Vietnam War was unwinnable

[9thIDdoc]

 

[RetiredGySgt]

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.

..we couldn't even beat the Chinese in Korea--how do you think the US could go all over China!!!!!!????
hahahahahahahah

Look you dumb ass we beat the Chinese in Korea. It was a POLITICAL DECISION not to retake North Korea. We could have done it as evidenced by the rampant slaughter we put on the Chinese , THEY kept attacking across the 38th parallel so we kept retaking the ground they were taking or we successfully defended against all the attacks for 3 damn years 51 52 and 53. WE CHOSE not to retake Korea.

 

[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.

..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.

..we couldn't even beat the Chinese in Korea--how do you think the US could go all over China!!!!!!????
hahahahahahahah

Look you dumb ass we beat the Chinese in Korea. It was a POLITICAL DECISION not to retake North Korea. We could have done it as evidenced by the rampant slaughter we put on the Chinese , THEY kept attacking across the 38th parallel so we kept retaking the ground they were taking or we successfully defended against all the attacks for 3 damn years 51 52 and 53. WE CHOSE not to retake Korea.

stalemate:

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.'''''' It was by far the worst military debacle the U.S. armed forces suffered in the entire twentieth century. '''''

Catastrophe on the Yalu: America’s intelligence failure in Korea | Brookings

The United States has been in conflict with North Korea since it invaded South Korea in 1950. For decades, it has been a top American intelligence priority to gather information and analysis on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

www.brookings.edu

 

[harmonica]

AND McNamara!!!!!!! JFK and McNamara!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.'''''''' Convinced that the war was unwinnable,'''''''''''

McNamara Recalls, and Regrets, Vietnam (Published 1995)

www.nytimes.com

..and you STILL deny it???????!!!!!!!!!
BOOOOM BABY

Another link you have not read. The Vietnam war is not the descriptive of a google search. If you care to actually use a link, you should quote the link with commentary. Or provide enough of a quote that the quote itself answers a premise you put forth.

I do not see that you have done that even once throughout your thread.

..so JFK says it before we were totally involved--then McNamara says it after......UNDENIABLE = unwinnable

 

[elektra]

AND McNamara!!!!!!! JFK and McNamara!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.'''''''' Convinced that the war was unwinnable,'''''''''''

McNamara Recalls, and Regrets, Vietnam (Published 1995)

www.nytimes.com

..and you STILL deny it???????!!!!!!!!!
BOOOOM BABY

Another link you have not read. The Vietnam war is not the descriptive of a google search. If you care to actually use a link, you should quote the link with commentary. Or provide enough of a quote that the quote itself answers a premise you put forth.

I do not see that you have done that even once throughout your thread.

..so JFK says it before we were totally involved--then McNamara says it after......UNDENIABLE = unwinnable

except, jfk and mcnamra are not quoted nor linked to. I already told you your link you did not read is broke. You are the worst author of an OP ever. You have not articulated one point.

 

[harmonica]

AND McNamara!!!!!!! JFK and McNamara!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.'''''''' Convinced that the war was unwinnable,'''''''''''

McNamara Recalls, and Regrets, Vietnam (Published 1995)

www.nytimes.com

..and you STILL deny it???????!!!!!!!!!
BOOOOM BABY

Another link you have not read. The Vietnam war is not the descriptive of a google search. If you care to actually use a link, you should quote the link with commentary. Or provide enough of a quote that the quote itself answers a premise you put forth.

I do not see that you have done that even once throughout your thread.

..so JFK says it before we were totally involved--then McNamara says it after......UNDENIABLE = unwinnable

except, jfk and mcnamra are not quoted nor linked to. I already told you your link you did not read is broke. You are the worst author of an OP ever. You have not articulated one point.

......you need your eyes checked--they are quoted and linked---you make yourself ridiculous and absurd

 

[rightwinger]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

 

[Andylusion]

AND McNamara!!!!!!! JFK and McNamara!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.'''''''' Convinced that the war was unwinnable,'''''''''''

McNamara Recalls, and Regrets, Vietnam (Published 1995)

www.nytimes.com

..and you STILL deny it???????!!!!!!!!!
BOOOOM BABY

Another link you have not read. The Vietnam war is not the descriptive of a google search. If you care to actually use a link, you should quote the link with commentary. Or provide enough of a quote that the quote itself answers a premise you put forth.

I do not see that you have done that even once throughout your thread.

..so JFK says it before we were totally involved--then McNamara says it after......UNDENIABLE = unwinnable

Bull. JFK was wrong, and McNamara was wrong.

Again, there was not a single example where our troops in force, met their troops in force, and we didn't completely slaughter them.

You are just wrong.

 

[rightwinger]

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.

Only because our lame assed government got us involved in a war that we had no business being in

So now you're an expert in international relations? Some folks feel the Cold War was worth winning.

We turned a Civil War in Vietnam into a Cold War against Communism.

Beating Communism regardless of the cost was not warranted.
The fear of Communism was not worth 2 million lives.

And with 45 years of a Communist Vietnam, we got to see that it was not worth winning

That's debatable. If you seriously don't care about mass slaughter of people, then you are right.

The communists slaughtered, and starved, millions of people. We can see today the difference between North and South Korea. There could have been a free, prosperous South Vietnam today.

But if you are left-winger, and love watching people killed because they have eye glasses, and don't care at all about freedom....

Then you are right, there was no value to the Vietnamese, and letting them die, so that you yourself never have to do anything difficult, would have been the right options for a self-centered and spoiled American brat.

You are ignoring the ground truth about Vietnam while clinging to your Cold War era anti communist rhetoric.

Communist Vietnam did not turn into the global terror that was being used as justification for war.
It was not worth 2 million lives to prevent.

 

[Andylusion]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

We have the truth. You are full of left-wing ideological garbage.

Yes, the military did lie about the realities on the ground. I agree. That was very bad because it undermined their trust.

Doesn't change anything we said. There was no one time where our troops in force, met their troops, and lost.

 

[Andylusion]

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.

Only because our lame assed government got us involved in a war that we had no business being in

So now you're an expert in international relations? Some folks feel the Cold War was worth winning.

We turned a Civil War in Vietnam into a Cold War against Communism.

Beating Communism regardless of the cost was not warranted.
The fear of Communism was not worth 2 million lives.

And with 45 years of a Communist Vietnam, we got to see that it was not worth winning

That's debatable. If you seriously don't care about mass slaughter of people, then you are right.

The communists slaughtered, and starved, millions of people. We can see today the difference between North and South Korea. There could have been a free, prosperous South Vietnam today.

But if you are left-winger, and love watching people killed because they have eye glasses, and don't care at all about freedom....

Then you are right, there was no value to the Vietnamese, and letting them die, so that you yourself never have to do anything difficult, would have been the right options for a self-centered and spoiled American brat.

You are ignoring the ground truth about Vietnam while clinging to your Cold War era anti communist rhetoric.

Communist Vietnam did not turn into the global terror that was being used as justification for war.
It was not worth 2 million lives to prevent.

You have the right to be wrong. We could have easily pushed into Hanoi and forced a surrender. Easily.

Nixon forced them to the table, without pushing to Hanoi. Why do think that is? Because they knew if we really wanted to, we would, and they would be screwed.

 

[rightwinger]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

We have the truth. You are full of left-wing ideological garbage.

Yes, the military did lie about the realities on the ground. I agree. That was very bad because it undermined their trust.

Doesn't change anything we said. There was no one time where our troops in force, met their troops, and lost.

The military mislead the American people on the chances of winning the war.
Walter Cronkite finally broke and said......This war is not going to end quickly, we are in for a long fight and need to reassess our role

 

[rightwinger]

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.

Only because our lame assed government got us involved in a war that we had no business being in

So now you're an expert in international relations? Some folks feel the Cold War was worth winning.

We turned a Civil War in Vietnam into a Cold War against Communism.

Beating Communism regardless of the cost was not warranted.
The fear of Communism was not worth 2 million lives.

And with 45 years of a Communist Vietnam, we got to see that it was not worth winning

That's debatable. If you seriously don't care about mass slaughter of people, then you are right.

The communists slaughtered, and starved, millions of people. We can see today the difference between North and South Korea. There could have been a free, prosperous South Vietnam today.

But if you are left-winger, and love watching people killed because they have eye glasses, and don't care at all about freedom....

Then you are right, there was no value to the Vietnamese, and letting them die, so that you yourself never have to do anything difficult, would have been the right options for a self-centered and spoiled American brat.

You are ignoring the ground truth about Vietnam while clinging to your Cold War era anti communist rhetoric.

Communist Vietnam did not turn into the global terror that was being used as justification for war.
It was not worth 2 million lives to prevent.

You have the right to be wrong. We could have easily pushed into Hanoi and forced a surrender. Easily.

Nixon forced them to the table, without pushing to Hanoi. Why do think that is? Because they knew if we really wanted to, we would, and they would be screwed.

Hanoi was bricks and mortar.
N Vietnam did not rely on it for their survival. Their military supply lines reached to Russia and China. Taking Hanoi would not have caused surrender
Invading N Vietnam would have led to China entering the war and escalated the number of US casualties

 

[Camp]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

We have the truth. You are full of left-wing ideological garbage.

Yes, the military did lie about the realities on the ground. I agree. That was very bad because it undermined their trust.

Doesn't change anything we said. There was no one time where our troops in force, met their troops, and lost.

Our definitions of victory and defeat were different than theirs. We used high body counts of enemy dead for declaring victory. The enemy knew 1,000 of their own killed was worth 100 American deaths. We would declare a victory of a battle and leave. A few weeks or months later the communist would retake the position, set booby traps, and challenge us to retake the hill or area of desolate jungle, again, for another hundred American lives. They were fighting for survival and national independence from foreign occupation and rulership. We were fighting for some abstract theories and unknown political ideas. They were fighting French, Japanese, and Chinese for decades and decades. We were fighting for new reasons no one understood or cared about. Huge portions of the population we were allegedly fighting for hated us. Our solution for peace was to leave. Theirs was to make us leave.

 

[elektra]

[QUOTE="harmonica, post: 25077249, member: = unwinnable
[/QUOUTE]
......you need your eyes checked--they are quoted and linked---you make yourself ridiculous and absurd
[/QUOTE]
It is your inept style of commenting that make it impossible to figure out what you are referring to. Try linking, quoting and commenting as well as making sure your links work. If you to lazy and stupid to do that your threads become jokes.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Not only would “marching on Hanoi” not have led to any surrender, not only would it have led to China entering the war, it would have led to an utterly impossible-to-maintain long-term occupation by U.S. troops of hostile occupied territories in Asia, requiring millions of soldiers and trillions of dollars. American society would have had more rebellions, student uprisings, constant chaos, with general strikes as the whole population awoke and revolted. In the army fragging of officers would increase exponentially into open mutinies among drafted soldiers, who were already utterly demoralized. Millions more innocent Vietnamese would be butchered. Russia would have won the Cold War. The U.S. would have committed suicide. It was wise for Nixon and Kissinger to have cut their losses. They had no choice.

As it was, of course the U.S. lost the war, but in a sense it did NOT lose, as Noam Chomsky pointed out. The CIA-abetted rightwing religious coup that massacred a half million leftists in 1965 in Indonesia already demonstrated the “dominos” were not falling in Asia as South Korea, Japan, and Thailand held firm and strengthened their alliances with the U.S. Rather, the USA had in Vietnam showed the whole world how far it would go, how dangerous it was, what bestial things it could do if challenged directly, dropping more ordinance on Indochina than on all its old imperialist competitors / enemies combined in WWII.

 

[Camp]

[QUOTE="harmonica, post: 25077249, member: = unwinnable
[/QUOUTE]
......you need your eyes checked--they are quoted and linked---you make yourself ridiculous and absurd

It is your inept style of commenting that make it impossible to figure out what you are referring to. Try linking, quoting and commenting as well as making sure your links work. If you to lazy and stupid to do that your threads become jokes.
[/QUOTE]


This thread seems popular and far from a joke. It's running since 31 August and has almost 600 comments. OP has made his points clear and concise. He seems to answer all questions thrown his way.

 

[Andylusion]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

We have the truth. You are full of left-wing ideological garbage.

Yes, the military did lie about the realities on the ground. I agree. That was very bad because it undermined their trust.

Doesn't change anything we said. There was no one time where our troops in force, met their troops, and lost.

The military mislead the American people on the chances of winning the war.
Walter Cronkite finally broke and said......This war is not going to end quickly, we are in for a long fight and need to reassess our role

Again... that was because we didn't push and attack the enemy.

Hey, if you go into a boxing match, with one hand tied behind your back, and your feet planted to the floor, so you can't move....... ya think you might be in for a long hard fight?

Yeah, you would be. Because you placed rules on yourself, that prevented you from winning.

As I said before, we had so many stupid rules on our military.... it was ridiculous. We had LBJ and his staff, individually approving bombing targets, and military assaults.

You can't win a war doing that. You tell the military people, go win the war, and they... the people who actually know how to win a war, will go attack, bomb, assault whatever they see they need to attack and bomb.

You can't win saying "No no, you don't need to hit that target". "No no, you don't need to attack that base".

This is what was going on. So yeah, Cronkite was right under those conditions. Under the way our idiotic government was trying to micromanage a war, yeah it would be a long hard fight, and you likely could not win.

But that was not because we couldn't win. If they had allowed unrestricted war, and just plowed into North Vietnam, they would have folded like a deck of cards.

Again, the Tet Offensive proved this. They lost the Tet Offensive. That was a complete surprise attack with a large force, and they specifically avoided direct targets with high levels of American troops.... AND THEY STILL LOST. The Tet Offensive severely crippled the North Vietnamese by any measure.

So you might ask... if it harmed them so bad, then why didn't we win?

Because we didn't march to Hanoi and win. We never attacked the enemy. We had so many stupid rules about where we could go, what we could bomb, how we could engage, it was impossible for us to win.

If we had simply let the military go, they would have flattened the N.Viet. They had nothing on us. Ever single time our troops met their troops in direct combat, we wrecked them.

 

[Desperado]

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.

You think the public would not have noticed 60,000 dead bodies without the media telling them?

You think the public never would have asked WTF are we doing there?


The problem is that the media stopped parroting the propaganda the military was feeding them

The war violence on the publics televisions was a major contributor and had that not been happening, it's not that thousands of dead troops would have been missed, only that the unity in the U.S. against the war would have been fractured.

So you oppose people learning the truth and being forced to accept propaganda from the military.

Initially, the press was very supportive of the military. then it became clear the ground situation was not what was being reported. Returning soldiers also told a different story than was being reported

Future wars will have everything immediately posted on the internet without Govt censorship

We have the truth. You are full of left-wing ideological garbage.

Yes, the military did lie about the realities on the ground. I agree. That was very bad because it undermined their trust.

Doesn't change anything we said. There was no one time where our troops in force, met their troops, and lost.

The military mislead the American people on the chances of winning the war.
Walter Cronkite finally broke and said......This war is not going to end quickly, we are in for a long fight and need to reassess our role

Again... that was because we didn't push and attack the enemy.

Hey, if you go into a boxing match, with one hand tied behind your back, and your feet planted to the floor, so you can't move....... ya think you might be in for a long hard fight?

Yeah, you would be. Because you placed rules on yourself, that prevented you from winning.

As I said before, we had so many stupid rules on our military.... it was ridiculous. We had LBJ and his staff, individually approving bombing targets, and military assaults.

You can't win a war doing that. You tell the military people, go win the war, and they... the people who actually know how to win a war, will go attack, bomb, assault whatever they see they need to attack and bomb.

You can't win saying "No no, you don't need to hit that target". "No no, you don't need to attack that base".

This is what was going on. So yeah, Cronkite was right under those conditions. Under the way our idiotic government was trying to micromanage a war, yeah it would be a long hard fight, and you likely could not win.

But that was not because we couldn't win. If they had allowed unrestricted war, and just plowed into North Vietnam, they would have folded like a deck of cards.

Again, the Tet Offensive proved this. They lost the Tet Offensive. That was a complete surprise attack with a large force, and they specifically avoided direct targets with high levels of American troops.... AND THEY STILL LOST. The Tet Offensive severely crippled the North Vietnamese by any measure.

So you might ask... if it harmed them so bad, then why didn't we win?

Because we didn't march to Hanoi and win. We never attacked the enemy. We had so many stupid rules about where we could go, what we could bomb, how we could engage, it was impossible for us to win.

If we had simply let the military go, they would have flattened the N.Viet. They had nothing on us. Ever single time our troops met their troops in direct combat, we wrecked them.

You miss the point..... It doesn't matter what tactics we used or who approved them,,, We should never have been there in the first place.

 

[Dick Foster]

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.

That war was fought and lost on the streets of this country. Everyone but a simpleminded shitforbrains knows that much. In fact we had no damn business there in the first place at least not on the side we were on. If anything, we should have gone in their years before and kicked the damned frogs asses out.