Vietnam War vs Ukrainian War

It's about time we compared some wars and conflicts.
While most people agree that any war is TOTALLY SICK AND INHUMANE, some of the same people believe the propaganda spewed out by right wing media and politics:
Can anyone tell me the diff between these two iconic war photos ? One is of Vietnamese children in the middle of napalm bombings by fascist Americans while the other is of a Ukrainian woman wounded under Russian bombs.
The diff? It's that the bigot right wing media and politics and people didn't give a damn about the children in Nam, but they care thru propaganda about the old Ukranian woman. I tell you, humanity is SICK TO THE VERY MARROW !

 

If you want to compare, i think it is more like the Irak war(resources/strategic)

Afghanistan was Russia(sovjets)..........vietnam war.



Mzzls

 

As I recall, at the height of the Cold War, the French threatened to quit NATO if the U.S. didn't intervene in Vietnam, who'd just handed their asses to them at Dien Bien Phu. U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a gradual, "camel's nose under the tent" escalation, not a blitzkrieg.

I fail to see any similarity to the current war in Ukraine.

 

I agree, but for argument points lets consider the military buildup of American forces and eventual attack in Iraq. The propaganda and force is the same, No?

 

Yes. Both casus belli were total bullshit, both wars served imperial aspirations, neither countries represented existential threats to the aggressors, and both aggressors possessed overwhelming advantages in firepower.

 

We have to tread lightly on the Ukraine invasion or it could very easily turn very ugly, very fast.
Americans don't want another Korean conflict.

 

I think the better analog for Ukraine is Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. This was an invasion of one country by another on the pretext of national irredentism--i. e., the notion that there were Germans living in the region of Czechoslovakia known as Sudentenland and Germany had a right to invade and occupy the region cuz the Czechs were allegedly pushing Germans around. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went down in infamy for trying to appease Hitler after this. Next it was Poland, and the British decided to stand up to Hitler militarily. World War II was the result. The lesson which the U.S. supposedly learned from this is that you shouldn't appease dictators. We might have avoided World War II if only our allies had not stood up to Hitler, but at what price? From the looks of it, we'd probably be goose stepping around wearing swastikas--unless we were Jewish, in which case we wouldn't be here. Russia invaded first Crimea, then the rest of Ukraine on a similar pretext--those nasty Ukrainians were pushing good Russian speakers around. Would Putin's expansionist policies stop there, or would it be on to Moldova?

You mention the Iraq war.Which one? The first encounter between the U.S. and Iraq came after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a sovereign neighbor, allegedly because Kuwait was stealing Iraqui oil. Instead of going through the U.N., Iraq simply invaded, and the U.S. and its allies responded by the Persian Gulf War.After the War, the U.S. under Bush'43 and his adviser Brent Scowcroft made the fateful decision not to invade and subdue Iraq but to try to contain it, for fear of upsetting the regional balance of power in favor of Iran. But a wounded Saddam was trouble. Bush '48 and his advisers, Cheney and Rumsfeld, told the UN Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and invaded on that pretext.

Vietnam presented a different kind of conflict. There was a divided nation, North and South, with a civil war or peasant insurgency going on in the South, which the U.S. perceived as being sponsored by the North, which in turn the U.S. suspected of being sponsored by China and/or the Soviet Union. We responded as though it was Hitler-style aggression, and that proved to be a major miscalculation..So I think there's more to it than those pictures of the Vietnamese kids and the Ukrainian woman. Ukraine is a much clearer case of aggression by a bigger power--"fascist" Russia, against its weaker neighbor.

 

I have said this time and time again . The sequence of events in the Ukraine Crisis closely mirrors that of the beginnings of WW2 , Apart from formal war declarations I believe we are in WW3 . Some people including those in governments need a reality check . Pearl Harbor was always the USAs official entry into WW2 . It was earlier than that when they escorted merchant ship convoys part of the way to Britain . The latter sounds a little familiar even though this time it will be land .

 

I compared the Ukraine war with Iraq war(doesnt really matter wichone)........because those conflicst are far more about resources(gas/oil)....money...imo.

Vietnam(US) and Afganisthan(RUS) were more about geopolitics/strategic...........communisme/capitalisme(zeitgeist)......... and they both lost

Mzzls

 

Perhaps the biggest difference is the Ukrainians don't have a jungle to disappear into as the Viet Cong did.

 

I don't think either the Iraq invasion nor the Ukraine war were primarily about natural resources, although both countries have plenty of them. The U.S.didn't "take the oil", despite Trump's statements we should do so. After the Persian Gulf War, Saddam was viewed as a loose cannon whose efforts to rebuild his military were viewed with alarm. Ukraine has natural gas (but imports natural gas from Russia), lithium, titanium, and lots of wheat. But I think Putin's concerns about NATO inroads, Ukraine's obvious gravitation toward Europe and the example Ukrainian freedom set for the rest of the Soviet Empire, and a desire to restore the Soviet Union were more important. And both the U.S. and Russia bit off more than they could chew.

 

On ths day
7th MAY: (An Observation)

• 1984: Agent Orange in Vietnam

US veterans reached an out-of-court settlement for $180m with companies who produced the chemicals, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical. Remarkably, Dow maintains that there is no evidence to link Agent Orange to illnesses from US veterans and Vietnamese civilians.
Vietnam’s forgotten war victims | News | Al Jazeera

Agent Orange in Vietnam (Famous Photo) - On This Day

 

The Iraq war(s) are about resources and the "oil dollar" imo.................why do you think they didnt finish off Saddam,in the first one?, they took really him down wenn he wanted to sell oil in euro s........and the US helped Saddam in his seat?



The Ukraine war seems(to me),to be about the gasfields lying around the Ukraine..................Putin just made the mistake, that he thought he could get away with it(like he did before georgia/ect), economic backlash..........RU/EU are still selling/buying gas atm.And yes Putin might be afraid of NATO,but it still does not explain his action at this time, he still has the backing of China.

For the most part it just shows how stupid it is to wage war,just hurting eachother,holding eachother back .......... all interconnected resources/energy/finance/economics/ect......... planet *sigh*

Mzzls

 

Since I served in the Viet Nam War as a medic in a casualty Staging and Med-Evac unit, I would like to suggest the following view. I volunteered to avoid being drafted. The Viet Nam war was an adventure by U. S. Corporations to Profit from increasing military spending, and stopping the spread of Communism. Communism and working class rewards for their labor terrifies the rich and powerful. The U. S. always tries to make allies at the point of a gun, and avoids permanent seizure and occupation of sovereign nations. The Russian invasion is nothing than a land grab to enrich the Russian Federation. It Follows the pattern of genocide against the native population and importation of Native Russians, resulting in the domination of the territory by native speaking Russians. They moved the Crimean Tartars out of Crimea and replaced them with Russians. They infiltrated the Baltic states, Finland and Georgia with Russian speaking immigrants. The only Hypocrisy is that our government tries to refer to the U. S. as a Democracy, when in fact it is a Corporatist Oligarchy.

 

At least the Russians haven't poisoned the land for the next 100 years by use of 'agent orange', unlike the U.S.

 

Well who knows what the Russians did in Chernobyl's Nuclear plant before withdrawing ,,,, as yet;

 

There are former Russian toxic waste dumps in Afghanistan that were occupied by U. S. Troups in our adventure. The legacy of cancer from these sites are just being studied, by Veterans organizations. The use of White Phosphorus by the NVA supplied by Russia resulted in horrible deaths by 20 year old inductees who just wanted to grow up and enjoy life. I cared for many of these kids who were kept alive artificially so that the would be able to die close to relatives.

Military veterans can always second guess the decisions of their governments when they decide to go to war with another nation. What were Truman and Eisenhower thinking about when they sided with a government of people of Chinese ancestry in a Civil War with the native Vietnamese Peasantry. The U S. has a long and proud history of supporting the wrong side Civil Wars. The U. S. and Russia and others all are responsible for leaving an environmental disaster when the hostilities are over. The only differences I see is that the U. S. tends to invite the people that they worked with to immigrate to the U. S. I live in the Bay Area of the U. S. and there are thousands of citizens from Afghanistan, Korea, Viet. Nam and the Philippines living here in vibrant ethnic communities. Can Russia boast of similar communities? There are also Ex Servicemen who have returned to Viet Nam to work with citizens on repairing the pains of war. Herbicides were a new tool in warfare and the rusk of using these chemicals is an ever expanding saga of irresponsible actions. We were no concerned with the use of Roundup on food crops here in the U. S. My neighbor sprays his entire yard several times a year. His wife and cat are both dying of suspicious conditions, but they still use the chemicals in their yard.

PS - Ho Chi Min, the Commie Devil from the VN War actually studied Entomology in the U. S. and wrote a rare book on the Butterflies of Viet Nam. The U. S. had been asked to join them in the fight with France and any colonial Power. Who Knows what would have happened if we intervened on the side of Viet Nam.

 

A personal and profound posting Wally.
Sadly a lot of decisions made, are only made in hindsight upon melancholy muse, ane the questions asked certainy warrant a truthful explanitory answer. For 'those who were there' the guilt felt cuts deep, and a lot of the youth involved in conflicts often face the bluntness of blame.
All one can do is to try and understand the actions that were took, the consequences there are and hope in the future that better choices are made
- Though even sadder is that we don't seem to learn our lessons from history.

 

But apparently they did !!! - in the huge lie about pacification when they sided with President Thu and the South Vietnamese Army.