From: "Adam Flinton" 


 wrote in message
news:407471.251529{at}harborwebs.com...
> Replying to a message of Jeff Shultz to Adam Flinton:
>
jeff{at}shultzinfosystems.com>
>
>  JS> On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 10:17:29 -0000, "Adam Flinton"
adam{at}NOSPAMsoftfab.com> wrote:
>
>  >>
jeff{at}shultzinfosystems.com>
wrote in message
>  >> news:pnv91vg2lhpt0j55aifcdri5r6rvk6lsgb{at}4ax.com...
>  >>> On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 21:31:10 -0000, "Adam Flinton"
adam{at}NOSPAMsoftfab.com> wrote:
>  >>>
>  >>>> You didn't, you just off loaded large tonnages of
high explosive
onto
>  >>>> it
>  >> inc
>  >>>> onto it's cities. Oddly enough my parents went on
the "B52 trail"
(my
>  >> name
>  >>>> for it) just before Xmas ( Laos, Thailand, Vietnam
& Cambodia). Very
>  >>>> much enjoyed it.  Oddly I got a Viet Cong scarf for
Xmas as one of
>  >>>> my pressies from them.  Adam
>  >>> They attacked an ally of the United States (South Vietnam). Anyone
>  >>> have the dates of existence for SEATO?
>  >>
>  >> Hohum. When the French pulled out of Vietnam (singular) the deal was
>  >> that the North / South thing was temporary. It was the politicos&
>  >> generals of the south who decided to break all the agreements because
>  >> they knew everyone would vote for uncle Ho.
>  JS> Admittedly, if the colonial powers had paid attention to Uncle Ho
when
>  JS> he showed up in Paris in 1919 history might have been very different.
>
> You don't have to go back that far.  Perhaps the biggest diplomatic
blunder
> this country made in the last century was Truman's 1946 refusal to
recognize
> Ho's *functioning government* in Hanoi.  Ho fought the Japanese occupiers
> throughout WW II, and was supplied by us via the Chinese government in
K'unming
> (supplies flown 'over the hump' and later via the Burma Road).  We even
had OSS
> attaches with Ho's people, and they recommended that we recognize his
> government after the Japanese collapsed at the end of WW II.
>
> France objected to any recognition of an independent state in Vietnam,
deGaulle
> wanted his colonies (Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia) back.  Truman believed he
> needed deGaulle to help float his pet 'United Nations' project.
>


What's funny now is that if Vietnam had stayed "part of France"
then France would split citing "Too many vietnamese living in
France" 

> The French returned, Ho went back into the jungle.  In 1954 the French
decided
> to fortify a small hamlet in western Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu.  400 miles
west of
> the main French support bases in the Red River delta, over a narrow,
winding
> dirt road.
> See "Hell In A Very Small Place" by Bernard B. Fall, for a pretty good
> description of events.
>

The British "liberated" Vietnam & it's astonishing how
quickly a recently soundly beaten France could find soldiers to put into
Vietnam.

Oddly if the US had liberated Vietnam vs the "arch colonialist
British"....then they might have been a major ally vs the Chinese.

Rather dippy of the French in that they had just been beaten in part by the
country the vietnamese had just been fighting as well using "modern
technology". The French didn't prove as effective vs the Japanese as
the Vietnamese had so....betting Vietnamese was a good bet esp when allied
to some "National Liberation" movement.

Adam

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