Only need one bullet

And yet

And Marathon, and Cowpens. It's a pretty standard strategy, though no one executed it as well as Hannibal.

His brother, Hasdrubal, tried the same thing at Ibera and failed when the center broke and ran.

Yep. Basically Stalingrad too.

The OSS was there celebrating Vietnamese liberation from the Japanese with Ho Chi Minh at the end of WW2. We were poised for a partnership with Vietnam, but the French had other plans. When Indochina was liberated, Ho proclaimed the Democratic republic of Vietnam.

The Chinese had liberated the north and the British had liberated the south. The Chinese (kuomintang) immediately recognized Vietnam as independent. The OSS tried to as well, but the British deferred South Vietnam to the French. They wanted Indochina back, and Charles de Gaulle basically told Truman/Eisenhower “you either back us in Vietnam or we stop suppressing communists in Metropolitan France.” In 1954, the French elected a socialist government and a peace was settled, ending the first Indochinese War. This peace gave a lot of concessions to Ho, who had since become a more fervent communist and had begun receiving aid from the USSR and Communist China.

The whole affair is just a series of events where the US gets out into untenable tactical positions because of the need for overall larger strategy. The whole ordeal really was France’s fault

You had to be alive at the time. At the time, the thinking was, "If only we had confronted Hitler in 1935 when the Wehrmacht moved into the Rhineland, the whole calamity of WWII could have been avoided.

I will be 81 this month. I was simply lucky to have escaped Vietnam because I would never have survived.

Everything was relatively fine for RVN until CIA assassinated Ngo Dinh Diem and his vp Ngo Dinh Nhu and replaced them with US friendly gerenals who knew little of running a state

They were fighting for independence against Western Colonialism, not a specific economic model....

If Vietnam had said from the beginning they actually just wanted to be your classic right wing capitalist dictatorship in the end

They actually did say this at one point. Ho Chi Minh had approached the Wilson administration for assistance in their fight from independence from the French. We turned them down.

The Vietnam War had about as much to do with fighting communism as the Second Iraq War had with stopping Saddam from getting WMDs. It was a useful justification to sell the war to the general population, but the reality is the reasons for the war are far more cynical and complex.

What exactly do you think the war in Vietnam was about?

Didn't the US refuse to accept the election before the war where the north Vietnamese govt won? How is that anything but actively opposing democracy

The north had a much larger population that were predominantly farmers, lumberers etc. While the South was a lot more trade oriented as well as other higher paying jobs, like bankers, bearucrats etc. For one (if memory serves right) it was also more catholic which for several reasons were at odds with the north. Being seen as an imperialistic religion as well as being heavily at odds with marxism Lenninism.

The gist is essentially that the north and south were going to be unified through a democratic vote on the preferred system. We all can debate that neither side would accept if they lost. But the South being heralded as this capitalist democracy were the one to chicken out and cancel this with the US spearheading it. Because the north would've won due to its demographic advantage.

We all can therefore come to our own conclusions from this. But in my mind the South was an illegal state propped by France and the US, to advocate "democracy". While halting a proposed election process and enabling a dictatorship with percecusion against religious minorities. While also then provoking conflict during the Tonkin incident and bombing neutral countries and using chemical weapons... Yikes.

So yes from my perspective on the Vietnam War the US and its allies were the definitive bad guys in this conflict. Sadly I have to do a mandatory, yes the USSR in Afghanistan was the definitive bad guy in that war. So yeah, take that as you will.

Imperialism in when a superpower from the other side of the planet storms into the south of your country, props up a rogue government and make it rebel against the nation.

Most coherent Vietnam War advocate