The 'Red Napoleon' who defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and subsequently the Americans has died at age of 102.
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/vietnam-general-giap-dies
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 4 Oct 13 at 20:57
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Strangely we were having a discussion in work about how post war Vietnam has turned out quite well in work the other afternoon..(not much talk of football there - thank goodness.)
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the weight of those shoulder boards dun for him.
Now there was a war we did well to keep our noses out of (officially), and a classic example of how the yanks should have kept their noses out too.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 4 Oct 13 at 21:16
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They should hang their heads in shame. But have they learnt anything ? - Hardly..
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The Vietcong had all the motivation they where fighting for their country.Heavy bombing superior wapenry and manpower by the Americans didn't win the war.Chemicals dumped on the Vietnamese Napalm.
It didn't defeat communism.The war started after the Tonkin incident which was reckoned a set up.
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Gen Giap (pron zap not jap) was around for a hell of a long time, original military leader of the Viet Minh divisions that surrounded the French at Dien Bien Phu, back when the world was young.
Died at 102. Must be a healthy life, guerilla general.
In its news piece on him the BBC said solemnly that his struggle had come at a price, that 2.4million people had died during it.
Come on chaps, guess who it was who killed nearly all of them. Just guess. One can't help feeling the Beeb was being a bit demure about what had really happened.
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I can guess A.C not being demure.
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>> Come on chaps, guess who it was who killed nearly all of them. Just guess.
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And guess who won using our WW1, or Russian WW2 mentality, regardless of the human losses.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 5 Oct 13 at 13:54
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>> guess who won using our WW1, or Russian WW2 mentality, regardless of the human losses.
Bear in mind though ON that when the French capitulated at Dien Bien Phu, the VietMinh allowed them to leave unmolested, perhaps - can't really remember - with their weapons.
This relatively civilized conduct of warfare succumbed later to mass bombing, napalm, agent orange, cut-throat mercenary hill tribes and God knows what all else ordered, organised and carried out by a succession of US war criminals in government and big business notably including, I'm sorry to say, LBJ among more obvious villains.
I'm not really anti-American in general terms, not at all. But fair's fair.
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Erm...why did the Yanks do it?
Was it to try to stop the spread of Communism?
Anyone actually want to live under Communism. I don't.
I think people in democracies sometimes take their freedoms for granted.
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>> Anyone actually want to live under Communism. I don't.
No one in their right mind would. But the Vietnamese had a right to choose it, then modify it as they have done. Their choice was no sort of threat to anyone in the West at any point. All that carp about the domino theory...
Nor, incidentally, did 'the spread of Communism' constitute any threat to anyone in the West other than useful idiots of course. There was no risk at any time of 'communism' gaining a real hold on any major western society or economy. It was just a scarecrow used quite clumsily, but well enough for the market bad cess to it, to justify colossal crimes and mass murder, along with a whole lot of boring horse manure.
As any fule kno I always thought. Perhaps I am wrong after all.
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Your'r not that far wrong A.C. Lots of it was hype, still is in the States about those commies.Over 50 million people in the USA on the bread line.
Cant say Putin is such a pleasant character.
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>> As any fule kno I always thought. Perhaps I am wrong after all.
Well, of course I could well be foolish..but the difficulty I'm having is:
Why would the Yanks have such a costly bun fight in that region for no real reason?
They stated they didn't want communism to spread. If there was an underlying reason that I'm not aware of, (such as oil in the middle east) perhaps you could enlighten me?
For my mind, I suspect the communism reason is true...look at the McCarthyism that was rife in the States, they were paranoid about it...and maybe they were right to be, who knows?
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>> look at the McCarthyism that was rife in the States, they were paranoid about it...and maybe they were right to be, who knows?
Always looked like a cheap, nasty scam to me, invented more or less from the ground up. I knew someone quite well who had been a false, lying witness for Roy Cohn/McCarthy. He wasn't the only one. And people's lives and careers were genuinely ruined by it, soppy centre-left people like many here (and me).
As for the mass murder in Asia, the cost - the expenditure on hardware, transport, weaponry etc. - was more the point really than the mass murder. That was just included to show something effective was being done. Meanwhile movers and shakers in the armed forces, big business and administrations were getting rich. Yeeee-hah!
(I wasn't calling you foolish Wp. Just vigorously expressing a point of view).
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 6 Oct 13 at 22:41
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>> (I wasn't calling you foolish Wp. Just vigorously expressing a point of view).
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Oh, I haven't taken it personally, all part of the debate.
I rather like a good parry now and again.
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"No one in their right mind would. But the Vietnamese had a right to choose it, then modify it as they have done. Their choice was no sort of threat to anyone in the West at any point. All that carp about the domino theory... "
With the benefit of hindsight that may be true but the threat of a communist world did seem a very real possibility back in the sixties. It wasn't after all that long after the second world war in which the Russians had displayed their massive military ability. Both sides were bristling with nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war hovered over us. Most of the Asian and European continents were under the control of hard line communist governments and the Domino effect did seem very plausible.
The world looked very different then.
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There was nuclear deterrence, two ways if you like but the West had lots more usable bombs, and the West could outspend and out-invent the communist world. Nothing could really happen except on the fringes.
Yes, the world looked a bit different. You wouldn't have wanted to be a Pole, Czech or East German. But there was absolutely no real probability of that happening, however much one might have dreamed about it in one's naive marxising youth. But the drip drip drip of anti-communist paranoia was nearly all eyewash for the credulous.
Very like the public discourse on drug prohibition (invented perhaps because alcohol prohibition hadn't done enough to generate a healthy organised crime industry). That too is harmful and obviously malevolent.
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>> but the West had lots more
>> usable bombs, and the West could outspend and out-invent the communist world. Nothing could really
>> happen except on the fringes.
We only know that now.
The Yanks obviously thought that when Ronnie Raygun was in charge...but it was a somewhat unproven theory at the beginning (which ultimately proved correct).
When the USSR was at its peak and China was beginning to be a main player, you could forgive the Yanks for having some paranoia.
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>> you could forgive the Yanks for having some paranoia.
Yes, they knew the Soviet Union could maul them if it really came to it. But the powers understood each other very well on executive level and were evidently in frequent communication. The 'paranoia' was essentially for public consumption. The value to governments of an atmosphere of ill-defined but ever-present threat is very great. Helps to keep the masses obedient.
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>> The value to governments of an
>> atmosphere of ill-defined but ever-present threat is very great. Helps to keep the masses obedient.
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Oh I can see all that. Create a problem for the masses to get umbrage about or get worried about and it'll nicely take their minds off other domestic issues.
Argentina has done the Falklands smokescreen for years..and more latterly Spain with Gibraltar..
....it's just that with the U.S. I think they WERE properly worried about the spread of communism.
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>>....it's just that with the U.S. I think they WERE properly worried about the spread of communism.
I'd share your view if, after the Cold War, spending on US military contracts had shrunk in line with the global threat but funnily enough the war on drugs/terror/oil rich nations has enabled them to keep filling the pockets of the real power in the "World's Greatest Democracy": the military (and the banks...)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Comparison_with_other_countries
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>> and the Domino effect did seem very plausible.
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The theory had been demonstrably true in Europe. The immediately post-war democratic and pseudo-democratic countries fell one by one under adjacent pressure from the ones next door, ultimately Russia. The theory of vigorous rebuff had earlier worked for the Finns, and it worked for Denmark when we made a quick dash to forestall the Russians after the collapse of Germany.
But like all good theories, it had its limits, and many failed to realise that communism was becoming played out, and this was a different country in a different part of the world, probably a different more local kind of communism anyway.
The North Vietnamese were only nominally backed by China, who found them difficult clients to manipulate (a bit like the N Koreans). That sublety was entirely missed by the Americans, who are incapable of seeing the trees for the wood, because the wood is easier to bomb.
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>> But fair's fair.
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"Fair" and "War" are not compatible.
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A website devoted to Den Bien Phu is www.dienbienphu.org, English version available. I believe it mentions "The Angel", aristocrat Genevieve de Galard-Terraube, formerly an Air Force nurse, who was working there throughout. A onetime French planting colleague and ex-Para knew her, having fought in another action where she was in attendance.
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>> we did well to keep our noses out of (officially)
But I often wonder if our efforts in the Communist Emergency in Malaya/Malaysia were not partially at the urging of America, an early indication of the Domino Effect theory in operation.
There were more direct results there later. During the Vietnam War, Malaysia (as it had become known) was an R & R centre for American troops. Correlation is not causation but there was a big increase in drug taking and VD among local people. In addition, a number of America civilians appeared on the scene with no discernible occupation - CIA spooks maybe.
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Don't forget the Borneo campaign of the '60s, there was considerable input to that by all of our forces.
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>> there was a big increase in drug taking and VD among local people.
Dunno about the social diseases, but I was disheartened to hear when in Malaysia a few years ago that in theory you can get the death penalty for possessing a pinch of grass. Damned uncivilised if you ask me, and also attributable to the US really.
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Not wishing to speak ill of the dead, but he was a Soviet puppet who had no qualms about arming children and regarded his own people as expendable. Hero he wasn't.
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Times change but history keeps repeating itself, but how easily convinced by the propaganda of the period (just as today) that a course of action nay a way of life should be the one to follow and others not in agreement should be destroyed.
In another 40 years policies in many parts of the world of the early part of the 20th century will appear dreadful, especially when being described by those responsible for the hymn sheet of the day in 2053, ad infinitum.
All depends on whos writing the script and who believes without question.
Whether you agree with someone or don't, better that you and they should have formed their own ideas without being indoctrinated.
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>> death penalty for possessing a pinch of grass
For single shot of whatever, there would more likely be a caning. This was not by some headmaster figure, who would say that it would pain him more than the culprit. It would pain the culprit, and badly, a vicious flogging with a 4' rattan, over 0.5" diameter. The process was enacted on UK TV about 3 years ago. It is demonstrated (using a dummy) to very young Malaysian schoolchildren.This might be followed by rigorous "rehabilitation" in a boot camp.
Singapore has a similar regime and there is an account somewhere by US citizen Michael J. Fay, done for vandalism there in 1994. This somewhat modified US opinion. I regret to note that the process was inherited from the British, who were fond of that kind of thing.
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>> I regret to note that the process was inherited from the British, who were fond of that kind of thing.
Oh dear. I'm afraid you may be right ambo... I was really talking about drug prohibition, but that too was something the British embraced post-war (perhaps under US influence though).
The lathis used by Indian and Pakistani riot fuzz are very likely inherited from the British, as are the kobokos (lengths of knotted, strong, dense, slim cord) with which the Nigerian fuzz sometimes belabour motorists suspected of causing the endemic traffic jams in Lagos.
'The spanking major', eh? Got a lift in London once from a military man who asked whether I had enjoyed being beaten at school, obviously hoping that I had. Nowt so weird as folks.
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>> 'The spanking major', eh?
As a boy and yoot i used to thumb lifts all over the place, must have been a distinctly unnatractive brat, never once got propositioned that i can recall.
Had a bit of a do one evening though on the way home when waiting for the gents loo at The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells, chap came out i went to go in another chap came out...ooer missus that was a wake up call for a 14 year old.
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Vo Nguyen Giap (RIP) - R.P.
