THEY'RE NOT THE VIET CONG THEY'RE THE NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT OF SOUTH VIETNAM (NLF). THAT IS A PEJORATIVE YOU'RE A "HISTORIAN" REPEATING A PEJORATIVE TERM 50 TIMES WITHOUT EXPLAINING EITHER THAT IT IS A PEJORATIVE OR SAYING THEIR REAL NAME EVEN ONCE. I HATE AMERIKKKAN "EDUCATION" ON VIETNAM AND KOREA.

  • She also commented that Amerikkkan soldiers "couldn't discern the enemy" because peasants were sympathetic to the communist struggle; doesn't that make you question your support for Amerikkkan goal? No, because public "educators" in the U.S. have a narrative and most of them believe it.
    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The US wasn’t in Vietnam to exterminate the Vietnamese, killing Vietnamese was rather a means to an end.

      The US was in Vietnam to exterminate perceived dissidents. While that wasn't universal to Vietnamese people, US military commanders were more than happy to wipe out whole townships on the implication that some of them were Soviet-aligned. That instinct - the belief that Vietnamese lives are less valuable individually than a "purge" of ideology is nationally - is absolutely genocidal.

      I won’t argue with you if you do want to consider it a genocide, it’s a completely understandable take.

      I think its a semantic distinction that really cuts across the question of race versus class conflict.

      The US attitude towards Vietnam was explicitly classist. Southern "urban" Vietnamese residents were functionally considered a different kind of person than northern "savage" Vietnamese residents. The peasant farmer was considered an enemy in a way the professional or industrial resident was not.

      So perhaps genocide is the wrong turn of phrase, simply because it cedes the race-based premise.