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Confusion over the Vietnam War [Veterans Please Bring Input]
Posted on 12/04/2002 2:48:01 PM PST by 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....
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To: Arthur Wildfire! March
Homecoming, Did the US spit on Viet Nam Vets? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/772266/posts The truth about Viet Nam, and life there today. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/771999/posts
81
posted on
12/05/2002 12:27:42 AM PST
by
Exton1
To: Eva
Watergate happened after the pull out from VN. What Watergate did was allow the North Vietnamese government to invade the South. We were suppose to go back in with air cover should that happen. But Nixon was too busy with Watergate, and did nothing to help the South.
82
posted on
12/05/2002 12:30:38 AM PST
by
Exton1
To: Arthur Wildfire! March; belmont_mark
we lost the Vietnam War was because because of 'will to win' or something to that extent. I heard a vet say once:"LOSE! We were winning this war every damn fcking day, blowing them bastards to bits." ANd it was not pretty, because communist revolution rejects any sanctuary: women and children are part of the revolution, of the combat, you have to kill them, those SOBs forced us to kill them, yet they still did their jobs, job that scared and scarred them, not because they were wimps, but because communist revolution is horrible to fight, since you end up, like in Israel, having to kill kids or seeing kids with bombs strapped on their bodies. Remember Hillary? It's for the children. EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL.
And it is true, what is a win? What WE LOST is that during the end of war negociations, the North had lost and was supposed to keep their word of not attacking the South and keeping the cease fire. IT IS our diplomats who lost, because they did not call on the NORTH to stop when they broke their word, just as Saddam did and just as the Soviets still cheat on treaties.
check it out on treaty breaking and deception from the East, that is the basis of every war we lose or risk losing, including this terror war where we trust the word of the religion of peace. Phase and JR and forum
Note that Lindon Johnson was at great fault for dragging the war and not fighting it, Nixon was at fault for not holding the commies to their word. It has been a usual pattern of the left and the so called right in AMerica. Now we got the same thing happening with Saddam.
To: All
Thank you all for participating in this discussion.
I agree that our soldiers kicked their tails on every given battle they were involved in. And that is a point well worth making. Nor did we lose the war in a technical sense. But our goal was not achieved. We failed to stop the domino affect.
Perhaps I need to rephrase what I said. Johnson's submission to the UN was the reason for our failure. Perhaps the deck was stacked against us. South Vietnam was unfairly pillaried when one compares how people had it before and after becoming communist. KGB operatives were influencing people here at home, undermining support.
But more importantly, IMHO, it was Johnson's submissions to UN rules that kept us from winning. We were sitting ducks. We could never reach the finish line because we could never invade. They could cherry pick their fights and run back to sanctuary whenever they liked. As one poster mentioned, we even gave our tactical plans to the UN, which in turn sent them to the communists.
Nixon later began the 'seek and destroy' campaign I think it was called that involved 'accidentally' crossing the border. 'Seek and Destroy', I've heard, was so effective that Nixon was seeing headway and became reluctant to end the war. [Source, Military Channel, several years ago.]
Kennedy, for all his failings, had a pretty good program going with the Green Baret, training and arming citizens to fight for themselves. But the Green Baret was also villified, largely by the UN.
It's been my claim for years that the only wars we ever failed to win decisively were wars in which we were too submissive to the UN. Korea, for example.
But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the UN didn't tell us we couldn't invade or occassionally cross the border to hit their sanctuaries?
To: Eva; Joy Angela; Clinton Is Scum
ALOHA EVA...
...ROBERT BARTLEY nailed it.
...NIXON's loss of Moral Authority due to WATERGATE during the Vietnam War allowed the Liberal Democrats in Congress to Stop the Bombing of North Vietnam and cut-off all U.S. Funding for replacement M-16/M-79 Ammunition, Artillery Pieces and Shells, Helicopters and Helicopter Parts, Jet/Prop Aircraft and Jet/Prop
Aircraft Parts for the Freedom Fighters in South Vietnam...
...while Senator FRANK CHURCH (D) decimated our CIA in Senate Hearings.
...September 11th, 2001 showed all Americans just how wrong those Democrats have been all along.
To: Eva; VOA; Fred Mertz; Carl/NewsMax; SMEDLEYBUTLER; RonDog; Judicial Watch; kattracks; katze; JLO; ..
NEVER FORGET
...While the Democrats in Congress killed the once Free People of South Vietnam's capacity to fight for their own Freedom...
...the then Communist Soviet Union gave Communist North Vietnam $6 BILLION for its Final Solution (Invasion Takeover) in the South.
...Funny, isn't it, how a Friend of HILLARY RODHAM Senator FRANK CHURCH, whose Parents were Communists, took advantage of all this confusion at home to hurt our ability to protect ourselves in the future...?
Real Funny, as HILLARY RODHAM is now pushing ever so hard to become President of the United States so's she can do to us what her Partner HO CHI MINH did to a once Free South Vietnam long, long ago.
NEVER FORGET
To: Eva
NEVER FORGET
...In the End...
...it was the Communist Soviet Union...
...that could not afford the BILLIONS of Dollars it gave Communist North Vietnam over the years to take over Free South Vietnam...
...and it helped BANKRUPT'em...
...leading directly to the eventual...
...Fall of the Berlin Wall...
...and the Communist Soviet Union.
Ya done GOOD, Vietnam Vets.
NEVER FORGET
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
Read through this thread---thanks for starting it.
I wasn't there, but my father was and I study everything about Vietnam I can get my hands on. I think the best book ever written about the Vietnam War is Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie.
A new take on the question before the group? Define winning---i.e.---how could we have "won" the war?
It seems to me that the Vietnamese we supported were the Vietnamese the Vietnamese people themselves didn't want or respect. Diem didn't fight the Japanese---Ho did. The ARVN wasn't a legitimate national army of South Vietnam---it was an amalgamation of troops and officers loyal to Diem, and it was riddled with incompetent commanders who wouldn't press the enemy when it was on the ropes for fear of high casualties and loss of favor with Diem. Add in the massive, wholesale corruption of the Diem government (Madame Ngo too), and it seems to me we were fighting to sustain a system of government that wouldn't have flourished under any conditions save military dictatorship.
Given all that, was winning for us merely eradicating every last vestige of the NVA or the VC? Given what we got into and how we got into it, I don't see how we could've taken any political victory from that war, no matter how valiantly our soldiers fought---and they did fight valiantly. Under the circumstances and the situation, they might be the most valiant US troops ever.
To: oh8eleven
So true.......
A USMC bump!!!
RVN '66-'68 (crit MOS extent.)
To: ALOHA RONNIE
Nixon's book No More Viet Nams was a good analysis of our lack of political resolve. I personally experienced my share of frustrations with "no fire zones" etc. It is BS like that which gets good men killed. In the end, the fall of Communism is worth the wait.
To: ALOHA RONNIE
From another poster...
Although the Vietnam War was before my time. I do know that it was Janet Reno (Bill and Hillary's GOON) that had more Tanks in WACO Texas killing our civilians than defending our Rangers and Delta force fighters in Somalia. The confusion about Vietnam is that the protesters on American Soil were Americans! No, they were led by the Communists themselves!!
And Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton led the way....
To: Billthedrill; Arthur Wildfire! March
For many of us, myself included, the Vietnam war isn't over yet. It will end when the entire rotten facade of communist government finally falls. And that will happen. I agree 100%
It makes me sick to know people like McCain and the like opened up relations with the same dam commies that we were fighting.
LBJ and the demonrats cannot run a war, and Nixon didn't do a good job either
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
I hate to tell you this, but the UN didn't have anything to do with the outcome of that war. I was with the 4th ID in the Central Highlands at various times and I can tell you that militarily, we kicked their
@@#$. Our 50K + casualties were a lot, but consider the 3 million + of the enemy. The problem we had was political and by that I mean US politics and not the UN. The media eevery evening showed scenes of Americans in fire fights and this went on endlessly for years. Americans patience for victory is very thin and this was especially true in a war that wasn't defined very clearly as to its' purpose at the start. Memoirs of people like Mc Namara and Lyndon Johnson now prove that they didn't have any confidence in the final outcome. Young men were being drafted and public opinion slowly eroded. When students were shot demonstrating at Kent State University, the beginning of the end of our involvement in Vietnam started. The biggest lessons learned were you can't fight a war without the whole hearted support of the Amnerican public. The purpose and end game strategy must be clearly defined and you must be willing to use overwhelming superior firepower to win and win quickly. If we go to war in Iraq, you can bet that that these lessons will be applied.
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
But more importantly, IMHO, it was Johnson's submissions to UN rules that kept us from winning. We were sitting ducks. We could never reach the finish line because we could never invade. They could cherry pick their fights and run back to sanctuary whenever they liked. As one poster mentioned, we even gave our tactical plans to the UN, which in turn sent them to the communists.This war had nothing to do with the UN. The US never invaded the North because of the fear in the Johnson administration that we would be facing another Korea with the huge Chinese army attacking if we pushed into the North with our Army.
Johnson was more than content to hold the communists behind the DMZ and allow the South to remain "free". This was all he wanted to achieve, but was unwilling to widen the war to finish the job. Nixon wasn't as fearful and he authorized the bombing of Laos and Cambodia as well as the North to bring them to the peace table. However, he was too weakened politically by Watergate to stop the eventual loss of the South.
To: kellynla; Orion78; lavaroise
Imagine the following scenario:
1965 - Strategic bombing of military bases, industry, roads from the PRC and other key targets in N. Vietnam. In parallel, forward deployment of not only B-52s, but massive invasion forces in "Essarn."
1966 - Invasion from "Essarn," then occupation by US forces of the entire length of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, encompassing the eastern 1/5 of Cambodia and the entirety of the "boot" of southern Laos (Screw the UN and screw the ranting "Bundung" generation of Nehru and all other 3rd world crybabies. Call us a bully, I don't care.)
Late 1966 early 1967 - Invasion of N. Vietnam. Unconditional surrender of the Communists. Decommunization of N. Vietnam and Laos commences. Establishment of a strong SEATO unquestionably led by the USA. Establishment of bases, similar to those in Germany, throughout SE Asia including nuclear warheads and road mobile SRBMs and IRBMs ready to strike the PRC.
I cannot begin to count our blunders in SE Asia since the end of WW-II and am sad to consider how we shall yet pay for them in the future great war. Appeasement, accomodation and trade with Communists only postpones the inevitable.
To: Kenny Bunk; american spirit; Nam Vet
"We were soldiers" Bump! America (the real America) thanks you all! And we are glad to have your wisdom around for we will need it again in the future!
To: joesnuffy
I was there for "Vietnamization" which sucked big time..turning the war over to the ARVN VC Patrolling the famous named French Rubber Plantation where you couldnt use an M-60 or an M-79 because of possible tree damage... Had a friend from MAC-V, passed away recently, he told me of his times in VN, said almost the same thing, tried to call in arty once, was told no, Goodyear owned the trees, they couldn't fight bak.
To: fire_eye; ALOHA RONNIE
From my standpoint, Vietnam definitely lost the war - they ended up with Communism. Talk about losing... try *that* one on your mother.Excellent Point! And we see at the Drudge Report tonight that Gore just made a fundraising trip to Communist China!
If the American People won't support them, by gosh, the Communist Chinese can ALWAYS be counted on to come up with the Campaign Cash!!!!
To: Rockiesrider
My hat goes off to every service member that fought in Vietnam. I am not going to try to answer the question because 1) I was not born during Vietnam 2) The patriots that were over there are summing up the war in this thread better than what I was ever taught in school.
But, I will just throw this out to see what type of response it gets.
I read a great piece concerning tactics and the way the war was fought and the way our leadership prepared for war. The article basically said that we tried to get so much into the heads of the Vietnamese by studying their philosophy on war (Sun Tzu) that we forgot our own.
We failed in what is referred to as the "perfect trinity" by Clauswitz: Army, Government, and People. Basically the politicians failed to win the hearts and minds of the American people and focused too much on the Vietnamese people.
To: lt.america
Actually, the real reason America lost the Vietnam war is because it was 'stabbed in the back' by civilians, treacherous politicians and, of course, the November criminals. ;->
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