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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Bilow who wrote (132132)5/18/2004 6:28:59 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
From the North Vietnamese point of view, their fight was not a "war of aggression", but instead was a liberation of the southern half of their country from under the foot of a foreign occupier.

From any point of view it was an aggressive move against the status quo. North Korean claimed and may have truly thought the Korean war was a war of liberation of the South, The US invasion of Iraq liberated Iraqis from Saddam but was still an invasion of Iraq not a defensive action. "Aggression is not directly opposed to "liberation" a war can be both.

Note that you use the phrase "directly defending the north from invasion". What is this "north" you're talking about??? "North" Vietnam didn't exist before the war. It didn't exist after the war.

All the "north" was, was a region of Vietnam that happened to be militarily occupied and politically controlled by a force that operated against US interests. It's like you want to deny the fact Vietnam was a single country, and instead, briefly for the purposes of making a point, define "North" Vietnam as a country.

North Vietnam existed as a country for some time. The fact that the Vietnamese people where in two different countries doesn't mean it was one country any more then North and South Korea are one country or East and West Germany where one country during the cold war. You can have "a nation" without having a nation state (Palestinians, Kurds ect.) you can also have a peoples that are split among two or more states.

Now let me rephrase your statement into the language of the US Civil War. In that war, if you recall, the southern states in the US renounced their US membership and declared themselves to be a sovereign country. The "North" then conducted a war to force them to return to the fold.

That invasion was also aggression or unless you consider it retaliation for the attack on Ft. Sumter. In the act of many it was justified aggression but it was not a defensive act.

Would you be surprised that the "North" United States was willing to accept high casualties to "conquer" the Confederacy?

It would be unusual if the North continued to try to invade the south to take control of it again if the North could not ever win anything big enough to be called a serious battle and absorbed not just disproportionate but strongly disproportionate casualties again and again while failing to defeat the South for over two decades.

Tim
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