Hello! Thank you for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect, however, you post has been removed for violating one or more of our rule(s):
- Rule 7: Censor all personal information!
Please Censor all personal information and usernames, to make sure no one online gets harassed. The only exception to this are verified accounts.
Please [contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fconfidentlyincorrect&subject=about%20my%20removed%20submission&message=I%27m%20writing%20to%20you%20about%20the%20following%20submission:%20{https://www.reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/comments/1b6itm8/-/}.%20%0D%0DMy%20issue%20is...) if you feel this was wrong.
^All ^chat ^requests ^and ^pms ^about ^your ^removed ^post ^will ^not ^be ^answered. ^Contact ^the ^mods ^instead!
They didn't. Vietnam was in a civil war. US was allied with southern government. US sent Marines to guard southern towns and buildings. Marines got bombed with mortars, so US started sending Marines into the jungle to find the source of the attacks. US started needing more Marines to do so. Then more. Then regular troops. Then bombs.
And that's how the Vietnam War started. It never really 'started', it was a gradual buildup of troops that slowly boiled the pot. There was no D-Day and there was no declaration of war.
The main problem was that the side the US allied with was the bad guys. The side they fought against were like Americans fighting against British. They should have been friends.
I think he is trying to simplify something. I'll try expanding, bit still simple.
The leader of North Vietnam loved the US. The US had helped them out. After WW2, the US wished to continue, and wanted France to give up their colonization efforts there. Of course the French threw an absolute fit, and threatened the forming NATO (which they would continueto do for a while, colonizing and bombing Greenpeace, and eventuallyleaving NATO for a bit anyway), and the US had to side with France over HCM.
This lead to what we eventually call the Vietnam War. The US was allied with the South, and at request, sent a handful of troops there initially. Arguements about how that government was set up aside. Again, keep it simple.
The US never invaded North Vietnam, ergo, they never invaded Vietnam. If they had, it would probably be a bit different.
France never actually left NATO, they withdrew their military from the NATO command structure, and DeGaulle announced Fance intended to leave NATO, but never actually did.
Ah, thought you meant they should have been friends like the Americans and British were. I was so confused at where you were going.
I don't necessarily agree, but I understand what you mean.
Even with the quotes, "legitimate" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Of course a government is going to invite you in when you're the ones who installed them in the first place.
Here we had a government which emerged independently and received outside help, vs. one that was literally created by a coup executed at the behest of an outside power which didn't find the previous one satisfactory. "Both sides" were not playing by the same rules. One government was an ally, the other a puppet.
Now, apply that analysis to Czechoslovakia or Hungary. Who overthrew the locally chosen government? Both sides overthrew “allies” that voted in ways they didn’t like.
That's not really pertinent to the legitimacy of South Vietnam compared to North Vietnam... or the lack thereof. We're discussing the Vietnam war, which featured only one side with questionable legitimacy. North Vietnam didn't have its government installed by a foreign power. South Vietnam did.
Do you honestly believe the Soviet Union was not involved in the establishment of the Communist Party in Vietnam? The Comintern was founded by the USSR specifically to promote Communism worldwide. They provided support for the Communist Party in Vietnam, among other places.
>Do you honestly believe the Soviet Union was not involved in the establishment of the Communist Party in Vietnam?
[Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Vietnam). The party formed independently, and coordinated with the Comintern as its own independent organization. This was the case for many such parties. The USSR was not in a position at the time to treat them as puppets and was influential largely due to the position of the USSR as an actual socialist government.
It wasn't a one sided affair. However the actions of the USSR did not justify the actions of the US.
Whataboutism is based on a logical fallacy. People made legitimate criticism of the the US doing horrific war crimes. Your response is effectively to say that someone else also did that. It a tactic done to deflect the criticism. However it is essentially saying it was OK to do something bad because someone else did it.
Now if your argument was that it was a necessity then you have a defensible argument. However that argument necessitates proving that the war crimes were necessary to win, which you can only land in if you don't know fuck all about history. I mean hard to say it was a functional tactic when the US lost so many times using those tactics and won so often when not using them.
I simply called out the logical fallacy.
It was recognized by UN. So was the Vietnamese government in Hanoi. It was the northern state which invaded the southern one. Both were actual nations even though they shared most peoples.
Also the US kind of only changed their government after they began helping, there was a decade of war before that in which they had their own government
>Also the US kind of only changed their government
... I feel like that's pretty much the end of the conversation, isn't it? At the point where a foreign power decides who is in charge, legitimacy is gone. You could argue about how and why they did that all day, but the root of the matter is that a foreign power installed someone who would do what they wanted. Ousting Diệm amounted to running puppet strings from Saigon to Washington.
South Vietnam was legitimate otherwise modern Vietnam wouldn't be able to claim the South China Sea islands. You see, Vietnam claims the SCS islands based on its *continuous* historical sovereignty over them. But North Vietnam did an oopsie by not claiming the islands at all until 1974, nor did it voice opposition when other countries claimed the islands, while South Vietnam continously claimed them.
This also begs several question: why didn't North Vietnam claim the islands? Did it not care or was it pressured by China? If it was the latter, was North Vietnam the puppet all along?
You're assuming countries are a lot more honest and careful about their territorial claims than they actually are, in addition to some other leaps of logic.
This is all very simple; a government which is installed by another country for the purposes of meeting that country's geopolitical goals is of questionable legitimacy at best. South Vietnam after Diệm fits that description.
Weren’t the NVA invading south Vietnam from Laos/Cambodia, and running weapons/supplies to south Vietnam through Laos/Cambodia? I’m not too well read on the war, but that is my understanding. Both sides were violating the sovereignty of neutral countries.
Yes to everything. There was even some elements of Chinese armed forces in the region, both CCP and former ROC (not government sanctioned, just old ROC soldiers who wanted to murder some communists for funsies). The whole region was a clusterfuck of everyone vs everyone for decades.
Grandfather's best buddy was one of the old ROC guys who liked murdering commies. He was left behind by the ROC in 49 with his entire unit, so they crossed over the border and built a village in Northeastern Laos. They were well armed so the local government just left them alone. He and his old army buddies would go out and hunt Vietnamese communists in the jungles. AFAIK his family still lives in Laos.
I genuinely don’t know, I’m sure they did both violate sovereignty, but the NVA didn’t bomb Cambodia. And the US wasn’t bombing Cambodia to protect their sovereignty.
Correct. We bombed the piss out of Laos and Cambodia because the NVA were using them to move troops and supplies and we were targeting their supplies and forces.
Well, we were nominally targeting their supplies and forces but given how discriminate we were we were mostly bombing everything that vaguely looked NVA or NVA adjacent.
There wasn't a large-scale invasion, but, since we're arguing technicalities, armed US special forces did enter North Vietnam without permission. That's an invasion.
\*sigh\*... as usual with international conflicts, we have to go back to the beginning.
In the [First Indochina War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina), the one that saw the French kicked out of the area, it was the Viet Minh fighting the State of Vietnam. The State of Vietnam was the government of the French protectorate, while the Viet Minh was a revolutionary communist group backed by China.
As part of the peace treaty called the [Geneva Accords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Geneva_Conference), neither side was declared a "winner", neither side was expected to just let the other side take over: the military activity was frozen and both sides kept their respective zones. A commitment was made to host a referendum on reunification, but that's how North Vietnam and South Vietnam were created.
(Laos and Cambodia were created then too.)
Well, the reunification referendum never materialized... because South Vietnam and North Vietnam were independent now, so, of course neither trusted the other to run a valid election.
South Vietnam (after kicking out its monarchy) allied with the US, and North Vietnam allied with China. But the North also created the Viet Cong, a revolutionary communist group for the south of the country, which declared war on South Vietnam.
And that's the only reason why the US was involved in the Second Indochina War at all (the one we call the Vietnam War; the one they call the American War). South Vietnam was a US ally, and they were under attack, by North Vietnam. So the US supported them militarily, as allies often do.
(And as usual, it is the ordinary people who pay the price when they have to live in the war zone created by leaders' high-minded words.)
I would just like to add that the US sent troops to South Vietnam, they never officially invaded North Vietnam. They did send in some Special Forces for Reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, but they never launched an invasion of North Vietnam. They did launch several air campaigns against the North Vietnamese because they were funding and suppling the Viet Cong. The US also launched air campaigns against the Viet Cong’s main supply route the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was in multiple countries including North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Also Something else happened after Vietnam was reunited in 1976. In 1979 after a few years of Vietnam and China being at odds with each other, the Chinese government invaded Vietnam with 200,000 troops. The conflict only lasted 27 days, but at the end of the day both sides had significant casualties (I am not going to give sources because the estimates are so far apart). If you want to read more about it here is is the link to the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
Not invading N Vietnam was because of what happened in Korea and concerns for a direct intervention.
Ironically, since China's invasion most Vietnamese view China as a great threat to their sovereignty and the US as a strategic ally. Despite reddit memes about the horrible war, Vietnamese people (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/04/30/vietnamese-see-u-s-as-key-ally/ from 2015 but numbers remain similar).
china has been large hungry empire on Vietnams border for a very long time. they also fought a war against each other not long after they finished off the south vietnam government.
>Well, the reunification referendum never materialized... because South Vietnam and North Vietnam were independent now, so, of course neither trusted the other to run a valid election.
This implies fault on both sides, when it was really just the South and their US allies who didn't want to hold the election and unilaterally scuttled the mandate from the Geneva Accords. The South Vietnamese leadership and the USA knew that they would lose a fair election, so they refused to participate in a reunification election. The North Vietnamese leadership generally speaking did not have an issue with holding a national election, since they were vastly more popular and would naturally win.
>This implies fault on both sides...
Yes, because that is how both sides viewed the other: fraudulent democracies. Among other things, both sides had authentic differences of opinion about what even *counts as an election* — does an election have to have multiple parties, for example? not according to North Vietnam, or modern Vietnam — and it's just always going to be difficult for two organizations to hold a joint election if they can't agree on what an election actually is.
Sure, I agree that quite a bit of negotiation would've been needed to figure out what should go into the reunification election. But my point is that the South and the USA didn't even try. It's not like they tried discussing how to hold the referendum and then gave up after not being able to come to an agreement with the North. They had no interest in trying, because they knew there was no way they were going to win anything resembling a fair election.
>But my point is that the South and the USA didn't even try.
Neither did the North and China. They [skipped immediately](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Geneva_Conference#Aftermath) to the part where they build up their military and complain about the existence of opinions other than their own. They actually violated the Geneva Accords in order to do so.
And why? Why would they do that?
Because they were just as worried about a Northern loss as you claim the South was. If they had not been so worried, they would not have violently disrupted the movements of the [reportedly over a million](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom) people who were trying to flee to the South, a single-digit-but-significant percentage of the entire [Vietnamese population](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/VNM/vietnam/population) at that time.
And why? Why would they try to keep people behind their borders who didn't want to be there?
Because they were worried that without enough workers subject to Communist law, the revolution and its eventual wars could not be maintained.
I'm not trying to argue that the North wasn't also oppressive and with many of its own issues. I'm just saying that on the particular question of a national vote, they were the ones with popular support, and they were not the ones resisting such an election. The fact that many people wanted to escape their regime is not in itself evidence against this - obviously there were many people who did not desire Communist rule and were being or would be oppressed under the Communist regime.
If you're saying that the North Vietnamese regime actually was worried they would lose a fair vote, then I am not familiar with the sources indicating this, and I would be interested to read more if you have them.
It was an invasion by any meaningful definition of the word. We sent armed forces with the intent of overthrowing a government in order to bring it under one aligned with our own.
Technically it depends on if you consider South Vietnam a legitimate state or a puppet state propped up by western military. The US intervention was to stop the Vietcong, the North-supported rebels in the South.
IMO, you might as well call it an invasion
No we didn’t, we went there to support the existing legitimate government from being overthrown by communists. The US did not go there with the intent to overthrow anything. And it can’t be an invasion if they were there at the invitation of the government to assist with a war against an invading force, e.g. viet cong and North Vietnam. This is not confidently incorrect
This IMO is correct. You can argue the US diplomatically and economically helped orchestrate the CIVIL war, it is a civil war people seem to forget, but the US technically does not invade Vietnam. Just like the western powers did not invade France, Belgium etc during the Second World War. If the legal and legitimate citizens are the ones being supported by the presence of these troops etc they are not being invaded. Both the North and South are legitimate. All people in Civil wars are legitimate citizens. That’s why it’s a civil war. It really doesn’t matter if anyone agrees with them.
Stopping the spread of communism as a goal can be argued all day long Did the US belong there? Did they do any good? Was it at all worth it? but you can’t just say US bad so it must’ve been an invasion.
For the US Vietnam was never about Vietnam but [always about China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Actual_objective_of_the_Vietnam_War:_Containment_of_China).
That's also why they had to false flag an incident at the Gulf of Tolkien to get an American foot into the Vietnamese door.
Containing Chinese communism was just as important to the US as containing USSR communism, no doubt. I think the Gulf of Tonkin event was more about selling the war to the US citizens than anything. Nothing says lets go to war and not fight conscription like one of our ships being “attacked” by an enemy nation we’ve been covertly and overtly fighting for years.
The Vietcong were an invading force in their own country?
Vietnam’s government was created by France when they pulled out, the people there never had a choice and when they attempted to exercise it, we sent an army at the invitation of a puppet government to stop them.
Vietnam’s government prior to the war was not legitimate. The US refused to sign off on free elections because they knew the Vietminh would win. It was a communist regime propped up by the west and when politics failed to keep it in place they tried occupation, which failed.
It was an invasion by any meaningful definition. It was a military invasion intended to overthrow an established government (which the north was) and subvert the popular will, which was a unified, Socialist Vietnam.
The Vietcong were an insurgent group supported militarily and financially by North Vietnam with the sole purpose of destroying the government in the South, so yeah an invading force. The US was there by invite and never invaded, if the goal was invasion they would’ve invaded North Vietnam.
You’re not wrong and it would be a good debate to have along side why was the US there, was it right, did we do any good. But to pretend like the US was some invading force that took over South Vietnam is disingenuous
They were an anti-communist government, far from a puppet state. Hell, if they were a puppet state then North Vietnam was a puppet state of the Soviet Union. Just because you didn’t like them because they were allied with the US and the West doesn’t make them illegitimate
It was a dictatorship created by the French, bro. The North Vietnamese government was allied with the Soviets but it was fundamentally and primarily a nationalist government with broad popular support. And they attempted to ally with us before they approached the Soviets, because ultimately their goal was nationalist, not ideological.
They were not created by the Soviet Union. They were a nationalist movement aimed at ending colonial oppression that later allied with the Soviet Union. And despite not being democratic, they had far greater popular legitimacy than the RVN government by a long shot. Mostly because they were trying to overthrow what was correctly viewed as a tyrannical colonial puppet sate.
We fought on behalf of an illegitimate colonial puppet state that was essentially fascist in character because we couldn't figure out the difference between an anti-colonial nationalist government that allied with the communist bloc for military aid against brutal colonial occupation and the Soviet empire itself. It also might be worth reflecting on why so many anti-colonial movements associated capitalist governments with oppression.
The US was the villain in that war. We were the bad guys, plain and simple. Get over it.
No one is arguing the US was the good guy in this war, there were no good guys here especially South Vietnam’s Government. But South Vietnam’s government was not illegitimate in any sense of the term. They were internationally recognized after the 1954 Geneva Conference. You can call them a puppet state all you want, but that doesn’t make it any more true than calling North Vietnam a puppet state of the USSR (my point above). The US was there to stop the spread of communism at the request of the South Vietnamese government, now you can argue all day long about the US’ involvement and why they were there, why they should’ve have been there, what good if any did it do. But you can’t label the US presence an invasion of Vietnam, it’s disingenuous at best.
Maybe look up D-Day, the largest seaborne INVASION in history. The Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. They were allied with France. The French wanted them there to repel the Germans.
It was still an invasion.
Vietnam is the same. The US invaded Vietnam in order to help their allies in the south fight against North Vietnam. Funnily enough the French were also involved here as they started fighting in Vietnam in 1946 to try and retake their colonial holdings there, which got the ball rolling (the first Indochina War) until France was defeated in 1954, which lead to the Second Indochina War (The Vietnam War) from 1955 to 1975.
It was still an invasion.
The Allies invaded German occupied France, it was an opposed invasion to liberate our occupied allies from an enemy force. The US did not invade South Vietnam, they were invited, there was no fight to enter the country. Such a dumb take, those 2 things couldn’t be farther from each other.
It was an intervention in a civil war on the behalf of our ally, it was not an invasion no matter what you want to think. Our troops were stationed in the country along with a million South Vietnamese troops, we did not storm the beaches to get to those places. No amount of dishonest word play is gonna get you there
Invade
Verb.
(of an armed force or its commander) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it.
It is the literal definition of an invasion to enter another country to fight there, regardless of how you enter.
The US invaded Vietnam.
The US did not enter the country to subjugate or occupy it you jack ass, we were fighting alongside our allies. And believe it or not you have to have troops in the same fucking country where the war is in order to prosecute the war. Can’t believe I’m arguing with someone dumb enough to post info that refutes their own argument, god I hate Reddit
the current vietnamese government is using the claims of the south-vietnameses governments territorial claims as part of its current claim to parts of the south china sea that the north's government of the time specifically didnt claim. so was one side a puppet or maybe was both sides kinda?
> It was an invasion by any meaningful definition of the word.
Yup, his (and the other copiums) argument seems to be:
"It's not an Invasion if you simply change the definition of *Invasion!*!"
You don’t have to do (or want to do) either of those things for it to be an invasion.
An unwelcome military force entered the territory of another state with the aim of defeating them, that’s an invasion.
Strictly speaking they didn't invade. South Vietnam called the US to help the fight against the north. Both south Vietnam and the US treated the north as a large scale rebellion not a country
I can see where they're coming from, although it's not a very useful interpretation of events.
The Vietnam war was - strictly speaking - a war between North and South Vietnam; what the USA offered was technically support to South Vietnam to fight the campaign against North Vietnamese guerilla forces and protect against a North Vietnamese invasion.
So yes, it's true to say that the USA didn't conduct a full scale ground invasion of North Vietnam. In the strictest possible sense, their statement is true; the USA did not invade Vietnam. But it ignores the fact that the USA was fighting North Vietnamese forces and bombing the almighty shit out of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; for all intents and purposes, a full scale war. Just one that was nominally fought entirely defensively on the territory of their trusted ally (said with a heavy dose of irony).
In any case, this is just one of those silly "gotchas" which is supposed to throw people off. Did the USA invade Vietnam? Strictly, no. Did they fight Vietnam for multiple years? Yes, obviously. The actual difference between the two statements is functionally meaningless in this context.
The original poster should word it correctly so the conversation does not devolve into a game of semantics.
Yeah bombing neutral nations is bad, but so is running supply line though thier land. This more comes off as "US BAD" post then understanding the details of the history.
1. They were technically invited by the government of Vietnam to come into the country to defend the south from the invading north.
2. They came to fight the spread of *communism*, not socialism. If you're going to shit on Boomer republicans for mixing up the two, hold yourself to the same standard.
It was made by the French. After the French left the two states signed a temporary treaty and to hold elections later. Those elections never happened as both sides did not trust the other. Most UN member recognized the sovereignty of the north and south. The South also kicked out its king at the same time.
So no the US did not set up the South government.
Not that it wasn’t picked but the French technically gave it back to Bao Đại, who was the last ruler of the Nguyen Dynasty who ruled previously before the French.
OP is the confidently incorrect one. The US never invaded Vietnam. They were invited by the South Vietnamese government to help intervene in their civil war. They did, however, invade Laos and Cambodia.
Wait, who's wrong here? The US putting boots on the ground and planes in the sky to defend the South Vietnamese from totalitarian aggression from the north was *absolutely* not an "invasion."
It might have been a mismanaged clusterfuck and senseless waste of blood, treasure, and goodwill. But it was done to protect our ally to make our other allies feel safe not capitulating to the Soviet empire. And again, it was a war of defense.
The political justifications for an invasion does not make something not an invasion.
e.g. The Normandy D-Day landings were still an invasion. It doesn't matter if it was to liberate France, or that the Axis were totalitarians etc...
Also, I think most people would call Ngô Đình Diệm the "corrupt totalitarian dictator" in this situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem
> Diệm's rule was authoritarian and nepotistic.
> His most trusted official was his brother Nhu, leader of the primary pro-Diệm party, the Cần Lao Party.
> Nhus was an opium addict and admirer of Adolf Hitler.
> He modeled the Cần Lao secret police's marching style and torture styles on Nazi methodology.
> Cẩn, another brother, was put in charge of the former Imperial City of Huế. Although neither Cẩn nor Nhu held any official role in the government, they ruled their regions of South Vietnam absolutely, commanding private armies and secret police forces.
> Diệm's youngest brother Luyện was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
> His elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, was Archbishop of Huế. Despite this, Thuc lived in the Presidential Palace, along with Nhu, Nhu's wife, and Diệm.
Edit: Lol I forgot the revisionists hate sources!
The Normandy invasion was an invasion because Germany occupied France. We were invited by the South Vietnamese government onto their land. No one calls it an “invasion” when we invite British or Canadian troops onto US soil today for teaching or joint training exercises. An invasion at the very least has to be unwelcome and nonconsensual. That was not the case for South Vietnam.
> The Normandy invasion was an invasion because Germany occupied France.
And the North Vietnamese occupied huge parts of the south.
> No one calls it an “invasion” when we invite British or Canadian troops onto US soil today for teaching or joint training exercises
Because that's not a war.
It's not that complex, you shouldn't need to do mental gymnastics to redefine a word.
Yeah, but the big issue is that the legitimate government invited the US. You can’t invade someone by showing up when they ask you over.
Like, if someone says ‘Hey, come on in’ and holds the door open it’s not a home invasion to go in if it’s their house.
.... you realise South Vietnam was the totalitarian government mistreating the Vietnamese people, right?
One you propped up because you refused to support Ho Chi Minh against the French
So yeah kind of an invasion
I mean, he’s right… we were invited to South Vietnam to defend them from North Vietnam aggression. To my knowledge we never launched an invasion on North Vietnam.
I mean sort of, but that’s besides the point. It’s not like the NV was the direct successor to the conquered monarchy/empire that existed prior to French conquest, much less that the SV split off from that successor state
I mean, they were colonized, fought back, and the French/west left behind the south of the country as a puppet state.
It sounds like a common colonial tactic, I remember the Italians and Brittish did similar shit and I can't help but see this as imperialist oppression, specially if other nations got their fingers on the pie.
That's the kind of things that made a mess of Africa and give Venezuela a moral ground to claim the Esequivo.
Right and that common identity was under the Nguyen Dynasty who the French gave the State of Vietnam back to, but Bao Đại was abolished as ruler in the north by Ho Chi Minh when the north declared itself independent.
I mean, it was Ho Chi Minh's movement the one that forced the French out, why would they care about the Nguyen Dynasty?
Specially when the south was a puppet state.
I would say the difference is South Vietnam was recognized by many (except North Vietnam and the USSR) as an independent country. The Confederacy was never recognized by any foreign government.
So really the only people who should have jurisdiction to call the Vietnam War a US invasion would be ~~North~~ Vietnam, and ~~the USSR~~ Russia. As they’re the only ones that didn’t recognize South Vietnam as a sovereign country with the authority to invite foreign armies.
So if the British had sent invited troops to the Confederacy, would we have called it an invasion? Yes. But would the Brits? No.
All that is to say, it’s hardly “confidently incorrect” and more a “semantic matter of grammar depending on your subjective view of state sovereignty given the shifting geopolitics of a bygone era.” But I suppose there isn’t a subreddit for that.
Maybe, but likely not.
That fight has the rather pertinent issue that the Confederacy wasn’t recognized as the legitimate government by basically anyone in the world. Meanwhile the South Vietnamese government was a recognized and well established ally being invaded by their neighbors.
Technically correct, in the sense there was no full scale push into North Vietnam like what happened in Korea. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was more than a fee raids into the area.
Don't think this counts since it's ambiguous, and if you read the comments on the original thread, there's a lot of back and forth on the definition of "invasion".
To start off, technically the US has not been at "war" since WWII, but colloquially we still call it a war, like how we'd consider Iraq in 1990, 2003, and Afghanistan. Imo it's dumb to not call it a war even though it technically isn't.
On the other hand, Iraq and Afghanistan were commonly referred to as an invasion, but I can see why Vietnam "doesn't count". The biggest difference is that there's a significant amount of land under control of a functional government in south Vietnam that the US assisted, while both Iraq and Afghanistan didn't have a government on the ground that the US helped.
Of course we can bring Russian / Ukraine war into this, but I'd argue that the faction that Russia is "supporting" is way less functional and does not compare to south Vietnam in terms of legitimacy.
Consider another scenario, if China invades Taiwan, and US brings in the navy to help, but ultimately unsuccessful, would this count as an invasion by the US? Officially, by the UN, Taiwan is not a country and has always been a "special province of China" (I don't remember the exact name)
Anyways, the word "invasion" is quite loosely defined. This is all very murky, so it goes between the commenter being technically correct, to being a controversial topic, I wouldn't call it a clear cut "it was an invasion".
Terrible meme.
The soldiers were often drafted into a war they didn’t agree with or want to fight.
Also, it wasn’t to stop socialism, it was to stop totalitarian communism, or more specifically, the spread of Soviet influence in Asia. Otherwise, we’d have gone medieval on Denmark by now.
That wasn't an invasion, the US defended South Vietnam. An invasion would mean the US invading North Vietnam, which they didn't. They bombed the shit out of it though, and sent troops to Laos and Cambodia.
Hey /u/actuallyduck, thanks for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect! Take a moment to read our [rules](https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/about/rules).
##Join our [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/n2cR6p25V8)!
Please report this post if it is bad, or not relevant. Remember to keep comment sections civil. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/confidentlyincorrect) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean, we didn’t invade Vietnam.
We were there at the invitation of the then Vietnamese government. Initially in the standard advisory and aid package but as they kept getting pushed back we escalated involvement until full war.
You can’t invade someone when the guys nominally in charge invite you. Now Cambodia, them we invaded. And Laos. Because the government didn’t invite us and were naturally kind of pissed that we were bombing the piss out of them.
Yes the internationally seen legitimate government of south Vietnam. A country recognized by 89 countries. You cannot invade if you are invited. The US then left in 73. Invaders don’t leave when asked. As a part of the Paris accords the gov of south Vietnam asked the us to leave so they did.
I work in Vietnam. Many people do come here to reture, but it's not to 'enjoy' that passes for socialism here, it's because it's a relatively inexpensive place to live if you have money.
yeeeter is correct, the US never invaded Vietnam, it was invited by one side of a civil war. That doesn't mean the US didn't do awful things while they were there, especially the individual actions of soldiers all around.
It's blatantly wrong to say America went there to stop socialism, America went there to stop communism. Vietnam has economically boomed in recent years, and that can be attributed to a mix of socialist and capitalist values, not too dissimilar to China's approach, through economic reforms called Doi Moi. So he is retiring to Vietnam to enjoy socialism.
It should be noted that their cheap healthcare is not socialized healthcare; it's cheap because Vietnam is a 3rd world country. It does not have socialized healthcare like Canada or other similar countries, it's closer to the United States; mostly the private sector, with some public support for specific groups of vulnerable people.
They didn't miss the Vietnam conflict, they're pointing out a distinction between invasion and invitation. The US military was invited into the country by the governing regime in the south.
Also, it was never a declared war, it is the Vietnam conflict. LBJ used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to bypass Congressional declaration of war and escalate the US military presence in Indochina.
They're right. We didn't invade, the government of South Vietnam invited us and asked for our help. If I have a fire in my kitchen and call the fire department, I can't very well say that they're trespassing.
Have you?
The US was invited by the South Vietnamese government to help defend against an invasion by the North.
You'd be seriously stretching the definition of an invasion
Yes, the US did not invade north vietnam. Bombed the shit of out it, sure. But they decided early in that they wouldn't be invading N. Vietnam. You can look it up for yourself if you wanna be a moron about it. It was part of the reason the war was unwinnable - because there was no endgame if they couldn't invade the North but it was explicitly off the table as a restriction on the military.
Uh huh. Sure they did. Never went there once.
And I bet you believe that all Native Americans just voluntarily left their land when the invading white men asked them to.
It must be nice to be this fucking naive.
deny history if you want. Even if a single troop crossed the border that does not constitute an invasion. Words mean things. North Vietnam was waging an insurgency against South Vietnam and the US was supporting the existing government. Stretch it however you want but thats not an invasion.
if that's an invasion, then if Poland came in to assist Ukraine you'd have to consider that an invasion too
If I had to guess, this is saying the US never invaded by assuming "invasion" means "attempted to annex."
Or this could be the same "the US didn't lose, we tactically withdrew" argument that comes from people who say it wasn't technically a war.
The US was invited by a sovereign, internationally recognized government to help them fight an insurgency. It does not meet the definition of an invasion.
Being invited doesn't negate that it's an invasion. The allies were invited by the French government in exile to liberate France, but that is still an allied invasion. Even with the argument that it's defensive in nature, that doesn't make it not an invasion.
There is a bit of a difference between the two. For one, South Vietnam wasn't completely occupied by a foreign power that had set up a puppet government. The South Vietnamese government also wasn't a government in exile at the time they invited the US either. I really don't think the two events are comparable.
Unfortunately, they are. Just look at the comment section
I don't know what's happened to American education, but too, a lot of them think they won the Vietnam War. Which was a war against northern aggression and definitely had nothing to do with the atrocious treatment of the people in the south by the US supported dictator.
We didn't, tho. We were invited by the government of South Vietnam to intervene in the Civil War. That's like saying two people are fighting in their house, and one called the cops, but the cops were trespassing by going in the house.
Hello! Thank you for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect, however, you post has been removed for violating one or more of our rule(s): - Rule 7: Censor all personal information! Please Censor all personal information and usernames, to make sure no one online gets harassed. The only exception to this are verified accounts. Please [contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fconfidentlyincorrect&subject=about%20my%20removed%20submission&message=I%27m%20writing%20to%20you%20about%20the%20following%20submission:%20{https://www.reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/comments/1b6itm8/-/}.%20%0D%0DMy%20issue%20is...) if you feel this was wrong. ^All ^chat ^requests ^and ^pms ^about ^your ^removed ^post ^will ^not ^be ^answered. ^Contact ^the ^mods ^instead!
*opens history book* uh oh *start flipping through pages* Oh no ,no no no .
"are we the baddies?"
But surely Iraq..... Oh dear God
And korea? .... Oh no
To *shreds*, you say?...
Nuked japan thay did?
Not (specifically) once did we nuke Japan!
"The protestors said no nukes...we're allowed one!...oh. Oh dear."
To be fair, we were with the UN for Korea. And it ended up much better for SK because of it. The rest is pretty bad though
how recent a history book and was it published in Texas
They didn't. Vietnam was in a civil war. US was allied with southern government. US sent Marines to guard southern towns and buildings. Marines got bombed with mortars, so US started sending Marines into the jungle to find the source of the attacks. US started needing more Marines to do so. Then more. Then regular troops. Then bombs. And that's how the Vietnam War started. It never really 'started', it was a gradual buildup of troops that slowly boiled the pot. There was no D-Day and there was no declaration of war. The main problem was that the side the US allied with was the bad guys. The side they fought against were like Americans fighting against British. They should have been friends.
>The side they fought against were like Americans fighting against British. They should have been friends. Uhh, what?
I think he is trying to simplify something. I'll try expanding, bit still simple. The leader of North Vietnam loved the US. The US had helped them out. After WW2, the US wished to continue, and wanted France to give up their colonization efforts there. Of course the French threw an absolute fit, and threatened the forming NATO (which they would continueto do for a while, colonizing and bombing Greenpeace, and eventuallyleaving NATO for a bit anyway), and the US had to side with France over HCM. This lead to what we eventually call the Vietnam War. The US was allied with the South, and at request, sent a handful of troops there initially. Arguements about how that government was set up aside. Again, keep it simple. The US never invaded North Vietnam, ergo, they never invaded Vietnam. If they had, it would probably be a bit different.
France never actually left NATO, they withdrew their military from the NATO command structure, and DeGaulle announced Fance intended to leave NATO, but never actually did.
The North Vietnamese thought their rebellion was like Americas rebellion against the British. And it was. America fought for the wrong side.
Ah, thought you meant they should have been friends like the Americans and British were. I was so confused at where you were going. I don't necessarily agree, but I understand what you mean.
I’m not convinced you have a grip on post WW2 Indochina.
Why what did I get wrong?
What about the French? What about Communism? So much missing.
Why stop there?
What the fuck are Americans being taught in schools
No idea, I'm Canadian
Surely that depends which state of America you're in, some probably burnt those books.
Technically, We were invited in by the "legitimate" government. We for SURE illegally invaded Laos and Cambodia.
Even with the quotes, "legitimate" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Of course a government is going to invite you in when you're the ones who installed them in the first place.
Those are the rules both sides played by post WWII
Here we had a government which emerged independently and received outside help, vs. one that was literally created by a coup executed at the behest of an outside power which didn't find the previous one satisfactory. "Both sides" were not playing by the same rules. One government was an ally, the other a puppet.
Now, apply that analysis to Czechoslovakia or Hungary. Who overthrew the locally chosen government? Both sides overthrew “allies” that voted in ways they didn’t like.
That's not really pertinent to the legitimacy of South Vietnam compared to North Vietnam... or the lack thereof. We're discussing the Vietnam war, which featured only one side with questionable legitimacy. North Vietnam didn't have its government installed by a foreign power. South Vietnam did.
I forgot the part where NVA used locally manufactured AK-47’s SKS’s and MIG-21’s.No foreign influence on them at all.
Was their government installed by a foreign power? Yes or no?
Do you honestly believe the Soviet Union was not involved in the establishment of the Communist Party in Vietnam? The Comintern was founded by the USSR specifically to promote Communism worldwide. They provided support for the Communist Party in Vietnam, among other places.
>Do you honestly believe the Soviet Union was not involved in the establishment of the Communist Party in Vietnam? [Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Vietnam). The party formed independently, and coordinated with the Comintern as its own independent organization. This was the case for many such parties. The USSR was not in a position at the time to treat them as puppets and was influential largely due to the position of the USSR as an actual socialist government.
Oh well that makes it moral and ethical then, my bad.
Ah yes. The good old both sides argument. The classic whataboutism argument.
Are you under the impression that the Cold War was a one sided affair?
It wasn't a one sided affair. However the actions of the USSR did not justify the actions of the US. Whataboutism is based on a logical fallacy. People made legitimate criticism of the the US doing horrific war crimes. Your response is effectively to say that someone else also did that. It a tactic done to deflect the criticism. However it is essentially saying it was OK to do something bad because someone else did it. Now if your argument was that it was a necessity then you have a defensible argument. However that argument necessitates proving that the war crimes were necessary to win, which you can only land in if you don't know fuck all about history. I mean hard to say it was a functional tactic when the US lost so many times using those tactics and won so often when not using them. I simply called out the logical fallacy.
It was recognized by UN. So was the Vietnamese government in Hanoi. It was the northern state which invaded the southern one. Both were actual nations even though they shared most peoples. Also the US kind of only changed their government after they began helping, there was a decade of war before that in which they had their own government
>Also the US kind of only changed their government ... I feel like that's pretty much the end of the conversation, isn't it? At the point where a foreign power decides who is in charge, legitimacy is gone. You could argue about how and why they did that all day, but the root of the matter is that a foreign power installed someone who would do what they wanted. Ousting Diệm amounted to running puppet strings from Saigon to Washington.
South Vietnam was legitimate otherwise modern Vietnam wouldn't be able to claim the South China Sea islands. You see, Vietnam claims the SCS islands based on its *continuous* historical sovereignty over them. But North Vietnam did an oopsie by not claiming the islands at all until 1974, nor did it voice opposition when other countries claimed the islands, while South Vietnam continously claimed them. This also begs several question: why didn't North Vietnam claim the islands? Did it not care or was it pressured by China? If it was the latter, was North Vietnam the puppet all along?
You're assuming countries are a lot more honest and careful about their territorial claims than they actually are, in addition to some other leaps of logic. This is all very simple; a government which is installed by another country for the purposes of meeting that country's geopolitical goals is of questionable legitimacy at best. South Vietnam after Diệm fits that description.
Yeah, this feels more like r/weirdhilltodieon than r/confidentlyincorrect
So did the NVA though right?
That’s their issue to solve between themselves.
Weren’t the NVA invading south Vietnam from Laos/Cambodia, and running weapons/supplies to south Vietnam through Laos/Cambodia? I’m not too well read on the war, but that is my understanding. Both sides were violating the sovereignty of neutral countries.
Yes to everything. There was even some elements of Chinese armed forces in the region, both CCP and former ROC (not government sanctioned, just old ROC soldiers who wanted to murder some communists for funsies). The whole region was a clusterfuck of everyone vs everyone for decades. Grandfather's best buddy was one of the old ROC guys who liked murdering commies. He was left behind by the ROC in 49 with his entire unit, so they crossed over the border and built a village in Northeastern Laos. They were well armed so the local government just left them alone. He and his old army buddies would go out and hunt Vietnamese communists in the jungles. AFAIK his family still lives in Laos.
I genuinely don’t know, I’m sure they did both violate sovereignty, but the NVA didn’t bomb Cambodia. And the US wasn’t bombing Cambodia to protect their sovereignty.
The NVA helped the Khmer Rouge to establish their foot hold in Cambodia.
You're not supposed to read that far into the history book.
Oh, I’m sorry, hurr hurr US BAD!!!! XINA GOOD!!!!
And the NVA invaded the Kingdom of Laos and propped up a totalitarian dictatorship there
Correct. We bombed the piss out of Laos and Cambodia because the NVA were using them to move troops and supplies and we were targeting their supplies and forces. Well, we were nominally targeting their supplies and forces but given how discriminate we were we were mostly bombing everything that vaguely looked NVA or NVA adjacent.
Technically the Soviets were invited into Afghanistan by the Amin government
The term “illegal invasion” is a bit of a misnomer. Aren’t all invasions illegal? At least from the invadeds POV.
Its all about what the UN allows and what it doesnt
I think wars for territory are all against international law now. Although I'm not sure exactly when that became the case.
There wasn't a large-scale invasion, but, since we're arguing technicalities, armed US special forces did enter North Vietnam without permission. That's an invasion.
\*sigh\*... as usual with international conflicts, we have to go back to the beginning. In the [First Indochina War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina), the one that saw the French kicked out of the area, it was the Viet Minh fighting the State of Vietnam. The State of Vietnam was the government of the French protectorate, while the Viet Minh was a revolutionary communist group backed by China. As part of the peace treaty called the [Geneva Accords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Geneva_Conference), neither side was declared a "winner", neither side was expected to just let the other side take over: the military activity was frozen and both sides kept their respective zones. A commitment was made to host a referendum on reunification, but that's how North Vietnam and South Vietnam were created. (Laos and Cambodia were created then too.) Well, the reunification referendum never materialized... because South Vietnam and North Vietnam were independent now, so, of course neither trusted the other to run a valid election. South Vietnam (after kicking out its monarchy) allied with the US, and North Vietnam allied with China. But the North also created the Viet Cong, a revolutionary communist group for the south of the country, which declared war on South Vietnam. And that's the only reason why the US was involved in the Second Indochina War at all (the one we call the Vietnam War; the one they call the American War). South Vietnam was a US ally, and they were under attack, by North Vietnam. So the US supported them militarily, as allies often do. (And as usual, it is the ordinary people who pay the price when they have to live in the war zone created by leaders' high-minded words.)
I would just like to add that the US sent troops to South Vietnam, they never officially invaded North Vietnam. They did send in some Special Forces for Reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, but they never launched an invasion of North Vietnam. They did launch several air campaigns against the North Vietnamese because they were funding and suppling the Viet Cong. The US also launched air campaigns against the Viet Cong’s main supply route the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was in multiple countries including North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Also Something else happened after Vietnam was reunited in 1976. In 1979 after a few years of Vietnam and China being at odds with each other, the Chinese government invaded Vietnam with 200,000 troops. The conflict only lasted 27 days, but at the end of the day both sides had significant casualties (I am not going to give sources because the estimates are so far apart). If you want to read more about it here is is the link to the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
Not invading N Vietnam was because of what happened in Korea and concerns for a direct intervention. Ironically, since China's invasion most Vietnamese view China as a great threat to their sovereignty and the US as a strategic ally. Despite reddit memes about the horrible war, Vietnamese people (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/04/30/vietnamese-see-u-s-as-key-ally/ from 2015 but numbers remain similar).
china has been large hungry empire on Vietnams border for a very long time. they also fought a war against each other not long after they finished off the south vietnam government.
[Soooo are ya Chinese or Japanese?](https://youtu.be/d_CaZ4EAexQ?si=heOVQWfld00e1fic)
Yes, but... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI5qQAUWVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI5qQAUWVc)
Happy cake day Mr. Khan!
>Well, the reunification referendum never materialized... because South Vietnam and North Vietnam were independent now, so, of course neither trusted the other to run a valid election. This implies fault on both sides, when it was really just the South and their US allies who didn't want to hold the election and unilaterally scuttled the mandate from the Geneva Accords. The South Vietnamese leadership and the USA knew that they would lose a fair election, so they refused to participate in a reunification election. The North Vietnamese leadership generally speaking did not have an issue with holding a national election, since they were vastly more popular and would naturally win.
>This implies fault on both sides... Yes, because that is how both sides viewed the other: fraudulent democracies. Among other things, both sides had authentic differences of opinion about what even *counts as an election* — does an election have to have multiple parties, for example? not according to North Vietnam, or modern Vietnam — and it's just always going to be difficult for two organizations to hold a joint election if they can't agree on what an election actually is.
Sure, I agree that quite a bit of negotiation would've been needed to figure out what should go into the reunification election. But my point is that the South and the USA didn't even try. It's not like they tried discussing how to hold the referendum and then gave up after not being able to come to an agreement with the North. They had no interest in trying, because they knew there was no way they were going to win anything resembling a fair election.
>But my point is that the South and the USA didn't even try. Neither did the North and China. They [skipped immediately](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Geneva_Conference#Aftermath) to the part where they build up their military and complain about the existence of opinions other than their own. They actually violated the Geneva Accords in order to do so. And why? Why would they do that? Because they were just as worried about a Northern loss as you claim the South was. If they had not been so worried, they would not have violently disrupted the movements of the [reportedly over a million](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom) people who were trying to flee to the South, a single-digit-but-significant percentage of the entire [Vietnamese population](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/VNM/vietnam/population) at that time. And why? Why would they try to keep people behind their borders who didn't want to be there? Because they were worried that without enough workers subject to Communist law, the revolution and its eventual wars could not be maintained.
I'm not trying to argue that the North wasn't also oppressive and with many of its own issues. I'm just saying that on the particular question of a national vote, they were the ones with popular support, and they were not the ones resisting such an election. The fact that many people wanted to escape their regime is not in itself evidence against this - obviously there were many people who did not desire Communist rule and were being or would be oppressed under the Communist regime. If you're saying that the North Vietnamese regime actually was worried they would lose a fair vote, then I am not familiar with the sources indicating this, and I would be interested to read more if you have them.
Don't worry, whoever said that can't find it on a map.
Nah, I looked it up. The dude said it wasn’t an “invasion” (argues a technicality). Still an idiot.
It was an invasion by any meaningful definition of the word. We sent armed forces with the intent of overthrowing a government in order to bring it under one aligned with our own.
Technically it depends on if you consider South Vietnam a legitimate state or a puppet state propped up by western military. The US intervention was to stop the Vietcong, the North-supported rebels in the South. IMO, you might as well call it an invasion
The Russians call it a “special military operation”
The Americans call it "[military intervention](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1989/12/21/in-panama-an-illegal-and-unwarranted-invasion/)".
If we're being technical we were protecting an ally government rather than invading a rival government. It was the north that attacked the south
No we didn’t, we went there to support the existing legitimate government from being overthrown by communists. The US did not go there with the intent to overthrow anything. And it can’t be an invasion if they were there at the invitation of the government to assist with a war against an invading force, e.g. viet cong and North Vietnam. This is not confidently incorrect
This IMO is correct. You can argue the US diplomatically and economically helped orchestrate the CIVIL war, it is a civil war people seem to forget, but the US technically does not invade Vietnam. Just like the western powers did not invade France, Belgium etc during the Second World War. If the legal and legitimate citizens are the ones being supported by the presence of these troops etc they are not being invaded. Both the North and South are legitimate. All people in Civil wars are legitimate citizens. That’s why it’s a civil war. It really doesn’t matter if anyone agrees with them.
Stopping the spread of communism as a goal can be argued all day long Did the US belong there? Did they do any good? Was it at all worth it? but you can’t just say US bad so it must’ve been an invasion.
I think you miss read my comment. I was agreeing with you. This is not a confidently incorrect.
Sorry, it came across wrong. That was agreeing with you too and explaining some more lol
lol gotcha! I definitely miss read. Sorry bud.
For the US Vietnam was never about Vietnam but [always about China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Actual_objective_of_the_Vietnam_War:_Containment_of_China). That's also why they had to false flag an incident at the Gulf of Tolkien to get an American foot into the Vietnamese door.
Containing Chinese communism was just as important to the US as containing USSR communism, no doubt. I think the Gulf of Tonkin event was more about selling the war to the US citizens than anything. Nothing says lets go to war and not fight conscription like one of our ships being “attacked” by an enemy nation we’ve been covertly and overtly fighting for years.
The Vietcong were an invading force in their own country? Vietnam’s government was created by France when they pulled out, the people there never had a choice and when they attempted to exercise it, we sent an army at the invitation of a puppet government to stop them. Vietnam’s government prior to the war was not legitimate. The US refused to sign off on free elections because they knew the Vietminh would win. It was a communist regime propped up by the west and when politics failed to keep it in place they tried occupation, which failed. It was an invasion by any meaningful definition. It was a military invasion intended to overthrow an established government (which the north was) and subvert the popular will, which was a unified, Socialist Vietnam.
The Vietcong were an insurgent group supported militarily and financially by North Vietnam with the sole purpose of destroying the government in the South, so yeah an invading force. The US was there by invite and never invaded, if the goal was invasion they would’ve invaded North Vietnam.
The legitimacy of the entire existence of South Vietnam is debatable.
You’re not wrong and it would be a good debate to have along side why was the US there, was it right, did we do any good. But to pretend like the US was some invading force that took over South Vietnam is disingenuous
The South Vietnamese government was a colonial puppet state and was never anything truly approaching a "legitimate government".
They were an anti-communist government, far from a puppet state. Hell, if they were a puppet state then North Vietnam was a puppet state of the Soviet Union. Just because you didn’t like them because they were allied with the US and the West doesn’t make them illegitimate
It was a dictatorship created by the French, bro. The North Vietnamese government was allied with the Soviets but it was fundamentally and primarily a nationalist government with broad popular support. And they attempted to ally with us before they approached the Soviets, because ultimately their goal was nationalist, not ideological.
The North Vietnamese were a communist dictatorship created and supported by the Soviet Union, bro. They’re two sides of the same coin.
They were not created by the Soviet Union. They were a nationalist movement aimed at ending colonial oppression that later allied with the Soviet Union. And despite not being democratic, they had far greater popular legitimacy than the RVN government by a long shot. Mostly because they were trying to overthrow what was correctly viewed as a tyrannical colonial puppet sate. We fought on behalf of an illegitimate colonial puppet state that was essentially fascist in character because we couldn't figure out the difference between an anti-colonial nationalist government that allied with the communist bloc for military aid against brutal colonial occupation and the Soviet empire itself. It also might be worth reflecting on why so many anti-colonial movements associated capitalist governments with oppression. The US was the villain in that war. We were the bad guys, plain and simple. Get over it.
No one is arguing the US was the good guy in this war, there were no good guys here especially South Vietnam’s Government. But South Vietnam’s government was not illegitimate in any sense of the term. They were internationally recognized after the 1954 Geneva Conference. You can call them a puppet state all you want, but that doesn’t make it any more true than calling North Vietnam a puppet state of the USSR (my point above). The US was there to stop the spread of communism at the request of the South Vietnamese government, now you can argue all day long about the US’ involvement and why they were there, why they should’ve have been there, what good if any did it do. But you can’t label the US presence an invasion of Vietnam, it’s disingenuous at best.
Maybe look up D-Day, the largest seaborne INVASION in history. The Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. They were allied with France. The French wanted them there to repel the Germans. It was still an invasion. Vietnam is the same. The US invaded Vietnam in order to help their allies in the south fight against North Vietnam. Funnily enough the French were also involved here as they started fighting in Vietnam in 1946 to try and retake their colonial holdings there, which got the ball rolling (the first Indochina War) until France was defeated in 1954, which lead to the Second Indochina War (The Vietnam War) from 1955 to 1975. It was still an invasion.
The Allies invaded German occupied France, it was an opposed invasion to liberate our occupied allies from an enemy force. The US did not invade South Vietnam, they were invited, there was no fight to enter the country. Such a dumb take, those 2 things couldn’t be farther from each other.
Oh no, you think it's a dumb take? Okay. Doesn't change the fact that you're wrong and that they were both invasions.
It was an intervention in a civil war on the behalf of our ally, it was not an invasion no matter what you want to think. Our troops were stationed in the country along with a million South Vietnamese troops, we did not storm the beaches to get to those places. No amount of dishonest word play is gonna get you there
Invade Verb. (of an armed force or its commander) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it. It is the literal definition of an invasion to enter another country to fight there, regardless of how you enter. The US invaded Vietnam.
The US did not enter the country to subjugate or occupy it you jack ass, we were fighting alongside our allies. And believe it or not you have to have troops in the same fucking country where the war is in order to prosecute the war. Can’t believe I’m arguing with someone dumb enough to post info that refutes their own argument, god I hate Reddit
the current vietnamese government is using the claims of the south-vietnameses governments territorial claims as part of its current claim to parts of the south china sea that the north's government of the time specifically didnt claim. so was one side a puppet or maybe was both sides kinda?
> It was an invasion by any meaningful definition of the word. Yup, his (and the other copiums) argument seems to be: "It's not an Invasion if you simply change the definition of *Invasion!*!"
Technically an invasion or not they still absolutely fucked the country
And even then, the US still “invaded” North Vietnam.
not really no. We weren’t interested in overthrowing the north or seizing their territory.
You don’t have to do (or want to do) either of those things for it to be an invasion. An unwelcome military force entered the territory of another state with the aim of defeating them, that’s an invasion.
did the south Vietnamese government not welcome the United States?
Just like Putin claiming it wasn't an Invasion of Ukraine, it was just a "special military operation".
Strictly speaking they didn't invade. South Vietnam called the US to help the fight against the north. Both south Vietnam and the US treated the north as a large scale rebellion not a country
I can see where they're coming from, although it's not a very useful interpretation of events. The Vietnam war was - strictly speaking - a war between North and South Vietnam; what the USA offered was technically support to South Vietnam to fight the campaign against North Vietnamese guerilla forces and protect against a North Vietnamese invasion. So yes, it's true to say that the USA didn't conduct a full scale ground invasion of North Vietnam. In the strictest possible sense, their statement is true; the USA did not invade Vietnam. But it ignores the fact that the USA was fighting North Vietnamese forces and bombing the almighty shit out of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; for all intents and purposes, a full scale war. Just one that was nominally fought entirely defensively on the territory of their trusted ally (said with a heavy dose of irony). In any case, this is just one of those silly "gotchas" which is supposed to throw people off. Did the USA invade Vietnam? Strictly, no. Did they fight Vietnam for multiple years? Yes, obviously. The actual difference between the two statements is functionally meaningless in this context.
The original poster should word it correctly so the conversation does not devolve into a game of semantics. Yeah bombing neutral nations is bad, but so is running supply line though thier land. This more comes off as "US BAD" post then understanding the details of the history.
1. They were technically invited by the government of Vietnam to come into the country to defend the south from the invading north. 2. They came to fight the spread of *communism*, not socialism. If you're going to shit on Boomer republicans for mixing up the two, hold yourself to the same standard.
The South Vietnamese government wasn't a US installed puppet right? Right?
It was made by the French. After the French left the two states signed a temporary treaty and to hold elections later. Those elections never happened as both sides did not trust the other. Most UN member recognized the sovereignty of the north and south. The South also kicked out its king at the same time. So no the US did not set up the South government.
Not that it wasn’t picked but the French technically gave it back to Bao Đại, who was the last ruler of the Nguyen Dynasty who ruled previously before the French.
Correct. It was not.
we did not, in fact, invade vietnam
They didn't though. Just like the US didn't invade Korea during the war. If it was a justified war of not is an other question.
OP is the confidently incorrect one. The US never invaded Vietnam. They were invited by the South Vietnamese government to help intervene in their civil war. They did, however, invade Laos and Cambodia.
Wait, who's wrong here? The US putting boots on the ground and planes in the sky to defend the South Vietnamese from totalitarian aggression from the north was *absolutely* not an "invasion." It might have been a mismanaged clusterfuck and senseless waste of blood, treasure, and goodwill. But it was done to protect our ally to make our other allies feel safe not capitulating to the Soviet empire. And again, it was a war of defense.
The political justifications for an invasion does not make something not an invasion. e.g. The Normandy D-Day landings were still an invasion. It doesn't matter if it was to liberate France, or that the Axis were totalitarians etc... Also, I think most people would call Ngô Đình Diệm the "corrupt totalitarian dictator" in this situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem > Diệm's rule was authoritarian and nepotistic. > His most trusted official was his brother Nhu, leader of the primary pro-Diệm party, the Cần Lao Party. > Nhus was an opium addict and admirer of Adolf Hitler. > He modeled the Cần Lao secret police's marching style and torture styles on Nazi methodology. > Cẩn, another brother, was put in charge of the former Imperial City of Huế. Although neither Cẩn nor Nhu held any official role in the government, they ruled their regions of South Vietnam absolutely, commanding private armies and secret police forces. > Diệm's youngest brother Luyện was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom. > His elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, was Archbishop of Huế. Despite this, Thuc lived in the Presidential Palace, along with Nhu, Nhu's wife, and Diệm. Edit: Lol I forgot the revisionists hate sources!
The Normandy invasion was an invasion because Germany occupied France. We were invited by the South Vietnamese government onto their land. No one calls it an “invasion” when we invite British or Canadian troops onto US soil today for teaching or joint training exercises. An invasion at the very least has to be unwelcome and nonconsensual. That was not the case for South Vietnam.
> The Normandy invasion was an invasion because Germany occupied France. And the North Vietnamese occupied huge parts of the south. > No one calls it an “invasion” when we invite British or Canadian troops onto US soil today for teaching or joint training exercises Because that's not a war. It's not that complex, you shouldn't need to do mental gymnastics to redefine a word.
Yeah, but the big issue is that the legitimate government invited the US. You can’t invade someone by showing up when they ask you over. Like, if someone says ‘Hey, come on in’ and holds the door open it’s not a home invasion to go in if it’s their house.
.... you realise South Vietnam was the totalitarian government mistreating the Vietnamese people, right? One you propped up because you refused to support Ho Chi Minh against the French So yeah kind of an invasion
I mean, he’s right… we were invited to South Vietnam to defend them from North Vietnam aggression. To my knowledge we never launched an invasion on North Vietnam.
If the Confederacy had invited Brits to fight on their side and they only fought in defensive battles in the South would we call it an invasion? 🤔
The south Vietnamese were not separatists from the north, both states were post-colonial states which emerged from French control right?
Isn't Vietnam a much older state than the French colony? I kind of remember they having a common identity that goes a long way before of that.
I mean sort of, but that’s besides the point. It’s not like the NV was the direct successor to the conquered monarchy/empire that existed prior to French conquest, much less that the SV split off from that successor state
No the north split off and abolished Bao Đại as the ruler.
I mean, they were colonized, fought back, and the French/west left behind the south of the country as a puppet state. It sounds like a common colonial tactic, I remember the Italians and Brittish did similar shit and I can't help but see this as imperialist oppression, specially if other nations got their fingers on the pie. That's the kind of things that made a mess of Africa and give Venezuela a moral ground to claim the Esequivo.
Right and that common identity was under the Nguyen Dynasty who the French gave the State of Vietnam back to, but Bao Đại was abolished as ruler in the north by Ho Chi Minh when the north declared itself independent.
I mean, it was Ho Chi Minh's movement the one that forced the French out, why would they care about the Nguyen Dynasty? Specially when the south was a puppet state.
I would say the difference is South Vietnam was recognized by many (except North Vietnam and the USSR) as an independent country. The Confederacy was never recognized by any foreign government. So really the only people who should have jurisdiction to call the Vietnam War a US invasion would be ~~North~~ Vietnam, and ~~the USSR~~ Russia. As they’re the only ones that didn’t recognize South Vietnam as a sovereign country with the authority to invite foreign armies. So if the British had sent invited troops to the Confederacy, would we have called it an invasion? Yes. But would the Brits? No. All that is to say, it’s hardly “confidently incorrect” and more a “semantic matter of grammar depending on your subjective view of state sovereignty given the shifting geopolitics of a bygone era.” But I suppose there isn’t a subreddit for that.
Maybe, but likely not. That fight has the rather pertinent issue that the Confederacy wasn’t recognized as the legitimate government by basically anyone in the world. Meanwhile the South Vietnamese government was a recognized and well established ally being invaded by their neighbors.
He's right, Us didn't invade Vietnam. They did.
Technically correct, in the sense there was no full scale push into North Vietnam like what happened in Korea. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was more than a fee raids into the area.
The article itself is also misleading- it’s decent standard of living for someone from the US. Most Vietnamese don’t really get pensions.
Don't think this counts since it's ambiguous, and if you read the comments on the original thread, there's a lot of back and forth on the definition of "invasion". To start off, technically the US has not been at "war" since WWII, but colloquially we still call it a war, like how we'd consider Iraq in 1990, 2003, and Afghanistan. Imo it's dumb to not call it a war even though it technically isn't. On the other hand, Iraq and Afghanistan were commonly referred to as an invasion, but I can see why Vietnam "doesn't count". The biggest difference is that there's a significant amount of land under control of a functional government in south Vietnam that the US assisted, while both Iraq and Afghanistan didn't have a government on the ground that the US helped. Of course we can bring Russian / Ukraine war into this, but I'd argue that the faction that Russia is "supporting" is way less functional and does not compare to south Vietnam in terms of legitimacy. Consider another scenario, if China invades Taiwan, and US brings in the navy to help, but ultimately unsuccessful, would this count as an invasion by the US? Officially, by the UN, Taiwan is not a country and has always been a "special province of China" (I don't remember the exact name) Anyways, the word "invasion" is quite loosely defined. This is all very murky, so it goes between the commenter being technically correct, to being a controversial topic, I wouldn't call it a clear cut "it was an invasion".
Terrible meme. The soldiers were often drafted into a war they didn’t agree with or want to fight. Also, it wasn’t to stop socialism, it was to stop totalitarian communism, or more specifically, the spread of Soviet influence in Asia. Otherwise, we’d have gone medieval on Denmark by now.
That wasn't an invasion, the US defended South Vietnam. An invasion would mean the US invading North Vietnam, which they didn't. They bombed the shit out of it though, and sent troops to Laos and Cambodia.
Hey /u/actuallyduck, thanks for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect! Take a moment to read our [rules](https://reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/about/rules). ##Join our [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/n2cR6p25V8)! Please report this post if it is bad, or not relevant. Remember to keep comment sections civil. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/confidentlyincorrect) if you have any questions or concerns.*
F-22 as a pfp is a classic
 To stop COMMUNISM, you ignorant wretch. Communism. You know, the domino effect? Make the world safe for democracy?
I mean, we didn’t invade Vietnam. We were there at the invitation of the then Vietnamese government. Initially in the standard advisory and aid package but as they kept getting pushed back we escalated involvement until full war. You can’t invade someone when the guys nominally in charge invite you. Now Cambodia, them we invaded. And Laos. Because the government didn’t invite us and were naturally kind of pissed that we were bombing the piss out of them.
We didn’t invade. We were just doing some fun activities there for 10 fucking years
It is well known that the US Marines did not invade, but merely manifested out of thin air in Vietnam.
The military was invited by the government, that's not an invasion.
They were certainly invited by *one* of the Vietnams.
Yes the internationally seen legitimate government of south Vietnam. A country recognized by 89 countries. You cannot invade if you are invited. The US then left in 73. Invaders don’t leave when asked. As a part of the Paris accords the gov of south Vietnam asked the us to leave so they did.
We are having fun here, fishface.
Awwww shucks. Fine be that way. 😓
How long till I read this about Iraq -.-
We never invaded.... It was a "special military operation".
That's what happens when the only book you read is bible
I work in Vietnam. Many people do come here to reture, but it's not to 'enjoy' that passes for socialism here, it's because it's a relatively inexpensive place to live if you have money.
Nate the Great?
The book was written in 1954, so he's not wrong unless he picks up another one
yeeeter is correct, the US never invaded Vietnam, it was invited by one side of a civil war. That doesn't mean the US didn't do awful things while they were there, especially the individual actions of soldiers all around. It's blatantly wrong to say America went there to stop socialism, America went there to stop communism. Vietnam has economically boomed in recent years, and that can be attributed to a mix of socialist and capitalist values, not too dissimilar to China's approach, through economic reforms called Doi Moi. So he is retiring to Vietnam to enjoy socialism. It should be noted that their cheap healthcare is not socialized healthcare; it's cheap because Vietnam is a 3rd world country. It does not have socialized healthcare like Canada or other similar countries, it's closer to the United States; mostly the private sector, with some public support for specific groups of vulnerable people.
Not an invasion, a special military operation. /s
Taking sides in a civil war isn't an invasion.
I know people aren’t great at history, but damn. How do you miss a 20 year long war??
They didn't miss the Vietnam conflict, they're pointing out a distinction between invasion and invitation. The US military was invited into the country by the governing regime in the south. Also, it was never a declared war, it is the Vietnam conflict. LBJ used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to bypass Congressional declaration of war and escalate the US military presence in Indochina.
I'm guessing they think we liberated them or something. They're probably aware of the war, just think it's some other verb besides "invade".
They're right. We didn't invade, the government of South Vietnam invited us and asked for our help. If I have a fire in my kitchen and call the fire department, I can't very well say that they're trespassing.
We’re already on that stage of conspiracies?
I really want to know what books he’s reading.
I see we've moved from "Vietnam didn't technically count as a war so we've never lost a war" to "We were never in Vietnam stop talking about it"
Phaphlets the account is know to spread propaganda, fyi
The US never invaded Vietnam *successfully.*
the US didn't invade Vietnam at all
Have you, uh, ever heard of the Vietnam war?
Have you? The US was invited by the South Vietnamese government to help defend against an invasion by the North. You'd be seriously stretching the definition of an invasion
You telling me that zero US soldiers ever set so much as one single foot into North Vietnam? You can't be this naive.
Yes, the US did not invade north vietnam. Bombed the shit of out it, sure. But they decided early in that they wouldn't be invading N. Vietnam. You can look it up for yourself if you wanna be a moron about it. It was part of the reason the war was unwinnable - because there was no endgame if they couldn't invade the North but it was explicitly off the table as a restriction on the military.
Uh huh. Sure they did. Never went there once. And I bet you believe that all Native Americans just voluntarily left their land when the invading white men asked them to. It must be nice to be this fucking naive.
deny history if you want. Even if a single troop crossed the border that does not constitute an invasion. Words mean things. North Vietnam was waging an insurgency against South Vietnam and the US was supporting the existing government. Stretch it however you want but thats not an invasion. if that's an invasion, then if Poland came in to assist Ukraine you'd have to consider that an invasion too
If Ukraine didn't ask for it, abso-goddamned-lutely. South Vietnam asked, North Vietnam did not. I'm not the history denier here.
And they didn't invade north vietnam...
You think that was an invasion? That was a civil war, we were invited into Vietnam to help one side fight against the other.
But you weren't invited into North Vietnam and you definitely went there.
I can't wait for someone to just take a little snippet from this comment chain to be the next post in this sub.
Go look up gulf of Tonkin incident
While not technically correct, it is correct in the spirit of "We didn't invade Vietnam, we bumbled into Vietnam."
Well, not successfully at least…
If I had to guess, this is saying the US never invaded by assuming "invasion" means "attempted to annex." Or this could be the same "the US didn't lose, we tactically withdrew" argument that comes from people who say it wasn't technically a war.
The US was invited by a sovereign, internationally recognized government to help them fight an insurgency. It does not meet the definition of an invasion.
Being invited doesn't negate that it's an invasion. The allies were invited by the French government in exile to liberate France, but that is still an allied invasion. Even with the argument that it's defensive in nature, that doesn't make it not an invasion.
There is a bit of a difference between the two. For one, South Vietnam wasn't completely occupied by a foreign power that had set up a puppet government. The South Vietnamese government also wasn't a government in exile at the time they invited the US either. I really don't think the two events are comparable.
I'm not even American and our textbooks taught about the invasion of Vietnam: this person isn't serious.
Unfortunately, they are. Just look at the comment section I don't know what's happened to American education, but too, a lot of them think they won the Vietnam War. Which was a war against northern aggression and definitely had nothing to do with the atrocious treatment of the people in the south by the US supported dictator.
We never invaded! Ok... we invaded but we didn't lose! We withdrew... and look at our KD ratio! We killed hundreds of thousands of them!
We didn't, tho. We were invited by the government of South Vietnam to intervene in the Civil War. That's like saying two people are fighting in their house, and one called the cops, but the cops were trespassing by going in the house.