Except the war in Vietnam was fundamentally different to that in North Korea. It was a direct outcome of the French colonial war in the early 50s which the US decided to support for semi-absurd reasons ("domino theory").
Geopolitically China was always a much bigger threat to Vietnam than anyone else so had the US made the right choices in the 40s and 50s it would've been easy to turn it into a state which was friendly or at least neutral towards the US (like Yugoslavia for instance).
South Korea is a modern, developed country with a high tech manufacturing economy and a high standard of living. And it only exists today because many countries including the United States defended it from a communist invasion, just as the United States attempted to defend South Vietnam.
You asked how "killing people on the other side of the world could achieve anything," and clearly South Korea is an example of a successful contrast to North Korea given the same people. If you think North Korea is only where it is because the US bombed them, comrade...
Also, Germany, Japan, Serbian conflicts, etc. You'd have to never have seen a world map to think history never "achieve[d] anything [positive]" from interventions "on the other side of the world."
> If you think North Korea is only where it is because the US bombed them, comrade...
You called? I think it is very relevant, but somehow it never, ever gets brought up that the cartoonishly authoritarian regime was bombed to hell in that war. That Germany lost WWII is certainly relevant to its last 80 year history, for example.
> Also, Germany, Japan, Serbian conflicts, etc. You'd have to never have seen a world map to think history never "achieve[d] anything [positive]" from interventions "on the other side of the world."
You dropped “ideology”, liar.
In the case of WWII: I have never seen anything to make me believe that the allies fought the Nazis because they were anti-fascists (ideology).
> In the case of WWII: I have never seen anything to make me believe that the allies fought the Nazis because they were anti-fascists (ideology).
In the sense that “anti-fascist” is a dishonest euphemism for “communist”, of course not. But the Allies were ideologically opposed to fascism, Nazism, and Japanese imperialism.
Stop parroting commie talking points and I won’t assume you’re a communist.
> America thought Nazis were such an existential threat that they remained neutral until Pearl Harbor.
You’ve spent this entire thread criticizing the US for foreign military interventions and now you turn around and criticize the US for not intervening soon enough? I’m sorry they didn’t do more to bail out your beloved Soviet Union in the seven months between Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor. (Not really)
That's almost an apples to oranges comparison. The situations in Korea and Vietnam were only similar on a very superficial level so it's a very disingenuous argument..
Also at the time the South Korean regime was about as brutal and oppressive as the Northern one. The situation barely improved in the 50s and 60s, after all South Korea only became a democracy in 1987 after all...
But South Korea was pursuing rational economic policies. Especially that Vietnam and China eventually turned to capitalism anyways, what was the point really of fighting a bloody civil war over communism and enduring decades of stagnation? If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier.
It wasn't exactly that obvious at the time. IIRC North Korea outperformed the south in the 60s and didn't really fall significantly behind until decades after the war. After the war South Korea was both extremely poor and ruled by a very brutal and oppressive regime. Which if we're being fair was not that that different compared to the North (which actually had a stronger economy at the time due to Soviet support).
> If they had just worked with the US peacefully they could have achieved similar results way earlier.
It's not like they really had a choice? Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh in the 40s and later the US stayed neutral until deciding to back the French in their colonial war in Vietnam. Communist countries were willing to help the Vietnamese to fight for their indepence (well.. oversimplification but the French were pretty brutal and they South Vietnamese regime they put in place after the withdrawal was dominated by Catholics who were only ~10% of the population) so it was pretty much their only choice unless they wanted to remain a colony.
