Vietnam War was unwinnable

[harmonica]

China, very much got stopped by the USA in Korea.

The Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces.

......so they kicked a whole Corps off the peninsula--that's stopping the US????!!!hahhahahahahahaha

 

[harmonica]

f the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

That is what Gen MacArthur said.
In a matter of about a month, his forces swept north of the 39 th parallel and chased the N Koreans all the way to the Yalu River.

That is when the Chinese forces came in and swarmed our unsuspecting forces and drove us back south of the 39th parallel. Ended up killing 50,000 American forces.

We wanted to avoid the same mistake in Vietnam

Which is only because they retreated. If you follow up on what happened after this, every time the UN forces stood their ground, and fought, they slaughtered the Chinese.

Especially the Chinese of army of the 1950s, was in fact a peasant army. They were not hardly trained at all.

Damn boy, are you ever ignorant of history.

The Chinese forces overwhelmed us. We ran for our lives

For a while till MacArther out flanked the assholes and was kicking their asses right back across the border until a democommie asshole of a president pulled him up short and fired him.
If we had let Patton have his way the USSR wouldn't have existed for long and if we'd let Mcarthur have his way Red China would have been a long forgotten footnote by now too. Both were stopped by a democommie asshole excuse for a president, Truman who was afraid of his own shadow.

MacArthurs arrogance screwed the pooch in Korea just like it did in the Philippines. Nobody could tell MacArthur anything.

He was warned that his invasion of the north would draw in China. He laughed at the threat and laughed at China. His arrogance cost the US 50,000 lives


Truman should have fired him sooner

Apparently you can't read either. My earlier post:

US Deaths:
Hostile: 33,739
Non-Hostile: 2,835
Total In-Theatre: 36,574
US Wounded in Action - 103,284
Other Casualties by Country (killed and missing)
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
South Korea - (217,000 military, 1,000,000 civilian)
North Korea - (406,000 military, 600,000 civilian)
China - (600,000 military)

If you could read you might note that: USA KIA's= 33,739
North Korea KIA's=406,000
China KIA's =600,000
Find someone to do the math but we clearly kicked some serious ass and that without nukes which we would have been more than justified to use.
In Vietnam we killed and captured a few hundred more Chinese without even bothering to go looking for them. They just weren't ready to face those kind of losses again.

Agreed agreed.
All of those numbers are dead on accurate.

We could have easily marched into N.K. and forced a surrender.

Especially during the 1950s. Again, China's army was quite literally peasants.

At least during Vietnam, China had a mild level of training. But during the 50s, the Chinese regulars were people formerly holding pitch forks in the countryside, that were handed bolt action rifles.

Equipment was often sparse, and resulted in them using captured American weapons, which then presented the problem of them running out of ammunition.

I am absolutely convinced based on the evidence, that if we had simply decided to take out North Korea, we could have done it, and then we wouldn't have this problem today.

..YOU, a USMB member is convinced ....hahahahahhahahahahaha

 

[harmonica]

..we are talking REALITY--not nuking anyone....not invading the north like the Russians and US did to Germany --that wasn't going to happen--even if they did invade the North, they couldn't stay there forever.....
..first--the French lost--and after we gave them MILLIONS$ and with all their '''advantages'' ....this should've been a lesson
......a big problem was the Vietnamese government [ and military ] = for a long time it was corrupt/unstable/etc = they had 3 heads of state changes in less than 2 years--one with a MURDER..with many attempted coups before and after......that mess was still there after Thieu took over
...N Vietnam did not have to even beat the US ......
.......the US could cut off Korea because it was peninsula--where as NV could bring troops/etc to the South over land
.

Yes, and no.

Obviously if you put in place all of the restrictions on how to win the war.... then yes, you can't win the war.

It's like going into a boxing match, and saying

"You can't move from the spot you start on, and you can only hit back, if you have been hit yourself."

If you put those restrictions on yourself in a boxing match, you are going to lose the boxing match.

If the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

As soon as Nixon in 1972, ordered a theater wide unrestricted war on North Vietnam, the N.Vet came to the negotiating table. Nixon approved of the mass offensive in February. Intensified the attack in May. By October, the North Vietnamese were the ones asking for negotiations.

If we had done that in 1965, we would have ended the war.

There is not a single time, at any point in the entire Vietnam war, where enemy troops confronted US troops directly, and did not lose. The US military was better trained, better supplied, better equipped, had better air and ground support, artillery support, navel support, and so on.

Every time we confronted enemy troops, they folded... even when they out numbered US troops, and sometimes by a wide margin.

We could have gone straight to Hanoi, and won the war.

Instead we put restrictions on ourselves, that made it impossible to win. You can't win a war, by not attacking the enemy. You can't win a war, by only playing defense.

Think about it like Football. Can you ever win a game of football without offense? Can you ever win the game, without ever going on the other teams side of the field?

But that is exactly how we played the Vietnam war. We stayed on our side of the field, and marched around, expecting... what? The enemy to all commit suicide? Of course you can't win, without ever going at the enemy.

you--like a lot of people--think unrealistically and like it's a board game--this is a common problem with people--and you don't know history:
--so, to very easily refute your post---we go ''flatten North Korea and then we are at TOTAL war with China!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..so Mr Genius--please tell me how do we defeat China?

Are you kidding? China didn't barely have jack. In fact, having read about this, China was begging Stalin to let them drop the Vietnam war. It was draining their resources, and killing them economically.

Remember China just had the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward in 1958 to 1960. The first half the 1960s of China was barely making a recovery.

And just by 1965, when things were almost at least back to where they were before the 1958 'leap to hell', then they engaged in the cultural revolution.

One of the idiotic things they did during the cultural revolution, was place all the factories and manufacturing plants, under the control of the revolutionary army. The managers and operators and knowledgeable people, were all replaced with military people. And unlike the US, these were not West Point trained officers, but rather just any idiot that was loyal to the communist party.

The people who knew how the factories worked, were sent to work the fields in the rural countryside.

In 1967 alone, production dropped 14%. That's insane. And keep in mind, China wasn't even a fraction as advanced as the US was, at that time. To lose 14% production in one year, when they didn't have that much production to begin with, was devastating.

And remember, in 1958, the entire Chinese arm was made up of peasants.

Again, if we had simply pushed to Hanoi in 1965, this would have been over. China could not have stopped us. Not even come close. Waves of peasants, would not have stopped fully supported US military advances.

And honestly, based on the huge critical issues throughout the China economy, they really would not have tried to stop us. If we had absolutely rolled in mass, towards Hanoi, they would have stepped back and let us go.

It is that arrogant dismissal of the capabilities of our adversaries that led to so many US deaths in Korea and Vietnam.

No it's a fact. That's just a fact. The Tet Offensive is a perfect example. The North Vietnamese specifically picked targets where there were few American Troops present, because they knew they would get slaughtered.

Not only that, but despite being a surprise attack, that focused on the least risky targets, it actually was a massive defeat for the North Vietnamese.

No, what killed our troops, was making it impossible for them to kill the enemy.

One particularly devastating story from a officer, was him recounting watching the enemy build a fire base to attack his base from, and not being allowed to call in an air strike, until they were actually being attacked, and men were actually dying.

Then after destroying the fire base, they wouldn't be allowed to go and finish off the people at the base. So they would watch them rebuild the base again, and still not be allowed to order an air strike, until once again they were being attacked and men were dying.

This is why our military personnel were killed. And that was due to left-wingers. No right-wing person believes that you can win a boxing match by not being allowed to move, and not being allowed to attack.

Left-wingers killed those troops.

FDR was a Dem

hooooowoowoowowoowowoooooooo--you fked up!
1. I am not liberal at all--I am American
2. I served in the USMC for 8 years..my dad was at the Chosin
3. in 1983, I remember hearing that the USMC was going into Beirut--for DEFENSIVE purposes only
....BEFORE the bombing that killed more Marines in a single attack than many, many other incidents, I thought:
'''this is not good...that place is a big mess ...this will not be good'''
= do you remember who the President was that did not let the USMC protect themselves was ???? a REPUBLICAN

Yeah, FDR was. So was JFK, and LBJ.

And yes I thought (in retrospect) that the Beirut mission was a bad idea.

Generally speaking, I'm against all "peace keeping" missions. If there is not peace there, then we need to be going as a military force, or not at all.

If there *IS* peace there, then.... why are we going?

That said, comparing one bomb, to an entire war, is Apples and Oranges.

But I do agree the concept is somewhat similar. All in... or not in at all.

Nixon--a Republican--let Americans die for his own political gain--with Vietnam!:

When a Candidate Conspired With a Foreign Power to Win An Election

It took decades to unravel Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam peace talks. Now, the full story can be told.

www.politico.com

Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson’s Vietnam Peace Talks in ’68, Notes Show (Published 2017)

Richard M. Nixon feared that progress toward ending the war would hurt his chances for the presidency.

www.nytimes.com

It didn't matter though. The North Vietnamese had no intention of surrendering at all, or having a real peace. Which is why the conditions of the "peace" deal, involved N.Viet troops remaining in S.Vietnam.

The only time that the North Vietnamese actually pursed peace at all, was when Nixon was unleashing the US military to conduct unrestricted offensive attacks in 1972.

you obviously didn't read the link posted which said::
It was by far the worst military debacle the U.S. armed forces suffered in the entire twentieth century

 

[rightwinger]

Sad, how China got it's ass handed to it buy the USA in Korea

Yet there still is a N Korea

 

[rightwinger]

f the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

That is what Gen MacArthur said.
In a matter of about a month, his forces swept north of the 39 th parallel and chased the N Koreans all the way to the Yalu River.

That is when the Chinese forces came in and swarmed our unsuspecting forces and drove us back south of the 39th parallel. Ended up killing 50,000 American forces.

We wanted to avoid the same mistake in Vietnam

Which is only because they retreated. If you follow up on what happened after this, every time the UN forces stood their ground, and fought, they slaughtered the Chinese.

Especially the Chinese of army of the 1950s, was in fact a peasant army. They were not hardly trained at all.

Damn boy, are you ever ignorant of history.

The Chinese forces overwhelmed us. We ran for our lives

For a while till MacArther out flanked the assholes and was kicking their asses right back across the border until a democommie asshole of a president pulled him up short and fired him.
If we had let Patton have his way the USSR wouldn't have existed for long and if we'd let Mcarthur have his way Red China would have been a long forgotten footnote by now too. Both were stopped by a democommie asshole excuse for a president, Truman who was afraid of his own shadow.

MacArthurs arrogance screwed the pooch in Korea just like it did in the Philippines. Nobody could tell MacArthur anything.

He was warned that his invasion of the north would draw in China. He laughed at the threat and laughed at China. His arrogance cost the US 50,000 lives


Truman should have fired him sooner

Apparently you can't read either. My earlier post:

US Deaths:
Hostile: 33,739
Non-Hostile: 2,835
Total In-Theatre: 36,574
US Wounded in Action - 103,284
Other Casualties by Country (killed and missing)
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
South Korea - (217,000 military, 1,000,000 civilian)
North Korea - (406,000 military, 600,000 civilian)
China - (600,000 military)

If you could read you might note that: USA KIA's= 33,739
North Korea KIA's=406,000
China KIA's =600,000
Find someone to do the math but we clearly kicked some serious ass and that without nukes which we would have been more than justified to use.
In Vietnam we killed and captured a few hundred more Chinese without even bothering to go looking for them. They just weren't ready to face those kind of losses again.

Once again you take the simplistic approach we used in Vietnam that whoever killed more of the other guy wins.

It was MacArthurs decision to ignore warnings not to invade north of the 38th parallel and instead proceed to the Yalu River that brought in the Chinese and led to a full out war.

Yes, we killed many more Chinese than they killed us, but we engaged in an unnecessary war that ended up where it started.....at the 38th parallel

 

[Desperado]

We lost because we had no business being there in the first place. That goes for Vietnam, Korea and pick your war in the mid east.

 

[rightwinger]

I am absolutely convinced based on the evidence, that if we had simply decided to take out North Korea, we could have done it, and then we wouldn't have this problem today.

We did try to take out N Korea. We invaded and marched all the way to the Yalu River. MacArthur also ignored the threat of those Chinese “peasants” and got his ass handed to him as he scampered back to the 38th parallel. He should have been fired then and there.

Could we have regrouped and attacked the Chinese again? Probably, but not without suffering more casualties than Truman was willing to give. America had just gone through WWII and was tired of war.

 

[elektra]

China, very much got stopped by the USA in Korea.

The Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces.

after they kicked our asses

You can not argue with the quote. The quote states the opposite of your opinion.

 

[elektra]

China, very much got stopped by the USA in Korea.

The Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces.

......so they kicked a whole Corps off the peninsula--that's stopping the US????!!!hahhahahahahahaha

Again, the quote proves you wrong. You make the claim that you substantiate your opinion with links yet when confronted with facts all you do is laugh?

again,, the quote proves that your opinion is pure fiction.

 

[elektra]

Yet there still is a N Korea

Yet, the Chinese/North Korea objective was for there to be no South Korea yet there still is a South Korea.

 

[Pilot1]

Both Korea and Vietnam showed the Soviet Union and Chinese we weren't going to roll over for them turning every country in Asia and possibly elsewhere COMMUNIST. Those proxy wars ultimately helped us to win the Cold War and bankrupt the USSR. Yes, they could have been waged better but our politicians feared a direct war with the super powers if we did win more decisive POLITICAL victories. We kicked the enemies ass in both wars, especially Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet.

 

[Desperado]

Both Korea and Vietnam showed the Soviet Union and Chinese we weren't going to roll over for them turning every country in Asia and possibly elsewhere COMMUNIST. Those proxy wars ultimately helped us to win the Cold War and bankrupt the USSR. Yes, they could have been waged better but our politicians feared a direct war with the super powers if we did win more decisive POLITICAL victories. We kicked the enemies ass in both wars, especially Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet.

Oh good god, you are really bringing up the Domino Theory
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet yet they were the ones that are in control now.

 

[Dick Foster]

f the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

That is what Gen MacArthur said.
In a matter of about a month, his forces swept north of the 39 th parallel and chased the N Koreans all the way to the Yalu River.

That is when the Chinese forces came in and swarmed our unsuspecting forces and drove us back south of the 39th parallel. Ended up killing 50,000 American forces.

We wanted to avoid the same mistake in Vietnam

Which is only because they retreated. If you follow up on what happened after this, every time the UN forces stood their ground, and fought, they slaughtered the Chinese.

Especially the Chinese of army of the 1950s, was in fact a peasant army. They were not hardly trained at all.

Damn boy, are you ever ignorant of history.

The Chinese forces overwhelmed us. We ran for our lives

For a while till MacArther out flanked the assholes and was kicking their asses right back across the border until a democommie asshole of a president pulled him up short and fired him.
If we had let Patton have his way the USSR wouldn't have existed for long and if we'd let Mcarthur have his way Red China would have been a long forgotten footnote by now too. Both were stopped by a democommie asshole excuse for a president, Truman who was afraid of his own shadow.

..see the map above--China kicked OUR a$$es

Dumbass they sneak attacked then Mcarthur landed at Inchon and put the run on the little bastards right back across the border where they came from and if Mcarthur had had his way he'd have run the little bastards all the way to Pieking as it was called then. You're obviously a real dumbass when it comes to history. I suppose in your idiotic feeble mind the South won the civil war because they won most of the battles at the beginning. BTW we never lost a single battle in Vietnam so we must have won that one too, you hopeless dumbass.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Both Korea and Vietnam showed the Soviet Union and Chinese we weren't going to roll over for them turning every country in Asia and possibly elsewhere COMMUNIST. Those proxy wars ultimately helped us to win the Cold War and bankrupt the USSR. Yes, they could have been waged better but our politicians feared a direct war with the super powers if we did win more decisive POLITICAL victories. We kicked the enemies ass in both wars, especially Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet.

Oh good god, you are really bringing up the Domino Theory
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet yet they were the ones that are in control now.

Because of cowardly dishonest Democrats.

 

[Desperado]

BTW we never lost a single battle in Vietnam so we must have won that one too,

now there is a record to be proud of,,,,, never lost a battle yet we lost the war.Are those Generals still in charge now? With the way the wars in the Mid East are progressing it sure looks like it.

 

[9thIDdoc]

f the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

That is what Gen MacArthur said.
In a matter of about a month, his forces swept north of the 39 th parallel and chased the N Koreans all the way to the Yalu River.

That is when the Chinese forces came in and swarmed our unsuspecting forces and drove us back south of the 39th parallel. Ended up killing 50,000 American forces.

We wanted to avoid the same mistake in Vietnam

Which is only because they retreated. If you follow up on what happened after this, every time the UN forces stood their ground, and fought, they slaughtered the Chinese.

Especially the Chinese of army of the 1950s, was in fact a peasant army. They were not hardly trained at all.

Damn boy, are you ever ignorant of history.

The Chinese forces overwhelmed us. We ran for our lives

For a while till MacArther out flanked the assholes and was kicking their asses right back across the border until a democommie asshole of a president pulled him up short and fired him.
If we had let Patton have his way the USSR wouldn't have existed for long and if we'd let Mcarthur have his way Red China would have been a long forgotten footnote by now too. Both were stopped by a democommie asshole excuse for a president, Truman who was afraid of his own shadow.

MacArthurs arrogance screwed the pooch in Korea just like it did in the Philippines. Nobody could tell MacArthur anything.

He was warned that his invasion of the north would draw in China. He laughed at the threat and laughed at China. His arrogance cost the US 50,000 lives


Truman should have fired him sooner

Apparently you can't read either. My earlier post:

US Deaths:
Hostile: 33,739
Non-Hostile: 2,835
Total In-Theatre: 36,574
US Wounded in Action - 103,284
Other Casualties by Country (killed and missing)
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
South Korea - (217,000 military, 1,000,000 civilian)
North Korea - (406,000 military, 600,000 civilian)
China - (600,000 military)

If you could read you might note that: USA KIA's= 33,739
North Korea KIA's=406,000
China KIA's =600,000
Find someone to do the math but we clearly kicked some serious ass and that without nukes which we would have been more than justified to use.
In Vietnam we killed and captured a few hundred more Chinese without even bothering to go looking for them. They just weren't ready to face those kind of losses again.

apparently you don't know shit about history/war/etc
WW2:
Russian deaths:military ALONE almost 8 MILLION
Germany about 5.5 million
FYI = Germany LOST !!!
KIAs mean nothing

And your comment has absolutely nothing to do with either my post or the subject of this thread.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Both Korea and Vietnam showed the Soviet Union and Chinese we weren't going to roll over for them turning every country in Asia and possibly elsewhere COMMUNIST. Those proxy wars ultimately helped us to win the Cold War and bankrupt the USSR. Yes, they could have been waged better but our politicians feared a direct war with the super powers if we did win more decisive POLITICAL victories. We kicked the enemies ass in both wars, especially Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet.

Oh good god, you are really bringing up the Domino Theory
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong NEVER won a major engagement including Tet yet they were the ones that are in control now.

Only because our lame-ass government of the time allowed it to be so.

 

[9thIDdoc]

f the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.

That is what Gen MacArthur said.
In a matter of about a month, his forces swept north of the 39 th parallel and chased the N Koreans all the way to the Yalu River.

That is when the Chinese forces came in and swarmed our unsuspecting forces and drove us back south of the 39th parallel. Ended up killing 50,000 American forces.

We wanted to avoid the same mistake in Vietnam

Which is only because they retreated. If you follow up on what happened after this, every time the UN forces stood their ground, and fought, they slaughtered the Chinese.

Especially the Chinese of army of the 1950s, was in fact a peasant army. They were not hardly trained at all.

Damn boy, are you ever ignorant of history.

The Chinese forces overwhelmed us. We ran for our lives

For a while till MacArther out flanked the assholes and was kicking their asses right back across the border until a democommie asshole of a president pulled him up short and fired him.
If we had let Patton have his way the USSR wouldn't have existed for long and if we'd let Mcarthur have his way Red China would have been a long forgotten footnote by now too. Both were stopped by a democommie asshole excuse for a president, Truman who was afraid of his own shadow.

MacArthurs arrogance screwed the pooch in Korea just like it did in the Philippines. Nobody could tell MacArthur anything.

He was warned that his invasion of the north would draw in China. He laughed at the threat and laughed at China. His arrogance cost the US 50,000 lives


Truman should have fired him sooner

Apparently you can't read either. My earlier post:

US Deaths:
Hostile: 33,739
Non-Hostile: 2,835
Total In-Theatre: 36,574
US Wounded in Action - 103,284
Other Casualties by Country (killed and missing)
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
South Korea - (217,000 military, 1,000,000 civilian)
North Korea - (406,000 military, 600,000 civilian)
China - (600,000 military)

If you could read you might note that: USA KIA's= 33,739
North Korea KIA's=406,000
China KIA's =600,000
Find someone to do the math but we clearly kicked some serious ass and that without nukes which we would have been more than justified to use.
In Vietnam we killed and captured a few hundred more Chinese without even bothering to go looking for them. They just weren't ready to face those kind of losses again.

Agreed agreed.
All of those numbers are dead on accurate.

We could have easily marched into N.K. and forced a surrender.

Especially during the 1950s. Again, China's army was quite literally peasants.

At least during Vietnam, China had a mild level of training. But during the 50s, the Chinese regulars were people formerly holding pitch forks in the countryside, that were handed bolt action rifles.

Equipment was often sparse, and resulted in them using captured American weapons, which then presented the problem of them running out of ammunition.

I am absolutely convinced based on the evidence, that if we had simply decided to take out North Korea, we could have done it, and then we wouldn't have this problem today.

.......we went up to the Yalu-----we did take out NK---and then the Chinese kicked our ass

Initially. Because of a sneak attack launched by a country we were not at war with. Then we turned around and delivered an ass kicking many orders of magnitude greater to them.

 

[9thIDdoc]

China, very much got stopped by the USA in Korea.

The Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces.

......so they kicked a whole Corps off the peninsula--that's stopping the US????!!!hahhahahahahahaha

Didn't happen. Learn history.

 

[LuckyDuck]

..we are talking REALITY--not nuking anyone....not invading the north like the Russians and US did to Germany --that wasn't going to happen--even if they did invade the North, they couldn't stay there forever.....
..first--the French lost--and after we gave them MILLIONS$ and with all their '''advantages'' ....this should've been a lesson
......a big problem was the Vietnamese government [ and military ] = for a long time it was corrupt/unstable/etc = they had 3 heads of state changes in less than 2 years--one with a MURDER..with many attempted coups before and after......that mess was still there after Thieu took over
...N Vietnam did not have to even beat the US ......
.......the US could cut off Korea because it was peninsula--where as NV could bring troops/etc to the South over land
.

Two problems with that concept.
1. We had completely destroyed the North Vietnam's guerilla units called, Viet Cong. That left only the NVA army to finish off.
2. Technically we weren't losing the war on the ground in Vietnam. We made the mistake of allowing complete and unrestricted access to the media on the battlefield (something we didn't repeat in subsequent conflicts). This brought the horror of war into the living rooms of millions of American families, with the result being a massive public resistance to further conflict in the war. Those public pressures, forced the administration to give in to that massive pressure and leave Vietnam to its own fate.
Having said all that, the one thing that was despicable, was how we got into the war in the first place. It was based upon a lie. That said, once we were actually committed to the war, we should have done two things, not giving the media unrestricted access to filming and letting the military go full out and not allow the civilian administration to pick and choose the targets. It essentially put handcuffs on how the military could operate. Those same idiotic restrictions were done via the Obama administration.