Quote:

D. McDonagh said:
Is it worth observing that the French lasted a lot longer in Vietnam (or French Indochina as it was then) than you people ever managed?



How the hell do you come to THIS brilliant conclusion ?!?

Ho Chi Minh began the seeds of revolution in the 1930's. His revolutionary movement to liberate French Indochina (later renamed Vietnam) was put on hold by WW II, because the Vietnamese felt they'd be more safe under French rule than as an independent state, from Japanese invasion.
But Japan very easily conquered Vietnam.

So from the end of WW II, seeing no benefit to being a French colony, the revolution began again.
The French didn't maintain continuous possesion of Vietnam. Quite the contrary, they got their butts kicked.

U.S. involvement began in Vietnam because the French would initially not join NATO, and pressured the U.S. to assist in humanitarian aid and economic aid to Vietnam, which gradually escalated to military aid as well in the early 1960's.
Pressure from France regarding NATO leveraged the U.S. into increased Vietnam involvement, to trade for French cooperation in NATO.

Precisely because of the French effort to keep Vietnam, France was the only nation in Western Europe not to have fully recovered from WW II by the mid-1950's.

The French were defeated at Diembienphu in 1956 (at which point the U.N. intervened, and split the nation into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.)
The idea was to make South Vietnam into a model of democracy, to make the North Vietnamese turn from communism. At which theoretical point, the two halves of Vietnam could be re-united.

But largely due to a heavy French hand in selection of South Vietnamese leadership, corrupt leadership and brutal repression of any political dissent inhibited the development of a truly democratic South Vietnam.
All economic aid to South Vietnam was siphoned into the pockets of the French-picked and French-educated ruling elite.
And the South Vietnamese people saw no evidence or benefit of democracy, and actually grew to fear their own South Vietnamese leadership.
With no political alternative offered in South Vietnam, the discontented South Vietnamese citizens again began turning to their former revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, in North Vietnam.
The French-appointed president of South Vietnam, Ngo Din Diem, (appointed by the French in 1956) was assassinated in 1963. American military involvement escalated soon after.

But all along from 1950-1963, France obstructed every U.S. attempt to eliminate the corruption and repression by the elite, the source of discontent in South Vietnam, and obstructed U.S. attempts to select South Vietnamese leadership that was not corrupt.

So, post WW II, French leadership lasted from 1945-1956. 11 years.

And U.S. involvement lasted from 1950-1975, when Saigon fell, and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Or from the point where U.S. involvement began in earnest, in the complete absence of French influence (from the point of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, August 1964), about 11 years. Roughly the same time period as the French. Longer, if you trace it to the first U.S. involvement (25 years).

The French role in U.S. involvement in Vietnam is something that is, for some reason, often glossed over.
Probably to better demonize the United States.

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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."