[redahs]

The U.S. lost Vietnam because rural farmers thought U.S. troops were working for land lords. Land lords would take control of rural areas and start charging farmers rent after it was cleared of Viet Cong. There is a similar problem in Afghanistan: the Afghan government raises most of its revenues from sales and excise taxes, and doesn't tax land owners on property privately seized from rural residents. Since it doesn't tax land and has not centrally issued titles to rural residents, it doesn't have good records on land ownership and can't prevent private land seizures effectively.

These are not inevitable problems. Our politicians just don't understand the difference between land and capital and have undermined U.S. efforts to promote land reform in Asia after it worked so well in Japan.

[mc32]

Interestingly, before it went downhill, US advisors told the S. Viet gov that the one thing they had to do to stave off revolution was land redistribution, in the least in the Mekong Delta, (I believe land redistribution was done to some extent in SK), but the S Vietnamese refused, and so the NVA had an “in”.

[magduf]

Sounds like one of those scenarios where the side we picked to support was itself corrupt, so the general population saw no good reason to support our side over the opposing side.

[mc32]

Yes, but it’s not so much the side we “picked” but the team that was given to us. Just as the Soviets often times had no choice but to work with truly bad people.

[magduf]

It seems like, in that case, you should just opt out. We didn't have to get involved in that war.

[mc32]

Hard to say, but given the realpolitik of the time, there doesn’t seem to have been much choice. The world was hostage to an indeological foe which took no prisoners and was looking to aggressively take over control of the world. That was their stated objective.

[Retric]

That’s mostly surface talk. They invaded fewer countries than the US has, sticking mostly to supporting rebellion.

The US and Europe squashed home grown communism mostly through things like social security, unemployment insurance, and a helping of good old propaganda. Yet, we where suckered into fighting ideology on foreign soil with military force.

I don’t think it was obvious at the time, but going forward we need to learn from these mistakes.

[nostrademons]

This scenario seems distressingly common in post-WW2 U.S. foreign policy.