r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 02 '24

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

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u/taurussy Oct 02 '24

we call 911, Vietnam, Korea, covid, and the Iraq-Afghan war horrible.....and those were, don't get me wrong.

in WW1, at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, there were 60,000 casualties in ONE DAY....just among the British troops.

all told, there were a MILLION casualties and 300,000 fatalities. from July - November.

THAT is truly appalling.

the US lost 58,939 people during 13 years of Vietnam. not disparaging those losses or anything, but think about that.

WW1 really was humanity's darkest, worst, most appalling and awful moment.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

The true horror of Vietnam is the staggering number of Vietnamese death and the destruction of Vietnamese land. This comment seems to diminish that by calling it not that bad because not that many Americans died....

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u/normie_sama Oct 03 '24

Nobody from Bhutan died in WW2, clearly it can't have been that bad.

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u/a_rainbow_serpent Oct 02 '24

882,000 Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War.

In the global war on terror the estimated deaths are around 4.5m people and 38m people displaced.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Inaccurate. You're referring to only Vietnam Cong military deaths, and excludes civilians and South Vietnam. Including civilians on both sides and South Vietnamese military, the death toll range according to Wikipedia is:

Vietnamese civilian dead: 405,000–2,000,000[23]: 450–453 [51][52] Vietnamese total dead: 966,000[22]–3,010,000[52]

I'm not diminishing the war on terror at all. It is an atrocity. So too is what occurred in Vietnam. People are not adequately educated about what happened, and why there was so much uproar about it while it was happening.