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Vietnam - US loss or something else?

Discussion in 'Military History' started by DocCasualty, Feb 25, 2009.

  1. DocCasualty

    DocCasualty Member

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    In an unrelated WWII "what if" thread the statment was made that the US lost in Vietnam, despite fighting for ten years, with the loss of 58,000 American lives. I've thought a lot about the US involvement in Vietnam over the years. Why we were there, what we could have done differently, etc. I'm not sure there are absolute answers to these kinds of questions, but I have concluded that it was another conflict of the 20th century that was rooted in Old World colonialism. The US had their first contact with Ho Chi Minh at Versailles after WWI and I think Vietnam is another tragedy that could have been avoided had the hard issues confronting the world been tackled then.

    Sometime ago I watched The Fog of War: Eleven Lesson from the Life of Robert S. McNamara and found it quite informative. Love him or hate him, it's hard to deny that he's an intelligent guy. I think one of the most important messages he tried to convey was to assess and re-assess why you are fighting. Clearly the US had a very different view of what they were fighting for than did the North Vietnamese and their partisans in the South. Although McNamara states he realized early on it was an unwinnable war, it was not until meeting his NV counterpart decades later that he understood how NV viewed the US and what NV was fighting for. McNamara states his discussion became quite heated as he tried to make his counterpart see the folly of NV's loss of millions of lives, compared to the US losses. It was only after learning that NV would have fought to the last person to oust what they saw as just another invader that McNamara truly understood what Vietman had been about.

    So what I have concluded is the US did not lose the war, they quit or perhaps more technically abandoned the mission. Oh there certainly were lots of losses. Loss of lives, loss of money, loss of international goodwill, loss of domestic trust and a certain innocence. Lost the war though? I don't think so.

    Should the US have gone into VN to begin with? It's a good question and I don't think I know the answer. I think that many if not most backed the entry to war for the right reasons but again, it turned out to be an entirely different set of reasons after the smoke cleared.

    Was the way the war was prosecuted in error? I think so. I just don't think waging war is something you can "sort of" do and if you can't do what's necessary, is there any point in doing it half way? Makes me question if everybody doesn't need to re-think these military police actions. They usually seem to arise when it's felt that diplomacy has failed. I'm not sure that subsituting one failure for another is any better and maybe it's worse.

    I'm not trying to re-write history, nor am I afraid to be associated with failure. My assessment is that the US did not lose in Vietnam, it quit and went home. Sometimes it's the right thing to do.
     
  2. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Good Ol' Boy Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    The military did not lose the war, the civilian government lost the the will to fight. And since the gov't here reflects the views of the governed, you can decided the genesis of that opinion.

    The main problem, IMHO, is that the US didn't fight to win that war; we fought not to lose. In that endeavor, the civilian gov't failed.
     
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  3. formerjughead

    formerjughead The Cooler King

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    Vietnam was an example of what happens when politicians become too involved in a conflict and do not let the military leadership do their job.
     
  4. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Agreed. Too many rules and restraints placed upon the military. There is only one way to conduct war and that is to win. Not attack but watch out for civilians, or historical sites or limit number of casualties to the enemy etc.....
     
  5. Mussolini

    Mussolini Gaming Guru WW2|ORG Editor

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    I think if anything, Vietnam War just reinforces the shift of power from the Western World to the Eastern World.

    Every major conflict prior to WWII took place in Europe (the Western World). Since the end of WWII, every major conflict has taken place in the Eastern World (Asia, for all intents and purposes). The shift of focus from West to East should not be ignored either. Economically, China is on the verge of being a powerhouse, and could very well become the Hegemony that replaces the US of A.
     
  6. Jaeger

    Jaeger Ace

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    When big men in big offices stateside, decide the target menue for the morrow.... Didn't Hitler try that?

    The upshot is the massive reforms in the US army that followed.
     
  7. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Vietnam wasn't a US loss. The US quit. North Vietnam didn't get a surrender they got a negotiated settlement. Saying the US lost Vietnam is like saying Israel lost Gaza.

    Anyway, Vietnam should be looked at in the larger regional context rather than in isolation. When Vietnam was going on with US involvement there were Soviet / Chinese backed communist insurgencies also going on in:
    Malaysia
    Indonesia
    Thailand
    Laos
    Cambodia
    Burma
    The Philippines

    Of these, all failed except Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And, these only succeeded after the US left and after the Democrat congress failed to live up to the military assistance treaty that the US had with South Vietnam.
    The First North Vietnamese offensive against S. Vietnam occured (in violation of the agreed peace) within weeks of the end of the US pull out. S. Vietnam defeated the North. A second offensive (again in violation of the peace agreements) occured about 18 months later and succeeded but only after the US stopped supplying military aid that debilitated the S. Vietnamese army and air force.
    For example one of the first North Vietnamese moves was sending a tank regiment spearheading an assault down Highway 1 on the coast. The South Vietnamese had a tank battalion of M48 deploy that shot the NVA column to pieces for virtually no friendly losses. But, with ammuniton running low this unit soon became ineffective and the tanks were abandoned.
    This is a common thread to this offensive for the South.

    In the US the withdrawal followed by the pathetically awful Carter administration debilitated the US military morally and physically. The combination led to some of the most far reaching reforms ever undertaken by the US military that started to occur in the mid 1980's under Reagan.
    It was largely these reforms that have made the US military the effective fighting force it is today.

    Oh, at the top of the thread, the stuff on McNamara: The guy might be book smart but he is clearly a moron. His statement can only be true if the North Vietnamese would not accept a two state solution. That means, that North Vietnam wanted the whole enchillada not half and was willing to continue offensive operations to get it.
    South Vietnam could only exist so long as they could defeat the North in combat. It would be a variant of the Korea situation. But, with the US gone and no military assistance South Vietnam was eventually doomed. So, one could say that America politicians, particularly those with a Liberal - Leftist - Progressive bent let South Vietnam go down and in doing so doomed millions to their deaths as a result.
     
  8. DocCasualty

    DocCasualty Member

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    I'm not here to be an apologist for McNamara by any stretch, but North Vietnam's unwillingness to accept anything less than a unified Vietnam appears to have been the crux of the matter. I would point out that the term unified is a relative concept.

    It's remained pretty popular to blame the US for all of the problems which were Vietnam, but as you have pointed out in part, the North was hardly blameless in this matter, having flagrantly disregarded multiple agreements over decades in pursuit of their ultimate goal.
     
  9. WotNoChad?

    WotNoChad? Member

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    Interesting points one and all.

    As a Brit I'm not sure how my opinion might be taken, but my distance from it and the perspective that offers means how, after WWII, the Viet Nam war is my most read historical subject.

    The wildest thing I believe is how, rather inconveniently, the US choose to support the wrong side. Had they supported the North when they were more nationalist than communist it would have been a non-event. Of course this would have meant involvement much earlier, very possibly in enforcing the part of the Yalta agreement* which marked Viet Nam for British rule following the Japanese surrender. A very difficult task given the politics of the time though.

    The one part I think which has been overlooked thus far is the role of the U.S. media in the whole conflict. Even the quite innocuous regular coverage seems to have worried the public and wore them down. Contrasts greatly with the coverage of a much bigger and more dangerous WWII. There was also a growing amount of anti-war coverage as the conflict went on, again in contrast, with some genuinely shocking developments - personally I'll never forget footage of Jane Fonda sitting on an AA gun grinning naively away, behaviour which just a couple of decades earlier would have likely seen her shot for treason.

    * I believe this was decided within this, as always happy to be corrected.
     
  10. Hufflepuff

    Hufflepuff Semi-Frightening Mountain Goat

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    The US military put up a hell of a fight, and so did the Vietnamese. If the public hadn't been lied to by the government they wouldn't have been so anti-war, although I don't quite see what they could have been lied to about...anyways, I think its settled that the US public caused the war to be "Lost," not the military.
     
  11. DocCasualty

    DocCasualty Member

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    Even earlier, as I mentioned above. I almost fell off of my chair when I first saw the pictures of Ho Chi Minh at Versailles in 1919 attempting to talk with Woodrow Wilson and garner US support for his people's independence. Viewed in that context, the West drove NV to Communism.
    And I'll never forget my dad's and other WWII vets' reaction when that photo hit the wire. Most of them felt she should have been tried for treason for aiding and comforting the enemy.

    "Hanoi Jane"

    [​IMG]
     
  12. TA152

    TA152 Ace

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    The South Viet Nam government was one of the most corrupt on the planet at the time and the US chose to ignore that fact of life.
    No one can win a war if one side is allowed to cross such and such boundry and the other side is not. ie the "demilitiarized zone".
    McNamara was a fool and is as much a traitor as Jane Fonda. Hundreds of thousands of humans lost their lives because of his dumb policies along with big ears Johnson. :mad:
    If they bombed military targets in 1965 like they did the last part of 1972 then the war would have been over in a hurry but still a very corrupt South Viet Nam left to govern the place.

    WotNoChad? has it right, we picked the wrong side to back for a war. (as usual)
     
  13. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    I also see the problem as a failure by the top level of the governement but it's not that we didn't fight to win as we didn't clearly define what win meant from the beginning and stick to that. There was also a failure to clearly explain things to the public and keep them on board as a result the left managed to promote thier side of the story and sell it to the populace which is what eventually lead to the US leaving.

    If for instance the goal was to prevent communism spreading throught SE Asia then the US won in Vietnam as they prevented that spread and got a diplomatic agreement to that effect. The failure was in not forceing the other side to live up to the agreement. As has been pointed out however the earlier failure to prevent the French from moving back into Vietnam was probably of even greater consequence.

    There's also the question of what would have happened if the US hadn't opposed the communist in Vietnam. How far would communism have spread if uncontested?
     
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  14. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    The goals of the two involved were quite different. One wanted to prevent the spread of what was seen as an "evil empire" and the other just wanted to unite the country.

    There is no doubt that the U.S.was successful militarily 90% of the time. However failed in her overall goal. The Vietnamese were not concerned about winning every battle with the least casualties possible. They wanted to rid who they saw as another invader while uniting their country by any means necessary.

    In the end, the Vietnamese regardless of how one looks at it, accomplished both goals set. Unite the country and evict the invader. The U.S. did not.

    The saying "We won the battle but lost the war" fits perfectly here...
     
  15. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Or did we? Eventually the North went on to take over the South and Cambodia fell to the communist but it stopped there and even that got reversed. And even the South didn't fall until after the US had obviously changed its priorities if not its goals.
     
  16. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Well would it not be safe to say that the overall premise for which the U.S. got involved was flawed? Where is it proven that once one government changes the one next to it should as well?

    The domino theory after all was invented in the U.S. was it not? Unless I am mistaken, it was never really proven to be the case and for that reason was later discredited.

    Please correct me if im wrong here.
     
  17. texson66

    texson66 Ace

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    The problem with any war like Viet Nam is the LACK of an affordable,timely, and clear set of objectives or outcomes to the conflict directed,managed, and communicated effectively by the CIC. If you can't define them, explain them, and sell them to the public, don't even start!

    With three different Presidents involved in the conduct of the VN war at varying levels of conflict, others in this thread have identified another problem: lack of strategic vision at the top and the ability to translate it to military operations: translated: the OSD and Military Staff couldnt provide operational plans that would ensure military victory because of diplomatic "constraints". LBJ was famous for drawing arbitrary lines on maps to prevent USAF fighter-bombers from attacking ground to air missile sites.

    Since there was NO strategic vision at the top in all three cases (JFK, LBJ, RMN) and poorly explained at best to the American Public by the CICs, the US Media (really in control then - no internet and only 3 TV channels) took it on themselves to root for the underdog....the NV Reds. (Basically the VC in the South & the Regular NV troops were just blood brothers...they're commies and the US Press was "liberal")

    Before long, monsters like Jane Fonda were flouncing their sweet little traitorous butts around NV flak positions. It was only a matter of time before the Media convinced the US that VN was a lost cause.... (and it was a BIG lie at that as other have pointed out).

    There were a few close calls, but by in large the US prevailed but were hamstrung by the political PolyAnnas and continued lied about by the media.

    So we left VN; the blood of many corrupt and many more non-corrupt Vietnamese is on the hands of the US Media - not to mention the millions in Laos and Cambodia. The US Media is responsible for those deaths and now are backing an administration aimed at converting the free market enterprise system into a Mugambe-like communist "economic" system.

    That is all. </Rant Off>
     
  18. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Well it was pretty well proven once the South fell the Communist moved on to Cambodia and Thailand had some problems as well. Where things broke down was the assumption that the Communist were as monolithic as the Soviets wanted them to be.
    I'm not sure if it was a US invention or not. It was pretty well proven IMO. The US after WWII adopted a containment strategy for dealing with Communism. IE try to limit it's expansion and let it collapse under its own weight. Actually worked pretty well. What we should have looked at closer were the divisions within the Communist block and encouraged them. In the case of Vietnam (and to some extent Cambodia) decided it wasn't worth the effort. I believe we did increase support to the Thai's after the fall of the South.
     
  19. WotNoChad?

    WotNoChad? Member

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    Quite, and if they didn't drive them they certainly paid the fare.

    Absolutely, it interesting to see how with more recent conflicts it's tended to be more like that.

    As a footnote I don't believe the U.S. military lost anything bar public support while the media managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
     
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  20. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    I hesitate to step into this "quagmire", but here goes.

    I think Doc is onto something here. After WW1, the European colonial powers managed to marginalize Wilson and they retained their colonies. The French were particularly inefficient in managing their colonies. Ho Chi Minh wanted to expel the French, and establish an independent Viet Nam. Of course, he joined the communists who were preaching an end to colonialism. When Japan conquered the region, Ho fought against them as well. They were viewed as another invader. After WW2, Ho believed there would be an end to colonialism, but he was wrong. He again took up the fight, depending on the Soviets for assistance. In the 1950's, the US and its allies tended to believe that communism was monolithic, and that whether it was Russian, Chinese, or Viet Namese, it was all the same. After Dien Bien Phu, US leaders were unable to distinguish among the many kinds of communism, and chose to support one of the most corrupt regimes anywhere. While Ho used Soviet and Chinese assistance, I don't believe (this is opinion) he trusted them. He was primarily a nationalist, and willing to use whatever help he could get to further his aims.

    By way of my own background, I was a student during the war and was an opponent of it. Please, no flames about my political views, since I still consider myself a liberal.. That said, I think Jane Fonda was a moron. Legitimate protest is one thing, political prostitution is another.
     
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