re: Another history thread: How did we get involved in the Vietnam War?

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Yet if fell two years later? There are two camps on this argument, I'm sure we could argue it all day. If they scaled to the level of the NVA it would maybe of worked. Just my opinion.

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Those two years were critical. In that time the Soviets poured mountains of arms and supplies to the North while in that time the liberals in Congress would not even let the South have spare parts to keep their equipment in working order. The bottom like is the North was a vassal of the Soviets, the South was a vassal of the US. The Soviets stood by their vassal while the US abandoned theirs.

You don't start a plan that requires long term funding and bail out. Vietnamization wasn't going to be a get it going and they take it over thing. They had no economy to do so. That was the scale comment I made. If the Soviets via China were gonna spend you had to spend.

The same shite storm happened in Iraq. Billions sent there, we train them and bail out and leave them to it. Fell apart in months, run over by some gangs. I'm not even gonna get into the religious implications of internal fighting that undermined that army but in Vietnam they did not want to fight each other, book it. The common people sympathized with the northern guerrillas and the southern government did not have their support.

I think looking over the course of overall history, it was a pretty typical proxy war where two big powers get involved in another country's or countries' fight in an effort to better position themselves between one another.

I think we ended up getting a bit more directly involved in this one than most proxy wars,at least by US standards.

Still, while the casualties were pretty high for a US war (comes after CW, WWI and WWII in the number of casualties I think), historically speaking our casualties were like one country's one day casualties in wars like the Napoleonic ones.

This is such fricking bullshite. I wonder if you know better or if you're as dumb as the rest of the people trying to learn history on a message board.

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How did we end up in such a clusterfrick of a mess? I always thought it was to prevent the spread of communism by China, etc. but I saw in another thread that the French are the ones who originally got us involved

Can anyone expound on that?

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Yes I can.

Two people, JFK and Robert Strange McNamara.

Back in 1962.


Body counts and horrible ROE.


Also, The US denying the VC and the NVA weren't in Cambodia and Laos.

Thankfully Nixon invading Cambodia in 1970.

The worst was Mr. Cronkite showing dead Americans and after TET saying the war was lost.

We kicked the VC and the NVA'S arse in TET.




ETA: Forgot one a-hole LBJ. He stopped the bombing over the 17th parellel. When we had them on the ropes.

It didn't help that we backed a colonial power when Ho Chi Minh repeatedly asked us for support for decolonization (citing our own Declaration of Independence) and then worked to cancel Geneva Accords-mandated democratic elections in 1956 because we were worried about the outcome. Plus ça change, plus la même chose.

Yes a very small percentage of total ARVN military were well trained and highly capable. But as a whole they were not capable of operating using tactics that had been successful by combined US forces such as close air support artillery and infantry working in concert. Read on that and you will see what I mean.

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How did we end up in such a clusterfrick of a mess? I always thought it was to prevent the spread of communism by China, etc. but I saw in another thread that the French are the ones who originally got us involved

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Both are true. We started out by supporting the French. When that failed, we put troops on the grounds and gradually escalated the war.

The same as it was last August when this was debated here before, after the bogus video featuring Bruce Herschensohn circulated:

"Well, I was a history professor, so let me clear the air a bit here.

I'm not going to engage in a long and drawn out debate, but let me be the soon to be drowned out voice of reason in this sea of bullshite.

The Vietnam War was, in fact, a series of military victories for the United States. However, as President Kennedy said in 1963, speaking of South Vietnam, "in the final analysis, it is their war. They're the ones who have to win it or lose it."

That was true when Kennedy was still alive, and it was the reality that Johnson faced later. McNamara and everyone else advised him, accurately, that South Vietnam could not win the war on its own, and that American withdrawal, regardless of whatever supplies we provided (nice try, Bruce), would result in South Vietnam's defeat. That is why Johnson ultimately decided to commit American combat forces.

Nixon understood this as well, and knew well that his Vietnamization policy would fail just as it had under Kennedy and Johnson. He continued American involvement for another four years trying to get a reasonable settlement.

If there's one thing that is the silver bullet against this ridiculous theory in the video that the war was won until the Democrats fricked it up, it is the reaction to the accords by the South Vietnamese government. Look it up. They were terrified, because they knew what it meant for them. Nixon and Kissinger's agreement with North Vietnam, not later congressional action, doomed South Vietnam. Or rather, it sealed their fate, because they were doomed all along.

As much as the former Nixon assistant in the video would like you to believe otherwise, it was not the fault of the Democratic Party. Nor was it the fault of the Republican Party. There were two Democratic and two Republican presidents involved in Vietnam after the French defeat, and none of them found success there. It was a national tragedy, not a partisan one. "