Yes, Nicolae Ceacescu was also killed in a similar way. So was Mussolini. Why bring up something completely irrelevant?
The point is you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Nobody was going to throw out the idea of a Romanian or Italian state because of those leaders, why throw out a South Vietnamese one?
Who cares if they were "reluctant"? They still gave him plenty of support, as they did to a plethora of other dictators who agreed to follow the U.S. agenda.
...And they supported the South after the realization that millions in South Vietnam did actually not want to live under a communist regime. This was proven during the Tet Offensive when the North Vietnamese invaded thinking it would have the entire country up in arms against the South;
this did not happen, and they lost the offensive. The boat people fleeing after the war is also a testament to this, as is the case with all communist regimes when they seize power in any given country.
Is the containment of Communism (not the spread of democracy, that was irrelevant in the Cold War) a goal that justifies the support of dictatorial regimes, and the massacre of millions of people, both directly and indirectly?
American politicians thought so.
Gee, I wonder why anyone would want to contain communism? Beats me!
Perhaps this might be due to the fact that as early as Marx, communists saw capitalism and democracy as the ultimate enemies to fight; even more of a threat than monarchism, colonialism, and fascism. As anyone who has defected from a communist state during the Cold War would have told you, the communists felt and wanted to be in a constant perpetual state of war with western democracy.
As for the west supporting dictatorships or authoritarian regimes; well yet again it depends. Supporting a South Vietnamese state was a good idea, whether they were democratic or not, as the outcome would have been the same as Taiwan and South Korea. Those states are prosperous and free, where as Vietnam today is poor and still under communist oppression. Sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. We now know with hindsight given the statistics, fleeing refugees, and killings on all sides that the US supporting the South against the communists was a far more justifiable cause than allowing another violent and oppressive communist state to come into existance.
Why would it be suicidal? What did America have to lose? What did America lose by losing the Vietnam War, besides the lives of 60,000 soldiers who did not deserve to die, and countless billions of dollars that could be used for far more noble goals?
More US lives were lost at Normandy, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and WWII in general than in all of Vietnam. The Vietnam War; like all major conflicts in the Cold War, was symbolic of the American need to stand up to Soviet aggression and democide. 22 communist states were created in the last century by the Soviets, of which a combined total of 150 million people were killed; that's 4-5 times the number who died under fascist states in WWII. The Americans did not lay down and roll over in the face of communist oppression, and overall did a good job in opposing such a homicidal system. The Vietnam war was the only one where the media hijacked the conflict to make America give up, even if they were winning on the ground. Here's an interesting video on the subject:
[video=google;7223462422195110030]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7223462422195110030[/video]
What's laughable is a democratic nation cancelling free elections, and then waging war a decade later on the basis of "spreading democracy"
The fact that North Vietnam is/was a one-party state is irrelevant. They were going to participate in elections that would involve the entire nation, not just the North, and they would be supervised by international groups. It was obvious that Ho Chi Minh was going to win, especially considering his opponent was someone a despicable as Diem, and Diem knew this better than anyone else.
Once again, you are comparing two unlike things. North Korea initiated the aggression during the Korean War, and thus the UN and the international community at large were obligated to defend South Korea.
So why is Vietnam a one party state now? Why is their one party state then and now irrelevant? You talk of Diem accepting democracy and elections, why not Ho Chi Minh for the North Vietnamese? Why did he profess a form of politics and government that is as homicidal as all of the other communist states? Comparing South Korea to South Vietnam is very relevant and can be drawn, since both had military juntas in the beginning when fighting a communist state, and anti-Americanism was rampant in Korea at the time (same for Vietnam), only did a lot of that stop once the communists attacked and they saw who the real enemy was. In the Korean war case; The UN only acted when the North Koreans conquered most of Korea down to Pusan, which was held by the Americans; only at the last minute did they intervene. With the exception of this conflict, the UN has been a useless international political body.
In the Vietnam War, it was America that initiated the aggression, after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the subsequent resolution of the same name was passed by the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, the UN is powerless to do anything about aggression by the superpowers.
The North Vietnamese started the conflict in 1956 by supporting communist insurgencies in the South, which was one of the precursors to the Vietnam war; the Gulf of Tonkin incident happened in the early 60s. The UN is powerless to stop the USSR without American help, but the UNs problems run deeper than their inability to stop super powers.
Indeed, Vietnamese government statistics are dubious. I could also say that I find that Rummel guy you always quote to be dubious. Two can play at that game.
Actually, after reading more of the stuff that the Rummel guy wrote, I find that he has surprisingly little bias. The only problem is that you only use the parts that justify your agenda. For example, I found this:
Quite some number for the shining beacon of peace, democracy, freedom, etc. etc.
I think the statistics Rummel has brought together and calculated come from far more sources and differing places than the biased Vietnamese ones. The Vietnamese government claims 2 million Vietnamese killed, yet you quote the following line that says the most the Americans killed
throughout the last century, in every war comes to a total of 600 thousand to 1.6 million. How can they kill 2 million in one conflict there if they haven't even killed that many overall? Derrr maf iz nawt mai bezt subjekt.
I haven't used his sources for any kind of bias at all, in fact I agree with the premise of his work in statistics titled
Power Kills, because in reality it does. The US (a democracy) in all of its wars in the the 20th century killed 0.6-1.6 million, yet the Soviet Union by itself killed 61 million, the PRC killed 73 million, and the North Vietnamese killed 1.7 million just between the periods of 1945-1987, not including 1 million that died during the Vietnam War. That's something worth pondering. The small state of North Vietnam killed more people in 42 years than the Americans did in the last century (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and all the wars in between), that's fairly staggering.
All though I'm sure you could attempt to justify American genocide through a variety of reasons, I'm not really interested in hearing them. I hold all murdering, war-mongering nations in the same low regard, regardless of whether they define themselves as "democracies" or not.
Also irrelevant. "I killed only one of your cows, but you killed two of my cows. I am God and you are the Devil!". I'm sure there's a name for this kind of logical fallacy. You're lucky I don't know the Western names for the logical fallacies, or else I would bring them up as often as you enjoy doing.
When have I ever justified Americas killings? Yet again more strawman arguments; you seem to be filled with more of an emotional and fallacious way of looking at things, rather than an objective one. Read Rudolph Rummels works and you will see exactly where I come from. Most of Americas killings of civilians happened during WWI and WWII, and those I do not endorse (such as the bombing of Dresden); however the number of killings that Americans commit in war has become less and less statistically over time, from Korea to Iraq, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. People like you will ignore this though and play moral equivalence, placing America in the same category of democide as the Soviet Union or the PRC. That is where the problem lies.