(2-5) Vietnam 1965-1975, as seen on British television.

[flameout12345]

Good job on our british counterpart! trying to use this war to weaken american influence and image around british colonies. I could only think of couple of reasons why.

[Jaywalk721]

Wow the Bias of the BBC is just horrible. "apparently it never occurred to anyone that there might be someone else in the embassy besides VC." COME ON there was a truck armed with explosives that could have blown up the Palace. The Americans had to fight agressively or those very same civilians would have been blown up, an act that the South vietnamese and Americans obviiously prevented. ALSO keep in mind that it is the VC who infiltrated that complex with civilians inside that complex, not USA

[civilwardoc1]

You know what it seems like everyone is afraid to say it. So I guess I will .South Vietnamese were coward's plain and simple. We did all of your fighting for you while you turned and ran from the VC. Then you try to play friends by day then turn VC at night and kill American's. We didn't lose that war. We pulled out because why should we die for you when you will not even fight for your own country. I am sorry that it wasn't 200 million Vietnamese that died. Don't come here and cry . Coward

[DsKARteam]

@civilwardoc1 well hey, South Vietnam's goverment are traitors and listens to the US. That mean the US takes Vietnamese to fight for them, so you guys can do a full evac of US and leave. You seperate Vietnam, create a puppet government, then you think that's Vietnam? No one fights for a country created like that. That's your country, created by war. Lower your pride and say you lost to us. 2004, we sued you for used chemical weapons, you US chicken out and denied it. Who's the coward?

[DsKARteam]

@civilwardoc1 I almost didn't reply it, cuz I cant find the exactly the comment. Anyway, You guys built that govern', you guy used VIETNAMESE to fight the war for you, then you leave the govern' you built, the army you control, and saying you don't wanted to fight for the country you build? Yea very good. No solider wanted to fight each other. Let me remind you, Vietnamese in South Vietnam were FORCED to be in the army. Who want to fight if they are force inside the army?The North VOLUNTEER in.

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 yes everyone does die eventually, but maybe you will die first. you think that the USA military was responsible for everything that happened to your country, but we were not, there were more countries involved than you want to admit to. like the military from Australia, and several other countries that were in the UN. you just do not want to admit that you might be wrong.

[kakashi76767]

@rosemarie443 Americans killed 100 million Vietnamese and raped many children.

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 NONONO thke americans did not do that. like i said there were more military over there than the Americans, but you just want to make the Americans the bad guy. try reading you own history

[kakashi76767]

@rosemarie443 then why did so many americans die? did they kill each other? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA­HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 because the USA was asked to help along with the other military members of the UN. everybody acts like the USA was the only military over there. and the other fact was since this was a cold action we could not make advances, we could only fire to defend outselves. I can see that you have a lot to learn about the wars of the USA

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 NO the Americans were killed by the Vietnamese some that we were trying to help. but your country likes to live under communism control, so be happy, that we are gone, and don't ask the USA for help again. you fight your own wars. LOL

[DsKARteam]

@rosemarie443 Classic Americans. You guys jump in to Vietnam in the frist place, and created South Vietnam. Then at the war ends, you guys runs like chickens. No one wants 2 Vietnam. Just one. So 1 has to give, and that's not North Vietnam. We don't fight because we don't want to be run by you US's I can see that the more into the document, the less you comment.

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 so a 100 million Vietnamese died, well all i can say is that the most of them were killed by there own people

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 and you are trying to tell me that the United Nations were not involved in the Vietnam envlovement? and the USA were not baby killers, your own country were the baby killers. because every person in vietnam was expendable. your government did not value life. that is why we were over there was to try and help your people to stay alive, but you decided that you wanted to die instead so we left.

[area51er6]

looks of this footage is from the documentary "The Anderson Platoon" great viewing.

[rosemarie443]

@kakashi76767 but the UN was

[SuperBluefire1]

No wonder the Vietnam War was sorta unpopular.

[canhvanglangoc52]

What is this? A glorified video/movie? His whole report makes me want to vomit...

[teddythebenny]

@canhvanglangoc52 hmm it means his still affective.. after decades..

[sicamousman]

Watch "No substitute For Victory" here on you tube to find more of the truth behind this war

[sicamousman]

American military forces had the manpower, resources and the will to win, but the U.S. state depart tied their hands by limiting the enemy targets that they could hit.The media both American and world media ended up being puppets of the communists and their sympathizers

[prettyknight9285]

Fucking U.S. and Soviet communist fuckers too scared to nuke each others , used my country as a chess board to demontrate each other's power

[TrueNovice]

@prettyknight9285 The Vietnamese were not saints either.

[Ralastar]

@prettyknight9285 FART.

[Wardog687]

American and British protestors shouting support for the vietcong should have been shot for treason.

[lamina198]

@Wardog687

They should have sent those hippies to fight in the war .

Big lession for the US in the propaganda war fare , with a lot of restrictions on journalism , and not showing real , closed up footage of the war everyday on the tely like chronic horror movies

It 's a war of course people dies , not a bloody tropical vacation .

[Wardog687]

@lamina198 Im very well aware of that

[xStalkerxx]

maan the american troops killed more wildlife than VC's...

[runrunforest1]

@xStalkerxx agree. Those are rain forest, extremely rich in

[NickB1967]

Gawd, what an asshole narrator at 1:19 on. Is it "lavish extravagance" to try to use overwhelming force to defeat an enemy? I wonder if he liked having British forces without enough firepower. One *can* make the point that the USA strategy and tactics were not cost effective, without the santimonious crap.

[UltimateLazyMinx]

@NickB1967

It was Vietnam, I think really he has every right to be snctimonious about the US tactics used.

[NickB1967]

@UltimateLazyMinx: Somehow, I suspect he wouldn't mind if the UK forces had such firepower, no???

[EbClectic]

"total military expenditure this year in vietnam is likely to be 10.000 million dollars, enough to give the every family in vietnam one of the highest standards of living in the world, instead it gives them a remarkably high standard of dying" Get a load o´ this... and that ain´t just Vietnam!

[AlanDee]

"They're just victims of operations like this" - gotta love the objectivity.

[vaultsjan]

@AlanDee Could you ellaborate, what it would sound if done objectively? 4 year and 2 year old looking at sea?

[npthaiduong]

As a Vietnamese, I have to say that" Shame on the people just stay home and ask for peace while the American and South Vietnamese soldiers die day by day on the battle, shame on you!"

The war is end but millions of my people were dead for "your peace" !!!! Is that peace ????

[50poiuyt]

@npthaiduong idiot,why Americans had to die for coward thieves like your father?

[jsbach15]

@npthaiduong How did your countrymen dying affect America's peace? The American Government's objective was to prevent the communist NVA, from taking over the people of South Viet Nam, who advocated freedom. Of course we know much more today, but your comment isn't correct.

[gsd1838]

-The British Empire never did anybody wrong when the "sun never fall on it" either

[NickB1967]

@gsd1838: Well put. The sanctimonious crap of the Anti-American Brit-Brats here is sickening.

[jdillmeister]

great footage, good info....

[cdwordsworth26]

a remarkably high standard of dying.

Hmmm appealling.

[QDL95]

mann look at thoes 2 children @ the beginning. hope there're no more war :(

[karlhelvede]

they should've called me

[patsyd80]

wow that little boy at 1.00 is balding allready. wtf?

[Tails137]

Starting at 3:23.........no helmet? Wow.

[BradNC11175]

Weren't US & English political relations the worst they had been in the 20th century during the Viet Nam War era?

[blatttman]

I guess the US would have preferred British involvement in Vietnam but I don,t think it really soured relations, Suez in 56 however was a realy serious rift, I would think that was its lowest point.

[BradNC11175]

Wow I don't really even know about Suez. Sounds like you know your stuff. Man, that whole cold war was just crazy with all the "back door politicing" going on all over the world on both sides. I remember back in the 80s when I was a little kid Reagan and Thatcher and the talk about them mending some broken fences between the US and the British. I hope the English and Americans always remain strong allies.

[4GooMan]

Gamel Abdel Nasser was not initially any part of the "Cold War". His decision to nationalize the Suez Canal stirred the Brits and the French to sabre rattling. Ike said back off, colonialism in Egypt is over.

Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh's entreaties to not allow the Frogs to re-occupy Viet-Nam, and Ho got Russian help. Ike pretty much ignored the whole thing (something we couldn't win) and then Kennedy decided to be the policeman/hero. Ike was right in both cases.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: Of course it is revisionist history but many claim that if JFK had not been assassinated we would have never escalated in Vietnam, in fact pulled out. One idea behind the assassination theories is that JFK wanted out of Nam where as LBJ and the "powers" wanted to escalate in Vietnam, hence why JFK was killed. You think there is a shread of truth to this?

[4GooMan]

Brad: I don't buy it. Kennedy sent armed "advisors" and his boy McNamara had grand schemes in mind for SE Asia. Just another Kennedy blunder in my book. The Berlin wall was built as he watched, he was the author of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and covert involvement in the Congo defined logic. But the Kennedy apologists only want to talk about the 1962 missle crisis. He didn't understand the world and unlike Ike, didn't feel the British knew as much as he did.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: if there is one positive to come out of both the JFK & RFK assassinations for the Kennedys and their supporters it gives them the "fallen hero" status. I have met many in your and my age group who seem to have this idea that the world would honestly be so much better had JFK never been assassinated and had RFK been our president and not been assassinated himself. Robert McNamara sounds like he was a dangerously unscrupulous and yet highly intelligent individual. Middle name was Strange

[4GooMan]

That is what was called and still is called the Camelot mystique. There were three things beneficial to the nation accomplished during JFK's three years. The Peace Corps, the Justice Dept. aggressively going after organized crime, and strong, constant pressure on the powers that ran the southern segregation system. Everything else he tried was a failure or didn't come to pass. But the Lamestream media still treats him as a superhero. RFK may or may not have been great. We just don't know .

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: Ah, Camelot, I have never understood what the term "Camelot" had to do with the Kennedy clan. But then again as a man who was born and raised after the deaths of JFK & RFK, most of my exposure to "Camelot" has been via that looser/degenerate masquerading as a politician: Red Ted Kennedy. He was the bottom of the barrel. I can't help but think RFK & JFK would have both been a step up from that jabroni. But then again the family dog would have been a step up from Red Ted.

[4GooMan]

Brad: Think of King Arthur and the Roundtable in the magical land of Camelot. Jacqueline was a beautiful, photogenic bilingual and cultured woman. The Kennedy children were photogenic and precocious. Jack was a bonafide hero. Even had a popular song about it (PT-109). Some of the best speechwriting since Bryan and Lincoln. Joe Kennedy had the money to spin all this into a package the media went gaga over and called it Camelot. Lotsa style, no substance.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: Now that just sounds familiar to our current president more or less. Proof of history repeating itself in one way shape or form.

[4GooMan]

McNamara was one of Kennedy's "Whiz Kids". Touted by the media as geniuses, there was even a poet amongst them. McNamara proved to be as scupulous as Tim Geithner and not all that competent in his worldview. And he eventually showed LBJ that loyalty was not a strong suit of his either.

[BradNC11175]

McNamara made a name for himself in WWII as a "numbers guy" for the Army Air Corps and Curtis Lemay. He did all the calculations on where and when to best drop bombs to maximize the efficiency of the bombing campaigns in both Europe and the Pacific. Many a pilots/bombing crews in WWII loathed him or at least the results of his statistical annalysises. Particularly when he encouraged Lemay to lower the altitude of bombing runs to increase accuracy, this increased KIA/MIA rates substantially.

[4GooMan]

Brad: He should have stayed with statistical analysis and been a college prof. I remember all that bulls**t he used to water down casualties in "Nam by focusing on how many gooks we were killing, how much territory we "controlled" and how things were getting so much better. I don't know if he believed his own bs, but he sure had LBJ mesmerized.

War is hell. And any gains against a competent opponent require one helluva lot of sacrifice. And that includes soldiers.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: I guess thats the policy when fighting an unpopular and overly protracted war. Bull shit the public into thinking all is "peaches & cream" in the combat zone. The biggest difference between now and then is that the Liberal Media now has competition for the "hearts & minds of the public" via an equally powerful military/industrial complex friendly news media. Hard to tell which is more full of shit in this day and age.

[BradNC11175]

McNamara was the CEO of Ford in the interum between WWII and his appointment to Sec. of Defense by Kennedy. He used his number crunching skills at Ford, and was the man responsable for the seatbelt as well as some other safety feature developments on Fords of the 50s in an attempt to lower life threatening and crippling injuries in car wrecks. As Sec of Defense he was responsable for standardizing the ammunition and weaponry of the entire US military and the whole disasterous "hearts & minds war

[4GooMan]

Brad: Like I said, he belonged in an academic environment, or counting beans for Henry Ford. But a policy maker? No Way!

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: Perhaps with respects to winning a war thousands of miles away in a nation most Americans had never heard prior to 1965. But, maybe the intention behind McNamarah's appointment to Sec. of Defense was to make the US Military more efficient and ultimately more profitable... at least for someone pulling the strings. I am sure that he was most effective on both of those fronts. Think of the 5.56mm round, think of Colt AR-15/ M-16s. Somebody made a hell of a lot of dough on standardization.

[4GooMan]

Brad: Von Clausewitz gave the formula for winning a war over a century and a half ago. And it's still taught in military schools. Destroy your enemy's ability to respond. McNamara never subscribed to this in "Nam. In 1964 Goldwater said fight to win or get out. McNamara said he was an extremist. Twelve years earlier Ike had said a land war in Asia was unwinnable.

Think of over 65,000 American boys dead. For absolutely nothing.

[Nawledge1]

4GooMan: Von Clausewitz sounds like a brilliant man and I'll need to study him more. But don't forget about Sun Tzu! His strategies for war work even today.

[4GooMan]

Nawledge1: I'll have to confess ignorance of Sun Tzu's teachings. I'll have to investigate next trip to the library. If I remember correctly, he melded military operations and diplomatic ones.

[rezlerken]

sun Tzu's ""Art of War" is the western translation, if thats any help ! may be wrong though

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: I don't know much of Von Clausewitz, actually nothing. But, yes a wise point. One casualty is one casualty to many when a nation is engaged in a war it has not determined to put every conceivable effort into winning. Battlefield casualties are always a waste for the side that does not achieve the desired results when sending troops in harm's way. I don't believe Vietnam was "unwinnable". Perhaps unneccicary, certainly poorly managed in Washington and a PR nightmare for the US gov/mil.

[4GooMan]

Brad: It's pretty hard to get a citizen militia to get behind fighting half the globe away when the country is not under attack. Ike made his statement as he visited/investigated Korea with the specter of the Chicoms next door and participating. Goldwater believed "Nam could be won, but it had to be fought to win. The Vietnamese had spent several hundred years battling and finally expelling the Chinese. They had the patience that goes beyond generations.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: with regards to what you just said. I can't help but think of Quincy Adams when he said "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." I am sure that if Quincy Adams could have seen the post WWII/present day US foreign policy he would be scratching his head and in shock. I can just hear Ron Paul putting his two cents in as well here. Goldwater was right, but that should go without saying. It's amazing what Washington has to be reminded of these days.

[4GooMan]

Brad: A bit surprised you'd be quoting a Federalist from Taxachussetts, but the truth is the truth.

Washington has no capacity for remembering patriotism, so reminding them is an effort in futility. Throw the bums out, with precious few exceptions.

When I think about it, we spent 5 years in the Civil War, 2 in WWI and 5 in WWII. And all had decisive results. "Nam lasted about 10, Iraq and Afghanistan are going on 8. The results of the latter group are nebulous, at best.

[BradNC11175]

4GooMan: Point taken about Adams but it shows that even the bigger government Federalists amongst our founding fathers would be opposed to this unabashed imperialism that has resulted from Wilsonian Imperialism. How about this for consideration? What if the US had won in Vietnam. Think we would still have boots on the ground in Vietnam? Maybe have a perminant base at Kesan? But then again, with regards to Vietnam, what were the conditions of victory in Vietnam? I don't think I ever heard.

[NickB1967]

@BradNC11175: Absolutely not, LBJ was following Kennedy's script faithfully, something the Kennedy Mystique crowd cannot admit. Kennedy's worst folly was the Diem coup of 1963. Even though Diem was botching it, the coup, rather than have a lawful transition of power, brought political instability from which The Republic of (South) Vietnam never recovered.

[BradNC11175]

@NickB1967 It would seem to me that from about 1960 the US should have just written off Vietnam as a lost cause: gone to communism. Everything I read see and hear about Diem and the ARVN leads me to believe it was all a gaggle fuck. The US should have never got in bed with Diem. I believe Ho Chi Minn was a brilliant man and a great leader. When the US squandered the chance to get in bed with him after WWII and he turned to the Soviets/China the US was out of viable options in Vietnam.

[NickB1967]

@BradNC11175: Maybe so, but to betray Diem, who while he was botching it was a devout US ally, and to undermine the peaceful transition of power in the Republic of Vietnam, were Kennedy's greatest sins. It was karmic in a sense that JFk was assassinated soon after. Madame Nhu may have been a "dragon lady" but she had a right to be bitter.

[MrStrictlyStock]

@NickB1967 The elections after Dien Bien Phu would almost certainly have been won by Ho and his commies. The "people" were not as concerned with his Leninist leanings as his expulsion of the Japs and Frogs. If they wanted to have a "worker's paradise", we should have let them, not cancelled the elections. History has proven that the "Domino Theory" was an overblown phobia - the real threat is and always has been muzlims in that region.

[NickB1967]

@BradNC11175: nor am I so sure Ho would have taken the USA up on any offer; he was a devout communist since his days in Paris in the 1920's. How ironic for the Froggies.

[BradNC11175]

@NickB1967 To my understanding on Ho, he was bound and determined to see a soviergn and united Vietnam from the time he was a young man. Obviously this is a goal he never wavered from and ultimately achieved. After WWII Ho expected the US to side with him, after all he had been an allie of ours in fighting the Japanese in WWII. But the US turn it's back on Ho when the French decided they wanted to reclaim Vietnam. That was when the Vietnam war became a lost cause for the US.

[BradNC11175]

@NickB1967 The frogs to my understanding had their issues with communism after WWI and up to the German invasion of France during WWII. As an American it's hard for me to fathom right vs. left political debates as right/socialist and left/communist but this seems to have been a common argument in France/Europe between 1918 and 1938. It seems as if it's an argument that has re-emerged in Europe in recent years as well. Ho sided with the Communists I suppose.

[MrStrictlyStock]

@NickB1967 He was firstly a nationalist. And Viet-Nam had fought a centuries long war to be rid of the Chinese. He would never have allowed them ANY control over Viet-Nam. If the Russians had been invited in, they would not have been any more successful than the US at subduing nationalist sentiments. I firmly believe that if the people of a country will not stand up and fight to the death, we have no business "helping" them.

[MrStrictlyStock]

@NickB1967 JFK was too busy being the whoremaster to have a clue about geopolitics. He decided to obstruct the people's choice in Viet-Nam (misguided they may have been, but it should have been their choice) and avoid popular resitance movements behind the Iron Curtain. Amazingly, he just watched as the Berlin Wall was being built in violation of Potsdam.

[NickB1967]

@4GooMan: With all due respect, Nasser towed the Soviet line well. And "nationalization" is a fancy term for theft. As for Ike, not calling air strikes into Dien Bien Phu (a set piece battle that could have wiped out the Viet Minh, the Frogs just didn't have enough air powr to pull it off) was a mistake that set the stage for our future woes in Vietnam. I liked Ike mostly, but Dien Bien Phu and the Suez were bad calls of his.

[MrStrictlyStock]

@NickB1967 Gamel Abdel Nasser was a schmuck and the Israelis eventually gave him a good old fashioned ass whipping, Soviet armaments and trainers and all.

A nation that allows foreign powers to control territory within it's borders is not at all sovereign. Nasser, despite being an incompetent meglomaniac, was but redressing the original theft of the Suez Canal Zone by empire builders.

[NickB1967]

@MrStrictlyStock: No diasgreement about Nasser's much deserved ass-kicking, however, how could the Suez Canal be "stolen" when the British and French built it in the first place? See also Panama Canal with respect to the USA.

[MrStrictlyStock]

@NickB1967 The danger of embracing that concept is that it would be acquiescing to an international precedent. Under such a scenario, the Chinese could buy land and construct whatever they chose in the US and then fortify it with their troops. I am too much a fan of national sovereignty to get behind that.

[EnnisUltra]

@MrStrictlyStock

But it was OK for South Vietnam to allow the US to control the VIetnam War??

[MrStrictlyStock]

@EnnisUltra That's something you'd have to ask the VietNamese. Or JFK and LBJ. I certainly had no use for the latter two and their foreign adventures.

[BritishWarLord]

Yeah so much for the worlds greatest allies.

[NickB1967]

@blatttman: I would call Ike's decisions at Suez a great folly. Alienating the British, French and Israelis, and for what? So Nasser the goon could continue his rule?

[brnsimpson]

Hell, the British and the Chinese helped the French get back in there after WWII.

[BradNC11175]

BRN: It seems like the Brits and the Chinese have always had a strange relationship. I have been to Hong Kong, great place. I was thinking just the other day about how the Brits must have spent truck loads of money on Hong Kong when under their control and then just turned it over to the Chinese. Putting faith in the French to do anything of substance sounds like a fuck up on behalf of both.

[matt99is]

@BradNC11175 the US and Britain have not really gotten along in a long time, even though politically we ally ourselves rather closely with the US the British people resent it deeply.

[BradNC11175]

@matt99is Blair was accused by many Brits for being a stooge to G.W. Bush. In the PM debate G. Brown made it sound as if Britain could not stand on her own without the US & the EU. This is not a view that most Brits that I know hold nore should it be. The British people are furious these days because the government does not listen to them nor do whats best for Britain. Many Americans feel the same about our government. The problem isn't between Americans & Brits, the problem is our governments.

[hungvan]

So much for freedom and democracy - moved everyone against their will to a camp.

[Lachausis]

@hungvan That was South Vietnamese government decision.

[thechangedknight]

at 2:05 did he say 10 thousand million dollars. how much money is that.

[blatttman]

10 billion dollars, estimated total cost of war I believe is 150 billion. The real cost is of course not in money.