How did the Americans manage to lose the Vietnam war so easily when they had every advantage? It doesn't make sense.
>>18451396burgers didn't lose militarily. most troops were gradually pulled out. they lost politically.
>>18451402ah, so they had lots of military gains, it was just the situation at home that did it
>>18451403No, the anon you were replying to is coping hard.
>>18451396>easily On the contrary. They easily held their ground militarily, but politically, nothing short of either salting the earth of the South or conquering the rest of the peninsula in order to create a proper DMZ coast to coast would've worked to freeze Vietnamese re-unification permanently.Which is what they were trying to achieve there, per containment-doctrine.
>>18451410Your grandfather was a draft dodger
>>18451415>>Which is what they were trying to achieve thereseems like a good way to pretty much doom yourself to losing the war
>>18451419And your grandfather was his bottom bitch, very fitting
>american coping already took hold of the threadvery grim
>>18451396We didn't really try to win.
>>18451396>>18451403>>18451420>>18451439When the paris peace accords happened the US/South Vietnamese controlled 80% of the land in Vietnam and 90% of the population. the Fall of Saigan and that whole thing happened like 18 months after the ceasefire and the withdrawal of all US troops. It's the same shit as Afghanistan, you can lead a man to water but you can't make him stop fucking goats
>>18451514>and the withdrawal of all US troops.so that means the US won even if they lost, got it
>>18451523the US goal just wasn't achievable. You cannot force a man to give up goat pussy
>>18451527so the us was a fool for even attempting the doomed war, is what you're saying
>>18451396>How did the Americans manage to lose the Vietnam war so easilyAmerica fought for over 20 years in Vietnam and killed over 3 million gooks (1.1 million NVA/VC, 2 million rice farmers) while suffering less than 60k deaths. The NVA and VC never once won any actual stand up fight even though they frequently outnumbered American forces 3:1. The issue was that Washington didn't allow any ground forces to advance into North Vietnam out of fear of another Chinwse intervention like in Korea, so all the military could do was play whack-a-mole in South Vietnam and terror bomb the North. All the while democrat traitors in Washington kept yapping about how America was genociding the Vietnamese and that it wasn't fair to the Vietnamese people.
>>18451396>How did the Americans manage to lose No, the US didn't lose in vietnam.>>18451439>CopingProjection, you anti-US loser.>>18451523>even if the US lostOnce again, the US didn't lost.
>>18451514>Isame shit as ufghMany disgusting and wacky turkish scumbag will be killed for the crappu nonsense you attempt to spout.
>>18451396we had a numerical advantagethat was it
>>18451585>The NVA and VC never once won any actual stand up fight two examples off the top of my head:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lang_Veihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fire_Support_Base_Ripcordthe vets who fought the PAVN will be happy to tell you about how horrible it was.
>>18451402The public at home seized defeat from the jaws of victory
>>18451527You can
>>18451396Because they weren't allowed to properly give out a death blow to the Vietcong.VC set up a supply line in Cambodia along the Vietnam boarder, then heavily fortified it with Russian anti-aircraft tech. US couldn’t risk conduction of military operations in another country at the risk of starting WWIII. The VC and NVA were both proxy organizations funded by the Chinese and soviets. So, this supply line, known as the Ho-Chi-Minh Trail, allowed the VC/NVA to move massive amounts of troops and supplies all throughout South Vietnam at a moments notice. And there wasn’t anything Americans could really do about it. Anyway, this meant that American troops would randomly find themselves in an outnumbered firefight on routine patrols. They would encounter traps set up on patrol routes that weren’t there hours before. Their standard issue rifles would constantly jam due to the weather/climate conditions. The VC and NVA they fought were relentless warriors. During firefights, NVA soldiers would routinely charge at machine gun nests in a single file line to draw away the suppressing fire.US failed because refused to pursue NVA forces up the Ho Chi Minh trail into Cambodia, from where US forces knew the NVA to be massing men and supplies from before even the onset of official US military action. The US Government wanted to diplomatically preserve the illusion of Cambodian sovereignty, they would not unilaterally invade Cambodia and kill the literal millions of massing NVA and Viet Cong troops. Shaky, or no goals = failed campaign, guerilla war of attrition forever.
>>18451658>Their standard issue rifles would constantly jam due to the weather/climate conditions.the M16 issues were due to the fact that when the guns were introduced they were literally never cleaned and they weren't issued with cleaning kits and because the army tested the M16 with one powder and then for whatever reason switched to a different powder that caused the malfunctions once they mass produced the M16 without testing the new powder first. They solved the jamming issues before the end of the war by switching the powder back and issuing cleaning kits
Classic case of not having a strategy before you actually invade.Plus geography did not aid the idea of propping up a divided state, e.g. southern Vietnam, even if their military was dedicated and not shit, would be facing a northern enemy supplied by China/soivets, and able to attack through the porous borders of neighbouring countries.Compare this to Korea with a fairly clear divide and little way for North Korea to attack other than strait on (also arguably more reluctance from China to support an overrun strategy after MacArthur suggested using nukes against the Chinese army, even though it wasn’t taken seriously I think this is something that would give a country pause when they’re a non nuclear power and it’s still the early years, where the doctrine of when and where it’s appropriate to use nukes hasn’t really been decided yet)
>>18451523Do yoy think the US was supposed to stay there forever and make Vietnam the 51st state? Is that the only win condition you have for the US?
>>18451403There were no "gains" to be had, because Congress did not permit the US to invade the North. The mandate the US military was given was to defend South Vietnam and force the North to either surrender (ideally) or else to agree to a truce with favorable terms for the US (what the US leadership considered a more "realistic" outcome but even this was wildly unrealistic given the sheer different in how the Vietnamese approached the conflict). So the US occupied the south, defended its propped up democratic government there, and set its win conditions to the North either collapsing due to US strategic bombing campaigns, or agreeing to a peace treaty.Instead, the North relentlessly attacked the South, in spite of constant bombing campaigns. The North never managed to make any military gains in the lands held by the US forces, but they were also completely undeterred from holding out against US bombing. So the war became a stalemate, and the press was portraying it in a negative light back home, so there was increased pressure to end the conflict on less than ideal terms. So the US drew up a hasty peace agreement with the North, without any of the concessions they had expected to get, and virtually no political will or means to enforce it. And sure enough, as soon as the US troops were gone from the south, the North invaded and steam rolled the South in violation of the treaty. And the US just sat by and did nothing.
>>18451523The US never suffered a military defeat worth mentioning in Vietnam. Nothing that ever shifted territorial control in the North's favor, nothing that ever materially impacted the US's tactical or strategic position in the country. The North steadily lost men, it lost critical positions, and it had its long-term prospects diminished gradually by US pressure. They were simply more tenacious and willing to endure hardship than the US command anticipated. Because they projected their own worldviews and values onto the Vietnamese leadership. There was a massive gap in understanding that led to the US command making assumptions about the war that simply were not true.
>>18451585>The issue was that Washington didn't allow any ground forces to advance into North Vietnam out of fear of another Chinwse intervention like in Korea, soChina's WW1 military was no real danger, although it was possible to claim it was as an excuse to not escalate the war.
>>18451661They did have a strategy, and it would have worked on most enemies. The Vietnamese, though, saw the war in a fundamentally different way that the US leadership neither appreciated nor took into account in their planning. To the Vietnamese, it was an existential war. A war of liberation. The US viewed it as an ideological power struggle, and believed that if they simply degraded the conditions in the north, people would prioritize a return to peacetime living standards over commitment to ideology. Basically, make the communist effort so shitty to endure that they'd rather coexist with capitalists than continue to fight. The Vietnamese didn't really give a shit about communism, it was never about communism with them. It was about freedom from colonial control, and self-determination. The US fumbled the ball on intelligence and did not realize how the Vietnamese characterized the war. They were "communist" solely to secure support from the USSR and China, because the USA already refused to help them. They actually approached the US first, but the US backed its ally France, so the Vietnamese went communist.Had the US understood the Vietnamese position more clearly, they would have adjusted their tactics. Actually, they probably would not have become involved in the war at all. Simply pressuring France to secure Vietnam's independence as a Democratic State would've been enough to end the conflict, but the US blindly backed its European ally against Vietnam and then blindly enforced Containment Doctrine against what it believed to be another ideologically motivated communist takeover.
LBJ had no plans to actually win the war, it was just to enrich military contractors and get rid of white trash and black conscripts by getting them shot.
>>18451701>They were "communist" solely to secure support from the USSR and China, because the USA already refused to help them. They actually approached the US first, but the US backed its ally France, so the Vietnamese went communist.This is false btw, Ho Chi Minh was a very convinced communist since the 1920s and Hanoi directly emulated the Soviet system.
>>18451707Ho Chi Minh was a socialist, he wasn't aligned with international communism at all. Hence why his first choice for help against France was to go to the United States. No card-carrying communist would EVER do this. Ever.
>>18451703*and test out new weapon systems
>>18451585>we burned 200 children alive for every US officer that was fragged by his own men>we couldn't advance north, because we were afraid the chinks would fuck us up again like in koreaidk man, doesn't sound very convincing
Gooks were willing to die for longer than America was willing to kill them
>>18451396Because jimbo’s dad was in charge of the navy
>>18451977t. zappa autist
>>18451693>There were no "gains" to be had, because Congress did not permit the US to invade the North. The mandate the US military was given was to defend South Vietnam and force the North to either surrender (ideally) or else to agree to a truce with favorable terms for the US (what the US leadership considered a more "realistic" outcome but even this was wildly unrealistic given the sheer different in how the Vietnamese approached the conflict)The chad insurgent who just absorbs all losses for years, and bleeds you dry with ambushes, intransigency, and grit.
>vietnam is le talking tree invincible hellscapeJapan buckbroke Vietnam but was backstabbed by America.
>>18451396They couldn't invade the North. They just couldn't win without doing so. South Vietnamese incompetence also didn't make matters better. And terrible public opinion back home on the war was the nail in the coffin
>>18452300>And terrible public opinion back home on the warIt was the summer of love and the hippie revolution. There was zero chance this foreign war of choice to enrich the MIC would be maintained.
They didn't just lose politically because the war was unpopular at home. That's a mega cope. They lost because more supplies and reinforcements kept pouring in from North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and they couldn't expand the war beyond South Vietnam without risking escalating things big time and pulling the PLA or Red Army into the war. They bombed the shit out of Laos and Cambodia and it didn't stop the Ho Chi Minh trail. There was no way for them to win without committing a huge amount of ground troops and risking hundreds of thousands of dead. At the end of which it could very well have just ended a stalemate like the Korean war.
>>18451710>No card-carrying communist would EVER do thisMao Zedong allied with the USA against the USSR
>>18452282I wouldn't even call it "bleeding the US dry" in anything except perhaps political will. The Vietnamese had unshakable, totally unbreakable will and willingness to fight on for anything less than a war of extermination. I think they would have surrendered rather than be totally destroyed. But they knew the US would not commit to a genocidal war, so they were willing to commit to years of increasing hardship and millions of deaths if it meant that A) they would survive it, and B) there was no path to victory to the US by doing this.
>>18452323Maybe in your parallel universe where you come from, but in this world there was never an alliance between Maoist China and the United States.
>>18452325>The Vietnamese had unshakable, totally unbreakable will and willingness to fight on for anything less than a war of extermination.I agree with this and your whole post. Col Kurtz's monologue is relevant here; he realized that the VC were totally and zealously committed and that there was no matching them. An important point is that history is not just the political and military, but all that is downstream from the cultural: the zeitgeist made itself manifest in the peace movement of the 60s. It ultimately brought an end to this ill-conceived adventure.
>>18451396Didn't invade the North, afraid China would retaliate. Spent the entire "war" defending positions in the South, sending out patrols to skirmish with VC, and bombing random shit in the North. Eventually the VC wiped themselves out in Tet and the bombing campaigns started to wear down the North but then political maneuvers in the US made it clear to the North they just had to hold out a little longer and the US would give up. Once they left, the South was swiftly overrun.
>>18451703>>18451714That's retarded post-hoc cope. The expectation under Eisenhower and JFK before him - and that LBJ inherited - was that they just needed to pump enough supplies and "advisors" into South Vietnam and they would eventually stabilise. After that failed that's when they started steadily expanding the war effort.This board always with the same retarded shit "durrr that's how the war ended obviously that was da plan da whole tiem" (i am very smart)
>>18451701The US did try to push back against France, since the entire thing was obviously a terrible idea.The problem was that France still had leverage, they threatened to join the Soviets.
>>18452327They were not formal allies but they did enter into a strategic partnership to counter the USSR.
>>18452282the one major weakness America has is that American lives are like 10,000 times more valuable than the lives of any other nation so no matter how hard we ratio someone they end up "winning"
>>18452359This is very apparent even now with Iran. The second the first 6 soldiers died in Kuwait, everyone immediately declared that the war has been lost, regardless of the thousands of Iranian soldiers killed along with leadership.Americans have had a very Marvel superhero view on war for a long time now. Wars are to be won within a weekend, with total surrender or destruction of enemy forces with absolutely 0 American casualties. Anything more than this and the war has been irrevocably lost.
>>18451402There are like 12 McDonald's locations in Hanoi, you tell me who won.
>>18452429how many vietnamese restaurants are in LA or new york?sounds like they won by restaurant ratio. and the food is better too
>>18451396As others have mentioned, we lost politically, not militarily. We did an amazing job in Vietnam, pushed them all the way to the far North. Casualty ratio was absolutely incomparable even with our negligence.It’s also a total mischaracterization when people claim we lost to “illiterate barefoot rice farmers with nothing but AK-47s”. In reality, North Vietnam was amazingly trained in both conventional and guerrilla warfare and had been supplied with a modern army by standards of the time from China and the USSR. Both sent troops in to fight, North Vietnam had Tanks, Planes, anti-aircraft. The Russians and Chinese had THEIR OWN pilots directly attacking American planes over the skies of Vietnam, little known fact. Despite the home field advantage of the Russo-Sino-Vietnamese Alliance, we still kicked ass. However, the war became extremely unpopular and we pulled out, and when we did, the seemingly stable South Vietnam was rapidly swallowed. We were never forced out of Vietnam, and especially not by “illiterate rice farmers”, despite popular misconceptions. Same goes for Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which we lost. I implore you all to go look up how long both of those wars actually lasted, you’ll be shocked. Seriously. Media and Historians don’t like how short these wars look on paper so they reclassify it as how long “the invasion” lasted. That’s not how real life works, bo other wars are classified this way. Iraq and Afghanistan both lasted under 3 months. Afghan War: 2 months, 1 week, 3 daysIraq War: 1 month, 1 week, 4 days
>>18452477yeah like how long were we in germany or the philipeans after those wars
>>18451585>>out of fear of another Chinwse intervention like in Korea>china does it anyway after burgers leave>loses
>>18452477>winning a war is when you show up and kill a bunch of people and then stick around for 10 years until you decide to hand the government over to your enemy Sorry burger but if you don't achieve your strategic objectives then you don't win the war.
>>18452477>we lost politically Stop repeating this lie. You lost because you couldn't enter North Vietnam without pulling the PLA and potentially the Red Army into the war. There's no guarantee that invading NV even would have been a victory. You very well could have had hundreds of thousands of casualties for another stalemate like Korea.
>>18452507this guy is german, he knows a lot about losing wars
>>18452510cope harder. with americans present in late-60's numbers, commies would never win.
>>18452517hey, that poster is from one of those countries that was occupied by russia for 200 years. he knows about losing wars to communists
>>18451710>>18451701>he wasn't aligned with international communism at all. He was literally a member of the Comintern, that is, the Communist International.>the process of intellectual radicalization accelerated after Nguyen Ai Quoc arrived in the Soviet Union in June 1923 at the invitation of the Comintern>His writings were now dominated by themes of class struggle.>He went from denouncing colonialism to launching broad attacks on French and American “civilizations.” In an article titled “Lynching: A Little Known Aspect of American Civilization,” for example, Quoc blamed capitalism for slavery and expressed solidarity with American blacks. >While writing for newspapers and participating in Comintern activities, Quoc also received some training at the University of the Toilers of the East. >The Soviet government created this university in 1921 to train foreign youths in communism and revolutionary science>Quoc arrived in southern China in late 1924 to work as a Comintern agent for Southeast Asia
>>18451396>howcrappy politics
>>18452469From the South Vietnamese diaspora
>>18451514The Paris Peace Accords required US forces to permanently leave the region. No withdrawal or even disarmament requirements were imposed on Communist forces, who spent the subsequent war of the flags reinforcing, reequipping, enhancing logistics, and subtly moving to secure village allegiances. That's not a stalemated, let alone winning, agreement, where they're conceding de jure sovereignty and de facto territorial integrity. The USSR and China kept up their support to North Vietnam after it; the US progressively decreased aid to South Vietnam. When North Vietnam began testing the possibility of a renewed offensive, the US did not meaningfully respond, opening the path for the Spring Offensive. So even after formal withdraw, the willingness of Le Duan/VWP leadership to risk renewed warfare had not been sapped, while the willingness of the US to accept warfare rather than the loss of its position in Indochina was exhausted.
>>18452429Vietnam. >>18452469those are from southern vietnamese who left after the war, and supported US forces. Dont fight retardation with more retardation.
>>18452469>>18453493The point is that the war in Vietnam was launched by the US to contain Communism. The US objective was to maintain a pro-western S. Vietnam. The N. Vietnam objective was to unite the country under a single, independent government. What the US didn't understand was that the Vietnamese cared more about nationalism than socialism, as evidenced by their break with China in the Sino-Vietnamese War. The US failed in its short term objective, but the worst fears of US planners never came to pass.
>>18453570>the Vietnamese cared more about nationalism than socialism, as evidenced by their break with China in the Sino-Vietnamese War.The Sino-Soviet split had already happened, and with reapproachment with America and triangulation, China was not regarded as the standard-bearer of socialism, which continued to be the Soviet Union, which Vietnam was still deeply allied to. The Sino-Vietnamese War was immediately preceded by the Vietnamese-Cambodian War, which happened as a result of attacks by Democratic Kampuchea under the leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea against Vietnam and Vietnamese. When the USSR collapsed, Vietnam attempted to form an ideological alliance with China, which China refused, and even then, Vietnam took much of its post-Doi Moi ideology and governance concepts (most notably, the vigilence against peaceful evolution) from China.
>>18451396They wanted to win more than we did. North Vietnam and its southern allies saw this as their war of independence and were committed to victory at any price, and the price was indeed extremely high. America and South Vietnam were not committed in the same way.
>>18451396My favourite Vietnam War meme is the (completely false) idea that the Vietcong was completely wiped out after it. There is no factual reason for why people believe this except a few shitty reports, they just took those and ran with it.
>>18453631>itafter Tet. After the Tet offensive.
>>18453632first time i am hearing this bs.
>>18453674Viet Cong were devasted after the Tet Offensive and never fully recovered from their losses, with the NVA playing the leading role afterwards. They weren't physically destroyed but strategically, they were.
>>18452469those are all south vietnamese who left due to the massive famines that happened under communism in the 70s and 80s>>18453486the US was supposed to return if the commies invaded in the accords treaty but didn't because joe biden and the rest of the dems in the senate blocked it
>>18453713Fucking Cope. No party or president would have or could have gotten us back into vietnam. Would have been riots and unrest until the government backtracked.
>>18451403They lost politically in Vietnam toomost South Vietnamese were pro-North throughout its entire existence and South Vietnam never built a broad enough political base to change that, despite the US willingness to coup particularly unpopular leaders
>>18453820the dems literally ran on and wanted vietnam to fall into the hands of the NVA because the dems worked for the CCP
>>18453841Most is an overestimation. It was primarily very rural Vietnamese along the Mekong Delta that were blatantly pro-North. Cities in general were antagonistic to the North and most rural areas were more mixed or indifferent. More accurate to say that most South Vietnamese hated both the South Vietnam government and communism alike, similar to early South Korean sentiments regarding their authoritarian government and North Korea. Both were seen as unfavorable.
