What Went Wrong In Vietnam?

[Shelly21]

Originally posted by: ffmcobalt

Originally posted by: Shalmanese
Why is it that Vietmanese civilian trying to kill American soliders is looked on in comtempt while it is "patriotic" to proudly state that if ever an invading country touched the US soil, there would be a massive amount of grassroots support by the US citizenship to rout the invading army?

It's called rules of war. We don't attack civilians for a reason. They're innocent civilians. But when we're worried about the army, those innocent civilians turn into another threat. Granted, it's a decent strategy, but if we had gone in knowing that the civies would be hostiles, we should have had permission to kill approaching ones without hesitation.

nik

Come now, If there was a bigger country invading US and they were everywhere. I'm sure some civilians here would take up arms to defend our country. I know I would try to shoot any enemies of the state if I see one walking on the street even thou I'm a civilian. (like Red Dawn, the movie) I think you would do the same thing (I know you can shoot better than I can).

So I guess we should've known that they would do that.

As for someone mentiong that we lost Korean war.... I thought it's more of a tie, technically speaking the war is not over yet.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: gopunk
well it was a type of warfare that i think we were unprepared for.... much like why the british lost to the rebels in the revolutionary war.

that and there were simply more of them... logistics... etc etc

Read up on the subject, that was partially true. The North Vietnamese were close to losing the war. Had the U.S. put some bombs in the right places (but were prevented by politics) the U.S. could have sent the North to their knees.

Originally posted by: Zakath15
We've fought three wars in asia, lost two and won the other only with the help of nuclear weapons.

Korea was a stalemate and the South was ultimately defended. In Vietnam The U.S. pulled out (thanks to the politicians and the south fell) and read my above statement to gopunk. And in Japan, they were defeated by the time we dropped the 2 nukes. The nukes helped bring a premature end to an inevitable victory.

And to answer Dari's original question of what went wrong, I would say the U.S. did not want to risk a full blown conflict with the Soviets.

 

[Ns1]

the us pussied out

they didn't bomb alot of northern targets until way late in the war

and by then, they had their antiair defenses setup

or so it was said on the history channel

 

[Triumph]

Originally posted by: Brutuskend
Vietnam was the first war aired LIVE on TV, it brought the true horror of war to everyone's living room on the 6 o'clock news. I think the government learned a lesson from that, and will never let THAT happen again. Look how much control they kept over the news media during Desert Storm. It disgusted me! People SHOULD know how ugly war is, then they would be less apt to want to start another one.
I know that broadcasting live can give away valuable information to the enemy, so I can understand not letting the news go out live. BUT there should be NO restrictions other than that IMO. People NEED to know that war isn't a pretty or glamorous thing!

I seem to remember a slew of reporters waiting on the beach in Kuwait just as our Navy Seals landed.... Yeah, that was a GREAT idea.

 

[Desslok]

From what I have read and from the people that I have talked to that were there if we did the following things the war would have been over in a few months.

1.) Mine the Harbor at Hai Phong-Have heard countless story of pilots flying over and seeing SAM's etc being unloaded but couldn't strike do to the target package restrictions.
2.) Destory the rail bridges at the Vietnam and Chinese border-This is where the majority of supplies came in from.
3.) Bring in more special forces troops.-The VC were terrified of the SEALS and the Green Berets.
4.) Take off ALL the restrictions the govt. put on our pilots.

What went wrong? Like other posters have stated, no clear objective, the govt trying to micromange the war from back home, we were fighting with the "last war mentality". Give us one big engagement and we will win. This was proven with TET, the VC were no longer an effective fighting force after this. At the same time the press took what happened back to the American people who were being lied to about the war being almost over.

 

[Brutuskend]

Originally posted by: ffmcobalt
One of the biggest failures was the M-16 jamming. We've found entire squads slaughtered and not a shot fired from any of their rifles because each and every one of them jammed from poor quality weaponry and harsh conditions.

Then again, I'm not so sure we should have been there to begin with.

nik

Yeah, the M16 was a POS. I only fired one on full auto one time, I got off three rounds before it jammed. The first weapon I trained with was the M14. Now THAT was a good rifle, but for jungle warfare it was to big and bulky.

BTW: Do you know what makes the M16 so deadly? It's the bullets themselves. They are weighted on one side. When they hit something they start tumbling end over end. A M16 round can hit you in the foot and tumble, following a bone, and exit out of your shoulder. Ripping the SH!T out of everything in it's path. Makes you wonder why hollow point ammo is illegal but those rounds aren't....

 

[Maverick]

we lost it because of some of the stupid tactics we employed. We should have relied more on the native south vietnamese and not have killed entire villages because one villager was scouted talking to the viet cong. We just made enemies on both sides and increased the VC strength by doing that. Successful tactics were employed in Cambodia during this time. Similar tactics would have won in Vietnam. Its just that it would have taken longer.

I think the armed forces learned their lesson...in Afghanistan they followed the right tactics. The Russians did what we did in Vietnam and therefore got their asses kicked.

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: rudder

Korea was a stalemate and the South was ultimately defended. In Vietnam The U.S. pulled out (thanks to the politicians and the south fell) and read my above statement to gopunk. And in Japan, they were defeated by the time we dropped the 2 nukes. The nukes helped bring a premature end to an inevitable victory.

Actually, I do agree with you on this.

That quote (that I quoted) is pretty, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

There was little to no actual justification for Truman dropping the nukes, other than a display of power towards the Soviets.

 

[Desslok]

Originally posted by: Brutuskend

Originally posted by: ffmcobalt One of the biggest failures was the M-16 jamming. We've found entire squads slaughtered and not a shot fired from any of their rifles because each and every one of them jammed from poor quality weaponry and harsh conditions. Then again, I'm not so sure we should have been there to begin with. nik

Yeah, the M16 was a POS. I only fired one on full auto one time, I got off three rounds before it jammed. The first weapon I trained with was the M14. Now THAT was a good rifle, but for jungle warfare it was to big and bulky. BTW: Do you know what makes the M16 so deadly? It's the bullets themselves. They are weighted on one side. When they hit something they start tumbling end over end. A M16 round can hit you in the foot and tumble, following a bone, and exit out of your shoulder. Ripping the SH!T out of everything in it's path. Makes you wonder why hollow point ammo is illegal but those rounds aren't....

I have always read and heard that it was the powder we used that was the problem not the weapon itself. To complicate things the M16 needs to be clean to operate. The guys were not keeping them clean, then with the powder causing jams and you had a problem.

 

[JellyBaby]

What Went Wrong In Vietnam?

Politicians.

 

[Kelvrick]

ALl I know was that it was a bunch of crap. The tet offensive was a godsend that would have let the US win if the media wasn't there and the South Viet government was a currupt piece of crap. The stuff that happened to the people in Saigon after the US withdrew was some of the worse sh1t I've ever heard but I guess thats what happens to losers in a war. I just got to have a little first hand experience with that sh1t.

Also, you b1tches who say how the Viet civilians were enemys too and they all should have been shot, shut the fvck up. I had relatives who were South Vietnamese troops and when they would come towards US troops, they were shot at, and one killed just for not looking white. That incident moved one of the families on my dad's side to become a Go-Go US supporter to a VC. That, and the troops that the US sent over weren't exactly the cream of the crop either. A lot of em were good people, but a lot of em also liked ransacking outlaying villages and raping the younger girls. You see why some viet civilians wouldn't take kindly to a troop of marines marching through their village?

What went wrong was that the US went in without knowing wtf they were doing and butted into a business that wasn't any of their business. The only clear stance they took was when they withdrew, leaving whoever was left behind to fend for themselves.'

<== vietnamese monkey dance

 

[wolf papa]

Well, you probably won't get an answer here, there have been dozens (hundreds?, thousands?) of books that tried to answer the same question, and it's too complex. But, here's my view -

The US became involved for the wrong reason - the South Vietnamese president was corrupt, but had friends in the US government, who wanted to keep him in power. The justification was to prevent the spread of communism. It happened to be beneficial to ambitious ranking US military officials, and the American companies that provided the supplies for the military - Dow, GM, Lockheed, etc.

There was no declaration of war, and no clear goal was determined, no definition of what constitued a victory. The war was conducted by politicians, not the military, and actions were determined by political motives, not military strategy.

The US military had enough problems as it was - the enemy had 2 armies - the North Vietnamese, and the Viet Cong (South Vitnamese), who were motivated and experienced (fighting against the French just a few years earlier). The enemy had years of preparation, tunnel complexes (including underground medical and storage facilities), communication, transportation and alliances. And being cold, hungry and wet weren't the same disadvantage to them as it was to our troops.

The enemy had another advantage, they could easily identify the Americans. The US forces, on the other, could NOT easily distinguish between friend and foe, which led to a lot of civilian casulties - not the way to convince a different culture that you are there to help them. The use of defoliants, napalm and bombings destroyed peoples' homes and crops. In return for threatening their traditional way of life, we offered them CocaCola, white bread and radios. When you don't have the support and cooperation of the people you are trying to save, there is no way to win. I am NOT saying that ALL of the South Viet Namese people did not want the US there, just that there were enough convinced that we were the WORST of two evils.

The above is merely the interpretation of someone who saw the nightly news reports during the time, had friends and family members who served, and read some books and analysis of the events.

 

[js1973]

As someone posted earlier, no clear objective. I think that's the most correct answer to your question.

Edit: I found this while searching the web:

Approximately 58,168 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, another 153,303 were wounded, and about 2,500 are still listed as missing in action.

Can anyone find any figures for Viet Namese casulties?

 

[js1973]

After more searching, I found this:

The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that a total of 45,000 North Vietnamese and NLF soldiers had been killed, most of them NLF fighters.

These are numbers from the tet offensive only. Not the duration of the whole war.

 

[CJZ]

Originally posted by: AvesPKS

Originally posted by: Zakath15
They fought a geurilla war while we maintained a traditional stance - keep throwing men in until the enemy gets overwhelmed.

Only thing is, they never got overwhelmed.

We've fought three wars in asia, lost two and won the other only with the help of nuclear weapons.

You try telling my grandfather and the other tens of thousands of marines who fought in Korea that they lost.

I'm glad the U.S. at least "lost". Otherwise I wouldn't be here in the states and my relatives in South Korea would be starving to death like our brethren in the North.

 

[slycat]

What went wrong in Vietnam = Messing with Asians

 

[Staples]

I have always read and heard that it was the powder we used that was the problem not the weapon itself. To complicate things the M16 needs to be clean to operate. The guys were not keeping them clean, then with the powder causing jams and you had a problem.

Well actually after a year or so, some soldier got a letter though to the governor of some state saying they were getting slaughtered because of this while command was looking the other way. It made waves around the US and then finally they started to issue cleaning kits (which kept the gun from malfunctioning) and made some adjustments to the gun. Today, the weapon that the military is still uses is the M16 A2 riffle (vastly updated).

 

[Mandrill]

Originally posted by: Triumph

Originally posted by: Brutuskend
Vietnam was the first war aired LIVE on TV, it brought the true horror of war to everyone's living room on the 6 o'clock news. I think the government learned a lesson from that, and will never let THAT happen again. Look how much control they kept over the news media during Desert Storm. It disgusted me! People SHOULD know how ugly war is, then they would be less apt to want to start another one.
I know that broadcasting live can give away valuable information to the enemy, so I can understand not letting the news go out live. BUT there should be NO restrictions other than that IMO. People NEED to know that war isn't a pretty or glamorous thing!

I seem to remember a slew of reporters waiting on the beach in Kuwait just as our Navy Seals landed.... Yeah, that was a GREAT idea.

That was Somalia and the Marines

 

[MacBaine]

We didn't lose, we honorably withdrew.

 

[Desslok]

Originally posted by: Mandrill

Originally posted by: Triumph

Originally posted by: Brutuskend Vietnam was the first war aired LIVE on TV, it brought the true horror of war to everyone's living room on the 6 o'clock news. I think the government learned a lesson from that, and will never let THAT happen again. Look how much control they kept over the news media during Desert Storm. It disgusted me! People SHOULD know how ugly war is, then they would be less apt to want to start another one. I know that broadcasting live can give away valuable information to the enemy, so I can understand not letting the news go out live. BUT there should be NO restrictions other than that IMO. People NEED to know that war isn't a pretty or glamorous thing!

I seem to remember a slew of reporters waiting on the beach in Kuwait just as our Navy Seals landed.... Yeah, that was a GREAT idea.

That was Somalia and the Marines

It also happen in Kuwait with the SEALS.