Question about Vietnam war

[zod96]

My 16 year nephew has to do a report on the Vietnam War. He asked me a question about it and I'm really unsure how to answer really. He asked me basically...

"How did the most powerful country in the world, with the best equipped, best lead, best trained military this world has ever seen lose the war?"

I was totally unsure how to answer really. Its kind of a daunting question...

 

[UberNeuman]

My 16 year nephew has to do a report on the Vietnam War. He asked me a question about it and I'm really unsure how to answer really. He asked me basically...

"How did the most powerful country in the world, with the best equipped, best lead, best trained military this world has ever seen lose the war?"

I was totally unsure how to answer really. Its kind of a daunting question...

We'll start with your opinion - which is?

 

[zod96]

Well I would say, bad planning perhaps on our end. Or too much interference from politicians?

 

[UberNeuman]

Well I would say, bad planning perhaps on our end. Or too much interference from politicians?

That assumes a probable outcome...

 

[zod96]

One thing I do not understand is, why didn't we ever go on the offensive? It seems all we did was play a defensive war. Couldn't the military launch a massive offensive and take Hanoi?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

To start, the military was totally unprepared to fight a guerrilla war. Then the government wouldn't listen to it's military advisers and attempted to limit the engagement to strategic targets. There were no strategic targets. That coupled with no goal or exit plan put the final nail in the coffin. We won most of the battles but, lost the war thanks to the incompetence and greed of our government.

 

[Vic]

The US didn't actually lose the Vietnam War. That's kind of a misnomer. What happened was that the cost of winning exceeded any possible gain we could hope to achieve by winning, and so eventually we cut our losses and pulled out.

 

[zod96]

So if that is the case, why didn't we shorten the war and just take North Vietnam by force which I assume we could have done easily?

 

[SKORPI0]

http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_US_lose_the_Vietnam_War

Did the US Lose in Vietnam?
Here are some various opinions on why (and whether) the US lost the war in Vietnam:

• The United States pulled out of the Vietnam war. We did not lose it. Technically, we were not at war, we were advisors but the Congressional approval to fight in Vietnam was not given. If anyone lost it was the people of Laos and Cambodia who came under Communist rule after the war.
• Lack of interest. No one was that interested in stopping the Communists aggression in the Far East. And as the war went on, the cost in blood and treasure seemed extreme and fruitless. So we didn't lose, we just withdrew. When the draft was ended, it made the war more tolerable, but then high profile stories of war crimes and napalming made the war unpopular.
• The only reason the US lost was because we withdrew from there. The US won every battle but the North Vietnamese were willing to sacrifice many more lives than the US.
• They lost because the politicians did not let the military do their job. They made decisions that should have been made by generals. Politicians should not make tactical decisions.
• The people of South Vietnam did not want to fight that war and the US didn't want to fight the war for them without their help.
• Failures by the US -1) The US troops completely underestimated the VC, who were skilled jungle fighters, and also had mass peasant support. 2) The American tactic 'search and destroy' increased VC support. As one soldier said "If they weren't VC before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left." 3) The supply line (Ho Chi Minh Trail) was never shut down by the Americans thus allowing the VC to send and receive supplies. 4) American public support waned after the atrocities of 'My Lai' and disasters of the 'Tet offensive' came to light, and American body bags continued to arrive home. Protesting became rife and the public voice became hard for the government to ignore. 5) Guerrilla warfare was brutal, and morale became increasingly low from about 1969. 6) The VC's great defensive system the 'Cu Chi' tunnel was not shut down , allowing the VC to take cover during the 'Air War' which could potentially have been very successful for the Americans. 7) The Media played a massive role in the war, before media intervention many Americans had felt alienated from a war that was so far from home. The media changed this, changing at the same time the general public's view on war.
• There are several reasons as to why we didn't win the war. There is truth in most of the answers given. True, we alienated a lot of the Vietnamese because of atrocities, but we weren't the ones that were going into villages and disemboweling the leaders or raping their women or taking a machete to babies. The VC did that. Yes, there were some unfortunate incidents like My Lai, but that is one incident compared to thousands of atrocities that the enemy soldiers did. Second, the US military was extremely handicapped by both the war planners and the US media. In order to make bombing runs, we had to contact a war planner back in the States to get permission to make a bombing run. Then we were not allowed to bomb anything close to a civilian area no matter how strategically important it was, because we were humane enough to not want to injure more North Vietnamese civilians. Were the North Vietnamese that concerned about not hurting anyone? Absolutely not. They had no compassion whatsoever. They placed no value whatsoever on human life. Sometimes when they would attack to try to overrun our bases, the first wave of soldiers' purpose was to die on top the barbed wire perimeter so that their fellow comrades could walk over their bodies and enter the compound. They were so fanatical they would fight until the last man was dead. As far as the Vietcong being a skilled fighting force that is a crock. They were poor, not very well trained, deluded people who were virtually eliminated after they made a massive attempt in 1968 to take over the country. They were temporarily successful but once the US military got to work, end of story. We literally slaughtered them. Then there is the US media who were probably the biggest traitors to the US cause and have a lot of our young men and women's blood on their hands. It seems so strange that when we would announce to the media that we were going to make a bombing run to a certain location that when the bombers would get there that the enemy soldiers would be gone. And the media also helped to stir up the anti-war movement back home thus being an ally of our own enemy. Right before we decided to pull out of the war we had the North close to surrendering. But you won't hear that from the news media. We had killed close to a million enemy soldiers.
• The US did not lose the war. The Paris accords were signed and all but 1,500 US troops were gone from Vietnam when Saigon fell. The reason Saigon fell was also the fact that the South Vietnamese Army was not willing to stand and fight for their own country.
• America didn't lose the war in terms of politics. The Paris Agreement states that the US won as troops were still in Vietnam at the time. In terms of casualties and deaths, however, it was pretty equal going.
• US efforts to hold and occupy ground were dismal failures; as emphasized by the failures at Dak To and throughout the Central Highlands in 1967, in the A Shau Valley throughout the War and at Khe San after May 1968, to hold ground against opposition. US forces, while moderately effective in some limited tactical actions to take ground or occupy an area of operations, were invariably outmaneuvered strategically and forced to withdraw when continued action proved the occupation had been pointless. Once the ground was ceded back to the enemy, it was immediately re-occupied. No US command ever held an area of operation 18 months after a major action had been fought there.
• The US was not fighting a total war, and usually did not remain in any areas with its forces other than those logistically important. It was never a goal of the US to occupy South Vietnam. In some cases this meant retaking the same areas from the enemy more than once. North Vietnamese generals recognized the fighting power of the US forces, but knew that the morale of US troops would go lower the longer the war went on, just as the US as a whole would tire of the war.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

So if that is the case, why didn't we shorten the war and just take North Vietnam by force which I assume we could have done easily?

What part of guerrilla war don't you understand? There were no obvious military or political targets. Their warfighters surrounded themselves with civilians and rarely carried out pitched battles. Remember what I said about strategic targeting? There were no strategic targets so, they tried carpet bombing. There has never been a war won by air power alone and there never will be one.

 

[unokitty]

My 16 year nephew has to do a report on the Vietnam War. He asked me a question about it and I'm really unsure how to answer really. He asked me basically...

"How did the most powerful country in the world, with the best equipped, best lead, best trained military this world has ever seen lose the war?"

I was totally unsure how to answer really. Its kind of a daunting question...

30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

“American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression”, announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”

But there was no “second attack” by North Vietnam — no “renewed attacks against American destroyers.” By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

US Naval Institute

Questions about the Gulf of Tonkin incidents have persisted for more than 40 years. But once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

On August 2, 1964, the U.S.S. Maddox came under fire while gathering signals intelligence in Vietnamese territorial waters. But it was the alleged “second attack,” confirmed by the NSA, that LBJ seized upon to order retaliatory bombings and push the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress.

As we now know, the “second attack” never happened. Days after the attack, Johnson cracked, “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!” A National Security Agency historian later concluded that “N.S.A. officers had deliberately falsified intercepted communications in the incident to make it look like the attack on Aug. 4, 1964, had occurred ...

As in Vietnam, the more troops we deploy and the more adversaries we kill (along with civilians), the quicker their losses are made good and the more their ranks grow, since it's our very presence, our operations and our support of a regime without legitimacy that is the prime basis for their recruiting...

In accounts of wars 40 years and half a world apart, we read of the same irresponsible, self-serving presidential and congressional objectives in prolonging and escalating an unwinnable conflict: namely, the need not to be charged with weakness by political rivals, or with losing a war that a few feckless or ambitious generals foolishly claim can be won. Putting the policy-making and the field realities together, we see the same prospect of endless, bloody stalemate – unless and until, under public pressure, Congress threatens to cut off the money (as in 1972-73), forcing the executive into a negotiated withdrawal.

I'm neither a political scientist nor a historian. Above are a few links that your nephew may find relevant. Probably shouldn't forget the National Security Archive either: Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed" According to Official History and Intercepts

From my perspective, I'd say it had something to do with lies that politicians told and a media that reported those lies as facts...

Then again, if your nephew has been reading the newspapers he probably already knows about wars like that...

Uno
Sentry Dog Handler
US Army 69-71

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

The war in Vietnam was never about Vietnam, or winning. It was a proxy war of communism v. those opposed to communist ideals. Both sides played this game and neither ever wanted to "win" because of the potential for escalation.

 

[chucky2]

We lost in Vietnam because we didn't fight a total war, we tried to do the Politician thing and keep it limited. Note that starting with Vietnam and each time since, each time we fight a limited war we never achieve our primary long term objectives. Basically this is why Politician and Media should never be allowed to influence where we are warring: The negatives they bring to the situation far outweigh any positives.

 

[touchstone]

The US didn't actually lose the Vietnam War. That's kind of a misnomer. What happened was that the cost of winning exceeded any possible gain we could hope to achieve by winning, and so eventually we cut our losses and pulled out.

I sort of agree with this, but I would point out that this conflict was never in terms of win/lose vietnam. This conflict was one proxy war of many in the cold war. The reason we didn't just go all out and turn Hanoi into a parking lot had very much to do with the 900 million chinese that were only a few hundred miles away, along with the USSR who would surely provide assistance if china called on it. It could easily have turned it WWIII and in such a case we would not have with certitude accomplished anything.

 

[realibrad]

We fought the Vietnam war differently than we had fought other wars. It used to be that when wars were fought, it was nation vs nation. There were armies yes, but you would be willing to destroy an entire city to weaken the enemy. Politically that is no longer possible. Morally that is a good thing, but it causes something to happen that nobody seemed to think of.

Up until WWII, we destroyed entire cities. In WWII we used firebombs on cities that could easily kill 40,000+. Firebombs were not smart bombs, so you would just burn done the entire city. The effect of wars at that point was to wipe out huge amounts of the people whom disagreed with you ideologically. So, had we fought Vietnam like WWII, we would have wiped out entire cities. Gorilla warfare would have been unimportant, because we would have simply killed almost everyone. Those who lived would be trying to find food and water to just live.

Vietnam was not a loss like Germany lost WWII. The US was fighting a people of ideas, and unless you break those people, you cant win. You wont lose, but you wont win either.

So, the reason the US did not win the Vietnam war, is because there could not be victory over people with ideas through military action.

 

[Vic]

We lost in Vietnam because we didn't fight a total war, we tried to do the Politician thing and keep it limited. Note that starting with Vietnam and each time since, each time we fight a limited war we never achieve our primary long term objectives. Basically this is why Politician and Media should never be allowed to influence where we are warring: The negatives they bring to the situation far outweigh any positives.

As another poster already mentioned, fighting a total war in Vietnam would have brought China (and possibly the USSR) into the conflict. Which would have made the war that much more exponentially expensive (in terms of both our soldiers' lives and our taxes) and yet still virtually no return on that investment.

Fighting a limited war is not the problem. We're fighting one right now, and we won the one in Iraq last decade. The problem lies with fighting wars that don't make sense.

 

[Jhhnn]

We took a beating in vietnam because we didn't belong there in the first place. We defended a corrupt system left over from French Colonialism. The Viet Minh & Viet Cong fought a war of national liberation, a fight for self determination.

Once Yankee sky raiders started blasting the shit out of targets in the North, they devoted themselves to total war & the Russians helped them do it. They had excellent morale & leadership, finally emerging victorious.

All we accomplished or could have accomplished was more bloodshed than would have otherwise been the case. The notion that we could have stopped unification of Vietnam short of genocide is absurd. It was part & parcel of a vast post-WW2 worldwide movement to throw off colonialism in all its forms.

 

[Vic]

It's nuclear weapons, and not politics, that has put an end to total war among the world powers.

Edit: for example, the firebombing of Dresden required 1200 bombers dropping a combined 3.9kt of high explosive over 3 days to destroy the city with 25,000 Germans killed.
Six months later, a single bomber dropped a single nuclear device with a 16kt yield that destroyed Hiroshima and killed almost 100,000 in seconds.
By the Vietnam War era, we had the ability to destroy all of greater metropolitan Hanoi, along with millions of its inhabitants, with a single missile launched from South Dakota.

 

[nickqt]

My 16 year nephew has to do a report on the Vietnam War. He asked me a question about it and I'm really unsure how to answer really. He asked me basically...

"How did the most powerful country in the world, with the best equipped, best lead, best trained military this world has ever seen lose the war?"

I was totally unsure how to answer really. Its kind of a daunting question...

Assuming facts not in evidence.

The US military wasn't an all-volunteer service, and the Vietnam War used a lot of draftees. So, "best trained" is assuming a whole lot. Warm bodies may be more accurate for a lot of the soldiers.

So, first, you have to look past the "Vietnam War", back to the history of Vietnam. It had been a colony of France since the 1860s or so, with constant uprisings every few years. So, first off, the US soldiers weren't necessarily the best-trained forces in the world. Vietnamese soldiers had been fighting the French using guerrilla tactics off and on for a hundred years before US soldiers started spilling blood there.

Second, in addition to Vietnamese soldiers being very experienced with decades of fighting, you have to remember that Vietnam has a lot of jungle. So, you have locals used to the heat and conditions, and who know their way around and can speak to the other locals. Against US troops not used to the conditions, who cannot speak with the locals.

Third, think Revolutionary War. Sure, the early US had help from the French, and Britain was also engaged in a much larger war outside of the colonies, but you had US troops fighting guerrilla-style against the British and winning (often losing when they fought face-to-face). So, guerrilla tactics are key to fighting better-equipped/tech. Not to mention, and perhaps one of the most important factors, but the Vietnamese/NVA actually lived there. Duh? Well, no. It's a jungle.mountainous country with lots of little villages, which is literally perfect for guerrilla tactics. Burn a village, capture a city, destroy a tunnel, and the enemy just drops their cheap rifles and walks away.

You just outspent the enemy 100-1 to temporarily capture a useless hill in the middle of the jungle that they'll take back control of as soon as the US soldiers leave.

Grats!

One thing I do not understand is, why didn't we ever go on the offensive? It seems all we did was play a defensive war. Couldn't the military launch a massive offensive and take Hanoi?

Take Hanoi and now you've gone from offensive on one little point on a map... to defending that one little point on the map...offensive to defensive, with literally nothing to show for it. The soldiers, supplies, and commanders are all out in the jungle. Have fun defending your city... that you now have police responsibility for. i.e. counterproductive considering the war, the territory, and the cost/benefits of controlling a city.

Also, the Vietnam War was intended to defend S. Vietnam and it's dictatorship from N. Vietnam. Cold war strategy was to hold, not take over new land and provoke a hot war between USSR/China and the US.

Finally, think outside the box. Taken everything I've said, do you believe the average NVA soldier was a die-hard commie ready to spit on the US flag and capitalism, or perhaps could the NVA simply have been fighting just another colonial power (The French from the 1860s to 1950s, and then the US from the 1960s to the 1970s)?

How do you define winning the Vietnam War? At first the US thought it was with body counts and supply lines destroyed. But if the average citizen/soldier considers it a war of "Independence" and "Freedom", how do you defeat them? What were the attitudes of many S. Vietnamese people who lived under a US-supported brutal dictator? How much did they want the US to stay there forever (Germany, Japan and Korea were "conquered" 70+ years ago...how many US soldiers are still there)?

The better question to ask is, given the history of Vietnam, their view of the war as a war against outside colonial powers, the geography/topography, and cold war politics and posturing...who in the hell actually believed the US could "win" there, considering there was literally nothing to win, and at best, would be an ongoing defense mission of a brutal dictator literally on the other side of the planet.

 

[realibrad]

It's nuclear weapons, and not politics, that has put an end to total war among the world powers.

Edit: for example, the firebombing of Dresden required 1200 bombers dropping a combined 3.9kt of high explosive over 3 days to destroy the city with 25,000 Germans killed.
Six months later, a single bomber dropped a single nuclear device with a 16kt yield that destroyed Hiroshima and killed almost 100,000 in seconds.
By the Vietnam War era, we had the ability to destroy all of greater metropolitan Hanoi, along with millions of its inhabitants, with a single missile launched from South Dakota.

That is still a political argument though. At the time of Vietnam, the US still would have won a nuclear war. I would have meant millions of dead US people, and possibly billions in the world. The reason that is not acceptable is because of the peoples will aka political.

Also, the US could have finished off the north, but the will of the people at home wanted the war to end.

You need two things to win a war. Military might, and political will. The US had more than enough of the first, but not of the 2nd. People for the first time got to see war on their TV, and they did not like it. America en masse got to see war. It did not matter that we were winning the war, because we lost the will of the people.

 

[CitizenKain]

Basically this is why Politician and Media should never be allowed to influence where we are warring: The negatives they bring to the situation far outweigh any positives.

So we should just let the military loose and see what happens? What an amazingly stupid idea.

Thankfully the media was there to cover what a giant shitshow it was.

There was no winning the war since there was nothing to win.

 

[norseamd]

"How did the most powerful country in the world, with the best equipped, best lead, best trained military this world has ever seen lose the war?"

This is warfare 101.

I was totally unsure how to answer really. Its kind of a daunting question...

Not actually.

Too tired to give that much more information right now but it involved bad policies towards the local populations, deploying all our aircraft out of Thailand which meant they had to make long flights just to reach infantry in need of air support, and not focusing on the war overall instead of daily fighting.

Look up the Pentagon Paper and the huge scandal that shit was back in the 70s.

 

[Sonikku]

Dr. Manhattan kicked those guys asses and secured victory for America according to a documentary I saw the other day.

 

[trenchfoot]

Well I would say, bad planning perhaps on our end. Or too much interference from politicians?

As a guy who had to go over there and fight in that war, I'd say you're pretty close to what most of my brothers in arms used to complain about as far as "winning every battle but losing the war" is concerned.

I really didn't care for fighting a war with one arm tied behind my back and an ROE that unnecessarily put us in a lot more danger than anything else, especially when the VC and NV regulars had a lot of fun taking advantage of that. And to top it all off there was the CID hovering over everyone waiting for some kind of violation of human rights to occur.

But most of all, this was a political war fought by politicians, the media and a most effective NV propaganda ministry that made even Joseph Goebbel's organization look like it was run by a cabal of shithead neocons.

Us ground pounders, well, basically we were there just to help each other survive the mess that our politicians and their big business buddies made in that part of the world and with a lot of luck, somehow make it back to the world without any body parts missing.

 

[Vic]

That is still a political argument though. At the time of Vietnam, the US still would have won a nuclear war. I would have meant millions of dead US people, and possibly billions in the world. The reason that is not acceptable is because of the peoples will aka political.

Also, the US could have finished off the north, but the will of the people at home wanted the war to end.

You need two things to win a war. Military might, and political will. The US had more than enough of the first, but not of the 2nd. People for the first time got to see war on their TV, and they did not like it. America en masse got to see war. It did not matter that we were winning the war, because we lost the will of the people.

We've had wars on TV since that received sufficient political will to achieve victory. The difference was in the return on investment.