Why Did America Lose the Vietnam War?

[Rainman05]

We defeated every move the enemy made. Tactically, we kicked the living **** out of the commies.

True, but you lost the war.
It's like, you're at a fair and you play that that game where you have to use a hammer and hit that button so that the thing goes up. The stronger you hit, the higher it goes. America hit hard but while you were doing that, the commie went behind your back and seduced your girlfriend. So the teddy bear you got left with is not a winners' prize, it's a consolation prize.

 

[Gathomas88]

A lot of people on here are saying that we actually won the war, and others are claiming that our loss of that war was because of America's 'far-left liberals'. It is my stated opinion that we flat-out lost that war, that it wasn't 'just' the far left that opposed the war, but a majority of the American people, and that when the majority of our nation opposes our involvement in a war, then we should get the heck out of that war.

Why? Because we didn't have the guts to commit ourselves to a full-scale conflict, but we were too invested to simply allow the South Vietnamese government to manage its own affairs.

If we had forced a confrontation more similar to that of the Korean War with the North, we might've actually been able to bring the war in Vietnam to some kind of definitive conclusion favorable to our own interests after the dust had settled. Likewise, if we had kept our troop presence to a minimum and simply supplied the South Vietnamese with the weapons and financial backing necessary to defeat the Communist insurgency on their own (as we did in Indonesia and all over Latin America), the conflict likely never would have escalated into the full blown Cold War proxy contest between East and West that it ultimately became, and might've simply fizzled out on its own given enough time.

Instead, we let the North Vietnamese, Vietcong, and their Soviet and Chinese benefactors draw us into an unwinnable brushfire conflict with no possible endgame in sight. We also wasted valuable time, money, and resources on ineffectual carpet bombing campaigns, military coups, and abortive attempts at the relocation of native populations which only really served to turn public opinion at home and abroad against us instead of addressing the real problems impeding our chances of achieving victory.

If you read the history, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that the war was really nothing but a giant clusterf*ck of indecisive bureaucratic meddling and irresponsible half measures from beginning to end. We simply didn't have the slightest idea what we were doing, or what we were even trying to achieve.

It was basically like what would've happened in Iraq if the Surge and Sunni Awakening Councils had never come along to save our collective bacon.

 

[radioman]

I'm unaware "our leaders" made that claim. Now before Tet I was still a civilian, more like a beach bumb who spent every day ripping up waves and chasing half naked young girls clad in their bikinis. But I always read the newspaper every day and watched the news every night.
Do you know which particular day "our leaders" made that claim ? I might have been down in Baja at the time ripping up waves and chasing young Mexican girls.


And "no longer mount a serious offensive" compared to which offense were they referring too ?

-----------

Well, well, well....Mr. Military Knowledge has no knowledge of Vietnam, eh?
I'm amazed.....look up Wm. Westmoreland, Lyndon Johnson....he was prez, remember?....McNamara et al.
Lot's of interesting quotes for you to peruse.
As for your former life as a fun-loving slacker.....it doesn't square with your current dyspeptic view of...well...everything.
I'll bet Cali. wouldn't be such a commie dystopia if you hadn't succumbed to the shiftless beachboy lifestyle.

 

[obvious Child]

A lot of people on here are saying that we actually won the war, and others are claiming that our loss of that war was because of America's 'far-left liberals'. It is my stated opinion that we flat-out lost that war, that it wasn't 'just' the far left that opposed the war, but a majority of the American people, and that when the majority of our nation opposes our involvement in a war, then we should get the heck out of that war.

Simple: We stopped separating the fish from the water.

 

[obvious Child]

If you read the history, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that the war was really nothing but a giant clusterf*ck of indecisive bureaucratic meddling and irresponsible half measures from beginning to end. We simply didn't have the slightest idea what we were doing, or what we were even trying to achieve.

Not everything. The Marines were doing quite well with their COIN operations before Westmoreland screwed them over and pulled the plug on that.

It was basically like what would've happened in Iraq if the Surge and Sunni Awakening Councils had never come along to save our collective bacon.

Not quite, but something close. You a fan of retired Lt. Col Nagl?

 

[Gathomas88]

Not quite, but something close. You a fan of retired Lt. Col Nagl?

I haven't actually read any of his work, but "Eat Soup with a Knife" does sound quite interesting, now that you mention it.

 

[obvious Child]

I haven't actually read any of his work, but "Eat Soup with a Knife" does sound quite interesting, now that you mention it.

That is one of the most useful and insightful books I read in college. I don't quite remember what class it was for though.

Essentially his premise is that an insurgency cannot operate in a vacuum, it needs local support, therefore to eliminate an insurgency, one has to turn that support against the insurgency, aka, separating fish from water. What we fracked up in Vietnam was attempting to do this by force and that only made the communities more insurgency friendly. Nagl took what he learned from British in Malaya and Vietnam and applied it to Iraq. Without the Awakening Councils, we would have lost Iraq, surge or no surge. The Councils turned on the insurgents (or stopped fight as insurgents) and the insurgency collapsed without local support. They were our water in a sense.

Nagl makes the point that the COIN ops the Marines were running were in many ways similar to the British in Malaya and the Marine's area of control was much safer for it. When Westmoreland pulled the marines out and those operations were replaced with what we were doing elsewhere, things went to hell. If Westmoreland had taken what the Marines did and applied it across the South, we might have won the war or at least turned it purely into a conventional war which the North and China knew they could not win.

 

[Grand Mal]

Because, oddly enough, strange-looking foreign people will fight to the last end of their resources when their homeland is invaded. The fat lady had finished singing and left the building before that dawned on some people.

 

[shrubnose]

Technically the war isn't over.

Bull****.

I don't know where you get your information from, but the Vietnam War has been over since the fall of Saigon on 30 April,1975.

But,hey, if you want to keep fighting it, be my guest, get after it.




"Better days are coming." ~But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.

 

[finebead]

It's a combination of reasons, but if we could defeat Japan and Germany at the same time, (with our allies Russia, England, Canada, Australia), we could have defeated N. Vietnam. Our weaponry had improved dramatically since WW II.

We would not do what worked in WW II, invade, conquer and occupy N. Vietnam.

There are a few reasons we didn't do that.
1. We did not want China to enter the war, as they did in Korea. They had a huge population and we didn't want to face their soldiers.
2. The cost of invasion and conquering was not justified by whatever the objective we thought we were fighting for (keeping S. Vietnam from being overrun by the communists).
3. As pointed out earlier, the N. Vietnamese were fighting for their homeland and to have it united. For the US soldier, the objective was less meaningful.

I think it was a bad strategic decision to get involved in Vietnam. According to Daniel Ellsberg in a book he wrote about the Pentagon Papers he released, the net of the several thousand page report written in 1967 was that the military advisors and CIA thought that we could not defeat N. Vietnam at a price that the American public was willing to pay. In the end, that's exactly what happened. The N. Vietnamese forces were willing to pay the price to unite their nation, and the price they forced us to pay was not justified by the objectives we sought. So, we left, and S. Vietnam was overrun by the N.

Years later I read an article about the lessons the military learned from Vietnam,
1. Be sure the objective is clear and attainable.
2. Go in heavy and achieve the objective quickly.
3. Understand the end game, what situation do you want after the original military objective is achieved.
4. Win the peace, have the plan in place and execute it after the military victory is won.
5. Understand when all the objectives have been achieved, and then leave.

I think we did a good job living by a good set of rules from the end of Vietnam to the start of the Iraq war. That was especially true with Desert Storm in 1991, and I think why Bush I did NOT send troops into Iraq then. The Iraq war in 2003, we ignored the lessons learned, particularly with respect to the end game; we were great at 1 and 2, bad at 3, 4, and 5.

 

[Gathomas88]

Essentially his premise is that an insurgency cannot operate in a vacuum, it needs local support, therefore to eliminate an insurgency, one has to turn that support against the insurgency, aka, separating fish from water. What we fracked up in Vietnam was attempting to do this by force and that only made the communities more insurgency friendly. Nagl took what he learned from British in Malaya and Vietnam and applied it to Iraq. Without the Awakening Councils, we would have lost Iraq, surge or no surge. The Councils turned on the insurgents (or stopped fight as insurgents) and the insurgency collapsed without local support. They were our water in a sense.

Exactly. No conqueror in history has triumphed through the use of pure military force alone, especially not if they intend on sticking around long enough to do anything more than rape and pillage their holdings afterwards.

Cortez conquered the Aztec Empire with tens of thousands of disgruntled native soldiers swelling the ranks of his army, and Caesar did much the same in his conquest of Gaul. The same is true of the British Empire's ultimate annexation of India.

As a matter of fact, generous use of native "auxiliaries" has been an essential part of warfare since time immemorial.

If you're not able to convince at least some of the population of a given area to accept your cause (or willing to resort to straight out genocide and ethnic cleansing if that fails), any attempt at sustained occupation is ultimately going to be futile. It's just that simple.

Frankly, even besides that, the simple fact of the matter is that utilization of native support makes for a superior strategy from a purely pragmatic standpoint anyway. After all, what sense could it possibly make to waste one's own men and resources when you can get someone else to do the dirty work for you?

I think a lot of people now-a-days get too wound up in the sheer ego of the thing to realize this.

Nagl makes the point that the COIN ops the Marines were running were in many ways similar to the British in Malaya and the Marine's area of control was much safer for it. When Westmoreland pulled the marines out and those operations were replaced with what we were doing elsewhere, things went to hell. If Westmoreland had taken what the Marines did and applied it across the South, we might have won the war or at least turned it purely into a conventional war which the North and China knew they could not win.

Interesting. It would've been nice to see what kind of difference the Marines' COIN doctrines could've made if they had been more widely adopted by the rest of our forces.

Many of our attempts at gaining local support during the Vietnam War - most notably, the Strategic Hamlet Program - were nothing less than absolute idiocy.

We would not do what worked in WW II, invade, conquer and occupy N. Vietnam.

There are a few reasons we didn't do that.
1. We did not want China to enter the war, as they did in Korea. They had a huge population and we didn't want to face their soldiers.
2. The cost of invasion and conquering was not justified by whatever the objective we thought we were fighting for (keeping S. Vietnam from being overrun by the communists).
3. As pointed out earlier, the N. Vietnamese were fighting for their homeland and to have it united. For the US soldier, the objective was less meaningful.

Frankly, a relatively quick "down and dirty" war with China would've been infinitely preferable to the decade long slog fest we ultimately did find ourselves embroiled in.

We could've actually "won" such a conflict, or at the very least forced it into a draw like we did in Korea.

 

[Utility Man]

A lot of people on here are saying that we actually won the war, and others are claiming that our loss of that war was because of America's 'far-left liberals'. It is my stated opinion that we flat-out lost that war, that it wasn't 'just' the far left that opposed the war, but a majority of the American people, and that when the majority of our nation opposes our involvement in a war, then we should get the heck out of that war.

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left"

 

[APACHERAT]

-----------

Well, well, well....Mr. Military Knowledge has no knowledge of Vietnam, eh?
I'm amazed.....look up Wm. Westmoreland, Lyndon Johnson....he was prez, remember?....McNamara et al.
Lot's of interesting quotes for you to peruse.
As for your former life as a fun-loving slacker.....it doesn't square with your current dyspeptic view of...well...everything.
I'll bet Cali. wouldn't be such a commie dystopia if you hadn't succumbed to the shiftless beachboy lifestyle.

Couldn't find LBJ or McNamara ever making those comments to the American People. In fact only LBJ being the only one to even speak directly to the American People on television. No record of Westmorland ever directly speaking to the American people. Are you sure you weren't reading something a newspaper of a reporter quoting Westmoreland at the daily military press briefing in Saigon ?

You'll have to provide a video link so I can watch it.

 

[APACHERAT]

Bull****.

I don't know where you get your information from, but the Vietnam War has been over since the fall of Saigon on 30 April,1975.

But,hey, if you want to keep fighting it, be my guest, get after it.




"Better days are coming." ~But not for today's out of touch, running out of time, GOP.

There's always seem to be a someone who never gets the word.

In this case there are those who want to refight the Vietnam War because they can't accept that they may have encouraged Hanoi to keep fighting because of their actions on the streets of America.

 

[joko104]

I think the war was lost when the USA decided to not send aircraft off an aircraft carrier we had there to rescue the trapped French. The French left and then we moved in gradually. The USA - if the war correct - should have instead joined forces with the French who years of connections. The USA walked into a void created in the middle allowing "the enemy" to organize.

 

[joko104]

What is never discussed is that the USA WON in Korea and LOST in Vietnam.

BUT, which one did we REALLY win and lose looking over the last 50 years? Whose more a threat? The united Vietnam, or the partitioned N. Korea?

 

[APACHERAT]

What is never discussed is that the USA WON in Korea and LOST in Vietnam.

BUT, which one did we REALLY win and lose looking over the last 50 years? Whose more a threat? The united Vietnam, or the partitioned N. Korea?

Technically no one won the Korean war. Under international law the war is still in effect. Only an armistice was signed so technically we are still at war.

The same was true after the first Gulf war under Bush 41. Iraq never surrendered, only a cease fire agreement was signed and Iraq kept violating that cease fire agreement hundreds of times during the Clinton administration and through the first couple of years during G.W. Bush administration.

 

[APACHERAT]

I think the war was lost when the USA decided to not send aircraft off an aircraft carrier we had there to rescue the trapped French. The French left and then we moved in gradually. The USA - if the war correct - should have instead joined forces with the French who years of connections. The USA walked into a void created in the middle allowing "the enemy" to organize.

Sorry for using Wikipedia as a source. It should only be used as a starting point for further research. But it's late, I'm tired and I'm going to Di Di Mao

MAAG, Indochina; MAAG, Vietnam
Excerpt:

In September 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam to assist the French in the First Indochina War. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of US military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces. By 1953, aid increased dramatically to $350 million to replace old military equipment owned by the French.[2]

The French Army however, was reluctant to take U.S. advice, and would not allow the Vietnamese army to be trained to use the new equipment, because it went against French policy. They were supposed to not only defeat enemy forces but to solidify themselves as a colonial power, and they could not do this with a Vietnamese Army. French commanders were so reluctant to accept advice that would weaken their time-honored colonial role that they got in the way of the various attempts by the MAAG to observe where the equipment was being sent and how it was being used. Eventually the French decided to cooperate, but at that point it was too late.[2]

In 1954 the commanding general of French forces in Indochina, General Henri Navarre, allowed the United States to send liaison officers to Vietnamese forces. But it was too late, because of the siege and fall of Dien Bien Phu in the spring. As stated by the Geneva Accords, France was forced to surrender the northern half of Vietnam and to withdraw from South Vietnam by April 1956.[3]

At a conference in Washington, D.C. on February 12, 1955 between officials of the U.S. State Department and the French Minister of Overseas Affairs, it was agreed that all U.S. aid would be funneled directly to South Vietnam and that all major military responsibilities would be transferred from the French to the MAAG under the command of Lieutenant General John O'Daniel. A problem arose however, because the French Expeditionary Force had to depart from South Vietnam in April 1956 pursuant to the Accords. After the French defeat, it was renamed the MAAG in 1955, as the United States became more deeply involved in what would come to be known as the Vietnam War.
Military Assistance Advisory Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service Command of the United States Department of Defense.

MACV was created on 8 February 1962, in response to the increase in United States military assistance to South Vietnam. MACV was first implemented to assist the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Vietnam, controlling every advisory and assistance effort in Vietnam, but was reorganized on 15 May 1964 and absorbed MAAG Vietnam to its command when combat unit deployment became too large for advisory group control.[3] MACV was disestablished on 29 March 1973.[3] continue -> Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[AngryOldGuy]

Oh for heavens sakes, looking back can't you see what happened? We took a 'war' that could have been resolved in a very short time and dragged it out 44 years. (1947 to 1991) funny thing is we think we won but the fifth column is in the process of completing it's work. If we'd fought to win 40+ years ago we'd have had a chance but now our fate is sealed.

 

[obvious Child]

Interesting. It would've been nice to see what kind of difference the Marines' COIN doctrines could've made if they had been more widely adopted by the rest of our forces.

Many of our attempts at gaining local support during the Vietnam War - most notably, the Strategic Hamlet Program - were nothing less than absolute idiocy.

Seems that they ignored the key part of the Briggs program, namely targeting those most likely to support insurgents. The Hamlet program seems to have been largely indiscriminate. It's bad enough that the Briggs program fostered some ill will towards the British, but at least the British invested money and time to create real infrastructure to benefit those they deemed most likely to be favorable to the insurgents. Plus, it seems that our take on the Briggs plan was huge. Rather than a mere 500,000, we did over 8 times its size and rapidly to the point it didn't actually function as the Briggs plan did. If you can't secure and protect your enclaves and prevent the flow of goods and information to the insurgents, why even bother centralizing the population?

The Briggs plan had its flaws, but at least it did the job of isolating the insurgents from the population at the same time giving the population security, food, housing and education. Seems we couldn't do that.

 

[AngryOldGuy]

For the same reason the French did. The US didn't understand the enemy it was fighting and so, couldn't counter it.

because we didn't march right up to the Chinese border and threaten them with nooclear annihilation in Korea, guess what if we had there wouldn't have bean a Vietnam.

 

[apdst]

True, but you lost the war.
It's like, you're at a fair and you play that that game where you have to use a hammer and hit that button so that the thing goes up. The stronger you hit, the higher it goes. America hit hard but while you were doing that, the commie went behind your back and seduced your girlfriend. So the teddy bear you got left with is not a winners' prize, it's a consolation prize.

No, we didn't. The North Vietnamese signed an armistice agreeing to cease all hostilities against South Vietnam. No amount of propaganda will change that fact.

You're at a fair and play that game and when a teddy bear. Soneone cones along and steals the bear. Even though you no longer have the prize, you still won the game.

The United States won every category.

 

[Rainman05]

No, we didn't. The North Vietnamese signed an armistice agreeing to cease all hostilities against South Vietnam. No amount of propaganda will change that fact.

You're at a fair and play that game and when a teddy bear. Soneone cones along and steals the bear. Even though you no longer have the prize, you still won the game.

The United States won every category.

No, you lost the war. How many analogies can I make I wonder. The USA is like Rob Stark in GOT. You won battle after battle but you lost Winterfell and lost the war, and in the end, they won.

In that analogy, the teddy bear is the war victories. The girl is South Vietnam. So while the USA won the teddy bear because it had the most war victories, the vietcong took south vietnam.

because we didn't march right up to the Chinese border and threaten them with nooclear annihilation in Korea, guess what if we had there wouldn't have bean a Vietnam.

If the USA had such little respect for human life, the cold war would have ended on a far different note that it did. The only problem would be that there wouldn't be anyone left to write it.

 

[AngryOldGuy]

or to put it another way child like minds can grasp If picking a fight meant that you'd lose more than you hoped to gain at least you could be assured that it wasn't such a good idea, that was the basis of Mutually Assured Destruction. It wasn't until they were tricked into believing that Star Wars was credible that it changed. If every time they tried one of these 'brush wars' we'd come in and cleaned their clocks decisively they'd have thought twice. Remember the Grenada Invasion Then again as it turned out we should have sided with them in Afghanistan because they were trying to fight Radical Islam that Carter let take hold in Iran but we couldn't have them in Iran because of the oil, thar ain't' no oil in Stan, man. Recall the Southern tier of the old USSR had 130 million Moslems innit

 

[AngryOldGuy]

oh yes my friend a nooclear war was very winnable Wait n see