Posted on 03/17/2002 2:25:49 PM PST by Mom_Grandmother
Is It Possible, Could America Have Won the Vietnam War In '1968?
By '1968, North Vietnamese morale was at it's lowest point ever. The plans for "Tet" '68 was their last desperate attempt to achieve a success, in an effort to boost the NVA morale. When it was over, General Giap (Senior General Vo Njuyen Giap) and NVA viewed the Tet '68 offensive as a "failure", they were on their knees and had prepared to negotiate a "surrender."
At the time, there were fewer than 10,000 U.S. casualties, the Vietnam War was about to end, as the NVA was prepared to accept their defeat. Then, they heard "Walter Cronkite" (former CBS News anchor and correspondent) on TV proclaiming the success of the Tet '68 offensive by the NVA. They were completely and totall amazed at hearing tha the US Embassy had been overrun. In reality, the NVA had not gained access to the Embassy--there were some VC who had been killed on the grassy lawn, but they hadn't gained access. Further reports indicated that riots and protesting on the streets of America.
According to General Giap, these distorted reports were insperational to the NVA. They changed their plans from a negotiated surrender and decided instead, they only needed to persevere for one more hour, day, week, month, eventually the protesters in America would help them to achieve a victory they knew they could not win on the battlefield.
Remember, this decision was made at a time when the U.S. casualties were fewer than 10,000, at the end of '1967, beginning of '1968. Today, there were 58,000 names on the Vietnam Wall Memorial that was built with the donations made by the American public.
Although General Giap did not mention each and every protester's name in his book, many of us will never forget the 58,000 names on the Wall. We will also never forget that names of those who helped in placing those additional 48,000 names there: Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Walter Cronkite, and other's.
Gene Kuentzler, '66-67, S-3 Operations 19th Combat Engineer Battalion
Actually they are currently moving away from communism.
We have no further business.
It is really a bit of a racial thing. If you are a poor backward Vietnamese peasant, whom will you believe, someone who resembles you or a big tall round-eyed big-nosed strange looking fellow speaking some foreign language????
And I still am waiting for a few FACTS.
They also ran a better war than the ARVN. Does anybody here actually believe that the ARVN was a better army than the NVA or VC? You need a capable ally to really win a war in another country. In Vietnam this was sorely lacking. Learn from history to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
It might be the same reason America didn't finish off Iraq in the Gulf War. Russia drew the line and said go no further. After the Korea War experience where China came in as the war was nearly over, America did not want to push too hard beyond a certain point, mainly to avoid going nuclear.
The enemy was finished off in 1968. But it did no good. The NVA just bided their time and launched another offensive in the Spring of 1972. It almost succeeded but was stopped by massive US firepower and bombing. So what happened? The NVA bided their time AGAIN and launched their final offensive in 1975. And what would have happened if that offensive had failed? They would have merely bided their time and launched another offensive and another and another until they succeeded.
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If you wil look on the God damned maps of the period, you will see three separate independent countries, Cochin-China in the extreme South, An Nam translated pacified south from the anchient Chinese, and Ton Kin in the North, from when the name Tonkin Gulf. They were separated from each other as well as from Laos and Cambodia. The area developed its own culture and written language under the influences of the Jesuits in the 1600s. The area was widely neglected and of little interest except for two things. The French lost out in colonization to the British who got the good stuff such as India and America. Consequently the French got the uncontested backwater such as parts of Africa nd SE Asia.
With the advent of the importance of rubber, the area became important and became inhabited by French plantation owners. The Farench attempted facilitation of rubber commerce through development of rails and roads north to south through the three countries. During the war, the Japanese needed SE Asia for the rubber, which brought conflict to the area. America had developed its synthetic rubber source through the GRS process derived from Corothers.
After the war the GRS process made the entire area obsolete. The American OSS armed communist Ho Chi Minh in alliance against the Japanese. After the war, the organized communist forces then turned upon the French in Ton Kin. The french were reluctant dragons in this new conflict. Ho Chi Minh took power in Ton Kin. Ho wiped out several entire cities in Ton Kin to do so. Non-Communist Catholics were exterminated.
When Co-Chin China and An Nam agreed to consolidate into a single nation under Bo Dai, Ho Chi Minh refused to recognize the agreement and made plans to invade from the separate nation of Ton Kin --which we erroneiousl called North Viet Nam over here. He was looking for an excuse to extend the communist revolution. ...and so forth. That's as much as I have time for.
Frankly, you don't seem to know jack shit about anything to do with the area or the war.
Henry Kissinger assured Chou En-lai we were leaving Vietnam when he went to China. Kissinger also abandoned Taiwan. Kissinger recently said America should not block Chinese interests. Call me crazy--I see a pattern here.
What you're missing is that this is the whole center of the debate. If we'd actually pressed the attack they would have been toast. You freely admit it took them 4 years to get back to a real offensive capability, according to their own documentation the best the could muster right after Tet was a battalion. Had we gone to saturation bombing and a pressed ground assault we would have beat them. They knew it, they weren't in good relations with China at the time. There's a reason the master mind of Tet "retired" right after.
But thanks to LBJ being chicken, and the big dove preassure here we ignored it. Cronkite declared Tet a win for the North and nobody in the halls of power was willing to prove him a liar. Quite possibly saturation bombing alone might have driven them to the nogotiation table like it did in 73. We had them on the canvas and we let them get back up. We could have won it, but the people in charge were afraid to fight it like a war.
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