Why did the U.S. lose the Vietnam War?

[JAR]

I think it was due to the use of the military draft, Vietnamization, and because the U.S. used a police-work type strategy rather than an offensive one.

[a_unique_person]

You left out

1. Backing an unpopular Government. Think of the US backing Saddam in a civil war. The South Vietnamese regular army and the civilian militia had no real motivation to fight. The officers were often corrupt and only out there to make money from the war. From the top down the tactic of the South Vietnamese government was to rely on the US to win the war for them.

2. Use of innapropriate military tactics, that is, relying massive superiority in fire power. This worked for set piece battles only, so the Vietnamese did everthing they could to avoid them. If they couldn't, they tried to fight in close, where massive air and artillery support would not help.

3. No real respect for the Vietnamese people. The massive rise of red light districts, drug use, corruption and perception of the Vietnamese as 'gooks' says it all.

There was no failure to take the fight up to the enemy. Ia Drang was a good example of this. The Vietnamese, however, learned quickly that they could not fight against superior firepower head on, so they did all they could to avoid this.

The draft was an issue. However, many soldiers appear to have tried to do their duty. They would have realised soon enough, when they got there, that they 'enemy' was not going to stand out there and fight them like the Germans. The enemy could be everyone from the woman working in the rice paddy to the old man riding a bike.

The amount of money spent on the war was fantastic. If money and weapons alone could have bought victory, the US would have won hands down.

The communist fighting force was definitely better motivated. They were fighting for their country.

The Vietnamisation plan had to be put in place. If the South Vietnamese would not fight, and did not support the war, then what was the point of it?

The anti-war movement only stated the obvious. In vietnam itself, there was a still massive army fighting, with all the weapons it asked for.

American soldiers, on the whole, I believe, did as they were ordered. They certainly killed many Vietnamese soldiers. If that was all that was required to win, then the US would have won easily.

The Government backed the war with massive amounts of men, weapons and supplies. The people of Vietnam still fought back.

[jj]

We weren't wanted. We weren't supposed to win according to the people who actually lived there, and furthermore, the idea of "limited engagement" should be titled the idea of "how to get your troops killed over and over".

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by jj
We weren't wanted. We weren't supposed to win, and furthermore, the idea of "limited engagement" should be titled the idea of "how to get your troops killed over and over".


Why do you think you weren't supposed to win. I can't imagine the US ever having that aim in anything. Especially when it literally pours billions of dollars and thousands of lives into the effort. There is no doubt in my mind that those generals over there wanted to win.

However, the only way they could have won was to raize the whole country. Kind of self-defeating, though.

[corplinx]

There is no simple answer. I recommend reading the chapters on Vietnam from Tom Clancy and Gen. Steiner's nonfiction book "Shadow Warriors" to get a fairly recent hindsight analysis.

Its hard to do vietnam justice in a web forum.

[Crossbow]

To: JAR

Of all your options, I think that "Because the U.S. used a police-work type strategy" is the most accurate in terms of choices and facts.

It is all but impossible to win a war without actually invading the country that is being fought, however the USA did not want to risk widening the war by sending in actual ground combat troops into North Vietnam. Therefore, the USA had to compensate for this lack by using aircraft, allies, mercenaries, secret operations, and so on.

While these elements were able to cause a good bit of trouble for the North, they were not able to stop the flow of men and material from the North to the South, they could not hold on to captured territory for any length of time, nor could they foricibly impose the will of the USA in the North. These types of objectives can only be obtained through the use of actual soldiers on the ground.

The USA knew all of this in advance, but it just goes to show just how badly the USA underestimated every aspect of the situation. Many (like Robert McNamara) had an extreme amount of faith in US military technology and thereby expected the Vietnam War to last only one year.

I hope this helps!

[Tricky]

Some of my Vietnamese friends say that it was because of American tactics. Even those who opposed the Communists were outraged when Americans would carpet bomb or napalm a village. Many South Vietnamese soldiers lost relatives to this brutal campaign and became defectors. Eventually, anti-US feelings became so strong that it was impossible to tell who our "allies" were. Vietnamese who were strongly pro-US found it safer to flee the country than to take the chance of being mistaken for Viet Cong.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Tricky
Some of my Vietnamese friends say that it was because of American tactics. Even those who opposed the Communists were outraged when Americans would carpet bomb or napalm a village. Many South Vietnamese soldiers lost relatives to this brutal campaign and became defectors. Eventually, anti-US feelings became so strong that it was impossible to tell who our "allies" were. Vietnamese who were strongly pro-US found it safer to flee the country than to take the chance of being mistaken for Viet Cong.

which gets back to the point I raised before about whose life is worth more, the civilians or the soldiers. It appears there is a US policy of, if there is a choice between a civilian dying or a soldier dying, the soldier gets priority. Now, the soldier is doing his job when fighting a war, a civilian is caught up in something through no choice of his own.

Who wins, well, the guy with the gun wins.

[Dancing David]

Maybe it is just hard for a major power to fight a homegrown force when the politicians are all in it for the wrong reasons. I mean this: how mant thousand dollar bombs did we drop on the HCM trail? Does bombing a horse trail through a jungle qualify as efficient? I am not sure any amount of military force would have been sufficient when you consider the tactical and operational objectives.

Honor to vets from both sides.

Peace,
dancing david

[Crossbow]

OK a_unique_person, I think that now I see what you are actually asking.

If the military really had its way when waging war on another nation,
then they would like to wound the soldiers and kill the civilians.

The reason for the distinction is thus:

Wounded soldiers do not fight well, if at all, and caring for them forces the enemy to expend valuable resources in order to properly treat them. Whereas personnel that are healthy or dead do not require these resources.

Civilians that are slightly to moderately injured can still do at least some, if not most of their usual workload, therefore it is best to kill the civilians in order to stop their contribution to the war effort of the enemy forces.

I hope this helps!

[Doubt]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
You left out

*snip*

2. Use of innapropriate military tactics, that is, relying massive superiority in fire power. This worked for set piece battles only, so the Vietnamese did everthing they could to avoid them. If they couldn't, they tried to fight in close, where massive air and artillery support would not help.


AUP has a point here. (Mark this page, you won't see me write that very often.) The leadership of the Army did not understand the nature of the war they were fighting. Based on Mao's writing, there are three phases to a guerrilla conflict.


http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerilla


Maoist theory of people's war divides warfare into three phases. In the first phase, the guerrillas gain the support of the population through
attacks on the machinery of government and the distribution of propaganda. In the second phase, escalating attacks are made on the
government's military and vital institutions. In the third phase, conventional warfighting is used to seize cities, overthrow the government and
take control of the country.


A good work to read on the subject is Basic Tactics by Mao. There are copies on the net, but all that I have found are from Marxist sources. The original english translation was done by a US Marine Corps general and has some interesting comments on changes in the original text. Also note that the Marine Corps presence in China during the '30s had a lot to do with the gung-ho concept and the marines seeing themselves as an elite force. The Chinese influence on the marines would be a subject for another thread.

http://www.maoism.org/msw/vol6/mswv6_28.htm

There are some big differences between how the Viet Kong acted and what Mao wrote about, but that is because of the different enemies that they faced.

General Giap spent most of the fight against the US in phase 2. The US tried to force set piece battles where the guerrillas would have nothing to gain since they did not have the force needed for phase 3. The one golden opportunity was the Tet offensive, which was a premature attempt by Giap to move to the third phase. The problem that the US faced during Tet was that the Viet Kong was not supposed to be able to mount that kind of attack. The end result was a loss of credibility for the US leadership.

Attacking North Vietnam would have surely lowered the level of conflict in the South, but it would probably not have won the war. We would most likely have seen the leaders in the North revert back to their own guerilla activities again, but with a much shorter supply line coming out of China. What would we have done next? Attack China? The trick to ending the war was to remove support for the guerillas. Knocking out their supplies was not going to do the job.

[Clancie]

We had no business to bomb and kill the Vietnamese just because they wanted a form of government that the U.S. government didn't agree with. Nor did we have the right to impose the corrupt government we installed there on the Vietnamese.

Interestingly, I see today Rumsfeld saying, "No theocracy in Iraq".

The more things change, the more they stay the same....

[jj]

Originally posted by a_unique_person

However, the only way they could have won was to raize the whole country. Kind of self-defeating, though.

Didn't you just answer your own question?

On the other hand, some of the ROE were, well, just idiotic.

[rikzilla]

The VC and NVA could never win against the US military. Our logistical support system was far more advanced than anything the enemy had.

It was apparently quite common that an ill equipped VC squad subsisting on a little rice, and carrying nothing more than Chinese AK's and RPG's could expect to have $500,000 dollars worth of ordinance placed on their position.

Superior firepower was a major advantage, but it was logistics that made it possible. Personally, I would not wish to be a soldier in the army of a government at war with the US. Enemy soldiers, when faced with the deployed might of the US on a battlefield, tend to die in staggering numbers.

The US failed in Vietnam because the political will to win was simply not there. Listen closely A_U_P,...and take a lesson from what just transpired in Iraq. When there is a political will to win there is no micro-management from the White House as was seen during 'Nam. There is no safe haven allowed one's enemy. In 'Nam the enemy infiltrated and fought in the South. The North's homeland was not similarly invaded. When you allow your enemy safe haven, you have no demonstrable will to win.

I believe this is simply because of the fear of a wider and perhaps nuclear war exploding from the existing cold war. As seen in Iraq, this fear no longer exists. The US and British forces were led by professionals, and allowed to do their professional best. Obviously they performed their jobs at a very high level of efficiency as a result.

Perhaps Johnson and Nixon kept the war on a slow boil over the years because they thought sooner or later the Vietnamese would give up in the face of overwhelming firepower. Obviously, whatever they were thinking, they were wrong. This was the reason so many lives and so much money were poured into 'Nam. It is not indicative of a will to win, merely a will to spend assets unwisely.

I am not posting this to put forth an opinion that Vietnam was "right" or "just". I don't believe that was either of those things. It was a stupid and brutal waste of life and money. But it was long ago. The lessons of Vietnam have been learned...just look at the way the Army has been used in the years since 'Nam ended. We've learned wars should be avoided...but not at all costs, and that when war is entered into...that there is no substitute for victory. This means a strategy of massive application of overwhelming firepower, and a resultant swift and unambiguous conclusion, with no safe harbor for the enemy.

-zilla

[jj]

Originally posted by rikzilla
I am not posting this to put forth an opinion that Vietnam was "right" or "just". I don't believe that was either of those things. It was a stupid and brutal waste of life and money. But it was long ago. The lessons of Vietnam have been learned...just look at the way the Army has been used in the years since 'Nam ended. We've learned wars should be avoided...but not at all costs, and that when war is entered into...that there is no substitute for victory.-zilla

Well, I surely hope you're right.

On the other hand, in Iraq what do we have? We have taken the territory, mostly, pretty much, kinda, and nobody can stand up to us directly.

But the population wants us out.

That looks more familiar than I had expected. :(

[Clancie]

Rikzilla,

Remember the phrase from the Vietnam War, "Hearts and Minds"?

What does it mean to you in terms of the U.S. "winning" in Iraq?

[RandFan]

Good post AUP.

Originally posted by a_unique_person
The Government backed the war with massive amounts of men, weapons and supplies. The people of Vietnam still fought back. ...And died, in large numbers. So large that they could not have continued indefinitely. It was a war of attrition. The North Vietnamese gambled that the U.S. would lose the will to fight before the North ran out of human fodder. The North won.

[RandFan]

It should also be noted that this "action" was blown from the very beginning. It started out as a small incursion "police action" and escalated into a war. This gave North Vietnam time to adapt to US strategy and tactics. It gave the North way too much time to perfect their means of supply. We also waited too long to go to Hanoi.

If we were to fight the war today we would devise a strategy that would not give the enemy time to adapt or develop alternate supply routes. We would take the fight to the heart of the enemy and march on Hanoi and seize the city.

The war was winnable, we made to many bad assumptions and made to many mistakes.

[Smalso]

One of the things that contributed is one that is not spoken of much. Every soldier who was sent to Viet Nam knew that he was there only for a limited time. The saying was that you spend the first six months learning to survive and the second six months surviving. There was no incentive to kick butt and win the thing so we can all go home; as contrasted to WWII when everybody was there for the duration--more or less. The shorter you got, the less inclined you were to take chances. Nobody wanted to get thirty days short and get killed. I don't hold that this was a bad thing or that everybody should have been sent there for the duration. But it was a problem for which there was no apparent solution.

[rikzilla]

Originally posted by Clancy
Rikzilla,

Remember the phrase from the Vietnam War, "Hearts and Minds"?

What does it mean to you in terms of the U.S. "winning" in Iraq?

Well,

I was speaking of a purely military definition of victory. We have acheived that in Iraq already. You are speaking more along the lines of "winning the peace"...that is a job for diplomats, not soldiers.

As far as "hearts and minds" goes I doubt we'll ever win that one overall. I think it's doable within certain segments of the population tho...we'll always have enemies...but again the opposite is true, we'll have alot of friends too. Perhaps the way to win peace there while a stable government is born, is by making our presence appreciated and needed in the infrastructure rebuilding phase. As long as we're doing something they need, they'll tolerate us being there a bit longer.

But as I said...that's a job for the political types.

-z

[JAR]

What gets me about the Vietnam War is it was supported more by right-wingers than it was by left-wingers. But it sounds like a left-wing cause. Just think about it. It was a war to prevent a tyrannical government from conquering a country of foreigners of non-European descent(No offence intended against anyone who is of non-European descent). Does that sound like a cause that a rascist bigoted southerner would want to risk his life and limb for?

But I remember that on the American Experience documentary on the Vietnam War, a person attending a meeting of George Wallace(the infamous former supporter of segregation) said in an interview that he wanted to have everyone who was against the war placed in a room with a nuclear bomb and have it be blown up. It seems like there's something wrong with the picture here.

[JAR]

Originally posted by RandFan
And died, in large numbers. So large that they could not have continued indefinitely. It was a war of attrition. The North Vietnamese gambled that the U.S. would lose the will to fight before the North ran out of human fodder. The North won.

I agree. I read in a newspaper article a couple of weeks ago that the North Vietnamese recruited or drafted women(I can't remember which) to fight in the war. That would suggest that they were more low on manpower than the U.S. was. These women suffered from health problems due to the poor diet they were given during their term of service. These women had a hard time getting married when they got back because it was suspected by people that their poor diet had made them infertile.

[peptoabysmal]

All of the above, plus widespread drug abuse and friggin' Jane Fonda :D

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by JAR
What gets me about the Vietnam War is it was supported more by right-wingers than it was by left-wingers. But it sounds like a left-wing cause. Just think about it. It was a war to prevent a tyrannical government from conquering a country of foreigners of non-European descent(No offence intended against anyone who is of non-European descent). Does that sound like a cause that a rascist bigoted southerner would want to risk his life and limb for?

But I remember that on the American Experience documentary on the Vietnam War, a person attending a meeting of George Wallace(the infamous former supporter of segregation) said in an interview that he wanted to have everyone who was against the war placed in a room with a nuclear bomb and have it be blown up. It seems like there's something wrong with the picture here.

Not quite.

The war was the result of the colonial period under France. The Vietnamese wanted France out at the end of WWII, and thought that their support of the war against the Japanese entitled them to this.

However, the US was more intent on keeping France on side, and actually supplied France with arms in the war against the independence fighters. If you see pictures of the French troops at this time, they are usually using US equipment.

The Vietnamese then turned to the next guy on the list of people who might help them, and surprise surprise, the Russians and Chinese were quite keen to help out.

When the French were defeated, the peace terms specified, for some reason, that Vietnam would be divided into North and South, something that had not existed up to that time.

The two parts were to be united by a popular vote at some time in the future which would decide the government.

That vote never took place, as it was known that the North would win hands down.

The South was governed by the rump of the colonialist co-operators. They were stuck in a 'cargo cult' mentality, and only ever expected their colonial masters to win the war for them. Absurd tactics and strategies were used, such as making sure they avoided any real fighting as much as possible. That was for the US.

The government in the South also never had any popular support. It was corrupt, self-obsessed, un-democratic, unstable. The Viet Cong, which was the army of the people in the South, thrived in these conditions. The North supplied and ran the Viet Cong, but the North fought as the ARVN.

[JAR]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


Not quite.

The war was the result of the colonial period under France. The Vietnamese wanted France out at the end of WWII, and thought that their support of the war against the Japanese entitled them to this.

My message you replied to was about how it was a contradiction of character for right-wingers to support the war and a contradiction of character for left-wingers to not support the war. Your rebuttal started out with "Not quite", implying that I was wrong, and then went on to give the causes of the Vietnam War without ever giving a counter-argument to my message.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by JAR


My message you replied to was about how it was a contradiction of character for right-wingers to support the war and a contradiction of character for left-wingers to not support the war. Your rebuttal started out with "Not quite", implying that I was wrong, and then went on to give the causes of the Vietnam War without ever giving a counter-argument to my message.

woops.

Try again.

As I stated earlier, the War was not one to prevent a conquest of one country by another. The two countries were really one country.

[JAR]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


woops.

Try again.

As I stated earlier, the War was not one to prevent a conquest of one country by another. The two countries were really one country.

The two countries were not one country. The South Vietnamese government was not run by the North Vietnamese government and the North Vietnamese government was not run by the South Vietnamese government. That means they were two different countries.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by JAR


The two countries were not one country. The South Vietnamese government was not run by the North Vietnamese government and the North Vietnamese government was not run by the South Vietnamese government. That means they were two different countries.

There never was a North and South, until it was created as part of the peace settlement when the French left, and even then was only ever supposed to exist until the vote to reunify under a single government. Until then, there had only ever been Vietnam.

[JAR]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


There never was a North and South, until it was created as part of the peace settlement when the French left, and even then was only ever supposed to exist until the vote to reunify under a single government. Until then, there had only ever been Vietnam.

Yeah, and under that logic, being that the U.S. used to be part of Great Britain, that would mean it still is part of Great Britain just like India would still be part of the British Empire.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by JAR


Yeah, and under that logic, being that the U.S. used to be part of Great Britain, that would mean it still is part of Great Britain just like India would still be part of the British Empire.

Haven't I made myself clear? North and South was only invented as part of peace of settlement, and was due to end after about one year.