question about Vietnam

[steve2470]

I've always heard the RW meme that Vietnam could have been won. Not being a vet or military expert, I've always doubted that meme. Could that war have been won without nuclear weapons or massive carpet bombing ? BTW, I honor all of you Vietnam vets :hi:

[H2O Man]

1. No.

We were on the wrong side of history. It could have been more violent, but short of WMD -- which would have had consequences with the USSR and China -- the USA could not have "won."

[acmejack]

2. Not without killing all the Vietnamese

which seems counterproductive.

[Eloriel]

96. Exactly. You don't win a guerrila war without committing genocide,

just as we Europeans did when we came here to Turtle Island. THAT's the way you win when the people you've invaded rise up and try to make life miserable for you.

Got the stomach for that?

And btw, I probably have the link buried somewhere, but MILITARY HISTORY (history, got it? not just theory, history) shows us that.

[Yupster]

103. An interesting topic to me

on the Vietnam War is the year 1974.

We had pulled out our last combat troops in 1973 so the defense of South Vietnam was given entirely to the ARVN forces though we still had airpower to call upon.

In the Spring of 1974, the North Vietnamese crossed the border in a major offensive overrunning some important towns and cities of Northern South Vietnam and threatening to roll up the entire country.

Some of the South Vietnamese units broke under the offensive.

This was the test of Vietnamization.

Then a surprising thing happened.

The South Vietnamese reinforced their defenses with some of their better units, and they launched a counterattack. They retook all the land that had been lost and inflicted a severe defeat on the North Vietnamese forces.

A year later in 1975, the North Vietnamese again attacked once the rainy season ended, and this time the South Vietnamese armed forces completely melted away and the country fell.

My question is though ... what happened in 1974?

What did that year mean?

In 1975, the South Vietnamese army had its funding cut off by the US Congress. In a strategic move to conserve their resources, they evacuated the Central Highlands before the North Vietnamese began their offensive and the retreat turned into a rout.

So what are we to make of 1974?

Most people just ignore it, but to me it's the most interesting year of the war.

I've heard there are quite a few books due out soon about service in the South Vietnamese Army. I think these are long overdue, and may shed a lot of light onto the war from another overlooked direction.

Anyone who was there in a position to know at the time, I'd like to hear your opinions.

[SHRED]

3. No

Pictures of the real Vietnam vets:

[unhappycamper]

4. The only way we could have won that war was to kill

every Vietnamese in the world and everyone who was sympathetic to them. The lessons I personally learned in that war:

• Don't get involved in a civil war.
  
• It ain't fun getting shot at.
  
• Don't allow your government to lie to you.
  

RVN, class of 67~68, 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Chu Lai
RVN, class of 70~71, 25th Infantry Division, Cu Chi

[liberalmike27]

5. Hmmm,

Propaganda. No one wins a war with nuclear weapons, it is likely to have spurred an all out nuclear war with either the Soviets, perhaps China (not sure if they had them). As far as conventional war, China was assisting them.

What do you think, we were in Vietnam for 15 years. Don't you think we'd have won it by then if we could've? We created the war anyway. Look at how well they've advanced since the French and us left. We did nothing but delay their progress, which is what most Imperialism and militarism does to a country.

There is some question as to whether LBJ wanted to win the war. He was the owner (or Ladybird, his wife) of Bell Helicopter, so at least part of it. His friends whose pockets he had raided all his life were profiting deeply from this war too, then Brown and Root, and other military contractors, as well as oil interests. War uses a lot of oil. There is a stunning similarity to Johnson and Bush, in that they have many of the same contributors. Brown and Root is now Kellogg, Brown, and Root, which is a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Two dynamics exist now in Iraq, and pretty much in Vietnam. The defense department makes big money, or as we used to call it, the Military Industrial Complex, much of it in Texas. The other is energy security, which is why we are in Iraq.

The U.S. strategy is to establish bases all over, and some say Vietnam was just another U.S. base in Asia. We have about 950 bases now, outside of America, and of course add the ones here.

[GCP]

6. One word answer? No

The Viet Cong were determined and they had the people in the countryside on their side - maybe the city dwellers were against them, but the farmers were getting more and more pissed off by the US destroying their villages and indiscriminantly napalming and agent-orangeing the land.
The US soldiers themselves were mostly unenthusiastic and hostile to the whole idea of being there, they wanted to get their year done and out, whereas the VC were prepared to fight forever.

[liberalmike27]

7. Well

I don't know if it is all volunteer army, or that the soldier-mind-control techniques have improved, or that there hasn't been enough time yet, but the soldiers seem far more compliant than they were in Vietnam.

Personally, I attribute it to a lifetime of media-mind-control, which I'm sure will get a laugh, but I think a lot of you are coming around to my way of thinking on that. When you look at the way they've been involved in pushing us to choose their candidates, or more specifically in destroying certain candidates that actually might have cared about our country and done a good job (Dean, McCain perhaps)it certainly looks more plausable.

What if everything you've ever heard is a lie, or more specifically what if you thought about it, and disagreed?

[karynnj]

34. I agree the media hurt Dean, but it worships at McCain's feet

He was a media darling in 2000 and is now. He is a moderate on a few issues and has split with his party there. His reputation goes far beyond reality. Dean was first built up by the media then viciously destroyed. Kerry actually won Iowa before the media saw he was gaining any steam. Throughout his career, he has been ridiculed or ignored by the media.

At the same time McCain was caught as one of the Keating 5 in the Savings & Loan scandal costing Americans millions, Kerry was risking his political future to fight to close BCCI, even though elite Democrats were involved. If the media or the Democratic party had supported Kerry instead of fighting him, the terrorist money flows could have been greatly reduced starting in the early 1990s. (Not to mention if MSM would have praised Kerry earlier when he found that the government was turning a blind eye to Contra Cocaine running, the inner cities would have been much better off in the late 80s. Instead, Newsweek called him a randy conspiracy nut.)

[jody]

8. Yes, it could have been won without nukes if the politicians had not

been making strategic and tactical decisions. That failure resulted in appointments to chiefs of staff of the respective services that were mere puppets for Johnson, Nixon, and their staff.

Even though the U.S. withdrew, its action in Vietnam stopped Russia's and China's efforts to expand their particular totalitarian form of socialism into the Pacific rim.

[H2O Man]

9. Respectfully

the war in Vietnam was not a Soviet or Chinese effort to expand their "particular totalitarian form of socialism into the Pacific rim." That reflects a lack of insight into what occured in Vietnam.

[jody]

12. I believe my insight is adequate. Russia and China both supported

North Vietnam because they thought it would give them a base for expansion. Neither Russia nor China gave billions of dollars worth of supplies to Vietnam out of the goodness of their hearts. Turns out that Ho Chi Minh had his own agenda and rebuffed China after the U.S. left.

On other fronts, Russia's economy was in serious trouble after the 1960's and China was just coming out of its internal conflict over a harsh form of communism. Those factors and many more led to changes in Russia's and China's governments.

Bottom line is the U.S. war in Vietnam, on the international scale was about the expansion of Russia and China.

[MadHound]

20. You're missing some important details, and missing some nuances

Yes, Russia was supplying Vietnam in order to expand its SE Asian influence. However China was backing the Vietnamese because it had always considered Vietnam, and other SE Asian countries to be part of its buffer zone, and also its own personal backyard to exploit.

Thus, if we had really become serious about winning the Vietnam war, we would have seen a much more massive Chinese presence in 'Nam, and we would not have won the war, unless we were willing to risk a global nuclear conflict.

And Uncle Ho was dead long before the Vietnam War ended. He died in 1969. And the main reason that relations chilled between China and Vietnam was due to Russia's attempted expansion into SE Asia, and the subsequent China/Vietnam one month war. That conflict chilled matters drastically between the two countries until 1991, when trade agreements were signed, and relations were normalized.

The Vietnamese war was never a winnable one, not unless we were willing to spark off an international conflict. The French realized this, and warned American commanders before they withdrew, but alas, we were foolish enough to press ahead with an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war.

[jody]

36. Still the war was winnable. n/t

[MadHound]

48. Unless you consider killing all life, and salting the earch winning,

Then Vietnam was unwinnable. To "win" that war we would have had to engage in massive carpet bombing, and that would have certainly involved China in a much larger role. Historically, and to this day, China always has responded to a threat to one of its buffer zone neighbors by providing them with arms and aid. If the threat isn't taken care of, then they start sending in their own troops. That could very well have involved us in a world wide confligration that we probably would have wound up losing, since the Soviets, even though they despise China, would have sided with China, you know, the enemy of my enemy. . . It would have ended with nukes being tossed around at some point, and we all would have lost.

So let's see here, Vietnam was an impossible location for your traditional set piece battles, like during WWI and WWII. That took away a huge American advantage. Thus, we were reduced to fighting hit and run conflicts, with guerilla fighters, in terrain that favors the home team. We were losing, and we quite frankly couldn't have won that type of war without resorting to large scale bombing. Our ability to fight against an insurgency, guerilla style army was no better then than it is now, in fact it was worse.

So no guerilla war win, no massive bombing for fear of the consequences, no set piece battles like WWII due to a terrain that favored Vietnam, what's left? Losing, plain and simple.

so tell me, how, exactly would we have won that war?

I would suggest that you go find the book Fire in the Lake, by Frances Fitzgerald. It is a very thoughtful analysis of America's involvment in Vietnam, and lays out exactly the case for how that war was unwinnable for the Americans.

Vietnam was another illegal, immoral war that we shouldn't have gotten involved in. But alas, the military industrial needed some more blood money, and this was the only major conflict going on at the time, thus we had to jump right in. Never mind that the French, who were there for decades were warning us not to go. There was money to be made for the view, thus, off to war we went. Sad, quite sad.

[jody]

52. As you acknowledge, the war was winnable. n/t

[MadHound]

56. So, are you saying that we should have started WWIII,

In order to "win" the Vietnam war. Sorry pal, but not even the most hawkish of our leaders at the time were willing to do that, and for a good reason. WWIII would have been a MAD war, you know, mutually assured destruction. Sorry, but that isn't a win friend, that is a needless unmitigated disaster. Are you really advocating that? If so, I'm glad that you weren't in any position to make war policy at the time.

[jody]

57. Your comments are very funny. The original question was "Could

we have won the Vietnam war without nukes or carpet bombing"? The answer is YES.

If you don't agree, then let's just leave it at that because I don't have time to educate you on military strategy, tactics, operations, and logistics.

Have a nice day. :hi:

[MadHound]

60. LOL friend,

You come in here saying that YES we could have, and then stating that I need an education in military strategy, tactics, etc. LOL friend, LOL. How many war games have you played, and I don't mean those games that come in a box, but the real thing? How much military strategy, both modern and historical have you studied? Quick question for you then, how come the French lost in WWII?

Save your time friend, I don't need your "education". I have laid out the case for why we couldn't win in Vietnam, c'mon, let's see your case for why we could have. Or after dealing out one or two sentence replies all day, are you all out of answers?

[jody]

61. I've played many war games, directed many, designed some

that are still used in military professional schools, and studied several thousand more.

Goodbye :hi:

[MadHound]

64. So then, if you've got all of this experience and expertise,

Enlighten us, please. Anybody can say that we could have won Vietnam, but it is another thing entirely to prove it. I'm sorry if I'm sounding skeptical, but I am. The high commanders of two countries, and many other expert military minds from around the world determined long ago that we couldn't win Vietnam without resorting to either nukes or carpet bombing, I'm interested in hearing your scenario that shows we could have won.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

80. because you've played war games?!

:rofl:

fuck that would make me Rambo

[jody]

86. Sorry but I was responding to a question by MadHound who asked "How many

war games have you played, and I don't mean those games that come in a box, but the real thing?"

Glad you had a laugh and so did I over MadHound's question because it had no relevance to the discussion.

Glad you decided to join in the fun.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

93. oh REAL war games

oh, excuse me. :eyes:

[jody]

94. No sweat GI, I had a nice chuckle over the exchange. n/t

[Just Me]

85. Define "win". What precisely is a "win" to you?

:hi:

[jody]

90. Interesting question but rather than hijack the thread, I defer

to steve2470 who started the question by asking could we have won in Vietnam without nukes or carpet bombing.

I will say that one version of winning a war is for the victor to be able to impose his/her will on the vanquished.

[Just Me]

99. Funny, you,...accusing me of hijacking this thread.

:rofl:

If winning is about imposing your will,...you are not a winner, in my book 'cause I happen to believe people have value.

Thank you, though, for exposing what "winning" is to you. I'll always keep you and your position in mind. :hi:

[jody]

101. Good for you and may we share a foxhole together someday. n/t

[H2O Man]

28. Actually, your "insight"

is a wonderful example of how people can entirely miss the boat. You speak of the Vietnam War only in terms of the USA, USSR, and China. I would remind you that it involved a country called Vietnam. And, in fact, it began long before any of the concerns that you list. Of course, to have insight on this would require not only an awareness of Vietnam being a participant in that war .... but also Vietnam's history.

In fact, the historic regions of Tonkin (north), Annam (central), and Cochin (south) had been established as a distinct nation by 200 bc. From the 111 bc invasion by China to the US aggression in the late 1950s through the '70s, the Vietnamese fought outside aggression.

It is interesting to note that Ho Chi Minh was a man of history, being educated in Paris for seven years and later in Moscow. His studies ranged from the US-Indian wars to Marxism.However, his primary concern was his own country -- he was in every sense a nationalist. One of Ho's favorite sayings, "Although we have been at times strong/ at times weak/ we have at no time lacked heroes," was actually a quote from the 15th century poet Nguyen Trai.

Trai had joined forces with guerrilla leader Le Loi in a nine year campaign against Mongol invaders. Loi himself was a writer, and Ho also was fond of quoting him: "Our people long ago established Vietnam as an independent nation with its own civilization. We have our own mountains and rivers, our own customs and traditions..."

It was, in fact, the American inability to grasp the fact that the war was all about Vietnam, not about the French, the USA, the USSR, or China, that doomed America to certain defeat. Your "insight" illustrates that very well indeed.

[jody]

37. Still the war was winnable. n/t

[H2O Man]

49. In a few people's imagination.

But not in reality.

[jody]

51. In the minds of many military experts, the war was winnable. It is also

clear that a determined small group of patriots/rebels/insurgents/guerrillas/terrorists could have continued opposition for decades as has happened in many other countries around the world.

The latter prospect should worry any well funded political group such as the neocons who try to tighten their grip on our government.

That's also why the Second Amendment is important to many and adds power to Abraham Lincoln's statement "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Have a nice day. :hi:

[H2O Man]

62. In their minds, it was.

In Vietnam, it certainly wasn't. And that doesn't have a dang thing to do with old Honest Abe. It's just the harsh cold reality of a war that we were on the wrong side in. If we had remained on good terms with Ho, as we were when he was our friend during WW2, we would have been fine. Instead, the country fell victim to the ignorance of those who couldn't grasp the simply fact that Vietnam was Vietnam, not a projection of Uncle Sam's demons .... that and the unfulfilled fantasies of crusty old men who, like Ronald Reagan, made a tiny circle with a finger and thumb and said, "Vietnam is only this big. It can't present the US with any serious problem."

[jody]

65. Was Ronald Reagan a key political figure in the Vietnam war?

What did he do?

[H2O Man]

66. Not familiar with the quote, eh?

Not surprising.

[jody]

69. Was Ronald Reagan a key political figure in the Vietnam war?

[H2O Man]

71. You are being silly.

Not funny, mind you. But silly.

[jody]

74. Are you unable to answer my question, "What role did Reagan play

in the Vietnam war?"

He clearly was not part of either Kennedy's or Johnson's administration. I'm not aware of any political appointment he had in Nixon's administration.

So what influence did Reagan have on the U.S. role in the Vietnam war?

[H2O Man]

75. Are you unable to comprehend what I wrote?

You are the only one questioning Reagan's role. I'd suggest you read any history book regarding that era to clear up any confusion you have. Maybe then you can respond to my comment about Reagan in a rational way.

[jody]

79. Are you unable to answer my question? n/t

[H2O Man]

81. You don't have one.

You are making a sad attempt to twist the discussion.

[jody]

87. I must assume you are unable to answer the question prompted

by your assertion.

Goodbye :hi:

[Just Me]

89. And YOU can't handle defining what "winning" means to you.

YOU refuse to define what "winning" a war costs in human lives and treasure. YOU refuse to acknowledge who profits from war. Why?

[jody]

92. You are being silly, I answered your question in #90. n/t

[H2O Man]

95. My assertion

was based on the history of the actual war, not the fantasy of someone who pretends they hold the key to a US victory in a war that was lost decades ago. Don't kid yourself. Any time you want to have a serious discussion, let me know.

[jody]

97. I've been having serious discussions for over 30 years. I doubt if

you have anything of value to offer.

[H2O Man]

98. You are really silly now.

Perhaps you engage in serious discussions elsewhere. On this thread, you have not.

[jody]

100. You are correct, my discussions on the topic were elsewhere and

using data not available to the general public.

I've monitored many DU threads on the issue and they are full of idealism offset by ignorance. The Vietnam war topic is incredibly complex and speculation on what could have been is just that -- speculation.

Given the many deaths that occurred on both sides in Vietnam including my comrades, I wish we could find a better way to resolve differences than war.

Still, a soldiers job is to obey orders, that's the intent of a military that is subservient to civilian orders but I wish the People's representatives would do a better job before they send kids off to wars like Iraq.

[H2O Man]

104. No argument there.

Even before LBJ increased the number of troops in Vietnam, there were a few brave men who spoke out against the US role. They included CIA Director McCone. (In 1954, Army Chief of Staff Ridgway had also opposed the plans of those advocating US intervention as a response to Dien Bien Phu.) However, they were ignored by men like McNamara.

I suspect that most DUers, like myself, recognize that the errors in Vietnam were not committed by the soldiers. Many of us lost family or friends, and the deaths that resulted from the insanity in our policy were not restricted to Southeast Asia. Being opposed to US policy in Vietnam or Iraq can not be considered being anti-military.

More, no matter what position one held (or holds), it doesn't lend authority to the claim that the Vietnam war was a US vs USSR/China conflict. That reminds me of J Edgar Hoover's belief that the Civil Rights movement was a creation of communists .... as if blacks were unabled to have beliefs and capabilities. The Vietnamese did, too.

[jody]

106. RE "Vietnam war was a US vs USSR/China conflict" sorry but

conventional wisdom in the 1960s as part of the Cold War strategy is that we must stop the threat of communism meaning Russia/China.

All the professional military schools for company grade, field grade, and senior officers included various courses or parts of courses on the expansion of communism in the Pacific. The initial guerrilla activity in South Vietnam was taught as a communist movement and later when North Vietnam became involved with Russian/Chinese support it was viewed as a major communist threat.

That's the way things were and with hindsight we now know that all Ho Chi Minh wanted was for foreigners to leave his country. :shrug:

[H2O Man]

108. "Conventional wisdom"

wasn't very wise at the time. It is important to understand how many Americans viewed it at the time. However, considering that they were wrong in many ways, it is important that we understand the differences between what people in Washington DC believed, and what really occured .... otherwise, it is less likely that we will learn from past mistakes.

There is a wonderful book caled "Vietnam: A History in Documents." (I do not have my copy handy, as I loaned it to a friend.) It is clear that mny people knew what Ho had identified as his goals. A strong case could be made that had FDR lived -- or his basic policies on Vietnam been continued -- the war as we know it would not have occured in anywhere near the way it did. Truman was a less-gifted man, who lacked the insight or appreciation for the abilities of non-white folks.

In the early post-WW2 era, the number of "communists" among the Vietnamese leadership was relatively small. While the country was not headed towards a market economy that looked just like ours, there was a window of opportunity for the US to have supported the nationalistic tendencies there.

It's an interesting topic, worthy of serious discussion. I lived outside a hamlet of less than 500 in upstate NY that lost 7 sons in the war in a short span. In the same years (plus a couple following), another 8 young men died in DWI accidents. My sons' second cousin found out his brother died, and committed suicide; a year to the day later, their father hung himself.

In Iraq, a kid who went to school with my son, and who camped out with the scout troop with him, was killed. His young wife told my son the biggest piece of his body they found to bury was a hand. I do not think that any of these people should have died in the way they did.

[jody]

109. "'Conventional wisdom' wasn't very wise at the time." I agree.

You are discussing what should have been and I was pointing out from experience what happened. Hopefully we can learn from our past mistakes.

God bless and have a wonderful evening. :hi:

[Just Me]

88. jody, you refuse to expose what you define as a "win" by distracting,...

,...with innocuous distractions.

What IS "winning" to you? What is it? What? For what purpose and whose benefit?

War is not a freakin' game. If you want to WIN at war, I surely do hope you can define what it is you and all the people who are sacrificed are gaining.

[jody]

91. I answered your question in #90 n/t

[wuushew]

73. The Gipper is full of such remarks

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan, 1965

[SlavesandBulldozers]

82. in their minds it was

it Vietnam, it certainly wasn't.

great response.

[Chef]

11. No

ah, stopped what? Who won? Perhaps we were told we were stopping the spread of world communist domination or whatever. That was the mistake and a lie. We were actually fighting against a group who were intent on national liberation and had been for decades. We could have bombed those people to dust and when we got done the last one of them would have crawled out of some cave and started all over again. This idea that somehow if we just let the military do their thing, we would have won is just plain wrong and a myth.

RVN, 198 Light Infantry Bde, 1/14 Field Artillery, 1969-1970

[jody]

13. The question was could the U.S. have won without nukes and the

answer is "YES".

My answer has nothing to do with should we have won. It is clear to any student of military history that North Vietnam could not have survived without logistic support from Russia and China and that support was given at no cost to North Vietnam, its economy was in shambles.

Given the necessity and essential nature of Russian and Chinese support, one can then ask why would those countries give so much aid?

I suggest you consider that question.

[Toots]

15. Why did our failure there stop communist expansion?

Why did they not move immediately into Malaysia and Cambodia and Laos and Thailand and ???? They saw we could not stop their expansion so how did our pull out from Vietnam stop the expansion that was imminent? I find the statement that our loss was also their loss to be a bit of wishful thinking and not based in reality.

[Igel]

29. You're so right.

Malaysia didn't fall to the "Commies."

Neither did Thailand.

Neither did Cambodia ... uh ...

But most certainly Laos didn't ... uh ... ummmm ...

where's my coffee?

[jody]

38. See #12 above. n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. Did you ever stop to think that the old Soviet Union and China aided....

...North Vietnam in an effort to stop US expansion in that part of the world? If we had beaten North Vietnam, we would have gained a strategic foothold in Southeast Asia. Who knows where the US would have stopped...Cambodia? Laos?

We were fighting in THEIR backyard, not ours.

Maybe you should stop seeing things through red, white and blue glasses.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. The domino theory is total nonsense

Look at Thailand. There were several attempts at a Communist insurgency in Thailand during the Cold War period, but none of them ever succeeded. Why not?

The answer is that most people in Thailand were okay with their government. The king was popular, and the government was not particularly repressive. Also, since Thailand had never been colonized, there was no "colonial oppressor" to serve as bad guy for the insurgents, unlike the former French colonies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

(Even the Khmer Rouge didn't have much clout until the U.S. fomented the coup that overthew Prince Sihanouk, installed General Lon Nol, and started bombing the border regions of Cambodia and pursuing the Viet Cong across the border.)

Malaya (not yet united with the Borneo colonies to form Malaysia) was still a British colony when it had its experience with Communist guerillas. The insurgency was successfully suppressed--in a country that is smaller, more urbanized than Vietnam and has no dominant ethnic group. (The insurgents were largely ethnic Chinese, and they are outnumbered by the combined populations of the Malays and south Indians).

[jody]

40. We interpret the facts differently. n/t

[jody]

39. The question was could we have won the war. The answer is YES! n/t

[liberalmike27]

14. Propaganda is running Rampant

Certainly part of the current media lie being promoted by Rove and their establishment media is that the war could've been won, and that it was all those dirty lib'ruls fault that we lost. It's all part of their control over you mind, and I see it is working for some here.

Communism,WMD's, Saving victims, it's one thing or the other. The main thing is they need a reason to get the American-mass-mind into the show, once in they'll keep it going for as long as they can.

You really have to understand the direct link to profit war is, it's like tapping directly into a vein of tax-payer money, and siphoning it off directly into accounts of the wealthy interests who own the company, or massive stock. When there is a bank, someone will be robbing it. There is no better bank to rob that the Congressional vault of tax money.

I think people, even people on the left seem unwilling to connect the dots of profit. What is sad is, if we were willing and smart, we could be investing this money in renewable energy, clean air and water, or helping countries like those in Africa and making lifetime friends. This would, of course, help the economy in the same ways, but it doesn't directly pay back owners of the Carlyle Group, or Texas companies like Halliburton. Our media has really fell short on that coverage, like much else they "don't" do.

[Just Me]

19. Violent, ruthless exploitation of people for profit.

War is a damn outrage. The only winners are the profiteers who spend the blood and treasure of their own people in addition to those they target as "enemies".

[jody]

41. I dislike Rove more than you but the war was still winnable. n/t

[Just Me]

70. WHAT IS A "WIN"? TOTAL DESTRUCTION AND CONTROL?!?!?!

:grr: What THE FUCK does "winning" mean to you? DAMN!!!!

NO war is a "win" without acknowledging the beneficiaries, without acknowledging the LIFE sacrificed for those beneficiaries.

Do you really want to advocate that a "win" means the exploitation of humanity to profit a few greedy, power-mongering assholes? I just can't imagine that.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Anyone for a little revisionist history? America couldn't have won.

Resurrecting the domino theory and the crappola about the military having it's "hands tied" by politicians is nonsense.

America intervened in Vietnam so that LBJ could burnish his "anti-Communist" credentials. Just as Bush, Rummy, Cheney, thought that invading a 3rd world country with no army would be a waltz like Grenada was, so the geniuses in LBJ's White House thought that taking on a bunch of "Yellow dwarves with switchblades" (as LBJ called them), would be a lark.

In both cases, Vietnam & Iraq, they were woefully wrong.

"Taking on Communism" is akin to "Spreading Democracy". Pure bullshit.
The American military got it's ass kicked in Vietnam because the Vietnamese realized that war is more than body counts and bomb tonnage.
The same is happening in Iraq.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. I would add that you have to go back to Ike's decision to send....

...combat "advisors" to Vietnam in 1954, an act that allowed the hawks to pressure JFK into adding even more troops until he became convinced that a war in Vietnam was unwinnable.

JFK's NSAM 263, signed on October 12, 1963, authorized the withdrawal of the first 1000 US troops from Vietnam. JFK's plan called for the complete withdrawal from Vietnam by Christmas of 1965.

LBJ's NSAM 273, signed on November 26, 1963, just four days after JFK's assassination, promised to provide any and all support to South Vietnam. The rest, as they say, is history.

Just as the current NeoCons ignored the history of the Middle East, particularly in regards to the eventual fate of invaders, so too did the rightwingers of the 1960s ignore the lesson of the Vietnamese defeat of the French in 1954.

[jody]

42. Perhaps you should read more Vietnam history. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

44. I have read a lot. And, a lot of the history of imperialism.

Your thesis that the American Military could have won is not upheld by the simple fact that the Vietnamese kicked their asses. The "help" given by the Soviet Union and China pales beside the overwhelming "assistance" provided by the United States in trying to crush a people's revolution.

Also, your assertion that China and the Soviet Union had designs on SE Asia is also obviously defective. You're reading monolithic Communism into indigenous peoples' attempts to throw off colonialism. Much the same as the geniuses in the CIA saw every aspiration for freedom anywhere on the globe as a "communist threat". Need I list the countries that were subverted by this country in the name of "fighting communism"?

And, much the same as the current occupants infesting the White House and congress is justifying it's use of brute force to "fight terrorism" in Iraq.

[jody]

46. I see we interpret the facts differently.

Have a nice day. :hi:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

47. Revisionist history is not "facts".

You say that America could have "won" the war if the military hadn't been subverted by the politicians. In fact, the politicians backed the military for most of the war.

The military had, by their own admission, overwhelming advantages in every area, soldiers, materiel, weaponry, money, than the VC and NVA could even dream of.

You say that the war was fought to stop the spread of "tyrannical socialism" and was successful in doing so. Yet, you offer no evidence that "tyrannical socialism" was being "spread" by anyone. Your allusion to it being "successful" is a non-sequitur. There was no validity to the domino theory so saying that it was successful is like someone saying that he stopped getting the plague by removing his toenails, the "evidence" being that he didn't get the plague.

Further, if America had "succeeded" in quashing the rebellion and installing a puppet government in a hostile nation, what would have been "won"?

[jody]

54. Senior military commanders in Vietnam were not allowed to

conduct the war on military terms. Johnson and McNamara made to many strategic and tactical decision including targeting.

Winning a war is one thing, what the winner does with the newly won country is another.

[wuushew]

55. Do you believe those targeting limitations to be in error?

Macarthur's zeal to kill commies extended what was successfully concluded operation into a three year long meat grinder that killed 53,000 Americans in Korea.

If we escalated the conflict the allies of the North would of as well. Unfortunately for us we would have been at a disadvantage in terms of casualties and lost our ability to sustain such an operation.

Please remember also that the South was a corrupt and hopeless state that had substantial internal opposition to its government. Were we also going to save South Vietnam from itself by destroying it?

[jody]

59. The question was "could we have won the Vietnam war without

nukes and carpet bombing"?

It is a fact that Johnson and McNamara were making targeting decisions based on political goals which were stupid from a military perspective.

Case in point, DoD made a list of the top 100 targets in North Vietnam and ranked them in priority. Targets were then chosen starting with the lowest priority in expectation that gradual escalation would bring them to the negotiating table. That goal was a political strategy, not a military strategy.

There are hundreds of similar political mistakes like that which cost U.S. lives.

Note that I am pointing out issues with directing a war and not whether we should have fought the war.

[kentuck]

22. I could have won the war by myself with a truckload of TVs...

The Vietnamese did not look at the Americans as "devils", unlike many in the Middle East.

[ieoeja]

72. Incorrect. The Army and Air Force made those decisions.

The Army and Air Force disagreed with the Navy/Marines on the strategy that should be used. The only strategic decision made by LBJ was to give the Army carte blanche and occasionally let the Air Force try their thing.

In my opinion the Navy/Marines had it right. Police the populated areas and stay out of the jungle. 90% of the South Vietnamese population lived in 10% of the country. Going into the jungle just gave the rebels a chance to carry off the occasional successful ambush which heartened him to carry on the fight. Stay out of the jungle and let him rot.

[jody]

83. Sorry but Johnson and McNamara dominated the strategy. There

have been many books written on the topic but among the best documented is McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty".

USAF and Army chiefs were guilty of dereliction but the truly sad thing is the Marine Corps Commandant played political games to the detriment of the Corps.

[Squatch]

10. Yes. Within the first couple of years

If the war was fought like a war and not a political action.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[KharmaTrain]

17. Curtis LeMay...We'll Nuke It Into A Parking Lot

There's a couple of RW memes about Vietnam...depends on who you run into and how bad they need to revise history to prove a conveluted "point".

IMHO, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War in 1956 when it couldn't play honest broker and conduct legitmate elections...as they knew Ho Chi Minh would win overwhelmingly. This should have indicated the will of these people, but we had to find out first-hand and 50,000+ names on a wall and hundreds of thousands of other veterans (who I always tip my hat to) were put in a no-win situation.

It's one thing to "win" a war through military might. History is litered with great military campaigns...from Napoleon to the Soviets in Afghanistan where they came in with overwhelming military force only to be bled dry by the determination of the occupied.

The Vietnamese viewed us as occupiers and foreigners. We didn't belong there...and just like in this invasion, we tell these people we don't want to stay there...but in the meantime we trash their house. Over time the cost and blood adds up. The same will happen in Iraq. I just hope it's nowhere near what happened in Vietnam.

BTW...I heard some goofy lady this morning trying to justify that since we lost 550,000 in WWII fighting "the Japanese who attacked us" (she forgot Germany...LOL) and that meant 120,000 a year, Iraq is a cakewalk. Sheesh...the lengths of illogic of these people.

Cheers

[nguoihue]

23. No

Before the Americans arrived the Viets had fought for their independence against the French colonial regime for nearly 100 years and had fought Chinese invaders for over a thousand years. The Americans lasted about 20 years before giving up. We knew next to nothing of their history and their culture and seemed to have no interest in learning, after all we were Americans and we thought we could do anything.

A line of dictators beginning with Ngo Dinh Diem and ending with General Nguyen Van Thieu ruled South Viet Nam. We were told we were fighting for freedom and democracy in S. Viet Nam but there never was freedom and democracy. The Ngo family and the generals who followed after Diem's assasination were only interested in maintaining power and accumulating wealth.

As a result of the Tet Offensive in 1968, a mere 2 months after Gen Westmoreland told the US Congress that we had reached the crossover point, the American public finally began to question the reported success stories coming out of Viet Nam. It would take 5 more years before US military involvement would end. The RVN fell two years later.

The aftermath was not pleasant for those who had sided with us. Those days are over now. Vietnamese have their independence and are united - north and south. The Cambodians and Lao also have their independence.

How many people died needlessly in the conflict ... Vietnamese, Lao, Cambodian, American and others. Three million? Four million?

It was a tragic waste but it is finally over. It's been 30 years but for those of us who were there it seems like only yesterday.

Time moves on and the people of Southeast Asia now look to the future much more than they look to the past.

Did we learn anything?

[dbt]

24. Yeah, we could have "won" it...

but it probably would have involved swapping nukes with China and/or the USSR. I believe they contained us rather well in that conflict.

:freak:

[Toots]

25. In my opinion we (the people) did win the war

Vietnam is a much finer place today than it was in early sixties and late fifties. They are no longer dying in the rice paddies from US bombs and we are putting no new names upon "The Wall" The war is over and we (the people) won...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. No

The U.S. dropped more bombs on the relatively small landmass of Vietnam than were dropped in all of Europe during all of World War II.

The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were living off the land and hiding out in the jungles and rural villages, and since they were on their home territory, they felt that they could hold out indefinitely and were willing to do so.

[MN ChimpH8R]

32. Some really good posts here

I've done some reading and spoken with a number of Vietnam vets, since I was (fortunately) just young enough to miss the draft. There was no way to win, because the North Vietnamese and VC were simply more motivated than the US troops. They were fighting to reunify their country, and our troops were placed in the impossible position of trying to stop a well-unified, though not monolithic, nationalist movement.

Americans clearly had no clue about the 1000-year antipathy Vietnamese people have towards the Chinese, going all the way back to the Trung sisters leading a rebellion against the Chinese in, IIRC,the eleventh century. The American presence in VN was a speck of time in Vietnamese history. The Vietnamese people seem to have moved on, and VN is an increasingly popular tourist destination for both Europeans, Aussies and Americans. And why not. It's a beautiful country filled with friendly, hard-working people. The one and only thing they seem to have borrowed from the Chinese is the Deng Xiaoping ethic of "act like capitalists, but we will still call it socialism" that has made China the world's fastest growing major economy. And it seems to be working very well in VN, just as it did in China.

Ho begged the US for help in the late '40s/early '50s and was turned away. We were fools.

[Igel]

31. The RW was convinced that we could have whupped their

tails militarily; they're probably right.

Even in the late '70s the military history version of Tet contrasted sharply with the media's; eventually at least Vietnamese military officer confirmed that one. Things quieted down after Tet ... they went all out, and probably wouldn't have been able to resist if the US/south had quickly resupplied and pressed the offensive.

On the other hand, with the neighbors willing to mount a guerrilla war, it would have been tough.

It's nice to think of Uncle Ho and his political descendents as a band of "nationalists", but the ideological, economic, and political straitjacketing they imposed, if they were nationalist, reeks more of WWII Sovietism or mid-late 1930s fascism. But Mao was just an "agrarian reformer", after all.

I've heard the figure of about a million for the number 'boat people' that fled, fearing for their lives and those of their families. I've known many, tutored some, had some as friends. They didn't fight for the North, frequently despised the north, and were proud of Vietnam while being ashamed of the reeducation camps and executions, of the lack of freedom of speech and the persecution of those that disagreed with the newly extended government.

Just as in Iraq, personal politics gets in the way: we ignore atrocities on the side we like or find convoluted ways of presenting mayhem as good, praising them as "fighters for freedom", magnifying the wins "for freedom", picking and choosing the news reports we want to believe in in order to be right.

[MN ChimpH8R]

33. Ho was a nationalist

He derived his legitimacy with large numbers of Vietnamese because he led resistance to Japanese occupation in WW II. That counted for plenty in the 1950s and 1960s, when memories of WW II were fresh in the minds of the populace.

[Igel]

50. Nationalism is a tool that has many uses.

Hitler was a nationalist; so was Stalin at some points, and Mao, and Milosevic. But Muhammed could be described as a nationalist, and Jesus was assumed to be one.

Both Hitler, and Stalin, used their country's dominant religions when it suited them; Stalin reversed the official atheist policy to rally the ranks.

They had a political agenda that legitimized their use of tools. It's best not to confuse their agendas with their tools.

Presumably, "the happiness" of the people could entice someone to use a totalitarian ideology as a tool; I've seen in done, in small ways. But I rejected the idea as an occasion of self-delusion.

[Number9Dream]

35. Depends how they define "won"? I doubt it

First, thanks to all brothers-in-arms for their service.
If by "won" - would the VC & NVA ceased hostilities & agreed to allow Nyugen Key run S. Vietnam? I seriously doubt it for the reasons stated by others previously. But, it's like asking if Rocky Marciano would have beaten Larry Holmes (for example)? Nobody knows for sure.
The point is that some 57,000 brothers-in-arms died, and many more were maimed and emotionally scarred in a war which could have been avoided. Bless their sacrifice.
Now, Yellowstain Dubya & the chickenhawks have done it again. Damn those chickenhawks all to hell.

[jody]

43. Damn those chickenhawks all to hell.

:toast:

[jody]

45. I see many responses ignored your simple question "Could that war have

been won"?

Your question is purely military and nor political. In that sense, the U.S. had overwhelming military force and adequate local troops. Unfortunately, military strategy and tactics were dominated by politicians and the military was never allowed to use its capability.

The military could have won the war if by winning one means eliminating North Vietnam's ability to wage war.

If one complicates the question with a vestige force of guerrillas to continue opposition, then that is almost a certainty. We find such opposition forces in many countries but that broadens the definition of war to include Bush's war on terror.

Whether we should have fought the Vietnam war is another question and in my opinion the answer is NO.

[still_one]

53. See the MacNamara documentary

"The Fog Of War"

No we could not have won Viet Nam

[tsuki]

58. No. It could not. There was too much lying by McNamara and Westmoreland.

[Jacobin]

63. We DID carpet bomb Viet Nam

and we had 550,000 troops there at the height of it.

Fuck no it couldn't be won, because the vietnamese people by and large didn't want us there.....kinda like another clusterfuck that's going on right now.

[wuushew]

67. Vietnam could not be won by bombing

bombing accuracy in the mid 1960s was atrocious by modern standards, also every piece of ordinance, every solider deployed has a dollar cost. The pursestrings of Congress are supposedly controlled by the will of the people. A democracy such as the United States is not going to pour infinite resources into hopeless quagmire. Vietnam as it was did much to destroy post-WWII economic prosperity, a large part of the non Raygun-Bush Jr. debt is because of that conflict.

-snip


The stark differences between the nature of the war during Johnson's Rolling Thunder (1965-68) and during Nixon's 1972 Linebacker air offensives have gone unnoticed by many of the war's air commanders, who contend that a Linebacker-like assault against North Vietnam in early 1965 would have achieved victory in short order.9
Moreover, destroying North Vietnam's capacity to fight was no guarantee that the insurgency in South Vietnam would stop. During the entire Johnson presidency, the vast bulk of the Communist army in South Vietnam consisted of Viet Cong units who fought, along with their North Vietnamese allies, an average of one day a month.11 This infrequent combat produced a requirement for such a small amount of external supplies that no amount of bombing with conventional ordnance could have prevented their arrival. Nor did the Viet Cong need or want a large amount of North Vietnamese direction. As Larry Cable has convincingly shown in Unholy Grail, the Viet Cong sought to minimize Northern influence in the National Liberation Front throughout the war.12 In short, eliminating North Vietnam from the war in 1965 would likely have accomplished little towards achieving a stable, independent South. By the time that removing the North would have made a difference--after the 1968 Tet offensive--the American public had lost its stomach for the war and the goal had changed to peace with honor


http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/clod.html

[helderheid]

68. interesting

[jody]

78. The graphs are distorted because we only had about 12K in 1962 and

about 16K in 1963 in Vietnam. We have 10 times that number in Iraq.

[ThomWV]

76. We Were Winning When I Left

You'll have to ask those other assholes how they managed to give it away once I was gone.

Sgt. RVN 1967-1970

[BikeWriter]

84. Are you sure you didn't give it away? You were there after me.

:shrug:
Welcome home, and thank you for serving.

[JVS]

77. When you put your mind to it, anything is possible!

Of course, sometimes you end up with an enormous pile of corpses along the way to your goals.

[agincourt]

102. Maybe, but,

We would have had to strip a lot of assets out of Europe, and Europe was more important than Viet Nam. The trick would be to get the North to shoulder most of the war with less recruits from the South, unfortunately we didn't have the people who could do that.

[steve2470]

105. fwiw

Our civilian political leadership should have never committed our wonderful armed forces to a spot in the world where we did not belong. This does not subtract,for one millisecond, from the admiration I have for our Vietnam vets. :-)

[jody]

107. I'll drink to that!

:toast: