The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on June 20, 2017, 08:57:59 am
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Could America Really Have Won the Vietnam War?
As U.S. policymakers eventually decided, the game was simply not worth the candle.
Robert Farley [2]
Mark Moyar, the scholar of U.S. foreign and military policy, recently had the opportunity to update [3] an older argument on the viability of the Vietnam War. Moyar argues that the historical consensus on the war is wrong on several points, and that in fact the United States could have won the war and preserved the Saigon government at acceptable cost. While Moyar’s argument is worth consideration, he still fails to make his case against the long-standing consensus on the war.
The Myths
Source URL (retrieved on June 20, 2017): http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/could-america-really-have-won-the-vietnam-war-21204
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The war had been won by 1973 when US airpower and supplies allowed the ARVN to destroy the large army the Commies sent down from the north. By 1975 communist sympathizers had gotten control of Congress and denied use of US air power and denied supplies to the ARVN. They were defeated as soon as they ran out of ammo and fuel. Losing two armies in the space of two years probably would have made the north stop for a while, and given the south another 3-4 years of breathing room to re-arm and prepare for the next invasion.
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We did win the war, then the media and globalist technocrats lost it for us.
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We did win the war, then the media and globalist technocrats lost it for us.
Yep!
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The war had been won by 1973 when US airpower and supplies allowed the ARVN to destroy the large army the Commies sent down from the north. By 1975 communist sympathizers had gotten control of Congress and denied use of US air power and denied supplies to the ARVN. They were defeated as soon as they ran out of ammo and fuel. Losing two armies in the space of two years probably would have made the north stop for a while, and given the south another 3-4 years of breathing room to re-arm and prepare for the next invasion.
Exactly. The defeatists ignore that the ARVN defeated the NVA attack in 1972 without the assistance of U.S. ground troops. They could have done the same in 1975 except we abandoned them.
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We did win the war, then the media and globalist technocrats lost it for us.
That's how I see it too.
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Exactly. The defeatists ignore that the ARVN defeated the NVA attack in 1972 without the assistance of U.S. ground troops. They could have done the same in 1975 except we abandoned them.
They also ignore that after Tet in '68, the Viet Cong had been pretty well chewed up. It was Walter Cronkite's full gravitas telling America the war was "unwinnable" and the communist agitators of The New Left (which hijacked the Democrat Party) along with the rest of the media who convinced us to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The same bunch (except Cronkite) are at it again with Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Exactly. The defeatists ignore that the ARVN defeated the NVA attack in 1972 without the assistance of U.S. ground troops. They could have done the same in 1975 except we abandoned them.
If the Republic of Vietnam was viable then it could have done the same in 1965 with little more than an Eisenhower level of support.
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We did win the war, then the media and globalist technocrats lost it for us.
I see lots of vets with the patch...
"I don't know what happened... we were winning when I left."
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Vietnam War. 1955-1975. Over 58,000 Americans dead. (19 yrs., 5 mo.)
By 1972 when McGovern ran, it had gone on and on for 17 of those years, with about 56,000+ of those already killed.
(Nixon had run in 1968, claiming to have a "secret" way to win the war.)
The American people run out of patience, for "half-measure" wars. We will soon be at 16 yrs, for Afghanistan and yet we still allow hostile locals, to infiltrate our ranks and kill us.
We defeated Germany, Japan on several continents, in less than 4 yrs, because we went "all out."
We had 10 percent of our population in uniform. We killed civilians on the enemy side, as a means of bringing about unconditional surrender, and ending hostilities.
It worked, we won, and those wars have stayed won.
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We did win the war, then the media and globalist technocrats lost it for us.
Absolutely! And had to do it with one hand tied behind our backs most of the time! South Vietnam was only lost after we were long gone from the field and the U.S. Congress cut off support for the S. Vietnam government!
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The correct answer is Of course.
One of the North's top generals--General Giap himself, I believe--admitted to an American officer that America never lost a major battle in the entire history of the war. He then turned around and said "But you lost the war."
The only way to explain this is that America was not fighting the war to win.
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The correct answer is Of course.
One of the North's top generals--General Giap himself, I believe--admitted to an American officer that America never lost a major battle in the entire history of the war. He then turned around and said "But you lost the war."
The only way to explain this is that America was not fighting the war to win.
In a recent interview published in The Wall Street Journal, former colonel Bui Tin who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 confirmed the American Tet 1968 military victory:
"Our loses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for reelection. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to reestablish our presence but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely.
We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was." And on strategy: "If Johnson had
granted Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.... it was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units .... our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom .... if all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would
have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest was damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us. And the left: "Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.
Bui Tin went on to serve as the editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Disillusioned with the reality of Vietnamese communism Bui Tin now lives in Paris.
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The correct answer is Of course.
One of the North's top generals--General Giap himself, I believe--admitted to an American officer that America never lost a major battle in the entire history of the war. He then turned around and said "But you lost the war."
The only way to explain this is that America was not fighting the war to win.
Americans were, in SE Asia. The media and (some of) the politicians back home were fighting for the wrong side.
(http://media.patriotpost.us/img/ref/hanoijane2.jpg)
Haven't watched a movie with her in it since.
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The correct answer is Of course.
One of the North's top generals--General Giap himself, I believe--admitted to an American officer that America never lost a major battle in the entire history of the war. He then turned around and said "But you lost the war."
The only way to explain this is that America was not fighting the war to win.
Over the years I've arrived at the belief that the collective globalists deliberately lost that war to knock us off our feet and send us into a tailspin, which they did. Plus they gained a whole bunch of lefties who would later go on and make govt policy and run the bureaucracy, as well as the lobby industry.
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Americans were, in SE Asia. The media and (some of) the politicians back home were fighting for the wrong side.
(http://media.patriotpost.us/img/ref/hanoijane2.jpg)
Haven't watched a movie with her in it since.
Keg party at her gravesite when the time comes!
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Over the years I've arrived at the belief that the collective globalists deliberately lost that war to knock us off our feet and send us into a tailspin, which they did. Plus they gained a whole bunch of lefties who would later go on and make govt policy and run the bureaucracy, as well as the lobby industry.
During the war, the Democrat Party was taken over by Marxists. That was the war that was lost. I may not have agreed with what Hubert Humphrey saw as the solutions to America's problems, but I never doubted he was an American first, and patriotic. By Clinton, I wasn't sure about the loyalties of the Democrats, and by Obama I was sure their loyalty didn't reside here, although with most of them it appears it's just greed and not ideology.
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Could America Really Have Won the Vietnam War?
Damn Right we could have!!!!!!!
(http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140208060837/p__/protagonist/images/2/29/Sgt.Hartman.png)
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The correct answer is Of course.
One of the North's top generals--General Giap himself, I believe--admitted to an American officer that America never lost a major battle in the entire history of the war. He then turned around and said "But you lost the war."
The only way to explain this is that America was not fighting the war to win.
He also thanked John Kerry and his Viet Nam Vets for Peace for giving the war to them.
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Keg party at her gravesite when the time comes!
Don't shit where you eat... and don't piss where you drink.
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He also thanked John Kerry and his Viet Nam Vets for Peace for giving the war to them.
Yet people will swear up and down that the globalists don't drive wars...
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Yet people will swear up and down that the globalists don't drive wars...
He was just "leading from behind." :whistle: