Quote:
Originally Posted by peppermintcandy88
Along with Iraq and Afghanistan. Why do Americans insist on believing that Americans won WW2, when the Soviet Union did most of the work.
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Nobody 'did most of the work' in WWII. The Soviet Union's casualties were the highest by far, but that was due to the Soviet leadership and their military leadership. Every nation in the war suffered far more than any other war that followed later on.
Why are Americans loathe to even talk about Vietnam today?
Because America was the only nation in WWII that emerged with an intact economy. The u.S. was protected by two oceans, and our industry, agriculture, and civilian population was killed en masse or bombed to rubble. That gave America a huge head start when the war ended and much of the world really needed our goods, food, and services.
That led to a huge expansion of our military, because we wanted to keep those advantages, and our military's might led to hubris. American sincerely believed we were the world's peacekeepers, and we had a military so large, potent and advanced that there were very few nations who could challenge it with any hope of winning. Half of those nations were our allies.
So, almost as soon as World War II ended, we began going about being the world's peacekeepers, and began intruding into other nation's affairs whether they wanted us to or not. Korea was not our first intervention; we went in and out of nations all over the world, engaging in tiny little wars and coming out as fast as we went in. In other instances, we just sent equipment to whoever we thought was going to be on our side, so we tipped the balance in that side's favor.
Korea was the first and greatest Communist challenge, and the best we could do there was draw a stalemate that still exists. Korea was the first war where America had to face limits on our military power. We couldn't use nukes to end it because the Russians had them, and everyone feared them equally. We learned the Chinese army was not only a good military, they were a very large military, and the only way to truly defeat China was to use the A-bomb. The Koreans were only tokens in a game between an established superpower and a rising superpower.
We called the stalemate a victory, got the hell out when the getting was good, and saved our pride, leaving the S. Koreans with a fully equipped war machine behind for them to use.
Korea had been occupied at one time or another by the Chinese, Japanese, and just about any powerful nation in the region forever, and are very good fighters as a result. After their Japanese occupation throughout WWII, all Korea was desperately impoverished and starving.
China courted the north with great care, providing all the food and stuff we provided to the south, and the north is a harder place to survive in than the south. There was a lot of migration both ways, but the south had more population who wanted no more outside rule than the north, and it wasn't easy to move around for any of them.
North Koreans were more disposed to taking anything they were given because it's harder to grow food there, and harder to re-build lives that were severely disrupted by war. Both sides still really resent the Japanese, and there is still much hatred for them, north and south.
So we never learned fully learned the lessons Korea provided us.
Viet Nam was very similar to Korea, but with one important difference- all Vietnamese wanted independence from all outsiders. Viet Nam was ruled for well over 100 years by the French, who were driven out by the Japanese in WWII, and then came right back in to rule again once WWII was over.
The Vietnamese wanted the French gone for good. Anyone who would help them in that cause was going to be their friend. Their George Washington was HO Chi Min, a young man entering middle age who had lived in the United States and became a Communist.
He wanted the U.S. on his side, but because he was a Communist, our representatives turned him down, so he turned to the Russians for help, and the Russians were very happy to oblige, as Nam gave them a foothold in territory they never had any access in before.
The revolutionaries, who wanted total independence, moved north to follow their George Washington. Those who were happier living like Frenchmen stayed in the south and were ruled by a series of weak and corrupt leaders who were mostly Catholic Christians, not Buddhists. So there was not only weak leadership, there was big religious division.
Since we didn't want Russia in the region because we feared all Russian power, we forgot the strongest lesson what we learned in Korea; That a people who craved independence the most are the most willing to die for it.
The South Koreans lost enormous numbers of their young soldiers fighting the N. Koreans and Chinese before we ever went in and helped them. They continued to fight alongside us once we were there, and continued to die for their independence. The North Koreans simply did not have the same fire in their bellies to die for the cause. The Chinese decided they had enough, and contented themselves with what they had gained earlier.
The U.S. never became content with what they had in Nam, because what we had was crap. The South Vietnamese leaders were all crap and stayed crap to the end. There were many South Vietnamese who wanted independence, but they hated the Communists because the Communists depended on Russia and were neither Christian nor Buddhist. They were a lot like our royalists who wanted to keep the English King.
The country folks in the middle didn't care about any of it. They just wanted the same life they had always led in the jungles forever.
The North Vietnamese revolutionaries were a lot like ours. They were willing to keep up the fight for however long it would take to drive the King and his people out. They fought when they could, and quit when they couldn't, but they stayed together in their mutual desire, just like our revolutionaries did.
We only saw the idiological differences. We never saw the desire for self rule, because our revolution was ancient history by then. And most of all, we sincerely believed we could easily whip any nation on the planet with our military. That's hubris for ya.
And since we have no sense of history that's older than a minute and a half, we forgot the lessons our ancestors had learned, and our experience in Korea failed to provide a reminder. So we hung in way too long, and won every battle, just like King George did, but lost the war, just like he did.
We still haven't fully accepted that a bunch of ragtag who wanted liberty more than life could kick our butts. We were their example on how to win a revolutionary war, but we had forgotten our war. Asians never forget anything, no matter how far back it is.
Then once more, we forgot what Korea and Nam should have been plenty of reminder, and did it all again 40 years later in Iraq. With the same hubris and the total lack of remembering history.
What ws one of the first subjects every school district in the nation cut when money got tight in the Great Recession?
History.
We still have not learned how valuable history is. We probably won't ever learn that.
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