Talk:Vietnam War/Archive 5

message: Let me put it this way, I've been a real sucker for this. I'm not particularly interested in your opinion. If you want to ride herd on this article I'll leave it to you (although it does not look like you are doing any writing in it at all) and get back to business as usual. Sayonara! RM Gillespie 23:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The famous Jim Morrison line 

message: The Society for  Military History is considering a session on Wikipedia at its annual meeting (Frederick Maryland, April 19-22, 2007). Any active editor who would like to be a panelist please contact rjensen@uic.edu Thanks Rjensen 00:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discuss military history in Wikipedia at Society for Military History meeting 2007 

message: I've had to correct the same errors two or three times: the use of "offical" for "official"; "In spite the United States" for "In spite of the United States"; and the incorrect mixing of tenses in a sentence ("having" and "had"). If you don't know basic English, don't edit here. Others have also intervened to correct these errors, which have then been deliberately repeated. Not to mention the introduction of material such as "So and so is gay" in the middle of the article, and someone writing that millions of Americans and Australians died in the war.
I consider the above vandalism. Is there a quick procedure for reporting the offenders and getting them banned? I'm fairly new to Wikipedia and don't know all the ins and outs. Of course, I will look at the info on this site about vandals and see what it says. starkt 10:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandals: How do we get rid of them?

message: It is not incorrect to use the phrase North Vietnamese army - it is a statement of fact, i.e. the army from North Vietnam.  It would be incorrect to write North Vietnamese Army, because that is not what the VPA/PAVN is called.  It is no more incorrect to refer to the PAVN rather than VPA than it is to refer to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), when it is officially the CPC.  I notice someone has changed all references to the North Vietnamese army to Vietnam People's Army; this is both ludicrous and inconsistent - references to the American army and South Vietnamese army are abundant.  Furthermore, it could be confusing for a lay reader who may not know to whom the Vietnam People's Army refers.  Unless there are major objections I intend to revert VPA mentions to that of North Vietnamese army or PAVN, which are far more familiar, and no less accurate terms. Cripipper 17:38, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I replaced "North Vietnamese Army".  It is not incorrect to use North Vietnamese army, but I didn't change that.  --Ionius Mundus 23:17, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: VPA v. North Vietnamese army 

message: Google seems to clear this up:
* 161,000 hits for National Liberation Front
* 4,320,000 hits for Vietcong 
and since Google's results might be skewed by the popular game, I ran one in Google Books:
* 14,700 hits for National Liberation Front
* 21,000 hits for Vietcong
Seems to me that VC is the more commonly used description. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 03:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NVA vs VC

message: 'Việt Cộng' meaning 'Việtnamese Communists' was a propaganda term used by the Americans and the Southern dictatorship.  Not everyone in the NLF were Communist.  We should change the term 'Việt Cộng' to 'National Liberation Front' or 'NLF', as that was the official name.  Upon the first mention of the term, we can add "(often known to Westerners as the Việt Cộng)".  --Ionius Mundus 21:27, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Việt Cộng 

message: Guys, in the Kennedy section I've included a couple of General Taylor's quotes from a biog of RFK. Unfortunately I think I've got the 'ref' coding wrong, hence it is recording the citation as 2 footnotes instead of one. I've tried to change it but to no avail. Could a more experience Wiki editor take a look and change it as necessary, please. Much obliged, Iamlondon 03:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a technical problem, it should be fixed soon enough or you can fix it on any specific page by adding "&action=purge" to the end of the URL and reloading. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnote Citation Problem

message: The 420k that is currently listed for DRV/NLF/PRC strength presumably doesn't include the ca. 100k Chinese who were serving in the DRV at the time.  If we accept China as a combatant surely this number needs to be increased by the same figure.? Cripipper 17:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DRV troop numbers

message: It seems to me that to seperate the election, the agreement and Linebacker is rather pointless, and misleading even, since these issues were inseperable.  I suggest that these two sections be joined.  Cripipper 20:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Linebacker II and Peace Accords

message: I don't agree fully with the above appraisal, but a major lapse in this article is the lack of discussion of the course of the peace negotiations from 1968 to 1973; ultimately this could, and probably should, be spun off into a seperate article. Cripipper 10:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vietnam Peace Negotiations

message: The two sections on Kennedy are, imho, rather disparate; the content of the first section doesn't bear a great deal of relation with its content.  If it is about containment then there needs to be discussion of Kennan, the theoretical underpinnings of containment and its misapplication in Asia, Gaddis would surely have a look in.  The closing quote leaves the impression that the consensus is that JKF would have sent in trrops as LBJ did; this is then flatly contradicted in the following section. There is no discussion at all of the huge increase in 'advisers' under Kennedy, etc...Cripipper 15:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, i've copied info about Green Berets from timeline into main section; and tidied up the section a little.  The quote from Kennedy is a general comment about the importance of the Vietnam situation, maybe implying but certainly not stating directly that he believed in 1961 that the US should send in troops. Also there is a link now to the article on containment. Istanbuljohnm 07:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Istanbuljohnm, I saw what you did here and I liked it, so I felt motivated to add the bit about NSAM 52 which is a key document in the chronicles of the Kennedy administrations's Vietnam policy.  After adding the new material, it appeared to me that a re-ordering of the paragraphs was appropriate to give a better chronological sense.  I also changed the term "Cold War policy" to "anti-Communist policy" so as to not give the misleading sense that the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam was wholely driven by concerns about the Soviet Union, as contrasted with Communism in general.  Finally, the new material is impeccably sourced and I would like to cite it (especially since the lead-in is more-or-less a verbatim quote from the source) -- however I haven't yet learned how to properly cite material that can't be hyper-linked (e.g. books, etc.)  If somebody reading this could send me a pointer on my talk page I would greatly appreciate it.  Thanks.  Dasondas 08:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Kennedy and containment

message: Why is the start of the war given as 1957, while most other sources I have read place it in 1954? Lesgles (talk) 22:33, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a good question; 1957 is by far the least common date attributed to the start of the Vietnam War.  Some date it to 1954, others to 1959 (for example Britannica goes for the former and Encarta the latter.)  There is however, a reasonable argument for 1957, on the basis of new research from the past decade or so.  My own personal preference is for 1959, since it was in that year that the Hanoi Politburo decided to move to a war situation in the South; personally I think 1954 is the weakest candidate of the three since it strikes me as being an overly deterministic starting-point somewhat akin to dating the start of WWII to 1918. Cripipper 12:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

text: *I have left this hanging for a while, but no-one has responded/seems to care.  On that basis I propose changing the date of the beginning of the war to 1959. The Hanoi politburo decided to go to war in the South in 1959, so I can see no real reason why we should be dating it as having started five years earlier. Cripipper 17:08, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  i agree Istanbuljohnm 16:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beginning date 

message: Personally I think the use of the flags makes the infobox look less cluttered and easier to read.  You would have to be exceptionally stupid not to work out which country the flag belongs to given that they are listed directly above with the country name beside them.  As for a screen reader, I would have thought that the addition of the words 'image' and 'flag of' before the casualty figures wouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle to comprehension.  I'd be interested in hearing what other editors think. Cripipper 19:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The infobox looks just fine Istanbuljohnm 09:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of flags

message: I'm a bit confused. I expected this article to be about the whole Vietnam War, in other words the firtst and second indochina war. The intro should be a bigt clearer about this. I added a bit, but some more clarification would be a good idea. I susp[ect this was written mostly by US citizens, who assume too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, but the intro should never do that. Also, this naming isn't entirely logical. The French Wikipedia also reserves the name for the second war, but the Dutch article says that in Vietnmam it is used for both the French War and the American War. I'm not sure where this should be added. This is the English Wikipedia, so it makes some sense for it to focus on the pov of English speaking contries. But English is also the world's lingua franca, so shouldn't it reflect as neutral a pov? I'm often confused by this. Is there no Wikirule on this? DirkvdM 05:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which  war is it? 

message: Considering the length of the article, the intro is extremely short. An intro should give a short overview for those who know (next to) nothing about the subject. I've added a bit, giving the roughest of overviews of the causes of the war, but it needs much more work. How much and especially what should be added is a balancing act and I've seen intros get way out of hand (eg WWII, although that looks ok right now), so this is a delicate subject. And subject to pov, because who decides what is important? I have based my edit largely on other language articles, which should assure some neutrality. DirkvdM 06:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *I couldn't agree more.  There is an entire background section detailing how the war came about.  What is written now is factually incorrect and grossly oversimplified.  Also, as has been pointed out, this is the English-language Wikipedia.  In English the Vietnam War very specifically refers to the conflict which mainly took place between 1959 and 1975.  The war previous to this is the First Indochina War, or the Franco-Vietnamese War.  It is not the Vietnam War. Cripipper 17:08, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nonetheless in as the war recedes into history both conflicts may come be seen as part of the process leading from French colonialism to the establishment of the state of Vietnam we have today. The background describes this as you say, all that's needed is a little note in the introduction sign-posting that history, in order to help people evaluate the background properly - I have restored one. Istanbuljohnm 16:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In the above I meant disagree more.  Of course the two wars were part of the same historical process, however they were most categorically and emphatically neither the same war nor the same conflict.  We cannot speculate what historians in the future may come to say.  Historians do not view these two conflicts as being one and the same. Cripipper 16:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, I tend to agree more with Cripipper on this point.  I've always viewed the "First" Indochina war as an indigenous struggle against the post-WWII vestiges of French colonialism and the "Second" as a civil war (or, perhaps a "reverse" civil war) that despite the srong outside patronage was essentially a fight to define an internal national identity.  Having said this, however, I think that even as we focus here on the post-1959 conflict it is still important that we properly document the strong US involvement (primarily economic, but also limited strategic and even tactical) in the French efforts to re-establish dominance between 1945-1954.  It also wouldn't be out of place, IMO to maintain some limited discussion of the effects that French colonial history had on the ascension of Ho Chi Minh and  the political and military development of the Vietnamese communist party and its associated military and revolutionary organs. Dasondas 16:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Could somebody with the right software and knowledge make a collage of famous and important Vietnam War images like the WWII collage shown
South Korea: The current section on South Korea is almost unreadable, it was clearly written by someone with poor knowledge of English and doesn't seem to be NPOV. Could somebody who knows what they are talking about fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.98.107.244 (talk • contribs) 
Related to images:  Under the subheading "Search and Destroy" is an image captioned "American troops sweep through a paddy", but the image does not match the description. 203.129.57.3 14:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main Image 

message: In the section "War legacy - Contamination from US chemicals" there is a sentence that reads:  'The use of Agent Orange may have been contrary to international rules of war at the time'.
This statement is vague and, I think, misleading.  The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of chemical and biological weapons. The fact that the USA did not ratify this until 1975 is beside the point - many other members of the international community had.  Moreover,  in 1966  the USA may have tried to present Agent Orange as nothing more than a non-toxic chemical herbicide before the UN General Assembly, however, the fact is that Orange contains dioxins that are harmful to human beings.
In any case the legality of the USA's Herbicidal Warfare program needs a more detailed and clear treatment than what appears in the article at present.  Someone within the Wikipedia community better qualified than myself may want to take up the challenge. Alexandert14 13:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemical Warfare 

message: Didnt Iran have a couple thousands soldiers in Vietnam during the war? My parents had a neighbor back in Iran who served in Vietnam during the war. I believe the Iranian units were there as peace keepers or something. I dont know exactly, sources are rare. Does anyone have any information?Khosrow II 17:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Iran in the Vietnam War

message: We spend too much time reverting vandalism from high school students.  I propose getting another lock for non-registered users put on.  (I've only just noticed some sneaky vandalism that has been there for over a week...) Cripipper 18:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Now  is added, there'd still be vandalism in the future... until disruption is seldom occurred. --Gh87 08:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism again...

message: The article weasels a lot about Paris Peace Accords without addressing the substance. For example, the article says "The peace agreement, in the meantime, did not last.", but fails to explain why did it not last. The commonly-known answer is that the Soviet Union never intended to honor the provisions of the peace accords and used them only to get the US out of Lebanon and resupply the North Vietnamese army. I can only wonder why the article is silent about it. Beit Or 17:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only problem with that theory is that the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Paris Peace Accords, and therefore had no provisions to honour. Cripipper 21:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: North Vietnam, however, was and it was entirely dependent upon the Soviet aid with the result that its policies were largely determined in Moscow. Beit Or 21:17, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am afraid that almost all the scholarship of the past twenty years on North Vietnam and the Soviet Union has shown that not to be the case.  See for example, Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War or Ang Cheng Guan, Ending the Vietnam War. Cripipper 00:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paris Peace Accords 

message: when was the vietnam war?
1959 – April 30, 1975--Johnston49er 07:58, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  vietnam war 

message: Been a whole lotta changin' goin on. Evidently someone likes the inaccurate title PAVN (first used by the US military during the conflict). Well lemme tell ya, the US Army has changed its tune. Just check out the first two volumes of their official history of the conflict - The United States Army in Vietnam: Combat Operations Washington DC: Center of Military History, 1998 & 2000. All North Vietnamese regular army units are given the designation Vietnam People's Army (VPA). Who am I to argue with the US government or the United States Army. They should know. RM Gillespie 22:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For starters, there is nothing inaccurate about the translation People's Army of Vietnam for Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam.  In fact, it is a more accurate translation than Vietnam People's Army, which doesn't actually even make sense in English.  But that is by the by, VPA is how somebody mistranslated it back in the 1940s.  PAVN is the standard, and it is what was agreed upon.  I am not particularly interested in what the U.S. military call them one way or another.  I am interested in what is the convention in academic writing, and that is PAVN.  If and when a time comes that VPA is the norm and easily recognized by a casual reader then we'll run with that; but until such times it is not the place of wikipedia to attempt to change naming conventions. Cripipper 09:23, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  VPA vs PAVN 

message: For whoever the individual was who replaced the previous talk page, I will leave it to you to answer the three questions posed by commentators since I last edited it. Most of the questions concerning article content (except those dealing with POV) have been answered in or merged into the article. If you are one of the three with questions, go to the history page and find your answers. I guess someone did not appreciate the combing and editing. It was done so that it might be easier for commentators on the new edit to be recognized on a talk page that is almost as long as the article itself. Thats OK, I just won't come back to this talk again. Might have been the guy who wanted to know when the Vietnam War occurred. RM Gillespie 21:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was me who restored it. If you want to tidy up the discussion page, archive it, don't delete its contents. Cripipper 09:23, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Personally, I'd be against it, as I think they help to strike the balance between the indigenous origins of the conflict, and the early origins of American involvement: the text focuses on Vietnamese developments, but the timelines provide relief of what the U.S. was up to.  I wouldn't worry too much about trying to make all the sections collectively sing - somebody will be along to edit them in a day or two anyway.  Good work though!  Cripipper 16:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent editing