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General Giap is dead

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  • General Giap is dead

    Rip

  • #2
    Link: Vietnamese general who oversaw defeat of French, U.S. forces, dies aged 102 - The Globe and Mail

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    • #3
      Having picked up Vietnamese boat people in the South China Sea, I'm not sure this is one for which I can send condolences. Just sayin'.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by desertswo View Post
        Having picked up Vietnamese boat people in the South China Sea, I'm not sure this is one for which I can send condolences. Just sayin'.
        Well he was the military leader, not the political leader. He was tasked of reuniting Vietnam just like Ulysses Grant was tasked of reuniting United States. I am sure that there were plenty of atrocities that followed.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Blademaster View Post
          Well he was the military leader, not the political leader. He was tasked of reuniting Vietnam just like Ulysses Grant was tasked of reuniting United States. I am sure that there were plenty of atrocities that followed.
          Not trying to get into a pissing contest here, but whose military do you think was charged with carrying out the will of the Vietnamese government?

          As a rule, I don't celebrate military leaders of any stripe. If there was one thing I learned over the years, it's that no one's hands are clean. Even mine.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by desertswo View Post
            As a rule, I don't celebrate military leaders of any stripe. If there was one thing I learned over the years, it's that no one's hands are clean. Even mine.
            Not even George Washington?

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            • #7
              The Iroquois blamed him for the Oneida slaughter.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                The Iroquois blamed him for the Oneida slaughter.
                I rest my case. None of us are without sin; period. I know I probably killed more than a few innocents with Tomahawk strikes. It's not something I like to think about obviously. However, I try to take comfort in the fact that I wasn't consciously trying to hurt those folks, whereas one cannot say the same about people like Giap. I know he's a great patriot, and freed his country. I get that, and even support the notion, as I agree with Omar Bradley's admonition with regard to expanding the Korean War, that Vietnam was also "the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong enemy." That still doesn't absolve Giap for what happened later.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                  The Iroquois blamed him for the Oneida slaughter.
                  General Giap?
                  "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge

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                  • #10
                    A true fighter of freedom. Good riddance. Hard to say much more for a man who devoted his life to fighting to oppress millions under a horrible system, and ordering the deliberate murder of unarmed civilians...

                    No different then if a Sudanese/Rwandan/SS general croaked.
                    Last edited by troung; 05 Oct 13,, 03:16.
                    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Blademaster View Post
                      Well he was the military leader, not the political leader. He was tasked of reuniting Vietnam just like Ulysses Grant was tasked of reuniting United States. I am sure that there were plenty of atrocities that followed.
                      Not looking to pick a fight, but he was very much a political leader. He started out as a revolutionary and remained a politician throughout his career. He had no formal military training, but was a teacher & then a journalist in the cause of the revolution. He was a senior politburo member and a minister at various times. The system he worked within - and helped to create - didn't make the neat 'politician/military officer' distinctions that are more familiar to us. He was a politician from first to last.

                      I wrote this elsewhere:

                      I struggle to see Giap as a 'soldier doing his job'. He was a dedicated revolutionary & Communist Party functionary who discovered a talent for military command. Charitable souls might compare him to Washington (though he was a military officer before the revolution), a better comparison would be Leon Trotsky - no great compliment I'm afraid.

                      There is no doubt that his defeat of the French showed touches of genius, especially in the management of logistics and ability to take advantage of French weakness. That said, there were some terrible and arguably unnecessary losses along the way, particularly when he took on the French where they were strongest.

                      I would find it easier to admire Giap if his talents had been harnessed in the service of a cause less terrible than placing the whole of Vietnam under Communist rule. Unfortunately the media coverage of his death will be a textbook example of the 'Rommel effect'.

                      A man of undoubted ability, but not one whose passing I can mourn.
                      sigpic

                      Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                      • #12
                        Well put, Pete.
                        "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
                        "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                          I would find it easier to admire Giap if his talents had been harnessed in the service of a cause less terrible than placing the whole of Vietnam under Communist rule. Unfortunately the media coverage of his death will be a textbook example of the 'Rommel effect'.
                          Who fought to free Vietnam from the French? Ngo Dinh Diem and Americans?

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                          • #14
                            Who fought to free Vietnam from the French? Ngo Dinh Diem and Americans?
                            Written from California, Texas, or Northern Virginia?

                            He fought to oppress millions under a barbaric system, deny them civil and human rights, create man made famines, and kill over a million people in three nations as part of a war of naked aggression.

                            Replaced the French with a violent regime which exported war to the entire region.

                            I hope his death was painful.
                            Last edited by troung; 05 Oct 13,, 23:42.
                            To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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                            • #15
                              Like I said, I've looked into the eyes of boat people. I'm not losing any sleep over the death of someone like him.

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