MovieChat Forums > Under the Shadow (2016) Discussion > The first sentence of the film is a fals...

The first sentence of the film is a false claim

posted 7 years ago by Tchoutoye
5 replies | jump to latest

The Iran-Iraq war is thought to be the longest conventional war of the twentieth century, lasting from 1980 to 1988.

There are two ways of determine the length of the Vietnam war. The traditional one is start with the deployment of US troops in 1965. But nowadays the US government has pushed back the start of the war to 1955. So that's 10 or 20 years respectively; either way the Vietnam war lasted longer than the Iran-Iraq war.

Now some would argue that the Vietnam war wasn't a conventional war (hence the inclusion of that term in the film's claim), rather a proxy war. But that is just playing a semantic game. Considering that the US had more than half a million boots on the ground, the proxy war argument doesn't hold up.

[–] Royalcourtier 7 years ago

There is no way that the Vietnam War could be said to start in 1965. That is like Americans claiming WW2 started in 1941. In fact US troops did not arrive in 1965, but before 1961. By 1963 there were 16,000 in zone - it was Kennedy who started sending in large numbers of troops. And the war had been raging for years before 1961. There have been many wars which have lasted more than 8 years - the US occupation of Afghanistan!

[–] 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] indiekid76 7 years ago

I think that Vietnam isn't a conventional war as it wasn't fought between two nation states. The gorilla warfare angle therefore being moot.

[–] ThresholdDweller 7 years ago

The words "is thought to be" gives indication it's up for debate and conversation. Vietnam was a protracted police action, as war was never officially declared by the U.S. Not sure that falls into the category of semantics, but rather precise definition.

[–] emvan 7 years ago

I think "conventional" here means non-civil.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.