Confusion over the Vietnam War [Veterans Please Bring Input]

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

My mom is really upset with a certain pundit who I'll keep nameless. It's not my intention to be negative on this. She heard someone say recently that the reason we lost the Vietnam War was because because of 'will to win' or something to that extent.

She and I both believe that the Vietnam War was winnable until we were hamstrung by the UN. When we started off, we helped the populace learn how to defend themselves. We equipped them and trained them. They learned enough that they could fight off anyone who wanted to mess them over, to draft their young men, loot their harvest, etc.

Also, we were forbidden by the UN from crossing borders. Thus, we were sitting ducks while the enemy could hit-and-run and cherry-pick their fights.

But neither my mom nor I were there. So perhaps a lot of people need educating?

To all vets who fought in that and any other war, Thank You from both of us!

FReegards....

[x1stcav]

Dear Arthur:

The reason was real simple: The Demonrats were in charge. They couldn't be trusted with waging war then and can't be now.

[Mike Fieschko]

The UN had nothing to do with the limits on military action in Vietnam. The Johnson administration was responsible for those limits. More knowledgeable freepers than I will no doubt supply their names. I'll supply the first one, though: Robert Strange McNamara.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

[kellynla]

Okay, I am not going to spend a lot of time on this subject, as I spent numerous years trying to get my act together after walking point for the 5th Marines in '69 & '70 but I can tell you that you are correct on two counts as I was the pointman who was told to turn around when we got to the border on innumerable patrols. It was LBJ's call to stop at the border. LBJ put us in a war in Viet Nam we should not have been in and once he got us in the war he would not let us win the war and refused to get us out. As they say in baseball. Three strikes and LBJ was out as POUS! Semper Fi

[Balata]

Gulf of Tonkin Incident...or the beginning of the Vietnam War for the US.

Modern history furnishes other examples of incidents deliberately set up to achieve a political result. The Pentagon Papers disclose that for six months before the Tonkin Gulf incident in August, 1964, the US had been mounting clandestine military attacks against North Vietnam, including kidnapping North Vietnam citizens for intelligence information, commando raids to blow up rail and highway bridges, and bombardment of North Vietnamese coastal installations by PT boats. (Pentagon Papers, pg. 238). This was done while planning to obtain a Congressional resolution that the Administration regarded as an equivalent to a declaration of war. (Pentagon Papers, pg. 234.)

On August 5, 1964, President Johnson called congressional leaders to the White House and told them that North Vietnamese naval vessels had flagrantly and without provocation attacked two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution drawn up, and it flew through both the House of Representatives and the Senate with virtually no debate. On August 7, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been passed, continuation and escalation of military reprisals against the North were given congressional blessing. "In the heat of the Tonkin clash, the Administration had accomplished . . . preparing the American public for escalation" (Pentagon Papers, pg. 269).

"The Tonkin Gulf reprisal constituted an important firebreak and the Tonkin Gulf resolution set US public support for virtually any action" (study quoted in Pentagon Papers, pg. 269).

Several years later the Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted an inquiry into the events of August, 1964. Senator Fulbright would later write that the Pentagon had misrepresented the actual event, and that the US had provoked the attack.

"Only when we began those later hearings on the Tonkin Gulf did it really begin to dawn on me that we had been deceived. In the beginning--before Vietnam, that is--it never occurred to me that presidents and their secretaries of state and defense would deceive a Senate committee.

"I thought you could trust them to tell you the truth, even if they did not tell you everything. But I was naive, and the misrepresentation of the Tonkin Golf affair was very effective in deceiving the Foreign Relations Committee and the country, and me, because we didn't believe it possible that we could be so completely misled." (J. William Fulbright, The Price of Empire, pg. 107.)

This was just the start, it was a political war run by the politicians in Washington D.C. Contrary to what you have heard, the US Military won every battle they were in.

[Kenny Bunk]

IMHO, militarily, we did not lose, it's just that we did not win a victory. The number of VC and NVA casualties reached the million mark, I am sure. Strategically, I believe we did lose. Many times we would take an objective at great cost to enemy (and ourselves) then abandon it, to go on further 'Search and Destroy,' missions.

The war was fought, and won or lost from Washington. The codes used to transmit the highly detailed orders to us were broken by the Russkis with the help of the Walker Family Spy Ring, so the enemy knew my orders before I did, and the back-up orders. They knew our supply situation, our personnel dispositions, our innermost secrets. It was the greatest intelligence diaster which has ever befallen us. (Our true-blue FBI wasted 5 years and more during which, Walker's wife turned him in many times!)

Our upper echelon commanders squandered resources and did not make good use of intelligence, not believing for example, that the VC and NVA had hundreds of miles of underground facilities and tunnels through which they ferried men and supplies up the gates of Saigon, until late in the game.

But all in all, our war was lost in Washington because the Democrats refused to even declare war, and were terrified of Russian or Chinese involvement, so they allowed the enemy sanctuary and supply from neighboring countries, freedom to receive shipment from neutral countries, or combloc sources, and in general to engage and disengage at their leisure.

[muawiyah]

Gee whiz, the UN is to blame for a lot of things, but Viet Nam isn't one of them.

The Democratic National Committee, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, a quest for willing and compliant women, and active agents of the USSR working in the news media are the ones most responsible.

Then there's a host of others, mostly Democrats, and they have to bear a lot of the blame as well.

Lately it has become popular to blame the troops. Actually that was popular in the '60s and '70s too. One of my neighbors has a t-shirt popular with a lot of combat guys back then - it says "When I left we were winning". In fact, when everybody left we had won everything that could be won except a deal and the politicians let us down. That's why politicians should never be allowed to be in charge of a war.

[wjcsux]

I am an A-F Vietnam Era Veteran. The failures of the Vietnam War can be laid directly at the feet of the Johnson Administration, and their ridiculus "Vietnamization Policy". Don't forget about the 50,000 American Servicemen lost in the line of duty also.
BTW, if Goldwater had won in 64, the Vietnam war would have ended with a U.S. military victory.

[Eccl 10:2]

Let there be no mistake, no Liberal rewrite of this tragic war where over 58,000 US lives were lost.

Kennedy was a Democrat. Johnson was a Democrat. There were large Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. This was started, approved, and escalated by Democrats.

The Liberal media, of course, associates one face with Vietnam -- Nixon. He is their scapegoat, their distraction from the real truth.

And the truth is that the Democrats are responsible for 58,000 American soldiers dead, and US status and morale irreparably demolished.

It was the Democrats, the Democrats, the Democrats.

[clamper1797]

Who said we lost ... did we surrender ... didn't we just pull out ...

I for one refuse to accept the notion that we "lost" the war

I'll agree we didn't win it ... LBJ and his democratic buddies wouldn't let us do what we could have done at ANY time

Vietnam Vet 72-73

[elbucko]

LBJ put us in a war in Viet Nam we should not have been in and once he got us in the war he would not let us win the war and refused to get us out.

Respectfully, may I add the reason LBJ put US troops into Vietnam. To keep So. Vietnam from falling to the communists before the '68 election, so LBJ would be reelected to a second term. It is no more complicated than that. (sigh)

[borisbob69]

In case anybody missed your point IT WAS THE DEMOCRATS!

I remember sitting in a bunker at Pleiku AB in 1968 and listening to AAFRTS on the radio when the news was announced that Johnson had ordered an end to the bombing of Hanoi...SAY WHAT?

[elbucko]

Good post!

[borisbob69]

Oops...forgot to mention we were under heavy rocket attack at the time we heard that heart-warming announcement...which is why we were in the bunker.

[johnny7]

Send your question to John Forbes Kerry. He's got a website.

America pulled out because of a lack of S. Viet Nams committment to survival.

They basically feared the north just like S. Korea fears the N. Koreans.

The UN had nothing to do with it. When you lose 50,000 men and after 5 years are still fighting... the public becomes rattled.

In a lotta ways, your momma was right.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

This doesn't really answer your question about the war itself, but if you want to know the truth about the Vietnam Veterans (Clinton, Oliver Stone...left is still lying, big time), check out Stolen Valor. It goes against most everything we've been told by Cronkite, Safer, Brokaw...and even the vets Stone, Kerry, etc. Newsmax has the series of excerpts at their "cooled off Hot Topics" archive. I posted most of them at FR during the last DC "peacenik" liars fest.

Did you know that more Americans volunteered to serve during the Vietnam War than volunteered to serve during WWII, most Vietnam vets were white, middle or upper middle class, educated, over 80% are glad they served and would serve again, and that they are the most successful group of vets in US history - family, jobs, home ownership, $$$? I ask the press, "Who knew? Why not?!".

Excerpts from Stolen Valor:

Part I - Rambo and the Bogus War Heroes
Part II - Welcome Home, Babykiller
Part III - Will the Real Vietnam Vet Stand Up?
Part VI - The VVA - The Vietnam Victims of America

[colorado tanker]

"Dereliction of Duty" I heartily second your suggestion! Anyone who wants to understand what happened in Vietnam needs to read that book.

[elbucko]

The Liberal media, of course, associates one face with Vietnam -- Nixon. He is their scapegoat, their distraction from the real truth.

No greater truth ever posted on FR. Nixon made mistakes, but Vietnam wasn't one of them. The Vietnam War is all Lyndon Johnson, Bill Moyers, and Robt. S. McNamara, to name a few.

[american spirit]

Went to a meeting a few years back to hear a speech from Col.James Ammerman, a highly ranked military chaplain who had close contact with Gen. Westmoreland. During his speech he spoke of Westmoreland's frustration with the UN because his commanders were forced to brief the UN on attack plans and it was discovered that workers with Communist ties were passing on the info to their countrys' military leaders. This info was relayed to the N. Vietnamese thus compromising some major offensives.