'A government run like heaven by Americans'

[sandwindstars 50]

Slick Willie:

My pleasure.

 

Udonthani:

My point is that Malaya (British rule at that time) was a commie insurgency (internal conflict) similar to the Huk or Moro insurgency in the Philippines involving the Philippine government. Vietnam, Philippine-American, and Iraq were wars because the US was an "outsider." I can only base my opinion on what has been written way after the event, comparisons made between the nature of conflict in the Philippines and Vietnam, during and after the Vietnam war.

[udonthani 2,027]

My point is that Malaya (British rule at that time) was a commie insurgency (internal conflict) similar to the Huk or Moro insurgency in the Philippines involving the Philippine government. Vietnam, Philippine-American, and Iraq were wars because the US was an "outsider." I can only base my opinion on what has been written way after the event, comparisons made between the nature of conflict in the Philippines and Vietnam, during and after the Vietnam war.

 

I don't see the difference as being all that great, or even that there is really that much difference at all.

 

The British were "outsiders" too. You might think oh wait, the Americans had only just invaded the Philippines, whereas the British had been in Malaya for over a hundred years, but really the American occupation was only a continuation of the Spanish one as far as the Filipino insurgents were concerned - just as of course, as far as the Vietnamese were concerned, the American involvement was merely a continuation of the previous French one. The Malayan 'commies' saw the insurgency as an anti-British or anti-colonial war just as the Filipinos did with Spain and the United States.

 

in fact I'm not sure what is the best term to use to refer to what Americans call the Vietnam war. The Vietnamese, of course, call it the American war, and the previous phase, when the enemy was the French, the French war, when really they were both acts in the same play, rather like the first and second Gulf Wars where Iraq was 'the enemy'. Perhaps the 'first Indochina War' and 'second Indochina war' would be the most accurate, though of course there is no way you'll ever be able to get Americans to refer to it as anything other than the Vietnam war.