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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: TimF who wrote (144175)8/27/2004 9:18:14 AM
From: GST  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Hi Tim. All estimates are just that -- estimates. The estimates from the Vietnamese Government are as follows: 1 million soldiers from the north dead, 2 million civilians in the north dead, 2 million (mostly civilian) dead in the south. This makes for a total of 5 million. In speaking of war casualties, civilians are often excluded as we exclude them in our counting of the dead in Iraq.

This "conversation" started with at least one poster exclaiming that we could not possibly have killed "millions" of Vietnamese and asserting that it was a bald-faced lie on my part. The estimates vary, but the numbers inevitably run into the millions. As for who did the killing, I would be willing to bet that we killed most of the soldiers and civilians in the north and a significant portion of those in the south.

Regardless of whose estimates you take (and frankly I think most of the variance depends on whether you include civilians), the number of Vietnamese killed during the Vietnamese war should be remembered as extremely large, because it was large even if we will never know the number with precision. When you kill "millions" of people, you should be clear about the mission, and you should be clear as to whether the mission justifies the killing, and you should be clear about your alternatives.
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