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Is It Possible, Could America Have Won the Vietnam War In '1968?
Article by: Gene Kuentzler '1999 ^ | 3/17/02 | Gene Kuentzler

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


TOPICS: Activism/Chapters; Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: protesters; reporting; traitors; vietnam
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To: PhilDragoo
You got it. And people like young Bill Clinton traveling to Moscow were part of the reason for our loss.
41 posted on 03/17/2002 3:41:32 PM PST by RLK
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To: PJ-Comix
I don't follow some of your logic about it being the worst place on earth to fight. My father fought in Japan, he said the landscape and terrain is the same as that of Vietname, maybe worse. The booby traps and tenacity of the Japanese were no different. They tortured and disgraced our troops the same in Japan, they cared for no one, not even their own people.

I am truley beginning to believe this did not have anything to do with our Military, they could have taken this war, they could have brought the North to their knees if they had been given the "back up" and "support" they needed. Some did not want to go the whole nine yards and it was not the United States Military.

They had the backing and support the needed to kick Japan and Germany's butt at the same time. I do believe Vietnam was a disaster because too many back home didn't have the guts, or sided with the them. just my opinion!

42 posted on 03/17/2002 3:42:57 PM PST by Mom_Grandmother
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To: oldtimer
I agree with you. IMHO, bombing hanoi would not have been enough. We needed to invade, and the cost would have been high. We never succeeded in interdicting the flow of supplies into south vietnam from the north. The nva, in reality, controlled laos and cambodia and moved massive amounts of war material down the ho chi min trail, which went partly through laos and cambodia. If we would have invaded, the nva would have found themselves in a two front war. Russia would not have been able to re-supply them by ship, because we would have captured haiphong harbor. Red china would not have helped, because they despise the north vietnamese. I expect the nva would have pulled out of south vietman and concentrated their fight in the north.
43 posted on 03/17/2002 3:43:47 PM PST by glockmeister40
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To: SauronOfMordor
If the US had concentrated on economic targets (destroying the dikes in North Vietnam and ruining the rice harvest; taking out the warehouses in Haiphong; etc) and gotten the North too busy keeping its own people from starving to look for trouble down South, things might have been different

The biggest problem was president johnson micromanaging the war. He personally picked bombing targets. When the president has that much distain and mistrust of the military, there is no way the military could function. And when we did withdraw, we failed to support the South. So they were unprepared to fight alone.

44 posted on 03/17/2002 3:44:24 PM PST by Sci Fi Guy
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To: Thorn11cav
God Bless you Thorn11cav.
45 posted on 03/17/2002 3:46:41 PM PST by Mom_Grandmother
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To: PJ-Comix
No. The war couldn't have been won. As a matter of fact Vietnam was the absolute WORST place on the planet to fight the communists.

Of course it could have been won--and with far less loss of life on our side. But a winning plan would have required the use of overwhelming, unrelenting, and devastating force from Day One, force sufficient to utterly break the morale and will of the enemy. That is best done early, in an all-out sprint, before the enemy finds its legs. If you build up to it slowly, you only allow the enemy to harden and become inured to death and hardship. You make your enemy into a marathoner.

The north Vietnamese were not superhuman by any stretch of the imagination. They could have been defeated. We had the ability to defeat them, but neither the will nor the plan to bring it about.

46 posted on 03/17/2002 3:48:43 PM PST by Kevin Curry
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To: Mom_Grandmother
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. By 1967 the Viet Minh had been fighting for over 25 years and would have fought for another 25 years. The long and the short of it is that they wanted it worse than we did, worse then the South Vietnamese did. The North Vietnamese were willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child and we weren't.
47 posted on 03/17/2002 3:48:50 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: SauronOfMordor
We did that in Korea. China did not want to tolerate US forces occupying land close to the Chinese border, so when we got close in Korea, the Chinese entered the war. We did not want to repeat that in Vietnam

Re: korea, towards the end we were beating the north koreans and their chinese helpers. Vietnam was the biggest mistake in the history of the united states. The worst thing happened: people became disconnected from their government.

48 posted on 03/17/2002 3:53:03 PM PST by glockmeister40
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To: Mom_Grandmother
The booby traps and tenacity of the Japanese were no different.

Notice that it took TWO A-Bombs to end the war with Japan. We weren't about to do that in Vietnam. Also the war with Japan was a truly national struggle. Vietnam was something of a police action or that is how it was portrayed to be. Remember, the purpose of the Vietnam War was to stop communism. This could have been much more easily accomplished at the Bay of Pigs with just a little air support. You gotta know where to pick the fights and where to avoid them.

49 posted on 03/17/2002 3:54:00 PM PST by PJ-Comix
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To: Non-Sequitur
The North Vietnamese were willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child

You've bought into the myth. You truly believe they were extra-human. But then you were likely weaned on Cronkite's socialist-praising pablum.

50 posted on 03/17/2002 3:54:53 PM PST by Kevin Curry
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To: PhilDragoo
Great post PhilDragoo, thanks.
51 posted on 03/17/2002 3:55:03 PM PST by Mom_Grandmother
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To: glockmeister40
I think the same military strategy that we have used in Afganistan, just bomb the living sht out of their capitol cities including civilians, would have worked just fine. We didn't need to lose 55,000 military for these shtheads.

Rumsfeld vs McNamara - no brainer.

I think we had the resources to totally demoralize the bstrds, and if the ChiComs and Russians wanted to get into it, then let's go to the mat.

Thank God for Ron Reagan. If a limp wristed lib had been there, we would have been giving missiles to the enemy, like we did with missile technology when the slickmeister was POTUS.

52 posted on 03/17/2002 3:55:13 PM PST by oldtimer
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To: Mom_Grandmother
I think that we could have brought the reds to their knees with the simultaneous amphibious and helicopter invasions of several large Vietnamese cities. Such an assault would sever NVA communication and supply lines, kill thousands of enemy soldiers, and badly damage Vietnamese morale. The Russians are cowards and the Chinese... well maybe they learned their lesson in Korea.
53 posted on 03/17/2002 3:55:47 PM PST by Chad Bagwell
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To: Non-Sequitur
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. By 1967 the Viet Minh had been fighting for over 25 years and would have fought for another 25 years. The long and the short of it is that they wanted it worse than we did, worse then the South Vietnamese did. The North Vietnamese were willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child and we weren't.

BINGO! Also notice that soon after the Vietnam war ended that the Vietnamese communists went to war with the communist Khmer Rouge and then with the Chinese communists. So as it turned out, China never did get a foothold in Southeast Asia.

54 posted on 03/17/2002 3:56:49 PM PST by PJ-Comix
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To: glockmeister40
Absolutely.
55 posted on 03/17/2002 3:57:59 PM PST by mulligan
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To: Chad Bagwell
I think that we could have brought the reds to their knees with the simultaneous amphibious and helicopter invasions of several large Vietnamese cities. Such an assault would sever NVA communication and supply lines, kill thousands of enemy soldiers, and badly damage Vietnamese morale.

Keep dreaming and enjoy your game of fantasy history. Yeah, a huge land war in Asia. Just what we needed.

56 posted on 03/17/2002 3:58:50 PM PST by PJ-Comix
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To: Kevin Curry
You truly believe they were extra-human.

No, just that they didn't care what the cost was. We could have bombed the dikes, flattened Haiphong, nuked them back to the stone age and they still would have fought. What position were we in? Locked into an alliance with a country that really didn't want to fight. Why should we fight if the ARVN didn't?

57 posted on 03/17/2002 3:59:02 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: Kevin Curry
You've bought into the myth.

------------------------

You got that right. Some of the birds here are repeating every piece of leftist propaganda that was compounded for the occasion. You can tell them that, but it won't make a dent because they think they're brilliant intellectuals for having accepted what they were told.

58 posted on 03/17/2002 3:59:29 PM PST by RLK
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Comment #59 Removed by Moderator

To: Thorn11cav
Thanks for telling that. I read it three times. :)
60 posted on 03/17/2002 4:00:21 PM PST by Nita Nupress
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