America has not done right by the Afghans who collaborated with the US army and it did not do right by those in Saigon either after the fall. But are there examples of countries who did do it right and could have provided a template for what a “good” US withdrawal of Afghanistan might have looked like?
This is kinda a trick question. We did not lose this war nor Vietnam on the field of battle. We lost it politically. We chose to leave and could have left at any time. The disaster on the ground is entirely the fault of our government for not evacuating any willing Afghans before we left.
I’d have to say that, yes, the war in Vietnam was lost militarily also.
Disagree. Had we fought it with the intensity of WW2 the N Vietnamese would have lost quickly. The N Vietnamese never beat us on the field of battle. We never tried to destroy their ability to wage war. We fought that war with one hand tied behind our back.
Regardless, it was not a great time for the Vietnamese who chose to collaborate with us. What wars did the ultimate team that withdrew, regardless of what you want to call them, do right by the locals that collaborated with them?
Sorry, that’s not the case. The American military held onto nothing basically outside of the major cities in South Vietnam and the bombing of the north was a complete failure achieveing nothing other than increasing the enemy’s resolve to win the war, which of course they finally did.
The only way to have “fought it with the intensity of WW2” would have brought in both the Chinese military and the Soviet military. No, this was in no way comparable to a World War II battle and viewing it through that lens is a complete mistake. That is the “hand tied behind our back”, not to mention the simple fact that the military itself had no viable plans for “winning the war”.
You are correct. We did not do right by the locals who assisted us and I don’t think we did that in any war we’ve ever fought. Trying to think of an example from elsewhere, all I can think of is the major ancient empires in the Cradle of Civilization, but I doubt their conquests and occupations were great for the losing soldiers.
LBJ: “If I could just set that boy down at a table and talk to him…”
My dad started in WW2 and retired mid-Vietnam. He actually agreed - he commented that if we had done the intensive bombing and material destruction in Vietnam that was done in Germany, they would not have stood a chance, but he also admitted we would have been killing off at least half of their civilian population as well.
He was not fond of Vietnam, but said that we were there first for treaty with France reasons back when it was still the Indochine conflict. However, and big however, Vietnam proper was mainly because Johnson had a bug up his ass about the whole proxy war thing - purportedly [according to my now deceased dad so I can’t ask him] Kennedy didn’t want a real dig in and fight war, he was OK with just sending advisors.
I am not fond of any war, my opinion about furrin countries is just that - they’s furrin, and not my business what they do in their country. And yes I know, crimes against humanity and all, however unless it is the UN declaring war, as far as I am concerned they can do whatever they want in their country. I don’t have to spend my money going there, and I don’t have to buy stuff imported from there [I do my damnedest to avoid any Chinese product, mainly food items where previously much of our food may have come from China. I also try to avoid certain Christian companies that I find have bigoted habits, and lately I have been doing my best to avoid any with Trump ties. ]
The Treaty of Lambeth provided amnesty for the English rebels who had allied with France. But many rebels had switched back to England after the death of King John.
ETA: It’s hard to beat general amnesties, for this question. There’s Andrew Johnson’s amnesty of Confederates, Napoleon’s amnesty of royalists, etc. But in the case of the treaty of Lambeth, nobility was restored.
~Max
This ignores the simple fact that the war in Vietnam was nothing at all like WW2. China and the Soviet Union, our allies in WW2, would be co-belligerants against us in Vietnam if we had tried to fight the war full-out like in WW2.
This contradicts history.
And this is isolationism which is pretty much impossible in today’s world.
By the time the United States ended its Southeast Asian bombing campaigns, the total tonnage of ordnance dropped approximately tripled the totals for World War II. The Indochinese bombings amounted to 7,662,000 tons of explosives, compared to 2,150,000 tons in the world conflict.
I guess we shoulda been using Garands instead of M16s?
Perhaps the re-hashing of the conflict in Vietnam should be moved to another thread.
I hear this a lot.
It’s a false distinction. The battlefield and the political theater are inseparable. They’re one and the same. War is war. Force is always a tool kept in the diplomat’s pocket.
We (the US) “lost”* Vietnam. And Afghanistan. Not to mention Iraq.
Well, sure. If we’d nuked Hanoi we probably would have gotten an unconditional surrender pretty quick.
On the other hand, China and possibly the Soviet Union would have had something to say about that. In WWII, we were all on the same side. Not so much in Vietnam.
* With a big part of the loss being that absolutely nobody had any idea of what “winning” would look like.
“War is simply a continuation of politics by other means”
The US-Grand Fenwick conflict.
I will stick with his opinions, he was the one boots on the ground all the way through, including the equivalent to our current FOBs, and working with the ARVNs as well as civilians. And no shit both the communist groupings were against us, remember proxy war? They were co-belligerants against us. Because we let a bunch of anticommunists paint our former allies as enemies, we ended up with a cold war full of proxy skirmishes and all out wars [certainly not police actions.]
And history is full of contradictions that we discover are not the actual truth decades after the fact. There were treaties, and for a fair amount of time we just sent advisors - oddly, Kennedy drops dead from a little FMJ lead poisoning and suddenly we have war.
And why the hell should America be the world policeman on its own cognizance? If we are to be a part of the world community on equal bases with everybody ,the Tibetan style polyandry and muslim style polygyny should be legal here too. Cool, I would love a spare husband around here to take out the trash and mow the lawn when mrAru doesn’t want to, and a fellow wife might be nice to help out with the housework when my cancer treatments make me sleep 16 hours a day. Well, if we can shove our laws on them, they can shove their laws on us - I wouldn’t mind the full veil deal, never have to worry about dressing nice, hair and makeup - just throw on a clean set of jammies and the full veil and on we go! It isn’t an a la carte world then.
I understand that the human rights issues get up your nose, but if you don’t want us going to war, being the world police is right out. If you don’t want them shoving their beliefs on us, then we don’t have the right to shove our beliefs on them. You can’t have it both ways. Now if you can get every country in the UN to agree without the US pushing the decision then it is appropriate to go to war.
And here we have more misinformation combined with more conspiracy nonsense.
The US dropped something like twice as many bombs during the Vietnam war than were dropped during all of WW2. So I don’t think “intensity” was an issue.
When China went to Mao in 1949, the French could never hold Vietnam. As long as the Ho Chi Minh Trail was flowing, the US could never win. The US needed to fight like it had in the Modoc War, not WWII, but instead of wiping out a few hundred hostile out in the tules, the US faced a country the size of all of California, with millions supplied by industrialized neighbors.