KuvahMagh wrote:You say France is a bad ally because of the way it has handled itself, I pointed out that the US Government has done worse than just not get involved, they get involved on the other side. The point is, anyone can find a few minor diplomatic difficulties and turn it into a huge issue even when it isn't. In the Suez Crisis case the US was right, such an invasion could have brought the Soviet Union in, although unlikely which would have started a War, the fact remains though that they essentially turned on 3 allies to protect themselves. Besides all that, if I were France and the US called me up and asked if they could fly some planes over top of me or do anything else in the general area of me I'd be pretty cheesed off.
Yep. I'm not denying that the US has done things at least as bad as what I had mentioned - it just wasn't part of my topic of conversation. As far as the the F-111 incident, it was merely the use of airspace
en route, and I can only imagine that France's true reason was to flex some figurative muscle and say, "Hey - we're still relevant, OK?"
Sorry that should read "The US did not begin its "peace action/conflict" until 1963. US Advisers and Analysts were present from 1950 onward and while they did provide support to the French and South Vietnam they were not bailing them out as has been said. Three different Presidents would be in Vietnam before the Second Indochina War began in 1963, 9 years after France left the region altogether as per the terms of the 1954 Geneva Accords, which the US refused to sign, clearly showing they had their own agenda in the area well before the War and were determined not to let anything stand in the way of it, even when America did finally get involved it was for its own reasons, not to bail an ally out.
Of course the US had its own agenda - no First World power has ever done ANYTHING without its own agenda. The spark for the brushfire, so to speak, was the overthrow at Dien Bien Phu. If the French presence was uninterrupted, fears of the Red Menace spreading down the peninsula would have been much more relaxed. And the "advisers and analysts" included spec ops who were actively involved in training and directing South Vietnamese militia at least as early as '56. Here's where you should be proud - part of the origin of that particular brand of spec ops was "The Devil's Brigade" of WWII, of which a percentage comprised Canadian troops.
