Talk:Vietnam War

There is just so much information that ought to go in this article. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre, the antiwar movement in the U.S., the Cambodian bombing, the Paris Peace talks....the list is endless. Maybe as I have time I will add more--this is just a rough outline and a first stab at expanding this article. This is a potentially contentious subject, so it is important to try to be objective.

Hey dude, great job starting it. I couldn't just stand to see this page left blank, even something small mentioning it is better than nothing. I hope it will get people going and they will add righteous material to it.

Vietnamization proved effective

Huh ? It proved exactly opposite. Army of South Vietnam lost. Taw

The article indicates that Congress reneged on Nixon's pledge of military assistance for "Vietnamization". The only thing proved here is that "Vietnamization" did not occur. Whether it would or would not have worked is a moot point in 2001.

The point of Vietnamization was that Vietnam would fight its own wars, so if it was necessary for the US to intervene militarily, then I would say that the policy was a failure.

There are three issues here:

1. What exactly, is the definition of "Vietnamization" as proposed by the Nixon administration?

2. Was this policy implemented as defined?

3. If the policy was implemented as defined, was it successful or not?

Further discussion is pointless until these three questions are addressed.

Okay, I'll give it a shot:

Vietnamization was the process of increasing training of South Vietnamese troops to the point that they would be able to take over the roles being played by American troops previously.

This policy was implemented as defined here.

The policy was successful enough that American troops were able to withdraw from Vietnam in stages as the policy was carried out.

It was not intended by the Nixon Administration that this would be the end of US attention to the war, or the end of US support for the South Vietnamese government when Veitnamization was implemented. It just kinda worked out that way.

On a related note, information was added to this article incorporating the perspectives found in Richard Nixon's memoirs, with the intention of supporting the stated aim that Wikipedia ought not be biased. Those additions have either been edited away, or qualified, while other statements of opinion are not similarly qualified. This is an extremely emotional topic area, obviously. Trying to create a balanced article is going to be very difficult no matter what we do, and reacting emotionally to the changes that are going to come as we hammer this thing out isn't going to help all that much. There are many viewpoints on Vietnam, and this article needs to be open to them so long as they meet the standards of the project. Identifying disputed points is a very good idea, but keep in mind that many of the points stated are going to be disputed -- it'll be better to identify the varying positions than to simply edit them away.

Note from F. Lee Horn, CPT, INF, USA (Retired/Disabled): This can be a really great article, particularly given the excellent start some of you gave it. I am trying to be as objective about this subject as is possible, given the fact that I was there from SEP '67 to SEP '69. Some of the statements I have added (particularly ones about media coverage and some of the activities of the anti-war activists) may be a bit controversial, but I can promise you that they are all historically accurate since I lived through them and my memory hasn't failed me...yet.

I think someone tried to undo your changes. I restored your version because whoever it was made a horrible mess of it (destroying all the links and other formatting). But I haven't attempted to judge the contents - someone who knows about the subject needs to check that. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 30

I think that as it stands this article lacks NPOV. I believe some rewriting may be necessary. On the whole, I would prefer to see certain points developed, rather than cut some of the more controversial elements of the article as it stands. There are four points, specifically, that I think need to be addressed

1) Discussion of the internal political dynamics in the United States that led to involvement, including the loss of State Department experts on Asia following the McCarthy witch-hunts, and Democratic fear of Republican accusations of being "soft on communism"

2) The opening of the article describes it as a war between RVN and the VC (the former backed by the US, the latter backed by N. Vietnam and the USSR). I do not argue that this claim should be cut, but attention must be given to the alternative claim, that the RVN was a creation and puppet of Western colonial powers (first France, then the US), and that the VC was fighting a war against the United States, not just the RVN

3) The article specifies two sources of opposition to the war: that it was unwinable, and that it lacked clear objectives. These certainly were two problems with the war, and are primary among the lessons that the US military have learned from the war. But they are not the only, or even necessarily the most important, reasons for opposition to the war: many Americans dreaded seeing their country take the place of the French as a colonial power; many were revolted by US support for a corrupt dictatorship (and were later horrified to hear that the US supported the assassination of their own puppet, only to instal a new one). Many simply felt the war was wrong, immoral. I am not insisting that the article declare that the war was immoral, only that it report accurately that this was one of the claims made by those who opposed the war

4) finally, the article should explore some of the reasons why so many Vietnamese did not support the South. The article ends by reporting some pretty nasty things that the victors did after the war. Without trying to defend that government or those actions, the South Vietnamese Government were pretty corrupt, and had little popular support within their own country. A reader of the article cannot fully understand the war without knowing something about problems within the RVN -- SR

You have some very valid points. Unfortunately, my view of the war was pretty much from the bottom up. I don't feel qualified to address most of the issues you raise. I think the article did state that a number of people who opposed it did so out of a sense that it was immoral. I can relate examples of how the people of the RVN, and beyond them the ARVN failed to give their full support (such as not having a deep idetification with SOUTH Vietnam, which was largely a creation of outside forces; or that the people were so war-weary that ANY peace, even under the North Vietnamese, was preferable to continued warfare), but beyond that I really can't go in all good conscience.

BTW...Zundark: thank you for the assist. I'm new to Wikipedia and most of the lost links and etc. wre probably my fault.

F. Lee Horn, CPT, INF, USA (Retired/Disabled)

Well, most of what I know comes from some youthful memories, but mostly Fitzgerals's Fire on the Lake and Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, so I don't feel very qualified to write much in-depth. Given how big a topic it is, the article so far is a good start. I am sure there are many more people who have much to contribute, I look forward to seeing the process continue... SR

I agree. F. Lee Horn

It is a fact that Diem and the United States blocked elections in 1956 because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win those elections, and it is inappropriate to continually remove this fact from the article.

Some proof of this would be nice. F. Lee Horn

A simple search in Google turned up scores of citations. It all probably depends on what you consider "proof", of course, but frankly, I have never seen any history of the war that ever said otherwise. I would think that the "proof" would be on anyone who wanted to claim that this wasn't the case.

For what it is worth, the Encyclopedia Britannica claims the same. They say that the North did political work in the South, that the Southern government was unpopular, and that the Communists were confident to win the elections. So the South refused to call the elections, with the support of the US. I don't know how to independently verify that. --AxelBoldt

Britannica works for me. I stand corrected. Can we devise some language from NPOV? Perhaps you, Axel, can word it? :) F. Lee Horn

Well, I have really no knowledge of the matter. All I could write would be a rephrasing of the Britannica material. If that's what you want, I'm your man :-) --AxelBoldt

By the way, for what it's worth, burden of proof is almost always on the party making an assertion. F. Lee Horn

Go for it, Axel! Better that than constant wrangling over "who shot John." :) F. Lee Horn

after introducing the

Editing out facts that you don't like is not an example of NPOV. Just because it is uncomfortable to some that the South Vietnamese government held a one-man election in 1971, or that it tortured political prisoners in "tiger cages", that is not a reason to remove that information from this article. Similarly, the fact that Diem and Eisenhower rejected unifying elections because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win should not be sugarcoated just because it makes one unfortable.

I added a statement to that effect, which you promptly changed. I have no problem with stating the facts, what I have a problem with is stating them in such a way that it becomes obvious they are being utilized to support a particular viewpoint. If you can't be objective, perhaps you should let others who can be add to the article.

Why did you delete the information about the severe human rights abuses of the South Vietnamese government?

Perhaps because you made so many changes that were misplaced and/or so obviously non-NPOV (at least in my opinion) that I had little choice but to reinstate the original article?

Furthermore, ad hominem attacks on one side of this dispute do not believe in this article, and are not NPOV. Accusing opponents of the war of having their position simply because they are "ill equipped" to cope with something is not only nosensical, it shows a complete lack of comittment to NPOV.

Show me where I indulged in any "ad hominem attacks" and I will humbly apologize to whomever it was I attacked. I don't think that stating people who had never experienced their country being in a war were "ill equipped to cope" with it. I went through the whole thing: two years in Vietnam, coming home to raving, spitting, cursing protestors, etc ad nauseum. Perhaps I can be forgiven for seeing this topic in just a *slightly* different light than others.

Fine, so you have deep emotional reasons for wanting to project your own viewpoint in this article, but it is important to stand outside that and at least try to be objective. The fact is that, unlike you, lots of veterans were themselves also antiwar activists. There is no question that Vietnam war veterans were not considered heroes when they came home, but it is also true that the primary issue that divided people was support versus opposition to the war, not whether people were veterans or not. Lots of antiwar protesters were also beaten up by hardhats and police. They have their own stories to tell about the abuse they faced. Everyone faced abuse.

Also, if you don't understand why it is an ad hominem attack against opponents of the war to attribute their beliefs to being "ill equipped" to cope with images, then you clearly don't understand how to write an NPOV article.

From the online "Stephen's Guide to Logical Fallacies" (http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/welcome.htm): "The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the argument itself. This takes many forms. For example, the person's character, nationality or religion may be attacked. Alternatively, it may be pointed out that a person stands to gain from a favourable outcome. Or, finally, a person may be attacked by association, or by the company he keeps." I don't recall doing this. If I did, I apologize.

I have no wish to "project (my) own viewpoint" onto this article. I was simply trying to state the facts as I saw them. To arbitrarily alter my input, rather than adding your own input as additional viepoint, is IMHO unacceptable.

Furthermore, the phrase "it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it" is one of the most infamous phrases to come out the war, and to censor it out of this article as one might wish to do is not only a case of whitewashing the history of the war, but it is also leaving out an important explanation of why the "Hearts and Minds" policy was sNational+Front+for+the+Liberation+of+Vietnamuch a miserable failure.

This is the one statement you have made with which I disagree most strongly. The article already mentioned in several places that large numbers of people in South Vietnam were disencanted with the war. Your choice of where to place a rather heavy-handed statement (to say the least) about why everything we did was such a miserable failure only serves to distract the reader from the purpose of that paragraph: to describe the role of a (to that point) seldom-used type of military unit.

The entire paragraph was a glowing portrayal of how beneficent and wonderful the "Hearts and Minds" policy was. To devote an entire paragraph to this without also pointing out the negative effects of US policy that was counterproductive towards winning their hearts and minds is simply an attempt at showing bias. Furthermore, to explicitly remove the issue of "destroying a village in order to save it" is to whitewash the history of the war.

The entire paragraph was intended to convey information about the role of US Army Civil Affairs. It wasn't a "glowing portrayal" of *anything!*

Futhermore, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War did exist and it is appropriate to mention its existence. This is also being censored out of the article.

Where and when did I ever allege that the VVAW didn't exist? If you feel that strongly about inserting comments about this organization, why not do so in an appropriate place within the article? Much of your phraseology and your choice of where to place your comments leads me to believe that, rather than at least *trying* to present a NPOV, you are simply attempting to refute an argument you despise...an argument which, I might add, was never intended to be an "argument" in the first place.

If you will simply try to group your anti-Vietnam War comments in the appropriate places within the article and preface them with statements like "some authorities contend that" or "many people believed that" or "some people felt that" I will be happy to leave them there.

By the way...I think it's interesting that you choose to identify yourself as 128.32.172.xxx, rather than by name.

Not interested in that approach??? Ok, how's this: you write into the article whatever you like. Change language. Delete language. Add language. Then I'll come back and either edit to what I consider NPOV language, or add my own version of the facts to what you've already written. Then we can go back and forth until we find language in each area acceptable to both of us. Agreed??? F. Lee Horn

That seems like a fair proposal. However, I think I would like to devote my energies elNational+Front+for+the+Liberation+of+Vietnamsewhere, so from my point of view you may do with the article as you wish.

F. Lee and others: Can I just say that, from my point of view of relative ignorance, I like this article now. It reads in an even handed way, and is succint and informative (assuming there are no horrible historical inaccuracies that I'm too dumb to spot -- GWO

On behalf of 128.32.172.xxx and myself, I thank you! Trust me...it wasn't easy. I hope the damned thing meets with at least *most* people's approval now! ;) F. Lee Horn

I know many people have been putting a lot of work into this. My point may seem partisan, but I think it is serious and important.:

Currently, the article states "Vietnam was partitioned, ostensibly temporarily, into a communist North and a democratic South."

I do not think it is accurate to call South Vietnam a democracy. I am NOT trying to compare/contrast the South and the North -- I make no claims about the North. But the South was not by our standards a democracy. Halberstam described it as feudal (albeit with many of the trappings of republics, like elections). I suspect some historians would also reject that comparison. Frankly I myself do not know what to write. I know the US government thaught that S. Vietnam was better than N. Vietnam. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. And I know that they had hopes thad S. Vietnam would become a democracy. But it just wasn't.

After the French-Indochina war and the Geneva accords, the French ceeded the North to Ho Chi Minh and the South was NOT set up as a democracy but left in the hands of the French puppet emporer, Bao Dai. The United States insisted that the emporor name Ngo Dinh Diem as Prime Minister -- he was not elected. In 1956 Diemh opposed unified elections and instead staged an election in the South which he won. He and his brothers effectively ruled S. Vietnam as a family. In 1963 Buddhist opposition revealed Diem's shaky base to the US public, which began to see how corrupt and oppressive his regime was. At this point the US government was so embarassed by him that when ARVN officers asked Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge if the US would object to a coup, Lodge replied no. Diem was assassinated in 1963. A few years later, one of the leaders of the coup, Nguyen Van Thieu, became president.

If this is a "democracy," I hope my country never suffers from such a democracy!

By the way, many of these details are in the Encarta on-line encyclopedia articles on Vietnam. If our article is going to diverge profoundly from this account, it ought to explain why.

The article is not on "Vietnam," but on the war, so I don't know if all of these facts are appropriate for the article itself. I just think we have to get a different word than "democracy" to describeNational+Front+for+the+Liberation+of+Vietnam

1) a puppet empire of the French

2) a puppet dictator of the US

3) another puppet dictator of the US who rose to power by killing the first puppet dictator with US approval

SR

I changed the statement from US supported RVN vs. Soviet and North Vietnamese supported VC to US supported RVN vs. Soviet supported VC and North Vietnam. The VC became less and less important as the war progressed, and the final offensive was conducted almost entirely by the NVA.

Made some small but very important changes in the first paragram

The U.S. supported government of Vietnam was known as the Republic of Vietnam, not the Republic of South Vietnam. There was a Republic of South Vietnam which was the government that was instituted by the North after the fall of Saigon. It lasted until 1976 when it merged with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (a.k.a. North Vietnam) to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

As I mentioned before, the war was not between the US supported RVN vs Soviet and NV supported VC. It was between the United States supported RVN and the VC and North Vietnam. The VC and the NVA were two distinct groups with the VC playing a less and less important role as time moved on.

Haven't looked at this article in a while, and I'm impressed with what y'all have done with it, and with how big you've made the /Talk article. I think the current version (as I write this) and how it's handled Vietnamization works reasonably well, and that was the big issue the last time I was here.

A couple of ideas to bounce by you folks on where we go from here. First, I know that sub-articles are strongly discouraged, but I think we're hitting the point with this that some kind of splitting up into separate articles could be a good thing. Second, I think there's a need to include some mention of groups like the Weathermen and SDS and some of the more militant action opposing the war (bombings, shooting police, etc.) in the section on opposition to the war. Third, I think it's time to cut some of the stuff in the /Talk here -- at the very least, the stuff up through the discussion of Vietnamization.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts, and thanks again to everybody who's put so much time into this article. You've produced an article with balanced claims, rather than buffered claims, and I think that's a good thing. -- Blain

I did a minor edit, mostly for clarity--commas and spelling and such. Also added "and Indochinese" to "this turbulent period in American history" at end: it's easy for us, writing in English, to deemphasize Vietnam because the effects on the US are more important to us. I suspect post-war Vietnam belongs in the article on that country, so haven't added anything.

Similarly, Weathermen/SDS and such probably belong in separate articles, manybe with links here. --Vicki Rosenzweig

What does this phrase mean:

for control of South Vietnam

I thought South Vietnam's goal was to retain its independence, while North Vietnam's goal was to conquer it -- analogous to the Korean War.

Is the phrase meant to insinuate the idea that the USA wanted to "control" South Vietnam? If so, the article should say so -- and document this. It should be rather easy to find such documentation, as I recall from the days of the peace movement that many people believed that the USA wanted to use South Vietnam as a kind of colony.

Also, does the phrase mean that the USSR or Viet Cong or N. Vietnam wanted to control South Vietnam separately? Or that they wanted to reunite the country? Considering that the aftermath of the war was a united country, I think it's the latter.

I'd like to see a better phrase used.

Ed Poor

This phrase is problematic:

the war was unwinnable and immoral.

I think it was meant to convey that the US military campaign in Vietnam was unwinnable and immoral. The other side in the war was not generally considered immoral by the peace movement. Almost always, when protesters said they opposed the "war" they meant not that they wanted both sides simply to stop fighting -- i.e., that all war is immoral. But that they wanted the US to withdraw.

Advocates of US withdrawal were divided into:

those who favored a Communist victory
those who, while neither favoring opposing a Communist victory, nonetheless regarded the US role as unwarranted interference (let them work it out themselves)
those who opposed a Communist victory, but opposed the US role as for any combination of the following: it was unwarranted interference in a civil war; it was immoral support for a corrupt dictatorship (S. Vietnam); or it was immorally motivated by the desire to exploit Vietnam as a sort of colony.

I'd like to use the term campaign to describe the US military involvement. I believe the term will help distinguish between the war -- which includes both sides, along with their allies -- and the military aims and actions of each of the two sides.

Ed Poor

I changed the terminology from Viet Cong to NLF. I think it's more NPOV to refer to groups by their official names or what they called themselves. See http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/vsg/vc1.html for a rather long thread between historians on the appropriateness of using VC vs. NLF in historical texts. DanKeshet

Yes but this is wikipedia and we need to always to give articles names that a majority of English speakers will recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity. Therefore the article for the Viet Cong should be at Viet Cong and all other varients should be redirected to that article. This is especially important for edit links -- since there is a FAR greater chance of somebody creating a stub for Viet Cong than the official title (which few people know). Compare a search for National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam with Viet Cong. The first gets 54 hits, while the second gets over 40,000. It would be OK to use the more "NPOV" title after introducing the far, far more common title. See the Linda Lovelace discussion in wikipedia talk:naming conventions for more reasoning. --maveric149

I can definitely buy naming the NLF/VC article Viet Cong and making the link to the as-yet-non-existent article National Liberation Front. But I still think it better if we use the name NLF within the Vietnam War article (with sufficient explanation so people who know them as VC can understand). DanKeshet

Agreed so long as the official title is always introduced as being what most people commonly call the "Viet Cong". Do you want to change the edit link or should I? --maveric149

We need to include more on the other countries contributions. China?, Canada? Korea sent 312,853 men over a twelve year period - how many casualties? 65.56.188.24