Is It Possible, Could America Have Won the Vietnam War In '1968?

Article by: Gene Kuentzler '1999 ^ | 3/17/02 | Gene Kuentzler

[PJ-Comix]

You've bought into the myth. You truly believe they were extra-human.

Actually the Viet Cong did pretty much fight to the last man. They were just about wiped out after Tet. However, you also had all those NVA troops also willing to fight to the last.

[Mom_Grandmother]

Well, you have every right to your opinion. But I am one American that believes our Military with the backing and support of the American people could have stomped North Vietnam (throw in a couple other countries) and still come out on top.

They didn't have the back-up, supplies, support ect, and our troops today will tell you so. They would have fought to the last man, no matter how tenacous the VC thought they were. No offence.

[PJ-Comix]

We had the ability to defeat them, but neither the will nor the plan to bring it about.

Also the ally. The ARVN troops had low morale and many of their officers were corrupt. If the ARVN had the tenacity of the NVA then, yes, the war could have been won. Bottom line, our ally didn't have the willpower that the NVA had.

[Biblebelter]

I will never forget what I heard a General Gavin say on of all places the Mike Douglas Show. Gavin said that Haiphong harbor was not a natural harbor, but a man made harbor. That in order for the harbor to be maintained to dock large sea going vessels, it needed to be regularly dredged. He insisted that we never bombed the dredges, and if we had bombed the dredges and continued to do so that a major source of supply to North Vietnam would have been cut off.

Whether this is true or not I do not know except to say that I felt the General appeared very credible to me. My contempt for Johnson and vile the bureaucrats who prosecuted the Vietnam War led me to accept this account as true. I conjectured the reason that they did not bomb the dredges was because they did not want to deprive our so called allies the opportunity to profiteer from our dead American heroes. My contempt also led me to wander if Americans were not somehow profiteering in some covert way through Haiphong Harbor.

In just how many ways American soldiers were betrayed by the politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, and captains of the military industrial complex we may never know? I will tend to believe Oliver Stone before I would ever believe any of the ever growing league of plagiarizing historians.

[Non-Sequitur]

Like you said, everyone is welcome to their opinion.

[RLK]

Also the ally. The ARVN troops had low morale and many of their officers were corrupt.

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Please read General Norman Schwarzkoph's review of the South Vienamese officers. He disargrees with you entirely. Quite honestly, your word isn't worth a damn against his. I'd like to know where you are getting your information.

[PJ-Comix]

Bottom line, we didn't have an ally (South Vietnam) willing to make the sacrifices for victory. Many of the ARVN generals and officers looked upon the war as a way to make an easy buck. Sorry, without a credible ally, the war was lost from the get-go.

[Mom_Grandmother]

I assume when you said "we wern't about to do that", you meant the people back home or our troops, who was it that did not want to finish this war? The A-bombs were a horrible time in our past, but I can't help but think of the millions we saved by not backing down. JMO

[MadRobotArtist]

Had there been no Pinko Intervention on the Vietnamese behalf, and had our troops carried out the tasks needed to get the job done, of course we could have easily won that war. Chances are we could have done it the same way we did Desert Storm. The Unites States should have had a media black out, rode into North Vietnam, wiped out the source, then came in from the south, and boxed them in. It would have been better than quitting the war because of unpopular views at home.

Jane Fonda has a lot to answer for as do a great many other communist sympathizers.

[PJ-Comix]

Quite honestly, your word isn't worth a damn against his. I'd like to know where you are getting your information.

You're telling me the ARVN wasn't rife with corruption? From the accounts I've read from many US vets, they weren't too pleased at the performance of the ARVN.

[RLK]

Bottom line, we didn't have an ally (South Vietnam) willing to make the sacrifices for victory.

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We had an ally, however, that went down the drain when John Kennedy began assassinating South Vietamese leadership.

[Kevin Curry]

No, just that they didn't care what the cost was.

How do you know they "didn't care" what the cost was? I'll tell you why: because you've been sold that line by socialist jelly-brained defeatists such as Cronkite, Fonda, and Moyers.

A common sense understanding of human nature teaches the opposite. Of course they cared. But our feckless politicans always gave them just enough time and space to catch their breath until their fifth column of traitors in the US could undermine the war effort and cause us to lose our will and morale.

A US victory with relatively little loss of life (on both sides) was surely achievable. We could have broken their will and morale, but the longer we dithered the more difficult and bloody that task became.

We should have fought like Patton--not McClellan.

[PJ-Comix]

No way in hell we were ever going to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. It just wasn't going to happen so take that option off the table.

[Mom_Grandmother]

It all keeps coming back to the "polititians" back home. They listen to the (some anyway) people. That's is why so many (thousands) of our troops are slaughtered, politics back home, right?

[PJ-Comix]

We had an ally, however, that went down the drain when John Kennedy began assassinating South Vietamese leadership.

Yeah, Diem. He and his family were totally detested by most South Vietnamese.

[RLK]

Like I said, I'll take Schwarzkoph's word, not yours. How old are you? You sound as if you have little familiarity with the time, the history, or the scene. Give me a two paragraph history of Viet Nam.

[Bernard Marx]

In that battle people such as Joan Baez and Jane Fonda were the generals and won the real war taking place here.

And don't forget that Commie s.o.b. Tom Hayden who still somehow plays an important role in CA politics.

My main recollection of the period was that Johnson and McNamara also were terrified an expansion of the war with real victory as the objective because it might have invited nuclear retaliation from Russia. So was Nixon later on. In addition, China was sending endless numbers of soldiers and huge amounts of supplies to the North and was threatening to send massive numbers of troops to fight. In effect, we didn't know what the hell our objective was there, and 58,000 Americans died as the result of McNamara's indecisiveness. He's as much as admitted it in a recent book.

[RLK]

Yeah, Diem. He and his family were totally detested by most South Vietnamese.

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Who told you that. Do you know why what we will call the North Vietnamese were forced to start action in the south several years ahead of their schedule?