Vietnam WI: Thieu doesn't order Central Highlands retreat

That was probably the fatal 1975 decision, or at least the one that led to SVN's 55-day disintegration. I've heard that supplies were too low to enable a proper defense- artillery rounds were limited to 10 per day or something along those lines. Let's say Thieu doesn't take leave of his senses and orders the CH held at all costs, and the best remaining units try to establish a viable defense line. How long can they hold out?
 
By this point with Nixon gone and no will in Washington to send in the USAF to provide support the ARVN is doomed, its simply a matter of time and casualties.
 
The lack of will is in Congress: Ford would've sent in the BUFFs, and wanted to. Case-Church didn't let him. Which I don't understand- sending in bombers doesn't result in thousands of US casualties per week, there's no draft anymore, etc. :confused: Even to an utter military amateur like myself: what sane person gives up 75% of their country's (somewhat defensible) territory?
 
By this point with Nixon gone and no will in Washington to send in the USAF to provide support the ARVN is doomed, its simply a matter of time and casualties.

The above is correct. SVN was lost when Watergate happened. Once the Democrats got effective control of the government after the 1974 midterms, nothing was going to save SVN. The Dems wanted SVN to fall and they would not lift a finger to help our allies.

If Nixon had not been completely paraniod (insane) and not covered up the Watergate break in, he could have used the USAF to keep SVN from being overrun indefinitely.
 
While the Dems need to take their fair share of blame for selling the South Vietnamese down the river I still mostly blame Nixon, a man more interested in scoring points than doing the right thing.
 
While the Dems need to take their fair share of blame for selling the South Vietnamese down the river I still mostly blame Nixon, a man more interested in scoring points than doing the right thing.

Agreed to a point; I certainly agree that Nixon was always out for Nixon. But Nixon would never have let South Vietnam fall on his watch (for the reason, see the previous sentance). However the Dems wanted the South to fall. "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!" by 1974 this was the actual position of the New Left that was taking over the Dem leadership nation wide.
 
My question is this: many Dems such as Scoop Jackson and the SoDems were moderate, if not outright hawks. Where were they for Church-Case? I don't believe for a minute that McGovernites formed a majority of the congressional Dem caucus, at least before the Class of '74. Their two leading '68 candidates offered "peace with honor". In 1972 they adopted the AAA platform and got their just reward. Did Watergate cause all these moderates to drop their long-held principles?

In sum, two things: Watergate, and the McGovernite control of the Democratic Party. Mostly Watergate.
 
My question is this: many Dems such as Scoop Jackson and the SoDems were moderate, if not outright hawks. Where were they for Church-Case? I don't believe for a minute that McGovernites formed a majority of the congressional Dem caucus, at least before the Class of '74. Their two leading '68 candidates offered "peace with honor". In 1972 they adopted the AAA platform and got their just reward. Did Watergate cause all these moderates to drop their long-held principles?

In sum, two things: Watergate, and the McGovernite control of the Democratic Party. Mostly Watergate.

You are basically correct. The one thing you do not seem to understand is the change in change in leadership mentality in the Dems after the 1972 Convention and 1974 midterms. No they did not have an actual majority but they did have everything else: the media, the intellectual leaders of Dem thought, the radical youth and minority voting blocks that were clearly (by 1974) the new base of the Democrat party. Scoop Jackson and his kind knew they were on the way to extinction. The Democrat Party and America changed profoundly between 1968-1974 and the history books do not truly capture the depth of that change nor the feelings of the American people in that time. There were points in there that America could truly have broken down into an armed chaos.
 
I think the media had a lot to do with it. The base can be ignored: they're not voting GOP anyways. The worst being Tet. Why not cover Vietnam the way they cover Iraq and Afghanistan, which is fair and balanced? Especially after 1971 with an all-volunteer military. What happened to the Dems from 1968 to 1974 is eerily similar to the Teabaggers today. A vocal minority which doesn't represent most of the party's voters, and a tiny minority of the congressional caucus, controls the party's media outlets and forces them to shift far-left or far-right "or else". By the time sanity returns, too late.
 
I think the media had a lot to do with it. The base can be ignored: they're not voting GOP anyways. The worst being Tet. Why not cover Vietnam the way they cover Iraq and Afghanistan, which is fair and balanced? Especially after 1971 with an all-volunteer military. What happened to the Dems from 1968 to 1974 is eerily similar to the Teabaggers today. A vocal minority which doesn't represent most of the party's voters, and a tiny minority of the congressional caucus, controls the party's media outlets and forces them to shift far-left or far-right "or else". By the time sanity returns, too late.

You honestly think the media had fair and balanced coverage of the Iraq war during the Bush administration?

As far as the Dems from 1968-1974, the same people are still in control today.

And the Tea Party people (I expected better from you than that "Teabagger" silliness) are a simple manifestation of conservative, middle-class anger against a truly far-left, Euro-Socialist Democrat Party that is trying to change the very foundations of American goverance. The energy and basic ideas (small government) of the Tea party movement are the only possible salvation for the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in this country.

Back on topic, the Democrat Party's soul became the Left after the 1972 convention. They did not want the evil, capitalist, running-dog lackeys to win in South Vietnam. The conservative Dems simply accepted the new reality.
 
Right, the same old song, sung infinitely in the pitch of high whine.

'We wuz stabbed in the back!'

It was the Dems that wanted Vietnam to fail, ignoring the fact that it was Kennedy who got into Vietnam in the first place and Johnson who escalated it. Yes, the Dems really wanted to lose, that's why they threw all those hundreds of thousands of men and billions of dollars into Vietnam.

Certainly defeat had nothing to do with the rank corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese regime, which after fifteen years of massive American support still couldn't function effectively or win the support of its own people.

Certainly defeat had nothing to do with a Pentagon which frittered away over 50,000 American lives, in a war in which a tenth of the Vietnamese population were killed, and in which the US government dropped more bombs on a tiny country than were dropped in all of WWII, a Pentagon which lied to the American people, which had no actual strategy or approach to win the war at all.

So much easier to blame the dastardly dems, curling their waxed mustaches and tying Vietnamese virgins to to the Ho Chi Minh highway.

It's an interesting issue to ask what would have happened if a particular decision would have been made differently, as with the Central Highlands Retreat.

On the other hand, a whole song of 'We wuz stabbed in the back' kind of ignores most of the realities on the ground - those realities being that the US effort was ten years and millions of men and billions of dollars in going nowhere fast, and South Vietnam kept on growing more incompetent, corrupt and ineffective every year.

Bored
 
Right, the same old song, sung infinitely in the pitch of high whine.

'We wuz stabbed in the back!'

It was the Dems that wanted Vietnam to fail, ignoring the fact that it was Kennedy who got into Vietnam in the first place and Johnson who escalated it. Yes, the Dems really wanted to lose, that's why they threw all those hundreds of thousands of men and billions of dollars into Vietnam.

Certainly defeat had nothing to do with the rank corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese regime, which after fifteen years of massive American support still couldn't function effectively or win the support of its own people.

Certainly defeat had nothing to do with a Pentagon which frittered away over 50,000 American lives, in a war in which a tenth of the Vietnamese population were killed, and in which the US government dropped more bombs on a tiny country than were dropped in all of WWII, a Pentagon which lied to the American people, which had no actual strategy or approach to win the war at all.

So much easier to blame the dastardly dems, curling their waxed mustaches and tying Vietnamese virgins to to the Ho Chi Minh highway.

It's an interesting issue to ask what would have happened if a particular decision would have been made differently, as with the Central Highlands Retreat.

On the other hand, a whole song of 'We wuz stabbed in the back' kind of ignores most of the realities on the ground - those realities being that the US effort was ten years and millions of men and billions of dollars in going nowhere fast, and South Vietnam kept on growing more incompetent, corrupt and ineffective every year.

Bored

I am not saying we, I am saying them. Yes Kennedy did start the war and yes Johnson did escalate the war. And yes the Dem Congress in 1974 did stop any US air support from helping the ARVN defend against NVA invasion. The Dems changed between 1961 and 1974, fact. The proximate cause of SVN falling was the lack of US air support in that last invasion, fact. I was only giving a factual answer to the OP's question.

As to the war itself, I have not stated a position. But if you really value my opinion: I was against every war the US has fought except for two, and those were both against Britain.
 

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You honestly think the media had fair and balanced coverage of the Iraq war during the Bush administration?

As far as the Dems from 1968-1974, the same people are still in control today.

And the Tea Party people (I expected better from you than that "Teabagger" silliness) are a simple manifestation of conservative, middle-class anger against a truly far-left, Euro-Socialist Democrat Party that is trying to change the very foundations of American goverance. The energy and basic ideas (small government) of the Tea party movement are the only possible salvation for the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in this country.

Back on topic, the Democrat Party's soul became the Left after the 1972 convention. They did not want the evil, capitalist, running-dog lackeys to win in South Vietnam. The conservative Dems simply accepted the new reality.

Uncanny resemblance to a GMB sockuppet. Banned.
 
Let's get this back on topic, shall we?

At this point, I don't believe that the ARVN can hold the entire Central Highlands. If they try, they'll be defeated in detail by the NVA, and after that, with many of the ARVN's best units burned up, South Vietnam falls, later than historically, but falls all the same.

Therefore, what Thieu and his generals want to do is to identify good positions for bastions, with defensible lines of supply, that the ARVN units in the region can make their stand at. They'll have to give up a good portion of the Central Highlands; that's a given. But if they handle this competently, they can trade space for time and avoid the general collapse.
 
joea64: That makes sense. Trade space for time, get as many people out as possible. There is no way to repulse the NVA without the USAF, which is not an option. VNAF doesn't have offensive capabilities (F-4, A-4, A-7, ECM), which I assume is because no one wanted firstline equipment to fall into NVA hands.
 
joea64: That makes sense. Trade space for time, get as many people out as possible. There is no way to repulse the NVA without the USAF, which is not an option. VNAF doesn't have offensive capabilities (F-4, A-4, A-7, ECM), which I assume is because no one wanted firstline equipment to fall into NVA hands.
Without that frontline equipment, South Vietnam is, to put it simply, and mildly, screwed...
 
Without that frontline equipment, South Vietnam is, to put it simply, and mildly, screwed...

But if SVN handles its defense competently instead of bugging out, can they hold on long enough for the political climate to change enough in the US for military aid to resume in some form? Frex, if Ford wins election in his own right in '76?
 
While the Dems need to take their fair share of blame for selling the South Vietnamese down the river I still mostly blame Nixon, a man more interested in scoring points than doing the right thing.

From what I gather Nixon did what he could to sort-of win the war. I mean massive bombing of the North and cutting Hochiminh trail, be it via massive bombing of the route or direct invasion. However by that time it was too late to really win, had it been done sooner, when US public was still behind the war (say 1968) and when inevitable US casualties would be both low and acceptable US could bring North Vietnam to its knees and forced a favourable peace treaty that would hold.

Specially Linebacker did have the desired effect of bringing NV to sign the peace treaty. But, as I said, by then it was too late to actually force them into de facto capitulating
 
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