Every day I start a thread on /pol/ that quite simply asks "how did America lose the Vietnam war?" Example It invariably leads to a 300 post thread of vitriol, name-calling, bombastic cock-swinging , memes and other such /pol/ related behavior. They are, for want of a better word, "triggered". The vast majority of contributors to the thread are American and there is no clear consensus or singular narrative as to what happened in Vietnam. This runs contrary to the usual /pol/ threads which quickly devolve into some kind of consensus or groupthink. From this it is safe to conclude that the damage to the American psyche caused by the Vietnam war is still a gaping, unresolved wound......even with millennials. Given that the mainstream and conspiracy based "factual" sources (which your average American, or even /pol/tard) have so obviously failed to capture the nature of this wound, nevermind it's poultice, I wonder if Veeky Forums could provide recommendations of novels related to the impact of the Vietnam war on the American psyche?
Please direct autistic screeching to the /pol/ link mentioned above. Serous answers only........also I'm more than familiar with Herr's excellent "dispatches"
Zachary Murphy
>how did America lose the Vietnam war? Same reason America won the Revolutionary War
Matthew Mitchell
is that Benedict Cumberbatch?
Asher White
You obviously didn't read my post in its entirety.
TL;DR I wonder if Veeky Forums could provide recommendations of novels related to the impact of the Vietnam war on the American psyche?
Lincoln Phillips
I read your post
Nicholas James
>Please direct autistic screeching to the /pol/ link mentioned above >not OP
Isaiah Cox
The same reason the French couldn't hold French Indochina, The same reason the Brittish couldn't hold Afghanistan.
Luis Young
See
Oliver Cook
not enough will to break the population by rounding them up and killing them all?
Aaron Williams
Let's stay on topic fellas
Ryan James
Who are you anyway
Parker Perry
I don't know who he is either but I think we should load him on the truck.
Evan Cox
Fuck off, we're not some qt Barnes & Noble girl for you to sadly flex your brainpower at under the guise of looking for book recommendations.
Figure it out yourself, and if you somehow find the will in your pathetic little mind to finish them, then come talk to us about it, you fucking pseud.
Charles Nelson
vietnam is like the biggest cliche ever
distance yourself bro, you'll be better for it, watch the deer hunter maybe
Jackson Moore
This
Also, isn't it like 3 A.M. in Jolly Ol' England. Go to fucking sleep Nige
Jaxson Jenkins
not exactly but sort of
the US dumped tons of men into Vietnam, way more than necessary
what they really needed was a smaller force of dedicated soldiers for tours of several years instead of just one. soldiers were drafted and they tried too hard to make them comfortable which only hurt the war effort.
likewise veterans of several years who are more willing to follow the chain of command can be relied upon more in stressful situations. the US needed the willpower to hit specific targets hard regardless of casualties or popular opinion. the Search and Destroy missions were a good start but to little too late. they destroyed the Viet Cong as a fighting force but by then the American public wanted nothing to do with the war.
really the biggest issue however was the instability of the South Vietnamese government. the Americans allowing a dictator to take power was a very bad move.
the fact remains if the situation had been put to a popular vote, Ho Chi Minh would have won in a landslide.
Parker Russell
>no clear consensus or singular narrative as to what happened Ask yourself if Vietnam is one country or two. And I don't mean that in a strictly territorial, maps-and-borders sense.
Try checking out H. Bruce Franklin's syllabi from his Vietnam courses at Rutgers. He also co-edited Vietnam & America a pretty decent, cheap text full of primary sources from early Ho thru the "end" of the war.
Jace Parker
...
Chase Mitchell
Too much dope. Heroin and marijuana were cheap and readily available. It turned out military into degenerate junkies.
Samuel Wright
See . For a literature board, you guys really struggle at reading and comprehension.
Luis Sanchez
A Bright Shining Lie Born on the Fourth of July (the book, seriously) Dereliction of Duty Manufacturing Consent
To answer your question, I think it is becoming obvious that America DIDNT lose Vietnam, although the strategy was so grotesque and cynical, and the lack of regard for human life so profound that it may well have.
It was essentially a firebreak in the sand drawn between communism and Indonesia/the free world. The bombing of Laos and Cambodia, the bombings of the north, and the utter devastation wracked in the south created a no mans land where communism could not effective push past, and the leadership was happy to spend tens of thousands of american lives and millions of yellow peoples lives to make that happen.
If America had a WW2 or WW1 tier populace of patriots at the time, that probably would have worked, but the rise of the left in the US in the 60s among the youth turned that position into an unteneble one, and made the government and military leadership lose legitimacy.
Still, communism was stopped in south east asia, indonesia still sells us oil, and Vietnam has become a decent place to go on vacation. A victory for neo liberalism
:/
Oliver Long
Thank you. Great recommendations.
Much obliged
Jace Jones
Any rec's for a book that does a good job of simply telling the whole narrative of what happened in the Vietnam war? I've seen more personal stories about damaged minds during/after the way then the actually events of it.
Kevin Morgan
Because:
1. Goals were unclear. 2. Massive amount of friendly vietnamese corruption. 3. Unwillingness to fully escalate war, because it would piss off the big commie nations.
Thomas Rivera
The best thing the U.S. could have done was leave vietnam alone, and let communism fail.
Communism lasted less than 10 years in vietnam after the U.S. pulled out.
That's because, even though we didn't know it at the time, communism is a really fucking dumb system that never works.
Isaac Sanchez
I've been reading Every War Must End on and off and it gives some interesting ideas on how wars are lost and won. For Vietnam, it seems an unclear goal or purpose among those waging the war led to the loss of interest from the public and eventually from politicians.