- Mar 8, 2003
- 38,416
- 4
- 0
OK, i know that we did not really lose, we just quit, but why did we have to quit? could we have won the war if things were done differantly?
why did we lose vietnam?
- Thread starter Schadenfroh
- Start date
When I first read the subject line, I was gonna respond "those damn liberals!" jokingly.
Looks like I was beat to it...
yup.
and today we have the american communist party being a big force in the war protests going on today..
they sure have a big showing at all the big rallies, could they being a co-sponsor of many of them have anything to do with it?
nah......
sMiLeYz
Platinum Member
- Feb 3, 2003
- 2,696
- 0
- 76
The real reason we lost the war was because it was a badly planned and badly executed war. The natives didn't support us while we were there, the enemies knew the jungle terran much better, were much more deeply entrenched, and they had more heart than us. Most of our boys sent there didn't believe an ounce in that war.
You can ask the Viet veterans.
Prior to then the US military had never fought a entrenched guerilla war of this scope...
You can ask the Viet veterans.
Prior to then the US military had never fought a entrenched guerilla war of this scope...
Acually, yes, we did "really lose" we didn't "just quit". I know it must come as a shock that the almighty US lost a war, but that's just what happen, we lost.
Now, as to how or why we lost, well, I guess you'll have to wait for the vietnam vets to post their opinion as to why they think we lost. Or just wait for the political hacks to say it's all the ebil lefties fault or ebil neo-cons fault. Question is, do you REALLY want to know, or are you just posting to validate some preconceived idea you have about the war? Which ever it is, I'd suggest waiting for nam vets to post what they have to say about it and that you read history books to find out more.
Personally though, it felt like the politicians in general had their thumbs up their ass and didn't let the military run it the way it should have been run. But that's just my outside observation. And as I said before, the best people to get an answer from would be the vets.
True, the enemie knew the terrain a hell of a lot better than we did. And the support was not all it should/could have been either.
we didn't win the psychological war with the Vietnamese, so we lost the psychological war with the American people.
Only love can win.
CrazyHelloDeli
Platinum Member
- Jun 24, 2001
- 2,854
- 0
- 0
From a military standpoint, we won almost all operations. Secondly, there was no clear objectives as to what we were supposed to be doing and how were supposed to be doing it. The South didnt really know, or care, what communism was and why we fought so hard against it. The to top it off the majority of the American public didnt care about the spread of communism, so this was seen as a useless war. No moral support from your own country, let alone from the country we were trying to liberate.
Let's deal with the "liberal" junk first. Military campaigns should idealy be fought with due considerations to the conditions under which the war is fought. Gung ho types like to start these things and then blame the liberals when the lose the war because "liberals undermined us." There is no way the current "warriors" should have failed to note the unprecedented opposition to this current war.
On to the Viet Nam war. The question of why we're there was never really answered. The best answer was, "The Domino Theory." It wasn't a very good analysis. No political party wanted to be responsible for "losing Viet Nam." That phrase when used in "losing [mainland] China" haunted the U.S. political scene throught the 50's and early 60's. Then no one wanted to appear "soft on communisim." There really wasn't any reason to be in VN.
Second, TV coverage came to the war. Back when we were exterminating the American Indians, it wasn't on TV. The U.S. population was very disturbed by the violence.
Third, a draft (which is why there won't be one after the elections). Shoveling lower class cannon fodder into the fray was no problem, but when white, middle class people (like me) started to have their sons sent over their and die, support went south.
Fourth, responsible news analysts (they're extinct now) began to see that what our government was saying didn't have much correlation with what they were observing. This problem has largely been solved by the economics of contemporary news reporting. Journalists can't do any real investigation.
And lastly, the colonial pattern had been, "support a local ruler to rule the country." After world war II some of the local rulers could get support elsewhere (the Cold War). They got arms and could fight and they weren't going to quit because it was their home. Let's see, it's us, who have a very, very expensive army to maintain at a great distance and who doesn't really have any interest in the country except some political status, against a raggedy assed army that can survive for a month on what the U.S. soldier shoots up and wastes in one day and they've got a realy deep interest in acquiring local control of their homeland and no where else to go if they don't.
That's some of the basics.
On to the Viet Nam war. The question of why we're there was never really answered. The best answer was, "The Domino Theory." It wasn't a very good analysis. No political party wanted to be responsible for "losing Viet Nam." That phrase when used in "losing [mainland] China" haunted the U.S. political scene throught the 50's and early 60's. Then no one wanted to appear "soft on communisim." There really wasn't any reason to be in VN.
Second, TV coverage came to the war. Back when we were exterminating the American Indians, it wasn't on TV. The U.S. population was very disturbed by the violence.
Third, a draft (which is why there won't be one after the elections). Shoveling lower class cannon fodder into the fray was no problem, but when white, middle class people (like me) started to have their sons sent over their and die, support went south.
Fourth, responsible news analysts (they're extinct now) began to see that what our government was saying didn't have much correlation with what they were observing. This problem has largely been solved by the economics of contemporary news reporting. Journalists can't do any real investigation.
And lastly, the colonial pattern had been, "support a local ruler to rule the country." After world war II some of the local rulers could get support elsewhere (the Cold War). They got arms and could fight and they weren't going to quit because it was their home. Let's see, it's us, who have a very, very expensive army to maintain at a great distance and who doesn't really have any interest in the country except some political status, against a raggedy assed army that can survive for a month on what the U.S. soldier shoots up and wastes in one day and they've got a realy deep interest in acquiring local control of their homeland and no where else to go if they don't.
That's some of the basics.
Lots of reasons.
It wasn't really possible to win. I guess we could have technically. We could've bombed the hell out of the north, then followed up with a full on invasion, used some VERY skillfull diplomacy and threats of atom bombs to keep china out of it. That might've worked. But no one was going to support an escalation that large, even if it might (might) have lead to less deaths in the long run. And of course keeping China out of it would have been the diplomatic success of the century.
Ideally, we would've supported Ho Chi Minh early on, and gotten the French to leave Vietnam on their own. He would've been a commie, but we could've supplied him with aid and such early on and he might have become another Marshall Tito, a communist that was not aligned with the Soviets. But France didn't want to give up their empire, and we needed their support in Europe, and they knew we did, and made sure they used to that to get our support in keeping their imperial possessions intact.
Could we have kept South Vietnam independent? Maybe. We needed a better regime though. Diem sucked, and we got rid of him (if half heartedly), but we didn't get anyone better in place. It was one crappy dictator to another, so it was understandable that the populace never really got behind them. We didn't understand Vietnam very well and did a very crappy job about winning the populace over. We could have won more over, knowing what we now know, but I don't know if it was realistic to expect us to to that well back then.
We certainly could've done a better job at cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trial and stopping NVA incursions and supply lines into South Vietnam. That might've done quite a bit to help. We should have been bombing the North the entire time. We were in a war, might as well act like it. Bombing campaigns in the north were generally half hearted and useless. Fllatten the damn place, then maybe we can get them to the bargaining table before they've got half the NVA sitting in South Vietnam already.
It wasn't really possible to win. I guess we could have technically. We could've bombed the hell out of the north, then followed up with a full on invasion, used some VERY skillfull diplomacy and threats of atom bombs to keep china out of it. That might've worked. But no one was going to support an escalation that large, even if it might (might) have lead to less deaths in the long run. And of course keeping China out of it would have been the diplomatic success of the century.
Ideally, we would've supported Ho Chi Minh early on, and gotten the French to leave Vietnam on their own. He would've been a commie, but we could've supplied him with aid and such early on and he might have become another Marshall Tito, a communist that was not aligned with the Soviets. But France didn't want to give up their empire, and we needed their support in Europe, and they knew we did, and made sure they used to that to get our support in keeping their imperial possessions intact.
Could we have kept South Vietnam independent? Maybe. We needed a better regime though. Diem sucked, and we got rid of him (if half heartedly), but we didn't get anyone better in place. It was one crappy dictator to another, so it was understandable that the populace never really got behind them. We didn't understand Vietnam very well and did a very crappy job about winning the populace over. We could have won more over, knowing what we now know, but I don't know if it was realistic to expect us to to that well back then.
We certainly could've done a better job at cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trial and stopping NVA incursions and supply lines into South Vietnam. That might've done quite a bit to help. We should have been bombing the North the entire time. We were in a war, might as well act like it. Bombing campaigns in the north were generally half hearted and useless. Fllatten the damn place, then maybe we can get them to the bargaining table before they've got half the NVA sitting in South Vietnam already.
- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,873
- 10,668
- 147
If you really want to know, read one of the following, it will lead you to the others:
Fire In The Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam by Francis Fitzgerald
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow
Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
They are all good. Fire in The Lake is especially brilliant and culturally incisive. Read A Bright Shining Lie for the story of one amazing American, John Paul Vann.
The two books that come closest, IMHO, to truly capturing what it was like to be a grunt over there are:
A Rumor of War by Phillip Caputo
Dispatches by Michael Herr
Cliff notes: The Vietnamese fought the French, the Japanese, then the French again, and then us for the right to rule their country. They fought like lions. It was their country, and they were never going to give up. They won.
From a review of A Rumor of War:
A platoon commander in the first combat unit sent to fight in Vietnam, Lieutenant Caputo landed at Danang on March 8, 1965, convinced that American forces would win a quick and decisive victory over the Communists. Sixteen months later and without ceremony, Caputo left Vietnam a shell-shocked veteran whose youthful idealism and faith in the rightness of the war had been utterly shattered.
<U>A Rumor of War</U> tells the story of that trajectory and allows us to see and feel the reality of the conflict as the author himself experienced it, from the weeks of tedium hacking through scorching jungles, to the sudden violence of ambushes and firefights, to the unbreakable bonds of friendship forged between soldiers, and finally to a sense of the war as having no purpose other than the fight for survival.
Most troubling, Caputo gives us an unflinching view not only of remarkable bravery and heroism but also of the atrocities committed in Vietnam by ordinary men so numbed by fear and desperate to survive that their moral distinctions had collapsed.
More than a statement against war, Caputo?s memoir offers readers today a profoundly visceral sense of what war is and, as the author says, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
The bottom line is, if you read just ONE of any of the books above, you will never again question whether we could have "won", or why we were destined to lose.
Vietnam was a tragedy for all concerned.
Fire In The Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam by Francis Fitzgerald
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow
Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
They are all good. Fire in The Lake is especially brilliant and culturally incisive. Read A Bright Shining Lie for the story of one amazing American, John Paul Vann.
The two books that come closest, IMHO, to truly capturing what it was like to be a grunt over there are:
A Rumor of War by Phillip Caputo
Dispatches by Michael Herr
Cliff notes: The Vietnamese fought the French, the Japanese, then the French again, and then us for the right to rule their country. They fought like lions. It was their country, and they were never going to give up. They won.
From a review of A Rumor of War:
A platoon commander in the first combat unit sent to fight in Vietnam, Lieutenant Caputo landed at Danang on March 8, 1965, convinced that American forces would win a quick and decisive victory over the Communists. Sixteen months later and without ceremony, Caputo left Vietnam a shell-shocked veteran whose youthful idealism and faith in the rightness of the war had been utterly shattered.
<U>A Rumor of War</U> tells the story of that trajectory and allows us to see and feel the reality of the conflict as the author himself experienced it, from the weeks of tedium hacking through scorching jungles, to the sudden violence of ambushes and firefights, to the unbreakable bonds of friendship forged between soldiers, and finally to a sense of the war as having no purpose other than the fight for survival.
Most troubling, Caputo gives us an unflinching view not only of remarkable bravery and heroism but also of the atrocities committed in Vietnam by ordinary men so numbed by fear and desperate to survive that their moral distinctions had collapsed.
More than a statement against war, Caputo?s memoir offers readers today a profoundly visceral sense of what war is and, as the author says, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
The bottom line is, if you read just ONE of any of the books above, you will never again question whether we could have "won", or why we were destined to lose.
Vietnam was a tragedy for all concerned.
The War was lost because of these factors:
1. Not enough troops sent at the beginning ( mission creep )
2. Dumb rules of engagement ( they would cross over borders and American troops couldn't follow, could only blowup half a bridge, bombing the same useless targets over and over agian. )
3. Tunnels ( Hard to bomb people living underground )
4. Guerilla warfare: It wasn't a conventional war, they used hit and run tactics, the millitary didn't adjust there plan fast enough.
5. Politics: LBJ wouldn't fully commit to victory !
1. Not enough troops sent at the beginning ( mission creep )
2. Dumb rules of engagement ( they would cross over borders and American troops couldn't follow, could only blowup half a bridge, bombing the same useless targets over and over agian. )
3. Tunnels ( Hard to bomb people living underground )
4. Guerilla warfare: It wasn't a conventional war, they used hit and run tactics, the millitary didn't adjust there plan fast enough.
5. Politics: LBJ wouldn't fully commit to victory !
Siddhartha
Lifer
- Oct 17, 1999
- 12,505
- 3
- 81
The doctrine at the time was that the US had to halt the spread of communism. And if Viet Nam went communist then it would start a domino effect and all of Asia would go communist.
The US got out of Viet Nam because the US citizens decided that this war was not worth the costs. Over 50,000 US citizens were killled in Viet Nam.
The US got out of Viet Nam because the US citizens decided that this war was not worth the costs. Over 50,000 US citizens were killled in Viet Nam.
Read Fire in the Lake.
Vietnam was a stupid blunder, like Iraq, like the Soviets in Afghanistan. You may win the war but you will never defeat the people.
-Robert
Vietnam was a stupid blunder, like Iraq, like the Soviets in Afghanistan. You may win the war but you will never defeat the people.
-Robert
While I agree with much of that, the tet offensive broke the back of the NV army. It was a political disaster for the US. The army lost the PR battle.
Night Crawler. LBJ wouldn't fuly commit to victory? Didn't you fail to mention Nixon who took over after LBJ and ran the war for almost 8 more years, lying to Congress along the way?
PingSpike
Lifer
- Feb 25, 2004
- 21,758
- 603
- 126
Because they weren't going to surrender. Like some one above said, despite being outmatched, the NV were fighting for their homeland with nowhere else to go. They were willing to suffer huge losses and keep coming, whereas most US troops probably just wanted to not die out there.
And the people weren't behind the effort either.
I always thought it was like the Korean war, except no one had the foresight to just draw a line in the sand, cut your losses and get out of there like in the Korean war. Instead, there was subborn insistance on winning the war. The only way to win it, would have been a scorched earth policy over all of North Vietnam. Wipe out everything up there, all the trees they were hiding in.
But I don't know a lot about the vietnam war, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
And the people weren't behind the effort either.
I always thought it was like the Korean war, except no one had the foresight to just draw a line in the sand, cut your losses and get out of there like in the Korean war. Instead, there was subborn insistance on winning the war. The only way to win it, would have been a scorched earth policy over all of North Vietnam. Wipe out everything up there, all the trees they were hiding in.
But I don't know a lot about the vietnam war, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
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