It also minimises the fact that the Vietnamese, a colonised people, defended themselves against a rabid bloodthirsty genocidal empire that was armed to the teeth at great personal cost.

It’s the kind of thing that people who view war as games and banter tend to say. So children basically.

Edit: Also calling an entire east Asian nation one of rice farmers

Nah I think Americans claiming they won Vietnam because of muh KDR is way more arrogant.

I hope to see the US brought down by a bunch of Uber drivers, baristas and Amazon delivery people someday

Not to minimise the NLF who were the guerillas, but the Vietnamese had a formal military in the PAVN who were fighting the US and various allies. The PAVN turned out to be one of the most disciplined and effective militaries of the 20th century. Like the uniformed army of a former colony dog walked you dude.

Also undermines the massive amount of organization, logistical planning and war strategy the vietnamese had to do. The quote is also a great display how “benign” expression with the intend to disparage american exceptionalism can actually further engrain it. After all the quote raises the unsaid notion that the vietnamese were primitive and incapable and that it should be have been expected that the “superior” american military/culture should have won.

This is the insidious nature of cultural imperalism- even our speech and thoughts are trained to help support the system.

A majority of the PAVN and NLF leadership and officers were old veterans who previously fought Japanese occupation during WWII, and French occupation during the 1950s. To say that they were all just plucky civilians who took up arms to fight the Americans is inaccurate. Many of them were already experienced soldiers.

Then a few years later they liberated Cambodia and fought off an attempted occupation by China in 1979.

Vietnam was a force to be reckoned with well before the US tried to get its claws in it.

Getting into pure territory here but the North Vietnamese had a modern (for the time) regular army and air force as well, a lot of people assume it was just the Viet Cong.

Hell, the Communists straight up dominated the air war the whole time, to the surprise of even the Soviet Union.

Americans like being condescending and undermining Vietnamese and Afghan guerrillas (and completely ignoring that the Vietnamese had a formal, experienced military for decades prior to the US bullshit) who killed their boys, but then when you bring up how the US military has drones and jets while the fascist “pro gun patriots” are a bunch of out of shape assholes who worship that military, have non-military equipment, full of privilege, and no conviction for anything but treats, then suddenly they talk about Vietnamese and Afghan “farmers with sandals” like they’re special forces

Also not enough can be said about how bad the US’ doctrine was during the war. For a big part of the Vietnam War our strategy was literally to just walk patrols out into the jungle to be ambushed because we knew that our artillery and air power (in the South, the North had their air space locked down) would let us get a lot of kills while our conscripts were being shot at, with virtually no plan for actually holding territory or winning the loyalty of Communism-supporting villages.

I still kinda love that meme with the “green in the American flag”, but it really could have been worded better, for sure.

Whenever people say that, I always think about America’s strategy of intentionally targeting farmland and rice paddies.