Could America Have Won the Vietnam War?

[cgannon64]

Could America have won the Vietnam War? Before I give you my arguement for why we could not have, I must give you a quote by Hitler: "For the Third Reich to win, the enemy must become (like) the Third Reich." This quote is very interesting, because I beleive it summed up what was happening during Vietnam: we were becoming like the enemy to beat the enemy.

Now, when I say 'win' I do not simply mean conquer North Vietnam or establish a friendly government there. By win, I mean doing those things while keeping America's ideals alive.

I personally think that we could not have won without becoming the enemy. I think America would have to have become a totalitarian state to win. My reasons for thinking so: Martial Law was established in Ohio for a short time. The National Guard killed innocent students, simply turning and opening fire on crowds, on windows. Operation Chaos made government investigations of 7800 Americans. Protest groups everywhere were becoming militant. I think if we stayed in Vietnam any longer, anarchy would start erupting in many places, and soon we would become like our enemy, eliminating free press, jailing people for no good reason, overall destruction of what America stands (or stood for...).

Do you people agree/disagree with me? Am I saying what has already been said?

[Frankychan]

Uh oh, I feel a flame war coming on...

Um...well....to answer you-no, I don't think we coulda won unless we dropped the A or H-bomb on 'em.

But I'll just get outta here before the s*** hits the fan.

[cgannon64]

I've never been in a real flame war!

By the way, you're right, we could have nuked Vietnam, but that would be the ultimate destruction of American morals: nuking a third-world country.

But, is that the ultimate destruction of American morals? I think MyLai was a huge failure for what we stand for---killing innocent civilans, raping innocent women.

By the way I have just been reading about the Vietnam War recently (can you tell), so this seems to be a hot topic in my mind. The problem I hear most is that the enemy was too well mixed---a common example is a woman with a baby, who when asked if there were any Viet Cong in the area replied no, only to have the truck ride over the road and explode.

Vietnam makes me shudder. NOt just for the pure sadness of it all, but for the fact that people thought it was a good idea.

[notyoueither]

I've heard assertions that the US spent enough on Vietnam to a: pave the entire country, or b: hire the Sicilians and the Triads to put a hit on every single person in the north and south.

With those sorts of resources, I'm sure it should have been possible for imaginative leadership to find ways of winning. The Brits 'won' in Malaysia.

[cgannon64]

Notyoueither---I think you are referring to a joke among the soldiers there (I don't find it quite funny). It went something like this: "The best way to win the war is too load all the friendlies on a boat, bomb the entire peninsula, pave it with concrete, then sink the boat."

You're right though, the military spending on Vietnam was huge.

[Bosh]

yeah, more bombs were dropped in vietnam than in WW II, don't see how they could have won with the South Vietnamese government though, it was just far too inept, unpopular and corrupt.

[Pekka]

Tough question. Maybe.. but Americans didn't have the full support of their gov and people, so that contributes a lot to what happened. North Vietnamese were ruthless and tough to beat. Maybe they were almost impossible to beat by the usual methods, so nuking would have been the only way to really take their cards. Maybe.
Or maybe using the same tactics as they did.. Bah, I know too little of this subject, I just like the movies made from that war .

[Capt Dizle]

Vietnam is a prime example of the stupidity of fighting a limited war. We could have won if we had hit them hard early. Our leaders lacked the political will to fight total war.

[Thrawn05]

Forgive me if I didn't grow up during that era... but I think I should says somthing.


We COULD (noticed I said COULD) have if the US did both of these things:

1: Allow the military to pick targets... not the pres.

2: STOP at the parallel line. That was a big mistake, and our egos got in the way of our better judgement.


If the two occured, then Vietnam would be like Korea... Northa and South. At least some people over there would have a democracy.


Just my 2 cents... I know this is a touchy subject.

[cgannon64]

Thrawn---I didn't live in that era either, but I find it very interesting to see the military mistakes and our culture begin to slide into anarchy before we stopped it.

I think the Vietnamese there knew the land too well and, I think, even today, still are/were the ultimate masters of guerrilla war. The fact that they could "beat", or at least make a stalemate with the most powerful nation in the world is quite a feat.

Yes, more bombs were dropped on Vietnam in one year (I think) than in all of WW2. And most of these bombs proved useless. THe classic example is where an American bomb destroyed a bridge, only to find the next day that Vietnamese peasents had built one out of sandbags.

I also find their tunnel system there to be amazing. Wasn't it 2 million miles long or something? Really an ingenious way to make guerrilla tactics all that more effective.

[SlowwHand]

Since you're new here I'll say it again.

Without question. Had the war been run by the military, instead of politicians, it would have been a whole different ball game.

I won't say what you can do with you're "military mistakes" ...mistake.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Since you're new here I'll say it again.

Without question. Had the war been run by the military, instead of politicians, it would have been a whole different ball game.

I won't say what you can do with you're "military mistakes" ...mistake.

I know, I read. I just wanted to opin as well.

[cgannon64]

"Since I'm new?"

Has there been a thread about this before? If yes, I'm quite sorry, don't mean to rehash an old thread. I was going to post this at CFC, then here, but that site is down, so I decided to reverse the order. Sorry, but was this even directed at me? If not, sorry...

The question I ask myself is WHETHER we actually wanted to win. I think that war made us realize something---we should only fight when victory is guarenteed, and it is not our mission to battle communism on all fronts. You may throw Grenada and those things at me, but those were VERY short wars.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by cgannon64
You may throw Grenada and those things at me, but those were VERY short wars.

How short? I thought the Gulf War the shortest (~3 days (6 months preps then 3 days it was over))

[SlowwHand]

"Has there been a thread about this before? "

Yes. Redundantly. But if you don't have answers, I guess that's all that really matters in the long run.
Hell. My dad and mom and their parents knew how to eat with a fork, but they taught me anyway.

[leftover_crack]

thrawn are you mocking captain Space with your avatar!???

[cgannon64]

*sigh*

I thought I had a good idea...oh well

[Darkworld Ark]

Acually, Ho Chi Min originally came to the US & asked if Vietnam could become a US territory, & than the US would help build up the infrastucture. Unfortanitly, the US refused, so Ho Chi when to the commies.

[SlowwHand]

It is a good idea. Sorry I even said anything. I was out-of-line.

[cgannon64]

Don't worry about it. I now know how to fix this dying thread---forget about the military aspect of Vietnam. What do you think would've happend if we decided to not pull out when we did, but to give it another year? If we decided to put a few more troops in rather than start pulling them out? What if the government thought total victory was the only answer, despite rising political outrage?

Would we be in anarchy right now, or would there have been martial law established all over the land to prefent it?

This is why I really wanted to do this thread, I didn't want people to think about the combat---I wanted people to think about the situation at home.

[SlowwHand]

If we pulled out later, fighting under the same method of leadership, we would have more dead boys.
That's about it.

With the military running it, my opinion is that the deal would have been done way earlier, with a lot less loss of life.

BTW, South Vietnam was a soverign nation being threatened.
It wasn't like the Confederacy in the United States.

[cgannon64]

Yes we would have more dead boys. We would also still have Ohio under marshall law, we would still have the National Guard shooting college students, we would still have constuction workers beating up students while the police looked on, we would still have Columbia being captured by students and the police clubbing every last one of them.

[Oerdin]

The short anwser is yes they could have, but, they would have had to launch a real invasion of the North by the mid-1960's to do so with their ideals intact. That probably would have resulted in a widening of the war to both mainland China and Korea but it could have been done successfully.

Since China was in the midst of the collosal failure that was the Great Leap Forward the Chinese would have been in a much worse position to begin hostilities against the U.S. then during Korea. Not to mention the North Vietnamese hated the Communist Chinese with a passion so it is a fairly safe bet to say the U.S. could have succeeded with a divid and conquor strategy against the three communist powers in Asia.

The only real question remaining is what the USSR's response would have been. They could have either limited themselves to material support like they did in Korea or they might have taken the opportunity to launch WW3 in Europe. I guess we will never know...

[Bosh]

BTW, South Vietnam was a soverign nation being threatened.

No, the country was never formally partitioned, it was just, in theory, under two temporary administrations pending national elections which the south refused to participate in.

[cgannon64]

I always thought wars fought over ideals were idiotic. I guess Vietnam could be considered a war fought over ideals---the country had little or nothing we actually wanted, but we just had to stand up to communism, because of our one-minded cold war status. If World War 3 and a nuclear holucaust was fought over Vietnam, a tiny jungle nation technologically unadvanced, it would be saying alot about the human race. We are all very lucky the government listened to its people and cooler heads prevailed.

[Q Classic]

No, the country was never formally partitioned, it was just, in theory, under two temporary administrations pending national elections which the south refused to participate in.

sorta like korea. they just picked a line which looked to divide it about in half.

[Mihai]

The americans thought that the problem could be solved by military means only, ignoring the succes of British in Malaya. When they tried to gain the local population on their side (the only way to win a guerilla war) it was to late and the effort was subminate be corruption.

[Sava]

According to recorded tapes, Nixon wanted to drop the bomb on Vietnam...

There's nothing America could have done short of a full mobilization to win Vietnam. Had they poured millions of troops in there, it probably would have sparked a war between the US and China + USSR.

[johncmcleod]

I think if we had fully committed to that war early on, we could've won it (by either keeping peace between the two nations or conquering vietnam) before the public started screaming. Though south nam did have a corrupt government, they still were attacked with provoking anyone, and I think it was our and the rest of the free world's duty to stop it. I don't know much about vietnam, and I was born after it ended, but I don't understand why the US soldiers were so bad to some of the Vietnamese. Was there a reason? And also, it's not like the public was perfect either. They hated the US soldiers that came back. It's not like they wanted to go just to kill innocent people, they went and fought because they were ordered to and they watched many of their brothers get killed beside them. They deserved more respect.

[Sava]

the whole situation is and was FUBAR