Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[lehighguy]

Nobody in Vietnam liked the communists, but they didn't like us either. We weren't fighting communism, we were fighting nationalism. We were fighting people who, like nearly every civilization at that time, wanted to throw of the yoke of colonialism.

What exactely was our endgame in Vietnam? We went in there to support a cruel dictator that started te insurgency to begin with. Would we have had to stay there forever? What was South Vietnam suppose to look like in the end? It seems to me that we were just trying to prop up one or another corrupt despotic thug in the hopes they would be our puppet. Is that why all those people died?

Every year in Vietnam made it worse. Every year the war itself created more insurgents. Every time you bomb a village and kill a mother or brother or child you create a new VC. We killed millions of Vietnamese. We dropped checmical weapons on them. Victory?

We need to destroy the village to save it. That pretty much sums up the entire war.