Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
Partly inspired by this thread, I finally took the time to watch Fog of War, a documentary in which Robert McNamara talks about war (mostly).
I can not recommend it strongly enough, fantastic.
As to McNamara's comments about war, they are I think spot on in many things that are seen in overly simplified ways. (For example "war crimes".)
In relation to the quote, McNamara makes (I'm paraphrasing a little here) the claim that had the two sides (North Vietnamese and the US) understood each other, US involvement in the war could have mostly been avoided (or at least it would have been very different).
The Vietnamese believed, wrongly, that the US wanted to replace France as a colonial power, and the US didn't understand that the NV considered their fight to be a civil war and a war of independence, and that they weren't really the pawns of the Chinese or the Russians.
|
Had the two sides understood each other in what way?
He is right in the 2nd part of your post. It was the North's propaganda that the US were absolutely raping the South and it was "our" job to go into the south and 'save our brothers' and reunified the country.
It worked. Except that the citizens of the South weren't saved. They suffered more.