Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?

[SLD]

Reading a great history of Vietnam War. It really raises the question of where we went wrong. Obviously we did at several points. It’s hard to pinpoint one moment in particular - aside from paying the French to stay in there after WWII. The problem is compounded by the myriad of issues facing the United States at that time. The accusation of losing China. The relative success of establishing a stable South Korea - although run by a dictator. No way could any politician advocate just walking away. Both right and left we’re determined to save Vietnam.

So why couldn’t we recreate the model of South Korea? If I would point to one event it would be the coup against Diem. That just resulted in a succession of coups and military infighting. Diem sucked for sure but removing him just worsened the situation. It’s still conceivable that Vietnam could’ve evolved differently and ultimately into a pseudo South Korea had Diem been allowed to stay on. Maybe not. The one advantage SK had was geography. Being on a peninsula meant it was hard for NK to launch a guerrilla campaign. The Viet Cong could be easily supplied by sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia.

Thoughts?

SLD

 

[Ford]

I've got a book on my shelf - long out of print - called "A Nation of Sheep" by one of the authors of "The Ugly American." Some of the language in it is very dated, as are some of the conclusions, but the titles of the first few chapters should give you an idea of what it was about. Titles like "The Laos Fraud," "What We Aren't Told about Formosa" and "What We Aren't Told about Korea."

The US didn't just stumble into Vietnam and screw it up. Vietnam was the culmination of bad decisions at every level in Southeast Asia for a decade or more. The book was in part a roadmap of where we went wrong in the region, and it was published in 1961. If someone had been paying attention...well, they weren't.

A movie that's sitting on another shelf is "The Fog of War." The documentary/interrogation of Robert S. MacNamara. If memory serves, there was a moment in the film where he recounted his meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart years later. Basically, he said that the US didn't understand what the Vietnamese were fighting for. We thought it was about communism vs capitalism or democracy vs autocracy but we were wrong.

It's not really a question of which event led to the failure, but rather the fact that we tried to impose our version of success upon a people who weren't buying it.

 

[skepticalbip]

Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?

I don't think there was any reasonable option to "go right" in Viet Nam. It was the middle of the cold war and Viet Nam was just a proxy war to show the "Communist block' that the U.S. was willing to spill American blood to halt their expansion (the old domino theory). There was no attempt to win because winning would have required an invasion of North Viet Nam... which was feared would have brought in China and/or the USSR creating WWIII. So rather than a plan to win, the strategy was to defend the population centers of South Viet Nam thus denying the North a victory... a planned stalemate. The mistake of this strategy is that the American population are not that patient and North Viet Nam was...

 

[Trausti]

The US was fighting a war against Communism. The Vietnamese were fighting a nationalist war against foreigners. They weren't fighting the same war.

 

[Sarpedon]

1. We took on a failed colonial endeavor that France had given up.
2. We backed a minority, non democratic government against the majority.
3. When that government did not perform as we expected, we overthrew it with a military junta, rather than replacing it with a more popular government (which likely would have not done as we said, but not necessarily be hostile)
4. Our contempt with the military junta's performance led us to essentially occupy the country, causing us to lose any hope of popular support.
5. Our military leader's contempt for the people of the country led them to disregard popular support as necessary, and focused on purely quantifiable goals such as 'body count.'
6. Our conscripted soldiers, unhappy to be there in the first place, absorbed the contempt of their leaders and translated it into brutal treatment of the inhabitants.

So from go, we did the wrong thing. In the end, only a tiny minority which comprised our puppet government and its immediate supporters were on our side. One and all of the people of the country opposed us. Military objectives captured could not be held in the face of an unrelentingly hostile populace. Military leaders did not understand this. Political leaders refused to comprehend that we could lose.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Also, if the first casualty in war is truth, and if all our previous wars had involved some intentional misinformation from the government, that trend intensified with Vietnam. Our mission was deranged by Cold War thinking that would not adjust to reality for decades. Outright deception followed. Tonkin Gulf now seems to be as shabby a story as anything Cheney cooked up in '01/'02. LBJ running as a sensible alternative to warmonger Goldwater resulted in a huge buildup of U.S. forces in 1965. Our policy of wiping out villages and moving farmers off their land, of widespread chemical warfare, of extensive use of napalm, of the incursion into Laos, were pieced together by reporters while Pentagon spokesmen kept referring to the light at the end of the tunnel. After four years of this, it blew up in the government's face when Tet seemed to prove to the public that Vietnam was a hopeless endeavor. It probably was. It's very hard to imagine that a fully resolved U.S. that was willing to put in yet more personnel could have prevailed against the insurgent fighting of the North Vietnamese.

 

[steve_bank]

From the old VN documentary post war Ho Chi Mihn approached the Americans with a plan for intendance with a constitution loosely based on ours. It was rejected in favor of France having a colony. Economics. He had lived in the USA.

South Vietnam Never really existed. It was corrupt. During the war drug lords ruled areas.

We are making the same mistake today in the mid east, people do not really want all of our culture, they have their own history.

The VN fighters were very much patriots willing to die.

The war was fought politically instead of tactically . We could not bomb ships in Haiphong Harbor loaded with weapons. Cambodia was bombed secretly. Regional and global polices preventing us from waging full scale war. Russia and China reaction prohibited a outright invasion of NK. It was an insane war.

In contrast in the first Gulf War it was the Powell Doctrine. Have a clear end goal and go in with overwhelming force.

The strategy devolved in VN to 'body counts' which were inflated. We did not take and hold territory, the idea was kill enough to deplete manpower. It failed.

There was the corruption on our side. The military industrial complex. It was big profit for weapon's.

The publishing of the Pentagon Papers revealed that as early as the mid 60s the milt ray had concluded there was no military solution. ds a lot lot like today, we ignore history.

The ARVN were never a fighting force. A friend's brother was in country during Tet. As he put it ARVN sat in trenches firing guns in the air.

 

[lpetrich]

As to why not a big knockout blow against North Vietnam early in the war, I once came up with a theory, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it confirmed. It's not as discussed as much as I think it ought to.

The reason is a fear of repeating what happened in the Korean War. At first, it seemed like the US and its allies were winning, conquering all of North Korea. But then China sent about a million troops across the border and pushed the the US troops back to the NK-SK border. The war ended up much as it began.

So if the US did a big push into North Vietnam early in the war, that might have provoked China to send in a similar-sized army.

South Vietnam was, it must be noted, a very poor advertisement for the Free World, as non-Communist nations were often called by opponents of Communism. Like Catholics vs. Buddhists there, even though both had a common interest in not being treated like drug addicts.

 

[Treedbear]

Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?
...
Thoughts?

SLD

The bombings. My heart bleeds for that country thinking of the civilians whose lives and land were scarred and destroyed by land mines, napalm, agent orange, cluster bombs and indescriminate carpet bombing. I got a 4F in 1972 and didn't have to go. But I've known many Vietnamese refugees and they are such a gentle, caring, and hard working people. America lost it's soul over that war and it tore my generation to pieces.

 

[ralfy]

And it wasn't just Vietnam but various forms of intervention in different parts of the world which led to significant levels of human suffering.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?
...
Thoughts?

SLD

The bombings. My heart bleeds for that country thinking of the civilians whose lives and land were scarred and destroyed by land mines, napalm, agent orange, cluster bombs and indescriminate carpet bombing. I got a 4F in 1972 and didn't have to go. But I've known many Vietnamese refugees and they are such a gentle, caring, and hard working people. America lost it's soul over that war and it tore my generation to pieces.

And we not only never recovered, we keep trying to win it over and over and over again, as if we can regain our soul the same way we lost it.

The specter of WWII (and WWI) has never left us. Which goes a long way to explaining why Nazis keep springing back up like whack-a-mole’s in our periodic zeitgeists.

 

[bilby]

Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?
...
Thoughts?

SLD

The bombings. My heart bleeds for that country thinking of the civilians whose lives and land were scarred and destroyed by land mines, napalm, agent orange, cluster bombs and indescriminate carpet bombing. I got a 4F in 1972 and didn't have to go. But I've known many Vietnamese refugees and they are such a gentle, caring, and hard working people. America lost it's soul over that war and it tore my generation to pieces.

And we not only never recovered, we keep trying to win it over and over and over again, as if we can regain our soul the same way we lost it.

The specter of WWII (and WWI) has never left us. Which goes a long way to explaining why Nazis keep springing back up like whack-a-mole’s in our periodic zeitgeists.

Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean,
But that couldn't happen again,
We taught them a lesson, in nineteen eighteen,
And they've hardly bothered us since then...

- Tom Lehrer, MLF Lullaby

Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.

- Frankie Boyle

 

[Treedbear]

Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?
...
Thoughts?

SLD

The bombings. My heart bleeds for that country thinking of the civilians whose lives and land were scarred and destroyed by land mines, napalm, agent orange, cluster bombs and indescriminate carpet bombing. I got a 4F in 1972 and didn't have to go. But I've known many Vietnamese refugees and they are such a gentle, caring, and hard working people. America lost it's soul over that war and it tore my generation to pieces.

And we not only never recovered, we keep trying to win it over and over and over again, as if we can regain our soul the same way we lost it.

The specter of WWII (and WWI) has never left us. Which goes a long way to explaining why Nazis keep springing back up like whack-a-mole’s in our periodic zeitgeists.

I was jusy listening to a women on CSPAN talking about how she traces the history of the white supremacist movement back to the end of the Vietnam war. The veterans came home to a country that didn't honor them sufficiently for their sacrifices, which they understandably resented, and that this led to the birth of backwoods militias which led to widespread distrust of government anything. I can see that. And I think this resentment is still having repercussions and is intimately related to gun-rights. Especially to the romance with military-style assault rifles. This is our heritage. Just as Lincoln said about the civil war being repayment with the sword of every drop of blood lost to the whip. I'm not a spiritualist or a supporter of Marianne Williamson but this is one idea she has right. When our moral compass has been broken we end up paying the price.

 

[Tharmas]

Having grown up in the South during the Fifties and Sixties, I hardly think that Vietnam vets had much to do with the origins of White Supremacists. There may have been some that gravitated that way, I‘ll admit. And what about African American vets, who had a lot more to resent than being ignored. There aren’t that many African American mass shooters.

 

[Treedbear]

Having grown up in the South during the Fifties and Sixties, I hardly think that Vietnam vets had much to do with the origins of White Supremacists. There may have been some that gravitated that way, I‘ll admit.

I can't agrue the point so maybe it was wrong to bring it up. I'm just looking for answers like everyone else.

And what about African American vets, who had a lot more to resent than being ignored. There aren’t that many African American mass shooters.

It seems obvious that there's more than enough opportunity for violent resistance to authority within the black community. When alt-righters complain about restricting guns they often point to this fact to deflect from the growing white supremacist carnage. It just doesn't tend to get considered as in some way a principled cause. And besides, history makes it obvious what happens to black militias trying to defend their rights. For some reason they don't qualify as patriots as easily as whites do.

 

[SLD]

So I wanted to finish my book before I finished. The comments are all well and good. But here’s the reality. The US didn’t go wrong in Vietnam. They won. Doubt me? Go to Saigon today. (And that’s what the locals call it). It’s a capitalist banking center. Look at the shops. From all over the world luxury goods. It’s a modern capitalist city. And with China seen as a threat, likely an ally of the US.

It’s unrealistic to have expected the US of the fifties to walk away from Vietnam completely. The experiences in China and Korea were too new. Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated Stalinist, and he created a brutally repressive regime. Far more brutal and repressive than anything in South Vietnam, which probably gave them the edge against the South. The South could never be so disciplined because of the pressures from outside to be free. The other thing going against the South was simple geography. Without Cambodian sanctuary the VC would’ve withered and died. A corrupt Diem regime would’ve given way to a South Korean style democracy eventually. It may still happen for all Vietnam. It’s the South that’s really taking over the rest of Vietnam.

SLD

 

[bilby]

So I wanted to finish my book before I finished. The comments are all well and good. But here’s the reality. The US didn’t go wrong in Vietnam. They won. Doubt me? Go to Saigon today. (And that’s what the locals call it). It’s a capitalist banking center. Look at the shops. From all over the world luxury goods. It’s a modern capitalist city. And with China seen as a threat, likely an ally of the US.

It’s unrealistic to have expected the US of the fifties to walk away from Vietnam completely. The experiences in China and Korea were too new. Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated Stalinist, and he created a brutally repressive regime. Far more brutal and repressive than anything in South Vietnam, which probably gave them the edge against the South. The South could never be so disciplined because of the pressures from outside to be free. The other thing going against the South was simple geography. Without Cambodian sanctuary the VC would’ve withered and died. A corrupt Diem regime would’ve given way to a South Korean style democracy eventually. It may still happen for all Vietnam. It’s the South that’s really taking over the rest of Vietnam.

SLD

That's like saying that the US won control of East Berlin after WWII, as evidenced by its lack of stalinism today.

The US lost the Vietnam war. That Vietnam subsequently shrugged off Ho Chi Minh's style of communism has nothing much to do with the Americans, and everything to do with the Vietnamese.

Indeed, we can see that throwing out the Americans was an essential part of this Vietnamese victory over totalitarian communism - if the Americans had maintained control of part of the country, then what would have happened in the communist part is clear. In the Korean peninsula, the presence of the Americans in the south as a perennial threat and bogeyman allows the extremists to present western style freedom as an existential external threat.

It's the absence of American influence that allowed Saigon to take a relaxed and liberal approach to the desire of their population to have private property and the right to trade that property with minimal government interference.

To present the victory of mixed market capitalism as somehow a victory for or by the USA is frankly insane, and only a blind US patriot with an extreme penchant for false dichotomy would suggest it.

That Vietnam today has a government and economy that looks a bit more like that of the US than it does like that of North Korea is no more a sign of US victory in the Vietnam War than the fact that New Zealanders speak English proves that the Americans have successfully invaded their country.

America not only doesn't have a monopoly on mixed market economics; They aren't even particularly good at it, as evidenced by your country's extraordinary levels of poverty, and woeful provision of essential services (such as healthcare) to vast swathes of your population.

The Vietnamese people, having defeated the USA, didn't just sit around with their Dong in their hands, waiting for Americans to teach them how to do business. They are economically successful despite the Americans, not because of them. America may well be partly responsible for the economic conditions in North Korea (and South Korea too); But the economic conditions in Vietnam are entirely down to the Vietnamese.

The American War, if anything, delayed the economic evolution of Vietnam. If America had stayed out - or gotten out far earlier - then likely Vietnam would have become a free and prosperous nation that much sooner than she actually did.

 

[ralfy]

So I wanted to finish my book before I finished. The comments are all well and good. But here’s the reality. The US didn’t go wrong in Vietnam. They won. Doubt me? Go to Saigon today. (And that’s what the locals call it). It’s a capitalist banking center. Look at the shops. From all over the world luxury goods. It’s a modern capitalist city. And with China seen as a threat, likely an ally of the US.

It’s unrealistic to have expected the US of the fifties to walk away from Vietnam completely. The experiences in China and Korea were too new. Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated Stalinist, and he created a brutally repressive regime. Far more brutal and repressive than anything in South Vietnam, which probably gave them the edge against the South. The South could never be so disciplined because of the pressures from outside to be free. The other thing going against the South was simple geography. Without Cambodian sanctuary the VC would’ve withered and died. A corrupt Diem regime would’ve given way to a South Korean style democracy eventually. It may still happen for all Vietnam. It’s the South that’s really taking over the rest of Vietnam.

SLD

Vietnam could have gained that without the war and two million deaths. Also, it learned from China, which started during the late 1980s. Finally, the difference is that in these countries the Communist Party is still in control while in the U.S. political parties work for Wall Street.

Interestingly enough, similar features are seen across many members of BRICS and emerging markets: authoritarian governments with financial oligarchs leashed.

Finally, the U.S. could not have walked away because it needed control of natural resources in Indochina, and thus coupled that with the military industrial complex, the use of the dollar as a reserve currency, and the need to engage in and profit from permanent warfare.

 

[Sarpedon]

Another way to look at Vietnam as a capitalist country is as proof as to how unnecessary the war was.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Having grown up in the South during the Fifties and Sixties, I hardly think that Vietnam vets had much to do with the origins of White Supremacists.

I don't think it's a matter of origins.

And what about African American vets, who had a lot more to resent than being ignored. There aren’t that many African American mass shooters.

I think the difference is obvious. Add or take away the "vet" part from an African American and you've got the same lower class citizen they've always been from the perspective of white America. Don't honor a white soldier? HOW DARE YOU! The rivers part and the skies open and the hammer of almighty gawd comes down against you.

Thus, when a white vet snaps, they snap violently because they've never had to bend in their lives before. If you've been forced to bend since birth, you get used to it. Or snap in your younger days (and/or join the army in the first place in order to "snap" legally and in foreign lands).

And the horrific irony is that the righteous hammer of SUPPORT THE TROOPS that sprang up as a direct result of how white Vietnam vets were treated upon returning what not about honoring the soldiers; it was (and is) about making sure that cannon fodder don't ever realize what they're being used for. Particularly for a volunteer army. If the recruitment posters all said: "Join the Army. Millionnaires need more pawns!" recruitment would (hopefully) plummet.