Sunday, August 06, 2006

French casualties in Vietnam

A quick aside while I work on a Vietnam essay for class.

France had been in Vietnam for almost two centuries before the U.S. military set foot there. Occupation and control of the region was standard fare for the imperialists, but Vietnam had proved tricky for the French, both politically and militarily. An official war against Ho Chi Min's Vietminh fighters began in 1947 (46?). Here's what the book I'm currently reading on the conflict says:
By late 1952, the French dead, wounded, missing and captured totaled more than ninety thousand since the war had begun six years earlier, and France had spent twice the sume it had received in U.S. aid under the Marshall Plan (203) ... "Officers are being lost... at a faster rate than they are being graduated from officer schools in France" (193).
In a war of liberation (ie. against tyranny and imperialism), the U.S. has lost a little over two thousand troops. Sure, "war is hell." But anyone who thinks the conflicts the West is involved in today compare by any measure to the carnage inflicted in the wars of the last century is simply ignorant.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

1 Comments:

Blogger A Wiser Man Than I said...

The quintessential point is not how many soldiers are killed in a conflict, but whether or not their deaths are brought about in a just and moral war or one that is the opposite.

If the War in Iraq is just, though casualties should of course be limited, the deaths of untold thousands would be acceptable. If the war is not just, even one death is one death too many.

But there is another point. The French ultimately failed in Vietnam. It looks increasingly doubtful that we will emerge victorious from Iraq. Will failure render the deaths of American soliders meaningless? I hesitate to answer.

8/09/2006 10:07 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home