/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6164948]

Not strictly /lit/ related, but there is no /hist/, so, fuck it. I was raised in a very conservative household, my education included 'christ centered' home schooled curriculum and history lessons from my fundamentalist dad. As you can guess, I didn't get the most objective education. Recently, I've taken an interest in relearning stuff. Literature, history, science, etc. To make a long story short, I started learning about the cold war and Vietnam. I'm terribly confused, why the FUCK did America involve itself in Vietnam? The only answer I've found is 'muh communism' and cold war bullshit. Sincerely, I don't understand why the US should feel even remotely proud of itself. I feel like we tried to be superman and save the world from the evils of communism, even though, arguably, it was on its way out. I don't know lit, I feel like there is an angle I'm missing, teach me, bishop.

[Anonymous No.6164957]

>>6164948
The military industrial complex

[Anonymous No.6164959]

You're missing that Ho Chi Minh was basically a communist saint and did literally nothing wrong.

[Anonymous No.6164964]

America was opposed to the USSR. America wanted countries to stay in its geopolitical orbit and submit to vassalization through American economic dominance. The USSR wanted ideological allies in communist states. The USA couldn't tolerate a communist Vietnam.

It's not saving the world from communism. It's saving it from the USSR.

[Anonymous No.6164976]

homeschoolfag reporting in.

the US got involved in Vietnam because they wanted to keep interests in southeast Asia "westernized." Remember, after ww2, there were decolonization wars in "French Indochina," as well as Algeria, the rest of Africa, and so forth. The "west" was losing a great deal of its imperial territory.

Add to that the "threat" of communism. And no, it wasn't on its way out, in fact it was still a huge deal. Remember, the Cuban Missile Crisis had just happened, and the threat of a MAD-style nukewar was still in the minds of everyone. McCarthyism and the "red scares" were fresh as well.

Getting involved against Russia and China in Vietnam was a way to fight them without fighting them. That's why it was a "cold war proxy war," just like Angola, Rhodesia to some extent, Mozambique, Korea, and so on. It was a way to put western equipment into action against eastern, and try to check the spread of the russkie.

Sorry if that's garbled, I'm only about 15% awake. Feelsbadman. Also just read the "background" section on the wiki for the vietnam war. I think that's what it's called, but it's been awhile so I don't remember.

[Anonymous No.6164983]

>>6164948
I strongly recommend reading David Halberstam's The Best And The Brightest, which is basically a fantastic account of exactly that question.

But basically, the reason was precisely because the people in power felt that it was necessary to avoid Vietnam falling to Communism, and at every point, thought that only a minor escalation could accomplish that goal.

If you want to talk about the ethical and political dimensions, I agree with you, I think we made a mistake.

[Anonymous No.6165024]

>>6164948
From what I know, it is fulled with "cold war bs". To put it short, the Russians were gaining ground on pretty much all fronts. They pretty much had eastern Europe, Cuba, and were progressing into Asia. The USA and Russia were neck and neck, almost about to nuke each other. (Cuban Missile Crisis) The USSR basically only had to make countries have communist governments to control them, usually being more indirectly. The USA tried to slow/stop this when they saw the spread of communism to Vietnam, and allied itself with the South Vietnamese government.
Hope it helps a bit.

[Anonymous No.6165889]

>>6164948
>I'm terribly confused, why the FUCK did America involve itself in Vietnam?

By the early 1950s the United States were dominated by a "military-industrial complex." This body of bureaucrats, managers, executives and owners coordinated US foreign policy by placing pressure on policy makers. Kennedy was a weak and naïve president, whose cabinet was filled with ideological warriors and who was deeply susceptible to pressure.

The military-industrial complex had key interests in Japan, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. They viewed any development of democracy in South East Asia as a threat to this, and encouraged the US government to crush nationalist, democratic, pro-Soviet, and workers' control movements in the area. This was the "domino theory," that any state that became democratic, independently nationalist, pro-Soviet or actually controlled by a workers' revolution would cause all states in the area to go the same way. Immediately the US was concerned with Thailand, and their puppet state there.

Kennedy was fearful of government change in Laos and Cambodia initially, meanwhile the Republic of Vietnam was failing to deal with an insurgency of nationalists, pro-Soviets and workers in southern Vietnam.

Kennedy escalated US advice and direct (US piloted / controlled) military aid to the RVN. He also executed the president of the RVN.

These moves failed and the insurgency grew and grew.

LBJ was an even weaker president than Kennedy. LBJ wanted to achieve domestic goals that would sustain US capitalism by ending the worst cases of racism and by improving the quality of US labour. As a result LBJ was willing to hand foreign policy over to the military-industrial complex.

The military-industrial complex expanded its involvement in the RVN, and eventually produced a false flag operation (identical to real incidents, but wholely false), to get Congress and the Presidency to authorise a war.

The US then raped the RVN and its population systematically. Japanese, Thai and Philippine capital grew rich out of the import-export markets that grew up around the war's urban consumer culture.

The insurgency and war grew, and the US policy makers found themselves trapped.

Fire on the Lake is an okay account, if ancient and problematic.

[Anonymous No.6165928]

>>6165889
>The military-industrial complex had key interests in Japan, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. They viewed any development of democracy in South East Asia as a threat to this, and encouraged the US government to crush nationalist, democratic, pro-Soviet, and workers' control movements in the area.

Hello ideological warrior

>problematic

I see you

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.6165985]

>>6165889
You forgot the part about Kennedy not wanting to escalate the war and getting killed for it.

[Anonymous No.6165999]

>>6165985
Which is strange because Ike did lots to restrain US war mongering and wasn't killed.

Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.6166015]

>>6165889
Moot gave you your very own board for this. Wouldn't you rather post there?

[Anonymous No.6166026]

>>6165889
>The US wanted to crush democracy! It couldn't allow a democratic government to stand!
>Published by The Workers' Consortium of America Press, by independent scholar Under Scorestein, PhD

[Anonymous No.6166027]

>>6166015
/pol/ is the politically incorrect board not the politics board, as per the board header. Political theory belongs on /lit/

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.6166039]

>>6165999
its a reference to the book On the Trail of the Assassins.

[Anonymous No.6166043]

>>6164948

because for Charlie, comfort is cold rice and some rat meat

[Anonymous No.6166045]

>>6166015
History is a form of literature. Please refer to my citation.

>>6166026
Indonesian coup much?

>>6166039
I don't shit in the laundry, I don't piss in the washing up, and I don't post conspiracy theory in a history thread.

[Anonymous No.6166082]

>>6166045
>conspiracy theory
Keep believing state-sanctioned narratives of history, bruh.

[Anonymous No.6166116]

>>6166082

I see your theory of history needs powerful bad men to cause powerful bad things. Keep needlessly multiplying postulates.

[Anonymous No.6166130]

We wanted access to their resources, mainly rubber IIRC but I've never studied the Vietnam war too intensely. The US also had to flex its military-industrial muscles. Also Communism, the idea was that if a Communist state popped up in Southeast Asia the rest of the world would go Red.