• just_change_it@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t forget Afganistan and Korea! We do so well when we go to places we are not welcome and do not have significant shared cultural ancestry from and try to get someone who likes us in there to run things.

      • IninewCrow
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        1 year ago

        Or fighting, then eventually losing, in major international conflicts with modern weapons, technology, well trained armies, the best intelligence and endless resources against a country full of malnourished farmers and peasants with a stick and an AK47

    • Pxtl
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      1 year ago

      I mean yeah but Vietnam didn’t go great for the Vietnamese either. “The US is getting involved in your war” is bad even if you win because “dropped more bombs on your tiny Asian country than were dropped in all of WW2 and then gave up and withdrew” is a pretty goddamned Pyrrhic victory.

      • IninewCrow
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        1 year ago

        Agreed … but if your options are death, destruction and subjugation … or fight endlessly until you get anything out of it … it’s a sight to behold how the Vietnamese even still exist today.

        A single lifetime might seem insignificant … but in the long run … even empires do fall.

      • eestileib@mastodon.social
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        1 year ago

        @Pxtl @ininewcrow

        It went pretty much exactly like Ho planned. He knew the death counts were going to be horribly skewed and that it would take a long time, but that they’d win with discipline.

        Great for international communism and the Ho clique, good for the survival of the VN identity, an absolute disaster for pretty much every civilian in the country.

    • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Was limited by politicians. We were trying to turn our military into police and that just doesn’t work.