

When Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam - vinnyglennon
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/when-nixon-threatened-to-nuke-vietnam-26c43a3f59d6

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MichaelCrawford
The Vietnam War could have been prevented, had the Versailles Treaty granted
Vietnam its independence, as Ho Chi Minh requested when he attended the Hall
of Mirrors conference.

My father was an anti-aircraft missile fire control officer aboard the USS
Providence. While he never told me, it was later declassified that the talos
missiles he fired, could be fitted with nuclear warheads.

I'm not real sure about the rationale but I figure nuclear antiaircraft
missiles would be used if the enemy was swarming.

After many years of quiet contemplation, Dad told me one day "We should not
have been in Vietnam".

65,000 americans died during the war, 250,000 vietnam vets committed suicide.
At least a million vietnamese perished.

But Vietnam did get its independence, and the US and vietnam are the best of
friends.

~~~
mc32
Also, if the corrupt south had carried out the suggestions (like land re-
distribution to the delta farmers, etc.) that they address the terrible
inequities which fostered the insurgency, the south would have had a better
chance at viability.

Years earlier, South Korea and Taiwan undertook some of the US suggestions,
and had a much better outcome.

SVN, was too corrupt to entertain the idea (and yes, some US advisers in that
area, had lost some of the ear, they had in that regard)

~~~
MichaelCrawford
I'm planning to read the Pentagon Papers sometime soon.

When I took high school American History, I thought it odd that we did not
discuss vietnam in any way, despite that our textbook had good coverage of it.

I figured the reason was that most of our parents were vietnam vets -
Fairfield, California is a military town.

------
bootload
_“We should try to induce them to get out of the war without having their
country destroyed and to realize that if they do not get out, their country
will be destroyed,”_ \-- McNamara

Totally false premise.

The Vietnamese fought the French from '46 to '54 [0] and defeated them. In
'54, six parachute battalions dropped using US aircraft, artillery, and US
tanks were deployed in _Dien Bien Phu_ , NE Vietnam. Over a month later the
Vietnamese overran the entire French force, effectively ending the war. This
was known by the US and I'm not sure they learned these lessons.

I didn't realise why the French might be interested in Vietnam until I found
Michelin had interests in rubber plantations. [1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Rubber_Plantation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Rubber_Plantation)

~~~
shard972
So your saying that socialist france went to war in the interest of a company?
Why do I find that hard to believe?

~~~
zachrose
Probably because your image of France as cute and socialist is overshadowing
the less cute reality of France as the world's second-largest colonial power
in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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KaiserPro
Tangentially related:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668)

Nixon undermined the peace process for his own ends (assuming the article is
true)

~~~
gcb0
Why Nixon and his aidee were involved in those talks? nor the article nor the
wikipedia article about the paris peace acords mention the reason, only the
effect.

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linhchi
and they say Hitler and Stalin were madmen.

my country won the war but it was so thoroughly broken, it hasn't recovered
properly to start to do anything sensible yet.

edit: -> Hitler and Stalin were the poster-boy of madmen, according to the
West.

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Synaesthesia
What the article doesn't mention is that South Vietnam was bombed 3 times more
heavily than North Vietnam. The bulk of the war effort was in the South.

------
x0x0
But Iran is part of the axis of evil. Why, if they get nukes, they might do
what we do!

