Vietnam: Where Did the US Go Wrong?

[steve_bank]

I can't argue your experience.

The media reporting certainly had an effect on opinion. I remember a mother reported seeing her son killed in the news. There was the picture of a SVN police officer shooting a VC suspect in the head in a street. As we would say today it went viral. Pictures of monks burning themselves alive in the street.

When I got out of the Navy circa 1972 it was damned if you went in and damned if you didn't depending on who you talked to.

All the analysis I have seen and read would say ARVN was generally corrupt at least at the top. Drug traffucking. I know GIs were bringing back duffel bags of pot.

The Navy of my time was riddled with drugs.

SVN was never a country. The agreement was a partition until free elections. It was clear the communists would win, and we were not going to let that happen. At one point Minh approached the USA with a constitution similar to ours in some ways. He was rejected in favor of keeping it a French colony to support France post war.

The fact the VC existed as it did says something, even given their tactics. The anti foreigner sentimnet was starong. General Giap said something like we have been fighting for 100 years to rid ourselves of foreign powers and we will fight another 100 years.

The will and determination of the VN at Dien Ben Phu says something. People carrying supplies down the trail says something. We had overwhelming technology and it was not enough to overcome the VC and NV.

 

[skepticalbip]

... snip ...

We had overwhelming technology and it was not enough to overcome the VC and NV.

That gets back to the fact that there was no attempt to win. The war 'strategy' was to just defend the population centers. This was done quite effectively while we were involved. An attempt to win would have required taking down the leadership in the North but there was fear that the invasion required would have brought the Chinese into the war like in Korea. The problem with the defensive 'strategy' was that the American public are not at all patient.

Oh, and the VC were no longer a force after the '68 Tet offensive. Their greatest protection had been that no one knew who they were. They revealed themselves during the offensive and were identified by the ARVN who fairly quickly eliminated them. After that the NVA had to leave cadre in the South to take their place.

 

[steve_bank]

I heard it said that NV intentional used up the VC to eliminate it as a threat if VN was unified under the North.

 

[Tharmas]

What the Vietnam war did was to destroy a lot of peoples' faith in the government and it started the split of the liberals from the workers and started the movement of the Democratic party to the right. The liberal anti-war protesters' primary motivation was not, in my opinion, a moral one of being against the war but was that they didn't want to be drafted to fight in the war. ...

I have to disagree with you. While there were specific protests against the draft, such as draft card burnings, my experience tells me the majority of anti-war protests were populated by individuals with genuine objections to the Vietnam War in particular.

For one thing, many of the protesters were not affected by the draft, such as women, and middle aged and for that matter elderly people. There was even a demographic of protesters called little old ladies in tennis shoes. There were sizable cohorts of Vietnam Veterans involved in the protests. I myself was not affected directly by the draft. I had a 3-A classification (married with dependent children), which was not drafted during the Vietnam conflict.

I agree with you that war did destroy people's faith in the government. We may have "won" the Tet offensive in terms of body counts, but we had been told for months, by Johnson and General Westmoreland, that we were seeing a "light at the end of the tunnel," that the war was nearly over and that we were in a mopping up stage. In that context, the Tet offensive came as a real shock. That was when you heard wags remarking that the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a train coming the other direction.

 

[skepticalbip]

... snip ...

I agree with you that war did destroy people's faith in the government. We may have "won" the Tet offensive in terms of body counts, but we had been told for months, by Johnson and General Westmoreland, that we were seeing a "light at the end of the tunnel," that the war was nearly over and that we were in a mopping up stage. In that context, the Tet offensive came as a real shock. That was when you heard wags remarking that the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a train coming the other direction.

I saw an interview with General Giap (one of the major planners of the Tet offensive) when he was hawking one of his several books after the war. According to him, that offensive was supposed to end the war with them victorious. The North made an all out effort in full belief that it would spur a popular uprising in the South in support of them, even to include most of the ARVN joining with the NVA and VC. The North was surprised that the offensive did none of those things and resulted in a rush of South Vietnamese volunteering to join the ARVN. He said that the North's leadership were considering drawing up a truce to offer to the South until they heard Cronkite's newscast declaring that the offensive showed that the war was lost. This made the offensive a major propaganda coup even though it was, tactically, a disaster for them.

Although Giap was a brilliant strategist, he apparently began to believe their own propaganda and ended up relying on bad information (their propaganda) in his tactical planning of the Tet offensive.

 

[SLD]

We lost the war for several reasons:

1) War is politics by other means. We did not have the political support of the Vietnamese people and eventually of the American people.

2) War is capture the flag. You can not bomb people into submission. To win the war we would need to go to Hanoi. Just like we went to Berlin

As Skeptical Bib pointed out, this is utter crap. I wasn’t there like he was, but any serious analysis of the war today clearly takes note of the basic fact that the people in SVN overwhelmingly didn’t want a communist takeover. That’s why so many northerners fled the north to come to the south after partition.

As for invading the north, that was an absurd thought, which no one took seriously. It would’ve brought the Chinese in. The goal was never to liberate all of Vietnam from communism, but to establish a an effective south Vietnam government as in South Korea. That didn’t happen due to geography. That’s really the big difference between the two outcomes. SK is on a peninsula and thus shielded on three sides from invasion.

SLD

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

It isn't complicated from the Vietnamese perspective. The US went wrong in Vietnam when the US invaded Vietnam. Vietnam was never a threat to the US, at all, yet the US invaded and bombed them like crazy.

This was just one of many countries that invaded and subjugated Vietnam. The Vietnamese have been conquered and have liberated themselves so many times (usually China, but also France, etc) that it may have set a record.

The US also went wrong when they bombed Cambodia so incredibly much. The power vacuum they formed through doing this was a big part of what led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge there, as well as the pro-communist sentiment in both Vietnam and Cambodia.

 

[PyramidHead]

It isn't complicated from the Vietnamese perspective. The US went wrong in Vietnam when the US invaded Vietnam. Vietnam was never a threat to the US, at all, yet the US invaded and bombed them like crazy.

This was just one of many countries that invaded and subjugated Vietnam. The Vietnamese have been conquered and have liberated themselves so many times (usually China, but also France, etc) that it may have set a record.

The US also went wrong when they bombed Cambodia so incredibly much. The power vacuum they formed through doing this was a big part of what led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge there, as well as the pro-communist sentiment in both Vietnam and Cambodia.

The only sensible reply to the OP, bravo.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

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

Yes. This.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

From a certain point of view, the Vietnam war ended the right way. It is one of the few countries in the world without US troops stationed there forever (compare to Korea). They are slowly, with stumbling, embracing a market economy. They are now a trading partner with their neighbors and even the US, much to everyone's surprise. The two nations are at peace with each other and not having any hostilities other than a rough history.

 

[steve_bank]

And now VN is a quasi ally to offset China. Who could have predicted that.

I know a VN woman who came over after the war and goes back to visit,.

It is very much an authoritarian state. She calls it a personality cult.

 

[robnisch]

Ellsburg died. 92. I was 18 in 1970. Thoughts? Was he a traitor or hero?

 

[steve_bank]

From combat VN vets I heard the ROK troops in VN were extremely anti communist.

Korea was a conventional war. It was about taking and holding territory. VN was not. Different strategies were tried.

Helicopter bore troops at go in and out of an area. Fight a battle and leave, and leaves territory in hands of VC or NVA. Did not work.

Westmoreland inflated 'body counts' as an argument the war was being won by attitiotion.

Then came 'hearts and minds'. We would win the people over by building schools and hospitals. Didn't work.

Sooth Vietnam never really existed. Post WWII the decision was made to let France keep VN to help post war French recovery. Ho Chi Min had lived and worked in te USA for a time and had approached the USA on an independent VN and was rejected.

The war was fought politically. No hot pursuit into adjacent countries. No bombing of cargo ships in Haiphong Harbor.

SVN was a corrupt puppet regime. Regional war lords had a lot of power. SVN never really existed. There was supposed to be an election to choose national leadership, and never happened.There are iconic pictures of SVN monks burning themselves protesting the war. The picture that went global of an officer in SVN in a street shooting a suspected VC in the head.

In the end the people did not want us there. General Giap said they had been fighting foreigners for 100 years and would fight 100 more. They were motivated much like Ukrainians today.

We made the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trying to establish western democracy in places where peole did not really wat us. Install selected leaders who can;t lead. With Iraq our neo oncs decared victory when there was an election, an election boycotted by significnt factions.

 

[steve_bank]

You need to go back 100 years before the American VN War and read the history.

1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm and the Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam were deposed by a group of CIA supported Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with Diệm's handling of the Buddhist crisis and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong threat to South Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the coup was referred to as Cách mạng 1-11-63 ("1 November 1963 Revolution").[3]

The Kennedy administration had been aware of the coup planning,[4] but Cable 243 from the United States Department of State to U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., stated that it was U.S. policy[5] not to try to stop it. Lucien Conein, the Central Intelligence Agency's liaison between the U.S. Embassy and the coup planners, told them that the U.S. would not intervene to stop it. Conein also provided funds to the coup leaders.[6]

The coup was led by General Dương Văn Minh and started on 1 November 1963. It proceeded smoothly as many loyalist leaders were captured after being caught off-guard and casualties were light. Diệm was captured and executed the next day along with his brother and advisor Ngô Đình Nhu.

 

[lpetrich]

 Daniel Ellsberg recently died.

In the 1960's, he became disenchanted with the Vietnam War, and in 2002, he looked back.

t was no more a "civil war" after 1955 or 1960 than it had been during the U.S.–supported French attempt at colonial reconquest. A war in which one side was entirely equipped and paid by a foreign power – which dictated the nature of the local regime in its own interest – was not a civil war. To say that we had "interfered" in what is "really a civil war," as most American academic writers and even liberal critics of the war do to this day, simply screened a more painful reality and was as much a myth as the earlier official one of "aggression from the North." In terms of the UN Charter and of our own avowed ideals, it was a war of foreign aggression, American aggression

That aside, I can't say that North Vietnam is all that great, and I'm disappointed by how some opponents of the Vietnam War seemed to like North Vietnam.

But South Vietnam's leadership was corrupt and incompetent, and couldn't get much support. It was a very poor example of the Free World, as non-Communist nations were sometimes called back then. By comparison, North Vietnam got much more zealous support.


In late 1969, he leaked a history of the Vietnam War prepared by the US Department of Defense, the  Pentagon Papers - that history was unflattering and embarrassing, to say the least. The New York Times published those documents, and the Nixon Administration litigated that publication all the way to the Supreme Court.

That admin had another response, to organize the  White House Plumbers named because they were to track down leaks. Some Plumbers broke into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, looking for embarrassments, but they did not find any. The Plumbers then went on to break into the Watergate complex to take pictures of campaign documents and to install listening devices in telephones. That became a big scandal, and the Nixon Admin's attempts to cover it up only made it worse.

 

[steve_bank]

Yea, the Pentagon had concluded there was no military solution by around 1967.

Gulf of Tonkin incident - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ) was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It consisted of a confrontation on August 2, 1964, when United States forces were carrying out covert operations close to North Vietnamese territorial waters and North Vietnamese forces responded. The United States government falsely claimed that a second incident occurred on August 4, 1964, between North Vietnamese and United States ships in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Originally, US military claims blamed North Vietnam for the confrontation and the ostensible, but in fact imaginary, incident on August 4. Later investigation revealed that the second attack never happened; the American claim is that it was based mostly on erroneously interpreted communications intercepts.[5][6][7]
Johnson's speech to the American people
US President Lyndon Johnson in 1964

Shortly before midnight, on August 4, Johnson interrupted national television to make an announcement in which he described an attack by North Vietnamese vessels on two U.S. Navy warships, Maddox and Turner Joy, and requested authority to undertake a military response.[38][39] Johnson's speech repeated the theme that "dramatized Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh as the aggressor and which put the United States into a more acceptable defensive posture."[38] Johnson also referred to the attacks as having taken place "on the high seas", suggesting that they had occurred in international waters.[40]

He emphasized commitment to both the American people, and the South Vietnamese government. He also reminded Americans that there was no desire for war. "A close scrutiny of Johnson's public statements ... reveals no mention of preparations for overt warfare and no indication of the nature and extent of covert land and air measures that already were operational." Johnson's statements were short to "minimize the U.S. role in the conflict; a clear inconsistency existed between Johnson's actions and his public discourse."[41][42]

While Johnson's final resolution was being drafted, U.S. Senator Wayne Morse attempted to hold a fundraiser to raise awareness about possible faulty records of the incident involving Maddox. Morse supposedly received a call from an informant who has remained anonymous urging Morse to investigate official logbooks of Maddox.[45] These logs were not available before Johnson's resolution was presented to Congress.[45] After urging Congress that they should be wary of Johnson's coming attempt to convince Congress of his resolution, Morse failed to gain enough cooperation and support from his colleagues to mount any sort of movement to stop it.[45] Immediately after the resolution was read and presented to Congress, Morse began to fight it. He contended in speeches to Congress that the actions taken by the United States were actions outside the constitution and were "acts of war rather than acts of defense."[45] Morse's efforts were not immediately met with support, largely because he revealed no sources and was working with very limited information.[45] It was not until after the United States became more involved in the war that his claim began to gain support throughout the United States government.

It led to the bipartisan Tonkin Gulf Resolution which gave LBJ and successors broad power to use military force in Asia. The rest is history. I believe JFK had been wary on escalating VN.

Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964)

EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Tonkin Gulf Resolution; Public Law 88-408, 88th Congress, August 7, 1964; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Senate roll call tally sheet, 08/07/1964; SEN 88A-M1, Misc Roll Calls, 88th...

www.archives.gov

Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.

Kinda brings to mind GWB, neo cons, and invasion of Iraq. The reolution to invade Iraq was also bipartisan and gave POTUS wide latitude to use force. I believe Obama used it for justification.