Vietnam War

FPBP

>muh body count

That's one reason you lost. Genociding poor rice farmers doesn't make you popular anywhere.

>launch a surprise offensive against an overconfident enemy with 100,000s of people simultaneously attacking multiple cities and points of strategic interest, making it the largest yet
>still manage to get your shit kicked in
It was just a matter of time before the NVA was exhausted & the government would sue for peace. If the US had stayed & not had the incompetent SVA take over operations, it would have just been a contest of manpower & industry, one that the US could have won if its population were willing to stay (won in this case meaning an independent south vietnam - which would probably still collapse, admittedly).

Ooh, yeah, forgot about Afghanistan. That, though largely similar, has a slightly different issue - with the North Vietnamese had the US was fighting a state, an army (along with guerilla civilians), and states can capitulate / surrender, whereas with the Taliban and similar groups the US is fighting pretty much solely a population, not a state, which is practically impossible to win against unless you start a genocide.

Oh, definitely, the US failed to justify its actions to its populace (I thought in this case, represented by OP's hippies), and, as a result, they had to pull out. I'm just arguing that the US, in a hypothetical situation in which the populace is content, could have succeeded in creating a south vietnam (admittedly, not having a clear goal is part of the US's problem in this timeline), since the issue was the hippies, that is, the discontented US population, not some guerilla rice farmers.

They lost because they're americans

The US won the Vietnam war and North Vietnam officially capitulated.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords

They just randomly decided to stop helping South Vietnam afterwards and North Vietnam won the 2nd Vietnam war.

>cancerous spread of whites
is... is nobody else gonna touch that?

who's the artist?

The average American doesn't care about US foreign policy; what the government wants, basically.

If you were to ask Americans today whether withdrawing from South Korea is a good idea if it prevents a potential conflict with North Korea, they'd probably say yeah.

From the average citizen's perspective, Vietnam was just something that looked to have no end in sight and was just racking up bodies.

Where in that treaty is the part that has north vietnam surrendering?

It's pretty much only an excuse for the burgers to bail, effectively abandoning their allies on a promise that they'll all be nice and democratic now.

I see what you're getting at, yeah. Do you think then, as a bit of an editing of my original point, it is better to say that the US lost Vietnam due to the government's inability to get the populace properly invested in its goals, leading to the war being seen as nothing but a drain, causing the rise of what I'll term "hippies," those who opposed the war & brought about the US retreat?

Heck, was it even possible for the government to get the people to care about the goals of the war? If not, then I can see the argument of it being a lost cause much better, and would actually agree.

North Vietnam didn't capitulate, the agreed to a ceasefire.

should've just listened to lemay and bombed the north back to the stoneage tokyo style desu

This. In terms of actually fighting the war, we on literally every major battle. But you can't just keep fighting forever.

Yes, to your top point. Considering the US had conscription at the time, it's all the more important for the government to have been able to persuade the populace into supporting the war. Instead, what they got was a lot of protests and draft dodgers.

>Heck, was it even possible for the government to get the people to care about the goals of the war?

Probably not. Remember, at the end of the day, all of the geopolitics going on doesn't affect the life of the average citizen. Getting involved in Vietnam, or even Korea, doesn't put food on the table or support their family.

I'd probably even go as far as to say that the US populace is largely passive, and generally won't support any war; not unless there's a direct attack on the US (Pearl Harbor). Heck, for all the complaints about Iraq and Afghanistan later, it was incredibly easy for the government to get the ball rolling in the period immediately after 9/11.

Well you can if you go full WW2 and just carpetbomb the everyliving shit out of everything, torch any town that's so much as sympathetic to the other side.

>Considering the US had conscription at the time, it's all the more important for the government to have been able to persuade the populace into supporting the war.

Only about a quarter of all soldiers in Vietnam were drafted, the vast majority were volunteers. Contrast that with WW2 which was a 60% drafted military.

preventing commies from chimping out in the south was.

True, but the draft was in effect. As long as you're drawing even 25% of your forces from draftees, then I think it's good idea to have the support of the populace on your side.

Interesting stuff, you've persuaded me. I am a little curious about the last point, though, about the US population being passive concerning wars.

It certainly seems like that nowadays, but, when you look at something like the Mexican - American or the Spanish - American war, the US is pretty clearly the aggressor, but they are able to fight & win the war with (at least as far as I know) little to no peeps from the citizenry. Do you think that there was some sort of shift in the American communal psyche at some point in time to attribute to this, or did it have to do with the more conventional fighting styles of Spain & Mexico, when compared to Vietnam? Or, was it some other variable that I am failing to see?

Yes but the war paints a very different picture when you realize most of them CHOSE to go to war. It's part of why Afghanistan/Iraq has very little criticism of the military itself and all the blame is on the politics, because the military volunteered and they're just doing their job.

>Heck, for all the complaints about Iraq and Afghanistan later
There was almost no complaints about Afghanistan at the time. Iraq was fiercely debated beforehand.

I do think there was a shift at some point during the transition from the 19th to 20th Centuries, but I couldn't tell you what exactly. My best guess would probably be all the European immigrants that settled in places like the Midwest.

It would make sense to me at least. A lot of these Europeans probably left to get away from what seemed like numerous conflicts in Europe. The US was an ocean away, and a lot of them probably wanted to leave behind that kind of stuff for good.

Yeah, but IIRC that kind of attitude wasn't present when troops came back from the Vietnam War. People see now that the military just does what they're told, but back then people probably viewed any volunteerism as tacit approval of the war.

The Republic of Vietnam lost because of its policy of not taking care of its wounded soldiers. The ARVN simply did not want to fight because of this, and Americans saw no point in taking their place. Collapse of morale both in the RoV and the U.S.A. won the war for the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam and the Republic of South Viet-Nam.

>>>/leftypol/

> Genociding poor rice farmers doesn't make you popular anywhere.
I dunno, Mao was pretty popular.

I believe it's dutchko

more bombs were dropped in Nam during Linebacker 1 and 2 then the payload for the whole of WW2
the American lost 2000 planes during the bombing campaign
Arthur Harris and Curits LeMay would've applaud this reckless campaign

So much attention is on America's military strategy that people lose sight of obvious facts like how "South Vietnam" was a completely artificial entity without any real popular support. Without America's constant aid--military and economical, there would have never have been a "South Vietnam" to fight for. Achieving the stated US objective of an independent "South Vietnam" was impossible without indefinite American intervention because the state literally only existed as a US puppet.

The Viet-Minh nationalists enjoyed overwhelming popular support and any genuine democratic solution to the Vietnam question would have undoubtedly resulted in a united "Red" Vietnam--in a profound irony, the US, self-proclaimed representative of the "Free World" would throw its weight behind a illiberal repressive authoritarian, Diem, and hail him as a "One Man Democracy", because of his tenacious loyalty to the US.

The US policy, accounting for the general unpopularity of its puppet government and the immense popular support of its enemy, was to cultivate loyalty among sectarian groups along ethnic, religious and political lines by lavishing them with money and aid. These sectarian groups would act as a bulwark against the Viet-Minh since their loyalties were tied to their American patron. Many of these groups would also end up being funded by profits from the Opium trade which the US intelligence agencies were heavily involved in, following in the footsteps of the French intelligence agencies who had found the Opium trade an integral part to their own counter-insurgency programs during the First Indochina War.

>USians
Fucking mexicans

Linebacker also gave the Russians a chance to have live fire exercises to practice shooting down nuclear capable B-52's and FB-111's, bombers designed to attack Russian targets. It also gave them a steady supply of captured
U.S. pilots, bombadiers, navigators, and air defense officers who were trained to attack Russia. And a lot of debris from those 2,000 planes that were shot down, including a working FB-111 complete with crew.

united statians*

Fucking americans*

It isn't how many, it's where you put them.

During Rolling Thunder, a lot of targets were avoided for political reasons

>Haiphong, because you might hit a Russian ship
>anywhere near the Chinese border
>downtown Hanoi because you don't want to slaughter thousands of civilians

Which is where the "rules of engagement lost us the war" meme comes from.

Mall sharters do not get to represent all of North and South America

Also, they did not want any damaged American planes or crew coming down in Chinese territory. Plus the Chinese would attack any U.S. planes that strayed into their airspace, including Hainan Island.

There were a lot of ships in Haiphong harbor from neutral countries. Bad PR to damage them. And Hanoi was also full of foreigners. bad PR to kill them as well.

They were volunteers because their parents either insipred them or guilt tripped them with stories of their service in WWII. Ironically, the detacthed nature of most americans to the political subtlties of Vietnam led to greater disillusionment witht the war. Most second world war vets at the time took a shitty attitude towards the vietvets that vets of pre-wwi did to the lost generation.

Militarily the US won.
Politically the US lost.
If you want to be technically right. The US won because of the Treaty of Paris.

Though when you look back at it overall. Vietnam lost by becoming a communist shit hole that makes US clothes for dirt poor prices and their quality of living is low.

The "hippies lost the war" meme needs to die. The idea of outlasting a dedicated guerilla force on their home turf, when they're supplied by two of the three biggest powers in the cold war is pie in the sky daydreaming at best. This is why McNamera should have stayed at Ford. This fetishism for beating enemies on paper is what got us caught in this decade long miasma in the ME. I get that Veeky Forums hates liberals and all that, but jesus christ.

Murrica got itself into a shitty decline also due to Vietnam,nobody won except Chinkna

Not really. China also didn't really win as they got BTFO by Vietnam a few years later after the US lost and did worse than the US militarily.

been there done that, didn't work

America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

John Quincy Adams, 1821

You're not thinking big enough bombs user

What would've happened if nukes were used, I'm asking out of curiosity because nuking a Soviet's ally at that time might result in WW3?

It'll be wwiii

They did agree to a Korea style compromise, it's just that when they broke it the US didn't enforce it

It's grammatically correct.

They did bomb the shit out of Haiphong and Hanoi in Linebacker 2 though
>Though when you look back at it overall. Vietnam lost by becoming a communist shit hole that makes US clothes for dirt poor prices and their quality of living is low.
They wouldn't have been if the UN and US hadn't put embargo on them, Chink backstabbed and Soviet ignored them
Also the US was so butthurt they funded Pol Pot just to spite Vietnam, so much for that better dead than red and 'freedom'
Either ww3 or the result is the same (the amount of nuke required to win the NVA would make the US lose the Cold war) but worse for Vietnam because of radiation (they still have agent orange to deal with and that shit is almost as bad as radioactive)

I have met a lot of American veterans. None of them said to me that their military outkilled enemy 15 to 1 nor crushed NVA military like US's propaganda is always barking. They all blame warmonger US government who push many of them to death for no fucking reason.

If you want to take this discussion seriously then i can advice you to answer my question first. After that you could answer your question yourself. You guys always argue like "oh finally we repulse their attack so we won the war" . However Vietnam war is not object-captured warfare dumbass. It is a war of attrition where both sides try to inflict damage on each other as much as possible and who hold longer would win. I have to tell you again to look at the fucking fact: American and allies casualty in total was even higher than NVA and Vietcong combined. There is no fucking myth like "US outkilled enemy 15 to 1, US army was crushing the enemy etc"that is what your propaganda is always barking.

This is what Giap normally said "We know we can't defeat US's army by only using military power. However we could make enough damage and political pressure for them to give up Vietnam." In every of his speak, Giap always insist that "the victory is a combination of political and military victory. He always thank for unification of Vietnamese to fight against Imperialism and thank for international peace-lovers around the world who support Vietnam during the war. " Again, I am sure with you that Giap never said something like " we got our ass kicked in every battle". It is a fucking propaganda?

Answer 2 questions and my : First, Why were US and allies casualties even higher than its enemy, given that they was always superior in numbers, high-technology to NVA? That is the fact. Second, despite of the fact, why do some American dickheads still believe "US's army is winning the war". Just answer those 2 questions Newton. Otherwise shut the fuck up. Everyone know you are sore losers, your propaganda is not enough to cover your crime and defeat. You are an idiot.

Giap never said so. Please give me the video showing he said that please? or is it written by US' propaganda book. That makes some American young dickheads believe in. I didnt expect you guys are so gullible.?

the US picked on less determined or very tech inferior enemies during the 19th century.

>nixon sends the enterprise to india to bully them with an invasion force
>russians pop out with a nuclear sub
>indians are conducting their own carrier ops in the area including a naval invasion of cox bazaar
would have been terrifying if someone lost their cool there

I just assume it was a resource war. America gets to wear out the USSR and China by forcing them to supply the Kongs for long years, and the American government also gets to spend on the military, beefing up the GDP and insuring the continuity of R&D breakthroughs and tech advancement.

They knew a classic win wouldn't be attainable, they were in it for the long term game.

It wasn't just hippies who were against Vietnam my dude. Nixon, a conservative, won by promising to end the war.

>if you aren't a warmonger moron you are an hippie
'no'
also, having killed millions of people including civilians isn't an accomplishment, at least not for a democracy pretending to be morally just, only a sociopath would consider such a thing as positive

>fighting a unfinishable war forever

asians play go, while you play chess, you just can't think a good outcome outside of checking the enemy king

there was no way to support the war economically, and if they did, china and russia would have been even a bigger threat than they were after the war, just think that for a second, grinding your economy and military for a complete waste of space in vietnam while the ussr and china grew stronger in comparison at every second

>Wtf? What cease fire are you talking about? When did that happen?
Daily reminder that the NVA didn't start shit again until the Democrats were elected and they knew the US wouldn't come back for round 2.

>: First, Why were US and allies casualties even higher than its enemy
They weren't.

I fucking laugh everytime burgers feel emasculated when the world says that they lost the vietnam war

top kek, they try so much at arguing otherwise, you can sense the feelings of inadequacy behind the screens of every burger post

The same as being called United Statians. If they live in the America continent, then they can be called american, canadians are also americans. Don't you agree?

vietnam was in a civil war and the US backed the wrong side, its citizens realized this much sooner than the government but eventually they got the message

Try calling a Canadian an American see how that works out. Furthermore, the USA is the only country on the American Continent (North and South) with America in its name, unlike United States (United Mexican States).

>preventing commies from chimping out
Funny, because last time I checked the only people giving the Khmer Rouge any support was the US.

>If you want to win a war, you have to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war.
That's kind of what the bombing campaigns were there for.

>China also didn't really win
China won territory in that war, Vietnam did not, how is that "BTFO"?

>This fetishism for beating enemies on paper is what got us caught in this decade long miasma in the ME.

I call bullshit. Way way back in the day over a century ago, a proto version of ISIS was causing problems in the Saudi Arabia region. The west didn't fuck around on this, when the British saw this was happening they sent an army in and slaughtered them to the last man and killed anyone allied with or sympathetic to their cause. It can be done, if you're willing to go that far.

And the middle east is still shit. The British hardly fixed anything.

The USA lost it to domestic commies. Hippies were just one of many proxies.

The 15:1 kd isn't American propaganda it's a fact. But the reason we had Killed that many wasn't because the average American soldier was a superhuman but because of our vast number of resources. We had complete air superiority and were better equipped. Even the current Vietnamese sources on the war show the same kd. I am very curious if you have any sources to backup your claims.

Those particular extremists were certainly gone.

The US lost Vietnam for several reasons

1. The geopolitical implications surrounding the conflict were such that the US couldn't win either the relatively quick and painless type of victory that McNamara expected or the long and protracted kind of war that Vietnam actually was. The US leadership was extremely worried about Red China (after all, they had failed to prevent the victory of Mao in the civil war and had already had the Chinese intervene in another ultimately unpopular Asian land war). People might talk about Hanoi and Haiphong harbor and say that they weren't damaged enough, but the US did kill well over a million civilians with its indiscriminate bombing and campaigns such as Operation Speedy Resolve.

2. North Vietnam was a more stable and widely accepted government for the people of both Vietnams, even with the war crimes and repressive actions that it committed. The original agreement to end the French Indochina war (which went unsigned by the US and South Vietnam) stated that elections were to be held within a few years. While the US was rightfully concerned that the North Vietnamese would interfere with the process in their part of the land, they also knew that, in a fair national election, Ho and the CPV would emerge victorious. So, they set out to create South Vietnam as a puppet in order to counterbalance the North. Numerous American war crimes and particularly the above-mentioned killing of civilians by the thousands (due to negligence and a racialized dehumanization of the Vietnamese as exemplified by the "mere gook rule") turned otherwise sympathetic factions within South Vietnam towards the North, or to indifference between who ruled, as long as they could live in their villages in relative peace.

3. The antiwar sentiment within the US. Part of the reason that Nixon won in 1968 was, besides his masterful use of the Southern strategy and the obvious dysfunction within the Democratic Party, his promise about a secret plan to end the war.

>muh poor shitskins
>muh poor commies
>muh poor terrorists
Please kill yourself, or alternatively, go back to leftypol

the funny thing is the mental gymnastics
>muh million enemy deaths
>b-but we didn't actually lose
yes you did, you had a mission and you failed it, you caused unnecessary suffering for nothing and you left 50k of your countrymen dead in a jungle for fucking nothing

>tactical victory!
>the gommunists did the hippies!
>we didn't even WANT to win

It did in 72, however it was too little too late. If they'd simply burned Hanoi to the ground to begin with and blitzed the north they might've pulled it off.

Even the south continues to be an area with more pro u.s sentiments, especially after the mass movements in the 50s.

Reminder: There was no Vietcong. It was a name given to groups of armed farmers by America in order to demonize them. (See: Al Qaeda)

Next you're gonna tell me the US is actually controlled by farmers

Vietcong was just what the arvn called the national liberation front.

>isn't American propaganda it's a fact
>we had Killed
>WE Are american of united state
>average American soldier was a SuperHuman (kill civilians) (rape) - because of our vast number of resources
>We had complete air superiority and were better equipped (agent orange)
I bet you didn't count ARVN, Korean, Austalian, Kiwis, Filipino,... casualties in the war, American didn't fight alone, they prefered letting their puppet fight for them.

I love the fact that the greatest military force on earth got it's shit pushed in by dudes wearing flipflops riding bikes.

It's fact for US forces only, not for our allies. South Vietnamese losses were catastrophic and they were the ones that needed to be able to hold out for the war to actually be won. We are repeating this in Afghanistan.

>Did the USians lost it to the rice farmers, or Hippies?
Yes

Bullshit it's a fact.

3,500,000 dead gooks to 58,000 dead Americans is almost 70:1, not 15:1.

And somehow they still lost the war.

See

>I love the fact that the greatest military force on earth got it's shit pushed in by dudes wearing flipflops riding bikes.

That's what makes them so insecure and defensive about it
It means that all of their military might means shit if they insist on being retards

>55,000 dead American GIs
>numberless hordes of dead Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians
Goddam it, France. You're America's Italy, and Vietnam was our Greece.

>He thought every VC will ride a bike to front-line
>their military might means shit if they insist on being retards
>hiding and ambush is a retard
You can't possibly be this retarded. Get out of here with your logic.

the arvn is something like 200,000-300,000 casualties including wounded, and not to diminish the bravery of south vietnam but american forces did a considerable amount of the heavy lifting especially in the later years.