I'm sorry but the actions of the Viet Cong do not excuse the crimes committed the US, and neither does the nationality of your parents.
To this day, many are maimed and killed by US land mines in the region, and the US does not give a shit.
To this day, many are maimed and killed by US land mines in the region, and the US does not give a shit.
If you don't believe me, you should try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country and ask them what they think of the USA. Look at the flags they use (South Vietnam and the USA). If you want to get assaulted (I highly don't recommend this), try bringing Vietnam's current flag and parade it around.
EDIT:
to andrepd: Again, you keep setting up straw man arguments. It's very easy to attack someone if you misrepresent their views. I never said anything about excusing massacres.
> If you want to get assaulted [..] try bringing Vietnam's current flag and parade it around
What a bizarre argument. Of course you're going to find pro-USA sentiment in the very people who decided to move to the USA. I hope you realise that the opinions of a few immigrants in the states are going to be pretty unrepresentative of those who actually live in, you know, Vietnam.
Speak to actual vietnamese people from actual vietnam and I don't think you'll find they are overwhelmingly pro-USA, nor at all interested in the flag of south vietnam. I'm no expert, but my experience is that they're mildly positive in attitude, mostly due to pop culture. The war was a long time ago and most people are just getting on with their lives.
Many immigrant communities foster a kind of "nostalgic nationalism" as a coping strategy when adapting to a profoundly different environment. It dates pretty rapidly. I very much doubt many of the 90+ million people in Vietnam even know of "Little Saigon", nor care overmuch about the opinions of a bunch of old-timers sitting in a mall in California.
Also Vietnamese are fiercely capitalistic. I've never seen a more go-getter attitude in any other country. That also colors their perception of the US.
This applies to many countries. Why does it specifically influence Vietnamese perceptions more?
> Vietnamese are fiercely capitalistic
This is true, but again, they're hardly alone. Chinese are fiercely capitalistic as well - and in the same context as the Vietnamese, within the framework of a nominally communist society. Why doesn't your theory apply there, too?
I think the situation is much more nuanced than these too-obvious theories, or that can be surfaced in superficial "attitude" surveys. As mentioned in other comments, Vietnamese are deeply (and IMO rightfully) suspicious of China, despite the state's theoretical status as an ally. The USA, despite its history of botched and ham-handed interventions, is ultimately seen as a friend. There's a love/hate aspect to that attitude too, similar to Filipino attitudes to some extent. The absence of military bases in-country helps by keeping the notion theoretical, rather than the often-negative daily experience of having foreign soldiers around a la Korea and Japan.
Anyway, without getting too much into the weeds of theorising and speculation, my point was that it's complex - more complex than the OP suggested. Nostalgia for the South Vietnamese flag is a niche sentiment at best, and attitudes to the USA are a complicated product of history and pragmatism. "90% positive" does not capture the nuance, in my opinion.
It's probably too late but it would have been good to hear from some non-emigrant Vietnamese.
It doesn't lessen the horror of atrocities if the other side did it.
That's exactly the point made. The US IS better. Better than the Nazis, better than North Vietnam/Vietnam, better than China (and frankly better than all European states during and immediately after WWI/II at least). Better than North Korea. Better than South Africa.
With better I mean "how people are treated", in the human rights, in general, and only as part of government policy.
And yes, I agree. The US has it's downsides. The US has made mistakes. The difference between a mistake and a government policy is the number of times and the scale at which it happens, and the intent. The US has made mistakes, some of which lead to the death of hundreds, even thousands of people. Some of those mistakes involved the military. It was NOT the intent of any significant fraction of the US to make these events happen.
China, Vietnam, and Germany had a widely supported-by-the-people government policy of massacre. Every organisation in those countries is focused and involved in oppressing and massacring people for some reason. Vietnam's CURRENT government made children watch their own parents getting raped, slowly, and killed, then used them as insane soldier-killers sending them into defenseless villages where they brutally murdered everyone they could. This is NOT a one-off. They did this to children for decades.
The difference is indescribable and it is absurd to even compare the two. They are not on the same moral level, they just aren't. We are better than that, it's just that simple.
That's objectively so, and for some reason a lot of people feel the need to destroy historical views like this.
It may not lessen atrocities on the other side, but we should acknowledge the difference between mistakes and popular government-supported genocide.
Equating them does nothing, other than provide cover for these massacres. Hell, the amount of people talking up Chinese policy seems to be mounting every day. And, of course, the situation of people in China gets worse everytime some high up in the Chinese government thinks censorship is good enough that they can get away with something more.
It pains me to point out the obvious: "anti-racism" has become the leading excuse for racism, inequality and state-based massacres.
I don’t see why an article or subsequent discussion about a horrible crime committed by US soldiers, subject to an attempted coverup by the US army and limply prosecuted afterwards needs to also say how nice the US is otherwise. It doesn’t matter how nice it is otherwise. It’s got nothing to do with the issue at hand, any more than if it had happened in any other country.
Maybe its India and Pakistan we're thinking of, hm?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/18/vietnam-unexpl...
For example do you think the US has no responsibility towards Pacific Islanders whose islands are now lethally radioactive due to nuclear tests 50 years ago, and can reasonably wash its hands of any problems arising from that today?
I don’t appreciate your shallow dismissal.
As far as Sweden goes I bet the people living north of the Arctic circle have little in common with people living in Stockholm.
My point is that’s it’s incorrect to speak of 330 million diverse people as collectively not giving a shit. I stand by that.
One of those things is not like the other, two of those things are kinda the same. Nazism is an ideology, a movement, so I’m going to move past that red herring.
The rest though, good advice that I try very hard to live by. I’m not sure at what point you decided that I was arguing in favor of something else. It would be downright stupid to assume that the lives and views of someone raising ducks and pigs on a small farm in an outer province of Chins bears much resemblance to the life of a high-level beaurocrat in Beijing. Some teenager with no future or hope in the outskirts of Moscow isn’t like a grandmother in Novasibirsk, or an oligarch in a penthouse.
By the same token, don’t assume that the US is some magically homogeneous group of people who don’t care if a Vietnamese child is blown away by a 50 year old mine.
Edit: Because apparently it must be said, The US Governmemt != “The US” in the same way that the Chinese Communist Pary isn’t “China” and Putin isn’t “Russia”.