Brothers, fuck your Colin Powell pics:
The French arrived in Indochina in the 1860s. the natives resisted, in one form or another until April 1975. The French were able to subdue them by co-opting the elite and middle class, but there were still uprisings. From that French educated elite came a group of French speaking Soviet-style Communists, Communist dissenters (mostly Trotskyites), regular socialists, but the majority were plain nationalists - people who wanted independence and a Vietnamese way, independent of Europe, independent of China or any one else.
One of those educated elite from the middle class, who adopted the name Ho Chi Minh, travelled the world as a chef, working in France, West Africa (on a ship), Britain and the UNited States. Ho Chi Minh worked in Harlem and studied the US declaration of independence. He even tried to make a presentation to the Versailles negotiations at the end of WW1 to get self determination. when that failed, he is known to have gone to Moscow, where he became steeped in Marxism for the first time. By the late 1930s he was ready and after 30+ years, returned home. The people wanted to hear what he said, and with Chinese Communist help, he began to organize.
When WW2 started there were the usual debates just like the ones that happened all around the world among colonized people: join the Allies and their militaries or help the Axis powers or wait it out? Few Indochinese helped the Japanese conqeror. Uncle Ho's group, the Viet Minh was known for their rectitude - no corruption and no bowing, literally and figuratively - to any colonial power, white or Asian. When Horoshima and Nagasaki occurred, the French got the remaining Japanese troops to help them to put down Ho's first attempts at revolution. In the last year of the war, the US send a few spies and soldiers to help in the fight against the Japanese.
Ever heard of the Pentagon Papers? They detail the first reports about 1945 - Ho could quote the Declaration verbatim and wrote to Roosevelt (or Truman, I can't remember). that's how he saw the US, as the first country to throw off the colonial shackles. Within months, the French had got combat troops to Indochina and put down the revolution. It took nine years, and a lot of money from Moscow and Beijing (and conversly, Paris and Washington) but the Viet Minh prevailed. Viet Minh fighters in the South moved north - ostensibly to resettle, but Uncle Ho had no intentions.
The first US death in Viet Nam occurred on a street in Hanoi in like November or December 1945. The next one happened in like 1957. It started as a trickle, but former Viet Minh started to return within a year, and they started to orgganize. By 1964 the former Viet Minh had the upper hand agianst the corrupt government in the south and Johnson - fearing being blamed for losing that country to the Communists began to pour in troops beginning in 1965. But the US had already lost 1,000 men by then. Colinn Powell had already been injured as an advisor. By 1968 there were 550,000 US military there but Nixon started teh drawdown so that all combat troops were gone by the Spring of 1973. The embassy closed at he end of April 1975.
So to the Vietnamese, the war took 110 years, or 30 years and they then had to purge their people of collaborators or reeducate them. I know all this because I needed to understand how Wobble Wobble came to be - Pops Wobble Wobble, home from Basic met Mama Wobble Wobble (who happened to be in the US) a few days before he shipped out. My conclusion is the key to understand the Vietnam war is actually understanding the Korean War...
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