DBWI: American troops fought in the Vietnam War

[glenn67]

In a speech in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson explained his reason for not committing American troops to the brewing conflict in Vietnam:

"We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

With his commitment to focusing his administration on his Great Society reforms to the exclusion of foreign policy, LBJ went on to landslide victories over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George Romney in 1968 and go on to rank among the top ten in greatest Presidents.

In 1967, the North Vietnamese with the help of their Viet Cong allies completed their conquest of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh personally walked through the main street in Saigon in a photograph made famous by Life Magazine.

But what if LBJ decided to send military "advisers" to Vietnam? Would it have resulted in a Korean-like armistice and would Johnson still have won re-election in 1968?

[CalBear]

Why would LBJ do that? Kennedy was smart enough to bail out of the situation right before he was assassinated.

Besides the whole thing with the Soviets (can you imagine the look on the faces in the Pentagon when we diverted troops from Europe), the extra money would have kept Johnson from finishing The Great Society.

Of course, if we had gone in it would have been a total walk over.

[RandomChance]

A victorious South would have prevented the rest of South East Asia falling to Communism, but only at great cost. I wonder if it could have sparked a nuclear showdown?

It would also butterfly the Chinese attempted invasion of Russian-backed Vietnam - I can't see them attacking an American ally given LBJ's successful diplomatic bridge building - After all, Only Lyndon could go to China!

[mowque]

Originally Posted by CalBear

Of course, if we had gone in it would have been a total walk over.

I mean, this is a given. The United States is the largest, richest nation around. Assuming we got involved, we could prop the South up easy.

[RandomChance]

But it wouldn't be just propping up Vietnam, you'd end up propping up everyone down to Timor . As it is, Singapore is more or less an isolated fortress in a sea of Communism.

[Peabody-Martini]

The Brits and the Russians learned the hard way never to start a land war in Asia. The Russians needed two bites at that poison apple. Sorry to be so contrary here but the reports that Kennedy and LBJ were getting suggest that any American involvement in Vietnam would have been anything but a cakewalk.

[CalBear]

Originally Posted by Peabody-Martini

The Brits and the Russians learned the hard way never to start a land war in Asia. The Russians needed two bites at that poison apple. Sorry to be so contrary here but the reports that Kennedy and LBJ were getting suggest that any American involvement in Vietnam would have been anything but a cakewalk.

That's true, but the reports envisioned using a few troops to prop up the South and few instructors. That would have been really dumb. No, if we had gone in it would have been two or three divisions, 60-70,000 men and plenty of bombers.

Can't possibly see the NVA hanging for two months in that case.

Look what happened when the PLA smacked them in '72 during one of the USSR/PRC proxy wars.

[Snake Featherston]

I dunno, maybe the US Army would have worked out its rather sorely defective strategic issues in the environment of a major war that exposed them instead of waiting into the 1980s and 1990s to realize that its strategic concepts did not really exist. As it is, I disagree with everyone else that the USA would have just gone in and curbstomped the Vietnamese. First of all the Kennedy and Eisenhower Administrations kind of sort of lied about how *much* we were involved (and ironically Nixon the red-baiter made that into a propaganda gold mine. Bastard ) in Vietnam, so we would not in all probability have gotten involved all at once, but probably in a more messy pattern.

Probably some advisor would be held captive by the Vietcong for ransom ala the PLO and other Soviet proxies of the time, the US public goes ballistic, another Congressional handwave declaration and then the USA's saddled with propping up a regime where its enemy has free logistics. It's ridiculous to assume that even in the case of gradual involvement that the USA would just go in guns blazing without at least trying to figure out why, but even a planned intervention will run into a logistical buzzsaw trying to square out how to win someone else's civil war for them while their enemy has unbombable logistics bases.

As it was Communism in SE Asia proved to be more about the local nationalist element than strictly Communist, and the whole Sino-Soviet proxy conflict in Asia thing indicates the domino theory had a major defect it didn't realize at the time: sure, it'd go Communist, but what *kind* of Communist?

Mind I'm not saying that Hanoi would have won against the USA militarily, what is more likely to happen is that due to lack of strategic thinking in the US Army of the time (that was seriously scary to read about, BTW) the US Army and maybe the Marines win a lot of tactical victories with no overall pattern or purpose, unable to end the major enemy supply lines and after long enough the US public just gets tired of that silliness and goes home. At least *Hanoi* would know what it wants, a unified Vietnam. What would the USA want if it intervenes in that war?

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by CalBear

That's true, but the reports envisioned using a few troops to prop up the South and few instructors. That would have been really dumb. No, if we had gone in it would have been two or three divisions, 60-70,000 men and plenty of bombers.

Can't possibly see the NVA hanging for two months in that case.

Look what happened when the PLA smacked them in '72 during one of the USSR/PRC proxy wars.

Except that we know now due to a bunch of tell-all memoirs that the US Army in the 1960s was astonishingly bereft of strategic thinking at the time. Tactically, too, they were prepared to fight the Soviets, not a jungle war against a bunch of guerrillas in pajama suits. Even supposing the USA wins every single major tactical engagement what purpose would any of that have so long as Hanoi would get free logistics from both China and the USSR? Strategic bombing has never yet won a war, and this against industrialized societies where it really did blast cities to rubble. What purpose would it have served to turn the RVN into rubble? If we decided to just bomb the Hell out of North Vietnam, that doesn't do anything but make us look bad and it won't change that they don't *need* their own logistics.

Edit-Wait a minute, LBJ's sweeping social reforms that happened in the 1960s would have been er.....slightly affected...by a war in Asia at that time. The whole "drafting poor people to fight a rich man's war" thing that led to the volunteer army in the late 1990s would have been a major issue at a time when politics was volatile enough as it was. The Great Society helped immensely to propel the USA into a gulf unbridgeable between us and all the other nations on the planet. Fighting in Vietnam *and* trying the Great Society? How would that even work?

[Peabody-Martini]

Originally Posted by CalBear

Look what happened when the PLA smacked them in '72 during one of the USSR/PRC proxy wars.

If I recall correct the PLA fought their way into Vietnam and discovered they had stuck their hand into a meat grinder. They wound up in control of the cities and remote bases, little else. That's when the real Russian involvement started. The Russians sought to use the war in Vietnam to bleed the Chinese white. The irony is that the Chinese were able to do the same thing to the Russians in turn.

[sharlin]

Just to point out that fighting in a jungle is very different from fighting in Western Europe, the US is trained and prepared for the latter kind of fighting as was the USSR and we saw how the soviets and chinese got chewed up in their proxy war. Would the US have done any better? Its hard to say.

Western oberserver do belive how ever that both China and Russia learned from the war and adapted their tactics and techology. Just look at the Soviets performance in Afghanistan as a counter. That country is now a Soviet Client state and the Mujahadeen are all but extinguished. And that fighting was similar to Vietnam, small company actions, not the huge sweeping battles the soviets had planned and trained for.

[CalBear]

Originally Posted by Peabody-Martini

If I recall correct the PLA fought their way into Vietnam and discovered they had stuck their hand into a meat grinder. They wound up in control of the cities and remote bases, little else. That's when the real Russian involvement started. The Russians sought to use the war in Vietnam to bleed the Chinese white. The irony is that the Chinese were able to do the same thing to the Russians in turn.

The Chinese did get bogged down, but that was because they tried to impose a government. With all the centuries of dislike between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, you would have thought that they would have known better.

The PLA smashed the Viets, mainly because the Vietnamese only had, what was it, 40 or so MiG 15s while the Chinese had that MiG 21 knock off (never will understand how Moscow let them buy 24 MiG-21s back in '65, dumb) and they also had those Mirages that the French sold them after Johnson's visit in '69. If they had left after wiping out the NVA and shooting Ho Chi Minh (oh sorry, having him die of a fever while in custody) they would have been okay.

[Grimm Reaper]

The PLA didn't get anything when they invaded Vietnam except a bloody nose, one reason being that the new reformers in Beijing deliberately put units whose officers were the most ideologically extreme around in the van, just to show what happened when properly trained military veterans face people who are ideologically secure.

[CalBear]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

The PLA didn't get anything when they invaded Vietnam except a bloody nose, one reason being that the new reformers in Beijing deliberately put units whose officers were the most ideologically extreme around in the van, just to show what happened when properly trained military veterans face people who are ideologically secure.

The PLA wound up empty in the end, but I wouldn't call razing Hanoi to the ground and destroying the Vietnamese (actually Soviet) naval base at Da Nang nothing but a bloody nose. The PLA wound up with almost the same number of casualties as the Vietnamese regulars, but the PLA was 10 times the size of the Vietnamese, so the losses were far from even.

[General_Paul]

Originally Posted by CalBear

The Chinese did get bogged down, but that was because they tried to impose a government. With all the centuries of dislike between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, you would have thought that they would have known better.

The PLA smashed the Viets, mainly because the Vietnamese only had, what was it, 40 or so MiG 15s while the Chinese had that MiG 21 knock off (never will understand how Moscow let them buy 24 MiG-21s back in '65, dumb) and they also had those Mirages that the French sold them after Johnson's visit in '69. If they had left after wiping out the NVA and shooting Ho Chi Minh (oh sorry, having him die of a fever while in custody) they would have been okay.

Now let's be honest here, the Soviets and the Chinese both underestimated the situation. Sure the PLA smashed the Vietnamese Army, but they were still fighting with Type 99 Rifles captured from the Japanese during the war and M-1 Garand rifles given to them by OSS. When those stockpiles of Type 56 assault rifles built up in '69 and '70, the PLA felt the sting of guerrilla warfare like they hadn't before.

The Soviets sent in those advisers and everything went to hell. They tried to mix organized combat with guerrilla warfare, somehow expecting that they'd be able to pull a Dien Bien Phu from Saigon to Hanoi and trap the PLA garrisons inside urban areas. They did that without recognizing that the PLA's tactical reforms had allowed them to shift over to a mix air-ground-sea resupply route as of 1968, when they'd invaded in 1966 with a supply line entirely dependent on local road access. The reformed National Liberation Front got its ass kicked by the knock off Soviet Mi-8 helicopters before we started selling them anti-aircraft guns and a few obsolete anti-air missiles.

If anything, I'd say that the West helped to turn Vietnam into the meat grinder as much as bad PLA follow-through and horrible Soviet training. Remember all those captured M-14s that the PLA paraded through the streets of Hanoi in '71? That made Johnson look pretty dumb in the eyes of the American people.

[LOTLOF]

LBJ was an idiot and it was his weakness in refusing to send US troops that allowed Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to fall to communism. In 1964 South Vietnam was in a similair position to South Korea in 1951, but on a much smaller scale. They were under attack by a hostile communist foe to the north pretending to justify their aggression in the name of 'reuniting' their people.

Johnson should have taken the lesson from the Korean war and stood up to communist aggression! Given the smaller scale of the fighting a few divisions or real American soldiers backed up by plenty of air support would have been plenty to save democracy in the south. Just like in Korea a few years of fighting would have convinced the commies they had no hope of winning and a truce with a DMZ could have been hammered out.

Not fighting in Vietnam was the worst decision made by the Johnson presidency!

[Gunnarnz]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

The PLA didn't get anything when they invaded Vietnam except a bloody nose, one reason being that the new reformers in Beijing deliberately put units whose officers were the most ideologically extreme around in the van, just to show what happened when properly trained military veterans face people who are ideologically secure.

Actually, that makes it sound like the Chinese made a pretty astute move there. If you want to point out the necessity of reform, making the old guard look like idiots isn't a bad idea. And it certainly seems to have paid off for them, the PLA is regarded as the gold standard of Asian militarys these days.

[Dilvish]

It wouldn't have just been the USA going into South Vietnam, would it? I've read stuff to the effect that both Australia and South Korea would have sent significant forces to help South Vietnam, if only the Americans would take the lead.

Speaking of Singapore, have any of you guys or gals visited the Singaporan (Singaporen?) fortresses? I know civilians can't get close to them, but still, to see the only battleship caliber guns still in service would be cool.

[lloyd007]

It's hard to see the US getting involved in SE Asia seeing as we had our hands full with deciding between 'the lesser of two evils' down in Cuba! Having Che Guevara's revolutionaries duking it out with Raul Castro's govn't after Fidel infamously 'Fell down the stairs' on New Years Day, 1964 really made Vietnam look very, VERY far away.

edit:

Originally Posted by Gunnarnz

Actually, that makes it sound like the Chinese made a pretty astute move there. If you want to point out the necessity of reform, making the old guard look like idiots isn't a bad idea. And it certainly seems to have paid off for them, the PLA is regarded as the gold standard of Asian militarys these days.

Well, that's only if you consider the USSR 'European' .

And as both nations have had to adapt to the realities of the wars they have fought and as such have sacrificed in other areas. I mean the old spectre of the Soviets launching a heavy armored invasion into W. Germany through the Fulda Gap is laughable nowadays considering how their armed forces have evolved from massive armies to the types of small unit tactics that deal with the Chicom backed insurgencies happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and vice versa while NATO never met a heavy bomber, tank, or other bit of heavy metal they didn't fund immediately... I mean just look at the 55mm 'Archon' railgun SPA they rolled out to replace the Crusader, enough power to punch though 5 meters of steel reinforced concrete and the definition of 'overkill' against the light armor that makes up the bulk of the Soviet or Chinese armies...

[PRFU]

Originally Posted by sharlin

Just to point out that fighting in a jungle is very different from fighting in Western Europe, the US is trained and prepared for the latter kind of fighting as was the USSR and we saw how the soviets and chinese got chewed up in their proxy war. Would the US have done any better? Its hard to say.

Western oberserver do belive how ever that both China and Russia learned from the war and adapted their tactics and techology. Just look at the Soviets performance in Afghanistan as a counter. That country is now a Soviet Client state and the Mujahadeen are all but extinguished. And that fighting was similar to Vietnam, small company actions, not the huge sweeping battles the soviets had planned and trained for.

Yeah but there's a huge difference between fighting in what is basically a desert with hundreds of miles of line of sight, and superior firepower and air support, and the same thing in thick jungle. And if you look at the sheer number of troops USSR has its inevitable they will defeat the rebels who are basically from one minority tribe and restore the 'Democratic' Republic of Afghanistan. It also helps that Afghanistan is a lot closer to move troops there, they have a major long way to go around China to go fight the Chinese in Vietnam! A squadroon of say chinook helicopters could take out every single rebel post and camp in Afghanistan within a few weeks, its more difficult in a jungle where people can hide more easily.

As for the US in Vietnam, if the Japanese can conquer Vietnam and hold it then its fairly obvious the US, one of the most advanced armies in the World at the time, who themselves defeated the Japanese, could do that as well. The only way I can see for the US to fail is if PRC and USSR both pitch in for Communist Vietnam, which I don't see happening, and besides if that happened the UK would have supported their allies America against the communists. And remember Britain had significant nearby territories and troops, and experience of east indies warfare that arguably the US didn't.