Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam 

In most discussions of the southeast Asian wars and other wars, there is little discussion of the moral standing of the opposing sides, the French, the US, and the Viet Minh. Maybe that is because the US and the French had no moral standing, and the bad, bad communists did.

Men, Americans still not knowing much about both wars in Vietnam.

I was with military intelligence with the Australia Army Training Team Vietnam on and off from 1963 to 1971. Our brief was training South Vietnam soldiers and conducting intelligence gathering and covert operations against the Viet Cong and the NV army. The reason why the US failed was because militarily they were next to useless and they should have never been there. We saw the worst of it and we would withdraw to our base in Cambodia to keep away from the politics. We fought a guerilla war against guerillas in the most difficult areas and the most dangerous situations. In our unit we won three Victoria Crosses. The US tried to fight an infantry war and it failed. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan. The Taliban will be back in charge in six months and for how many allied deaths?

Why do the the producers of video, such as this one, not take audio quality seriously? Is the video audience supposed to read lips?

Ngo Dinh Diem was his own worst enemy. We should have gotten out after his assassination in the midst of the chaos.

After Vietnam's fall in 1975, the dominoes stopped falling. In this sense it was a success.

..."perhaps produce abook"...3:42 oh , all you important chair-incumbents and book producers...

The 2nd speaker speaks exactly like a colonizer. The general sided w/ the terrorists? You mean the Algerians fighting and winning their independence? And DeGaulle had found safety in Africa? You mean the African colonies whom they'd brutally repressed into submission? The colonial troops they pressed into service; conscripted? The problem that everyone has w/ Vietnam is that American and European commentators never read or critically think about the Vietnamese perspective. What Ho Chi Minh was thinking, how the Vietnamese pulled it off. We'd save reams of paper miles of film if they just did that, because Ho Chi Minh's writings lay out all of the reasons why Vietnam won. So no amount of continued navel gazing down the same navel will provide any illumination or insights...and THAT is why the French and US lost. And neither the French nor the Americans were 'working their way out of imperial colonizing enterprise', ask the Guineans for one. And look at the state of the French relations in their African colonies; (the CFA, Mali, in their treatment of Haiti and how the Americans continue to support Europe in the colonization enterprise).

kindly allow me... ho chi minh and comrades are the second degree xenophobic in the asean lands... the number one xenophobic group is in afghanistan( regarded by dynasty rulers as asean lands border people)... for anyone to say that ho chi minh would consider america or french communists is not possible... muskowa(russia) is known as a neighbor great nation beyond china border... and to the oriental philosophy, neighbor is family... for ho chi minh or mao crawling the border to get stalin help is not surprising to the oriental people...

Ho Chi Minh were a nationalist , because communism were the only way for nationalism . you cant be a Vietnamese radical nationalists because the Germans and the Japanese were defeated, you cant be a moderated western backed nationalists , because your nationalism is fighting against the west , the French and the Americans. so , only the communist, Soviet Union were supporting nationalism . Vietnam did not celebrate Stalin just as the Soviet turned their back against Stalin after his death , Vietnam just celebrate the Soviet Union and warsaw pact countries for all their supports. nationalism override communism , since after the second indoChina war , there were a third indochina war between communist nations. And Stalin is an extremely complicated man , he supported the nationalist Chinese during the early states of sino-Japanese war, he worked with Hitler for quite a while , some people say that Stalin were a tyrant , yet are there any great Russian leaders or tsar that were not a tyrant ?

conclusion: asean people are not like africans & native americans... india china & russia are existing solid great nations since ancient times in the asean lands... the legendary china silkroad is the iran, desert arabs turks route of trade to great china...