The United States won the Vietnam War

[kolpo]

If you try to prefent an invasion and you fail in that and are also not able to do a counter invastion(what USSR did in WWII) then have you lost ! That looks me self explaining.

Just the idea that the one with least deads wins a war is a joke, the Russians losts extremely many people in WWII but they ended up as the biggest winner of it(they gained whole eastern Europe as pet).

Quite all wars are about a certain piece of territory, who(or his allies) has most of that territory at the end of the war has won, that's at least how 99% of the historians view it. Isn't that simple?

What will come next? Someone saying that Germans won WWII ?

[Dis]

it has to do more than deaths. The U.S. never lost a single battle. Including the Tet offensive. All ground was retaken shortly after Tet began.

How can a country win every battle yet lose a war?

[Dis]

and vietnam is a separate country. You can't expect the U.S. to hold that territory. It was never ours to begin with.

[steelehc]

Kolpo: If you tell a Russian that his country won WW2, he will tell you that they did so, but not in any way worth while. Twenty million dead does not balance out with Eastern Europe.

Germany lost WW2, in every way of looking at it. Ten million or more dead, their country destroyed, their military ruined.

WW3 hasn't happened yet, hopefully it never will.

Dissident: I agree with you basically, but not specifically. The Allies in WW2 recaptured France, so did we win the Battle of France? Simply because we recaptured territory does not mean we won a battle. I do not think we won in Vietnam, but we certainly did not lose either.

"We have learned the immortal lesson of Viet-nam: Stay out of Viet-nam." -George H. W. Bush (aka Dana Carvey)

Steele

[Dis]

you could say that Nixon lost the war. As CIC he made the ultimate decision. But the U.S. military machine didn't even come close to losing the war. They could have went on another 20 or 30 years. But Nixon promised to end the war to the voters. Although he was already elected a second term. What did he care.

[kolpo]

Originally posted by Dissident
it has to do more than deaths. The U.S. never lost a single battle. Including the Tet offensive. All ground was retaken shortly after Tet began.

How can a country win every battle yet lose a war?

Guerillia doesn't works with battles but with slowely weakening the enemy.

Guerillia doesn't have real terrirtory until the end of the war(when the enemy retreats), but they are everywhere and anywhere hidden in many places. If they by this are able to hurt the occuping force so hard that they retreat looks that to me like a victory even while it was not in an official battle but again guerillia, guerillia doesn't often use big battles.

Most people who fought there said that it was clearly a defeat and that they had no chance, that it was just one insane unwinnable mission, just like 95% of the historians.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Dissident

How can a country win every battle yet lose a war?

It was said of the Romans they lost every battle and won every war. The same was said of the Brits. You guys have a lot to learn about empire building

[Dis]

well my argument is based on people who badmouth the U.S. military. The U.S. military could have continued fighting that war forever. As long as people are still producing children back home, the military can fight on. the military wasn't forced to retreat due to enemy opposition, but due to presidential order.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Dissident
it has to do more than deaths. The U.S. never lost a single battle. Including the Tet offensive. All ground was retaken shortly after Tet began.

How can a country win every battle yet lose a war?

Simple, the Americans did not win every battle in Vietnam. They lost numerous firefights on a regular basis. They lost the battle for heart and mind of the ordinary Vietnamese. They lost the battle for public support at home and abroad.

You also mistake, as do many others, holding ground and controlling it. The Tet offensive proved that the Americans did not truely control major cities in the south. After the battle, the American generals claimed victory and said they had wiped out the VC, but no one believed them because before the battle the generals claimed the VC was a spent force and that the south was safe.

It wasn't the media that turned the Tet offensive into a victory. It was the lies of the generals.

The main reason the war was lost was that the American public finally woke up to the fact that it was a stupid war. The US had no right to install and prop up corrupt, puppet governments in Vietnam. The deaths of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans was achieving nothing.

What has been forgotten is that the witdrawal of US forces from Vietnam was a victory for democracy. The American people forced their government to change its foreign policy and to end a war that the majority were against.

[Rasputin]

the president just enacted what the people wanted.. they saw the hell hole their boys were fighting in, the saw the body bags. If the same level of reproting was allowed with the same sort of visuals in WW2 or especially WW1 the USA would have pulled out of them too and left the Germans to win.

It was a lack of ability to keep taking losses (even though they were lwoer than their enemies) that cost America that war. IMHO

[Roland]

Re: The United States won the Vietnam War

Originally posted by Dissident
The U.S. has never lost a war. Militarily we did not lose in Vietnam. We had staggering success on the military front.

I would have said the same about Rome until maybe 378 or 410.

Whether the US has been the greatest military power in history can only be judged after its fall.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Dissident
well my argument is based on people who badmouth the U.S. military. The U.S. military could have continued fighting that war forever. As long as people are still producing children back home, the military can fight on. the military wasn't forced to retreat due to enemy opposition, but due to presidential order.

That reminds me of the old joke that American soldiers never retreat, they just advance to the rear.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

What about Cuba ?

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Rasputin
the president just enacted what the people wanted.. they saw the hell hole their boys were fighting in, the saw the body bags. If the same level of reproting was allowed with the same sort of visuals in WW2 or especially WW1 the USA would have pulled out of them too and left the Germans to win.

It was a lack of ability to keep taking losses (even though they were lwoer than their enemies) that cost America that war. IMHO

IIRC, during WWII, the American government initially censored films showing dead American troops. But then FDR ordered that the films be shown to show the people the conditions that the troops were facing. Rather than discouraging the public, the images created even more support.

People will support a just war even if it involves high casualties, but not an unjust war or a pointless war.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dissident
The U.S. military could have continued fighting that war forever. As long as people are still producing children back home, the military can fight on.

That would be rather pointless, wouldn't it?

Vietnam didn't kill the US like Afghanistan killed the USSR simply because the US has a fatter economy. Staying in there for another 5 or 10 years, and it'd be hard to tell.