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  #51  
Old 11-30-2007, 07:45 AM
AlexM AlexM is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[ QUOTE ]
Our political goals in Vietnam were not met.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know this how?
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  #52  
Old 11-30-2007, 07:53 AM
Kaj Kaj is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Our political goals in Vietnam were not met.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know this how?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fine. Our stated political goals in Vietnam were not met.
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  #53  
Old 11-30-2007, 08:40 AM
tame_deuces tame_deuces is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?


Grunching,

Counter-insurgency wouldn't have worked, even if following the british Oman model (which is the bomb) because you'd have the chinese and the soviets doing pretty much the same thing anyway.

Declaring war was not a viable solution in the beginning of the conflict, due to the international situation.

The change in military doctrines really came around when needed, it would be unrealistic to believe the US could have been prepared for all the eventualities in the vietnam, lending another reasons as to why early invansions could have been catastrophical.

The political gains from an American military victory are debatable, since ideally you would want the south vietnamese to win while you were there as advisors.

So all things considered the defensive line tactic seems like a good idea, the military tactics used throughout seems sound enough (the ratios are brilliant compared to anything of its time or before) and the political situation at home were out of control anyway.

So I'll end it by grunching that discussion if it could have been won is not really an issue.

The military certainly did a good job at the military bits and the political situation changed and the people didn't want to win nomore.
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  #54  
Old 11-30-2007, 09:05 AM
Kaj Kaj is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[ QUOTE ]
The military certainly did a good job at the military bits and the political situation changed and the people didn't want to win nomore.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree and so do many Vietnam war heroes and military analysts. Excerpt below from an excellent article on Vietnam's winnability, hosted on the US Army War College's site.

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue"> Such military observers as Harry Summers, Jr., Andrew Krepinevich, Jr., David Hackworth, Dave Richard Palmer, Douglas Kinnard, and Bruce Palmer, Jr., are critical of the professional military's performance in Vietnam as well as that of civilian authority. Readers will discover among their writings[38] often brutal condemnations of professional hubris, the attrition strategy, excessive use of firepower, reliance on lavish base camps, self-defeating personnel rotation policies, command disunity and micromanagement, and an officer corps corrupted by careerism--none of which can be laid at the doorsteps of McNamara's whiz kids, David Halberstam, or Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. These and other critics have properly concluded that no debacle as epic as America's in Vietnam can be ascribed solely to either military or civilian authority. Neither acquitted itself well, though ultimate responsibility for what happened to the United States in Vietnam rests with the White House. Harry Summers has observed that much of the criticism of political interference in military operations "is off the mark. Our problem was not so much political interference as it was a lack of a coherent military strategy--a lack for which our military leaders share a large burden of responsibility."</font>

[/ QUOTE ]
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  #55  
Old 11-30-2007, 09:07 AM
sightless sightless is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

Highly unlikely that US could have won in Vietnam. Too much asymmetry in motivation.
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  #56  
Old 11-30-2007, 09:26 AM
zasterguava zasterguava is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Our political goals in Vietnam were not met.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know this how?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fine. Our stated political goals in Vietnam were not met.

[/ QUOTE ]

The real goal was to prevent Vietnam from becoming socially and economically prosperous and independent as to not act as a model for other states. The terroist campaign of the US military was a huge success in this regard and in regards to its litteral military accomplishments.
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  #57  
Old 11-30-2007, 11:54 AM
lehighguy lehighguy is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

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.
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  #58  
Old 11-30-2007, 12:01 PM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

I would say that most, if not all, of the Republicans at the debate, with the exception of Paul, would say that Vietnam awas a noble enterprise that went awry because we didn't fight the war to win, because the media and peace movements subverted our efforts. They would say the war was a disaster because. Whereas I would think most of the Democrats running would say it was a dissaster because it was the wrong war to fight in the wrong place.
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  #59  
Old 11-30-2007, 12:04 PM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

Which military experts? The ones who constantly lied to us and were wrong every step of the way? The younger posters here are probably most familiar with Bill Clinton's duplicity, but he was an amateur compared to the pathological liars who ran the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
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  #60  
Old 11-30-2007, 12:11 PM
Mark1808 Mark1808 is offline
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Default Re: Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[ QUOTE ]
vulturesrow

I think that anybody with a modicum of intelligence would say that the claim that in a strictly military sense, the US won the war in Vietnam, must be the obvious troll's claim. What next? the US is winning in Iraq? ORLY

That you may try to portray me as a troll, whatever your reasons, I can accept. That the majority of the posters on this forum, or any other forums, would agree with my accusing you of trolling in the above statement is also self-evident.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who is winning the Iraq War?
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