'Defending others against attack is usually a moral act whether or not you had promised to do so before the attack.'
Quite a range of actions can be characterised as 'defending others against attack' ... for instance, PAVN forces defending those of the NLF, circa '59-'63 or so .... the 'viet cong' had set up alternative governments in areas, where they kept their taxes much lower than the Diem regime, and opened up absentee-owned land to peasants, they had schools and hospitals, they governed better than the 'South Viet Nam' guvmint du jour, as far as the locals were concerned ..... these areas were attacked quite brutally before and during the 'strategic hamlet' programme, it is easy to see how northerners could see themselves defending southerners from attack .... remember too that a lot in the PAVN were southerners who had gone north for training and equipment ... also there was a general sense on the part of vietnamese that they had had enough foreigners in control, so any move against french or US or whoever was defending the nation from attack
'South Viet Nam' was a 1955 Eisenhower invention, that's just a fact .... the french had divided up the country into three, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin China if memory serves, but this too was obviously artificial, meaningless to the vietnamese
'The government in Washington had been the government in the South as well.'
Not sufficient argument for the states-rightsers .... who, if it hadn't been for their fantastically heinous institution of slavery, would have had a point - the union had been a voluntary association until then, a confederation of equals .... there is a natural right to self-determination of peoples, imho, the trick here is where you draw the borders for the referendum area ..... also, how you phrase the question [thinking of the parti quebecois thing here] ..... there's another way to handle separatism right there, the canehjun way, where if they really wanna separate you wish em good luck and that the door not bang them in the ass on the way out ..... and really, what would it matter, they'd still be next door and very much related to us, there would still be people and trucks full of stuff going back and forth .... of course there would be much fighting and squabbling about jurisdictional minutiae, so that particular canadian sport would be in no way endangered
Anyway, the vietnamese are ethnically and linguistically a distinct people, and well aware of the fact long before the US/french/japanese/whoever showed up
'Even the US might not have became independent without help from the French.'
Sure you would have ..... we did .... we have an entirely different sort of homegrown civilised french, who never ever rise against the Crown outside of courts and parliament, and look at us, we're free like birds .... in fact our french were right beside us in defending against US attack, without the voltigeurs we'd have been in trouble at Chateauguay and a few other places ..... there were other paths than that of bloody revolution, doctrines other than Overwhelming Firepower [although the latter works well for storming kaiser-held ridges in Picardie, in fact it was there that canadians refined the concept, albeit in a well-regulated planned and coordinated canuckistani fashion]
The 1770s War of the Treasonous Rebellion in the thirteen colonies was a civil war, i hope you realise .... to the extent that the french interfered, they were advancing their ancient goal of petty revenge for anglo-saxon brilliance, nothing more ..... but in school down there they feed you so much twisted b.s. in the name of history, to the point where if you haven't made exceptional later effort to study, you likely still believe the thieving murdering traitor rebels to be somehow the good guys, and the law-abiding patriot loyalists they were robbing to be somehow less worthy of human rights ..... this attitude is a bit amusing when viewed from our patriot perspective, but a little saddening as well, fwiw
The british people were overwhelmingly opposed to Blair being the tail Bush wagged into Iraq, it was something like five to one against ..... same with the spanish, btw - i saw the comment on one of the censored wingnut threads here, that the spanish had 'cut and run because of the Madrid bombing' - this is absolutely untrue, spanish troops had only been there because Aznar, who was at the end of his term and couldn't run again and wouldn't have been elected if he could have run because the people had had it up to here with him, wanted to play with big boys Bush and Blair, or something, who knows, anyway the spanish lined up on the question just about the same as the brits - against ..... Zapatero campaigned against involvement in the 'coalition', got voted in quite handily, and when he took office the troops were coming home real quick, no matter what |
