# What would have been required to win in Vietnam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466 "2014-11-12T18:06:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/61 "2014-11-14T04:32:14Z")
The difference being that the Vietnamese fighting the US - which included both North and South Vietnamese - were, in fact, Vietnamese. They had to stay there and fight; \*it was their country. \* The U.S. did not have to, and ultimately couldn’t. If Vietnam ever invades the United States you’ll see the same thing in reverse. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/62 "2014-11-14T05:08:20Z")
South Vietnam did not belong to the North Vietnamese. In fact, the South Vietnamese had as much a claim to the North as the North did to the South. The North no more had to fight to conquer the South as the South had to fight to conquer the North. Your argument suggests that Germany was obligated to be at war with itself as long as it was divided. Thank goodness the Germans had cooler heads. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/63 "2014-11-14T08:34:45Z")
The partition itself was artificial and maintained by foreign interests that cared fuck all for the Vietnamese people. The latter absolutely had the right to throw that thing in the fire and self-determine, just as the Germans would have had every right to tear that fucking wall down themselves and tell both the Russians and US troopers stationed there to take a hike. There’s also the fact that the South broke the Geneva accords before the North did (though if I’m being honest, neither side was ever really interested in upholding them). Plus there’s the little detail that the South government was a corrupt \*de facto \*dictatorship crowned by an absolute shithead who wound up shot by his own dudes, he was so popular and beloved. So it’s not like there wasn’t any reason for the North to be reluctant to be ruled by him. I mean, how would \*you \*feel if the next US election cycle, the UN unilaterally decreed the country be split in half for Reasons (along whichever lines you care to put forward) and one half wound up “electing” a Putin spokesperson with 50% more votes than there are voters ? And he then declared that there would be no more elections because his political opponents are so unreasonable ? And \*then \*started torching churches and beating up ministers ? How would you feel were you living _on either side_ of the new US divide, and what would you feel like doing ? If your answer is “scream FUCK THAT SHIT at the top of my lungs”, congratulations… Uncle **Ad** ’. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/64 "2014-11-14T08:48:29Z")
And yet the Koreas remain divided, and the Communists there did actually have a choice about whether to stop fighting or not. As did North Vietnam. I was only objecting to the argument that North Vietnam had no choice but to fight. Countries are partitioned all the time and people choose not to fight. They didn’t beat us because they had their backs to the wall or something. They beat us because they wanted to conquer the South and rule over it more than we wanted to preserve it as a pro-West regime. the decision to wage war was as elective for Ho as it was for LBJ. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/65 "2014-11-14T09:34:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > South Vietnam did not belong to the North Vietnamese. In fact, the South Vietnamese had as much a claim to the North as the North did to the South. The North no more had to fight to conquer the South as the South had to fight to conquer the North. Your argument suggests that Germany was obligated to be at war with itself as long as it was divided. Thank goodness the Germans had cooler heads. > [@adaher](#): > > And yet the Koreas remain divided, and the Communists there did actually have a choice about whether to stop fighting or not. As did North Vietnam. > > I was only objecting to the argument that North Vietnam had no choice but to fight. Countries are partitioned all the time and people choose not to fight. They didn’t beat us because they had their backs to the wall or something. They beat us because they wanted to conquer the South and rule over it more than we wanted to preserve it as a pro-West regime. the decision to wage war was as elective for Ho as it was for LBJ. This demonstrates a blinding ignorance of history and of the facts, and it’s quite funny and incredibly ironic that you used the word elective when describing Ho’s decision to wage war. The partition into North and South at the 17th parallel in 1954 was supposed to be temporary and elections were to be held in 1956. The division of the country was entirely artificial, and if elections had been held there is no question that Ho Chi Minh would have won by a huge margin. To quote [President Eisenhower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Transition_period): > [@](#): > > President Eisenhower wrote in 1954 that “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bảo Đại. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bảo Đại was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for.” The only reason the country was not reunified in 1956 under Ho Chi Minh was because Diem cancelled the elections, knowing he would lose, and instead declared the formation of the Republic of Vietnam. South Vietnam, simply put, was an illegitimate state that did in fact ‘belong’ to North Vietnam, or rather to Vietnam as a whole, as the division was never intended to be more than a two year temporary measure. Or do you imagine it was pure coincidence that a rather significant part of the population of the South was willing to take up arms to overthrow the government of South Vietnam and reunify with the North while nobody in the North wanted to take up arms against the government of the North to reunify with the South? Such a significant part in fact, that had the US not taken over the war from the ARVN in 1965 and sent hundreds of thousands of ground troops, the Viet Cong - not the North Vietnamese Army - was going to defeat the ARVN in the field and overthrow the South Vietnamese government in the very near future. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/66 "2014-11-14T09:38:58Z")
Which does not actually rebut my argument that Ho didn’t HAVE to go to war. Please don’t let Kim Jong Un find out that he has to go to war to remedy the artificial partition of Korea. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/67 "2014-11-14T09:50:45Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > South Vietnam did not belong to the North Vietnamese. In fact, the South Vietnamese had as much a claim to the North as the North did to the South. The North no more had to fight to conquer the South as the South had to fight to conquer the North. Your argument suggests that Germany was obligated to be at war with itself as long as it was divided. Thank goodness the Germans had cooler heads. France had withdrawn from Vietnam based on an agreement that elections would be held and the winner would rule all of a united Vietnam. Everyone, including both Diem and Ho, agreed that there should be a single government over a united Vietnam. Diem then repudiated this agreement when he realized he would lose the election. The North said they wanted to stick to the agreement to hold nation-wide elections. Obviously it was easy for them to say this now that they realized they would win the elections but the reality is Ho was the one who had the law on his side. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/68 "2014-11-14T09:55:40Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Which does not actually rebut my argument that Ho didn’t HAVE to go to war. Please don’t let Kim Jong Un find out that he has to go to war to remedy the artificial partition of Korea. The United States didn’t have to go to war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We could have just surrendered. Ho didn’t have to go to war either. He could have surrendered even though he had a just cause for war. North Vietnam went to war because it was fighting for territory it was entitled to by treaty. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/69 "2014-11-14T11:20:18Z")
I guarantee that if the state of California decided to rejoin Mexico we wouldn’t sacrifice 2 million lives and fight 20 years to keep it in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/70 "2014-11-14T11:28:43Z")
Really ? I seem to recall there being something of a tiff when half the states tried to break away and do their own thing. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/71 "2014-11-14T12:14:11Z")
The point is, the North Vietnamese wanted to conquer the South and they were willing to pay more of a price to do that than we were to defend it. If the US had been a brutal dictatorship with no dissent permitted and the North had been a liberal democracy, the US would have won, because the North would have given up long before losing 2 million people. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/72 "2014-11-14T13:34:15Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > South Vietnam did not belong to the North Vietnamese. No, but it certainly belonged to the South Vietnamese, many of whom were fighting alongside the North Vietnamese. That’s who the NLF was. I’m not saying the Vietnamese couldn’t have decided to split up the country; of course they could have. But they didn’t, and U.S. intervention in that decision was doomed, one way or another. The Vietnamese simply were not going to live with more foreign occupation, so either the U.S. could withdraw and accept that and let them settle it, or occupy North Vietnam, which of course would have resulted in a near-endless revolutionary war of limitless horror and brutality. Either way the U.S. was going to lose. [QUOTE=adaher] I guarantee that if the state of California decided to rejoin Mexico we wouldn’t sacrifice 2 million lives and fight 20 years to keep it in the US. [/QUOTE] If Mexico was a military superpower that occupied not just California but most of the western United States, installed puppet governments at its whim, and committed acts of astounding barbarism against the eastern United States, including carpet bombing of cities and the chemical destruction of food crops, plus bombed Canada just to add a little more to the mix, I think American resistance might be quite considerable indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/73 "2014-11-14T15:02:56Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Which does not actually rebut my argument that Ho didn’t HAVE to go to war. Please don’t let Kim Jong Un find out that he has to go to war to remedy the artificial partition of Korea. You would have made a \*great \*chicken hawk! ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/74 "2014-11-14T15:29:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > France had withdrawn from Vietnam based on an agreement that elections would be held and the winner would rule all of a united Vietnam. Everyone, including both Diem and Ho, agreed that there should be a single government over a united Vietnam. > > Diem then repudiated this agreement when he realized he would lose the election. The North said they wanted to stick to the agreement to hold nation-wide elections. Obviously it was easy for them to say this now that they realized they would win the elections but the reality is Ho was the one who had the law on his side. Quite. There was no ‘South’ Vietnam. It was always a fiction. Just a Cold War contrivance that meant nothing more than an opportunity for a class of deeply corrupt buggers to stuff their pockets with money. Kind of like ‘Iraq’. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/75 "2014-11-14T15:49:38Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The point is, the North Vietnamese wanted to conquer the South and they were willing to pay more of a price to do that than we were to defend it. If the US had been a brutal dictatorship with no dissent permitted and the North had been a liberal democracy, the US would have won, because the North would have given up long before losing 2 million people. I disagree. History has shown that democracies generally beat dictatorships. I think the key factor is that countries require a cause they can believe in in order to sustain a war. North Vietnam was able to keep fighting because it believed unifying the country and gaining independence from outsiders was a cause worth fighting for. South Vietnam lost and we lost because we couldn’t find an equivalent cause worth fighting for. What you perceive as a weakness is actually a strength - in democracies, the people are able to tell the government to stop fighting a war when it sees there is no reason for the war. A dictatorship might keep fighting a stupid war. A democracy will stop. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/76 "2014-11-14T16:31:14Z")
One has to add here that there were also several times were democracy was denied by our side. First by refusing to follow with the general election to find out if the population wanted unification (and all signs pointed that most Vietnamese did wanted that, that is why the US opposed the referendum) and then by propping up the military government that came out the coup that assassinated the president of South Vietnam. Items like that were not missed by the North and neither by the people of the South that had to live with palpable and real hypocrisy. Of course the North was not a saint at all. But for the people looking for independence meddling like that can not help the side that we expected to be better and to know better. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/77 "2014-11-14T17:36:39Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I guarantee that if the state of California decided to rejoin Mexico we wouldn’t sacrifice 2 million lives and fight 20 years to keep it in the US. Truer words were never spoken. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/78 "2014-11-14T17:41:16Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Really ? I seem to recall there being something of a tiff when half the states tried to break away and do their own thing. But the North wanted to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/79 "2014-11-14T18:01:11Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The point is, the North Vietnamese wanted to conquer the South and they were willing to pay more of a price to do that than we were to defend it. Again, you are demonstrating that you have no idea what you are talking about. The North, along with a significant part of the South, wanted to reunify the country as was supposed to happen in 1956 before Diem declared the creation of the Republic of Vietnam and prevented this from happening by cancelling the nationwide vote. In trying to paint this as a Northern conquest of the South, you are ignoring that a majority of the South didn’t want to their government and wanted to be ‘conquered’ by the North. Before US intervention, almost all of the communist forces in South Vietnam were local Viet Cong, not North Vietnamese, and had the US not sent hundreds of thousands of troops to South Vietnam in 1965, the Viet Cong was going to win the war. This all ignores the point of why the US should be willing to pay the price to defend South Vietnam when South Vietnam itself wasn’t willing to pay the price to defend itself. > [@adaher](#): > > If the US had been a brutal dictatorship with no dissent permitted and the North had been a liberal democracy, the US would have won, because the North would have given up long before losing 2 million people. Yes, this is of course why the Nazis were easily able to crush the UK and win WW2 in Europe and why the US cringed and folded in the face of the Imperial Japanese Empire and lost WW2 in the Pacific. Liberal democracies are soft and weak and unwilling to take casualties or fight protracted wars.:rolleyes: Two things you might consider: one is even with how divisive the war was with the American public the US fought it for eight years, the longest war the US had fought up to that point. The other is that the government of South Vietnam was also a brutal dictatorship with no dissent permitted, and yet this did not impart upon it the magical qualities of being willing to sustain endless casualties that you attribute to the North based upon being a dictatorship. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/80 "2014-11-14T19:46:17Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Yes, this is of course why the Nazis were easily able to crush the UK and win WW2 in Europe and why the US cringed and folded in the face of the Imperial Japanese Empire and lost WW2 in the Pacific. Liberal democracies are soft and weak and unwilling to take casualties or fight protracted wars.:rolleyes: Also why Saddam won both wars and why Muhammar Khaddafi…Qadafi…Qaddhafi… \*\*Quasi-Daffy \*\*was able to wait them pansy-ass secular democrats out. ETA : also, the North wasn’t a dictatorship (or if it was so, it was a popular one) [QUOTE=doorhinge] But the North wanted to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. 😃 [/QUOTE] Not sure I get your point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466.md?page=5)