
Another Vietnam – Unseen images of the war from the winning side - dnqthao
http://mashable.com/2016/02/05/another-vietnam-photography/#TBVXB4fMGkqN
======
adekok
I'm reminded of an article I read in one of Jerry Pournelle's anthologies. It
was written by a Vietnamese man who had agitated against the Americans during
the Vietnam war.

At one point, he was in jail for resisting the Americans. His father visited
him, and asked "What the heck are you doing?" He answered "Fighting against
the oppressor Americans!" His father responded "It's true that they're
oppressors, but the communists are worse."

He didn't believe his father. When the Americans left, there was a victory
parade through Hanoi. Which was composed _only_ of communist regiments. He
asked the other people involved in the resistance "Where are all the non-
communist regiments, which were the majority of the fighters?" The answer was
"On exercises in the country."

It turned out that the communists had infiltrated all of the non-communist
resistance groups (of which there were many), and taken them over from the
inside.

A few years later, with his life in danger from the communists, he fled
Vietnam, became one of the boat people, and immigrated to America.

~~~
Tloewald
Bear in mind that Jerry Pournelle is a very right wing guy and was right wing
at the time of the Vietnam war, so he looks for confirmation of his own pro
war views.

The big problem we had in vietnam is that we backed the wrong side from the
beginning, and we did it for blindly ideological reasons (Ho Chi Minh was an
avowed "communist" therefore evil). If Ho Chi Minh had been a race supremacist
(South Africa) cannibal (idi amin) drug dealer (too many to mention), we'd
have been happy to back him.

The Viet Minh, who fought the Japanese and largely defeated them with little
outside help during WWII were disarmed by the French with US and British help
after WWII. (Roosevelt appears to have wanted to let Vietnam be independent
after the war, but he was dead.) So Vietnam went back to the French who
created a hot mess, got their asses handed to them (despite a lot of US help)
and then we stepped in and picked as our clients the bizarre collection of
mobsters and thugs the French had been backing. And while your correspondent
appears incensed that some people didn't get a parade (you know that they had
reeducation camps in the South after the war? I would have led with that),
from what I've heard and seen, Vietnam didn't end up too terrible, and
certainly in no worse shape than places the US "won' in like Columbia, Chile,
Honduras, etc.

No Buddhist monks burned themselves alive to protest the _north_ Vietnamese
government.

~~~
tosseraccount
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/31/vietnamese-
blog...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/31/vietnamese-blogger-
mother-fire-tan)

"The mother of a prominent Vietnamese blogger has died after setting herself
on fire as her daughter prepares to go on trial next week.

A police officer in the southern province of Bac Lieu said Dang Thi Kim Lieng,
64, died on Monday afternoon on the way to hospital in Ho Chi Minh City after
setting herself alight that morning near her home.

Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch, said Lieng's
death 'points to some very, very serious concerns about the kind of
harassment' that relatives of dissidents face in Vietnam. "

I'd rather live in Santiago, Chile or Medellin, Colombia.

~~~
Riod
You clearly have no idea the kinds of crimes Diem and his cronies got up to in
South Vietnam.

Vietnam would have been another former colony with western companies
exploiting resources and the political class getting rich off corruption.

~~~
tosseraccount
Doesn't the Socialist Republic of Vietnam have a former colonial status,
Western companies, exploited resources and a political class getting rich off
corruption now?

~~~
Riod
No. They're the second base for manufacturing after China now. Their economy
is young, relatively debt free and growing. In a few decades they will
overtake most of their ASEAN neighbours

------
narutouzumaki
I think it is crucial to understand the motivations and principles of the
people involved, in order to shed more insight unto the matter.

Regardless of the political overhead, from my personal experience the vast
majority of the Vietnamese people at the time, already being Spartan like in
certain manners and living in times of turmoil, saw the 'war of Resistance
against America' (as the Vietnam War is called in VN)as the continuation of
resistance against foreign superpowers, dating back thousands of years.

The US, after, Japan, France, the Mongols, China was seen as yet another
invader in a long line, albeit arguably the one with the most overwhelming
strength.

The average North Vietnamese person did not care about Communism, Capitalism,
Political theories or world politics. They only cared about them in so far how
they could help them achieve their goal: To be free! Sovereign in their own
land.

This mindset coupled with the history of Vietnam is important to understand
where the dermination of these units came from. Yes, the US military would
'win', as in being the last party to remain with living soldiers in an all out
war until the very end no discussions, hands down. That is because, similar to
the Japanese the morals of these Vietnamese guerilla peasants fighting would
fight till the end.

In that regard, especially when seeing discussions here and mostly on reddit
going back and forth about who 'won' the war, people forget that they might
talk with completely different defnitions of winning in mind. (Or they are
just American kiddos that cannot accept their great US ever loosing ever.)

It is a great tragedy in the end, because in the end, absurdly in a certain
way, both sides fought for the same thing: Freedom.

The US won the battle, but lost the war.

~~~
poof131
The saddest part of it all is that we were allied with Vietnam in WW2 with OSS
operatives in assistance.[1] Ho Chi Minh reached out to the United States for
our support at the end of the war. Unfortunately, the French wanted back their
pride and their colonies and refused to support the Marshall plan without
them. So we turned our back on a people who wanted to be independent for
politics and a desire to buttress Western Europe against communism.[2] We then
followed the French in after their fiasco at Dien Bien Phu to fight the spread
of the communist menace.

For the longest time I thought the Vietnamese were the biggest losers in this.
They got their independence, but down a path closer to North Korea instead of
South Korea after much loss of life. But now I think America was the biggest
loser. We lost a cornerstone of our culture: military service. We killed the
draft and a generation has been inoculated with the attitude military service
is for poor people without other options. The military has begun to privatize
and isolate itself from America. Fewer and fewer people serve. Many people
serving in Iraq were paid, foreign contractors. Debate about the military is
nonexistent. Everyone “supports the troops,” but the wars are either patriotic
or evil, with little discussion of execution and goals. It saddens me and
makes me think of Rome at the end of the Republican period. [3]

[1] [http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-
oss.htm](http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm)

[2]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=B59ZUKeNoD4C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=france+marshall+plan+vietnam&source=bl&ots=vDtuRho66J&sig=jos6boLUTCwZiwaultjTJdg5pdI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidzoiWiebKAhUH92MKHR77BL0Q6AEILTAC#v=onepage&q=france%20marshall%20plan%20vietnam&f=false)

[3] [http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-
mercenaries.htm](http://www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm)

~~~
narutouzumaki
Exactly! Here is a telegram Ho Chi Minh sent Truman on the 28th of February,
1948. A piece of history you can touch. (well you would have to break into the
archive or work there, but theoretically hehe)

[http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-
febr...](http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/18436528466/dated-
february-28th-1946-this-telegram-was-sent)

Published by the national archives, it shows that Ho Chi Minh was a
nationalist and independence seeker first, and Communist second (or even
third)

In fact, having spent time in Paris, Boston, Moscow and Hongkong working
menial jobs and getting in contact with western philosophies in his youth he
actually chose to quote

    
    
        "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"
    
    

this from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in
his independence speech after French occupation.

The course of history might have been slightly different...

~~~
chinhodado
This is one of those moments in history where we can clearly see history
itself branches into different routes. Had Truman reached out to Ho Chi Minh,
Vietnam wouldn't have had to spend the next 30 years in war.

It's a shame, really.

------
madaxe_again
This is sure to be confusing to many, as a majority of Americans believe the
US won the war on Vietnam, or won it but were forced to declare defeat by
Congress.

The VC won fair and square against the occupying and invading forces, and
despite all the doom predictions of the time, they appear to still be a
functioning state.

~~~
paganel
The only war which has been strategically won by the US after WW2 was the Cold
War, and possible a tie in the Korean War. It's a f.ucking huge win, don't get
me wrong, but this puts into perspective the huge US military budget which has
been consumed in countless other wars with almost nothing to show for it.

And, as an anecdote, as a guy how grew up in Eastern Europe in the 1980s
things like Michael Jackson's music or Coca Cola bottles had a lot more
lasting effect on "winning" the Cold War for the US then the nuclear warheads
from North Dakota or the Nimitz-class carriers. Too bad that know-how has not
been translated into trying to "win" over the hearts and minds of the Arab
people.

~~~
Donzo
I mean, the US "lost" in the sense that they failed to accomplish whatever
vague political goal that they had in mind when they went to war, but if you
look at the body count, it's like 10 to 1.

Same with all of the other "wars."

The advantage in weaponry is staggering, and this weaponry has been bought
with unprecedented military spending.

So, there are some kinks in the ideological goals and imposing those on
others, but the killing machine seems to be fully optimized.

~~~
kiiski
You have a really strange way of deciding who won a war. Most people would
consider those "vague political goals" the whole point of going to war, and
the people killed undesirable casualties. But if USA really did go to war just
for the sake of killing people, I guess they have indeed been pretty
victorious. Much like Germans in WW2. I mean, they might have failed to
accomplish whatever vague political goals Hitler had in mind, but they
definitely killed a lot more people than they lost.

~~~
ekianjo
There is no peaceful war so obviously headcount is also a measure of
superiority. Ever heard of Pyrrhic victory?

~~~
mercurial
But it's largely a pointless measurement, unless your goal is the
extermination of a population. Soviet losses on the Eastern Front were much
higher than German losses, which didn't prevent the German from losing on that
front.

Or take WWI, where the collapse of the government was the death knell for the
German military effort.

~~~
ekianjo
On the Russian front this was only true at the beginning of Operation
Barbarossa, then it became very clear a year later than the German losses
became increasingly in Soviets' favor. Plus Soviets were fighting on their
home ground, with direct access to resources, which would eventually turn the
advantage on their side. Of course hindsight is everything, but several
generals opposed Hitler's decision to go against the Soviets because they knew
the odds were against them. So assuming that Germans expected to win is, I
think, improbable.

And to come back on the original point, you do War to kill enough people to
make your opponent give up or until it is completely destroyed. In the case of
WWII, even if Russia kept losing soldiers 10:1 vs German soldiers, Germany
would have still run out of soldiers to fight with anyway because of Russia's
massive supply of men behind the frontlines - And even if Russia did give up
at some point, there would have been no way Germany would be able to control a
country as large as the Soviet Union with the army they had on site. Germans
were clearly bound to lose no matter what.

------
vkazanov
Yeah, Vietnamese had no Hollywood to force their point of view onto the global
society.

I lived in Hanoi for two years, and been attending a local climbing club. A
friend of mine, an American climber, once shared his thoughts on the war, and
the way Vietnamese don't hate modern Americans despite having a war veteran in
every family - it was a bit of surprise to him.

I think what he did not realize is that the US lost the war, and retrieved the
forces, and Vietnamese are really proud of that, and it's very different to,
for example, modern situation in the Arabic world, where the US just can't get
enough of it.

~~~
tyingq
The rest of your comment is interesting, but this...

>>Vietnamese had no Hollywood to force their point of view onto the global
society

Sort of implies that Hollywood was reinforcing some view that the US won in
Vietnam, or that the reasons for the war were noble, or?

I can't think of any Hollywood produced Vietnam centric movies that follow
that sort of theme.

~~~
rawfan
Yet something must have gone wrong. As a European, I've met many Americans who
only learned of the US losing the Vietnam war, when they were in Europe.

Some of them might not have been that bright, though. I remember an exchange
student protesting a poem we read in English class because she thought it
implied the US lost the war. There was complete silence in class and our
teacher just said "well, they did lose." She actually said "No, we won it when
we threw the bomb on Hiroshima."

~~~
tyingq
So, you've met some number of ignorant Americans, including someone who thinks
Hiroshima is in Vietnam.

That's not really compelling evidence that there's a widespread belief among
Americans that we won the Vietnam war.

------
Ono-Sendai
Some of these photos are probably staged:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/44dwib/aston...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/44dwib/astonishing_photo_of_vietnam_war_from_the_other/)

~~~
reledi
Maybe, but at the moment that reddit thread doesn't provide any convincing
evidence.

~~~
Ono-Sendai
There's no firm evidence that they are staged, agreed. However if you spend
enough time looking at combat photos and videos, you get a good feel for what
kind of situations are captured during combat. This situation is just too
perfect (too well composed), and at too close range.

~~~
sangnoir
> However if you spend enough time looking at combat photos and videos, you
> get a good feel for what kind of situations are captured during combat

I strongly disagree with this armchair analysis, 'gut feel' isn't good enough!
Some photos happen serendipitously (not sure if that's the correct word for
combat photographs). I'll be damned if the Saigon Execution[1] or the burning
monk[2] were staged - yet the framing and timing could not have been any
better.

1\.
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XwjZTVlnghk/U3Jv5jqOpBI/AAAAAAAAJF...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XwjZTVlnghk/U3Jv5jqOpBI/AAAAAAAAJFM/Mf6WVCThdZM/s1600/Saigon+Execution+Murder+of+a+Vietcong+by+Saigon+Police+Chief,+1968.jpg)

2\. [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ul72G5EX-
Pc/VYjrTroozbI/AAAAAAAAJ5...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ul72G5EX-
Pc/VYjrTroozbI/AAAAAAAAJ54/b-fLE0bNd9Q/s1600/The%2Bburning%2Bmonk%252C%2B1963%2B%25281%2529.jpg)

~~~
Ono-Sendai
Those are striking photos of course. But neither are combat situations.

------
arca_vorago
There are two larger points about Vietnam that I think are often overlooked.

1) Vietnam was, as others wars are, a most profitable venture for the military
industrial congressional complex. Even with the draft, the upper elite usually
wiggled their way out it in some form or another.

2) The war was started, as were other wars, on false pretenses and lies. Now
this is where you may expect a rambling about the gulf of tonkin, but the more
sinister angle is that of the created enemy: communism. Through the Yale in
China group, a front for an intelligence group, the Maoists were trained and
put into power against Sun Yat-Sen who wanted to actually modernize the
country.

The supranational elite use the hegellian dialectic in order to control the
outcome. It's nowhere as direct as maany theorists would say, buts thats how
its done, for whatever the enemy is, be it facism, communism, terrorism, and
soon cyberterrorism.

No ones learns any of this in their heavily controlled history textbooks
though.

------
tim333
It's striking that we're only seeing these 40 years after the war. If people
saw both sides earlier on we might have less conflict. (Typed from Saigon
which is booming at the moment).

------
j_r_f_b_n
Jose Rocha Ferreira Bastos Neto - That wouldn't surprise me at all

------
golergka
So, this article not only retranslates Vietcong propanagda, but the only
commentary it seems to offer is by Vietcong themselves, with phrases like
"resistance to foreign invasion". How isn't this article isn't considered a
propaganda piece by itself? It's one thing to present interesting historic
material; it's another thing entirely to glorify a marxist dictatorship.

~~~
nness
"Resistance to foreign invasion" is essentially accurate, is it not? I find
the quotes interesting. They help to illustrate the rhetoric which likely
motivated much of North — that there were foreign countries intervening in
what many locals considered a country's own struggle and not just another
battlefield for a proxy war.

I think pieces like this are important. Whilst you can disagree with it, it
still makes you consider the views held by millions on the other side.

~~~
golergka
Well, this is exactly my point: this piece is presenting only one point of
view, without even an attempt to put it into context of a conflicting
worldview.

~~~
mmustapic
Well, the point of the article is how NV photographers saw the war. You don't
need any extra context since it's explicitly stated that this is from one
particular point of view. If you want a different point of view, there are
thousands of articles, books and photographs.

------
ap22213
We're still glorifying war? Even on HN?

------
mikerichards
The Vietnamese people didn't win the war. The people lost when the communists
won. They realized that a couple decades later..after the communists had
inflicted their brutal tyranny on the people.

Neighboring Cambodia lost a seventh of their population because of Communist
evils.

By the way, despite leftist gleefulness of "American loss ". The US militarily
won almost every battle and had a kill ratio of 134:1.

~~~
rangibaby
I wouldn't conflate the communists in Vietnam (USSR ally) with those in
Cambodia (Chinese ally). Vietnam fought wars with both of the latter
countries.

Winning battles doesn't count for much if you don't meet your strategic
objectives (if you even have any). The same story has played out many times
since then; the Soviets dominated the Afghans in every possible way, but
accomplished nothing of note. Iraq now is much the same.

~~~
vkazanov
True.

Losses in "Afgan" (Russian slang name of the country) weren't too high (15k
either killed or died from wounds), even compared to American losses in
Vietnam (58k KIA), and technically there were no major battles lost.
Vietnamese were backed by the USSR, Afgans - by Saudis and the US.

But from a political point of view it was a clear loss, similar to Vietnam for
the US: no pro-USSR government established, anti-war movement back home,
further deligitimisation of the Party, etc. Unfortunately for the Soviets,
this strongly resonated with other problems at the time resulting in... The
collapse.

------
classicsnoot
First off, these pictures are amazing, and the stories of the photographers
are hard to describe with words.

Reading through the comments, I see a lot of purportedly european folk who
believe that many, if not most, people in the US are unfamiliar with the
Vietnam conflict. If we discard children (15 and younger) I would be very
surprised to find that half of the country is unaware of the war.

I think the confusion here is coming from the Idea that the US lost the war.
They did not. There were two groups of winners and losers. On the winning
side, you have Vietnam, Thailand, the US, and Japan. On the losing side you
have France, Laos, Cambodia, and China. The last one was the true "enemy" the
US was confronting. Given the recent developments in the Spratly's and Cam
Ranh Bay, i think it is even more clear that the US, losses notwithstanding,
gained much from the Vietnam Conflict.

Another point brought up by another comment was that the US does not fight at
"home". This is intentional and the US has been very successful in this
regard. Even if the US is forced to abandon policy aims as well as territory,
it is hard to see it as a loss when it continues to economically prosper.

Wars are not like sporting events; there is no official scorecard. Body counts
and capital losses play a role, but so do evolving narratives and cultural
identity.

Only time tells us who wins and loses. The French definitely lost. The
Vietnamese definitely won. All other participants, direct and indirect, occupy
a gray area.

~~~
vlehto
>Given the recent developments in the Spratly's and Cam Ranh Bay, i think it
is even more clear that the US, losses notwithstanding, gained much from the
Vietnam Conflict.

I don't understand. U.S. controls neither, Vietnam controls Cam Rang Bay.
Given recent developments there, it looks like U.S. gained nothing from the
Vietnam war.

Edited, I mistook about Vietnam controlling Spratly.

