Why do Americans claim they didn't lose the Vietnam War?

Why do Americans claim they didn't lose the Vietnam War?

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Body count and came out of the conflict in a better state. Operational objectives don't matter you know.

most people you come across here will admit we lost, though.

the ones that don't are generally neo-cons claiming that we won every battle and secured the peace treaty in 1973, anything after that was South Vietnam's failure alone.

but nah the large majority will tell you it's a defeat, and comment on how it was a useless war anyway

>Operational objectives don't matter you know.

Because Muh superior Army can't be defeated by a bunch of guys who literally used used shit covered sticks and inferior material.

We lost good men there. And as usual killed 70 to 1.

Nothing else.

>Nothing else
You also lost the war and left native collaborators behind.

there is now a McDonalds in Hanoi

in the end i think we all know who won

Vietnam was much like a scrawny kid and a beeflargemchugecake going at it, and predictably the scrawny fucker gets his ass beat. Then Lee the Roid's mom shows up and drags him away and the scrawny kid claims victory by default.

DLET THS

>i posted it again mom!

We could have won had the anti war sentiment of the time not halted us from deploying more troops. In the end it's a blemish on our pride, nothing more.

The reality of the situation is that the soviets took our pawn, but we took their king.

Corporations? Jews?

We took their king, but they left poison on their pieces that soaked into our skin, and it's slowly killing us.

>i WILL defend global revolution whatever the cost!!!!

We don't claim we didn't lose, we just maintain we didn't lose on the battlefield.

This desu

Foreigncucks are just too stupid to know the difference between a political and a military victory

That's more nuance than I've ever heard anyone outside of a classroom, book, or the internet ever talk about it.

This right here is almost as shitty a sentiment as refusing to admit that we lost the war. If we're going to blame morale, no amount on our side would have been half as much as that of the Vietnamese, who were willing to die by the millions in a war they'd been fighting for decades before we arrived.

>we

Shoo Marxist shill shoo

>Body count

so, youre saying me Germany won WW2 ?

It's wrong to portray the war as Vietnam vs America, it was more like a civil war of South Vietnam vs North Vietnam with America on the Southern side.

Most coalition troops who died in that war were Southern Vietnamese, not Americans.

Germans only have a better k:d if you could civilians and POWs into the statistics. If you only look at battlefield casualties the Germans lost almost as many men as did the Allies. On the Western Front they actually suffered more casualties than they inflicted on average, again not counting POWs.

>military victory
You haven't achieved that either.

>the ones that don't are generally neo-cons claiming that we won every battle and secured the peace treaty in 1973, anything after that was South Vietnam's failure alone.

See I would largely ssy all that but go on to say we lost when south vietnam fell.

Technically we stopped every North Vietnamese offensive, destroyed the Vietcong utterly and bombed the North until they signed a peace treaty.

Do you know what "neo-cons" are? I'm generally curious if you actually know instead of just throwing it around like a buzzword.

This is just a gut opinion, but I think it usually stems from either one of two reasons.


Reason #1:They have a belief that America is exceptional, above the normal concerns of interest based politics, and that America is a force of objective Good in the world. Obviously, if America loses a war, this deals a blow to the notion that they are Always Right and good triumphs over evil

Reason #2: They partake in something of the military culture that exists over here, that they're "our boys" who are "The best". The notion that they lost becomes extremely disturbing. This root view however, doesn't usually lead to the notion that "america lost" exactly, but that it was lost on the home front, or by the politicians, which somehow doesn't count.

At least in my personal experience, #2 is way more common than #1, leading me to suspect that since I see #1 on here a lot more, it's probably trolling for a reaction.

Because we didn't. America's objective was to bring about a single state in Vietnam, which we achieved by withdrawing our military support for the southern state. Thus, you see, America won.

Did Americans kill anyone in Vietnam but civilians though?

1. It was never a war.
2. The South was fighting a civil war with our help; of course they lost men.
3. The Viets begged to come to our country; we brought them here and they set up nail salons.

We didn't lose jack shit.

They were moping around after their incredibly failed Tet Offensive wondering what surrender terms they were going to have to abide by.

I'm an American and I was always taught we lost. Or rather that the war became unpopular at home search we just gave up and left.

>We could have won had the anti war sentiment of the time not halted us from deploying more troops
But that's a major part of what makes a country able to wage war or not. It's literally the point of On War.

>We didn't lose jack shit.
Except for the war.

>inferior material
Wut. Their material was up to date.

Can we not have this thread every fucking day? Take it to /int/ cocksuckers.

you realize casualties = killed, injured or captured and don't include civilians right?

Can you read? It wasn't a war.

You can try to troll us by saying we lost a police action, but wars are declared.

And when we declare wars, we win them.

>but wars are declared
If that were true, how did the US lose the Vietnam war?

just let it go.

You weren't even born.

Who gives a shit.

You lost man

I don't get hung up over the many loses my country endured throughout the centuries..doesn't affect how I live my life so why be in denial about others achievments?

No it was to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam, which you failed to do.

Never held those territories at the same time

We could've won if we actually invaded the North. The Johnson administration and later Nixon, we're to chicken shit to invade or really do WWII levels of bombing to the North for fear of injuring/killing the few Russian aides assisting North Vietnam.

>we're to chicken shit to invade or really do WWII levels of bombing to the North for fear of injuring/killing the few Russian aides assisting North Vietnam.
No, they were scared of a Chinese intervention and repeating another Korean War.

Because it was a far off, irrelevant conflict. You can lose a penny during a bar fight, hardly worth saying you lost money.

>we're to chicken shit to invade or really do WWII levels of bombing to the North
We dropped more bombs during Rolling Thunder than the entire amount of bombs dropped before Vietnam and that was an extremely half-assed bombing campaign.

>Nixon
>didn't do WWII style strategic bombing campaigns
False.

>Why do Americans claim they didn't lose the Vietnam War?
Because we didn't.

>irrelevant
>Vietnam became the most bombed country on Earth
>more than 50k US dead servicemen
>Because it was a far off, irrelevant conflict
>caused shitstorm of domestic protests
>irrelevant

I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH YOU FAGGOT

>50k out of 2.7 million troops in Vietnam
>50k out of 9 million troops total
>50k in a country of 300 million
>a lot
Wew. You, like those dirty longhair protestors, can't see the forest for the trees.

SOME FOLKS ARE BORN

It's not politically acceptable to lose 50,000 soldiers' lives and more than three times that wounded for what should be a minor "police action"

For comparison, 50k dead is about half the price needed to topple Imperial Japan. Considering the strength of the NVA and the Vietcong, it was a ridiculously high price to pay for no appreciable benefit.

>50k soldiers across 12 fucking years
>compared to 100k across 4 (3 really)
These are totally comparable in terms of casualty rates. Again, you can't see the forest for the trees.

I love you.

Buddy, YOU can't see the fucking forest because a huge amount of fucking spindly little trees are blocking your stupid myopic vision.

The Vietnam War was hardly irrelevant, it was bloodier than anything involving Vietnam should've been, and it completely changed the social fabric of America. You are engaging in historical revisionism pretending that we didn't care because of your personal feelings. People like you study history as a form of boosting self-esteem, not because you like history. FUCK

Also, it wasn't 12 fucking years. The majority of casualties were accrued over a 5 fucking year period (1965-1970), you fuck.

>getting this mad over facts
It was less relevant than you, the long hairs, and so called liberal realists claim. Less than a third of US servicemen were in Vietnam. Casualties were fairly light. Less than half of all draftees went to Vietnam. If Vietnam was OH SO IMPORTANTU, you'd see less of a number disparity.

Technically it was 14 years. The first US servicemen to die in Vietnam died in 1959. Actual casualties started rolling with the Kennedy advisors beginning in 1961. You should pick up a book sometime.

I don't think you understand your own argument. You say that 50k dead is not a big figure because America has over 300 million citizens. You are using a total war mindset applied to a complex conflict that nowhere approaches the levels of a total war and then say "oh, the war wasn't that important."

Well, if it wasn't important, then why was a significant portion of US military force applied to Vietnam for nearly a decade? Why was the combined amount of ordnance dropped on Vietnam exceeding that of all the US ordnance dropped in WWII?

Cognitive dissonance isn't going to get you anywhere.

THE MAJORITY OF CASUALTIES WERE ACCRUED OVER A FIVE FUCKING YEAR PERIOD. READ MY FUCKING POST.

Why do Turks claim the Armenian Genocide never happened?

>Armenian Genocide
The what?

Not him but, if Vietnam was so important why did the US not achieve the objectives they set out to, that being the destruction of the Communist government?

All those reasonings you used, without seeming like an asshole, are literally pointless.

>they dropped more bombs on Vietnam than WWII
>therefore it's important

Also, there were barely any times when Americans dropped bombs during WWII, it was a relatively new concept. Sure there were a few raids, over-all they dropped fuck all.

Do you really not know why the US was so afraid of sending combat troops into North Vietnam? And the point of the war wasn't to topple North Vietnam, it was to keep South Vietnam afloat.

You're out of your element here, Donny.

I've never heard this from a teacher, a book, a television program, a peer, a parent, a pundit, any person.

Sage because I don't wanna totally fall for this troll thread.

>there are people in this very thread that think that the US won the Vietnam War

>Also, there were barely any times when Americans dropped bombs during WWII, it was a relatively new concept. Sure there were a few raids, over-all they dropped fuck all.


Da fuck? You ever hear of something called the B-17? It was at the time a revolutionary new design, 4 engined, massive bomb load, a big "fuck you" from the sky. They loved dropping bombs, and managed to drop slightly more tonnage of bombs on Germany than the RAF, despite starting years later.

They loved dropping bombs, which is why they delivered almost 1.5 million tons of them.

Don't listen to this moron.


We left vietnam in a barely recognizable state and didn't start a war with China.
The only reason we didn't raze them to the ground is because back home they had ZERO public support for it.

Idiots like John Lennon advocated for an end to a war they had no stake in, between 2 countries he was not from, because he didn't understand the war in the first place. No one did, because the enemy was so untraditional and the objective was unclear, so naturally the public, and eventually a lot of big name politicians and figureheads, called for an end to it.

They also didn't realize that the US was there for an objective, not for people. Tons of young American men were dying and no one really understood why since the motives of the US military weren't as clear and honest as they were in WWII. All the images and video footage of the war was put in a very negative light, as opposed to previous wars, so that didn't help Congress any bit with support on their decisions.

Eventually we did complete our objective, which was to stop the "spread of communism" (we eventually actually did, but with global trade, of course). To the pleasure of the American publics ears, the war ended and we all went home, leaving vietnam a smoldering, orange ash pile, from which they still suffer from to this day.

IMO, the world is just looking for any little fault in Americas reign as the most powerful. You europeans will nitpick and make fun of us as much as you like while your own countries crumble from an immigration crisis. As for us, we will try our best to keep ACTUAL fuckups like the battle of mogadishu under wraps while watching you beg us to save you from the middle east.

we were stabbed in the back by the homefront

Unconditional support of the military is my favorite right required by me of the constitution.

t. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei member, circa 1925

>MUH TACTICAL VICTORY

Few bombs compared to later wars
In the immediate post war era up to the 70s insurgencies without anti air capabilities were increasingly common but precision weaponry was not. Subsequently, it seemed to make sense to drop bombs at every hour of the day. That's why places like Vietnam and Malaysia ended up with more air dropped bombs than were used in ww2.

Ehh. Probably because the North had to sign a treaty of Peace, wait for the U.S. to pull out, invade during watergate, and take the south without engaging a single US soldier (The US wasn't at war with North Vietnam even after they took the South.) So yeah, the US's objective was nullified by a war that capped off the Vietnam conflicts, not the same war that was actually fought by US soldiers.

Undeniable proof yanks are retards

We won.

Get over it, loser.

I hope you who say america won or "didn't loose" are trolling.

We're not.

We could've left vietnam as a crater, but decided to go easy on them because everyone at home whined hard enough.

But if you still think if it matters, just realize to win a war, you have to actually defeat your enemy, not hide from them until they go away like the Vietcong did. We obliterated most of anyone seriously trying to fight back, and the rest just set up traps and hid. Their Govt is STILL trying to find and disarm a ton of the traps, and trying to rid the country's landscape of all Agent Orange. And they trade with us all the time also, so nobody today (that matters) gives a shit about the war anymore.

>We could've left vietnam as a crater, but decided to go easy on them because everyone at home whined hard enough.

Is america the bully that cries and runs away when the little guy stands up for himself and punches him, then claims that he didn't really lose the fight?

Leave them a crater, and you piss off China and/or Russia and start WW3.

Any could have and would have means jack shit. Your country can not soak up any casualties, any time that happens you cry and run home to your island. That is why the only war you won in a fair fight (that is no allies pulling all the weight as in the world wars) was against yourself.

It was a failure but it wasn't a military failure. The communists did literally NOTHING on the battlefield.

>try to cause a mass popular uprising
Didn't happen

>Vietcong tries to go full gorilla warfare
Vietcong gets brutally raped and wiped the fuck out

>North launches several invasions
All of them get stopped and achieve nothing other than Giap sending hundreds of thousands into the meat grinder

>North wants to boost up northern air defense
North still gets bombed to the stone age and America has absolute air superiority

You understand the concept of guerilla warfare, right?

>ll, if it wasn't important, then why was a significant portion of US military force applied to Vietnam for nearly a decade
Less than a third of US military force was applied to Vietnam.

>Why was the combined amount of ordnance dropped on Vietnam exceeding that of all the US ordnance dropped in WWII
Probably because the conflict lasted for 14 fucking years instead of 3 and half.

That is incorrect. Casualty figures very often include civilians.

Not true, germany won in bodycount regardless of how you calculate that (within reason)

Few bombs compared to later wars because the carrying capacity of future bombers outstripped the B-17 and anything else by a massive factor. It's not like the US half asses the bombing campaign, it's that engines got a lot better post WW2 and could carry a lot more weight.

You're fuckin retarded and clearly don't understand what you're talking about. The WW2 bombing campaign was a full commital, it was the most bombs dropped in any war until Vietnam, where the massive, huge, monstrous B-52 got its time to shine. One B-52 could carry the same amount of bombs as multiple B-17s and they were deployed in similar numbers as B-17s were, and over a longer period of time. You do the math.

Yeah and we killed off all the guerillas.

Well not really by any unusual amounts.
They lost more men not counting POWs against both Poland and France. Same with Denmark and Norway. They achieved a very lopsided and unusual k:d versus the Russians not counting POWs, and especially counting POWs, but seriously so many Russians died in POW camps looking at casualty figures skews the k:d by several million deaths and makes everyone think Germans were supermen or something.
Anyways North Africa is largely in the Germans favor. Italy is predictably in Germany's favor.
Normandy and the following months are quite disastrous for the Germans with them losing just as many men as the Allies. The defense becomes your traditional 2:1 casualty rate for attackers/defenders it's always been until the closing months when the Germans start taking 1:3 casualty rates.

#Not all Americans

>Anyways North Africa is largely in the Germans favor. Italy is predictably in Germany's favor.

Italy was about 5:3 in the Allies favor.

And I don't have the stats in front of me, but I'm pretty sure North Africa was too. Rommel kept winning a bunch of little skirmishes, but the big battles, Crusader, El Alamein, motherfucking Tunis, were far more against him than for him. Gazala's the only one that scale that he won.

Because Americans such as myself are very prideful. Especially after how we finished up and won WW2 we had this big boost of ego. We never experienced a defeat against another country that was that bad in our history such as Vietnam. At some point we were acting like the Japanese did where we were just throwing lives away similar to the kazakami attacks they performed in WW2. It paints a vivd image in your head when you realize that the opposing side is not fighting with the hope of the troops coming home but rather going to fight to die because the powers higher up are too stubborn to admit defeat.

>When your still responsible for so many people dying after such a stupid war that even 20+ years later people are still suffering the aftermath
abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-hints-post-presidency-plans-laos-visit/story?id=41913805

dear god the mental gymnastics.
>Also, there were barely any times when Americans dropped bombs during WWII, it was a relatively new concept. Sure there were a few raids, over-all they dropped fuck all.
>american strategic bombing did fuck all.

Wasn't Italy only in the allies favor because of the Italians? I was only counting Germans.

No, I'm only counting Germans as well. Most of the fighting on the Italian peninsula was conducted by Germans, Mussolini's government falling, and the bulk of the Italian forces disbanding, by July 25th of 1943. Avalanche, the landings in Italy proper, only began on September 3rd.

Not counting the surrender at the end of the war, The World War II Databook: The Essential Facts and Figures for all the combatants. (Ellis) gives the following losses at:

Total Allied casualties: 59,151 killed, 30,849 missing, 230,000 wounded.

German casualties, 59,940 killed, 163,600 wounded, 357,090 captured in combat or ancillary to it.

That makes it roughly 5:3.

The purpose of the Vietnam War was to stall the communists, and it accomplished that. It's literally true that the North Vietnamese won *the war*, but that's misleading considering we got exactly what we wanted.

Most people going on about how we "lost" the war mean to say that the war was a failure, and it simply wasn't.

Oh right, but like I said I'm not counting POWs here, so that puts Itaky's fighting proper at a slight advantage for the Germans.
Although question, is that counting POWs taken at the end of the war? If not that's some rather impressive figures for the Allies as a whole.

>Oh right, but like I said I'm not counting POWs here, so that puts Itaky's fighting proper at a slight advantage for the Germans.

Why not? At least in most military historiography, you count prisoners taken in battle, but not ones that surrender at the closure of hostilities.

Otherwise, you get weird results like "Barbarossa and Kiev had more German losses than Soviet ones".

>Although question, is that counting POWs taken at the end of the war? If not that's some rather impressive figures for the Allies as a whole.

No, if you count post end of war surrender, you need to add another million or so.

POWs are a result of superior maneuvering not necessarily superior fighting. In actual combat the defender will largely have an advantage and suffer less casualties than the attacker. Most people look at this and see German super men, I look at it and see the Germans achieving the 2:1 casualty rate expected of all defending armies, with the addition of superior Allied mobility and logistics resulting in a lot of German POWs to boot, but again Im avoiding counting POWs because they heavily skew the numbers. Especially in Russia where people think the Rissians were slaughtered 10 to 1. In reality almost as many Russians died to malnutrition or exposure in POW camps as they did on the battlefield.
As you pointed out, actually, when the Germans could not exploit Soviet immobility and capture them, they were forced to fight them head on where often they took heavy if not similar or even, excessive losses comparatively.

Oh shit

>POWs are a result of superior maneuvering not necessarily superior fighting.


In modern infantry combat, maneuvering is a critical component of fighting, you can't just draw a line and say "This is maneuver, this is not".

The huge lopsided losses that the Germans inflicted on the Soviets wasn't because Soviet soldiers couldn't shoot or duck behind cover, it was principally because of maneuver and coordination, of getting into better firing positions first, and being able to communicate to their fire support faster when the opposition had done so. You put an even number of them in an open field and have them blaze away at each other, and the result will be pretty even.

Sometimes that superior fire and maneuver nets you PoWs, other times, it nets you bodies.

>In actual combat the defender will largely have an advantage and suffer less casualties than the attacker.

Not really, no. Only if the attack is repulsed. Successful attacks yield cascade failures in the defensive position, which mean more and more people become exposed, and they're often killed or taken without ever knowing what hit them.

>I look at it and see the Germans achieving the 2:1 casualty rate expected of all defending armies

Even if you don't count prisoners for some bizarre reason, you've got pretty equal numbers of deaths and a 1.4:1 ratio of wounded.

> with the addition of superior Allied mobility and logistics resulting in a lot of German POWs to boot

>Superior mobility
>Italy.

What?
1/2

2/2


>Especially in Russia where people think the Rissians were slaughtered 10 to 1. In reality almost as many Russians died to malnutrition or exposure in POW camps as they did on the battlefield.

Yes, but once those prisoners are taken, regardless of whether or not they live through their internment, they have ceased to be useful members of the battlefield. Taking a prisoner does not imply a lack of military efficacy, usually the reverse. Again, if you don't regard taking PoWs as inflicting a casualty, you get all kinds of hell of weird analysis, especially in the War in the East.

>As you pointed out, actually, when the Germans could not exploit Soviet immobility and capture them, they were forced to fight them head on where often they took heavy if not similar or even, excessive losses comparatively.

And that, not some call of duty style better shooting/aiming/hiding/whatever is what made the Wehrmacht better soldiers than the Red Army, for almost the entirety of the war. They moved faster. They communicated better, they got their artillery at concentrations of force faster. They got their armor to exploit local weak points and chew up rear echelon stuff more often. That's what the better military DOES.

Eurocucks btfo