EFFORTPOST Rant about Vietnam, Cambodia, hippies, chuds, journos, &ct.

I was replying to a post and one thing led to another and I wrote this. It happens sometimes. Maybe someday I'll clean this up, reorganize it, make it more coherent, and do some actually good writing.

Korea

We went to Korea and trained their guys. Within a couple years in 1953 they had infantry as good as ours (Ridgway himself said this) and they were learning to use artillery. By then the Americans were doing most of the technical stuff (communications, artillery, armor, certain engineering tasks) but with our help the Koreans had built up the 4th most powerful army in the world and taken responsibility for most of the front.

Vietnam

We go to Vietnam. We're there for 15 years. We give them all kinds of training and equipment. Many ARVN units are brought up to US standards. They're flying jet fighters in combat ffs. Somehow they lose. This is some political problem in Saigon, not what's happening at the front. They had the same problem as Ukraine with draft dodgers who they wouldn't crack down on for political reasons. You can't win a war when the people who are supposed to be doing most of the fighting are playing a bunch of inscrutable oriental Fu Manchu games with each other. Apparently Ukraine has the same basic problem, except the Vietnamese fought for 15 years and they're already throwing in the towel.

Somehow we don't have a Fu Manchu marsey yet.

The Vietnamese were treacherously stabbed in the back like Trump is going to do Ukraine. Kissinger made a deal with the Chinese where we'd make sure South Vietnam was destroyed in exchange for them turning against the Soviets. The media presented this like it was a genius move that only he could make. Frick. Frick this b-word. The Chinese already hated them and were in extreme fear of a Soviet invasion. We didn't need to give them anything. I could have gone over and accepted them begging us for help. Mao was a total fricking psycho but he was willing to do business.

The US mostly pulled out in 1971 (Old Man Redactor was one of the last) and completely in 1973. But to the consternation of imbecilic wingcucks on both sides, South Vietnam didn't immediately collapse.

I hate hippies

Leftoids were shocked as they imagined that the with the Americans gone, the Vietnamese didn't all rise up and beg for the communism they always wanted? They were supposed to be cute communist teddy bears (George Lucas has proudly and openly said the Ewoks are based on what he imagines Vietnamese people are like) and follow Jane Fonda's lead. In my entire experience with leftoid boomers (keep in mind this about 75% of my teachers, lots of family members, etc.) I have never once heard them mention ARVN once. I think most of them honestly don't even know it existed. So there's this extreme cognitive dissonance between their idea that America was fighting all the Vietnamese and it turning out that most Vietnamese were on our side.

B-word, you are not going down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a major highway, in the rubber sandals they imagine on college campuses. You know why? Because it would be dangerous with so many trucks going by.

You ever notice that the "Anti-War Movement" never gave a shit about ending the war? After 1971 they had zero interest. Curious. Their hearts bled for all the brown people being killed by US imperialism and all of the sudden they don't give a shit what happens. I've had conversations with people who were adults in the 1970s and I have to explain to them what happened because at the time that's how little they cared about all those brown people. (I know Vietnamese aren't brown, I'm talking in terms of how these people saw them.) I'm not saying we should have gone to Vietnam. I'm not saying we should have stayed in Vietnam. Throughout this post I am not giving any military or government policy advice. But the "Anti-War Movement" was entirely self-serving, trying to keep upper middle class people out of the war. This is the real moment when the Democratic Party began shifting upward. Republicans dodged the draft too, but the Democrats became identified with the social class that could and did to that. A generation later it should be no surprise what peoples' party affiliations are.

This is one of the best episodes. When the hippie dies because he's walking around barefoot I always curl up in laughter. I guess this planet has a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policy.

Chuds are no better

The rightoids were equally embarrassed. They were supposed to be so badass and they lost a war against a weaker opponent. How does that work? Some blamed the Vietnamese "we cared more about fighting for their country than them!" and a lot them made it a racial thing. A couple moments in time from Old Man Redactor's memory: Standing there in the base and realizing that everyone in his unit was either drunk or high. Everyone. Every single one. Other memory: Old Man Redactor turns on the TV. Now you've been told over and over again that "Vietnam was the first war on television, where people at home could see what was really happening". He's flipping the channels and he gets on South Vietnamese station. They're showing their journos' footage of the fighting. And right away he can tell that this is actually not staged, these people really are in combat, because they're fighting but at the same time they're scared out of their minds. You notice Walter Cronkite never aired any of that footage on American TV. The audience might find out his Vietnam War entertainment product wasn't really authentic.

You ever notice that our "racist grandpas" watched our Chinese allies fight but you never see our allies today (except white Europeans). It's probably because of internalized whiteness or something.

The stab in the back (unlike Hitler's, this one actually happened)

So the ARVNs kept on fighting. In America both leftoids and rightoids had massive cognitive dissonance. A South Vietnamese army that could hold it's own in battle? This can't exist in either of their world views. (You had to try really hard to not notice the ARVNs existed. (Old Man Redactor paraphrase: "The Tet Offensive is when they found out that in a real war the South Vietnamese would beat them.")) The leftoids especially were absolutely fuming that South Vietnam didn't roll over and die immediately like their professors at Dartmouth promised. Should they learn and adapt their thinking to the real world? Of course not. We're talking about rich white women. So the US Congress got together and cut off artillery ammunition for South Vietnam.

Is that the narrow gauge railroad he told me about that went along Route 1, the Street Without Joy? Notice the relationship between the ARVN commander and the advisors. At this point in the war they're throwing out suggestions but this guy may have been fighting 12 years. He'll consider that but he's the one in charge.

Old Man Redactor says they used 130mm guns to blow shit out of Quang Tri province, the one on the border just north of where he was. The ARVNs had no shells. They couldn't shoot back. Things disintegrated pretty fast after that. The US had trained and equipped a really strong powerful army to fight like Americans. Americans (especially then) rely a lot on artillery. So they're overrun.

Impossible. The Viet Cong (who totally still exist 7 years after the Tet Offensive) only fight with goofy wooden traps and carry everything on their backs. American soldiers can wander around unarmed alone because... the teddy bears are waiting to spring their traps. They would never use an 8 ton gun that is among the heaviest artillery in the world. It's just not sporting. Only imperialists do that.

The war is over!

Meanwhile the "Anti-War Movement" doesn't notice. They're too busy smoking dope and giving each other gonorrhea to care. There war is over. The North Vietnamese send I dunno how many people to "reeducation camps". (I guess it's better than Tet where they murdered all the teachers in Hue on the grounds that they're paid by the government.) They help their Cambodian puppet army take over Cambodia. Their puppet does their own thing, which is genocide. Now genocide isn't a problem for the Vietnamese commies. They aren't Anne-Marie Slaughter weeping about the "responsibility to protect". But a power struggle between the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese factions is fought out and the pro-Russians win. Pol Pot sides with China. So Vietnam invades Cambodia. Pol Pot's guys run into the jungle and do guerilla warfare. You thought the Vietnamese commies were good at guerilla warfare? Well they're sure not good at being on the receiving end of it. They quickly realize that they can't accomplish anything by fighting, so they just cut off food to areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Now huge numbers of people are dying of starvation. This only ends when the Cold War does. Like so many wars across the world it was fueled by the Russians and Chinese fighting over who is the better commie. As soon as that ends, all these wars do too.

*Border skirmish between China and Vietnam in 1984. Did the Anti-War Movement care about this? A bunch of asian people got killed. That's they're raison d'etre, right?"

You ever ask an "Anti-War" boomer how they felt about the genocide in Cambodia? I'm not saying they're responsible for it (they had virtually no impact on any decision making in the war) but like... did you ever wonder what happened in the end? Ever? All those people you cared about so much before. And then they stammer and piss their pants and say "It was... It was Immoral! It was an immoral war! I know because I saw that napalm girl! That's when I knew I had to fight against the war!" And then I say "b-word please, that photo is from 1972 when virtually all Americans were home. For you the war was over. There were no Americans involved. A South Vietnamese plane dropped napalm in support of a South Vietnamese unit on the ground. The more I think about it, the more I notice that the "anti-war" boomers would systematically ignore the whole existence of South Vietnam through the whole war. I wonder who coordinated this.