How did the U.S lose the Vietman War?

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

[QUOTE=Aeschines]
But here is my take. The reasons for the US participating in this war were extremely poor but fit the mindset of the time. Keep in mind that Vietnam was already divided when we began limited operations in 1964. Communism was a bad thing, and we were afraid that the fall of one nation to Communism could cause others to fall as well (the “domino effect”). South Vietnam needed our help, or it would fall to the bad Communists in the North. /QUOTE]

OK, let’s go off on a little tangent here. I understand that there was fear of the Big Bad Reds back then, but help me to understand why.

First of all, Communism is an economic system. There is nothing inherently bad about it, except that it is not really compatible with large, nation-type economics. What was bad was Stalinism, the absolute power of the leader of the “Communist” Party (and I put that in quotes, because Soviet-style “Communism” was anything but).

Second, even if we accept that the Soviet Union was our enemy, is it unreasonable to think that perhaps we precipitated the situation? After all, we didn’t lose approximately 20 million people in World War II and they did, maybe even more than that. Given that, why was it so hard to understand that they didn’t really want to go through that again?

Third, despite our best efforts to fight off the Evil Empire, the “Domino Theory” was a colossal failure. It cost us 58,000+ men, destroyed numerous countries, and failed to accomplish anything at all. In fact, all of the countries that we were trying to save from the Reds went Communist anyway.

Thoughts? Mine are that the Cold War was a waste of time and resources that ultimately took on a life of its own simply because two stubborn countries wanted to fight it and so they pushed and pulled and made it happen. What a waste.

[JRDelirious]

@ambushed

“…It’s not like we were defeated on the battlefield and had to go running for the escape routes.”

But that’s pretty much just what happened! We Americans in particular are quite loath to admit it, but the military historians I’ve read agree that we were beaten militarily, by regular troops even more than by the guerrillas.

Cite, then.

[aahala]

The US got into the conflict in a big way thru false pretenses. The mindset of the leaders and the public was wrong, and continued even though there were many signs indicating the course was not leading in the right direction.

Then the Tet Offensive in January 1968 which was the wakeup call. It was seen as a military defeat, which it wasn’t, although it was an intelligence failure of first magitude. It was however a political disaster, eliminating any possibility of maintaining or increasing the existing level of military effort.

[smiling_bandit]

Loopydude:

Wars, however, are won or lost strategically. This deals with damaging the other nation’s ability to pursue the war either materially or economically or politically, including an intangible but important element called the will to fight. In Vietnam, it got to the point that from the grunts in the field to the policymaker in DC, enough people started thinking “this is not worth it” to make the war unsustainable.

As has been said, that’s politics. We could have won srategically - guerrilas are no threat without arms and ammo, and we could have cut that off. But politically, we couldn’t aford to ake the necessary actions, which might have provoked China. As long as those supply lines were open and Russian-made arms going into Vietnam, and we refused to take an offensive, we couldn’t win.

When the French got their asses handed to them by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, the US somehow was of the oppinion that the same would not happen to them, and continued the colonialist folly, this time ostensibly for the higher motive of fighting Communism.

It didn’t. Dien Bien Phu was a total loss for the French and crippled their war and political effort. Even the Tet offensive was not as damaging. And we lost a lot fewer men, pound for pound. In any event, we didn’t particularly want to colonize their country.

By sheer numbers, we won handily on the battlefield,

As you just said, we were outnumbered. but out superior transportation may have enabled us to acheive local superiority, I’m not an expert on it. But we never had the nubers they did; we were a lot better at using them.

Ironically, the lesson of Vietnam contributed immensely to our present skill in armed conflict.

and gained nothing worth having for our efforts. For every VC soldier we killed, for every villiage we napalmed, for every jungle road we carpet bombed, more fighters rose, more villiagers fought, more routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail were built.

That’s not really true. By the end of the war the VC were decimated and eliminated as a credible fighting force. That was perhaps the best time for us. But it didn’t matter because Tet was a huge political loss. I think it was Johnson’s promise of “the light at the end of the tunnel” that got turned into a huge embarrassment and ended real support for the war.

I forget who:

In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the lesson of Iraq too.

Which, in fact, I think is why we are winning. Al-Sadr’s militants are being beaten - he simply lacks support of other clerics, and we may not be trusted by them but we worked hard to show them some measure of trustworthyness and they are responding; attacks from Baathists are way down because we’ve demoralized and broken their cells. Our big problem now is trying to keep certain unpleasant outside influences out.

Airman Doors:

Third, despite our best efforts to fight off the Evil Empire, the “Domino Theory” was a colossal failure. It cost us 58,000+ men, destroyed numerous countries, and failed to accomplish anything at all. In fact, all of the countries that we were trying to save from the Reds went Communist anyway.

That’s not true. It was true that by the time we got into a military fight with states about to go red we were too late. But we only did that a few times, and the results were not always bad. South Korea, for example.

But the biggest victory was psychological. The Soviets knew we’d fight to hold them back, and win or lose we did. And you can hardly say that Soviet Russia and Stalinism would have spread more slowly had we not fought it.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

Your’e right. I forgot Korea. I stand corrected.

[Desmostylus]

@smiling bandit

As has been said, that’s politics. We could have won srategically - guerrilas are no threat without arms and ammo, and we could have cut that off. But politically, we couldn’t aford to ake the necessary actions, which might have provoked China. As long as those supply lines were open and Russian-made arms going into Vietnam, and we refused to take an offensive, we couldn’t win.

Translation: We could have won, except we were scared of China and Russia.

@smiling bandit

It didn’t. Dien Bien Phu was a total loss for the French and crippled their war and political effort. Even the Tet offensive was not as damaging. And we lost a lot fewer men, pound for pound. In any event, we didn’t particularly want to colonize their country.

Translation: The French were pussies.

@smiling bandit

As you just said, we were outnumbered. but out superior transportation may have enabled us to acheive local superiority, I’m not an expert on it. But we never had the nubers they did; we were a lot better at using them.

Translation: We were real heroes.

@smiling bandit

Ironically, the lesson of Vietnam contributed immensely to our present skill in armed conflict.

Translation: We learned jack shit, and we’re proud of it.

@smiling bandit

That’s not really true. By the end of the war the VC were decimated and eliminated as a credible fighting force. That was perhaps the best time for us. But it didn’t matter because Tet was a huge political loss. I think it was Johnson’s promise of “the light at the end of the tunnel” that got turned into a huge embarrassment and ended real support for the war.

Translation: Black is white.

@smiling bandit

Which, in fact, I think is why we are winning. Al-Sadr’s militants are being beaten - he simply lacks support of other clerics, and we may not be trusted by them but we worked hard to show them some measure of trustworthyness and they are responding; attacks from Baathists are way down because we’ve demoralized and broken their cells. Our big problem now is trying to keep certain unpleasant outside influences out.

Translation: I don’t really know what’s going on, but in my own private fantasyland, things are swell.

@smiling bandit

That’s not true. It was true that by the time we got into a military fight with states about to go red we were too late. But we only did that a few times, and the results were not always bad. South Korea, for example.

Translation: Ignore North Korea.

But the biggest victory was psychological. The Soviets knew we’d fight to hold them back, and win or lose we did. And you can hardly say that Soviet Russia and Stalinism would have spread more slowly had we not fought it.

Translation: We were too scared to actually prove that we could hold them back in Vietnam, but gosh, we sure showed them something. Or other. Maybe. I hope. Whatever. La La La La.

[dropzone]

@Airman Doors

Your’e right. I forgot Korea. I stand corrected.

And the Korean vets really appreciate it, though it’s nothing new for them.

[Zagadka]

I’ll add another variable to the equation:

Logistics, logistics, logistics. While we maintained pretty much complete air superiority, this meant little, because the Vietnamese were still able to supply their army. It is about impossible to win a war against a well supplied enemy, and not even carpetbombing half of Vietnam was able to stop their supply lines. As noted, it helped them that the US couldn’t do much about stopping the supplies coming in from China. Nonetheless, they did a superb job in logistics, even if their methods were rather crude - we were mobilized to fight a conventional enemy who has fuel and ammunition dumps to bomb and massive troop concentrations to attack.

One thing I just realized… has anyone seen a detailed breakdown of North Vietnamese/Chinese casualties? It would be interesting to see how many were killed during carpetbombing versus direct combat casualties.

[Zagadka]

@dropzone

And the Korean vets really appreciate it, though it’s nothing new for them.

Ironically, all that history will have to remember Korea is the zany antics of Alan Alda…

[dropzone]

Desmo, you’re being sorta jerkish there.

@Desmostylus

Translation: We could have won, except we were scared of China and Russia.

Hell, yeah, we were and we might have prosecuted the war more aggressively (ie: “nuked 'em back to the Stone Age,” which could conceivably “won” the war) had we not.

Translation: The French were pussies.

I didn’t get that out of what Smiling Bandit said at all. Don’t bring your preconceptions of what people think to a thread.

Translation: We were real heroes.

More jerkiness. What SB said was sometimes true and while while sometimes not but using the sole success criterion, as was done back then, of kill ratio we did real well.

Translation: We learned jack shit, and we’re proud of it.

Actually, no. Prior to Vietnam we had minimal background and experience in fighting a guerilla war. We learned a lot about that.

Translation: Black is white.
Translation: I don’t really know what’s going on, but in my own private fantasyland, things are swell.
Translation: Ignore North Korea.
Translation: We were too scared to actually prove that we could hold them back in Vietnam, but gosh, we sure showed them something. Or other. Maybe. I hope. Whatever. La La La La.

Really, bro, save that sort of shit for the Pit.

[kniz]

@David Simmons

Easily? Easily? Easily?Easily?

Well if LBJ had the attitude that we couldn’t win at the beginning of the war, then what would you call it? His reason for staying with the war was as a holding action against the famous “dominoe effect”. This probably was the reason that he didn’t care if the field generals were lying about body counts, etc., etc. He didn’t want anyone else to know the truth; “that we couldn’t win”. So yes I say LBJ mentally gave up easily and still committed troops to what he believed to be a lost cause.

[David_Simmons]

@kniz

Well if LBJ had the attitude that we couldn’t win at the beginning of the war, then what would you call it? His reason for staying with the war was as a holding action against the famous “dominoe effect”. This probably was the reason that he didn’t care if the field generals were lying about body counts, etc., etc. He didn’t want anyone else to know the truth; “that we couldn’t win”. So yes I say LBJ mentally gave up easily and still committed troops to what he believed to be a lost cause.

Is this mind-reading of LBJ pre- or post-mortem?

I never heard that he thought “we couldn’t win” at the beginning. McNamara wrote the he, McNamara, came to the conclusion that South Vietnam couldn’t win even with our help and that we were not going to go to the all-out mobilization that would have been needed to support a US Army in Vietnam big enough to do the job. However, he stayed on and kept sending people in and for that he should be ashamed.

[Slithy_Tove]

@Desmostylus

Translation: The French were pussies.

Or maybe the French at Dien Bien Phu were some of the bravest soldiers in history. Whenever a commander loses his head it usually follows that his force is doomed, as happened to the Byzantines at Manzikert, but when General De Castrie stayed in his funkhole, his subordinates formed what was called the “paratroop mafia” and worked around him to keep fighting. Units of the Foreign Legion outside the battle zone demanded to be dropped in even after it was understood that the end was inevitable. Even the prostitues of the military borello refused to be evacuated, and served as nurses until the end. Nobody who can spit in Death’s eye like that should be called a pussy.

(BTW, you Aussies aquitted yourselves well also - after the NVA returned to the site of Fire Base Coral, they did not desecrate the graves of the Australians who had died fighting there. That kind of respect wasn’t often shown in that war)

Although the picture is much, much wider, Tet will probably be the short answer in future history books. Hanoi encouraged the Viet Cong to go full out against the US and ARVN, but gave them little support. Sounds familiar? Stalin did the same thing when he told the Polish resistance to start on the Nazis when the Soviet Army was near Warsaw; then he stopped and waited for them to be wiped out. Hanoi wanted to use up the VC and then not have them at the table afterwards.

But both Hanoi and the VC miscalculated, and the US and ARVN won the battle. Significantly, when the VC were in control of the Phu Cam section of Hue, they massacred over 2,000 political enemies, and their children. This heavily influenced Nixon’s decision to simply not “pull out.” Unfortunately, the US didn’t follow up what was a clear victory, since the American people hadn’t been “sold” a vision of victory but rather peace, and then were served with misleading film clips of defeat.

Sure, logisitcally the US had the upper hand, but tactically we kept the war fairly even, hoping that our wealth of materiel would balance things out. It didn’t

The NVA were free to violate Cambodian neutrality so as to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open, but when Nixon raided the supply dumps, America went into a fury of protest. Also, the Chinese had used tunnels in WWII, but the Japanese flooded them with poison gas. The US refrained from this obvious war crime (not that anyone appreciated it), and the tunnel system provided an advantage that the US could not counter. Not with bombs from B52’s, and if the agent orange revealed one opening, there were still a dozen others still in the bush.

Our numbers didn’t help either. 66% of US casulaties were from punji sticks, land mines and booby traps. A few NVA and VC simply had to plant them and wait for the US to come and step on them. However, evocatave footage of medics wrapping up sharpnel wounds made up much more than 66% of what was shown on TV.

In sum, the North exploited public opinion, while the US actually took everyone’s opinion into consideration. The fact that this resulted only in alienating just about everyone is a lesson not lost on the current administration.

(one good thing - after Vietnam got hot, those thermonuclear showdowns with the Soviets stopped. We were proccupied with Vietnam, and they were satisfied with seeing us stymied there. Vietam, not the resolution of the Cuban Missle Crisis, prevented WWIII: remember that Khrushchev was replaced by harder, not softer men.)

[Sampiro]

An at least quasi-relevant aside about how no two scholars can agree on how/why the U.S. lost Vietnam:

When I was an undergrad I took a course in the Vietnam war taught by a Chinese professor (I’ll call him Dr. C) born under Mao and still unapologetically Communist. (He read Vietnamese and while watching documentaries on Vietnam in which Hanoi & Saigon protesters carried signs in their own language, Dr. C. would burst out laughing, then when asked to translate the sign: “Oh… I’m not sure what it say…”- used to majorly p.o. me, but that’s a hijack).

Dr. C told us several times “Linebacker and Linebacker 2 were two of the deadliest most atrocious death waves ever unleashed, but they accomplished nothing of strategic significance. They killed many civilians, many children, but did nothing to fighting spirit or the military strength of the Vietcong. They were on par with Nazis.” (Dr. C was incredibly difficult to understand, with sounds like “jew-jew bay tess” later being deciphered as “rural bases”, but that’s another story.)

Anyway- towards the end of the class he was very pleased to introduce a current Vietnamese general who was visiting the Air-War College on the nearby AFB (this being when diplomatic relations with Vietnam had just resumed). The general had been an officer in the VC during Linebackers 1&2 and when asked about them by a student responded (in much better English than Dr. C) “If there had been a Linebacker 3 we would have been crawling to Saigon on our bloody stumps to surrender- the stupidest thing America did in the war was not continuing that, but I am very thankful they did not. They had no idea how much it crippled us.”

Dr. C showed no emotion, and later reiterated that Linebacker was ineffective.