Vietnam War, lost or not.

Please pick one of the two options.

  • The US militarily lost the Vietnam War.

    Votes: 25 45.5%

  • The US withdrew only due to the homefront protests, but they it never lost on the military level

    Votes: 30 54.5%
  • Total voters
    55
Are you trying to say that the u.s actually won the war in vietnam?
Its nice to see that you dont want to give your country a bad label by saying the u.s didnt win the war but the truth is that the u.s pulled out because of heavy u.s casualties adding up to around 60,000 and the fact that vietnam was very hard to take control of without creating a mass insurgency which was responsible for most u.s casualties.
The anti-war protests started before the u.s went to vietnam just like the anti war protests for iraq started long before the actual war. Why would the u.s government ignore the protests and only pay attention to them after 7 years of war?
 
prolific said:
Are you trying to say that the u.s actually won the war in vietnam?
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Good heavens, I certainly hope not. We can justify it however we like, but the USA really and truly lost for the first and only time courtesy of the Vietnam Conflict.
Its nice to see that you dont want to give your country a bad label by saying the u.s didnt win the war but the truth is that the u.s pulled out because of heavy u.s casualties adding up to around 60,000
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Incorrect. First of all, Within about a 10 year period, taking 60,000 casualties is light casualties, not heavy. Consider the casualties taken by both sides of the Korean Conflict in just 2 year!

and the fact that vietnam was very hard to take control of without creating a mass insurgency which was responsible for most u.s casualties.
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"Taking control of Vietnam" was not what created the "Insurgency" in South Vietnam. Forcing the creation of a non-Communist half of Vietnam -- hence the creation of the nation of South Vietnam -- touched off much of it, but the insurgents (Vietcong) were:
1.) A definite minority.
2.) Cannot be said to have been acting alone. Their initial creation continued existence was heavily dependent upon the support of the USSR, China and North Vietnam. Without these outside factors, the Vietcong would have been a shortlived, failed rebellion.
3.) As we are now seeing in Iraq, when you are nowhere close to having the majority vote, brutalizing the opposing magority into submission is one thing to try.

The anti-war protests started before the u.s went to vietnam just like the anti war protests for iraq started long before the actual war. Why would the u.s government ignore the protests and only pay attention to them after 7 years of war?
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The two conflicts are similar there, but name for me any war in modern history that didn't have your "give peace a chance" or " ... peace in our time" (Chamberlain) stupidity around. There are always people crying peace when peace is counterproductive and even absolutely damning. At the outset of Vietnam, that segment of Americans was very very tiny.
 
godofthunder9010 said:
This bit of loveliness. Surely does look all terrible and inhumane when you only take this one frame and slap it onto the cover of your Magazine (it was Time magazine I believe). Makes our role in Vietnam seem like we were absolute monsters, doesn't it? But if you watch the video of exactly the same incident, you realize that the "crying" face is not crying at. It was an expression of rage, but this frame catches it with his eyes closed and all scrunched up. Time (or whover it was) just picked to perfect frame to make it look like something completely different than it was. This gentleman had just been captured. He had just knocked down a couple soldiers and was in the process of breaking and running. The guy with the gun does in fact shoot him in the head. Had he not done so, this man might very well have escaped.
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I believe that was a South Vietnamese Police Officer firing the gun, they actually had a picture of this in my school and through some miracle they even had a caption that put it into context, kind of, read something like this: "South Vietnamese Police Officer kills a captured Vietcong." Quite amazing.

prolific said:
Are you trying to say that the u.s actually won the war in vietnam?
Its nice to see that you dont want to give your country a bad label by saying the u.s didnt win the war but the truth is that the u.s pulled out because of heavy u.s casualties adding up to around 60,000 and the fact that vietnam was very hard to take control of without creating a mass insurgency which was responsible for most u.s casualties.
The anti-war protests started before the u.s went to vietnam just like the anti war protests for iraq started long before the actual war. Why would the u.s government ignore the protests and only pay attention to them after 7 years of war?
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This was a political loss, not a military loss, that's the difference we are trying to point out to people like yourself.
 
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prolific said:
Are you trying to say that the u.s actually won the war in vietnam?
Its nice to see that you dont want to give your country a bad label by saying the u.s didnt win the war but the truth is that the u.s pulled out because of heavy u.s casualties adding up to around 60,000 and the fact that vietnam was very hard to take control of without creating a mass insurgency which was responsible for most u.s casualties.u.s government ignore the protests and only pay attention to them after 7 years of war?
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Are you trying to say that the American military was defeated in Vietnam?
It's sad to see so many people taking things out of context and even believing untruths designed to make America look bad. The truth is the U.S. withdrew its military because of changing public opinion influenced by communist funded, inspired, and trained agitators, of this there is no doubt.
The fact is that there was no true South Vietnamese insurgency.
How could anti-war protests exist before the war? What the heck would they be protesting?
During the early conflict, the protestors were a minute group of students that would have been protesting something else if not Vietnam, kind of like PETA. Who pays them much attention?
 
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Exactly zander, they are movies (like King Kong). Hollywood is not exactly a good source for the truth is it?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
This bit of loveliness. Surely does look all terrible and inhumane when you only take this one frame and slap it onto the cover of your Magazine (it was Time magazine I believe). Makes our role in Vietnam seem like we were absolute monsters, doesn't it? But if you watch the video of exactly the same incident, you realize that the "crying" face is not crying at. It was an expression of rage, but this frame catches it with his eyes closed and all scrunched up. Time (or whover it was) just picked to perfect frame to make it look like something completely different than it was. This gentleman had just been captured. He had just knocked down a couple soldiers and was in the process of breaking and running. The guy with the gun does in fact shoot him in the head. Had he not done so, this man might very well have escaped.


Originally Posted by Damien435
I believe that was a South Vietnamese Police Officer firing the gun, they actually had a picture of this in my school and through some mirable they even had a caption that put it into context, kind of, read something like this: "South Vietnamese Police Officer kills a captured Vietcong." Quite amazing.

The NV man is question was in fact an NVA or VC officer (I forget which) caught in a combat area wearing civilian clothes. In other words, he was a spy. The South Vietnamese officer who pulled the trigger had just been informed that the NVA officer was fighting in the area that his family lived in. Now, if you read the Geneva convention, you will find that the punishment for spies caught in a combat area is summary execution. The police officer simply did his job and it was completely legal.
Yep, it surprised the hell out of me as well.

Dean.
 
Yes well that may be true Dean, but even w/o the Geneva Conventions, the man was a prisoner attempting to escape. He was attempting to do so by force, so even if he hadn't been a spy, he was attempting to run away from, in effect, an arresting officer. The arresting officer, to simplify, shot him before he could escape. Would he have been executed anyway? In all likelihood, yes.
 
If you ever see the video, it looks awful. The VC prisoner, Captain Nguyen Van Lem (in some sources, his name was Bay Lop) was led up to ARVN General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who just looked at him. Unfortunately, we cannot see his face as his back was towards the camera. The General then turned towards the prisoner and very nonchalantly waved the pistol back and forth to motion the guards to move away from him. This is when I think his expression must have been scary, because the two guards moved as if they were standing on live electric wires. At this point the prisoner reacted in fear and anger, but he did not have time to do anything else as General Loan simply raised the pistol and fired at point-blank range. He was not even trying to escape, and I don't even think he got a chance to talk. But as I said, because of the circumstances in which he was captured, the General was completely within his rights to do what he did.
Ironically, according to many sources, this was the image that changed the perception of the American public towards the war. It was after the showing of the video oon the 6:00 news that people started to believe tha tUS soldiers should be pulled out and that the US was losing the war.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Ngoc_Loan and http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/666noxlw.asp for more info.

Dean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Van_Lem

I found a bit more.
South Vietnamese sources said that Lem commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; these sources said that Lem was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. (In some accounts, the deputy was a victim as well; in others, the number of murdered relatives were as few as six.) Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Lem's widow confirmed that her husband was a member of the Viet Cong and she did not see him after the Tet Offensive began. Shortly after the execution, a South Vietnamese official who had not been present said that Lem was only a political operative.

Though Loan's execution of Lem would have violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war had he been wearing a uniform and fighting enemy soldiers, the execution was attributed to war crimes allegedly committed by Lem. The rights of POW status were accorded to Viet Cong only if captured during military operations. Those captured as unlawful combatants were subject only to the laws of the South Vietnamese government, which sanctioned the use of draconian measures.

Note the "had he been wearing..." bit. A bit of diversion there. The fact is that he was not, and the Geneva Convention is very clear on this. If you are a combattant, a member of an organized military force, wearing civilian clothes while fighting in a combat zone, you are considered a spy, with the obvious consequences. In addition, if Lem was only a "political operative", what would he have been doing hiding in a ditch in enemy territory while his death squads were running around?!??

Also keep in mind that the activities of the death squad can be described as war crimes!
 
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Surely to fail your military objective(prevent north invading south) is to lose whatever the reason.
This is not to diminish the superb performance of those who served there.
 
Hey Sven, while we were there, we kept the North from overthrowing the South. It wasn't until the North signed a peace treaty (Jan 27, 1973)promising not to invade the South that we left (March 1973). Even after we were gone the North took a while to take the South (April 1974). It's not as simple as you might think.
 
Checkmate....

DTop said:
Hey Sven, while we were there, we kept the North from overthrowing the South. It wasn't until the North signed a peace treaty (Jan 27, 1973)promising not to invade the South that we left (March 1973). Even after we were gone the North took a while to take the South (April 1974). It's not as simple as you might think.
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Check and Mate on this topic....as pointed out via the quote, the North had not yet taken control of the South until well past April of 75..(((correction))). The South were still in control on the day we pulled our last people out of that h*ll-hole (March 73). We didn't really lose the war - our politicians pulled us out while we were still meeting mission profiles.

The South lost the war when they allowed the North to invade and didn't put up a strong enough defense. Part of the problem was that some of the South Vietnamese were in favor of joining the North to the South and helped with the takeover by the North.
 
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Actually it was April of 1975, two years later when the North Vietnamese violated the treaty they signed.
8)
 
DTop said:
Hey Sven, while we were there, we kept the North from overthrowing the South. It wasn't until the North signed a peace treaty (Jan 27, 1973)promising not to invade the South that we left (March 1973). Even after we were gone the North took a while to take the South (April 1974). It's not as simple as you might think.
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Sorry for my ignorance.
 
I am a Vietnamese-American, raised by Vietnamese parents who escaped from Viet Nam during the war, and I was born and raised in Southern California (Orange County, very near Little Saigon).

Never, EVER have I heard any comments against the American military effort in Viet Nam from my relatives or any other Vietnamese person.

The 1SGT of my NJROTC unit, who served a tour in Viet Nam, has always proudly said that the US military never militarily lost a battle in Viet Nam. I think that's probably an exaggeration, but from my studies of history, it's mostly true.

I don't think any blame can be put on American forces. The American military was the only thing keeping the North from overwhelming the South, and it's no surprise that once the US pulled out, the South was defeated.

Rather, in my opinion the war was lost by political micromanagement of the war (rather than leaving it to soldiers) and by American anti-war sentiment at home which magnified the political effects.
 
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