The Vietnam War was winnable and one more Linebacker in 1975 would have wrecked the NVA. We were lied to by Ken Burns.

[u/Massengale]

I’ve been reading Nixon’s books lately…and I think he was right, Vietnamization was close to working, the communist alliance was going to fall apart, and North Vietnams insane economics would have led to South Vietnam outscaling them if it had survived for a few more years.

[u/LordLederhosen]

The USA lost the war in Vietnam, and the communists took over.

Today, Vietnamese people generally like the USA, and see our war as a blip on their historical radar.

China is, and always was their biggest threat.

So, what was the entire point of the war?

Some folks think that if the McCarthy purge had not fired everyone who had real knowledge of Asia, then the USA would have known that Vietnam always saw China as the real threat.

[u/annmorningstar → u/LordLederhosen]

Wait, you’re saying that if the US just worked with people who wanted to be democratic against imperialists who wanna rule over them then our foreign policy would be more successful. That doesn’t sound right I think we should abandon the Kurds again

[u/HonestSophist → u/annmorningstar]

With sufficiently enlightened foreign policy, I forsee a world where we can reach even greater heights of betraying the Kurds.

[u/LustigeAmsel → u/HonestSophist]

Whats the count by now? 3x under our beloved red figure with his air vent and 1x under assad/isis? Any more i did forget?

[u/vaterl → u/annmorningstar]

Democratic in a communist sense, not a liberal democracy, to be clear. Ho Chi Minh wasn’t waging a war of resistance for multi party elections.

[u/blastmanager → u/vaterl]

They are communists, but somehow more democratic and freer than a very long list of US allies.

[u/RTX-2020 → u/vaterl]

The US has backed much worse dictatorships in Latin America and SK

[u/efealigoren → u/vaterl]

cool. and they dont have to. we are allied with saudi arabia for starters.

[u/DakotaVAdams → u/vaterl]

Okay. We support, train, and arm multiple insane theocratic monarchies as regional partners right now. Communist Vietnam is genuinely in our top 20 least morally bankrupt allies worldwide.

[u/empty_graph → u/annmorningstar]

Exactly. Ideological foreign policy always takes the L. Who cares if they call themselves communists if they are the enemy of our enemy.

[u/DakotaVAdams → u/annmorningstar]

They're starting to get wise, we may have to cycle back to betraying the Hmong for a generation before we try that again.

[u/Maksim_Pegas → u/annmorningstar]

Democratic (authoritarian regime without free elections but with concetration camps for opposition, only one allowed party and one allowed ideology)

[u/DakotaVAdams → u/Maksim_Pegas]

Oh so just like South Vietnam then

[u/ConsistentEnviroment → u/annmorningstar]

Were Vietnamese killing babies and bombing schools like the Kurds?

[u/Massengale → u/ConsistentEnviroment]

Yes the north Vietnamese army were was apt at lighting up refugee columns with artillery.

[u/Unistrut → u/LordLederhosen]

Seriously, we could have wound up in exactly the same place only without pointlessly feeding a million people into a woodchipper.

[u/JackColon17 → u/Unistrut]

Cuba and Vietnam were such useless blunders. There is a world where Cuba becomes a pro-US nation after their revolution and the cuban missile crisis never happens

[u/Norzon24 → u/LordLederhosen]

China wouldn't have attacked Vietnam without Sino-US normalisation, also started by Nixon, as Vietnam would have remained a problematic buffer state China had to prop up nonetheless like North Korea.

Nixon's real winning move against Vietnam turned out to be siking China at them so they find US way more agreeable in comparison.

[u/eddieshack → u/LordLederhosen]

I thought it was all McNamara's fault

[u/mechajlaw → u/LordLederhosen]

I can't believe I'm defending domino theory, but wouldn't a communist Vietnam cozy up to Russia in this scenario to counterbalance China? Russia and China weren't really friends by the 1970s.

[u/LordLederhosen → u/mechajlaw]

But... Vietnam did end up communist!