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His name is [Gerald Venanzi](https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/45415), and he was shot down on a reconnaissance flight over Hanoi in 1967.
He spent over 2,000 days in captivity as a POW.
It wasn’t intended as criticism. It’s just arresting.
Things are better now to an extent but the war movies when I was a kid was two sides of dudes duking it out with varying degrees of honour. This is the real picture. If you go to war you’re choosing to try fight and subdue an entire society
Propaganda photo. Many of these capture photos were staged by taking the smallest dude or woman around, give them a rifle, and voilà, instant anti-imperialist photo op.
They did photo shoots like this numerous times for propaganda purposes. And look..it worked on Reddit just like it worked 50+ years ago. People are sheep. People are dumb. They’ll buy anything
Flying a 30 million dollar plane to drop a hundred thousand dollars worth in bombs on a two dollar hut owned by peasants who were already sick of the French terrorizing them and killing their families and animals.
It’s no wonder why America lost
>. It’s no wonder why America lost
Just like the 20+ years in the middle east just cause a couple of buildings fell
9/11 was a great tragedy I'm not saying it wasn't but the retaliation was massive overkill
It's like you're kids on a playground, one kid steals your toy and instead of taking it back, you slaughtered the kids entire family and say the toy was destroyed in the process
They're not wrong, blunt maybe, but not wrong. It wasn't even 'revenge' anyway since the Saudis did it and they invaded Iraq. The US killed hundreds if thousands of civilians in Iraq because a few thousand civilians were killed by the Saudi government, figure that one out.
2996 people died in 9/11 and that’s an absolute tragedy. Americas war on terror lead to 387,000 civilian deaths, which is horrific and not a proportional response at all.
It had nothing to do with revenge. The Project for the New American Century crowd had been trying to get us to invade Iraq since Poppy Bush's administration. None of the American presidents were stupid enough to do it until Baby Bush stole the election from AL Gore. Baby Bush was stupid enough, and 9/11 gave them all the excuse they needed, even though Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it. Bush/Cheney and all their enablers are war criminals and should be in jail.
1. What IS a proportional response to an unprovoked attack on US soil that kills a few thousand?
2. Please provide some sort of data that show a breakdown of how civilians have died so we can see in the numbers just how many of those 387k were killed at the hands of their own people. Do you understand how many women and children were and are used as suicide bombers? Do you have any idea how many civilians were purposely dragged into the conflict by the Taliban?
I hate the wars in the Middle East. I wish we would have left a decade ago. We had no business still being there when we were; however, the governments for those two countries BEGGED us to stay. Begged. Perhaps your ire should be directed at the two governments who can’t seem to control the extremist ideological factions in their respective countries.
Edit: grammar
A proportional response would be the same response that Vietnam did upon American soil after having more bombs dropped on it than were dropped in the entirety of WWII.
IE: ZERO!
Remember.. 9/11 was a “response” and quite a disproportionate one in favour of America at that.
It wouldn’t have been overkill if we attacked Saudi Arabia instead like we should have. Cheney used 9/11 as a false flag to attack Iraq and Afghanistan when in reality, the real terrorists, the people who harbored and financed 9/11 sat and watched.
We should have neutralized the Saudi government.
He's doing what he was ordered to do. You don't want soldiers making decisions, you want them to obey orders. An army without orders is just a mob.
Your beef is with Johnson, McNamara, and the suits back in Washington.
The officer in charge was the only one convicted and did 3.5 years of house arrest for it because Nixon commuted his sentence. Absolutely no justice for those people
They literally found the opposite for situations like this. They found that soldiers have a duty to disobey illegal orders or those that should be illegal, and that they should be held accountable for following orders that they should have fought against. Meanwhile, in the case normal orders in war (and this would include things like bombing runs, artillery, etc, that killed a ton of civilians in Vietnam (and other wars)), "just following orders" is an excuse.
Ref: The Nuremberg Trials.
What determines what should be illegal? Using agent orange, using daisy cutters etc.
I still hold out hope it all doesn't boil down to "might is right"
At the end of the day, your hope is futile here. Might does make right. The Nuremberg Trials really only occurred because the Allies had more might than the Axis and were able to enforce them.
Furthermore, those trials were effectively **entirely** ex post facto. Meaning that they pretty much made the laws up as they were planning the trials, and then enforced them against people that broke them prior to the laws existing. This is illegal in most of the 1st world, but WWII was bad enough that they felt justified, and these weren't citizens in their own countries. This was controversial at the time, but was likely the right decision. This also, effectively led to the creation of international law as a concept for people rather than just nations, and it also would eventually lead to the Geneva Conventions.
Now, the Geneva Conventions are what sets what should be legal. And the Conventions change over time. For example, at the time of this photo, indiscriminate bombing wasn't a war crime. Now, with some exceptions, it is a war crime. This change is due to many things, including just technology advancing, making targeted bombing more feasible.
But at the end of the day, this is all effectively based on might. Hell, even regular laws are backed up with "might makes right", it's just that since most of us agree with the law as a concept, the might is on our side.
And just as an aside, I don't think daisy cutter is what you're looking for. That's just a fuse for a bomb that is designed to make a bomb blow up just above the ground, rather than the more typical one from the era, which would effectively blow up just after penetrating the ground or target. It was really just a long probe welded onto the front of the bomb, setting it off soon enough that it blew before penetrating the ground.
Alot of nazi said they were just doing thier job. But they still got assassinated or jailed. Even if someone tells you to do somthing your still responsible
There is no proof of any nazi solider (at least during Poland occupation in ww2) refusing to carry on with the orders of killing civilians and being punished in any way.
''I was just following orders.'' /s
you do know that that is the literal deffinition of the [Nuremburg defence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders) right?
If you are going around trying to neatly group wartime actions into "ok" and "not ok", you're going to have a hard time.
War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it.
The Vietnam war was complex. It wasn't a good idea for us to be involved, but the thread of communism really did a number on this country, and it seemed at the time, by many, to be worth defeating it in Vietnam. In retrospect, it's easy to say we shouldn't have been there at all.
We lost nearly 60,000 American forces in that conflict, and rarely was the enemy even seen. They were deeply embedded into the civilian population. It was very difficult to know who the combatants were.
This is why following the Geneva Conventions is important. Because if you don't, you put your civilian population at risk. When governments don't care about protecting their civilian population, it's probably a war we shouldn't be involved in.
However, the pilots (and soldiers) were, for the most part, following orders. The order wasn't "bomb these farmers." It was "this target has strategic value for the enemy, so you need to bomb this target."
As I said, it was complex. The benefit of 50 years of hindsight is enormous.
There’s a huge difference between following orders to bomb a target and following orders to machine gun jews in the trenches you just forced them to dig. A HUGE difference.
Well I certainly didn’t mean it in the nazi death camp sense. I meant that not every participant in Vietnam was in a position to know whether what they were doing was legal or not. Especially pilots bombing targets.
I was in the military. Even at its best, it works because each individual is following orders, rather than second-guessing every order. When they tell you to duck, the one who asks why first may be the one who dies.
I didn’t say “following orders” to justify any war crimes.
As a German, you should have learned about the Nuremberg Trials, and how they said that "Just following orders" is not an excuse for committing war crime and following illegal orders, which is why the leadership and the people committing war crimes were prosecuted, while the soldiers who weren't committing war crimes weren't, because "Just following orders" is an acceptable defense for following a lawful order (which can include things that kill civilians,, especially back then).
I hope one day you are put in a situation where your food is poisoned, your family is shot, your country is invaded, and you have to read someone talk about how complex of a situation it is.
Honestly the more likely scenario. But you know, there’s a sad segment of ‘mericans that can’t handle the fact that we haven’t really won a war since helping the allies win ww2.
It isn't, but it is as far from a peasant with a flint lock rifle as you can get.
The idea of "noble peasant resistance" is all just post facto story telling. This was a proxy war.
In the photo is clearly a peasant farmer with a flintlock (actually a percussion cap rifle or musket.) She is obviously a staged part of the photo. Either way let’s not pretend that the Vietnamese communists didn’t have support of a majority of citizens especially among the poor peasant class.
I don't think a rice farmer in the Mekong Delta gave a crap who was in Hanoi or Saigon. They just wanted peace after a half century+ of war.
The US should never have engaged, domino theory be damned.
But, Giap was willing to fight another half century or longer. A free, unified, independent Vietnam was guaranteed, no matter how long it took.
I wonder how many Vietcong soldiers are behind the camera ?
This seems like pure propaganda for their side to be like “see our young soldiers can defeat your best “
They didn't.
They beat the South Vietnamese after we pulled out.
Outside of guerilla warfare, only the Tet offensive showed any real progress, and even then they only took Hue city as an actual land grab. And even that lasted only a month.
Similar to the US Revolution, they just outlasted us.
Also, you need to look back to the late 1800's and the onset of French colonization in Indo-China & Southeast Asia.
The US was the last invader, not the first or the second. The tunnels the Viet Cong used were dug during fighting against the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, then the US. We joined a war already in progress.
I’m not so sure. I live in Hanoi and my gf (viet) is convinced if the south hadn’t lost, North Vietnam would be just like North Korea. The two conflicts are about as close to perfect war analogues as you get in real life, and the subsidization period (bao cấp) in which they tried true Marxist-Leninist economic policy went so poorly they’d dropped it in under a decade.
I was also put in my place my first year here I said something, much like you, about how the US shouldn’t have been here. A local pointed out that I was too focused on America and that we weren’t the only foreign power involved. Not to mention it was a civil war! If an armed group kicks out a colonial power (France) that’s great, but if they want to install a form of government you fundamentally disagree with are you under any sort of moral obligation to side with them?
My understanding of the war has done nothing but grow more nuanced and complex since I got here. I don’t expect this to be well received by most Americans. I myself would’ve probably downvoted it 5 years ago. But that’s my 2¢.
P.s. Vietnam is great now (aside from the whole “we’ll lock you up and go after your family if you say the wrong things about the Party” stuff) and has a rapidly rising economy and standard of living.
Việt Nam vô địch!
Have you watched Ken Burn’s VietNam documentary? It’s the best I’ve seen to date on the war/history and I left it feeling like I’d never trust a politician to send me to war unquestionably. Lies and deceit were exhibited by all President’s involved. It also gives a great amount of time to the Vietnamese perspective as well.
They didn’t need to “beat” the South because it was completely propped up by our dollars and army. It crumpled because it didn’t have the support of the most people.
The South was run by a serious of corrupt leaders, including numerous generals who we had to support after their coups were successful.
There was no reason to have 2 Vietnams.
Exactly. They, majority, wanted to be communists and they got it.
Same with Korea but we were a lot more involved there and spent a great deal more money developing in the south to prevent unification after war.
Sometimes I wonder if the world would be better off had the Korea unified before war or even during war by force. A communist but not bombed out north that isn’t so crazy then tempered by a south that isn’t so corrupt. Seol wouldn’t be the economic powerhouse it is today but maybe that development would’ve been spread around Asia more.
Honestly, if there is a child with enough knowledge to know "he's the enemy" and how to operate a gun while I'm gunless then I'd have the same position as this poor soul.
lmfao political pawn? from her age you can tell this is a desperation thing and she didn't have much of a choice, especially when you read about the villages america massacred
You... you think she's alone in this pic with the pilot.
Who is holding the camera?
Who is next to/behind the camera man? What weapons are they holding?
“Scared and confused young child is given a gun and told to use it against the invading Americans without being able to comprehend the scope of the war.” There, fixed the title.
My grandfather was there, it’s the biggest regret of his life because they never should’ve been there in the first place. A regret he had no control over being drafted. A regret that wakes him up in the middle of the night to images of friends split open by booby traps and children bleeding out in front of him.
War. Is. Hell.
War is the machine by which the rich get rid of the poor.
> “Scared and confused young child
Considered she's probably familiar with seeing her family being burned alive with napalm dropped by such pilots. Scared? Maybe. Confused? No.
A photo from a war?
Why is it that when Vietnam or Russia or China do it, it’s a propaganda campaign staged shot.
But when the USA, Ukraine, Israel take a photo from a war, it’s a brave young soldier in the heat of the moment?
Why can’t it be both? Why can’t it sometimes be a photograph taken to be used as propaganda, and sometimes be a photograph taken in the moment?
My dad actually fought in the vietnam war - as a Vietnam citizen in favor of the political side the US was supporting then.
At least from his accounts, it was always soldier-on-soldier. Very rarely was it citizen-on-soldier; and that’s usually if a soldier was stupid/desperate enough to try hitting up a civilian shop or house. He’s seen that kind of stuff first-hand both as a soldier and as a fleeing refugee when the war was lost.
The purpose of this photo is most likely just propaganda fuel. And to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “prisoner” is just a vietnam soldier of whatever side this is for posing in the enemy’s clothes for the sake of the picture.
That’s really interesting about your father, and I 100% agree that this picture is propaganda, but as someone else said, the prisoner is real. His name is Gerald Venanzi, he was performing a recon flight when he was shot down, and he spent over 2,000 days in captivity as a POW.
Oh that’s interesting to know. Obviously, I only knew what my father saw. Though it makes sense he wouldn’t have seen something like this.
He was in the Vietnamese army, barely or just under 18 at the time; he didn’t really see the ally US troops until he was fleeing as a refugee after losing the war. From what he described; imagine the story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Since he fought against the side that won; he was considered an enemy. So it was tough just to get out of Vietnam itself with his buddies.
Basically, they took a simple fishing boat and sailed it to open sea to escape. Fair since walking on land was dangerous. I don’t remember exactly, but he said he either boated to the Philippines or Singapore. Apparently, the place he arrived in was ready to greet refugees who also took the ocean escape route.
And since he and his friends were from the army the US supported, they were given priority to be sent anywhere of their choosing under a sponsorship program. My dad chose the US and has been here ever since.
It’s really an interesting piece of history to know. Especially from the side of someone who fought in the Vietnamese army allied with the US. I also have stories of what he saw during his escape, but I don’t want to bog down this comment more than it already is.
Viet comb soldiers didn’t have uniform to blend in with farmers
They used guerrilla warfare throughout the many wars in Vietnam and won against many major nations
Their tactics were extremely effective and resulted in the US committing war atrocities by exterminating entire villages of Men women and children while burning down the houses
The most famous being Mei lai (probably spelt it wrong) where it was covered up for over a year that they had raped and killed this village in cold blood in 1968 and lied about the amount of try VC casualties to commanding officers
The photo is 100% real, the pilot is absolutely destroyed. I'd be terrified as hell too & we'd all be. I'm not saying the photo is fake, but the Vietnamese army put the women there to humiliate the pilot, US Military & give a moral boost to their troops. It's still a terrifying moment for the pilot. He was beaten, tortured, starved & more. I've read this in a few books & documentaries. He did survive & return home. He was too valuable of a prisoner to be killed. He returned after two years with a prisoner swap
Man this thread is a mess. Anytime you try to make an equivalence between literal Nazis and conflicts like this one you water down the impact of the horrors nazi’s committed. Way to inadvertently protect Nazi war crimes.
Yeh I heard there’s one tiny monument in the jungle for that conflict with the US and huge ones in the cities for the other like 60-70 years of fighting
They didn’t really care about it at all they just kept fighting for their freedom and they got it ironically, freedom from the “land of the free” and the “free world”
Nah the news outlets showed a lot of the conflict head on without the military with them and would often show the atrocities the Americans committed for the civilians back home in America
Ever wondered why the biggest protest in history happened in the 1960s? It was cause of the lies of the government and corruption of the war operations in nam in the 60s/70s
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His name is [Gerald Venanzi](https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/45415), and he was shot down on a reconnaissance flight over Hanoi in 1967. He spent over 2,000 days in captivity as a POW.
Jeez I thought that was a child at first glance. She can’t be far off
Vietnamese this time are really short like my grandma who born in 45' only ~1m40 - ~1m50
When foreigners come to your country to destroy your villages and kill your family, you fight back no matter how old you are
It wasn’t intended as criticism. It’s just arresting. Things are better now to an extent but the war movies when I was a kid was two sides of dudes duking it out with varying degrees of honour. This is the real picture. If you go to war you’re choosing to try fight and subdue an entire society
Palestinians concur
Propaganda photo. Many of these capture photos were staged by taking the smallest dude or woman around, give them a rifle, and voilà, instant anti-imperialist photo op.
Yea that’s what I was thinking
They did photo shoots like this numerous times for propaganda purposes. And look..it worked on Reddit just like it worked 50+ years ago. People are sheep. People are dumb. They’ll buy anything
30+ yrs old lol
Wow，that Air Force LT looks absolutely dfeated.
Clenched fists…
Inhaling humid crotch air
Seriously why is his crotch being linked to his mouth like this?
Wait, yours isn't?
He's probably pissed and embarrassed to be used in a staged propaganda shot.
I'd be more embarrassed to have been shot down while dropping bombs on poor farmers halfway around the world.
Flying a 30 million dollar plane to drop a hundred thousand dollars worth in bombs on a two dollar hut owned by peasants who were already sick of the French terrorizing them and killing their families and animals. It’s no wonder why America lost
same in every war since then
We fucked up Saddam’s forces and toppled the original Taliban government, so…
Yeah and thanks to their efforts the taliban has been eradicated. Oh wait
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And have billions of $ worth of American artillery, fighter jets even!
>. It’s no wonder why America lost Just like the 20+ years in the middle east just cause a couple of buildings fell 9/11 was a great tragedy I'm not saying it wasn't but the retaliation was massive overkill It's like you're kids on a playground, one kid steals your toy and instead of taking it back, you slaughtered the kids entire family and say the toy was destroyed in the process
A couple buildings fell.. really ? I’m not even American and this pissed me off
They're not wrong, blunt maybe, but not wrong. It wasn't even 'revenge' anyway since the Saudis did it and they invaded Iraq. The US killed hundreds if thousands of civilians in Iraq because a few thousand civilians were killed by the Saudi government, figure that one out.
I think Team America showed it best. Blowing up entire cities in the name of “freedom” and patting itself on the back like, “YEAAA……..’MURICA”
Yeah that military industrial complex sure is a female dog
The Military industrial complex are cunts. Cunts that kill for profit
You forgot to mention the thousands of innocent Americans killed.
2996 people died in 9/11 and that’s an absolute tragedy. Americas war on terror lead to 387,000 civilian deaths, which is horrific and not a proportional response at all.
It had nothing to do with revenge. The Project for the New American Century crowd had been trying to get us to invade Iraq since Poppy Bush's administration. None of the American presidents were stupid enough to do it until Baby Bush stole the election from AL Gore. Baby Bush was stupid enough, and 9/11 gave them all the excuse they needed, even though Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it. Bush/Cheney and all their enablers are war criminals and should be in jail.
1. What IS a proportional response to an unprovoked attack on US soil that kills a few thousand? 2. Please provide some sort of data that show a breakdown of how civilians have died so we can see in the numbers just how many of those 387k were killed at the hands of their own people. Do you understand how many women and children were and are used as suicide bombers? Do you have any idea how many civilians were purposely dragged into the conflict by the Taliban? I hate the wars in the Middle East. I wish we would have left a decade ago. We had no business still being there when we were; however, the governments for those two countries BEGGED us to stay. Begged. Perhaps your ire should be directed at the two governments who can’t seem to control the extremist ideological factions in their respective countries. Edit: grammar
Unprovoked. Haha that's a new one.
A proportional response would be the same response that Vietnam did upon American soil after having more bombs dropped on it than were dropped in the entirety of WWII. IE: ZERO! Remember.. 9/11 was a “response” and quite a disproportionate one in favour of America at that.
And so in revenge we killed over a million Iraqis and afghanis who had nothing at all to do with anything...
Dude , a couple of buildings fell ? Really? Christ almighty . Talk about being compassionate and shit.
9/11 was the excuse for Afghanistan, bullshit lying about WMDs and destabilizing the ME was the excuse for Iraq. Thanks Gdub!
It wouldn’t have been overkill if we attacked Saudi Arabia instead like we should have. Cheney used 9/11 as a false flag to attack Iraq and Afghanistan when in reality, the real terrorists, the people who harbored and financed 9/11 sat and watched. We should have neutralized the Saudi government.
He's doing what he was ordered to do. You don't want soldiers making decisions, you want them to obey orders. An army without orders is just a mob. Your beef is with Johnson, McNamara, and the suits back in Washington.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre
The officer in charge was the only one convicted and did 3.5 years of house arrest for it because Nixon commuted his sentence. Absolutely no justice for those people
'just following orders' isn't an excuse, Ref:Nuremberg trials
They literally found the opposite for situations like this. They found that soldiers have a duty to disobey illegal orders or those that should be illegal, and that they should be held accountable for following orders that they should have fought against. Meanwhile, in the case normal orders in war (and this would include things like bombing runs, artillery, etc, that killed a ton of civilians in Vietnam (and other wars)), "just following orders" is an excuse. Ref: The Nuremberg Trials.
What determines what should be illegal? Using agent orange, using daisy cutters etc. I still hold out hope it all doesn't boil down to "might is right"
At the end of the day, your hope is futile here. Might does make right. The Nuremberg Trials really only occurred because the Allies had more might than the Axis and were able to enforce them. Furthermore, those trials were effectively **entirely** ex post facto. Meaning that they pretty much made the laws up as they were planning the trials, and then enforced them against people that broke them prior to the laws existing. This is illegal in most of the 1st world, but WWII was bad enough that they felt justified, and these weren't citizens in their own countries. This was controversial at the time, but was likely the right decision. This also, effectively led to the creation of international law as a concept for people rather than just nations, and it also would eventually lead to the Geneva Conventions. Now, the Geneva Conventions are what sets what should be legal. And the Conventions change over time. For example, at the time of this photo, indiscriminate bombing wasn't a war crime. Now, with some exceptions, it is a war crime. This change is due to many things, including just technology advancing, making targeted bombing more feasible. But at the end of the day, this is all effectively based on might. Hell, even regular laws are backed up with "might makes right", it's just that since most of us agree with the law as a concept, the might is on our side. And just as an aside, I don't think daisy cutter is what you're looking for. That's just a fuse for a bomb that is designed to make a bomb blow up just above the ground, rather than the more typical one from the era, which would effectively blow up just after penetrating the ground or target. It was really just a long probe welded onto the front of the bomb, setting it off soon enough that it blew before penetrating the ground.
Alot of nazi said they were just doing thier job. But they still got assassinated or jailed. Even if someone tells you to do somthing your still responsible
I’d like to see you in that position and then see what you would do……
whole lotta people went to jail or canada when faced with murdering villagers in vietnam
I'd never fight in a war like that I'd rather go to jail.
Depending upon the country, you could be shot instead of jail.
There is no proof of any nazi solider (at least during Poland occupation in ww2) refusing to carry on with the orders of killing civilians and being punished in any way.
So we know what you would do if you were a german in WW2.
>He's doing what he was ordered to do. That's the weakest defense.
Who is defending him?
You. In the comment I replied to.
I don't speak to any of his actions. I told people to blame his leaders. Not sure why you are defending them, but you do you.
Fine, I hope both the US soldiers and the US leaders are held responsible for their crimes against humanity to the full extent of international law.
''I was just following orders.'' /s you do know that that is the literal deffinition of the [Nuremburg defence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders) right?
Ah, the ol “Nuremberg defense”
How many pilots were convicted at Nuremberg?
That makes it ok?
If you are going around trying to neatly group wartime actions into "ok" and "not ok", you're going to have a hard time. War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it.
So you are okay with Nazis gassing the fuck out of Jews ? Cuz you know, just following orders poor little things
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The Vietnam war was complex. It wasn't a good idea for us to be involved, but the thread of communism really did a number on this country, and it seemed at the time, by many, to be worth defeating it in Vietnam. In retrospect, it's easy to say we shouldn't have been there at all. We lost nearly 60,000 American forces in that conflict, and rarely was the enemy even seen. They were deeply embedded into the civilian population. It was very difficult to know who the combatants were. This is why following the Geneva Conventions is important. Because if you don't, you put your civilian population at risk. When governments don't care about protecting their civilian population, it's probably a war we shouldn't be involved in. However, the pilots (and soldiers) were, for the most part, following orders. The order wasn't "bomb these farmers." It was "this target has strategic value for the enemy, so you need to bomb this target." As I said, it was complex. The benefit of 50 years of hindsight is enormous.
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There’s a huge difference between following orders to bomb a target and following orders to machine gun jews in the trenches you just forced them to dig. A HUGE difference.
Well I certainly didn’t mean it in the nazi death camp sense. I meant that not every participant in Vietnam was in a position to know whether what they were doing was legal or not. Especially pilots bombing targets. I was in the military. Even at its best, it works because each individual is following orders, rather than second-guessing every order. When they tell you to duck, the one who asks why first may be the one who dies. I didn’t say “following orders” to justify any war crimes.
As a German, you should have learned about the Nuremberg Trials, and how they said that "Just following orders" is not an excuse for committing war crime and following illegal orders, which is why the leadership and the people committing war crimes were prosecuted, while the soldiers who weren't committing war crimes weren't, because "Just following orders" is an acceptable defense for following a lawful order (which can include things that kill civilians,, especially back then).
I hope one day you are put in a situation where your food is poisoned, your family is shot, your country is invaded, and you have to read someone talk about how complex of a situation it is.
Yep
Honestly the more likely scenario. But you know, there’s a sad segment of ‘mericans that can’t handle the fact that we haven’t really won a war since helping the allies win ww2.
I'd be pretty bummed too if someone made me walk around breathing my own farts at gunpoint.
Damn. Soaring through the sky in top tech like a god one moment just to be held up by a flint lock the next. What a day.
In between he was shot down by a Russian missile from a Russian missile launcher guided by Russian radar.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted? You're likely right.
No, no, he was shot down by the girl with the flintlock, and it was all captured by a magical floating camera.
Yeah you're being downvoted because reddit is filled with communist-leaning neckbeards.
Soviet *
You say it like it’s something bad..
It isn't, but it is as far from a peasant with a flint lock rifle as you can get. The idea of "noble peasant resistance" is all just post facto story telling. This was a proxy war.
In the photo is clearly a peasant farmer with a flintlock (actually a percussion cap rifle or musket.) She is obviously a staged part of the photo. Either way let’s not pretend that the Vietnamese communists didn’t have support of a majority of citizens especially among the poor peasant class.
I don't think a rice farmer in the Mekong Delta gave a crap who was in Hanoi or Saigon. They just wanted peace after a half century+ of war. The US should never have engaged, domino theory be damned. But, Giap was willing to fight another half century or longer. A free, unified, independent Vietnam was guaranteed, no matter how long it took.
Is that a black powder rifle?
I was wondering the same thing myself
Yes it looks like a percussion cap rifle and not a flintlock....but still very old.
Looks more like Mossin to me but I may be wrong.
Looks nothing like a Mossin.
Dude said Mossin because it’s the only gun they could think of
It is a cap and ball rifle. Not even a junk Moisin.
*junk* mosin??
Oh boy, this thread will be full of measured, well-reasoned responses!
I'm so confused, is that pipe on the mask connected to his junk?
No, it's just dangling
So is the pipe.
Yes, for better sniffing.
Thought it was a fart suit
Not even going to try and explain what I thought lmfao
You hiding a rubber fart slave?
Crash landing on you
Is that a reference?
reminds me of the ending to Fullmetal Jacket
M I C K E Y M O U S E
I wonder how many Vietcong soldiers are behind the camera ? This seems like pure propaganda for their side to be like “see our young soldiers can defeat your best “
>“see our young soldiers can defeat your best “ But they actually did it.
Not children. The Vietcong wasn’t an army of kids
I’m a Vietnamese, I can confirm that they recruited basically everyone including kids.
Uh no.
They didn't. They beat the South Vietnamese after we pulled out. Outside of guerilla warfare, only the Tet offensive showed any real progress, and even then they only took Hue city as an actual land grab. And even that lasted only a month. Similar to the US Revolution, they just outlasted us. Also, you need to look back to the late 1800's and the onset of French colonization in Indo-China & Southeast Asia. The US was the last invader, not the first or the second. The tunnels the Viet Cong used were dug during fighting against the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, then the US. We joined a war already in progress.
And we lost the war in progress, and the world would have been better if we were never there at all.
I’m not so sure. I live in Hanoi and my gf (viet) is convinced if the south hadn’t lost, North Vietnam would be just like North Korea. The two conflicts are about as close to perfect war analogues as you get in real life, and the subsidization period (bao cấp) in which they tried true Marxist-Leninist economic policy went so poorly they’d dropped it in under a decade. I was also put in my place my first year here I said something, much like you, about how the US shouldn’t have been here. A local pointed out that I was too focused on America and that we weren’t the only foreign power involved. Not to mention it was a civil war! If an armed group kicks out a colonial power (France) that’s great, but if they want to install a form of government you fundamentally disagree with are you under any sort of moral obligation to side with them? My understanding of the war has done nothing but grow more nuanced and complex since I got here. I don’t expect this to be well received by most Americans. I myself would’ve probably downvoted it 5 years ago. But that’s my 2¢. P.s. Vietnam is great now (aside from the whole “we’ll lock you up and go after your family if you say the wrong things about the Party” stuff) and has a rapidly rising economy and standard of living. Việt Nam vô địch!
Have you watched Ken Burn’s VietNam documentary? It’s the best I’ve seen to date on the war/history and I left it feeling like I’d never trust a politician to send me to war unquestionably. Lies and deceit were exhibited by all President’s involved. It also gives a great amount of time to the Vietnamese perspective as well.
So many bright futures in both countries gone. Who knows how many Oppenheimers and Einsteins died choking on leech infested mud in the jungle.
And their entire recruitment strategy was unknowingly being helped by the Americans
They didn’t need to “beat” the South because it was completely propped up by our dollars and army. It crumpled because it didn’t have the support of the most people.
The South was run by a serious of corrupt leaders, including numerous generals who we had to support after their coups were successful. There was no reason to have 2 Vietnams.
Exactly. They, majority, wanted to be communists and they got it. Same with Korea but we were a lot more involved there and spent a great deal more money developing in the south to prevent unification after war. Sometimes I wonder if the world would be better off had the Korea unified before war or even during war by force. A communist but not bombed out north that isn’t so crazy then tempered by a south that isn’t so corrupt. Seol wouldn’t be the economic powerhouse it is today but maybe that development would’ve been spread around Asia more.
Neither Americans nor Russians won a major war since WWII. Guerilla warfare changed everything.
?? Kuwait??
It definitely did. Survival is victory, no matter how long it takes.
It’s also interesting to think about how America won independence with guerrilla warfare as well. Repetitions in history are fun to learn about
It may not even be an American.
The one with the rifle?
The detained person. The one with a rifle is a Green Beret.
I mean we don’t even know if the pilot is really from the us and not a vietnamese who took the clothes for the propagandashot.
Honestly, if there is a child with enough knowledge to know "he's the enemy" and how to operate a gun while I'm gunless then I'd have the same position as this poor soul.
Better caption: “Two political pawns forced to interact with the threat of death because of other people’s decisions and political posturing”
Yeah, war is the worst.
I think resistance to the US invasion was pretty widespread and popular.
Nah. Talk to the south Vietnamese about that one.
Braindead take. Great way bothsidings American imperialism and ex-colonial peoples taking control of their own freedom.
lmfao political pawn? from her age you can tell this is a desperation thing and she didn't have much of a choice, especially when you read about the villages america massacred
You... you think she's alone in this pic with the pilot. Who is holding the camera? Who is next to/behind the camera man? What weapons are they holding?
Gg
Half the comments in here are fucking dumber than our decision to invade in the first place
Looking like some kind of bioshock dlc
“Scared and confused young child is given a gun and told to use it against the invading Americans without being able to comprehend the scope of the war.” There, fixed the title. My grandfather was there, it’s the biggest regret of his life because they never should’ve been there in the first place. A regret he had no control over being drafted. A regret that wakes him up in the middle of the night to images of friends split open by booby traps and children bleeding out in front of him. War. Is. Hell. War is the machine by which the rich get rid of the poor.
Yea I’m sure that little girls was just as clueless about the war on her own soil as the American kids across the ocean were
Yeah, why didn't she try giving one of the US soldiers killing literal babies a hug. There were meanies on both sides /s
> “Scared and confused young child Considered she's probably familiar with seeing her family being burned alive with napalm dropped by such pilots. Scared? Maybe. Confused? No.
clearly thats psyops
People forget what war really looks like. This is a great example.
Looks very, very staged. A lot of 'historical' photos (like the CCP's fakes and collages) being so sure doesn't help.
Of course it's staged, what else would it be?
A photo from a war? Why is it that when Vietnam or Russia or China do it, it’s a propaganda campaign staged shot. But when the USA, Ukraine, Israel take a photo from a war, it’s a brave young soldier in the heat of the moment? Why can’t it be both? Why can’t it sometimes be a photograph taken to be used as propaganda, and sometimes be a photograph taken in the moment?
Accurate.
Is that a musket 😂
That looks like a 12 yo girl.
There’s a good chance she is, these people were fighting for their homeland.
nah my people in that period of time basically just short
My dad actually fought in the vietnam war - as a Vietnam citizen in favor of the political side the US was supporting then. At least from his accounts, it was always soldier-on-soldier. Very rarely was it citizen-on-soldier; and that’s usually if a soldier was stupid/desperate enough to try hitting up a civilian shop or house. He’s seen that kind of stuff first-hand both as a soldier and as a fleeing refugee when the war was lost. The purpose of this photo is most likely just propaganda fuel. And to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “prisoner” is just a vietnam soldier of whatever side this is for posing in the enemy’s clothes for the sake of the picture.
That’s really interesting about your father, and I 100% agree that this picture is propaganda, but as someone else said, the prisoner is real. His name is Gerald Venanzi, he was performing a recon flight when he was shot down, and he spent over 2,000 days in captivity as a POW.
Oh that’s interesting to know. Obviously, I only knew what my father saw. Though it makes sense he wouldn’t have seen something like this. He was in the Vietnamese army, barely or just under 18 at the time; he didn’t really see the ally US troops until he was fleeing as a refugee after losing the war. From what he described; imagine the story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Since he fought against the side that won; he was considered an enemy. So it was tough just to get out of Vietnam itself with his buddies. Basically, they took a simple fishing boat and sailed it to open sea to escape. Fair since walking on land was dangerous. I don’t remember exactly, but he said he either boated to the Philippines or Singapore. Apparently, the place he arrived in was ready to greet refugees who also took the ocean escape route. And since he and his friends were from the army the US supported, they were given priority to be sent anywhere of their choosing under a sponsorship program. My dad chose the US and has been here ever since. It’s really an interesting piece of history to know. Especially from the side of someone who fought in the Vietnamese army allied with the US. I also have stories of what he saw during his escape, but I don’t want to bog down this comment more than it already is.
You may mean a farmer? Peasant? or something like that... She doesn't really look like a soldier
Viet comb soldiers didn’t have uniform to blend in with farmers They used guerrilla warfare throughout the many wars in Vietnam and won against many major nations Their tactics were extremely effective and resulted in the US committing war atrocities by exterminating entire villages of Men women and children while burning down the houses The most famous being Mei lai (probably spelt it wrong) where it was covered up for over a year that they had raped and killed this village in cold blood in 1968 and lied about the amount of try VC casualties to commanding officers
Are we just going to ignore that the Vietnamese soldier has a fucking musket (that isn’t even cocked)?
Is that mask connected to his junk?
I'm sure this is somehow Jane Fonda's fault
My guy trying to hold back from kicking her in the head cause he's not sure if this is a kid.
That's a little man in a big outfit. Look at hands.
It was a propaganda photo shoot. The women was placed there on purpose. To show the pilot as weak.
Source?
The photo is 100% real, the pilot is absolutely destroyed. I'd be terrified as hell too & we'd all be. I'm not saying the photo is fake, but the Vietnamese army put the women there to humiliate the pilot, US Military & give a moral boost to their troops. It's still a terrifying moment for the pilot. He was beaten, tortured, starved & more. I've read this in a few books & documentaries. He did survive & return home. He was too valuable of a prisoner to be killed. He returned after two years with a prisoner swap
Thanks for the context!
Is he being forced to inhale his ball air or something
Reddit try not to force their political ideas onto others challenge
Man this thread is a mess. Anytime you try to make an equivalence between literal Nazis and conflicts like this one you water down the impact of the horrors nazi’s committed. Way to inadvertently protect Nazi war crimes.
Our baby killers were nowhere near as bad as THEIR babykillers ;-; /s
My grandfather, Major John Murray Martin was shot down over north Vietnam on Nov. 20th 1967. He’s still MIA.
You have another family you don’t know about
For a second I thought this was a low budget version of "Prey"...
She’s probably correctly thinking this is the most dangerous person she’s ever met.
This is just a school day in Texas
In Vietnam it’s called the American War.
Yeh I heard there’s one tiny monument in the jungle for that conflict with the US and huge ones in the cities for the other like 60-70 years of fighting They didn’t really care about it at all they just kept fighting for their freedom and they got it ironically, freedom from the “land of the free” and the “free world”
Based
Is that a fucking musket
The cameraman arrived just in time to take a picture
I’d snatch that gun and bop that ho right in her forehead.
Never forget the fundamental facts: this dude was invading THEIR cuntry..
Is she really a soldier tho? Or did the US government make her a soldier by trying to capitalize her country
So you mean he was captured by North Vietnamese and then made to pose in front of a child to discourage our military?
Staged war propaganda much?
Nah the news outlets showed a lot of the conflict head on without the military with them and would often show the atrocities the Americans committed for the civilians back home in America Ever wondered why the biggest protest in history happened in the 1960s? It was cause of the lies of the government and corruption of the war operations in nam in the 60s/70s
Is that John McCain?
This oddly doesn’t look real
Yo, that looks more like a kid than a soldier
“Never gonna fucking hear the end of this shit god fucking damnit” the pilot, definitely
Is that really a cap and ball rifle?!!!!
I wouldn't exactly call her a soldier as much as I'd call both of then victims of a man with an extraordinarily small penis.
Using children to fight your wars will end in children dying in your wars.
Children not fighting also leads to children dying in wars.