Hi twfowler; Re: "North Vietnam existed as a country for some time. The fact that the Vietnamese people where in two different countries ..."
Great argument, but it obviously didn't cut much mustard with the Vietnamese, LOL. For that matter, the CSA existed as a country for "some time", as did East and West Germany, the USSR, and various other political configurations that failed to match up with the ethnic realities.
Re: "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."
It's clear that I've made my point and that you have little left to offer. Now your point is that North Vietnam suffered repeated losses? You could make the same point about the Continental Congress in what would become the United States in 1780, but our ancestors fought on.
There are few peoples on this planet that are "reasonable" in terms of how many casualties they are willing to accept in return for obtaining freedom from a foreign authority. Humans are just plain ornery when it comes to the principle that they like to live in governments led by their own kind.
As I have said before, it is not at all unusual for humans to fight hard against foreigners who are temporarily camped out in their territory. As I have said before, the odds of a bloody rebellion increase as the size of the ethnic group (total ethnic group, not only the ones in the occupied territory) increases. This is normal human behavior, and variations on this theme are present in not just recent history, but in the ancient history of this planet. As I have said before, the Iraqis will kick us out of Iraq.
-- Carl |
