Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "History Buffs: We Were Soldiers" video.

  1. The Vietminh didn't defeat the Japanese in WWII. The Japanese left when they decided they needed the troops to defend Japan against an impending American invasion more than they needed to hang onto Vietnam. They basically told them, "You're all free now," and split. One of the myths that grew up around Ho-Chi-Minh was that he fought valiantly against the Japanese. Bullshit. He spent most of the war in the Soviet Union. He had run to the USSR in the 30s after the French put a bounty on his him. He claimed to be in charge when American OSS agents arrived but there were other Vietnamese guerilla fighters who were a whole lot more involved in the resistance against Japan than the Vietminh. And if you're looking to nitpick accuracy, there are other scenes such as the one where the men piss on the overheated mortars that would be a better choice than the one where the lady goes off about racism. There were plenty of folks living in the north who had never seen segregated facilities. Also, you said that most of the men who went into this battle in 65 were conscripts who just wanted to come home. That's not true. A lot of the soldiers who went in around this time were patriots, true believers who believed in the cause and wanted to win. I get it, you are British and you sound young so I assume you were taught that stuff in school. The war wasn't unpopular at that time. The protests didn't pick up steam until two years later and even then, most Americans still wanted to stay at the war and wanted to win. LBJ was an insecure pussy who let the media bully him and when things got tough he didn't know what to do and just gave up. I'm not saying America could win the war. Truth be told, they wouldn't have been there if Truman and then Ike hadn't tied the French war in Indochina with the larger war against communism. Korea was going at that time and that had a lot to do with the development of the Domino Theory. Anyway, by 1969 people were more fed up with LBJ than the war. The polls at that time reflect that. And the war protestors were not seen as valiant young people standing up for a noble cause like the history books and documentaries like to portray them. Most Americans thought they were commie agitators and cowards. You said you wouldn't put this film ahead of the other Vietnam movies but I will. Oliver Stone has a hard-on for the U.S. and its government so anything he does, from Platoon to JFK is just this side of Soviet state propaganda. Kubrick made a Kubrick movie and I'm one of the few who finds the Deer Hunter pretentious and Apocalypse Now tedious.
    1