Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "The Life Guide" channel.

  1. No, that’s just how it was portrayed by the Americans. Castro wasn’t even a communist originally and courted the Soviet Union in the hope of getting some financial aid, since the bottom had fallen out of the sugar market (that was Cuba’s biggest export). So Castro was a revolutionary first but a latter-day communist and mainly for the purpose of gaining a strong ally. It was funny how the Americans seemed to run around in circles trying to decide what sort of communist he was. Many referred to him as a Marxist without actually saying what a Marxist was. What you’re saying is right. The trouble is that there were a lot of people in the US government who believed that a nuclear war was winnable. So when you’re being advised by fanatics and fantasists like Le May, a lot of people forget that the planet would have been left basically uninhabited.
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  2.  @jessarhodes6196  It was never “just one dude”.
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  3. @John Picardo09z I, for one, am glad they did. Otherwise the Americans would have extinguished life on earth.
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  4. Richard Anderson In the end there was no incentive for the Vietnamese to align themselves with the United States. America lost the political battle on the ground in Vietnam. Home politics was a secondary issue. Sun Tzu is very clear about this. He calls it moral influence. Westmoreland called it “winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.” From any perspective, that was a failure.
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  5. Jesus Christ “We” (that’s you) were lifting people off your embassy roof with helicopters while the NVA was smashing down the gates. Sounds like a loss to me. “We” (that’s you) never won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. So yes; “We” (that’s you) lost both military and politically. Sun Tzu is very, very clear about this. The first of his five fundamentals is moral influence. As Sun Tzu put it, “By moral influence I mean that which causes the people to be in harmony with their leaders, so that they will accompany them in life and unto death without fear of mortal peril.” The communists, whatever their failings, did this far better than the South Vietnamese puppet state or the United States ever did.
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  6. Marlon Van Veen Nuclear weapons are not very relevant because a nuclear war would not involve strategy. It would simply involve total annihilation and extinguishing of life on earth. MAD is simply an unwritten contract that largely political and is outside the scope of most military doctrine, though the weapons would be delivered by military agencies. There is a small intersection with Sun Tzu in as much as the fighting should not escalate to that point (proxy wars).
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  7. Mark Fischer You are missing the point. Either I didn’t explain it well enough or you didn’t read it properly. The concept of moral influence is not the same as fighting a moral war (though America always claims to go to war for moral reasons). Read what Sun Tzu said about it. The rest of your post is as good an explanation of why you lost in Vietnam as I can think of.
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  8. Simon Ghost Riley The application of Sun Tzu to the winter war can be found in the five fundamentals on the first page.
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  9. Tony Gambino No they lost it on both fronts.
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  10. heartbeatpoetry Exactly.
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  11. Mark Fischer By far the greatest mistake America makes is assuming that everyone else wants what they want. That’s why they lost in Vietnam and why they are still bogged down in the Middle East with no end in sight. Blaming politicians at home is avoiding the fact that those people had to balance the aims of the war commanders (which were very fuzzy) with the hard reality of the fact that they were fighting a proxy war in the middle of the Cold War which could turn hot at any moment. The real political war was the battle for “the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.” The communists did that far better than the South Vietnamese or US ever could. Your final remark about torture and execution is as good an example of this as I can imagine. Sun Tzu is very clear about this. He calls it moral influence.
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  12. Mark Fischer This tells me nothing and doesn’t address the point.
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  13. Mark Fischer Mark Fischer Well I read you opening post and you made your position quite clear. You also ignored a lot of hard reality. Viewed through the perspective of Sun Tzu, it’s easy to see where your mistakes were made and it has nothing to do with Obama or Wilson or indeed American history. Your theme of completing the job is understood but your method is abhorrent. You are advocating a barbaric system which would be no better than the SS or NKVD in WWII. Sun Tzu’s moral influence means that you have to show yourself to be morally superior to your enemy. This isn’t a matter of an arm being strong because a cause is presumed to be just. It is the conscious effort to treat people better than your enemy does. The scorched earth policy you are advocating is not just bad for your image as a campaigner for what is morally right but leaves the locals nothing to work with afterwards. Sun Tzu would ask what your goals and objectives are. Other than defeating your enemy, they are fuzzy to say the least. This reflects bad planning and more. There is no attempt to understand what motivates your enemy, just a determination to kill and torture and leave nothing standing. This is precisely the mistake you made in Vietnam. Carpet bombing civilians, setting mines and attacking villages with napalm doesn’t win people over. When you win people over you win wars. Post-WWII America has never done this. That is why you lost in Vietnam and why you can’t win in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The systems you installed didn’t last very long because they were not what people wanted.
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  14. Mark Fischer Well, nobody’s going to want to play in your sandpit, are they? You’re missing the point again. Sun Tzu was not talking about morality in the sense that you mean it.
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  15. booty sweat420 No it isn’t. Sun Tzu was not a social Darwinist.
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  16. Kshitiz Garv Sun talks about that.
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  17.  King Royal  Rubbish.
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  18. It would need about 30 episodes.
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  19. Able Archer 83 was arguably worse.
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  20. Jesus Christ Yeah, sure mate. LOL!! Now tell me why you left.
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  21. HeinRich W. KocH That has never worked in the past. You can’t enforce those things. If a country like say, the American states in the War of Independence, decide to do it themselves then that is one thing. Trying to implement those values on a country that is not ready for them will probably only make matters worse. Sun Tzu even makes limited comment about this. Acceptance of human rights can only happen by mutual agreement.
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  22.  @mikehiggins946  You absolutely can make that argument.
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  23.  @hashishsenju  More about arms sales than anything else.
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  24.  @jaydaflame6401  Not anymore. You really think life as say, trans person, would be one of tolerance and acceptance? But I digress.
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  25.  @bjarne8343  Not true. This episode should make it abundantly clear that the Americans were quite happy to support actions like the Bay of Pigs, not to mention all the CIA attempts to remove Castro.
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