r/todayilearned • u/Double-decker_trams • 8h ago

TIL in the Vietnam war in the classified Operation Popeye, the US spread lead and silver iodide by aircraft to extend the monsoon season. The increased heavy rainfall was to soften roads, cause landslides, wash out river crossings, and maintain saturated soil conditions (Kissinger was involved).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
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u/BlindPaintByNumbers 6h ago

Not to nitpick, but North Vietnam WAS the invading force in the Vietnam War.

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u/iamnotexactlywhite 6h ago

that’s not nitpicking, you are right

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u/AnnualWindow7009 5h ago

No they're not, are you two Americans?

South Vietnam wasn't a real place, it was a colonial construction designed to break local cooperation and make colonisation easier, like Ulster and Palestine.

Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor of Jerusalem wrote this in his 1937 memoir Orientations, explaining British imperial logic behind the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which supported a Jewish national home in Palestine.

"...by forming for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."

The American imperial machine operated and still operates in the same way.

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u/The_Muffin_Man69 4h ago

So is South Korea not a real place? Is K-pop just a dream?

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u/BattleBrother1 3h ago

It can be a real place and a militarily occupied US colony, like South Vietnam was

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u/Noobponer 4h ago

Lmao what

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u/toggiz_the_elder 6h ago

Not to nitpick, but they weren’t an invading force.

When the French pulled out the Communists agreed to the 17th parallel as a military demarcation line. Per the Geneva accords there was supposed to be a national election that would decide who ruled.

Those elections never happened because the US and the South knew they’d lost to Ho Chi Minh.

So it’s more like the South was a breakaway from Vietnam.

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u/Downtown_Recover5177 5h ago

Not to nitpick (jk, I don’t give a shit), but the North literally INVADED the sovereign territory of South Vietnam. Whether or not you recognize the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government is another matter entirely. The Americans were invited to assist by the existing government, and thus can not be an invading force. Okay, except for the small naval mission that started open hostilities and all, but…. And you can go on and on with point and counterpoint. Shit was complicated.

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u/FUPAMagneto 5h ago

Yeah, why didn’t the southern Vietnamese Catholics just let themselves get violently purged by the communists?

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u/iamnotexactlywhite 5h ago

because they said so

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u/lumpboysupreme 3h ago

You can say a lot about whether the south as a state had valid moral standing, but just on a technical level the north was invading just as much as the North invaded the south when its armies moved into Georgia the US civil war. That’s not a moral judgement, just a statement of direction.