Is the Vietnam War technically classified as a military "defeat" by the US or not?

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

…

@Archie

I’m tellin’ ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD

[Max_Torque]

@xtisme

But I disagree that either the Soviets or the Chinese would have risked nuclear war over Vietnam. Korea? Yeah, I think the Chinese would have been a bit more ticked off if we attempted unification by force. But I don’t think they would have risked nuclear war over Vietnam at the time. YMMV of course…that’s why it’s a debate.

Open war, perhaps not, but the situation was very touchy. Way back when I was in college, I took a class on the history of the Vietnam War taught by a veteran (the school I went to as an undergrad, Texas Tech University, has a very sizable and respected Vietnam archive). One of the tidbits he passed on to us was the hamstringing of the air campaign due to political concerns. For example, pilots were ordered not to bomb or otherwise attack SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites while they were under construction. The reason given was that, as long as the site was under construction, it was probable that Soviet scientists or advisors would be on site, and the US didn’t want to give the Russians an excuse to enter the conflict openly instead of just providing support. Therefore, pilots would have to wait until the SAM sites were finished (as in, capable of shooting back at the planes) before they could be bombed.

What a way to fight a war.

[ElvisL1ves]

This is not the final image of the anything but a defeat.

[tagos]

@Max Torque

Open war, perhaps not, but the situation was very touchy. Way back when I was in college, I took a class on the history of the Vietnam War taught by a veteran (the school I went to as an undergrad, Texas Tech University, has a very sizable and respected Vietnam archive). One of the tidbits he passed on to us was the hamstringing of the air campaign due to political concerns. For example, pilots were ordered not to bomb or otherwise attack SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites while they were under construction. The reason given was that, as long as the site was under construction, it was probable that Soviet scientists or advisors would be on site, and the US didn’t want to give the Russians an excuse to enter the conflict openly instead of just providing support. Therefore, pilots would have to wait until the SAM sites were finished (as in, capable of shooting back at the planes) before they could be bombed.

What a way to fight a war.

You’ll find that no level of savagery, and the US fought with plenty of savagery, will stop people fighting foreign invaders for their own country. And certainly not a people who have been fighting invaders for centuries.

Any more than if Nazi Germany had invented a new country out of part of the USA and stepped in to ‘protect’ it.

[ralph124c]

By the end of the war, some very strange behaviors had evolved: the US would fight “pretend” battles (like the siege of Khe Sanh): this was a replay of Dien Bien Phu, except the USA NEVER could be defeated-we had too much air cover. However, the battles were pointless and the place wasn’t strategic. As for not bombing the SAM sites, we also didn’t bomb the docks at Haiphong harbor (where 90% of the weapons flowed into N Vietnam). So we were allowing our men to be killed by weapons that we would not destroy on the docks-stupid!
We wasted thousands of tons of bombs, dropping them on remote areas of jungle-where we KNEW the supply lines were NOT there! The vietnam war was bizzare-officers went along with the fiction that our “allies” were fighting-except that in most cases, the S. Vietnamese generals just kept the payroll monies, and stayed home.

[tagos]

@ralph124c

The vietnam war was bizzare-officers went along with the fiction that our “allies” were fighting-except that in most cases, the S. Vietnamese generals just kept the payroll monies, and stayed home.

Quite. If the supposed denizens of the fictional construct would not fight then there was never any possibility of victory short of barbarism. The USA could have nuked every city in North Vietnam and it would still be fighting today. To the vietnamese Vietnam was Vietnam.

[francois60]

I don’t think that’s fair to the South Vietnamese. Their military was incompetently led and corrupt, but they did fight.

As for whether it’s a defeat or not, it certainly wasn’t a military defeat. Our military left with an agreement signed preserving South Vietnam as an independent political unit, which was the primary political objective of the war. North Vietnam broke that agreement and defeated South Vietnam, but that’s a political defeat akin to the Communists taking over China.

[tagos]

@francois60

I don’t think that’s fair to the South Vietnamese. Their military was incompetently led and corrupt, but they did fight.

As for whether it’s a defeat or not, it certainly wasn’t a military defeat. Our military left with an agreement signed preserving South Vietnam as an independent political unit, which was the primary political objective of the war. North Vietnam broke that agreement and defeated South Vietnam, but that’s a political defeat akin to the Communists taking over China.

And they left because the will of the US to fight was broken and knew full well they were turning a blind eye to the inevitable.

And the ARVN were conscripts who were not good fighters, particularly not when lacking US support.

Hence the Nam era US soldier’s joke of ‘One M16 for sale. Only thrown down once.’

[XT]

@tagos

And the ARVN were conscripts who were not good fighters, particularly not when lacking US support.

Hence the Nam era US soldier’s joke of ‘One M16 for sale. Only thrown down once.’

This reminds me a lot of the French Surrender Monkey’s meme…and has much the same level of validity (or lack there of). South Vietnam managed to fight on for 2 years after the US left…despite a lack of support from the US. The North of course continued to have full support from the Soviet Union and China both in terms of arms and money.

-XT