vue - The Vietnam War: Reasons for Failure - Why the U.S. Lost
In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871137992/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0871137992&linkCode=as2&tag=tra0c7-20&linkId=d1bb53399f448906b40e7c954de052ac As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted, "First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous." Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... The...Vietnam War...legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military...Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam." U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail." Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion." Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing. As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job." Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented." The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours...But even at these odds you will lose and I will win." The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome." In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces. Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. James E. Westheider wrote that "At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops." Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973." By war's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. According to Dale Kueter, "Sixty-one percent of those killed were age 21 or younger. Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races." The youngest American KIA in the war was PFC Dan Bullock, who had falsified his birth certificate and enlisted in the US Marines at age 14 and who was killed in combat at age 15. Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft dodgers. The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
Commentaires
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the world would be better without white people..seriously
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Did not lose. The only way in which the USA lost is in being there in the first place. Never should have been there at all period. Smartest thing we did was leaving. Truth. End of story.
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The USA lost the Vietnam war because the combat troops and their command leaders were not given a clear directive to obtain the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the Communist forces. Doing so likely would have required total defeat of China and the USSR which the USA probably lacked the means to accomplish by non-nuclear means.
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Hmm. This is the first time I've ever heard of Fragging. That's insane. But then the scene in Platoon where Barnes "frags" or shoots Elias came to mind, which I thought was only a part of the movie, but turns out to be real. Twisted. Vietnam was sick.
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rapist and murderes, only good american soldier is a dead one.
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first defeat may i remind yu all 1812 was also a defea actually more a salmate no wait it was a fucking defeat
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We sure didn't win any hearts and minds with these tactics...
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We lost because we started focusing on making money from war instead of winning and ending it. Perpetual war to fill the coffers.. Eisenhower warned us!!!
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God bless Vietnam
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God Bless American Soldiers. I have really deep respect for American Soldier who were shedding their fresh warm blood to fight again communists in Vietnam jungle to saved the millions Vietnamese non-communist. I will never forget American Soldiers who died to saving me from communists Vietnam and I will always keeping them closest to my heart.
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talk about something positive for a change think how good we have it until donny boy (menin. drumphf) gets in then all HELL is going to break loose and it already started with riots in the street all across Ametican and more to come GOD help us
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Vietnam war and Korean War tells America only one lesson, don't try to fight with China. you will fail or a draw in best case.
Vietnam and Korean penisula is only the battle field.
China is the power behind the 2 battle field!
Dont forget at that time, China is as pooooor as shit.
Today China is the 2nd economy, with commie's dictatorship mobilization, any merlicious attempt against China will fail. -
Most of the Vietnamese today do not like their government, it was all a propaganda and lies by the Vietnamese communist party. Vietnam today are being oppressed and mistreated by their own government, many of the Vietnamese high ranking officials send their families to the US to enjoy that luxury lifestyle, while the majority of Vietnamese wishes the American would come back to save them from China and their own government. Not many people know this but the US intention in Vietnam was honest right from the beginning, they were not there to invade Vietnam but they were there to help the South. The US truly thought that they could build Vietnam into another Japan and Korea a powerhouse in South East Asia, but because of the terrain in Vietnam it did not favor both the American and the South Vietnamese Army, so without the Hochiminh Trail in Cambodia and Laos the NVA could have never reach the South to supply the Vietcong guerrillas. Such a shame Vietnam could of been another Korea or Japan today.
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From a Vietnamese, to be honest, It would have been better if the american won
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WE KNOW WHY IT FAILED BECAUSE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX PLANNED IT TO FAIL! When my father came back from Vietnam he was really upset with the fact that we were running drugs instead of fighting a war! The top military brass were getting rich!! The military is actually the enemy of the American people and their agenda is war, genocide, and pushing drugs into mainstream society! Why are we in Afghanistan? We took control of their opium trade! Now the Pentagon has 6 trillion dollars missing!!!!!!
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Apperantly we are better than US in the ww2. BUt when i try to find an articles about greatest leader in the ww2. They are put almost US leader in their shit article ?
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There should be a way to fast forward so that we can find the part in the video that is shown in the intro photo.
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Good arguments made here it seems. Who knows. One thing I'm sure of - this is an infommercial to sell the guy's book disguised as an interview. I hate that marketing ploy. It's soooo obvious how rehearsed everything is!
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the usa is repeating the same mistakes in afghanistan and iraq today. they entered an unwinnable war which will cost them huge human and material costs. wasting tax-money and lifes of soldiers in useless wars is an american tradition. american politcians = dumbest people on earth.
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Who was in whose country? The Americans went half way round the world
to wage war in Vietnam against a people who were no material or physical
threat to the security of the United States or the American people. The
Americans were foreign interventionist aggressors in the Vietnam War.
The Americans stuck their long fucking nose into a civil war between
Vietnamese belligerents. It was the Americans that kept escalating the
war from 1965 onwards. It was the Americans that introduced chemical
incendiary weapons, such as napalm and white phosphorus, on a huge scale
into the war and expended literally millions of tons of high-explosive
ordnance in indiscriminate strategic bombing, tactical air strikes, and
artillery fire missions, all of which killed millions of Vietnamese
civilians, and on top of all that then sprayed Christ knows how many
billions of fucking gallons of toxic chemical defoliants which have
caused hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese children to be stillborn or
born with horrific birth defects. And Americans expect the rest of the
fucking world to be sympathetic about a piddling 58,200 dead and 300,000
wounded Americans from the war compared to 3.4 million Vietnamese
slaughtered, and Christ knows how many wounded and injured, as well as
the southern half of Vietnam and much of the northern half devastated,
all because the Americans went to war in Vietnam on a fucking whim and
grossly underestimated the enemy they had to fight there. If you think
that anyone outside the U.S. has much sympathy for the Americans killed
or wounded in the Vietnam War, then you are a complete fucking idiot!
The U.S. government sent the cunts there and the U.S. government and the
nation it represents must shoulder the blame for what their forces did
there. The U.S. deserved to fail in the Vietnam War, and it did! And the
fact the United States was defeated in Vietnam still sticks in the guts
of many Americans to this day, 41 years after the fall, or Liberation,
of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. Many Americans have never got over
the Vietnam War. Every American Vietnam vet that wipes himself out as an
alcoholic or a narcotics addict or a shotgun-in-the-mouth suicide is a
post-war victory for Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. That's fucking
justice!
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