How many were killed in the Vietnam War?

[MorkandMindy]

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

The argument at the time was of necessity

Russia became communist in 1917 and was now very powerful

China in 1949 became communist and in 1964 achieved nuclear status

The fear was that communism was spreading - France has a communist party and England had many sympathisers - and within a few more decades the US would be completely surrounded and out gunned.

There was also an explanation that communism was very nice in theory but didn't work in practice, and before long communism would simply collapse due to the inefficiency of the command economy.

 

[Montalban]

It's called "The Domino Theory"

 

[MorkandMindy]

...and within a few more decades the US would be completely surrounded and out gunned.

There was also an explanation that communism was very nice in theory but didn't work in practice, and before long communism would simply collapse due to the inefficiency of the command economy.

Never mind the contradiction...


"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."


OK, some more practice:

I also remember the explanation that Ho Chi Minh was deceiving even his own allies and followers, that he was a closet Communist and was tricking the Nationalists into supporting him.

It was years before I realised the consequences of that was that most of the 'communists' we were killing were actually nationalists. Oops.

 

[Montalban]

MorkandMindy: A gentle reminder... there's a few questions I've asked you which you've not answered

Further I pointed out where you were incorrect re: body armour and IEDs which you've not commented upon

 

[MorkandMindy]

MorkandMindy: A gentle reminder... there's a few questions I've asked you which you've not answered

Further I pointed out where you were incorrect re: body armour and IEDs which you've not commented upon

I contrasted the body armour worn in Iraq with the absence of it in Vietnam.

What was worn in Vietnam were flack vests and I understood these would not stop direct rifle hits, if there was widely used personal protection in Vietnam that could stop direct rifle hits then that would change the OP somewhat.

 

[Montalban]

I contrasted the body armour worn in Iraq with the absence of it in Vietnam.

Yes, and I evidenced body armour in use in Vietnam

What was worn in Vietnam were flack vests and I understood these would not stop direct rifle hits, if there was widely used personal protection in Vietnam that could stop direct rifle hits then that would change the OP somewhat.

So your suggestion is that there was no armour in use in Vietnam because that which was used in Vietnam couldn't stop a direct rifle hit?

"Developed by Natick Laboratories and introduced in 1967, T65-2 plate carriers were the first vests designed to hold hard ceramic plates, making them capable of stopping 7 mm rifle rounds.

These "Chicken Plates" were made of either boron carbide, silicon carbide, or aluminium oxide. They were issued to the crew of low-flying aircraft, such as the UH-1 and UC-123, during the Vietnam War"
Ballistic vest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[MorkandMindy]

Thank you for that information.

I won't change the OP if it was not widely used in Vietnam by ground troops because my comment was on the kill ratios in the Vietnam vs Iraq Wars.

 

[MorkandMindy]

They are like us.

And please don't claim a war didn't out 'that badly'- the Vietnams war is one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent modern history. It completely transformed that nation, and poignantly sent a country's greatest asset- it's young people- home in hundreds of thousands of body bags, on both sides.

They are like us.

Yes they are like us in that the inhabitants of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are human beings and certainly should not be killed to achieve some political or economic end.

The point I was making in saying 'imagine if they were like us' is that if someone bombed the US and killed thousands of people the US would immediately make it the top priority to go after whoever did that, or even whoever might have helped whoever did that,

whereas to this day I haven't heard of even one Vietnamese person taking any direct retribution for relatives blinded / killed / injured by the bombings.

I would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who is aware of instances of retribution.

And please don't claim a war didn't out 'that badly'- the Vietnams war is one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent modern history. It completely transformed that nation, and poignantly sent a country's greatest asset- it's young people- home in hundreds of thousands of body bags, on both sides.

This is where it was necessary to read lots and lots of posts before that one, I should have made that clear, um, it was an ironic statement.

 

[Montalban]

Thank you for that information.

I won't change the OP if it was not widely used in Vietnam by ground troops because my comment was on the kill ratios in the Vietnam vs Iraq Wars.

I accept that it was not widely used/available

 

[ExtremeDelicious]

How many were killed in the Vietnam War?

4 - 6 million +

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

Destroy the independent development of South East Asian nations - achieved.

 

[Dale]

Gracchus in post #19:
“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.”


Gracchus,


Since you are being rather abrasive here, let me put this in perspective.


“The Catholic Church left a deeper imprint on Vietnam than on amy other Asian county apart from the Phillipines ...”
“To peasants, Christianity also represented freedom from the traditional Confucian system and its oppressive mandarins. The north, where people were impoverished by the pressure of population on scarce land, was especially receptive to Vietnamese priests, who became community leaders. Whole districts turned Catholic, and some became fortified bastions. In 1946, many of these same Catholic districts, still intact, fought against both the French colonial forces and the Communist-led Vietminh nationalists. Nine years later, following the French defeat and the establishment of a Communist government in North Vietnam, entire Catholic villages fled south, attracted by the more congenial regime of Ngo Dinh Diem—whose ancestors, like their own, had been converted to Christianity centuries before.”


“The Vietnamese rulers were particularly disturbed by the achievement of Alexandre de Rhodes, the seventeenth-century French Jesuit who perfected the simplified script quoc ngu, which transcribed Vietnamese, previously written in arcane Chinese ideographs, into the Roman alphabet. The innovation endangered the traditional Vietnamese structure, for priests could now propagate the gospel to a wide audience, thereby weakening officials whose power reposed largely on their narrow scholarship.”




Stanley Karnow, Vietnam, A History, The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War
NY: Viking, 1983; 670 pages, quotes form p.58-9.

 

[Dale]

Karnow's very scholarly book doesn't even mention the notion that oil had anything to do with the Vietnam War.

Is Vietnam an oil exporter or an oil producer today? I haven't heard of it.

If Vietnam has proven oil reserves, when were these discovered?

We haven't seen any source on these claims about Vietnamese oil.


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[Kalevalatar]

Karnow's very scholarly book doesn't even mention the notion that oil had anything to do with the Vietnam War.

Is Vietnam an oil exporter or an oil producer today? I haven't heard of it.

If Vietnam has proven oil reserves, when were these discovered?

We haven't seen any source on these claims about Vietnamese oil.

Apparently, Vietnam is the third-largest producer of oil in Southeast Asia:

The making of Vietnam's oil giant

I admit not being familiar with the Vietnam-war-for-oil theories. The old axiom concerning offensive wars does say that the expected economic benefits have to outweight the costs before such opportunist venture is to be undertaken. Of course, since the United States of America lost the war, there were no oil spoils to reap, so it's all speculation.

 

[MorkandMindy]

...

The old axiom concerning offensive wars does say that the expected economic benefits have to outweight the costs before such opportunist venture is to be undertaken.

Of course, since the United States of America lost the war, there were no oil spoils to reap, so it's all speculation.

The oil is all in the shallow sea of the Southern part of the country so the first thing Esso did was decide we only needed to take the Southern part.

When we couldn't take that it was then decided to bomb Hanoi until they needed money to repair the infrastructure and also badly needed us to stop bombing it.

Because the oil was off the coast we didn't actually need to control any of the land. Sure it would have saved a lot of money to have a puppet government in the Southern part of the country to sell the oil very cheaply, but bombing had persuaded the government to sell at a reasonable price.

 

[Kalevalatar]

The oil is all in the shallow sea of the Southern part of the country so the first thing Esso did was decide we only needed to take the Southern part.

When we couldn't take that it was then decided to bomb Hanoi until they needed money to repair the infrastructure and also badly needed us to stop bombing it.

Because the oil was off the coast we didn't actually need to control any of the land. Sure it would have saved a lot of money to have a puppet government in the Southern part of the country to sell the oil very cheaply, but bombing had persuaded the government to sell at a reasonable price.

A quick google job did indeed produce a few sources that mention President Emeritus Hoover & Vietnam oil. "Exxon" and "Vietnam" (+ "edu") -- mostly current stuff but nothing related to the 50/60s. However, I would need to see the "standard three" academically acceptable sources to consider it.

So, a) the oil giant Esso/Exxon decided to grab the SE-Asian oil prospects. Sources, please.

b) when this plan, supposedly, fell through, the oil giant Esso persuaded the British government to back up Washington to bomb Hanoi, supposedly, again, in order to get the SE-A oil fields. Sources, please.

c) How does the story continue, in terms of Esso/Exxon's SE-Asia conquests?

And please, don't take this the wrong way, that I'm being deliberately obtuse or something. I am just genuinely unaware. If you can provide academic sources, I'm open minded and perfectly willing to adjust my own perception according to the new (to me) information presented to me.

As to the question raise in post #2, was Vietnam a war of choice or a war of necessity, I would say, the Shelling of Mainila, the Gulf of Tonkin "incident," the Iraqi WMDs. If a nation needs to come up with a fictional PR casus belli to start a war, then that war clearly is a war of choice, not one of "necessity".

 

[MorkandMindy]

A quick google job did indeed produce a few sources that mention President Emeritus Hoover & Vietnam oil. "Exxon" and "Vietnam" (+ "edu") -- mostly current stuff but nothing related to the 50/60s. However, I would need to see the "standard three" academically acceptable sources to consider it.

So, a) the oil giant Esso/Exxon decided to grab the SE-Asian oil prospects. Sources, please.

b) when this plan, supposedly, fell through, the oil giant Esso persuaded the British government to back up Washington to bomb Hanoi, supposedly, again, in order to get the SE-A oil fields. Sources, please.

c) How does the story continue, in terms of Esso/Exxon's SE-Asia conquests?

And please, don't take this the wrong way, that I'm being deliberately obtuse or something. I am just genuinely unaware. If you can provide academic sources, I'm open minded and perfectly willing to adjust my own perception according to the new (to me) information presented to me.

As to the question raise in post #2, was Vietnam a war of choice or a war of necessity, I would say, the Shelling of Mainila, the Gulf of Tonkin "incident," the Iraqi WMDs. If a nation needs to come up with a fictional PR casus belli to start a war, then that war clearly is a war of choice, not one of "necessity".

a) there is no decision to make, it is the duty of Standard Oil to obtain oil resources.

b) first part of plan was to provide weapons to Ho Chi Minh to throw out the French, this meant Elf wouldn't get the oil

then installing a puppet government and declaring a nation of South Vietnam didn't work because it proved impossible to hold the land so Hanoi was bombed and the 'North Vietnamese' government capitulated and agreed to sell rights to the oil for money and a share in the revenues. Obviously it was in the best interests of the government of 'North' Vietnam to claim a victory and not mention capitulating over the oil, and it was also in the best interests of the US government to give the same story about losing and not mention having got the oil after killing a few million peasants.

I seem to recall this document was signed in Paris immediately before the Treaty of Paris and a Nobel Prize was then awarded for no obvious reason and refused by one of the negotiators because it was totally pointless.

c) it continues all over the globe, Standard Oil had put the Shah in charge of Iran but BP backed the Ayatollah Khomeini who was far more acceptable to the Iranians as a puppet leader, so for once BP actually won against Standard Oil having lost Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to Standard Oil in previous decades.

But then BP and Standard Oil merged in 1988 I understand so now the US and Britain go into the same wars whenever possible.



As for proof, it was a person from Vietnam who first mentioned the oil to me and I didn't believe it but looked up a map of oil fields and found it there, just off the coast of Southern Vietnam. I also recalled mentioned as a total incidental the need to sign some oil exploration agreement at the same time as the Treaty in Paris, I should have guessed it was no incidental at all but part of the package - you sell, we stop bombing

I really don't have time to look for proof but would like to see anything you come up with.

 

[Dale]

Here a question. The Pentagon Papers is supposed to contain the inside story of US involvement in Vietnam, everything the government didn't want us to know. Does the Pentagon Papers in any way support the theory that oil one of the causes of US involvement?


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[Dale]

The following is a paraphrase of a memo from John McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, to Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense. This is a March, 1965 memo.


Justification for the war:


70% To avoid an embarrassing defeat for the US.
20% To keep South Vietnam and its resources from falling into the Chinese orbit.
10% Freedom for the people of South Vietnam.




Source:
Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
New York: Random House, 1988, p. 535.


This assessment is depressing and may be an embarrassment in itself, but it doesn't support the notion that the US was all that concerned about the resources of South Vietnam.




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[MorkandMindy]

Things changed a lot over the next 5 years as accurate seismic maps of the locations and some idea of the quantities of the oil deposits emerged.


There may have been three reasons for the Vietnam War. One was to show people elsewhere in the World that they can't just leave US control, that is, leave the 'Free World'.


Although the US didn't emerge victorious, it wasn't exactly an embarrassing defeat because the damage done to Vietnam was enough to make any other nation think twice (11 years of war, 10% of the population dead and a similar number with permanent disabilities, forests that can't be logged or cut down due to embedded scrapnel, huge tracts covered in dioxin levels so high that birth defects are still common and horrific).

 

[MorkandMindy]

The other two possible reasons relate to the territorial waters.

Ho Chi Minh wanted to sell the oil on the World market, basically he was a socialist and wanted the best for the population of his country. After the Tet Offensive it was generally believed in the US that the land war would not be won, that the Nation of South Vietnam would never be established, and there wouldn't be a puppet government of South Vietnam who would 'sell' the oil in the territorial waters of that 'country'. So the remaining option was to bomb the ('North') Vietnamese government into signing an acceptible deal.

That deal was open to all the oil companies, but Standard Oil put in good bids for the areas that have the oil, and got those.

The third reason for the Vietnam War that has been suggested was to provide cover for Standard Oil to secretly do the seismic exploration. A couple of ships and regular explosions would soon have had the other oil companies on to their governments and some kind of agreement, but with a war going on a few 'intelligence gathering' ships were not conspicious nor the occasional explosions among all the unused ordinance getting dumped in the sea.

And it has been suggested this seismic work is the reason the Standard Oil bids included all the oil fields and nobody else got any.