I'm curious, in america is it actually taught that this was real? In my history classes, it was pretty openly stated that the americans set up the gulf of tonkin to be able go in and destabilize a potential ussr ally after an election result they didn't like, that the whole war was basically one long war crime (with focus on all the massacres etc), and that the US lost. The only point made against vietnam was that some of the traps were kind of brutal, but fair enough - thats what you'd do too if the americans invaded so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
With what i've heard on this site about american schools, it occurs to me that you guys might have been told the exact opposite of all that, despite all available evidence and international opinion? How would they even manage to get away with saying that shit when people can prove them wrong?
Many public high schools simply stop teaching history after they finish WWII. College courses might discuss it, but I was never explicitly taught anything regarding Vietnam (or even the Korean War, for that matter).
The reason we were not taught anything post WWII was that it was too contemporary, too "political"
Here our history classes refused to go any further than 2005, for a kind of similar (but in effect very different) reason, in that it would become too political - i.e. that it would directly overlap with the politics curriculum and that theres no reason to teach it twice.
I guess this might explain the level of Takes™ you can hear from americans online...
I'm curious, in america is it actually taught that this was real? In my history classes, it was pretty openly stated that the americans set up the gulf of tonkin to be able go in and destabilize a potential ussr ally after an election result they didn't like, that the whole war was basically one long war crime (with focus on all the massacres etc), and that the US lost. The only point made against vietnam was that some of the traps were kind of brutal, but fair enough - thats what you'd do too if the americans invaded so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
With what i've heard on this site about american schools, it occurs to me that you guys might have been told the exact opposite of all that, despite all available evidence and international opinion? How would they even manage to get away with saying that shit when people can prove them wrong?
Many public high schools simply stop teaching history after they finish WWII. College courses might discuss it, but I was never explicitly taught anything regarding Vietnam (or even the Korean War, for that matter).
The reason we were not taught anything post WWII was that it was too contemporary, too "political"
:agony-consuming: WWII oof
Here our history classes refused to go any further than 2005, for a kind of similar (but in effect very different) reason, in that it would become too political - i.e. that it would directly overlap with the politics curriculum and that theres no reason to teach it twice.
I guess this might explain the level of Takes™ you can hear from americans online...
When I was in school in 2014, our textbook listed it, along with domino theory as why we became involvedin Vietnam; and it did not say it was fake.