reduced poverty in comparison to ANy other system and no other has done so.

Feudal regimes have been the norm throughout most of history and communism is nothing more than a feudal system dressed up in socialist rhetoric.

It is you who is delusional yes the Inca's had full storage bins of grain which were reserved for the elite while the rest made due with what they could hunt or gather.
Not everyone had homes you are simply wrong many had to fend for themselves in the jungle.

Hunter Gatherers were one meal away from starvation and unable to do much of anything except hunt and gather. It is brutally difficult to feed a family much less a village off of hunter gathering.

Poverty is as old as man capitalism has started to lift man out of it.

 

No, just no. That is just factually incorrect and ahistorical. You are making things up which you have not provided any links for.

 

They did hate the government. The evidence is in history. The rebels were mostly south Vietnamese. This is why Americans ended up massacring civilians, because the line was so blurred between the rebels and regular people who'd regularly shank American soldiers when nobody was looking. Most regular people hated them aside from the rich, the dictatorial government and privileged state functionaries.

 

South Vietnamese village chiefs also changed sides when it suited them and depending on who held a gun at their heads.

 

you've got to include your source dude.

 

The so called rebels were insurgents under control of the north and they did not represent the majority.

The vast majority of massacres were committed by these insurgents and by the North Vietnamese Army. The only such massacre committed by Americans was My Lai which was an isolated crime and treated as such.

Other than that exception Americans overwhelmingly helped and tried to protect the people of south vietnam even at the cost of their own lives. The claim that most hated Americans is ludicrous when one considers the vast numbers of boat people who tried to escape to America ( or anywhere else ) as the communists invaded they were not the rich but just average terrified people.

As with your other claims your history is lacking in accuracy

 

Uh no links in your claims either but they are still false and mine are accurate.

Consider the facts about hunter gathering which you claim was the first form of affluence.

The key word is hunter. To hunt means to search and attempt to find something thats because it is hard to find. Animals do not hang around outside ones home waiting to be killed. Hunting is a gamble you might find the game or you might not. When you do find it you can only bag a limited amount before the rest of the game animals leave. Animals know when they are being hunted and do not hang around to die the survivors move very far away. This forces hunter gatherers to be nomadic and migratory just like the animals they hunt. Inevitably you will bump into other humans who are hunting the same animals which will inevitably lead to tribal warfare this is why in such cultures the hunter and warrior is one and the same.

Not only do you have to compete with other humans for the food but with other predators, wolves, coyotes, lions, whatever they often want the same game and will attack and kill you if they can in the competition to eat.

IF this is how you live and provide for your people it consumes a massive amount of time and energy leaving little for anything else. Life is a constant struggle to find the next meal or you die. Then of course there are changes in season which cause animals to hipernate or just sit still and leave no trace making them impossible to find and kill. Nearly all native American tribes had a name for this which basically translates to he starving time. A time every year when there is no more stored food and the winter weather prevents any form of game from being found and the plants are not producing. It can last days weeks or even months and it is time where you simply suffer starvation. Not affluence by any measurement.

Everything I have stated is based on simple rules of nature not a construct just ask any hunter.

These are just some of the reasons why hunter gatherers were the absolute definition of impoverished by any modern standards. They had massively high infant mortality rates and a very short life expectancy.

I am also correct and capitalism has reduced poverty more so and in comparison to any other system. That is simple fact because it ALLOWS people to combat their own poverty.

All other systems merely try to plan an economy which means ordering people how to live and therefore spreads poverty around equally.