How many were killed in the Vietnam War?

MorkandMindy

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How many were killed in the Vietnam War?

My guess is more than in Iraq because there was no body armor, but then there were no IEDs either.

Also what was the overall goal of the Vietnam War and was it achieved?

If it was not achieved than what ended up happening as a result of not achieving it?
 

MorkandMindy

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Was Vietnam a war of choice or a war of necessity?

That's a very good question to start a thread with. I think we need more discussion threads on the Vietnam War because it:

1. was a major war
2. recent enough to relevant today

1. A major war

Comparison:
Revolutionary War / War of Independence: 'US' KIA approx 8,000 with around 10,000 dying in prison ships and 7,000 from other causes.

Vietnam War: US KIA 58,000, also very large numbers of casualties of many types owing to the chemicals used, and psychological aspects owing to the huge numbers of enemies, allies and civilians killed or maimed.


2. Relevance

The Vietnam War is somewhere in the middle of the oil wars running from the late 1800s through the present to, well, your guess is as good as mine, but hopefully there will be abundant biofuels soon and we will be able to leave the other parts of the World alone.
 
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The Penitent Man

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I'm not familiar with the Vietnam war. I do know that despite what Americans are taught, NO ONE won the war. So I guess that means the goal was not achieved.

Are you looking for solider deaths? Or civilian deaths as well? That's likely to be astronomical.

I'm talking about the total loss of life because of and during that conflict.
 
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MorkandMindy

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I am surprised that no one knows that the Vietnam conflict was not a declared war but a police action. The USA did not declare war on North Vietnam. I suspect for reasons regarding Cold war politics (not dragging China directly into the conflict).


It is always difficult to choose terms to use, specifically the balance between using familiar terms at one extreme and making sense at the other.


Yes, the American Vietnam War (it was running long before the US military was formally committed), was at one point described as a police action to stop the insurgents, but what sort of police bring B52s?
 
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MorkandMindy

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Hell; The Yanks will bring in anything that will do the job! Some of their police departments are better armed than some countries armies:D:D:D:D:D

One typical arrangement was a formation of six that devastated a strip one kilometer wide by three kilometers long. The tremor through the ground would wake people far away.



It is always difficult to choose terms to use, specifically the balance between using familiar terms at one extreme and making sense at the other...

What I mean is the terms used in the media, which people are familiar with, in contrast with what was actually going on.
 
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Gracchus

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The official government line was that the Vietnam Was was to stop Communism. (Atheistic Communist Dictatorship was the bogeyman that was used to frighten the great American ignorancy during the early and middle of the last century.)

What was seldom if ever mentioned is that Vietnam has over 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves.

The Vietnamese aim was to get foreign troops out of the country. It took them nearly 1000 years to kick out the Chinese, about a century to rid themselves of the French and about ten years to evict the Americans.

The Vietnamese achieved their aim, although at a terrible cost in lives and property.

:wave:
 
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MorkandMindy

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The official government line was that the Vietnam Was was to stop Communism. (Atheistic Communist Dictatorship was the bogeyman that was used to frighten the great American ignorancy during the early and middle of the last century.)

Was was seldom if ever mentioned is that Vietnam has over 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves.

The Vietnamese aim was to get foreign troops out of the country. It took them nearly 1000 years to kick out the Chinese, about a century to rid themselves of the French and about ten years to evict the Americans.

The Vietnamese achieved their aim, although at a terrible cost in lives and property.

:wave:


This is a case where ONE good reason is more convincing. Saying something about maybe restraining the growth of Communism in some corner of Indochina is sort of convincing on it's own, here, let Colin Powell speak:

"We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in..."

If you then add that there might be a lot of oil there too, far from adding, it sort of takes away from the overall impact.

 
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MorkandMindy

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...

What was seldom if ever mentioned is that Vietnam has over 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves.
...

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Norbert L

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How many were killed in the Vietnam War?

My guess is more than in Iraq because there was no body armor, but then there were no IEDs either.

Also what was the overall goal of the Vietnam War and was it achieved?

If it was not achieved than what ended up happening as a result of not achieving it?

From the online wiki, "By war's end, 58,193 soldiers were killed...".

The wiki also discusses insights into your other two questions.

Vietnam War
 
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MorkandMindy

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From the online wiki, "By war's end, 58,193 soldiers were killed...".

The wiki also discusses insights into your other two questions.

Vietnam War


By the war's end about 1 million soldiers had been killed
 
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MorkandMindy

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From the online wiki, "By war's end, 58,193 soldiers were killed...".

The wiki also discusses insights into your other two questions.

Vietnam War


According to the Wikipedia article the military deaths were:
N. Vietnamese and NLF 1,176,000
S. Vietnamese 220,357
US 58,159
Kingdom of Laos 30,000
S. Korea 4,960
PRC 1,446

Civilian deaths were
Laos and Cambodia 1.5M to 2M
Vietnamese (both sides combined) 3M to 4M

The numbers are a bit higher than most Americans have tended to believe.

I wonder if the rest of the understanding of the War was also a bit out.

How big a role did the oil play?
Did the US actually lose?
Why did many Vietnamese flee South if the N. Vietnamese leader was popular and the S. Vietnamese leader was not?
Given the present situation, who came out winner and who were the losers?
 
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Gracchus

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How big a role did the oil play?

There are said to be 600 million barrels of proven reserves, and exploration will probably reveal more.

Did the US actually lose?

Many Americans definitely lost. Some made oodles of money.

Why did many Vietnamese flee South if the N. Vietnamese leader was popular and the S. Vietnamese leader was not?

Some went south to be with family members sundered by the failure of America to honor the Geneva accords. The north-south separation was supposed to be temporary, but the oil was largely in the south, and that had to be sequestered for western business.

Roman Catholics fled the north at the urging of their bishops. Religious folks will act against their own best interests if they can be convinced that it will earn them pie in the sky, by and by, when they die. Since they already believed ridiculous nonsense, such conviction was easily secured.

Given the present situation, who came out winner and who were the losers?

To the extent that foreign troops were driven out the Vietnamese won.

Arms dealers in the U.S. made lots of money, and could be said to have won.

The common folk on both sides lost much, and are still losing.

:wave:
 
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Chesterton

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Some went south to be with family members sundered by the failure of America to honor the Geneva accords. The north-south separation was supposed to be temporary, but the oil was largely in the south, and that had to be sequestered for western business.

Roman Catholics fled the north at the urging of their bishops. Religious folks will act against their own best interests if they can be convinced that it will earn them pie in the sky, by and by, when they die. Since they already believed ridiculous nonsense, such conviction was easily secured.

Do you have any references for the above? And have you ever heard of the Truman Doctrine, NATO and SEATO?
 
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