What if the United States had not given up in Vietnam?

[Zincvit]

Consider yourself lucky you don't live in Vietnam. Over the last 20 years as they've started to turn away from Communism Vietnam's economy has been growing fast, but it still only ranks 121st in the world for per capita GDP with $3,498, less then half of Thailand's. Vietnam is a large country with many resources, and a very long coastline, it should be doing much better, but 40 years of Communism is hard to get over.

According to Human Rights Watch

Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in all areas. The Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights, including freedom of speech, opinion, press, association, and religion, are restricted. Rights activists and bloggers face harassment, intimidation, physical assault, and imprisonment. Farmers lose land to development projects without adequate compensation, and workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system lacks independence. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Vietnamese authorities continued to harass, arrest, and imprison bloggers and activists based on bogus national security charges.

Available in Tiếng Việt >>

So Vietnam remains a workers paradise, that continues to benefit from the glorious peoples victory of 1975.

I live in Vietnam and it's pretty okay, the GDP per capita seems low but so do the service's cost. But yeah you're right that a person who enjoys freedom of speech won't like living here.

 

[Rickshaw]

And the Cuban People have really benefitted from the economic justice Castro gave them? Today they can't keep the lights on, and food is rationed, but they have healthcare.

Read Human Rights Watch report on the state of human rights in the Workers Paradise that Castro gifted to the Cuban People.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/cuba

Human Rights Watch has no one on the ground to verify if the claims are true or not. The CIA has for many decades blighted the reputation of Cuba under Fidel. They have made outrageous claims which are lies. Look up the Isla de Pines where there as supposedly a concentration camp established under Castro. There was a youth camp established there. Bullshit most of what is claimed about Cuba.

 

[htgriffin]

That would work as well as supporting Castro did. You'd have to believe the Viet Minh weren't Communists, and could be talked out of wanting a one Party Marxist State.

A) How much support did we actually give Castro, esp. for daring and sort of land reform that may have inconvenienced US interests there?

B) I note that the Viet Minh were a coalition with vastly more popular support than the One Party Kleptocracy we were backing in the name of freedom. Arm-twisting Diem into honest elections and respecting the rights of the general populace from the start, whilst cultivating actual cordial relationships with the opposition, would get better results than the rotating juntas the RVN wound up with.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

It turns out the dumb non-counterfactual axegrinding thread about Vietnam has resulted in a bunch of axegrinding that has nothing to do with alternate history, who would have guessed?