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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> This is the story that is told, but one can’t avoid the similarity between the South’s alliance with the US, AUS, NZ, Korea and the North’s with the USSR and China (which had many soldier stationed there). Without material support the USSR and China provided, the North never could have won the war

The difference is that with no outside meddling and support, South Vietnam wouldn't have existed or would have existed very briefly until a Communist electoral victory of the whole country. Without the US in Vietnamese affair, there is no North-South war.

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Just like South Korea. It's sad so many lives were lost and the current situation is impossible to solve because of former US involvement.

I’d have to disagree on the popular vote. By the time of the proposed election, the Communists had complete control of the Northern population. There was no “free” vote for unification - any more than there would be a free vote in Vietnam today.

And the US didn’t get significantly involved (beyond material support for the French) in Vietnam until the early 1960’s with the help of military advisors. The build up didn’t start until around ‘65 when it was apparent the South would collapse (through a combination of communist subversion but also a lot of in fighting) The South existed as an independent state for a few years - barely, I would agree. But it existed.

The South never existed without US backing. It was a made up thing, without popular support, ruled by successive dictatorships (some even had to be toppled with the ok of the US, so terrible they were).

It's not your right to decide whether people have free will or not. It's their call. "Deciding" for them is called colonialism.

Ho Chi Minh had huge popular support; precisely what the US feared.

PS: before the US fucked things up, Ho Chi Minh even looked up to them and fully expected their support against the French. That's how bad the US fucked up.

And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. I’m not sure what your point is?

And your comment about “free will” is telling. How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today?

The only difference is it’s Vietnamese elite that control the masses, not some foreign power.

> And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing.

False. Did you know the Viet Minh initially counted with support from the US? When it was an anti Japanese struggle, of course. Initial US assessments even thought the French should get the fuck out; those sentiments were overruled by others in the US, sadly.

The Vietnamese struggle was a struggle of national liberation. Aided from the outside like all resistance organizations, sure -- like the French resistance against the Nazis was. Didn't make France any less real. Imagine if the Allies had partitioned France in two after the war, claimed the last Nazi held parts were to be ruled by Germany's successors or whatever, and that the ensuing fight to reunify France was "a civil war" and that the free (non German) France was "just as artificial".

> I’m not sure what your point is?

That the US sided with colonial powers and against an independence movement. Not their finest hour.

> How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today?

More than they would have had had the US backed dictatorship won.

Not that it matters: it's not for you to decide. There's no White Man's Burden to send civilization to other countries. Let them have their self determination and arrange their governments how they like.

Above all, don't murder them by the thousands, destroy the countryside and poison their land when you don't like the government they choose.

So you’d agree Vietnam today is in better shape than say South Korea? Or Taiwan? Should the Us have not intervened there?

One last time: in the struggle against colonialism, the colonial power is always in the wrong and the locals struggling for freedom are always in the right (within the context of their struggle, of course -- they are free to fuck up afterwards as is any nation's right to self determination).

The US sided with a colonial power and was therefore wrong.

They also destroyed the country in their alleged attempt to "save" it. They were savage about it. Brutal.

Please stop it with the sidetracking attempts. We're talking about Vietnam, whether the US was the aggressor, and whether calling it the liberation of Saigon makes sense.

> And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. I’m not sure what your point is?

The liberated themselves from Japanese and then French control, with limited ( some arms) outside help, so that's just false.

False. They never would have liberated themselves from the French unless the USSR won the war in 1949 and funnel support to them.

False. They would have rid themselves from the French sooner or later. They had the will, and the French were foreign invaders. The age of colonialism was over by then; it was a mistake of the French that it took them so long to notice.

They ended up getting rid of the mightiest army in the world, after all.

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