Vietnam, a unwinnable war?
- Thread starter Luciano7477
- Start date
Your entire position requires the logical fallacy of arguing to the center while likewise appealing to some imaginary agreed upon basis of discussion with no documentation to back it up
I agree, but it was not only that, the bomber campaigns should be unrestricted, destroying anything of any value to the enemy, and also permanently occupying positions across the border, instead of killing the NVA and withdrawing from the site, so that in a few days the NVAs can come back and reoccupy, as in Burguer Hill
Recalling that the Vietnamese had already invaded Laos and Cambodia, the Ho Chi Minh trail passed through these countries.
So technically the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia had already been violated, and instead of invading the entire two countries, they could just occupy areas with Nort Vietnamise activity, to destroy the enemy operations in these territories, that is, would be a war against the North Vietnamese, not against Laos and Cambodia itself.
Probably unwinnable, in that the degree of American intervention necessary to defeat the VC/NVA would have been intolerable to the American public. We got the worst of all worlds, an intervention strong enough to prolong the war but not not strong enough to end it, yet strong enough (thanks to the draft) to generate considerable resistance to the war in the US. A true Folly (as per Barbara Tuchman).
It had significantly more support by the end, when the Viet Cong were not a serious force and the NVA had taken over. Much of this was due to the occupation of Hue during the Tet Offensive.
Before Hue, the average Buddhist South Vietnamese peasant supported actively or passively the VC. After Hue, and the persecution of monks and desecration of Holy Sites, this changed. The VC lacked the support or manpower after Tet to carry on as before, and the NVA had to replace them
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South Vietnam did have a strong Western influence, but they were also nationalists.
What went wrong with southern Vietnam was the corrupt and inefficient government, because as the Tet offensive demonstrates, the population feared communism, so much so that the North Vietnamese expected South Vietnamese civilians to leave their homes and rebel against your government and the United States, which did not happen.
To further highlight this point, millions of South Vietnamese were sent to concentration camps after the war.
If they built static lines of defense, they could have stopped the North Vietnamese advance along the trail indefinitely.
Not by destroying enemy troops and leaving the place for new enemy troops to occupy, it would have been more efficient to build static fortifications in these areas.
The United States can easily win the Vietnam War... I have said this before in previous threads, it just needs to go all in from the very beginning (JFK presidency) instead of half assing it until losing public support.
- Protect president Diem from a coup and stabilize South Vietnamese democracy.
- Escalate the conflict and invade Cambodia from the very beginning, cut off the Southern half of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
- Deploy most of your soldiers along the DMZ and in Southern Laos so that the NVA can't send men and material south.
- Mine North Vietnamese harbors and start Operation Linebacker from the get go. Bomb North Vietnam into oblivion.
- Collaborate with Monarchist regimes in Cambodia and Laos so that they don't see your military interventions into their territory as invasions. Appease them with foreign aid.
- Vietnamization from the very beginning. If the South Vietnamese military had several more years of quality training, they would have won.
- Persuade the rural population to support the US and South Vietnamese Government. Force, Diem to stop persecuting Bhuddists, buy farmer's crops at high prices and subsidize US imports to SV so that the rural population can afford western goods and medicine. Also provide a financial incentive for participating in the Strategic Hamlet Program
- When US soldiers are drafted, send them to Europe while actual soldiers who volunteered to serve are sent to Vietnam. Also encourage South Korea to send more troops.
- And for God's sake don't allow the US media to have unrestricted Access to every battlefield in the entire war. Regulate everything so the American public only gets what the government wants them to know.
- Do all of the above, and the Vietcong will be wiped out with search and destroy missions. by 1967/68 while the NVA won't be able to react offensively in any way and until Vietnamization is complete and the rural population is won over.
- Protect president Diem from a coup and stabilize South Vietnamese democracy.
- Escalate the conflict and invade Cambodia from the very beginning, cut off the Southern half of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
- Deploy most of your soldiers along the DMZ and in Southern Laos so that the NVA can't send men and material south.
- Mine North Vietnamese harbors and start Operation Linebacker from the get go. Bomb North Vietnam into oblivion.
- Collaborate with Monarchist regimes in Cambodia and Laos so that they don't see your military interventions into their territory as invasions. Appease them with foreign aid.
- Vietnamization from the very beginning. If the South Vietnamese military had several more years of quality training, they would have won.
- Persuade the rural population to support the US and South Vietnamese Government. Force, Diem to stop persecuting Bhuddists, buy farmer's crops at high prices and subsidize US imports to SV so that the rural population can afford western goods and medicine. Also provide a financial incentive for participating in the Strategic Hamlet Program
- When US soldiers are drafted, send them to Europe while actual soldiers who volunteered to serve are sent to Vietnam. Also encourage South Korea to send more troops.
- And for God's sake don't allow the US media to have unrestricted Access to every battlefield in the entire war. Regulate everything so the American public only gets what the government wants them to know.
- Do all of the above, and the Vietcong will be wiped out with search and destroy missions. by 1967/68 while the NVA won't be able to react offensively in any way and until Vietnamization is complete and the rural population is won over.
I am afraid it was unwinnable. We were attempting to shore up the legacy of French colonialism. We were attempting to take a page from British colonialism and use a minority, Catholic Vietnamese, to rule the majority, Buddhist Vietnamese. We were attempting to dislocate local custom and living patterns with what we called "Strategic Hamlets", fortified reservations. Even if we invaded North Vietnam we would have had to occupy it for years. We failed to take the advice of Omar Bradley and found ourselves involved in a land war on the Asian mainland. We should have followed the advice of the Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup who called it ''pure, unadulterated poppycock.''
marathag
Banned
Yet the North took care of that religious problem by making sure no Buddhist or Catholic would rule anybody.
So they used an even tinier Minority, Communists, to rule over them all.
Don't like it? There are nice re-education camps to fix that incorrect beliefs.
Still have problems? Take small boats out to sea, since you couldn't legally exit the country, like when Catholics were run out of the North during Ho's 'Land Reform'
No war is "unwinnable". Of course the US *could* have won the war, but it would either require a) a quasi-genocidal war strategy or b) a 180° degree turn in the South Vietnamese government, probably in form of a US-backed revolution against it.
The big question is why?
At the time the war was fought because American foreign policy was based around domino theory. Almost every historian and political scientist now agrees that domino theory was nonsense in hindsight.
What does victory in Vietnam really mean? If the USA had the political will to keep South Vietnam split from the North then they could by fighting a forever war. But the cost of doing so would be far beyond any geo-political Cold War benefits.
Why fight in Vietnam? The cost of victory is far beyond any benefit gained. The only way America wins is by not fighting.
At the time the war was fought because American foreign policy was based around domino theory. Almost every historian and political scientist now agrees that domino theory was nonsense in hindsight.
What does victory in Vietnam really mean? If the USA had the political will to keep South Vietnam split from the North then they could by fighting a forever war. But the cost of doing so would be far beyond any geo-political Cold War benefits.
Why fight in Vietnam? The cost of victory is far beyond any benefit gained. The only way America wins is by not fighting.
People make choices. We were fighting to prop up an unpopular dictatorship because it was not communist. The people of Vietnam made a choice. Whether it was the wise choice is a matter of judgment and opinion.
That was the early strategy, and it failed. That did not remain the strategy for the whole war.
The guerilla movement in South Vietnam was moribund by the end of the war, especially after the invasion of Cambodia that disrupted NVA personnnel taking up positions in the Delta and other areas close to Saigon, as the VC itself was decimated after the Tet Offensive. The North won the war through a conventional military offensive that decimated ARVN after an incredibly dumb order to abandon the central highlands was given, which started a rout that combined with refugees, eliminated most of ARVN as a real fighting force. Even so, this offensive could have been crushed by airpower had the USAF not been prohibited from doing so as they had done previously in a similar offensive in 1972.
The government under Diem had little legitimacy, true. The military governments that followed him were not nearly as hated by the non-Catholic populace, and the Communists were very much unpopular after they had adopted the village headman assassination policy. Did these governments have enough legitimacy so that people would be willing to fight for them to a level where American assistance was unnecessary? No. But was failure guaranteed? I don't think so.
Would like to point out that the 1972 NVA Offensive against South Vietnam was a complete failure, and the US only provided air support (ground forces had already been withdrawn).
Strategies implemented by the Nixon administration were extremely successful. The only reason it didn't work out is because these Strategies were implemented after the American people were already against the war, which was then compounded by Watergate.
If Johnson or Kennedy implemented Nixon's Strategies at the very beginning, South Vietnam would be a independent country today.
People fail to realize that the NVA couldn't replace their casualties in the long run and was only a matter of time until they'd have to give up. The Vietnam War is simply a matter of basic math. Just kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. The only reason why things didn't pan out right is because we have up before the equation could be finished.
Strategies implemented by the Nixon administration were extremely successful. The only reason it didn't work out is because these Strategies were implemented after the American people were already against the war, which was then compounded by Watergate.
If Johnson or Kennedy implemented Nixon's Strategies at the very beginning, South Vietnam would be a independent country today.
People fail to realize that the NVA couldn't replace their casualties in the long run and was only a matter of time until they'd have to give up. The Vietnam War is simply a matter of basic math. Just kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. The only reason why things didn't pan out right is because we have up before the equation could be finished.
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