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 the Viet Cong did pretty much fight to the last man. They were just about wiped out after Tet. However, you also had all those NVA troops also willing to fight to the last.
They didn't have the back-up, supplies, support ect, and our troops today will tell you so. They would have fought to the last man, no matter how tenacous the VC thought they were. No offence.
Also the ally. The ARVN troops had low morale and many of their officers were corrupt. If the ARVN had the tenacity of the NVA then, yes, the war could have been won. Bottom line, our ally didn't have the willpower that the NVA had.
Whether this is true or not I do not know except to say that I felt the General appeared very credible to me. My contempt for Johnson and vile the bureaucrats who prosecuted the Vietnam War led me to accept this account as true. I conjectured the reason that they did not bomb the dredges was because they did not want to deprive our so called allies the opportunity to profiteer from our dead American heroes. My contempt also led me to wander if Americans were not somehow profiteering in some covert way through Haiphong Harbor.
In just how many ways American soldiers were betrayed by the politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, and captains of the military industrial complex we may never know? I will tend to believe Oliver Stone before I would ever believe any of the ever growing league of plagiarizing historians.
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Please read General Norman Schwarzkoph's review of the South Vienamese officers. He disargrees with you entirely. Quite honestly, your word isn't worth a damn against his. I'd like to know where you are getting your information.
Jane Fonda has a lot to answer for as do a great many other communist sympathizers.
You're telling me the ARVN wasn't rife with corruption? From the accounts I've read from many US vets, they weren't too pleased at the performance of the ARVN.
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We had an ally, however, that went down the drain when John Kennedy began assassinating South Vietamese leadership.
How do you know they "didn't care" what the cost was? I'll tell you why: because you've been sold that line by socialist jelly-brained defeatists such as Cronkite, Fonda, and Moyers.
A common sense understanding of human nature teaches the opposite. Of course they cared. But our feckless politicans always gave them just enough time and space to catch their breath until their fifth column of traitors in the US could undermine the war effort and cause us to lose our will and morale.
A US victory with relatively little loss of life (on both sides) was surely achievable. We could have broken their will and morale, but the longer we dithered the more difficult and bloody that task became.
We should have fought like Patton--not McClellan.
Yeah, Diem. He and his family were totally detested by most South Vietnamese.
And don't forget that Commie s.o.b. Tom Hayden who still somehow plays an important role in CA politics.
My main recollection of the period was that Johnson and McNamara also were terrified an expansion of the war with real victory as the objective because it might have invited nuclear retaliation from Russia. So was Nixon later on. In addition, China was sending endless numbers of soldiers and huge amounts of supplies to the North and was threatening to send massive numbers of troops to fight. In effect, we didn't know what the hell our objective was there, and 58,000 Americans died as the result of McNamara's indecisiveness. He's as much as admitted it in a recent book.
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Who told you that. Do you know why what we will call the North Vietnamese were forced to start action in the south several years ahead of their schedule?
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