Was it inevitable that the US lost the Vietnam war?

[Lancer]

"the political purpose of the war was to protect the South Vietnam, without invading the NV"

The political purpose is why we lost. The purpose of a war is to win.

"the military did not challenge the validity of this mission;"

I disagree and would like to see where you get you information. Iirc EVERYONE questioned the way the war was being managed.

"And the chinese would have kicked our asses again had they got involved."

Diss, no way, totally different military situation. We would not have been fighting migs with WW2 prop jets. We had the equipment we needed. No, I disagree 100%. If we had to fight the Chinese conventionally they couldn't compete with our firepower and particularly our mobility. It was their nukes that caused concern, not their ground forces, and the Sovs nukes as well. However nukes are useless, just ask Kruschev. If you use them, you die. If Kennedy had stood his ground in Germany or Johnson had fought Vietnam to win, alot of grief and death would have been averted imo.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Lancer
"the political purpose of the war was to protect the South Vietnam, without invading the NV"

The political purpose is why we lost. The purpose of a war is to win.

You desagree with Clausewitz

The purpose of the war is to win : pure sig material

[Pekka]

Lancer, are you kidding me? Conventional warfare would have been a disaster. A total war I think China would have lost. Conventional. Look at the map dude.. logical superiority bar none. Just not doable at the time.

[Dis]

according to wikipedia, Kennedy dreamed up Vietnam as a way to funnel Soviet aggression over there and avoid nuclear confrontation (started when Krushcev demanded Berline when the 2 met in Vienna).

I'd say avoiding nuclear war is a good thing. No? Yeah we lost, and alot of people died. But how many more would have died in a nuclear confrontation.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Lancer
"the political purpose of the war was to protect the South Vietnam, without invading the NV"

The political purpose is why we lost. The purpose of a war is to win.

"the military did not challenge the validity of this mission;"

I disagree and would like to see where you get you information. Iirc EVERYONE questioned the way the war was being managed.

"And the chinese would have kicked our asses again had they got involved."

Diss, no way, totally different military situation. We would not have been fighting migs with WW2 prop jets. We had the equipment we needed. No, I disagree 100%. If we had to fight the Chinese conventionally they couldn't compete with our firepower and particularly our mobility. It was their nukes that caused concern, not their ground forces, and the Sovs nukes as well. However nukes are useless, just ask Kruschev. If you use them, you die. If Kennedy had stood his ground in Germany or Johnson had fought Vietnam to win, alot of grief and death would have been averted imo.

migs with prop jets?

come on!. You've seen the movie Top Gun. It's a bull**** movie, but what they said was true. Our dog fighting kill ratio Korea was excellent. But in Vietnam our dog fighting kill ratio dropped very low. We had excellent air superiority in Korea. You can argue military tactis weren't great, but the superiority was there. We struggled on the ground.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Pekka
I think it was going to happen one way or the other anyway. What you have in there is the defendors dream and the locals weren't exactly pussies but pretty tough folks.

Troops fought well, but they were on a mission that couldn't be won IMO. Then again, we have a lot of those 'US could take over the world militarily few times over' and those folks are being ****ing serious .. anyway if you ask me, Vietnam was not about to be taken by anyone else except NV, period. It was their domain. Even though US troopers took and won the battles, it wasn't a war to be won, it turned out.

yeah I used to overstate U.S. military superiority. Looking back to the Korean war, you can see it just was never there. We did have a few flashes of brillance in that war, but then the men got cocky and over confident, and then got their asses kicked back to the 38th parallel.

[Pekka]

Right, but the thing is, you are basing it on the amount of equipment that is supposed to be superior, which it is comparing to other mega armies and their equipment, but then you whip out every single nation, oh man that's just .. i mean what the hell is that claim anyway? It' snot my dad can beat your dad, it's my dad can beat anyone of your dads the same time and I believe it!

Russia can gain victory over Europe, Japan can dominate China, these are all laughable scenarios, because it's not real life.

But you know what real life is? WORD LIFE!

YOU CAN'T SEE ME!

[Lancer]

"come on!. You've seen the movie Top Gun. It's a bull**** movie, but what they said was true. Our dog fighting kill ratio Korea was excellent. But in Vietnam our dog fighting kill ratio dropped very low. We had excellent air superiority in Korea. You can argue military tactis weren't great, but the superiority was there. We struggled on the ground"

In Korea we were fighting the Mig 15 with prop planes early on. Then we had some crap jet iirc. Later the F86 Sabre. The F-86 was the plane that turned things around, including our low kill ratio. Still, in Korea it wasn't great. In Vietnam on the other hand, iirc, our air to air kill ratio was excellent. On the ground in Vietnam we won all the battles but lost the war...because of the politicians. We would have beat them on the ground in large formation battles that the Chinese would have had to use to take and hold ground, the only way to even think of kicking the US out of the North. They would have lost these battles, been hammered from the air and had their supply interdicted continuosly by air mobile troops and strategic and tactical airpower with which they could not hope to compete.

The NVA success against US airpower was in the use of Russian SAMS. The Chinese would have to have advance out from under their SAM umbrella early on.

Also, don't think the numerical advantage of the Chinese would be that great. Consider that they had very little ability to project power, otherwise they would have crushed Vietnam later on when they invaded the north, exactly where they would have had to fight US forces.

Also, they would have had to supply troops across the Yalu river, kinda tough with all the bridges blown away. Those would go very early on.

[Lancer]

"according to wikipedia, Kennedy dreamed up Vietnam as a way to funnel Soviet aggression over there and avoid nuclear confrontation (started when Krushcev demanded Berline when the 2 met in Vienna).

I'd say avoiding nuclear war is a good thing. No? Yeah we lost, and alot of people died. But how many more would have died in a nuclear confrontation."

wikipedia sounds like he's trying to cover grand stupidity by calling it grand strategy.

"It was their nukes that caused concern, not their ground forces, and the Sovs nukes as well. However nukes are useless, just ask Kruschev. If you use them, you die."

The Russians aren't going to get their own country blown away for North Vietnam, niether are the Chinese who have a very small nuke capability at the time.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Lancer
"the military did not challenge the validity of this mission;"

I disagree and would like to see where you get you information. Iirc EVERYONE questioned the way the war was being managed.

I have never heard any top military explaning that protecting the SV without invading NV was not feasible : first military failure.

The management of the war was a military duty which apparently was not recognized as properly done : second military failure.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
i disagree. we sure did a number against the native americans. and so did the spaniards.

True. Tassadar should of said; Against the people, all nations are powerless - outside of genocide.

So in that sense, if the the USA "won" they would be even biggers losers. So yes, their defeat was inevitable.

[CerberusIV]

The Vietnam war(s) really go back to WW2 when the Jpanese kicked the French out and the locals got the idea that they didn't have to be someone elses colonial puppets. the French lost, mainly because substantial Chinese support meant they could not keep the conflict down to a policing level. Crucially, the Viet Minh (later North Vietnam) realised that they could raise the domestic political cost of a war in Vietnam to the level no western power could meet.

I think Vietnam could have been won but the level of conflict in the South would have had to be kept to the level of policing, supported by targeted military action. the British in Malaya are a good example of how insurgency at this level could have been defeated at that time.

To keep the level of conflict down required two things - a South Vietnamese government that could command some degree of popular support and restricting aid to the Viet Cong from NVA.

It is fair to say the domestic regime support was never there and the ordinary people suffered from corrupt bureaucracy and a system that favoured the large landowners and their political puppets. The U S Government seems never to have tried to get reform or been able to see that without change here the problem was never going to be solved, and probably not even contained. The eventual adoption of free fire zones and the known cases of resettled villages then being bombed really killed off any last chance of support for the government in South Vietnam.

Stopping support from the North was easier and Johnson should have authorised many of the measures Nixon eventually took. Mining the ports and bombing any targets of any value in the North would, IMO, have forced North Vietnam to back off in the late '60's.

It could have been won but the decisions that might have created the necessary conditions weren't taken so the conflict was lost.

U S politicians still don't seem to have learnt the lesson that firepower alone isn't enough, unless applied on the scale that the Nazis or Stalin's NKVD would have done and as genocide isn't politically acceptable, they need other solutions if they are not to condemn the U S military to situations it isn't allowed to win.

[chequita guevara]

There is only one way that the U.S. could have won the Vietnam War: kill all the Vietnamese people.

Many conservatives are victims of the big lie. They think that if only the military had gotten what it wanted, if only the politicians hadn't interfered, we might have won. It's the exact same BS as happened in Germany following WWI. Oh, we can't have lost on our own merits, we must have been stabbed in the back! Instead of blaiming the Jews, however, the right blaimes liberals for stabbing America in the back. Of course, this is every bit as much of a lie as it was in Germany.

The military got 99.9% of what it wanted. The only part of NV that was off limits to aerial bombing was a ten-mile corridor along the China-Vietnam border, to ensure no accidental bombings in China, possibly setting off another war with China.

The military never wanted to invade the North. They say that today, but at the time the military firmly believed that invading the North would invite a Chinese response. Only a couple of years ago, China released some of its documentation from that era, and it was discovered that yes, indeed, the Chinese would have responed, just as they did in Korea. Furthermore, the USSR said it would not allow an American invasion of the North. If the only way to win means WWIII, then winning isn't an actual option, since no one wins WWIII.

You invaded South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. You dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped in all of WWII. The same is also true of Laos and Cambodia. Every military target in Vietnam was bombed. An area the size of Massachusetts was turned into desert by bombing and spraying. Nearly 2 million people were killed.

WHAT MORE DO YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE DONE!?!

Finally, 95% of the people of South Vietnam opposed the Southern dictatorship and wanted union with the North. Short of killing off all the Buddists, victory simply wasn't in the realm of possibility. This is a people that have fought for their independence for 1400 years. They were't going to stop fighting just cuz we invaded the North.

conservative idiots

[Pekka]

logical.. I mean LOGISTIGAL.. logistics would be so far up China's ass they wouldn't even have to lift a finger to make it work where as anyone coming from another side of the world even with all those military bases closer.. man it's just not doable in those terms and times I'd suppose, and even less today with conventional means. Air superiority is overrated in jungle.

[Whoha]

Re: Was it inevitable that the US lost the Vietnam war?

Originally posted by Lancer
How did the US lose, and how might we have won?

I think we lost because we wouldn't invade North Vietnam, and we could have won by doing so.

1) Leave the countryside in the hands of the ARVN and consentrate all US forces, except the marines, south of the DMZ.

2) Drive across the DMZ. The NVA will come south to meet the attack. The consentration of NVA will present many targets for tactical and strategic air attack. Perhaps this will also lessen pressure on the ARVN as well.

3) When the NVA come south, the marines do an end around and land behind them supported by naval gunfire, carrier and ground based air.

4) Hit from the north and south, by tactical and strategic airpower and naval gunfire, the NVA would be defeated. Then the US forces drive on Hanoi against whatever remains.

5) The VC would wither on the vine without the support of North Vietnam.

As always, the side that makes the least mistakes wins:

http://www.marine-family.org/vva/jane2.htm