George C. Herring, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky, discusses the strategies and tactics that the U.S. employed in Vietnam during the W&L Alumni College program, "Vietnam: A Retrospective."
I was an eighteen year old kid when I went to Vietnam in 1966. I did two tours with the 1st Marine Division. I was a grunt. I have two purple hearts and I have refought this stupid fucking war a thousand times in my mind, trying to understand it. I still haven't changed the outcome and the only casualty of all this rehashing was me. I think Professor Herrring explains this whole thing about as well as it can be explained, but I have to say this. About early 1967 or even earlier we realized the war was a mistake. When we stayed anyway, with no prospects of success, it became a crime. My Lai really happened and many more. The mission was a lie, the body counts were lies, the lights at the end of the tunnel was a lie and practically every thing we were told was a lie. We lost the war because the objectives we wanted to achieve were not attainable and we were just to proud to admit it so we had to face failure and the way most of us deal with that is by telling ourselves more lies.
Thank you for your service. It was never your fault that said service would result in a cruel waste ov lives and, as you stated, later a crime claiming even more lives. That was so much above your paygrade. The curse that hangs over every soldier's life.
I was drafted during the goddamn war. I always knew it was bullshit... nothing but a civil war like those going on all over the world during, before and since. But! Because one side of the war was communist, Washington made it our business. In all these decades did you wonder WHY we we were against communism? You, me & everyone else born just after WWII was raised from birth to kill commies for Christ. But why? It took most of my lifetime before I accepted it, but the reason was to preserve cheap labor. Every population that communism seized was no longer available to be exploited. The corporations were not going to stand for that, and with their money power over Washington they got the war they wanted.
Our progress was determined in body count not territory taken. One example was the battle of hill 937 or the soldiers that were there called it "Hamburger hill" after 10 days of heavy fighting and casualties we took the hill, but later just left it and the VC took it back a few days later without firing a shot. It was like blowing out a candle that would light up again and each time you blew it out, it would cost the US millions of dollars and thousands of lives.
I had a classmate in the Infantry Officer's Advanced Course in 1974 who was wounded on Hamburger Hill. I told the story of having an NVA major in the bed next to him for a short time. The major told him, "You know we won the battle." He replied, "But we destroyed your unit." "That is true, but we won a great political victory." And that, is the story of Vietnam. The US, from the top to the bottom, had no idea how to win.
@@bosnbruce5837 Why? Because the South never though the slaves would pick up guns and shoot bullets at white men. The Southerns underestimated the humanity of the slaves thinking they just needed to keep out northern forces. Once Lincoln announced the emancipation proclamation well history said that 190,000 black troops and sailors would defeat the South. Every slave who could escape was going to get a Springfield 1861 rifled musket. Would you stay home shuckin' and jivin' or go for a musket?
@@kimobrien. That is an amazingly distorted view of history. 2.75mill fought in the civil war, and most Southern forces were never slave owners. Your attribution of motives is anti-historical fabrication.
z@@stevealexander8010 www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html The percentage of slave holding families in the CSA ranged form 49 percent in Mississippi to 20 percent in Arkansas. Like most ruling classes it exempted itself from conscription. (Those who owned 8 or more slaves.) Jeff Davis himself owned a plantation in the Mississippi delta with about 75 slaves. Once the slaves heard that Yankee Troops including runaway slaves were coming to free them. Slavery and defeat for the slave owners was all but over.
I have a friend who rode the last helicopter off the Saigon Embassy. Those folks on that roof were doing what they were told, by people who seemed to fail to understand the motivation of humans to defend their homes from becoming a Colony. Until we can admit that Chase Manhattan had a branch in Saigon for a reason, we fail to understand the war...... The Family that owned the Bank, also owned stock in Dow Chemical, Anaconda and a few other business concerns, that may have had interests in exploiting that Nations resources. The most famous writing that was used to support our involvement in Nam, was underwritten by that same illustrious family..... The fact that Vietnam fought to defend their nation from becoming a Colony of one more imperial power, seems strangely similar to the spirit of Americans who fought to free themselves from King George..... The folks at Chase Manhattan now have 5 offices scattered across Vietnam......
In Vietnam with Australian Military Intelligence from 1969 to 1973. Reading the comments I see one where it said that the US never lost a battle in VN. I would like to correct that. The US never won a battle there. Politically it was all about stopping communism expanding and the associated "hoards from the north." The Marines did a pretty good job but mostly they just wanted to survive to get home. The US made the same mistake in WW2. Against the Germans and Japanese those troops were told you stay until the war is over. Our troops were there semi-permanently. You can't build up an intelligence picture and experience secret patrols that we conducted, only to go home. I only got to go home for 2 weeks a year when the rainy season made soldiering impossible. We had a covert base in Cambodia which had good intel on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That was our job. We would call in bombing only to see the bomb loads dropped 4km away from the target. It was the same failure with the daylight bombing in WW2. Why? Unpredictable cross winds. No bombsight can allow for that, and the higher you go the worse the effect. I once saw a B52 try a low level bombing run. It was out of Thailand. It came in really low along this valley. We were looking down at it. It released 12 tons of HE bang on target at 500 feet. The pilot had a hard time accounting for the bullet holes and tree branches stuck in the slats when he returned to base. There should have been more of that. The Vietnam War was a political war and the decisions were made out of hubris. It was always going to fail.
Thanks for your experience input. I'm shocked looking at bomb tonnage dropped in WWII 3-million tons (which didn't appear to impact German Panzer production which maxed out in the Summer of '44), Vietnam 7,000,000 tons, and then 1991 where the 4th-largest army in the world, with 8yrs of recent war experience, was annihilated in a one-sided campaign with 88,000 tons dropped.
@@robertjohnson5838 well smartass can you name a battle the usa won in vietnam and by the way they threw the french .usa out and told the chinese too fuck off not too bad for a bunch of rice burners hay and fords building here 4wheel trucks here ps just in case your looking for a job old mate and lf yor planning on visiting too vietnam book early cause the joint full of americans telling every body how great usa is lol
War is a business. I remember sitting in front of my locker and looking to my left and right. Guys getting set to ship out and if they got clipped, no problem, there were a lot more guys to take their place. Would love it if the politicians and businessmen who create this shit could go in place of a bunch of guys who are fighting for each other and want to go home.
The war in Viet Nam was a lost colonial conflict when the US lied itself into it. I saw recently an American veteran of that war currently living there saying he thanks God every night that the US lost, because ha it won, the place would have been unfit for humans.
I was there for 7 years, '62 to '70. When Westmoreland gave his farewell address to the troops he badly mispronounced the name of the prime minister, calling him Na-goo-en. I learned in my first week there that Nguyn was pronounced WIN. He had been there 4 and a half years and he couldn't pronounce the name of the man he was supposed to have been working with all that time.
Walter Guest -Thank you. I was there when the US Army collapsed in the field. 1970, 71, 72. I state this with no intent to disparage anyone, but organizations can collapse despite all effort of their human members. This was a vast human tragedy, the Second IndoChina War, the American War. With prayers for all.
@@rudolphguarnacci197 disagree - - - JFK spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse. Looming over it all is the American descent into Vietnam. The assassination of Vietnam’s President Diem on Kennedy’s watch may have been one of the two biggest mistakes of the war there. (The other was the decision to wage a war of attrition on the unexamined assumption that Hanoi would buckle under the pain.) I don’t buy the theory promulgated by Robert McNamara and others that Kennedy would have kept U.S. troops out. McNamara launched a program called Project 100,000, which lowered mental standards. Men who had been unqualified for military duty the day before were now deemed qualified. By the end of the war, McNamara’s program had taken 354,000 substandard men into the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy. Among the troops, these men were often known as “McNamara’s Morons” or “the Moron Corps” or “McNamara’s Boys.” Military leaders-from William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam, to lieutenants and sergeants at the platoon level-viewed McNamara’s program as a disaster. McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam." Because so many college students were avoiding military service during the Vietnam War, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered mental standards to induct 354,000 low-IQ men. Their death toll in combat was appalling.
I completed the Special Forces Officer's Course in 1975. The speaker for my graduation was Col. Aaron Bank, the father of US Special Forces. Seeing all the Combat Infantryman Badges in the audience (we were in a classroom), he said, "Guys, I hate to tell you this, but you deserve to know. I knew Ho Chi Minh personally and we could have worked with him. He was more nationalist than Communist. Vietnam didn't need to happen. I wrote to President Truman that the US should support Vietnamese independence instead of the return of French colonialism. He didn't listen."
I am glad this guy has fun with this period of American history. I did not serve in Vietnam. I served constantly during the Cold War and 12 years of smaller conflicts until after the first Gulf War and the volcanic eruptions in the Philippines. As a Aeromedical Evaluation Medic every time I flew for the whole time it was filled with torn up American Military personnel. I am proud that all of my supervisors were Vietnam War Veterans. Had we not had these high caliber humanitarians supervising us (even when they struggled with the PTSD from their pain), if you only knew how many people are alive today because of an often overlooked aspect of US American Power that was solely for good and no political agenda whatsoever, he would not be such a narrow minded person.
According to my history professor, who was there, the enemy was down to 15 year-olds at the end, so maybe our attrition strategy was an inch from success.
@@robertroselle3341 Not true, but there was never the political will to actually take the steps necessary to completely destroy the North Vietnamese. Without that political will, all military efforts were doomed to failure.
I wonder, did your history prof tell you the USA waived the entrance exams and recruited 350,000 men of low IQ to serve in Vietnam? Also known as "McNamaras morons", these guys were a danger to themselves and their comrades. There was desperation on both sides.
The helicopter was on top of the Pittman apartments not the American embassy. This is what the photographer who took the photo said. He should be the person that knows. Look it up Richard in Dallas
My father used to tell me.. At first he supported the war. He said it was portrayed as the patriotic thing to do. As the war when on, he became convinced we had become the fascists.
@@kristyann9912 and look at communist countries how nicely they treat their people....concentration camps...."reeducation" like in North Korea and North Vietnam which is actually mass killing ...ethnic cleansing...It was right to fight an evil regime. If it's morally right to bomb Japan and Germany to ruins to protect freedom in the world than you have to fight communists in Korea and Vietnam as well...Asian people deserve to be free as much as Europeans...Chileans....Black South Africans etc.
Why we lost? What did they expect would happen? Victory was never was an option, for fear of Russian and/or Chinese involvement. With Victory off the table, the best we could hope for was a draw. Defeat was practically guaranteed from the start. Nor can it be said we did not know what we were getting into, because Ho Chi Mihn had been our guy, and we helped him defeat both the Japanese and the French. (Many thanks to Greg Jay, below for his comments, especially the following: "Fletcher Prouty put it best where he claims the Pentagon (aptly named) had gamed it out to last 10 years with 57k dead...") So what happened? The war lasted, you guessed it, 10 years and cost us 57 k dead, at least. Our no-win strategy worked to perfection; the US military and treasury were bled dry, and the North Vietnamese were the eventual recipients of all the infrastructure and munitions paid for by the US taxpayer and left behind when we were ignominiously chased out. Fast forward to 40 years, and what is the situation in Viet Nam today? Business is booming, and why not? Taxes in "Communist" Viet Nam, are a fraction of what they are in "Free" countries like the US. Makes you wonder why we even bothered.
No fuck you did not helped us the Japanese and the French. What kind of Weed did you have. Not just that entire of your comment like delusional. Business is booming, and why not? We have to trade with China to 2000 just for your people set our sanction off(we are the winning here but USA is sore loser). Russia help us not the USA. And those Running to USA now they even pool if compare those in Viet Nam so no an entire comment is just you delusional.
Im a former Marine who was stationed in I Corp. The TET offensive was a brilliant move by the North Vietnamese. First it was sensationalized by the American press and spun into a defeat. Actually it was not . The zviet Cong came out of their sanctuaries and fought in the open. They werecessentially destroyed due to very high casualties. 2 the North zviets after that essentially took over the wsr in the South.. This guare n teed to the znorth that if only the Americans could be made to leave the znorth would have no real problems with competition in thecSouth for country wide control..
@@roberteaston6413 A lot of Canadians can trace their origins back to the Loyalist who left after the signing of the Treaty of Paris. England was briefly a republic with Oliver Cromwell. They restored the King, dug up Cromwell's body hung him in effigy and ever since they've been trying to get just the right mixture of monarchy, the peerage and democracy. The can't celebrate the beheading of Charles the first a revolutionary victory for all England and Europe because it would insult the King.
I am old enough to remember the Watergate crisis in 1974. Everyone Monarchist in Canada was gloating over that. For a while they had the luxury of being smug and self-righteous towards the USA. But like everything else we had to move on to other things. @@kimobrien.
@@roberteaston6413 The Canadians had the problem of Quebec almost voting for independence. They Quebecois probably would have won if a certain leader didn't turn off the first nations with an announcement that Quebec was to be a white nation. The also enacted a charter of rights and freedoms around that time. Conservative Justice Anthony Scalia wished he had a reasonable limits in the US constitution like the Canadian Charter. They also recognize the 'Supremacy of God'. God is never mentioned in the US Constitution or Amendments.
The North Vietnamese would *never* stop in their fight for freedom and unification against a puppet government in the South. Also, a failure in military strategy in keeping real estate won, rather than fighting a war of attrition, was doomed from the start.
The North couldn't lose without causing the Chinese army to enter the war just like they did in 1950 when MacArthur's forward recon got within sight of the Yalu river. But the real estate was worthless. VC bullets don't grow in rice fields. Keeping every tree you already fought for would just mean assigning men to guard a tree acting as bullet sponges to VC/NVA snipers just because some other a$5hole died for that tree months earlier. No war is won standing still.
We couldn't impose our will on Vietnam for the same reason the British Empire, then the strongest military on earth, couldn't impose their will on the American colonies. Vietnam wasn't buying what we were selling. All the military stuff, and all the battles were essentially irrelevant to a nation that believed we were just trying to reimpose the colonial system they had worked hard to get rid of by running the French out. They had been the victims of Capitalist Imperialism once, and they were willing to try just about anything else. Attributing the "failure" to anything but the wishes of the Vietnamese people is just myopic stupidity by people who only want to view the conflict through American lenses. If killing 3 million Vietnamese wasn't enough to impose our will on them, it's pretty clear that killing another couple million wasn't going to do it either. The notion that we should deny countries self-determination by means of genocide is just absurd.
No one believed the US was re-imposing colonialism - that's fantasy. A lot of Vietnamese didn't want communism imposed by China/Russia either. After the fall of Saigon ~50k were killed immediately, ~250k were tortured & starved in re-education camps, ~120k fled the county (and a lot more wanted to). Then we have ~2mill killed in Cambodia's killing fields. So no - not everyone was in favor of communism - it's just a massive falsehood to claim that. One of the agreements NV signed was to have a popular plebiscite vote. NV had a significantly larger population than SV - so OBVIOUSLY the reason they never held a vote on the form of government is that they believed they might lose. Communism wasn't that popular. There were only ~1mill deaths of N.Vietnamese including civilians, not 3mill, and many civilian deaths were due to VietCong pogroms (tho also ARVN democide). Body-count is not a valid way to measure pain, but your claim that 3mill died specifically opposing the US is hogwash. The gov of SV were definitely corrupt rat-bags, but like S.Korea, a republic form of government had the potential to evolve in a positive direction. Sad that murderous anti-progress socialists won that war.
@@stevealexander8010 Saying no one believed that the US was going to establish colonialism in South Vietnam shows your utter ignorance of the conflict. A lot of Vietnamese believed strongly that the US just wanted to reinstate colonialism. The only strong support for the South Vietnamese government came in the cities, usually by the people in on all the corruption that came with the US money that was spent. The US just backed a shitty horse in the Diem Regime, and the utterly incompetent military dictatorships that followed after we OK'ed Diem's assassination. Classifying any of those governments as Republics is generous to the point of absurdity. Diem stole the election with an improbable 98.2% of the vote against Bao Dai, and then reneged on the UN agreement to hold elections across Vietnam. It's more likely the Vietnamese government ended up as an overthrown Dictatorship like the Shah of Iran than any sort of Democratic Republic. A lot of the South Vietnamese, especially the majority Buddhist population, had problems with the discrimination against Buddhists by the South Vietnamese dictators. You can watch videos of Buddhist Monks setting themselves on fire in protest of the corrupt South Vietnamese government if you wish to actually pay attention to wealth of historical documentation that shows that the South Vietnamese were most certainly not strongly on the side of their government.
@@Dethfeast Preposterously wrong. France gave up the colonial VN in 1954 by treaty, several years before the US offered support to SVN. YOU don't know the history. No one with a 3 digit IQ believed the US was about re-establishing colonialism. That is just stupid.
@@stevealexander8010 ever hear of neo-colonialism? it's where a major power (u.s./russia/china/uk) exercises military/diplomatic/economic control of a country without formally colonizing it. exactly what the u.s. attempted to do in vietnam.
Abrams was a difficult man toward new concepts and he hated Special Forces and irregular warfare in general. He made things very hard for SF operations and Recon teams.
Go tell the Spartans the first Vietnam movie was made while the war was still going was a very good movie with Burt Lancaster, MacArthur was a horses ass consumed with self glorification, went to congress and spoke said avoid the quagmire of Vietnam. After the JFK murder who had signed MSM263 all US personal out of Vietnam by Dec. 65 , Johnson gave the generals their war where the pilots were denied to bomb the ships bringing in Sams, it was classified as a police action but Fletcher Prouty put it best where he claims the Pentagon (aptly named) had gamed it out to last 10 years with 57k dead, in 63, so it worked out almost exact, the war was basically for the rich fat cats to get get richer. We didn't fight the Vietnam war for 10 years we fought it for 1 year 10 times.
Actually JFK DIDN’t bring troops home. He only signed a first troop drawdown, which everyone in his admin (including his brother) stated it was because at the time he signed it, it looked like the war was going well. The equipping & training the south was always the plan. JFK had also expanded USA involvement earlier.
The rich fat cats made millions off of defense contracts. This why they did not let the Air-Force hit strategic military sites. This would have caused this none declared war to end too fast. The very rich fat cats did not mind drafting very poor Americans to fight and die. They were only interested in making big profits to make lots of money. That's why President Johnson and his friends killed President Kennedy and covered it up. President Johnson wanted leave the White House as a war hero. He left in disgrace . People know if he had no problem sending and ordering American troops , like 58,000 to die in his war. He and his friends killed President Kennedy. He even created the 25 Amendment that would make a Vice President a president. He wanted power , glory fame and lots of money. The only ones that won in Vietnam were defense contracts . Plus: The rich fat cats that wanted this fake man made war to last forever. They could care less about the American lives shot and blown up. They just cared about making lots of money. As their children went to IVEY LEAGUE COLLEGES TO BECOME A SENATOR OR CONGRESSMEN TO SENT THE POOR AMERICANS TO DIE IN THEIR WARS MANUFACTURED TO MAKE THEM LOTS OF MONEY. THEY NEVER LOSE.
I was a Boy Scout in the sixties we were being trained for war. The older scouts promoted that war philosophy. It was a testosterone thing you were expected to man up period. Unfortunately for the US military we got into the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong people. In WW2 we the OSS had supported Ho and his Viet Minh.Then we turned our backs on them to support the French reucupation.The smart move would have been to opt out but we couldn't bear to lose face.
The late Barbara Tuchman-her book "The March of Folly" has a section devoted to the Viet Nam War with quite a bit of history background as to how our involvement evolved believe used the phrase "America dishonored herself" I suspect that chapter in that book is one of the best sources to consult if you want to begin to understand the debacle that was American involvement in the "Viet Nam war"
Found my copy. The phrase is "America Betrays Herself in Vietnam" "eventually damaging to American society,reputation and disposable power in the world." quoted from Mrs. Tuchman I think that damage is still with us and being reinforced
Economy of force. The counter-insurgent regime must not overreact to guerrilla provocations, since this may indeed be what they seek to create a crisis in civilian morale. Indiscriminate use of firepower may only serve to alienate the key focus of counterinsurgency- the base of the people. Police level actions should guide the effort and take place in a clear framework of legality, even if under a State of Emergency.
Vietnamese people are very good kind and respectable people. Above that they are very patriots and they are willing to sucrifice everything for their freedom and land. Yes, they had uncle Ho as a God, and they listen to him, and had a lot of experience in warfare and battles vs Japanese in WW2 vs the French in the 50's and after they fought the U.S. and the S. Vietnam. They got united after they took the South and never bothered anyone again. Humble people. Like a Vietnamese veteran said one time.. " As much bombs as they are trying to throw on us they still can not level our cities and destroy our infarstructure, why? Because we never had any ! We lived out in the nature and ate rice. The U.S. troops had a lot to loose and we knew that they will give up and leave one day, it was just matter of time.... and we had plenty of it ! " Damn!
And USA is doing business in vietnam too . We moved on so should you. Now making money building the country is more important than holding grudges against each other. If the Viet hold grudges to all the enemies in the past then my god we would have no one left to be friends ?
When a lecture is called Why we failed in Vietnam and WE didn't fail AT ALL while we were there and South Vietnam stood proudly for over 2 years after we left, it's a pretty stupid lecture of some true irrelevancies and some bare-assed lies.
Definition of "Search and Destroy" missions: if GI's found stockpiles of rice that the VC were eating, they destroyed them. If "pacified" villagers were eating the rice, it was left alone. You understand the brilliance of this strategy? Me, neither!
Search and destroy meant stumble across the jungle, get ambushed to fix the enemy, and destroy them with artillery and bombs. However the Vietnamese initiated 90% of the combat and were not stupid enough to fight pitched battles in the open.
I am trying to have a book published that refers to this lecture's opening observation: there was no attack in the Tonkin Gulf incident. My book accuses suppression of LBJ's Address to the Nation, delivered August 4, 1964, in which he stated, "There were no US losses." in that incident. The speech was televised live and published throughout the nation the next day. The New York Times published an additional report, the same day, above the fold, from the Pentagon of "no casualties, no damage". Thus, the lingering doubts mentioned in the lecture were, in fact, always very well known. Finding the Gulf of Tonkin
Why....That guy is a Harzole....and I can assure you he didn't go to Vietnam despite the fact he was most certainly of age to do so... there is your answer...
VK HAM - If you don’t have first hand intelligence, shut up and stop mocking the brave South Vietnamese soldiers. The US forces were supported and protected by air forces and artilleries. That kept lots of them from totally annihilation. The Vietnamese forces fought without causes, or at least don’t know what to fight for: South Vietnam or Washington DC; largely due to the fact that they were kept in dark of the war objectives and strategies. How come the South Vietnamese casualties from the boopy traps were much less than the Americans? Because fought it wiser. There is of course corruption, but not within the ranks of real fighters. And guess who created these corrupters?
While it is absolutely true that the US failed to understand their enemy, I would point to another factor in The Art of War as at least equally important in explaining the US loss, namely what Sun Tzu calls the "Moral Law": "Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:- Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law?" (Literally: "is in harmony with his subjects") Unlike in Germany, in South Korea, in Japan, the US did precious little to convince the locals that they weren't a hostile invading force. They kept backing a local strongman who was neither strong nor beloved by his people and they spent orders of magnitude more on blowing the country to smithereens than they did building it up. I'm convinced that had the US approach been closer to what they did in postwar Germany, they could have turned at least south Vietnam into an allied nation a la South Korea. I don't think it's a coincidence that Ho Chi Minh appealed to the US constitution upon declaring their right to independence. I think he would have much preferred being a US client state to being a sino-soviet proxy.
I can still remember the news reports on the Tonkin Gulf. I was amazed that the N. Viets supposedly attacked the US Navy with some coastal gun boats. I thought they were crazy. I thought they were going to pay a heavy price for that mistake. The military lesson of Vietnam is never have decision makers on strategy who are not extremely knowledgeable of military history.....and have an IQ of at least 99. .....better several - not just one.
That's it in a nutshell they always claimed the were the best and the brightest from Harvard and Yale. Yet metaphorically many could not tie their own shoelaces.
Actually, the evidence is that China had no intention of escalating their involvement as their crossing of the Yalu during the Korean conflict was still vivid in their minds as well. China knew that they were too weak economically to sustain a military operation against the US.
"Fade out into the countryside, or across the border into Cambodia, or north of the parallel into the north.." the guy says. Hell, the way the Vietcong guy "fades away" is he goes back to work the next day at his job in the US Army PX.
Remember folks, we were not there to "win" a war. We were there to help South Vietnam push the VC/NVA back across the DMZ and keep them there.Kinda like the Korean situation I guess.
panzerken You cannot fight other people's civil wars for them. South Vietnam was geopolitical fiction anyway. It was a creation of The Geneva Accords and bore no basis in reality in Southeast Asia. Most Vietnamese didn't view it as a legitimate country. You can't drop enough bombs on a quagmire to create stability.
Your post is already 3 years old. I hope you've spent some time with studying the history of the American War in Vietnam. Because this post shows that you have a lack of information.
America was there to win. America’s main objective was to stop communism from spreading. Soon enough America pulled out and lost, thus communism spread throughout Southeast Asia.
During the Vietnam war American press focused on what the Americans were doing and what the South Vietnamesse were failing to do. instead of talking in private to the Vietnamesse we criticized them publicly not understanding how important it was to there concept of honor not to loose face publicly.
Most historians never explained the very begining of the conflict in Vietnam, what happened even before the very first American marine landed in Vietnam. To understand one must go back before 1954 when Vietnam was not divided and under the French colonization.
General advice: Don't get involved in other people's domestics. You will bring terrible problems for your own family. America should never have done what it did. It was a crime against humanity. A Universe Court might bring them to justice.
@Graham - This line of thinking is expected from the European, not the braved American. The US protected the liberty and humanitarian worldwide. That’s what leaders do, realizing the unpleasant price to pay for. That is also the reason millions of people worldwide wanted to live in America.
Graham -America is too big to be tried by any court. Only Americans can stop the immoral acts of the American government and their partners in the Miliarry Industrial complex. People Joan Baez and Daniel Ellbert.
@@muuhoang7592 There have been in most countries ... civil wars, religious wars, ethnic wars, dictatorships, economic dominance fighting, cultural wars, and numerous other causes. And such has been happening throughout the history of mankind and perhaps even more so in the modern era. Just look at the dozens of countries today in the world with serious "civil wars" on one kind or another. It just seems impossible that any one external country or even a collection of external countries can prevent such from happening.
The war was about what all our wars are about, Money, for the economy. Lots of money and plenty of jobs, unless you were a barber, 😆. The military industrial complex was seeing big 💵 signs for the next decade.
We didn't lose in Viet nam and neither did the French. Read what Khrushchev said on pages 482 and 483 of his memior. We and the French both just said , "piss on it," and left. The reason I believe is that the Vietnamese on our side didn't like us. The communist rank and file did. I spent 4 yrs in Viet Nam. Two in the army and two as a civilian. I arrived in the Tuy Hoa area, Phu Yen province in Jan 68. My unit was a component of the 173 ABN. My 2nd day in my unit two paratroopers took several of us newbies into Phu Hiep to buy some toiletries the PX was out of. These two paratroopers had been in Viet Nam for over a year and a half. They told us newbies how to tell which Vietnamese were VC. We were told, "the VC are friendly, they like us and they don't try to screw over us." During my 4 yrs in Viet Nam I found this was very true. The opposite was also true. The Vietnamese on our side weren't friendly, didn't like us, and screwed over us every chance they got. The two experienced paratroopers had been based at Bien Hoa their 1st yr and took part in operations in lll Corp, thenthe hill batles in ll Corp during thr last half of 67. Yes, in combat the fighting was fierce, butonce off the time clock, there was a lot of fraternization going on. A lot. So you wake up one morning And you realize you're helping the wrong side and you say, "we're out of here!" I think that's why we didn't leave the South Vietnamese with equipment they needed to win. My 2nd yr in Viet Nam my unit was attached to the 7th ARVN Div. We were in a lot of heavy combat. The ARVN would fight hard.
Would you say the same abt N/S Korea ? About E/W Germany ? Do you recognize the mass murders & poverty that might have been prevented - but instead actually occurred in VN & Cambodia?
They were thinking the same thing we who believe in freedom are thinking today about the parasitic communist who threatens a takeover of our country today, "Let's send help to stop it."
A universal lesson one may learn (reinforced by the mess of IS): violence never solves any problems, only causes them. People dislike being bullied, whether Vietnamese, Arab or/American/European (think of the resistance during WW2) Military power is not durable, as also proven by the eastern block.
a corrupt upperclass playijng upperclass games with the lives of t he working classes. This is ignored by the righties because theyre delusional magical thinkers and willing serfs. It's ignored by the centrists (dems) because it doesnt fit their bullshit narrative...
Ernest Murphy What makes you think that there was anything that the U S could have done to achieve victory? The Vietnamese people would NEVER have given up! They were determined to be free!
@@robertroselle5073 i agree but holding our military hands behind there back was the mistake after tet we needed to fire westmoreland and the war to the north crippled the north with a ARVN spear head that we know would have been destroyed
@@robertroselle5073 They (communists) would have given up if we had marched north. I agree that as long as NV existed, it was determined to spread communism. Those determined to be free got on boats and helicopters.
Its very simple... #1: The (North Vietnamese) were a 100 times more willing to die than Americans. #2: We took the invasion of North Vietnam off the table from day one and were reluctant to attack North Vietnam at all because we didn't want to risk expanding the conflict to directly involve China or the USSR. #3: The regime we supported in the South were more interested in CORRUPTION and RACKETEERING by the politicians than any cause or the survival of their country. #4: In the end we were only interested in finding a way out and saving face than winning -- which was what we got after Rolling Thunder and Paris Accords.
It is the terrain stupid, it is the terrain. We did not understand how effective the Vietnamese were in using the terrain to their advantage. I was an intelligence officer in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. I made a geologic map of the II Corps Zone and was impressed at how the Vietnamese utilized the geology and related terrain to their advantage. Yes we placed our artillery bases on the top of the hill but we ignored the area underground. The Vietnamese occupied both the area above and below the surface on the earth very effectively. Much of western Vietnam is a volcanic basalt plateau. The Vietnamese utilized the lave tubes to move around undetected. Where these did not exist then dug tunnels. I was so impressed with their use to the terrain that I argued with my CO that there was no way that we could win this war because we refused to use the terrain to advantage while the Vietnamese always used it to their advantage. I said that we may bomb every inch of the country until there were no visible people above ground because they all lived below. Because of this I became very disillusioned with the war that I had experienced first hand. There for I realized that two things greatly led to our eventual defeat. One was the enemy’s will to prevail and the other was their amazing use to their advantage the terrain of the country. It was their friend while it was our enemy!
George, Excellent. When Kinky Friedman served in the Peace Corps in Indonesia he wrote a memo for his boss, the halfwit Harris Wofford, and for the very bright Francis A.J. Ianni back in Washington, about his and his partner Sam's situation there. They shared the inane assignment of teaching accounting to Chinese small businessmen -- as though these people didn't have three thousand years' experience in keeping double or triple sets of books. They were supposed to commute around on 50 cc motorbikes which Honda had just started making. Here are your maps. Follow these roads. The "roads" were berms between the paddies, and they were berms carefully calculated to hold a 50 kilogram man carrying a 40 kilogram bag of rice (a notional half-year or so supply for one adult, and an economic unit of account). Such illusory roads could carry a Honda love-bike while they were dry. A platoon of large men in Vibram boots would very end up in the deep muddy very quickly, dry weather or wet. The memo was promptly classified in Washington at a time when there were still only a few advisors, genuine advisors, before the Bien Hoa raid, and the news apparently never got to the Pentagon. The company knew about it, but Ed Applewhite, MaNamara's briefing officer, was famously fired for his famous "Sir, may I make a personal remark?" "Grumph?" "Well, sir, I don't think those numbers mean what you seem to think they mean." Ed later served with great bravery as Station Chief in Lebanon. His post as briefing officer was later taken over by another friend of yer Granny's, John Ford, who had as little effect on Nixon as Applewhite had had on JFK. Granny wonders, did you know Col. James R. Corson? His time in I Corps might have overlapped with yours in II? prunefaced.grammarian AT gmail DOT com.
we failed because we wouldnt kill enough of them to make them quit. its up to each one of us at that point to decide if that was a virtue or failing. i personally am glad we didnt do it. the real shame is a lot of good people died in the meantime
I feel you missed some of the major failings of Vietnam. Setting aside whether we should have been there in the first place. We should have prioritized protecting people and making sure they knew we were there to protect them. Not force them into fortified villages similar to jails, but live among them. Learn the language, make social connections. Not living in isolated bases and indiscriminately bombing and destroying the land and literally shooting anything that moves outside of those villages figuring they must be enemies. Not to try to win militaristically at all but to win hearts and minds while defending and helping them, and I think the rest might have eventually fallen into place. Especially if this had been done from the get go. The french should have been immediately kicked out for one. Imagine a US soldier living in a house in a Vietnamese village, properly paid for, not taken. Who's daily work included working the land for food for themselves and others only to put down the plow when under attack. Not only would that endear them to the people much better, it would also be socially expensive for the north to just attack that village. I mean they might be able to cover it up if it was once or twice but not if they kept doing it, the people would see them as the bad guys. Then the issue of not knowing friend from foe would not be much of an issue. Not prioritizing conquering land. From what I've heard of the Vietnam wars there was alot of senseless efforts to hold meaningless ground. My intuition tells me that this ironically has to do with peace talks. I think alot of higher up government thinking was to shock the enemy, grab land, and then sue for peace and have the land grabbed codified in the peace agreement. It is also the only reason I can think of for all the senseless orders of holding meaningless hills. Also waving your hands and saying we did the best we could giving them a decent government but the task was too big... There should have been effort made to minimize the South Vietnam president and find a figure popular with the people, of the people, to lead. If the government that the military is propping up to rule the people is unpopular, that military itself will be unpopular. But the messed up priority of higher ups in government was first and foremost to have a government friendly to the US and not to Russia/communism. Not only the first priority, perhaps really the only one baring immense failures in all other categories Watch a Vietnam war documentary, or a Korean war documentary. Look at how everything that happens suggests a overall policy that showed no love for the people of the countries they were suppose to/supposedly there to help. I don't question there were individual US tropes that did care for the indigenous people, as well as those who hated them all, who not only couldn't determine friend from foe among them but didn't really care to (especially after being burned by a supposed allie over and over again, including working on sympathize with kids and women) But if you look at the overall policies of the military and US government itself it doesn't suggest any caring about the indigenous people.
Backing a Catholic Pres./dictator EvilDiem of a Buddhist country doesn't work very well... Vietnamese didn't see us looking, believing, or thinking like them...
We had no proper business being there other than to assist in implementation of the 1954 Geneva agreement. Eisenhower doesn’t get his share of the blame, in my opinion.
I always wonder since World War I Led to World War II, that led to the cold war, Which led to the Korean war, Vietnam, The Russian Afghanistan war, which led to the war on terror, 500 years from now will they call this the 100 years war? Cause it seems like one long Conflict.
"We" didn't fail in Vietnam. Americans had no business making policy for Vietnam. There was nothing to win. The vid claims to present history. Few Americans remember that the US supported, armed, and trained the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh from 1943 to 1945 as an ally against Japan and the Vichy French who brutally ran Vietnam in a loose alliance. Few Americans know that under Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter signed by all the major Allies of WW2, the US demanded that European powers decolonize the world and support the independence movements like Ho's movement in Vietnam. America in the era of Roosevelt united America as never before since our own revolution as a colony to overthrow British rule. Immediately after WW2 our leaders switched from backing Ho to backing the French, and then creating a thing they called "South Vietnam". Nobody told Americans what was going on, but by 1975 our army and air force had become partly antiwar and often no longer wore regulation uniforms, grew their beards and hair, and refused to fight the Vietnamese who posed no threat to America then or after the Vietnamese won their own independence. The man in the vid is a stand up cutout of disinformation, the same kind of disinformation that has us "failing" today yet systematically destroying the Middle East today. There was nothing for America to "win" in Vietnam and there is nothing for America to "win" in the Middle East. Vietnam has remained a peaceful trading partner for the last 50 years. Our leaders bizarre fears of communist "dominoes" masked their old school imperialism. America has become exactly what we sought to be rid of in 1776. We need a people's democracy here at home and to crush the elite system of private wealth that has colonized so many "historians" like George C. Herring.
Upvoted for everything except the one sentence beginning, _"The man in the video is..."_ Perfect communication is hard, probably impossible, especially with one-single take in unedited talking off-the-cuff for an hour recording. We should reserve the benefit of the doubt for the speaker, not insults.
@@czdaniel1 Thanks! I'm accustomed to history being presented to celebrate or validate conquest.The WW2 era understanding between Ho Chi Minh and the US, allied against Japan and the Vichy French, is almost never presented. Yet it's well known.
Had there been competent Army commanders, the losses the Army experienced at LZ X-Ray would not have happened. Similarly, the losses the Marines experience in Leatherneck Square would not have happened. Angel Fire Memorial.
WTF, again nobody mentions Henry Kissinger, he was more influential than any general or president at the time, Hollywood thought of him as just another movie star and the girls loved him, and he loved all the attention, he had the power to stop that war early but did not, because he was loving his status, and prolonged it as long as he wanted, after all he was the main negotiator between nations.
I remember the day I became a liberal...it was when I found out that it was the US and not the Vietnamese who wouldn't permit free elections in Vietnam. That is why we lost the war. There was no moral imperative for victory.
"That is why we lost the war. There was no moral imperative for victory." But that didn't stop Washington from trying to invent one. One that wasn't rooted in reality.
Vietnam's tragedy was FDR's death. No friend of colonialism, he might have seen Ho Chi Minh, an ally who fought against the Japanese, as the rightful ruler of Vietnam, rather than, as HST did, allowing the French to move back and continue 30 more years of bloodshed for the Vietnamese, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Filipinos.
@Cheltenhamrob It's been a year, but I believe I was being cynical and sarcastic regarding the apparent lack of interest in understanding the US failure in Vietnam
In the counter-insurgency context, "boots on the ground" are even more important than technological prowess and massive firepower, although anti-guerrilla forces should take full advantage of modern air, artillery and electronic warfare assets. dont forget the Marine small wars manuel written about lessons learned in the 1920-30 central american wars. westmoreland wasted 4 years fighting a conventional war. America should never fight a war of attrition the last time that worked was Grant vs Lee
The US is bad at war because it has great power to break things, but is often lacking in resolve and poor at identifying objectives. In this case I think you don't correctly identify the objectives which were to enhance it's situation relative to the ongoing cold war, which was perceived to pose a threat to the very existence of the US. There weren't achievable goals in vietnam alone. It can't be said they achieved their global strategic goal at all, and certainly not at any cost worth paying. The talk was very interesting, and I learned a lot.
You will like the William Gibson documentaries as well, they are available on RU-vid. Both sides will get something out of watching those. The communist union, really wasn't. It had only been seen that way by the US. Chinese emperors had invaded and gotten thrown out several times over a period spanning hundreds of years. I don't feel the history of the country had been respected by the West. Canada had officially been against the war, but they had been involved in a big way. Munitions had been made there, including napalm. There were Canadians fighting in US uniforms. We do respect and appreciate the Vietnamese ability to forgive and forget. There's lots of them here and in the US. Vietnam is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Giants like Samsung are looking to open factories there.
@@CoryGamesHD Marshall Plan was to float loans to Western Europe for American goods. Not a bad deal considering we were the only large Industrial country not ravaged by the war.
