Could America Have Won the Vietnam War?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai


How many advisors said don't send in troops?

A lot. Bundy, Rostow and I believe Rusk. Even Kennedy was extremely wary. There were a lot of people advising caution after the disaster of the Bay of Pigs.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by cgannon64
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.

[GePap]

Coud America have won the Vietam War?

Yes

Did we?

No

Does it matter anymore?

Not much, just for American Ego.

Of course, we could have lost WW1 and WW2, so all considered, not too bad.

[cgannon64]

Rogan Josh, please explain the comedy you see in that sentence.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
Coud America have won the Vietam War?

Yes

Did we?

No

Does it matter anymore?

Not much, just for American Ego.

Of course, we could have lost WW1 and WW2, so all considered, not too bad.

GePap, obviously you were not alive during that war, so you will never know. That war tore this nation apart. We were trying to do good, and ended up doing evil. We could have won with a different strategy, but our leadership failed us. The war was not a military defeat, but a defeat imposed on the American people by LBJ.

The idealism of many if not most Americans was destroyed. We began to hate ourselves for what we had become. The military fell into disrepute and the economy into chaos. Everyone across the world rightly said that America's star was in decline.

We should never forget Vietnam and lightly assume that we could have won with just a little more firepower. We could not have won that war the way were fighting it. LBJ, in particular, is a murderer - both of the Vietnamese we killed and of the American troops that were killed there.

Wars, if they are fought, should be fought with clear objectives, overwhelming force and the minimization of casualties. Vietnam had none of these.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
The war was not a military defeat, but a defeat imposed on the American people by LBJ.

The war was a defeat imposed upon the American government by the American people.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


The war was a defeat imposed upon the American government by the American people.

Cute. But to the extent I understand this, I do not agree. The American people supported LBJ until early 1968. That's when Bobby Kennedy broke ranks and began his campaign. LBJ was a parriah after that.

[uh Clem]

From the Nixon Library:

In the 1968 campaign, candidate Nixon asserted in virtually every speech that the goal of his administration would be to "end the war and win the peace in Vietnam." One of the enduring myths of the 1968 presidential campaign is that the Republican nominee claimed to have a "secret plan" to end the war. He never made such a claim.

http://www.nixonlibrary.org/Research...xon_Role.shtml

("VIETNAM AND THE 1968 CAMPAIGN")

It's one of those things that "everybody knows," but it isn't true.

[cgannon64]

Ned has a point. Voters lost ALOT of faith in the government, and voting really went down after Vietnam. How many people voted in the 2000 election? Around 8 million, right? How many in America are voting age? ALOT more. For example, if the same percentage of people who voted after WW2 voted in the early 80s, there would have been 20 million more votes.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

[Dom Pedro II]

But at the same time, if you compare the percentages of people who voted in elections, say 100 years ago, the figures have not changed that dramatically. I mean, if you pick an election like 1860 or 1864, the results would be dramatically different, but in years were there were no great crises, the voter turn out was about the same.

[Ned]

Originally posted by uh Clem
From the Nixon Library:



http://www.nixonlibrary.org/Research...xon_Role.shtml

("VIETNAM AND THE 1968 CAMPAIGN")

It's one of those things that "everybody knows," but it isn't true.

I don't remember Nixon's exact words, but everyone knew that Nixon claimed to have a secret plan to end the war. We all eagerly awaited to see what that plan was when he took office. The plan was "Vietnamization." We would gradually withdraw and turn the ground combat over to the Vietnamese.

This we did. Troop levels declined steadly under Nixon, from over 550,000 in early 1969 to just 25,000 at the end of the war in Jan. 1973.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Rogan Josh, please explain the comedy you see in that sentence.

Wasn't it meant to be funny?

Oh... you were serious!

Originally posted by Ned


I don't remember Nixon's exact words, but everyone knew that Nixon claimed to have a secret plan to end the war. We all eagerly awaited to see what that plan was when he took office. The plan was "Vietnamization." We would gradually withdraw and turn the ground combat over to the Vietnamese.

This we did. Troop levels declined steadly under Nixon, from over 550,000 in early 1969 to just 25,000 at the end of the war in Jan. 1973.

Nixon did say as you have said he would end the war.

Originally posted by Ned
joseph1944, Yes, but he had Diem assassinated in Nov. 1. That fixed that problem. Kennedy himself was assassinated just three weeks later.

Here is a quote from an interview conducted with NBC news on Sept. 9.

According to RSMcN book, (I read it two years ago) Kennedy did not want to kill Diem per say, however he did want him removed from the Presidency for real. So Kennedy said I'm going to Boston for the weekend and if Saigon calls you handle it. Well, Robert S did not want to kill him either so he told the duty officers at state and defense if Saigon embassy calls you call it and I back you. So when Saigon did call the duty office told them to go for it.
Hell of a way to kill ally president.
Also according to the book every time Saigon ask permission to kill Diem, Kennedy would say no Lets waite a few days and see what is happing. This went on a several weeks. I think Kennedy was hoping something would happen without our involvement

[Ned]

joseph1944, you have to wonder about Kennedy. He allegedly was a smart man but he made so many critical mistakes.

Originally posted by Sikander
Seeing how there is so much ignorance about the war as related on this thread, I suggest that some of you do some reading. There are numerous books on the subject, but I suggest starting with an overview. Even books written by journalists (like Karnow's "The 10,000 Day War) will give you a good base to start from.

Once you have a grasp of the political sequence of events you can move to institutional histories ("Vietnam: The Death of an American Army" is pretty good) and finally campaign and battle histories. "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" is a good battle history, though it is relatively useless for drawing strategic or political conclusions. In fact, while individual, campaign and battle histories abound, the war was fought over such a vast area with vastly different terrain and other local features, and over such a long period of time, these histories are almost useless except for filling in the gaps once you have a very good handle on the big picture. There were some big battles, but any single battle had almost no effect on the direction of the war at large.

With no offense met to you I really do not want to read any book about Vietnam. It would only upset me.
On 26 March 65 I was discharge from the US Navy.
On 28 March 65 I turned 21 year of age.
I wanted to stay in the military but my wife of 5 months said NO.
However she did ask me to work for the Navy at Mare Island Naval Shipyard as a civilian, so I did.
When we talk about Nam I do used my memory a lot, and yes I may forget some Info from time to time but for the most part it is still petty good.
When Vietnam WAR started in 65 (actually it started back in 54), the country was behind it because we were stopping communism. And yes we where not told that Johnson did not have an end game on the table. He thought we could kill enough of them and they would quit. He was wrong big time.
We could have invaded and now we know that Russia could not have done much about it, because in 62 they had only 3 nucs on ICBMs. Remember the Russian spy who was telling Kennedy everything the Russian had.
The Chinese had no nucs at this time, however they did have men and lots of them.
I believe the B-52s could have slaughter them in an all out war.
That is enough for now.
Joseph

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Ned has a point. Voters lost ALOT of faith in the government, and voting really went down after Vietnam. How many people voted in the 2000 election? Around 8 million, right? How many in America are voting age? ALOT more. For example, if the same percentage of people who voted after WW2 voted in the early 80s, there would have been 20 million more votes.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

I know exactly what you are saying. What sickens me nearly death is that more people voted for the "American Idol" tv show than voted for the American President, last election. When they say half the country was split over Bush and Gore, that is BS, only a fraction of the voting population was split over it, the rest didnt bother to excercise the very point of our republic *sigh*

Kman

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Ned has a point. Voters lost ALOT of faith in the government, and voting really went down after Vietnam.

Wouldn't Watergate have had a greater impact on voter disillusionment?

[Ned]

Think about this. In 1964 Goldwater said that if America was going to get involved in a war, it should have a clear objective. He repeatedly asked Johnson what his objective was in Vietnam. He got no answer - but LBJ labelled Goldwater a warmonger and the people elected LBJ. What did they get? The worse mess in US history by a mile. How can one not be disillusioned by this?

Vietnam was far more troubling to Americans than Watergate.

[Tingkai]

Sure Vietnam was a mess, but a lot Americans supported it. The fact that Goldwater failed to communicate his message is nothing unusual.

LBJ was also carrying on the policies on Vietnam set by Kennedy, who followed the policy path set by Eisenhower, who followed the policies set by Truman.

Each preceding president took small steps that moved the US closer to direct military action.

If Goldwater was elected, there is no indication, as far as I know, that he would not have sent US troops into Vietnam.

I agree that the Vietnam war led to disillusionment. The hawks saw the government as betraying the war effort. The doves saw the government as warmongers getting the country involved in useless war. But different views always exist.

A president getting impeached was unusual. The exposure of corruption within the Nixon administration was unusual.

I'm not saying that the Vietnam war did not affect attitudes towards government, but rather there was a combination of factors.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Sure Vietnam was a mess, but a lot Americans supported it. The fact that Goldwater failed to communicate his message is nothing unusual.

LBJ was also carrying on the policies on Vietnam set by Kennedy, who followed the policy path set by Eisenhower, who followed the policies set by Truman.

Each preceding president took small steps that moved the US closer to direct military action.

If Goldwater was elected, there is no indication, as far as I know, that he would not have sent US troops into Vietnam.

I agree that the Vietnam war led to disillusionment. The hawks saw the government as betraying the war effort. The doves saw the government as warmongers getting the country involved in useless war. But different views always exist.

A president getting impeached was unusual. The exposure of corruption within the Nixon administration was unusual.

I'm not saying that the Vietnam war did not affect attitudes towards government, but rather there was a combination of factors.

Nixon resigned before being impeached. When they found the smoking gun, Goldwater asked him to resign and he did.

Contrast Nixon's and Goldwater's behavior to that scumbag Clinton, who was impeached and tried. There was not one democrat that had any integrity to ask Clinton to resign. Gore lost the election because he stood by the filth in the Rose Garden and defended him. This is why Gore is a coward. He has no integrity.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned


Nixon resigned before being impeached. When they found the smoking gun, Goldwater asked him to resign and he did.

Contrast Nixon's and Goldwater's behavior to that scumbag Clinton, who was impeached and tried. There was not one democrat that any integrity to ask Clinton to resign. Gore lost the election because he stood by the filth in the Rose Garden and defended him. This is why Gore is a coward. He has no integrity.

So I take it you're not a Democrat.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by uh Clem

Really??? Are you sure this is what you mean to say? It's always seemed to me that the higher you went, the less people knew, at least on this side. Just my impression.

On this side the war was compartmented in large part. Each of the 4 corps zones was almost fighting a seperate war, and the same holds true for the forces in Laos and Cambodia. Unlike the western front in WWII or WWI, a success in one area was virtually meaningless somewhere else. There was very little unity of purpose in the theatre, soldiers shuffled in and fought their war and in many cases assumed that their experiences were similar to those of troops fighting elsewhere. This was often not the case.

Troops in I Corps tended to fight larger formations of NVA regulars for instance, and saw little of the VC. They fought in mostly mountains, hills and jungle. Troops in IV Corps fought mostly in a vast swampy river delta, and they saw few NVA and a lot of VC. Along the coastal plain the enemy consisted of VC mainly, and in large numbers. In the central highlands the NVA were plentiful, and the locals often were friendlies. The variance in the terrain, enemy weaponry, logistics, the typical size of enemy formations etc. made every zone very different. Units were more or less permanently stationed in a certain area in order to allow the conscripts a chance to become at least some what familiar with the area before their tour was up. Here institutional memory was substituted for experienced troops in an effort to reduce the gap in that area vs the NVA / VC.

Thus the organization of the war was almost feudal, with each corps operating pretty freely in their assigned area. This tended to give the vast majority of troops and officers a sort of tunnel vision of the war, a very different effect than say Korea where everyone was manning the same line (with the spine of the peninsula limiting lateral communications somewhat) against the same enemy organized in large formations using the same weapons and tactics.

Only officers and men who served at higher HQs and / or in Washington had the opportunity to see the war writ large while retaining access to classified information (which was abundant, if not incisive). Whether or not these gentlemen availed themselves of that opportunity is a good question, certainly many seemed to be pretty clueless when it came time to formulate strategy. I tend to blame the lack of a workable strategy on the highest echelon (the civilian leadership and in some cases the JCS). There were plenty of mistakes made, but bad strategy will doom even good operations to ultimate failure in the long run.

Part of the civilian leadership's failure can be ascribed to the complexity of the war, lack of familiarity with the area, and the extreme flexibility of the enemy, who in turn fought a guerilla war down to the individual terrorist level as well as engaging in multi-divisional operations and every level in between, the whole time scoring points politically both within and outside of Vietnam even when their military efforts were less than successful. Their achievements are more remarkable considering the fact that the majority of the the civilian as well as military leadership of the U.S. were veterans of WWII and / or Korea. That experience in the end was no substitute for competent strategic leadership with a deeper knowledge of history, or a professional military.

[chequita guevara]

A big problem with the way the war was fought is that the infantry were used as bait to lure the Vietnamese out of hidng. The enemy would then be pounded by artillery and air. The Vietnamese intiated 75% of ground combat during the war. This means they picked the where and when.

Another consideration, while the Vietnamese lost 2 million people, most of them were civilians who died from the bombings. Their combat losses were definately a LOT lower.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai


So I take it you're not a Democrat.

I am a Republican. But, but Republicans and Democrats tend largely to agree on foreign policy. We back each other up and save our disputes for domestic issues where we disagree.

This is why you will see me and other Republicans making all kinds of positive statements about Roosevelt and Clinton on foreign policy issues.

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by Kramerman
What sickens me nearly death is that more people voted for the "American Idol" tv show than voted for the American President, last election.
Kman

You are SO right Kramerman. That means that more people would like to pick a 1-hit wonder (we all must admit she is going to be one) than the President. I think this is where Democracy really fails---the masses make bad decisions, and the masses don't feel like using their power. I know many people who didn't vote in 2000 because they were getting their hair down, or they were watcing television, or some other crap like that. You have the power to PICK YOUR LEADER, and you would rather watch a sitcom?

I can't vote yet, but when I can, I will vote every election.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
I am a Republican. But, but Republicans and Democrats tend largely to agree on foreign policy. We back each other up and save our disputes for domestic issues where we disagree.

This is why you will see me and other Republicans making all kinds of positive statements about Roosevelt and Clinton on foreign policy issues.

You must be joking. Foreign policy is just as much a political battleground as domestic policy, as your previous posts have shown.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai


You must be joking. Foreign policy is just as much a political battleground as domestic policy, as your previous posts have shown.

Then I'm and independent Demo-Republican. Whatever. But when a war starts, we tend to stop debating. Most other countries do the same and form a coalition war cabinet. Britain ran WWII that way.

[Tingkai]

Ah, you were talking about a war situation. I agree with you there, although the co-operation can break down if the enemy is not a major threat.

[OldWarrior_42]

In the '68 campaign, Kennedy came out against the war, Humphrey backed the status quo, and Nixon had his elusive plan to end the war honorably - but with no details. Nixon won

RFK had an enormous backing of young people due to his coming out against the war. I believe that the percentage of voters that would have turned out that year would have been enormous. And probably would have carried on for years after, had he not been assasinated. This is why Nixon won.

Nixon would not have beateb Kennedy in the elections that year.

And I believe one of the many (stress on many) reasons for voter disillusionment in '68 and to the present , started with the assasinations of Kennedy and King. Turned young people into cynicism and hatred of the establishment.

If you spoke of peace and love and togetherness and all the so called hippie crap, you were eliminated.

I'm still apathetic today, but I do vote. Sadly enough, many people have never recovered to bother to vote anymore.

And when your choices are c rap and c rappier, it makes it tough. I am neither Republican or Democrat. I am probably more of a centrist. But I vote simply for whom I feel will do the least damage. Not a good way to go into the booth to vote, but it is usually all I have to go on.

I guess I lean a little more to the liberal side of the fence, especially in social areas, but the Libertarians and Green party and others tend to simply put FruitLoops up there as a choice.

Oh well... maybe next election, someone will stand out as extraordinary.