mozzaok wrote on Aug 5
th, 2008 at 10:03am:
I am amazed at how some here seem to believe that the North Vietnamese had the logistical capability to wage war on a massive scale without foreign aid.
Didn't say that.
Quote:Here is a small quote from the Wikipedia page on the Vietnam war.
"Support by the Soviet bloc and China
Communist
bloc support was vital for prosecution of the war in the South. North Vietnam had relatively little industrial base. The gap was filled primarily by China and Russia. The Soviet Union was the largest supplier of war aid, furnishing most fuel, munitions, and heavy equipment, including advanced air defense systems. China made significant contributions in medicines, hospital care, training facilities, foodstuffs, and infantry weapons.
Since China bordered Vietnam, it was an immensely important conduit of material on land, although the Soviets also delivered some of its aid by sea. Soviet aid outstripped that of China, averaging over half a billion dollars per year in the later stages of the war, with some $700 million in 1967 alone.[7] China provided an estimated 150 million to 200 million annually, along with such in-kind aid as the deployment of thousands of troops in road and railway construction in the border provinces.[8] China also provided radar stations and airfields where North Vietnamese aircraft could marshall for attack, or flee to when in trouble against American air forces. These airbases were off-limits to American retaliation.[9]
The railway network in the Chinese provinces bordering North Vietnam was of vital importance in importing war material. American Rules of Engagement forbid strikes against this network for fear of provoking Chinese intervention. Thousands of Chinese troops (the PLA's 1st and 2nd Divisions) made important contributions to Hanoi's war effort- building or repairing hundreds of miles of track and numerous other facilities such as bridges, tunnels, stations and marshalling yards. Chinese troops also built bunkers and other fortifications, and manned dozens of anti-aircraft batteries. In all, some 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in Vietnam during the war.[10]"
Plus a link to the page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLF_and_PAVN_logistics_and_equipment Yeah North Vietnam got military equipment from the north.
Excuse me while I remember the time line again...
Country split in two
-
North Vietnam sit around doing nothing
-
US attempt to turn South Vietnam into Panama or El Salvador (we can continue the list)
-
The US remove South Vietnam from the world approved election that would have unified Vietnam under the 'North' Vietnamese government
-
Having sat, literally, through years of slaughter the Vietnamese people finally implement violence as a dominant method of defense
-
Crumbling under the weight of the population the US kill off the dictator and run a series of military juntas
-
Still unable to dominate the region they invade the country
South Vietnam, then attack North Vietnam and in the end drop more bombs than in all of WW2, kill 6+ million people and leave the children of peasant farmers with peeling skin and no eyes at birth.
In a world which lacked hypocrisy or at least operated on basic moral principles every decent society on earth should have been sending some form of aid to, if not North Vietnam, than the nationalist Vietnamese movement.
When things started tumbling down for Russia and they started selling everything, one valuable item was the internal records. It spawned virtually a whole academic field just looking through trying to find justifications for bullshit the US pulled off during the century. Combine this with declassified US records, i.e. Pentagon papers.
We know what they were all thinking and who was talking to who, or lack there of. Find the part where it was a magical battle of ideology, find the part where Ho Chi Minh was just an agent of the 'mother land', find the part where the spread of crazy communism! was violently making its way south.
footnote: China and Russia didn't like each other at the time.
Quote:I am always opposed to war, but I do not ascribe to the simplistic view that one side or the other, is ever solely to blame.
Like most things, it is about the shades of grey, black and white can not provide the full picture.
People need to let go of poor schooling, the massive 80s propaganda (thanks Chuck Norris), revisionist history and the fairy tale of most of the poo that supposedly happened under the umbrella of the "cold war".
There could not be a more clear example of "the supreme crime of aggression" in the last 60 years... except for all the other times the US did it.
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