What went wrong with the Vietnam War? Why didn't they just fight it like WWII and hold captured land?

What went wrong with the Vietnam War? Why didn't they just fight it like WWII and hold captured land?

Gureilla Warfare.

Also we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. What a fucking mistake of a war.

Because it was a guerrilla war without clearly defined battlefronts you autist

China

USA would bomb the fuck out of a city, send in troops, kill a bunch of people and then leave.

"Guerilla war" rarely actually accomplishes anything unless the majority of the population is already on your side. Look at the FARC in Columbia or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. The primarily problem was the South Vietnam only had the loyalty of those Vietnamese it could directly imburse. The entire SV political structure was built on a refined system of corruption and the people were the ones being screwed with constant graft while the Viet Minh carried the promise of being a government for and by the people instead of foreign interests.

A bunch of unmotivated, shitfaced, apathetic teenagers fighting for a country they probably never heard of defending a culture they don't know VS. Ideologically motivated rebels fighting in the lands they've lived their entire lives.

It ain't me

>A bunch of unmotivated, shitfaced, apathetic teenagers fighting for a country they probably never heard of defending a culture they don't know VS. Ideologically motivated rebels fighting in the lands they've lived their entire lives.

Shut up, hippy

*Project 100,000's your 4-F ass"

Have fun in Khe Sanh, faggot

Because a full on occupation of every centre of population within south vietnam would have involved investment beyond what the US was willing to provide. Same with all guerrilla wars. It's a solution in a theoretical sense, but it's practically impossible.

>What went wrong with the Vietnam War?

Burgers coup'd the only person holding South Vietnam together

When we came to the table, didn't one of the US officers tell the lead NV rep that he'd never taken a single objective, and the NV rep said sommat like "irrelevant?"

>while the Viet Minh carried the promise of being a government for and by the people instead of foreign interests.
>mfw most of the vietcong were thrown in the same re-education camps as their ARVN foes

>Why didn't they just fight it like WWII and hold captured land?
because they couldnt.

>What went wrong with the Vietnam War? Why didn't they just fight it like WWII and hold captured land?
A: we were trying to avoid another situation like Korea where we were on the cusp of a conventional war victory and then China invaded in an overwhelming wave and we sued for an armistice to keep the conflict from spiraling into WW3.

B: The whole point of us being there was trying to convince the Vietnamese to defend their own country against communism, even when we were doing the lion's share of the fighting and basically propping up a corrupt, ineffectual regime whose only redeeming feature was that it was pro-USA and could barely project force or even keep its own population in line, but we wanted to pretend like it was the Vietnamese doing all the actual work and we were only there playing support

pic unrelated

Domestic pressure, letting the press embed freely with the troops.

>even when we were doing the lion's share of the fighting and basically propping up a corrupt, ineffectual regime whose only redeeming feature was that it was pro-USA and could barely project force or even keep its own population in line, but we wanted to pretend like it was the Vietnamese doing all the actual work and we were only there playing support

That was America's own fucking fault, Diem never wanted American troops unless North Vietnam actually invaded (as he rightly knew that "boots on the ground" would just reinforce the idea he was an American puppet).

By the time the US embarked on "Vietnamization" it had already lost almost a decade in which it could've properly prepared ARVN for combat

>What went wrong with the Vietnam War?

one side didn't care about it's casualties whatsoever and was a totalitarian regime which had literally zero accountability to anyone.

The North government didn't even report casualty figures, or tell the people when their offensives failed, it's super easy to fight a war when your decisions aren't answerable to your own people.

>Le Duan keeps mounting big offensives
>tens of thousands of casualties, unsuccessful every time
>"lol do another one the southern people will revolt this time :^)"

If RVN wasn't basically in anarchy the entire time the North Vietnamese wouldn't have been nearly as successful

>bomb the fuck out of a city

>rebels
>NVA/VC

Some guy from literally another country who lives in the jungle around your village with 300 of his pals and who visits to threaten you with murder unless you supply him isn't really a rebel

he fucked up with the whole buddist monk situation and needed to go because of that

Was Vietnam war ever winnable?
Like, I feel the americans did everything they could, but the corruptness of South Vietnam and the fact that VC blended so well with Civilians and the fact that NVA just kept launching attacks, despite huge losses kinda fucks up all american efforts, support at home or not.

certainly disproves the ink blot theory, especially after the Soviets tried in Afghanistan with the same lack of success, then the eternal burger tried the same loser policy in Afghanistan after not learning from neither himself nor the Soviets. luckily juice dropped the pretense and now amis don't even try to be the good guys in the ME anymore. fucking sad

You do realize it was ARVN that couped him right? The Americans just approved of it because he was so wildly unpopular outside the Catholic community

I thought CIA killed him

ARVN officers pulled the trigger

>didnt get to march in the parade

Lel fagits

>Columbia
oh come the fuck on dude.

They felt powerful and important after WW2, even tho they barely fought and since they went with the "we won a larger war guys this is nothing" (and the guerrilla tactics were unknown for most of the soldiers on the us) they kept advancing like idiots

This basically

Nva knew they didn't need to win on the ground just force the American opinion against the war and make the cost of maintaining it greater than the benefit of continued fighting

>The US underestimated just how much resources the USSR and China were prepared to commit to North Vietnam
>The US lost the propaganda war and therefore failed to convince the general populace to not support and hide the VC
>The US underestimated the NVA's tactical sophistication and capacity to replace lost troops
>The US could never reliably shut down NV logistics and so people, weapons and supplies continued to appear wherever NV wanted them to be

Pic related is a great primer.

CIA actually told JFK to leave him in and just quietly get rid of Nhu, his brother had too much power and was out of control, but the eternal state department told him to help the ARVN coup, then the fucking gook idiots went and killed them in the back of an APC

>tfw state department destroying US interests since way back when

I always found it ridiculous that Lansdale wanted to send Nhu to Harvard because he fancied himself an intellectual and it would keep him the fuck away from Vietnam, but the dean at Harvard started reeing about it "not being how things are done"

>What went wrong with the Vietnam War?

unironically not bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail where it went through Laos and Cambodia from the immediate outset

>but the dean at Harvard started reeing about it "not being how things are done"

kek thanks to that stuffy cuck of a dean the vietnam war got out of control, hope he died happy with himself

>Lansdale wanted to send Nhu to Harvard because he fancied himself an intellectual and it would keep him the fuck away from Vietnam

the things this simple idea would have solved fucking hell, genuinely angry now

>just how much resources the USSR and China were prepared to commit to North Vietnam

>take billions in material assistance from USSR
>take that and hundreds of thousands of rear echelon troops from PRC
>basically tell them to fuck off after the war

Vietnam was pretty based

>the NVA's tactical sophistication and capacity to replace lost troops
>tfw the "crossover point" never came

Was Westmoreland actually delusional? w-was he a meme?

I think he was proved an idiot when after announcing the NVA was on the ropes they launched the Tet Offensive

>USSR was busy doing something else (collapsing)
>China was rooting for the guy who hates glasses but loves genocide
>Viets just want a quiet live after 1945
>1954
>1975
>1979
finally got it in 1985 with the normalisation with China, stopping border skirmishes and then another normalisation in 1995 with the US (in which the US demand the aids they gave SV during the war to be paid)

The US never invaded the North, thus providing a safe-haven for insurgents to train and pour across the border, somewhat like Pakistan's tribal areas are to Afghanistan, except Pakistan is ostensibly allied with the US.

Are those Rhodesians? They have fal

Of course the war was winnable. The big question was more: would is actually remain stable? The South Vietnamese government was deeply unpopular, and even if the North were wiped out, it's unlikely the people would accept them. You'd just get a new, different kind of guerrilla terrorism.

Admittedly, that isn't unsolvable. Truly democratic elections with some half-decent candidates give a really powerful sense of legitimacy. It's just unlikely the South Vietnamese elite would ever be interested in this. Very few countries in the world are decently free democracies.

Aussies also had troops in Vietnam.

what point are you trying to make

>city

>The whole point of us being there was trying to convince the Vietnamese to defend their own country against communism,
Yep if the goal of your war is to avoid people turning to commies and towards their ideology -- then propping up a corrupt anti-commie režime and bombing everythign to shit is not very good idea how to accomplish that. Commies will be seen as good guys by the populace the more you bomb everything up - you could i guess kill EVERYONE but this would not accomplish goal of turning the people to your ideology would it.

>lost because they didnt bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail enough

US couldn't invade the north for fear of Korea Part 2
US couldn't bomb people into giving up an idea
US couldn't kill enough people to give up an idea

The Vietnamese just wanted their own country.

The ARVN would never have moved on Diem without America's explicit/implicit support, though

Also Diem and his brother had secretly approached North Vietnam in regards to turning the South into a "neutral" state with commercial/cultural relations with the North, and a power-sharing agreement between Diem's party and communist factions in South Vietnam brokered by De Gaulle

>tfw you could have stopped it, if dumb Burgerstanis didn't think anyone and everyone in the Third World was a commie

johnson/mcnamaras' phased escalation gave the communists time to recover as opposed to gradually squeezing them to death as was intended.
the americans/allies not being permitted to push into north vietnam and their safe zones in cambodia in an attempt to keep the war contained and prevent further escalation.
ineffective bombing campaigns that mostly attempted to interdict supplies and troop movements (see commando hunt) as opposed to more direct and indiscriminate attacks on haiphong and other targets in the north.
attrition and counter insurgency in general take a long time, much longer than the public was willing to stomach.

just bad planning and leadership overall.

Under rated.

>ink blot theory
Can you do a quick and dirty explanation? My attempts to Google the term get swamped by returns about the Rorschach test.

Not him, but I think he was pointing out that if you are going to speak knowingly on a subject, being able to spell the relevant terms (such as Colombia) is an important part of not looking ignant.

We were trying to kill an idea, and ideas are bullet proof.

What happens when the enemy gets too close for CAS though?

Lawl
At least hippies didn't lose the war!

>and basically propping up a corrupt, ineffectual regime whose only redeeming feature was that it was pro-USA and could barely project force or even keep its own population in line
Why does this describe nearly everything the CIA did during the Cold War?