Posted on 06/24/2024 9:53:11 AM PDT by airdalecheif
Vietnam considers the United States its strategic partner in economic and investment matters, says Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Dems and RINO’s try to make Truman into some kind of Republican-Lite.
In my opinion Truman was little more than a thug.
Most of the history of Việt Nam has been that of fighting free of Chinese domination and kicking and keeping China out.
From BC through the tenth century China conquered and reconquered Việt Nam but Việt Nam was too remote from the Capital and the satraps and occupying armies sent south tended to become Vietnamese and to fight for independence which was a number of times accomplished for short periods. The Vietnamese finally fought free and was reinvaded unsuccessfully several times.
It nauseates me to no end when the Krauts start crying about Dresden and totally ignore how the Luftwaffe flattened Warsaw, burnt the heart out Rotterdam and Coventry, sent millions up the chimneys of Auschwitz and then have the unmitigated gall to complain about how they were treated. Years ago I got into an argument with some Kraut on line who was moaning about that very subject, Dresden and I said "Fick dich!(F you) I said "You're lucky my nation didn't teach you the lesson it taught Japan about starting wars with The United States. Shut him up.
You’re right, it doesn’t. Nation building that is.
The British tried to make carbon copy’s of themselves in all the peoples they came into contact with.
And it never worked out.
I don't blame the Vietnamese for U.S. soldiers being there. I blame our government for sending them in the first place to die in a proxy war with Russia and China. And unfortunately, our government hasn't learned anything in the past 71 years since Korea.
The Vietnamese now don't even think about such things much any more but the people generally twenty years ago were Americophiles and believed that of all the invaders of the past, America was the one that did not have any designs on conquest and colonization. And after the Clinton handshake, many Vietnamese mothers hoped their daughters might find American husbands, Americans personally had acquired a unique reputation. A line of troops passing through a small town pass an old man who is stumbling under a load and two troops drop out of formation and give him a hand. In all other cultures one doesn't offer gratis help to people who are not related. American men who become interested in a woman who already has a child and marry her, any pre-existing progeny are included in the package. For all others no man will raise another man's child, Children have to go live with relatives. Mothers with young widowed daughters crave to get them hooked up with American men and that includes Party and Government people. I have watched an old Việt Nam war buddy who traveled back and forth as a business lawyer get trapped by a plot of a young widow's retired Party parents into marrying their daughter with her then six year old daughter. Best thing that ever happened to him. He died in Nha Trang a few years later and left his wife with half his Social Security which was enough for her to live very well on.
A lot of people don't realize that Germany bombed London in WWI as well, from zeppelins, and did a lot of damage then too. The British called it the First Blitz.
According to Wikipedia: "Airships made 51 bombing raids on Britain during the war in which 557 people were killed and 1,358 injured. The airships dropped 5,806 bombs, causing damage worth £1,527,585. Eighty-four airships took part, of which 30 were either shot down or lost in accidents. Aeroplanes carried out 52 raids, dropping 2,772 bombs of 73.5 long tons (74.7 t) weight for the loss of 62 aircraft, killing 857 people, injuring 2,058, and causing £1,434,526 of damage."
I got to visit Coventry during a 3 week bus tour of the British Isles back in 2006. That one raid killed 176 people and injured around 680. The cathedral they destroyed was beautiful from photos of the inside I have seen. I went into the new cathedral they built right next to the bombed ruins. It is horrible to me. Way too modern for my taste. I didn't feel comfortable in it, and it certainly didn't have the grandness that you would expect when you walk into other cathedrals in Britain. Coventry Cathedral had been built in the 14th and 15th centuries.
My feeling about the bombing of Dresden is as yours. Germany was the one that started the bombing. The British finished it, and they had every right to do so.
The one thing about Germany is that after they surrendered in WWI, they signed the Treaty of Versailles, then they cried about it (especially Hitler), because they said it was too hard on them, and extremely restrictive. Well, then don't start wars. And if you do start a war, make sure you win it. The thing is, Germany never stopped producing arms despite being restricted to do so by the Treaty of Versailles.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Krupp, the major arms manufacturer in Germany admitted they had never stop manufacturing military arms after the Treaty of Versailles. Gustav Krupp was the head of the company during WWII, and conveniently became incapacitated in 1941, and his son Alfried Krupp took over the company. He continued to produce war machinery for Germany, even using slave labor in his factories. At Nuremberg Alfried was convicted of crimes against humanity. He was given a 12 year sentence and was ordered to sell off at least half of the company shares, but nobody would buy them. In three years, he was released from prison, and the forfeiture of his property was reversed under political pressure. Like a lot of Nazis that had committed crimes, he got away without punishment. And he never admitted any guilt for his crimes.
Actually I am Scots-Irish extraction with most branches going back to the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I enlisted in 66 because I was wasting my fathers money in college with no idea of what I wanted to do. I joined the AF because I was too skinny for the Army. My action in VN was all in the back end of a C-47 and I lived in Chợ Lơn. I lived with a Việt family for five months reporting to work three of four days a week to fly. The enemy was shooting at me just as much as at those fellows on the ground but for me it wasn’t personal. At eight thousand feet I couldn’t hear it or see it. We carried a box of M-16s but never opened it.
I learned Vietnamese, French- which I had got in grammar school- and some Dutch because I got to know a Dutch trading family who were still in Sài Gòn. I went back in 2003 with the old soldier syndrome to see how the country had fared since the war and an oath to stay out of bars and to NOT take a girlfriend, even for a “short time.” I knew some old soldiers who had gone back to see the country and saw nothing and learned nothing. They started off by being ushered into saloons and by getting too-willing girlfriends.They could have done that in Chicago or El Paso for less money. I fell in love with the country and the people, put a very bright fourteen year old through school at ̣Đại Học HCM to her MBA and several other people who had no futures are now successful business people or a college professor or business owner primarily because the American -Ông Mỹ- was many times in the right place at the right time and somehow said the right words to prevent a suicide, to bring a woman out of a physical and mental breakdown to where she is now a college professor, and more. I have long come to the conclusion that I was not alone, that God or an angel was moving me around. There have been way too many coincidences for more than a tiny part of them to have happened in the natural course of things. Some of those incidences were pretty bizarre. The fly in the ointment is that some of them are Buddhists and I am totally untalented at any sort of evangelism so they are still Buddhists. I have two proteges and a goddaughter in VN. I am 78 and still work because my little bit of social security won’t pay the air fare. I go back as often as I can which is running a tad more than once a year for a month because since COVID visas are only for one month and no extension.
“Poor Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world’’.- Henry Kissinger.
LOL!! I never heard that. Kissinger did have a sense of humor.
(But I never thought all my shirts would be made in Vietnam either.)
Hell, that ain’t nothing. I gots me a Vietnamese wife! Best thing that ever happened to me.
I laugh at the Uke propaganda that paints Russian soldiers as raping monster because of their behavior in invading Germany. Really? I’ve seen the pictures of roads in Russia lined with gallows with Russian women hanging from them. The pits of corpses with women and children. The Germans got off easy.
Sorry, but the origins of World War One were not as they were described in the peace treaties.
History, however, is written by the victors. Might makes right. Always has, always will. Please believe me, I know, as I have studied it.
Kaiser Wilhelm begged the Tsar (his cousin) to stop the mobilization, because he knew he couldn’t hold back his generals who were itching for a fight with Russia.
The Generals knew if war with Russia was inevitable, better to start the fight then, rather than wait until Russia was too strong.
Unfortuantely, there was that “minor” detail of France’s alliance with Russia. And well, you know the rest of the story.
Yes, Paris absolutely wanted Alsace-Lorraine back.
That these territories had not been conquered by France before the 17th/18th century, having been a part of the HRE before (since the Treaty of Meerssen had allotted them to the East Frankish kingdom, the first German polity), played obviously no role.😀
In those days rules between kingdoms were simpler: if you conquered territories from them, they were yours.
P.S.: I would like to apologize to you for the snippy comment I made towards you a few weeks before in a debate. I am sorry 😞
It seems like the old problem, there is a human being on the other end of the line - though he cannot be seen nor his voice be heard…
Mr. Robinson addressed this problem here at FR a short while ago, and I think he was right to admonish everybody to keep this fact in mind…
And about the relationship between the US and Vietnam: it really shows that both nations have, in recent decades, tried to mend the broken pieces.
Furthermore, with China aligning herself closely to Russia, a partnership between DC and Ha Noi seemed, in Vietnamese eyes, to have the extra bonus of opposing Peking, the traditional adversary.
There is, as you know, after all a long and tragic history of enmity between the Great and the Little Dragon.🙁
Thank you Menes. I respect your knowledge, and input. I’m hoping to make a concerted effort to learn more about the beginnings of that war, and what went on in it. So many lives were destroyed, only to have another war roll around again to do even worse to the world. I’ll admit I’m no expert on WWI, and there are a lot of different people, offering different points of its history. I need to do some more reading so I can come to my own conclusions. Take care.
Sorry?
It was not until 843 that the Frankish Empire was divided into three by the grandsons of Charlemagne. Two evolved into France and Germany, respectively, but the one in the middle, Lotharingia, was divided.
In due course, the modern nations of Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland evolved where Lotharingia used to be. Other parts are in present- day France, Italy and Germany. And it is just the name of Lorraine, the region, which harkens back to the days of ancient Lotharingia.
And Charlemagne was a Christian all his life. It was Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who had himself baptized in 320, when his life was coming to an end. But Constantine lived nearly half a millennium before Charlemagne.
Yeah, I know, I said that.
He divided his two kingdoms between his sons.
And nice way to avoid your ‘’The Allies imposed guilt on us’’.
The Hell you say.
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