Makes sense the the Vietnamese have generally favorable views on America, after all compared to their hundreds of years of stuggle against China the American-Vietnam war was basically a particularly destructive skirmish.
“Why don’t we hate the Americans? We fought the Americans for 20 years. But we fought the French for 200 and the Chinese for 2000.”
The Vietnam War was an event that culturally shattered a generation here in the States, and first showed many American homes the brutality of a war fought by unrestrained soldiery, and by the same forces they had always been told fought for ‘good’. But for all the greater destruction wreaked by it in Vietnam, for them, American involvement in the Vietnam War was just the tail end of their independence movement, the moment before victory. “Gg, no re, if you don’t fuck with us again we don’t have to be enemies.”
If one will forgive both the Americentrism and the flippant comparison, we were their Hessians - foreigners involved in a struggle that wasn’t ours for dubious reasons of financial gain and diplomatic ties.
Makes sense the the Vietnamese have generally favorable views on America, after all compared to their hundreds of years of stuggle against China the American-Vietnam war was basically a particularly destructive skirmish.
I always hear it as:
“Why don’t we hate the Americans? We fought the Americans for 20 years. But we fought the French for 200 and the Chinese for 2000.”
The Vietnam War was an event that culturally shattered a generation here in the States, and first showed many American homes the brutality of a war fought by unrestrained soldiery, and by the same forces they had always been told fought for ‘good’. But for all the greater destruction wreaked by it in Vietnam, for them, American involvement in the Vietnam War was just the tail end of their independence movement, the moment before victory. “Gg, no re, if you don’t fuck with us again we don’t have to be enemies.”
If one will forgive both the Americentrism and the flippant comparison, we were their Hessians - foreigners involved in a struggle that wasn’t ours for dubious reasons of financial gain and diplomatic ties.