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Explanation: US involvement in Vietnam started in support of the French, who were attempting to hold onto their colonial concessions in the country. After the end of the First Indochina War, the French-recognized State of Vietnam remained in control of the south, while the Democratic Republic of Vietnam remained in power in the north.
Since we Americans were apparently too stupid to recognize a sunk cost fallacy when we saw one, we ramped our operations in support of the State of Vietnam even as France cut its losses, leading to another 20 years of bloodletting that ended with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (by all accounts with more legitimacy amongst the Vietnamese people of the time) winning any-fucking-way.
… can’t help but feel that it was a disaster that very easily could have been avoided.
“Just hit 'em with a few more million tons of bombs. Then they’ll definitely come around to our way of seeing things.” --Robert McNamara (Probably)
I wonder what the alternate timeline is like where Ho Chi Minh’s letters to President Truman were properly delivered. The US could have sided with Vietnam, and the second half of the 20th century would have looked so, so different.
I imagine Eisenhower’s very ‘red-scare’ administration still would’ve ended up putting the dominoes in motion, even assuming the letters were enough to keep Truman on the side of anti-colonialism.
No, that’s a bad excuse. The US voluntarily stepped in and took over. The 10+ extra years of war is entirely on the US.
I mean, as I said in the explanation:
Since we Americans were apparently too stupid to recognize a sunk cost fallacy when we saw one, we ramped our operations in support of the State of Vietnam even as France cut its losses, leading to another 20 years of bloodletting that ended with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (by all accounts with more legitimacy amongst the Vietnamese people of the time) winning any-fucking-way.
It’s just an amusing factoid that we got involved to support the French, but the French turned against the war before we did.
