Originally Posted by willsrn2000

Politicians micromanaging Vietnam from Washington didnt help..

The JCS had their hands tied because Johnson and McNamara planned or approved each and every mission/bombing raid!

Someone said "the majority of the population was against us."
What a bunch of hooey!!!!

The poor villagers didn't give a damn who was running things if they were left alone to plant their crops and raise their children in peace. They also knew nothing of governments far away when the Viet Cong came to their villages and chopped off a few heads. What was the central government doing to stop it.

Yes, the South Vietnamese government was corrupt. But so is/was every single government in Asia! And our own US government too.

We did NOT lose the war! We won the war but lost the peace.
A media driven by left leaning groups with many journalists only seeking their own glorification showed only the bad and not the million of good things our troops did for the people of Vietnam.

Notice any similarities to what is being reported from Iraq and Afghanistan today?

best speech he ever made

LBJ quits

The American military DID NOT lose the Vietnam War. It won every battle that it engaged in. The American politicians lost the war. The people in charge of our government wanted to run the war THEIR way,not the military's way.
McNamara was the biggest egotistical idiot that ever held his position. He thought he was smarter than all the Generals and Admirals.
If JFK had been there,you would have seen a Desert Storm type of military situation.
The Army would have started in the South fighting North. The Marines(1st and 3rd Divisions) would have been landed around Haiphong and fought west all across the country as a blocking force. In military jargon it is known as "Hammer and Anvil".
With our overwhelming air power(Navy and Air Force) in support ,it would have worked.
Westmoreland had such a strategy in mind when he was in charge.
The US would not have used 'nukes' unless China or Soviet Union did.
The politicians,LBJ and Nixon included,thought they could micro manage the war.
I was there in '72 as a pilot(Marine). Our daily mission assignments came from D.C.,not from 7th Fleet or 7th Air Force(local commands).
If the military had been allowed to run the war their way,I and several million other Americans never would have been there.
It would have been 'quick and dirty',but it would have ended a lot differently.

Let's get real about this - if the USA had accepted Ho Chi Mihn's offer of fighting against the Japanese and making France get out of Indochina, none of it would've happened.

Originally Posted by ezlead

The American military DID NOT lose the Vietnam War. It won every battle that it engaged in. The American politicians lost the war. The people in charge of our government wanted to run the war THEIR way,not the military's way.
McNamara was the biggest egotistical idiot that ever held his position. He thought he was smarter than all the Generals and Admirals.
If JFK had been there,you would have seen a Desert Storm type of military situation.
The Army would have started in the South fighting North. The Marines(1st and 3rd Divisions) would have been landed around Haiphong and fought west all across the country as a blocking force. In military jargon it is known as "Hammer and Anvil".
With our overwhelming air power(Navy and Air Force) in support ,it would have worked.
Westmoreland had such a strategy in mind when he was in charge.
The US would not have used 'nukes' unless China or Soviet Union did.
The politicians,LBJ and Nixon included,thought they could micro manage the war.
I was there in '72 as a pilot(Marine). Our daily mission assignments came from D.C.,not from 7th Fleet or 7th Air Force(local commands).
If the military had been allowed to run the war their way,I and several million other Americans never would have been there.
It would have been 'quick and dirty',but it would have ended a lot differently.

I'm a VN vet and I agree with what you say - but we were the military forces of the US and the US chose to loose the War.

We lost in Vietnam due to the simple fact we did not go into North Vietnam and take the war to them especially after the TET offensive failed.The V.C. were all but done and the NVA suffered massive casualties at Khe Sanh and Hue in particular. You cannot fight a war limited to your own back yard and our army were resticted to Sth Vietnam. Without an Army to take and hold ground the rest is just wasted. 53000 U.S.dead for nix, a shame.

Value each other opinions.