Hey Veeky Forums right now i am looking into some vietnam stuff, cuz i have to give a presentation for my history class.
The main topic is "why did america lose vietnam war"
I am looking forward to see some non wikipedia tier information about the outcome of the war.
and hopefully, someone could drop some videos / pics / or text sources to read further about the topic.
Thanks
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I have pretty much nothing of interest to contribute
It didnt. It kicked the shit out of the "farmers with outdated weapons" to the point they ceased to exist as a fighting force, then it went home and never came back for the final round.
because they didn't understand their enemy + hippies, but mostly hippies
>burgers wanna check chinese/communist expansion
>fears more populous north will win election during unification
>gets in the way of that
>war
>US doesn't wanna invade north to prevent Korean war 2 with the Chinese moving in
>figure Nort Vietnam will get tired and stop
>VC gets rekt so bad they never recover
>America gets tired and realizes it isn't worth it
>NVA steamrolls South Vietnam after burgers leave
>14% of Vietnam's population is dead
>China invades North Vietnam and gets rekt
Funny part is that the US reluctance to invade the north probably was a smart idea, since the North Vietnamese might begrudingly let the Chinese in if they were getting fucked, so "losing" the war might have been what ultimately secured their objective as the north repelled and resisted Chinese communist expansion. Kinda sad since Ho Chi Minh originally admired the US and saw himself as the Vietnamese Washington.
tl;dr: shit was dumb and unnecessary
TL;DR (it's going to be pretty long anyway)
>country splits in half
>some crook named Ngo Dinh Diem takes over the South after a rigged referendum
>Uncle Ho gets the North
>there was supposed to be a referendum to unify the country, as part of the peace deal that ended the last war
>Diem blows it off, and Eisenhower supports it
>North starts sending infiltrators south
>Cambodia and Laos are willing to pretend it isn't happening, and declare "neutrality"
>in between 1961 and 1963, the infiltrators make major advances in taking control of the rural population from the inept central government
>in 1962, the infiltrators declare the formation of the "National Liberation Front" or Viet Cong to anyone who isn't a commie
>Kennedy is personal friends with Diem because lol Catholic, but as the US troops flood in in the early 60s, and Diem cracks down on Buddhists (in a mostly Buddhist country) instead of communists, he approves a coup to remove Diem
>the coup works, but one of the officers involved kills Diem and his brother
>Kennedy is horrified, but gets domed a few weeks afterwards, so nobody cares
>LBJ takes over
>LBJ never believes that Oswald acted alone
>LBJ sees the Gary Powers Shootdown, the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the recent "neutrality" of Laos as part of a pattern of rapid communist advance across the globe
>LBJ cut his teeth working for FDR during the height of appeasement in the 30s, and sees this as Sudetenland 2.0
>the South has its own program of "infiltration" into the North which involves sending commandos in speedboats up north along the coast, where they all inevitably die
>US SIGINT ships tag along for these speedboat rushes to record North Vietnamese radio and radar data as the North is dealing with all the commandos
>the USS Maddox, one of these ships, reports being shot at
>LBJ isn't sure it actually happens, but thinks he can't afford to back down
Fun starts here
>Communust rebels revolt against France
>America Post-WW2 hates both France and European colonialism so instead of helping the French (who had barely rebuilt an army yet) when the Vietminh is still weak, they watch the events unfold
>After a few years, France loses at Dien Bien Phu and withdraws
>A year later, the US intervene
>The Vietminh is now strong and even more determined than ever thank to their victory so the US fail to beat them despite their pouring of large amount of troops with the lastest technology
>LBJ talks congress into passing a Tonkin Gulf Resolution that gives him overarching powers over US forces in the region
>immediately begins bombing the North
>when VC blow up some US bombers on the ground, he sends in a battalion of Marines to guard US air bases in Vietnam
>this is followed rapidly by combat troops
>in a relatively short amount of time, half a million US troops are in Vietnam
>the policy the Johnson administration has worked out is "graduated esclation" in the North, or bombing more and more shit, gradually ratcheting up the pressure to try and bring the commies to the bargaining table
>in the South, General Westmoreland, a thoroughly conventional general, rejects COIN (Kennedy was a huge COIN fan) in favor of a war of attrition against the Viet Cong, using superior US firepower
>the US public has no idea what this "Vietnam" shit is but they hate commies
>this enthusiasm begins to fade as the body count racks up with little decisive victory
>by 1967, US politics is a powder keg, with riots in Newark, LA, and Detroit
>the North decides to try and reunify the country before Ho Chi Minh dies
Oh shit, brb class.
If this thread is still up at like 10 I'll start up again
Because it's in a spooky jungle and the enemy fought beyond dirty.
>"why did america lose vietnam war"
why did britain lose american revolutionary war?
>why did britain lose american revolutionary war?
Because France and Spain.
>South needs X dollars in equipment every year to not die
>this is set out very clearly
>Congress gives them like half X
>"you don't have to ration bro we'll get you that cash"
>amount keeps going down
>the one asshole who wrote in a bunch of jets built in his state and made the Pentagon bill the South for them
>one M-16 magazine was issued to each soldier a month
>4 artilery shells per gun a day
>no pay
>no gas
>most of the air force is literally broken
>North decides to annex a province
>South rolls over
>president Thieu tries to abandon Central Highlands, mass panic sets in
>NVA general realizes he's got the whole country
You can't cut funding, you'll regret this.
Replace France with China and Spain with Russia and you got it
there's also
>people at home didn't like the war
>people that were for the country was fewer/weaker than they imagined
>there wasn't much of a point to it
>it didn't really go anywhere
>guerrilla warfare
add the fact it didn't really America/Britain only gotten stronger after the war and you're done
reminder that France and China also got their ass kicked
it speaks more about the farmers really
The Jews
>wants non-wiki tier info
>comes to a bhutanese sock puppet infoboard
Why? Because the NVA was well fucking equipped to actually fight a goddamn war and the Cong were just auxiliaries ready to take american bullets for the actual ground forces on their side.
You think some fucking rice farmers just magically cooked up the training and manufacture for anti-air capabilities? NO! Fucking China helped an ACTUAL ARMY for that.
There was no way in hell China wasn't going to keep trying to push the NVA southwards as to prevent the US from taking over the damn place and possibly using it as a staging point to fuck with their interests in SEA.
Top kek
Thanks to you guys, i copied all your posts and i'll probably look deeper into all that shit, hopefully i can form a useful presentation out of this information.
I am not quite sure if i can get all that into a 20 min presentation
>You think some fucking rice farmers just magically cooked up the training and manufacture for anti-air capabilities?
You drastically underestimate the efficacy of guerrilla warfare and sticks covered in poo.
enjoy your F
Well thought the same, maybe it won't be as bad as i expect it to be
I didn't realize sticks covered with poo and SKS's could shoot down fighter jets and helicopter gunships.
Russia and China was never going to let the United States have Vietnam and gave a metric fuckton of support to the NVA. Had the US actually won you'd probably have one of the biggest foreign military bases established post haste, a possible Second Korean War and covert installations of missile silos.
Since i have no fucking clue about the whole vietnam war, is it true, that there were actual reports about cannibalism?
Like Some soldiers got lost in the jungle and only their bones have been found afterwards?
[...] Cannibalism was reported by at least one reliable witness, the journalist, Neil Davis, during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Khmer (Cambodian) troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the liver. However he, and many refugees, also reported that cannibalism was practiced non-ritually when there was no food to be found. This usually occurred when towns and villages were under Khmer Rouge control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation. Ironically, any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed. [...]
Because even though they had outstanding military victories, the atrocities they committed in friendly villages converted Vietnamese to Vietcong.
When occupying a village, they didn't know who was Vietcong or not. They were always paranoid at having their throats slit in the night, so they questioned the villagers. Shoving a gun in one's face and shouting "YOU CHARLIE," does not persuade people to join you.
Additionally, Ho Chi Minh did a lot more for the Vietnamese than Ngo Dinh Diem ever did. Diem was a corrupt liar and scandalous and Ho Chi Minh was actually a pretty cool dude. Apart from communism, he had his shit together.
Also, you're fighting someone else's war, so you can't just glass the place. You have to take care to leave as much intact as possible. What this meant was feet on the ground. Lots of them. And as it was in the Revolutionary war, more military != winning force. Knowledge of the terrain helped the Vietcong immensely because they could wage guerilla war. Pair that with my aformentioned point of not knowing who's Charlie and you have an unknown enemy.
Now here's the real kicker, Vietnam protests were HUGE. A lot of people were completely against waging another countries war, especially right after the disaster that was the Korean War. Hippies were most vocal, but there were also academics, government officials and even the military itself. The protests were big, very big. The US is a democracy. The will of the people was not with the war.
You're a nigger do your own research.
I fixed that meme for you. During VIetnam is when the Americans became aware of the power of Sun Tzu and is why it is now heavily taught inside of US military.
Guerilla warfare and home field advantage.
The US won in the sense that its actions told the rest of the world that if you turn Communist the United States will start a costly and lengthy war with you.
From a military organisation point of view, some strategists emitted the idea of the lack of centralized command to explain the outcome of the war.
With seven army organizations conducting the war the way each wanted without a clear hierarchy with a powerful comity at the head of the pyramid, there was a lack of coordination.
This problem was later addressed, that's why the USA won so easily the first gulf war.
Before you go thinking the VC gorilla operated all over a bunch of hapless GIs, keep in mind that the VC got fucked so hard they almost ceased to be a factor and that the NVA did the heavy lifting, further, the NVA and VC suffered about 1.1 million casualties while the US suffered about 58000 deaths, 10000 were non combat related, ARVN suffered roughly a quarter million casualties.
read how to eat soup with a knife, a bit hard to read written by Army officer, but you understand the nature of Westemorland, and a conventional army fighting a asymmetric war or not.
there are 2 ways to defeat guerrillas
1: cut them off from resupply
2: conduct genocide
They couldn't win the Vietnam war
There was no winning condition
They fucked up the vietcong but you can't win if you don't have a goal
America lost because the politicians telling the generals how to do their job decided that we weren't going to invade North Vietnam, and the result was basically the equivalent of trying to win a boxing match without punching. We could have that shit over in 1967.
This. Remember, OP, in war your objective is to kill the enemy. You need to be willing to exterminate every man, woman, and child. You should be willing to poison their food and water, and to kill their children and their livestock. You should spare no effort in your goal of completely wiping them out.
If you're not willing to do that, why are you going to war at all? You're doomed to suffer what the US suffered in Vietnam. Any war short of total war is wasted effort.
The VC was pretty overblown anyways. Even before Tet BTFO the VC, the NLF (North Vietnamese guerillas) was doing the vast majority of the wet work in the South.
>in war your objective is to kill the enemy
No it isn't.
Mass annihilation went out of fashion a long time ago and has demonstrably been shown to 1)not be necessary to win wars 2) logistically difficult 3) hugely unpopular (at least in the 'modern' era of warfare with the democratic populace.
You're just a stupid edgy kid who knows nothing about the philosophy of warfare.
I don't know what this is trying to claim. The statement that the U.S. never lost a major battle in Vietnam is correct. None of those are major battles outside of Ia Drang and Ia Drang wasn't a loss. Seems like many of the "battles" in question are smaller subsets of the battle that occurred (such as cherry picking Khe Sanh village getting over run rather than using the Battle of Khe Sanh).
tl;dr
Cherry picking that doesn't even refute the argument that was made.
>Kinda sad since Ho Chi Minh originally admired the US and saw himself as the Vietnamese Washington
He initially borrowed most of his ideas from Jefferson. He only shifted toward socialism a few years after getting snubbed by Wilson at Versailles.
Kek. Mate grow up. The whole point of the Vietnam War was to stop Nam going commie. America failed utterly
The Vietcong had fairly little to do with Nam going Commie. The main fighting force from day 1 was always the North Vietnamese Army. They were the bulk of the soldiers, the dead, and by the wars end funnily enough the Vietcong fighters.
Vietcong were useful for the NVA to conduct deep penetration strikes with intel/weapon caches, but in terms of actual fighting the Vietcong fared about as well as you could expect literal rice farmers from a country still largely living the same way it did 1000 years ago to fare against a well supplied, heavily armed, technologically advanced army would fare.
>The whole point of the Vietnam War was to stop Nam going commie
The whole point of the Vietnam War was to stop SEA from going commie.
Exhaustion.
The U.S. objectives didn't rely on military strength. It wasn't like WW2 where the plan was to totally topple and dismantle the states of Germany or Japan.
The objective was to protect the democratic/capitalist government in the south so that they could stand independently and maintain control of the country.
Same as Korea or currently Iraq.
In Korea they didn't meet that objective either. They got to a satisfactory halfway point. The South was able to stand independently of the North and form it's own state.
In Vietnam the North Vietnamese fought an endless war of attrition while the South just did not give a fuck. It would eventually mean the U.S. would have to essentially annex the South and maintain it themselves or call it an L and go home and let the South get overrun.
Which is what they did.
Oh, and in addition, what this guy said - If the U.S. went into the North heavy, as they had in Korea, it probably would have been the same result - China entering the match and pushing them back.
Depends on if the military is left to its own devices on use of force and rules of engagement. If politicians get involved its over.
>it probably would have been the same result - China entering the match and pushing them back
Actually, China was in no position to intervene if the intervention had begun when McNamara initially stated to do so (early 1961). Their people were starving themselves out at this point and Krushchev had openly stated that he had no interest in Vietnam. The U.S. could have realistically kicked the shit out of North Vietnam without foreign interference until 1963. Either way, the first contingency on the docket for Chinese intervention in the conflict: nuke everything north of the DMZ, up to and including Beijing.
You should start with the fact that it was not 'a few hundred farmers with outdated weapons'. The equipment that was being given to the Vietnamese was the very best commie block kit outside of Russia. They had a small but very well supplied air force. Their army got the AKM, RPK, RPG-7, 9K32 Strela-2, and PK before most of the Warsaw pact did. In fact they got the Strela-2 the same year it entered production. They had the best SAM systems that the USSR was making at the time.
>democratic government
Yeah, but hindsight's 20/20. At the time, the fear that invading North Vietnam would set the Chinese off was pervasive, and as far as U.S. intelligence was concerned, legitimate.
>and as far as U.S. intelligence was concerned, legitimate
Not according to Robert McNamara or the CIA. It was really only guys like Maxwell Taylor that thought so and pushed it to Kennedy.
Has anyone a clue about the cannibalism part?
It might not fit perfectly into the topic, but it will definetly catch their interest