A collection of 30 Mistakes made in the “Vietnamese War” - and “Lessons Learned”

October 10, 2017 | re_tail20

[Mad Dawgg]

The reason we lost the war in Vietnam is painfully obvious if you look at a map of where the fighting took place.

There is an old saying in conflict theory that if one side is saying "What is mine, is mine and what is yours is negotiable" and the other side plays by those rules they are going to lose.

Almost all the fighting was South of the DMZ we never once sent a major battle force North of the DMZ to take and hold ground. Yet the NVA and VC were constantly attacking South of the DMZ. Hell we never sent troops into Cambodia to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail until Nixon and he only did so in attempt to get a stronger position in the peace negotiations. Nixon finally mined the harbors in the North to stop the influx of war materials into the country by USSR and China but again that was well towards the end and to get a stronger position in the negotiations.

You don't win a war by just killing people you also remove their ability to make war by taking all their territory and destroying/denying their resupply chains. But apparently we don't do that anymore.

[Snickering Hound]

[basalt]

looking back, the tactics used were jaw dropping stupid...chasing these guys around in Asian jungles, good grief. Walt Rostow very early on told Johnson to put troops into Vingh where the Ho Chi Minh trail actually started, then unleash the Air Force on Hanoi..4 weeks tops that war would have been over...Johnson claimed he was afraid China or the Soviets would join in the fight.

[humblegunner]

Shut up, huckleberry.

Yeah, see.. you keep trying that and it keeps not working.

It's funny over here, but over there it has to be kind of sad.

[bagster]

Shut up, Ike Clanton.

[TexasFreeper2009]

um... fight to win, and do whatever necessary to win as quickly as possible with the fewest casualties on OUR side.

that is the only mistake.

Either fight to win, or don’t fight at all.

[Uncle Sam 911]

Only one of your mistakes was partially fatal, mining the harbors too late. However, once they were mined and the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam got underway in December 1972, probably another 3-5 days of the same intensity would have won the war outright. The NV government was at the point of surrender but Nixon by then was carrying operation Linebacker II to get the prisoners home and the NV back to the table and not to win the war. Had he known they were ready to surrender, he would have no doubt kept going but he didnt. He had his tactics right but his goals wrong and it cost us the war and wasted 58,000 American lives.

[Does so]

Kennedy went to Berlin and made a speech in which he declared himself to be a breakfast pastry. ("Ich bin ein berliner" as opposed to "ich bin berliner".)

What great fortune Kennedy didn't have to speak in Hamburg.

[Steve Van Doorn]

None of them believe they're evil or should be stopped.

Going to war to stop them wouldn't have been on the table unless it was all volunteers

[bagster]

You can tell all that by my posts? You are very astute, sir. Kudos.

[VRWC For Truth]

Shut, ur asshole, two bit losah! FR’s Anal canal! ..

[ealgeone]

Number one rule of war: To Win.

If you don't have that as your ultimate goal, there's no point in fighting.

[ealgeone]

One other point I think should have been done. The war was to stop communism. That should've been an all volunteer bases. If they couldn't get enough soldiers for the volunteer effort we had no business requiring kids to fight.

Communism is evil but it wasn't a national threat to keep them at bay. It wasn't a direct threat to the US.

I'm glad you're not in charge of strategy...or at least I hope you're not.

Communism, like Nazism, needs to be defeated. They are opposite sides of the same coin.

[ealgeone]

You can’t win a football game if you never cross the 50 yard line.

[Steve Van Doorn]

I never said communism shouldn't be stopped.

I'm saying the way it was fought was piss poor. You must of missed the part that i agreed with MaCarthur and finish the war quick and decisively.

[Steve Van Doorn]

I want to be clear with my point. MaCarthur was correct on how to conduct a war. IF we did conduct the war correctly a draft would have been required because we would've likely had to take on Russia and/or China at the time.

If we played footsies with the enemy as we did. Then it should be an all volunteer action.

The way you supposed to fight a war. If ANYONE allies with your enemy they get stomped on no different then the primary enemy. If you don't then the war is over before you started.

[Sans-Culotte]

I didn't watch any of liberal dweeb Burns' program, but a liberal weenie at work was raving about it. He kept repeating the mantra that Oliver Stone did in his POS movie JFK: "Kennedy was going to get us out of Vietnam, but unfortunately, was assassinated before he could do so". Apparently, Burns was riffing on that as well. Is there any evidence that JFK was even thinking about getting the USA out of Vietnam?

[re_tail20]

There’s a great book that came out 20 years ago, around the time that
“JFK” by Oliver Stone came out. It’s called “JFK and Vietnam”. It makes a compelling case that, yes, Kennedy knew that South Vietnam was a lost cause, and couldn’t be made to stand on its own, and that the U.S. should cut its losses and make a stand elsewhere. His challenge was to withdraw all 16,000 U. S. advisors by 1965, all the while still looking strong and winning re-election. Those who claim that had he won re-election that 500,000 U. S combat troops would be in Vietnam by 1967, exactly the same as Johnson, are on very shaky ground, I think.