Ho Chi Minh

[FriendlyFire]

There's little doubt the U.S. could have defeated the Vietnamese Communists, but it would have meant a risk of war with China and/or the USSR and the application of much more airpower and infantry.

Change could to should
then read my siggy

 

[CruddyLeper]

Atrocities and massacres were commited under Ho Chi Minh's reign and nose, so that would probably qualify the monster.

Umm... how does that make Bush and Blair look? Pretty bad by your logic.

One thing ignored is that Minh was INCREDIBLY popular with the majority of Vietnamese.

If that isn't democracy - what is? Putting a cross on a piece of paper every four years?

 

[El Justo]

how Bush and Blair made it into this thread is beyond me. that type of stuff should be relegated to OT.

anyhow - being "popular" with a majority of a particular population by no means qualifies as a "democracy". if this is the case then Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Tito, Stalin, etc, etc would...for all intensive purposes...be considered memebers of a democratic institution.

 

[CruddyLeper]

True... but the opening points make it unclear about how popular or democratic HCM was.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man... also no mention of guerrilla ops against the Japanese OR the fact that re-armed Japanese troops were used in Vietnam after the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces.

Ho was an opportunistic Communist who seized power

See what I mean? Check out the first Vietnamese Constitution, it's just a rewrite of the US one.

Uncle Ho was ruthless... so were his opponents.

 

[YNCS]

CruddyLeper,

You may have missed one statement I made:

If the scheduled 1956 elections had been held, he most certainly would have been elected President of Vietnam, since he was the most popular man in Vietnam.

[Emphasis added]

 

[FriendlyFire]

Cometh the hour, cometh the man... also no mention of guerrilla ops against the Japanese OR the fact that re-armed Japanese troops were used in Vietnam after the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces.
.

I thought the French used a lot of Germans in the forgiegn legion in Indochina ?

 

[CruddyLeper]

CruddyLeper,

You may have missed one statement I made:
[Emphasis added]

Yep. I missed it. Fair play.

As for Germans in IndoChina, I don't know about that. But the Japanese were certainly rearmed after the armistice and used to prevent the natives from liberating their country quickly until the French arrived back.

Didn't make a lot of difference, outside Saigon they were finished anyway. Nothing like a conquered overlord to make the serfs think "Screw the bosses, let's run things ourselves".