The Untold Real Reason We Lost Vietnam

[SoDesuKa]

Of all the reasons we lost the Vietnam war, the one that's never mentioned is that we were simply out-soldiered. The Viet Cong had no natural superiority in any aspect of the war, but we could not match them in such essential soldierly virtues as discipline and morale. We lost the war because they simply beat us.

If Americans had had the character to acknowledge our limitations, we might have avoided getting bogged down in another deadly quagmire, this time in the Middle East. But instead of learning from Vietnam, we repeated the same mistake. Simple sportsmanship should have compelled us to admit that our defeat in Vietnam was not a fluke. The Viet Cong didn't just "get lucky" - they learned from every defeat, and came back at us with renewed intensity.

Some say we should double the number of boots on the ground in Iraq, but escalation didn't solve the problem in Vietnam. Instead of slogging on at a cost of a billion dollars a week - to say nothing of the cost in human lives - let's get honest. We lost Vietnam because the other side fielded a better team. We took our best shot, and it wasn't enough to win.

[zalinda]

1. No, we lost because we weren't fighting for our

survival. When you are fighting for your very survival, you fight harder, unless you are so overwhelmed that you can't. Our people are basically just trying to stay alive, they are fighting for their very lives. That's the real difference, doesn't matter if it's Vietnam or Iraq.

zalinda

[oscar111]

2. We just lost hearts and minds of Iraq by not rebuilding it

Water, sewer, electricity, hospitals not rebuilt.

tons of explosives not secured, so stolen and now being used on us.

massive joblessness... eighty percent quote a few months ago for part of Baghdad.

{Nam was never built up either}

Bush cant govern well because he is blind to human needs ... suffering results...
final result: hearts and minds LOST.

Time to rebuild Iraq or leave.

rebuilding includes total employment, something bush will never do for philosophical reasons.

Iraq needs good government. Do they have something like us dems over there?

[SoDesuKa]

3. Fire the Coach

A coach who keeps losing football games because he won't address essential weaknesses in the team should expect to be fired. Our military is simply unprepared to face highly motivated opposition. We lost Vietnam - and we are losing Iraq - because the quality of soldiering is inferior. Our enemies have discipline and morale, and we don't.

[UdoKier]

4. We lost because we had no damn business being there.

Same as Iraq. People generally don't like being occupied and bossed around by foreigners. It may take years or decades, but unless you kill every last native, they eventually throw the invaders out.

The greatest failures were Eisenhower's inability to have some faith in Vietnam's self-determination, and let them have the elections they were promised, and LBJ's stepping up our involvement when he should have cut the south's corrupt government loose.

Ho Chi Minh didn't start out antagonistic to the US, we made him that way. The good relations we have with that same regime are proof that none of it was necessary, but our corporations had to have their slice of the pie. That's what you get when your government is by corporate fiat.

[understandinglife]

6. Correct. And, if folk had listened to Bernard Fall, the entire catastrophe

.... would have been avoided.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4173.htm


WE THE PEOPLE .... WILL NEVER FORGET

"... we sent our young people into harm's way without leveling with the American people." - Congresswoman Pelosi before Congress, 16 June 2005

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - Impeachment of Bush and Cheney; indictment and prosecution of all members of the Bush regime who participated in the deception, should be campaign promises of any candidate worthy of our vote in the 2006 Congressional elections.

[nguoihue]

5. Why we lost

To sum it up: Ignorance and Arrogance

[rooboy]

7. I wouldn't say it was an "untold" reason.

I remember reading a book on Vietnam from the Australian govt perspective, and it was clear to the Australian leadership that the Vietnamese were prepared to fight for a thousand years if that was what it took.

They didn't field a better team necessarily, but they fielded a numerically bigger and more committed one.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. It wasn't that they had better soldiers

Time was on their side......along with plenty of help from the Soviet Union and Red China. The only way to WIN a war against Vietnam or Iraq is to totally obliterate the country, leave, and declare yourself the winner. Kinda'like we did in the Gulf War. Now look what we've got on our hands. We created more problems than we solved. But then, the oil companies and defense contractors who sleep with the Bushits are laughing all the way to the bank, and that's the goal of most American wars the last 60 years.