General Giap dead at 102

[Sensei]

It doesn't matter how he won, only that he won.

Assuming that I agree with your basic premise that he won, winning in such a manner only makes him marginally effective. After all, you can accomplish a lot with strength, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor...

[SteyrAUG]

It doesn't matter how he won, only that he won.

And here is what he won at the cost of an estimated one million Vietnamese military dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...28from_1976.29

Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final NVA Spring Offensive were killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975.[15] Sources have estimated that 165,000 South Vietnamese died in the re-education camps out of 1-2.5 million sent,[16][17] while the number executed could have been as high as 200,000[18] (Jacqueline Desbarats estimates an absolute minimum of 100,000 executions[16][19]).

Rummel estimates that slave labor in the "New Economic Zones" caused 50,000 deaths (out of a total 1 million deported).[16][20] The number of Vietnamese boat people who died is estimated between 200,000 and 400,000, out of the 2.5 million that fled.[21] There were also tens of thousands of suicides after the North Vietnamese take-over.[22] In 1988, Vietnam suffered a famine that afflicted millions.

Many North Vietnamese soldiers and cadres began to realize that they had been indoctrinated into thinking that the South Vietnamese people were utterly poor and exploited by the imperialists and foreign capitalists who treated them like slaves, shackling, whipping and terrorizing them with dogs. Contradictory to what they were taught, they saw an abundance of food and consumer goods, fashionable clothes, plenty of books and music; things that were hard to get in the North. This fact was expressed by Duong Thu Huong, a former northern Viet Cong fighter turned democracy activist and book author, who wrote of this in her book Paradise of the Blind.

In 1976, Vietnam was officially unified and renamed Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRVN), with its capital in Hà Nội. The Vietnamese Communist Party dropped its front name "Labor Party" and changed the title of First Secretary, a term used by China, to General Secretary, used by the Soviet Union, with Lê Duẩn as General Secretary. The Viet Cong was dissolved. The Party emphasized development of heavy industry and collectivization of agriculture.

Over the next few years, private enterprises were seized by the government and their owners were often sent to the New Economic Zones—a communist euphemism for a thick jungle—to clear land. The farmers were coerced into state-controlled cooperatives. Transportation of food and goods between provinces was deemed illegal except by the government. Within a short period of time, Vietnam was hit with severe shortage of food and basic necessities. The Mekong Delta, once a world-class rice-producing area, was threatened with famine. During the mid-1980s, inflation reached triple figures.

The SRVN government implemented a Stalinist dictatorship of the proletariat in the South as they did in the North. The network of security apparatus (Công An: literally "Public Security", a communist term for the security apparatus) controlled every aspect of people's life. Censorship was strict and ultra-conservative, with most pre-1975 works in the fields of music, art, and literature being banned. All religions had to be re-organized into state-controlled churches. Any negative comments toward the Party, the government, Uncle Ho, or anything related to Communism might earn the person the tag of Phản Động (Reactionary), with consequences ranging from being harassed by police, expelled from school or workplace, to being sent to prison.

Nevertheless, the Communist authority failed to suppress the black market, where food, consumer goods, and banned literature could be bought at high prices. The security apparatus also failed to stop a nationwide clandestine network of people trying to escape the country. In many cases, the security officers of some whole districts were bribed and even got involved in organizing the escape schemes.

These living conditions resulted in an exodus of over a million Vietnamese secretly escaping the country either by sea or overland through Cambodia. For the people fleeing by sea, their wooden boats were often not seaworthy, were packed with people like sardines, and lacked sufficient food and water. Many were caught or shot at by the Vietnamese coast guards, many perished at sea due to boats sinking, capsizing in storms, starvation and thirst. Another major threat were the pirates in the Gulf of Thailand, who viciously robbed, raped, and murdered the boat people. In many cases, they massacred the whole boat. Sometimes the women were raped for days before being sold into prostitution.

The people who crossed Cambodia faced equal dangers with mine fields, and the Khmer Rouge and Khmer Serei guerillas, who also robbed, raped, and killed the refugees. Some were successful in fleeing the region and landed in numbers in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, only to wind up in United Nations refugee camps.



Yes it was a great victory at great cost to the people who did the actual fighting and a richly deserved reward for the populace. Although not quite the socialist utopia they had been told to expect.

[LHS]

NBC News also gave a glowing puff piece on him. I was fairly shocked at how much praise they heaped upon him.

[Moose-Knuckle]

It doesn't matter how he won, only that he won.

Sorry to pinch a loaf in your hero worship but he didn't "win" the war, the US packed up and went home. Tet was a disaster for them, communist sympathizers like Cronkite did more damage to the US effort than the General ever did.

[chuckman]

Does that consideration extend to Goering, Sepp Dietrich and Heydrich?

No. These men, while generals, were predominantly party people and not largely responsible for affecting overall military doctrine or strategy.

If Giap was pro-US we would have been singing his praises.

I am a former professional warrior and can detach the man's politics and military duty....the same way I can do the same for Stonewall Jackson and Yamamoto and Rommel.

[ABNAK]

Sorry to pinch a loaf in your hero worship but he didn't "win" the war, the US packed up and went home. Tet was a disaster for them, communist sympathizers like Cronkite did more damage to the US effort than the General ever did.

This. foxtrotx1 has bought into the retarded oversimplification of who won or lost in Vietnam. The NVA defeated the South Vietnamese in 1975. We pulled out in 1973, over two years earlier. The NVA could not take SV while we were there.....they tried numerous times and failed (and that is a fact).

The North did NOT defeat the U.S., period.

[Mjolnir]

The man was a military genius for sure. Can't blame him for being a good general.

We shouldn't have been in Vietnam in the first place. Same with the french.

Flame suit on.

That's how I see it. If we weren't there what would it matter to any of us? It would not.

I assume EVERYONE is a great warrior and I live my life in a manner that I don't have to test that theory. I do not go looking around for a reason to screw with people so relax, you great warriors you.

Godspeed to ALL fallen soldiers believing in their cause - many of which I don't give a care about and some I outright despise.


-------------------------------------
"One cannot awaken a man who pretends to be asleep."

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

He won and condemned his country to another generation of craptastic communist rule. He won and his people lost.


Take the long Chinese view of history and you could say that we are winning the Vietnam war.

[MountainRaven]

This. foxtrotx1 has bought into the retarded oversimplification of who won or lost in Vietnam. The NVA defeated the South Vietnamese in 1975. We pulled out in 1973, over two years earlier. The NVA could not take SV while we were there.....they tried numerous times and failed (and that is a fact).

The North did NOT defeat the U.S., period.

Yup.

Just like how the Persian Empire wasn't defeated by the Greeks, they withdrew.

France wasn't defeated in Algeria, they withdrew.

The Soviet Union wasn't defeated in Afghanistan, they withdrew.

Kublai Khan wasn't defeated by the Japanese, he withdrew.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi wasn't defeated by the Chinese and Koreans, he withdrew.

The Roman Empire wasn't defeated in Europe, they just withdrew to Greece.

Hannibal wasn't defeated by the Romans, he withdrew (and then was defeated by Scipio).

The Arabs weren't defeated by the Israelis, they withdrew.

The Allies weren't defeated at Dunkirk, they withdrew - and the Soviets withdrew all the way back to Moscow.

The British Empire wasn't defeated by the United States of America, they withdrew from the colonies.

Anyway. I imagine much of the reason that the official word on Giap's death is woe on behalf of the American media and government is because today Vietnam is an ally against the Chinese.

[SteyrAUG]

No. These men, while generals, were predominantly party people and not largely responsible for affecting overall military doctrine or strategy.

If Giap was pro-US we would have been singing his praises.

I am a former professional warrior and can detach the man's politics and military duty....the same way I can do the same for Stonewall Jackson and Yamamoto and Rommel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Giap

Võ Nguyên Giáp (25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a General of the Vietnam People's Army and a politician.

Giáp was also a journalist, an interior minister in President Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh government, the military commander of the Việt Minh, the commander of the Vietnam People’s Army (PAVN), and defense minister. He also served as a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party, which in 1976 became the Communist Party of Vietnam.

I stand by my earlier assessment. This guy was no Rommel, he was a communist leader who ignored articles of the Geneva convention and those under his command murdered and tortured US prisoners.