Desperate freeper seeks information

[AnIndependentTexan]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1238069/posts


FReepers! I need your help! (Vietnam debate related)


Posted on 10/07/2004 11:28:29 AM PDT by mike182d


I'm trying to debate with someone that we lost Vietnam, not because of military faults, but because of the anti-war effort. Does anyone know where I could find concrete evidence of us winning the war from a purely military standpoint before pull-out?

[Parche]

1. vietnam

It was Clintons fault for Vietnam




There was no fighting strategy by the military that was the reason

[Jack from Charlotte]

15. I'll write the Wing-nuts answer for him...........

We only lost 58,000 guys in the 12 years we were there. They lost about a million. That whole damn country only had about 65 million people in it. So had we just kept it going rather than allowing those Kerry-wussies to take over we could have killed the whole 65 million Viet Namese people and we'd have only lost 3,770,000 if the kill ratio stayed the same over the next 65 years of war.

It's just that simple.

[Warpy]

23. The war was unwinnable

unless, of course, they'd decided to slaughter every adult in both Vietnams and start over with the orphaned children. Even then, they'd ultimately have to face the grown children of that slaughter.

Anticolonial wars never end, although they may quiet down for periods of time when the colonized people are exhausted by struggle. Check out Ulster for an example.

That is why there is no possibility of any sort of victory in Iraq.

[AntiCoup2K4]

29. Yep. The Clenis flew to Saigon and met with the VC

It's true! I heard it on Hannity and Colmes!!

[shoelace414]

2. and

The Greeks lost to the persians too.

you know.. 200 greeks were killed and 1 million persians.. but the persians won, because they killed the 200 greeks.

[zinsky]

3. Look in Limp Dick Cheney's Ass!

He's always pulling wild, fictional stories out of it!!!!


Look, we lost in Viet Nam because of imperial overreach, just like how we are going to lose in Iraq. GET OVER IT!!!

[democratreformed]

6. That sounds like a great place to me too!!! LOL. n/t

[JimmyJazz]

4. I'll do a bit of reseach, but you might want to look at Chomsky

He's very good with these kinds of facts. However, as a start, I'm pretty sure it's not referred to as the "fall of Saigon" because it was a military success!

I'm also confused by the posters question (imagine that). Is he saying we lost Viet Nam because of anti-war protests or that we won first and then left?

[Bandit]

24. How many American troops were involved in the fall of Saigon

I don't recall us ever losing a military encounter. We had a few setbacks but we never ever lost a Battle. we pulled our troops out and left the Vietnamese People to their own devices and the North overran them. I won't say it was the anti-war element that influenced Nixon but I'm sure it helped. Most of America was against the war near the end. It wasn't the Anti-War group it was American people. In this case I may have to agree with the Freeper to a degree. We lost the Vietnam war because we had poor management and indeciveness from our Political leaders. It was bad Politics that lost the war not Anti-War crowd.

[JimmyJazz]

28. That's only part of it. We never went into the war with a plan to win.

Seriously. We never could/would make a concerted effort to invade North Viet Nam because we didn't want the communists to get involved. Not to make light of it, but I sort of see it like trying to win a football game by only playing defense.

I was a young girl at the time, but I do have a fairly clear recollection of the mood of this country at that time. In 1968, it was only the hippies and the college students protesting and they were considered to be disruptors, but by 1972, public opinion had changed drastically. Nixon campaigned on the promise to get us out of Viet Nam.

Also, again I recommend reading Chomsky because he not only does a great job explaining these things (much better than I), but he also provides an explanation as to how we got into Viet Nam in the first place and it wasn't to defend South Viet Nam against communism. It was an imperialistic move on the part of the US, but, again, I would get lost trying to explain it.

[Bandit]

30. I agree totally with you but that is not the point

The entire point being made was we suffered military defeat. I say we did not. You mentioned the Fall of Saigon. I asked how many American Troops were involved in that. We never ever lost a battle. We did not lose by military means we lost because of Politics. Our military then as well as now was unsurpassed. In this aspect and this aspect only I agree with the Freeper. We did not lose because of a failed Military.

[JimmyJazz]

33. I wouldn't necessarily consider Hamburger Hill

a victory - the price was too high and the land never held.

http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real7.htm

Here's a site describing the fall of saigon

http://www.afa.org/magazine/April2000/0400saigon.asp

And this is really wild because it breaks events down by subject matter and even includes the pentagon papers:

http://www.military-graphics.com/war4.html

I hope these help.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

5. LOL

Yeah, insurgencies never work as long as there aren't any hippies on the homefront.

[CrowNotAngelGRL]

7. Wasn't it

said that because of the anti-war movements they pulled out of Vietnam earlier than they wanted?

[girl gone mad]

12. Why are you still here?

Nixon admitted on tape that Vietnam was lost, a full two years before he finally withdrew.

[w4rma]

32. Good grief.

Please try to get along.

[girl gone mad]

36. You might have a change of heart..

If you were familiar with this person's prior posts on DU.

[Mountainman]

18. It was already the longest friggen war in our history! We pulled out too

late! Winning was not the option after Tet. We only wanted an honorable way out. Had we made a truce with the North and left we would have had the same result that we got. Had we not fought the war at all we would have gotten the same result. Had we not let France back into Vietnam after WWII there never would have been a Vietnam war!

[Javaman]

26. Although Tet was a military failure for the NV...

it did prove that the nation didn't want us there. All the various policies to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese was just pure bullshit.
We are the ugly American. Whether it's in Viet Nam, Iraq or El Salvador.
No one fights harder than people who fight for there own land.
We are seeing that now in Iraq.

[Bridget Burke]

27. I'm sure that was said,

But not by anybody I'd trust.

[girl gone mad]

8. God, I hate these people.

They are willing to completely rewrite history just to tear one man down.

I urge everyone here to see "Going Upriver", but be warned: you will come out loathing O'Neill and the swift boat liars for Bush even more than before.

It was John Kerry who raised the profile of Vietnam veterans in his campaigning, and it is the swift boat liars who smeared Kerry and all veterans with their lies.

[cheshire]

16. The truth is these people really believe what they say, proves repetition

can brainwash people, even if they do it to themselves. They thought they could win if they had stayed. It's a military mentality.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. By Conventional War Standards We We Were Winning

but we would still be there today if we didn't withdraw....


Kind of like Iraq...

[fob]

10. Somebody want to direct this clown to factcheck.com?

[missjudy6]

11. Is this Freeper

suggesting the war was lost because of antiwar demonstrators?
Would that we had that much power.

[sandnsea]

13. Millions dead?

Laos, Cambodia and N Vietnam bombed to oblivion? S Vietnam destroyed, villages burned, countryside napalmed and destroyed with Agent Orange? And we won? The spin has always been that if we'd ever really let loose in Vietnam, we could have taken that country in months. We weren't allowed to really fight. That ignores the reality on the ground completely. You have to re-educate. Yes, we never lost a major battle, but that's not winning a war. Look at Iraq.

[Mountainman]

14. We lost the Vietnam war because of the same reason we had a truce in

Korea. We did not use all our might for fear it would start a nuclear war. The anti war movement was right about the fear of escalation. Nixon expanded the war to Laos and Cambodia.

Had we nuked Hanoi some free world country would have been nuked in retaliation which would cause us to retaliate and that stupid freeper probably would have never been born!

[girl gone mad]

20. We could have continued the war..

maybe we would still be there, or maybe we would have won militarily, but at what cost? The domino theory was wrong, we weren't winning hearts and minds because the Vietnamese saw it as a war for their own liberation, and escalation was, as you pointed out, a real risk.

It would have been a Pyrrhic victory, at best.

[NoPasaran]

17. The Freeps should thank the antiwar movement

If not for the pressure on the home front, I am thoroughly convinced we would still be in that imbecilic conflict, and those freepazoid lowlifes would be over there getting their asses shot off. I doubt many of them have the family connections to get them cushy flying jobs keeping Alabama's skies safe from Victor Charlie.

[punpirate]

19. He can keep lookin'...

... as long as he likes, and he won't find any evidence of a military victory snatched from us by those nasty anti-war protesters. People like William Westmoreland tried, in his autobiography, to say so, but there's little to no evidence for that view.

In doing a little research, we dropped seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam, which translates to about 800 pounds per person. (In all theaters of WWII, we dropped a total of two million tons of explosives.)

Between civilians and the NLF, we killed at least 1.5 million people, and they wouldn't give up. There simply wasn't going to be a military "victory" under those circumstances. What drove that conflict so long and so hard was a military that had been denied their invasion of Cuba (as the war against communism the brass wanted badly), and a defense contractor establishment that was happy to see it continue.

As well, we depended upon a South Vietnamese army, the loyalties of which were divided.

Try to find me a military victory in all of that....

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. And, Custer would have won at the Little Big Horn if it weren't for

those dern Indian lovers.

We got our asses righteously kicked. Get over it.

[onager]

22. "You've Missed The Point Completely..."

Sorry, I don't remember where I read this...I have no life and read a lot...

Just a few years ago there was a dinner for former North Vietnamese and American officers who had fought each other in that war. One American said he was still baffled by the Vietnam War, because "you never beat us on the ground. We won every battle we fought with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong."

A former North Vietnamese officer replied, as I remember: "You've missed the point completely. For us the war was not about winning battles. We never cared about winning battles. We cared about unifying our country, and we would have never given up that goal. No matter how many battles we lost."

Ironically, the political higher-ups on both sides saw the famous Tet Offensive as something of a failure--politically for the U.S, militarily for the Vietnamese.

After Tet, both sides "fired" their supreme field commanders. Gen. Westmoreland was kicked upstairs as Army Chief Of Staff, and Gen. Vo Ngyuen Giap was similarly brought back to Hanoi and a desk job.

[yellowcanine]

25. "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" That should shut him up.

Or at least leave him sputtering.

[Bongo Prophet]

31. Looking for justification, not "evidence"

"debate"
"Winning"
"concrete evidence"

Blame game.
"Revisionist historians thash whut I call 'em."

[ThoughtCriminal]

34. Obviosly we lost because Cheney and Bunnypants

and the other GOP chickenhawks weren't there.

[evilqueen]

35. McNamara said in his book that the protesters had very little impact.

North Vietnam was being resupplied by China, Laos, Cambodia, etc. Everything McNamara saw led him to believe that the North had no qualms about infinite escalation. No matter how many times we took out parts of the Ho Chih Minh trail, it continued to be a major supply route. The North would have kept sending in cannon fodder, no matter what.

McNamara tried to negotiate during cease-fires, but bombing elsewhere continued, ruining the chances of negotiation. This happened under Johnson.

[ieoeja]

37. We lost because of poor strategy.

Take one US Army convinced they can win in months despite having no experience fighting jungle warfare and whose only experience fighting guerilla warfare was against a vastly outnumbered enemy (the pre-Columbian population of the United States). Add one US Air Force convinced they can bomb the enemy into submission. Subtract the US Navy/Marine Corps who said "defend the cities and plantations and for God's sake STAY OUT OF THE JUNGLE", a strategy they developed during 150 years experience WINNING that sort of war (a fact constantly overlooked by your average DUer).

Johnson should have known better. He was a Navy guy. But he listened to the Army and Air Force who promised a quick victory instead.

[farmbo]

38. It's true...Adm. O'Neill's Swiftboat fleet raided Haiphong Harbor in 1973..

and launched an overland amphibious commando assault--which Gen. O'Neill also led-- on the general headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army in Hanoi.

When General Giap of the NVA realized that Admiral/General O'Neill (a special military rank conferred on O'Neill by President Nixon himself) was in charge of the commando force, he knew they were doomed and advised Ho Chi Minh to surrender unconditionally, which he agreed to do at a full dress formal military ceremony on the deck of Adm/Gen O'Neill's Swiftboat #147 at 6:00 am the next morning.

But at 9:00pm that night Giap received word from the North Vietnamese ambassador in Paris that, through secret negotiations with Navy Lt John Kerry, they had acquired super-top-secret codes which could be used to disarm Adm/Gen O'Neill's super-top-secret US Navy weapons systems.

The rest, as they say, is HISTORY.

God bless Gen/Adm O'Neill!