Why did we lose in Vietnam, and what could we do different

You cannot win a civil war for one of the local combatants. They must do the bulk of the fighting themselves.

That is why the French waited until the American colonists rebelling against Britain had some victories under their belt before they lent assistance.

The South Vietnamese didn't want democracy badly enough. They didn't have a charsimatic leader of their own to match Ho Chi Minh.





Absurdity: A Statement or belief inconsistent with my opinion.

You hit the nail right on the head. A lot of people seem to forget that point. By '75 U.S. combat troops were no longer involved. Other than a skeleton crew of advisors and intel types, the U.S. was gone. I will never view Vietnam as an American loss. If anything, a draw at the least.

Lol, what's the difference? The war could not be won so you left the South-Vietnamese on their own!
Just because America didn't withdraw all at once doesn't make it less of a defeat!

America's image was already massively weakened, so they pull of this strategy making it look less of a failure. Pretty obvious and has it's rightful passage in the history books!

No one who has a clue would argue against that!

I've always believed that what made the U.S.'s position untenable in Vietnam was the simple fact that they were unable to successfully interdict the flow of men and material down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. North Vietnam had manpower reserves of well over 2 million men and something like 120,000 to 200,000 reaching draft age each year that they could send down the trail. Furthermore, the Soviet Union and Communist China seemed more than willing to provide North Vietnam with all the arms and material they needed to keep the conflict brewing at a sufficiently high level to eventually wear down the U.S. The U.S.'s strategy of "attrition" was effectively doomed from the very beginning, in that the North Vietnamese political leadership and the people on the whole seemed more than willing to accept exorbitant casualties towards their goal of a unified Vietnam.

As for what the U.S. could have done differently to achieve their goal of a independent non communist South Vietnam, the only way to have done that would have been to drastically increase the cost in lives lost for further North Vietnamese involvement in South Vietnam. The manner and number of people this would have required the U.S. to kill would have been well beyond what the American public would have been comfortable with, in short the U.S. was unwilling to make the sort of moral and ethical sacrifices to achieve their political goals.

I'm not sure the Vietnam war was all about money. Supposedly the War was about stopping the spread of communism during the Cold War. There's videotape of at least 4 U.S. Presidents claiming that "if we let Vietnam fall, communism will spread throughout the rest of S.E. Asia and beyond. In hindsight it seems kind of illogical but that was the thinking back then. From what I know the biggest reason the situation in Vietnam became a disaster is when both the S. Vietnamese president Diem and the U.S. president Kennedy being assassinated in the same month, Nov 1963. This left power vacuum's in both regimes that got filled by incompetent leaders.

S. Vietnam became out of control corrupt and LBJ was a big Texan who was great at wheeling dealing domestic affairs but didn't know a thing about foreign affairs. I read one quote where he told the Generals "You can have your war..after I'm elected". Sure enough, once LBJ was inaugurated he quickly(1965) found a way to send hundreds of thousands of troops into S. Vietnam and the disaster began. I don't think it was 2 1/2 years later when LBJ decided to salvage some of his legacy by declaring "peace in Vietnam" and stopping the bombing in the North. In truth he realized he could not possibly get reelected nor could he win the war nor did the U.S. have any more money to fund the war so he did what was best for LBJ and ONLY LBJ.

Nixon inherited the War and it was still a disaster for quite awhile, once we started pulling out the remaining troops were left twisting in the wind. One soldier quipped "it got worse every single day". Near the end of 72 Nixon got pissed off about the POW's in N. Vietnam plus he had won his reelection so he bombed the holy *beep* out of N. Vietnam(Christmas Bombing 1972) and that brought an end to the conflict we got our POW's back and S. Vietnam could not defend themselves without the U.S. so the Civil War ended pretty quickly.

Overall, the Vietnam conflict was one of the bloodiest wars in the 20th century involving dozens of countries. A huge problem for the U.S. was it's corrupt political leadership and inability to drum up popular support. The culture changed drastically, the media pounced on LBJ unmercifully and made him and McNamara look like the worst villians imaginable. S. Vietnam couldn't drum up popular support either esp. after that crazy "first lady" Madame Nhu badmouthed all the major factions in S. Vietnam, to include the Bhuddists. As a matter of fact Madame Nhu may have been the single biggest cause of S. Vietnam falling. She was that crazy/bad.

Could we have won the war? Only if we would have had popular support. We did achieve a military victory during the Tet offensive but we lost the American public, even Cronkite. LBJ was a disaster and he and McNamara lied to us and we knew it. All the N. Vietnamese had to do was wait it out and victory was theirs.

Shall we play a game?

Good points. Unfortunately LBJ listened to his Generals and shipped our boys to Vietnam. It really was hubris on his part, thinking he could waltz into Vietnam and win a war of attrition. LBJ was a great wheeler dealer in Congress but he never understood the foreign policy big picture. I think Nixon finally got fed up with the POW situation so that's why he ended our involvement once and for all. Of course it was conveniently after he won his reelection.

Shall we play a game?