When the NVA all out invaded South Vietnam in 1974 and 1975, was the US obligated to help the South Vietnamese?

I know we did not.

hammermill thread

Hammer time.

FPNI

Spammermill thread

Harumph

And... no

Are you familiar with the words "Frequent Wind"?  

Harumph x2

We relocated tens of thousands of them to the US.



 

Is this being asked from a ethical standpoint?

you know that eh?

Yup. Congress betrayed  them

How did we help them militarily after 1973?

I think in 72 or 73 they stopped a major offensive by the north by air power pretty much, in 75 it was just pretty much done, the south was not/could not stand up for themselves, I mean everything from the DMZ to Da Nang fell in a blink, the north was also able to come out of Cambodia into the Highlands and cut right down to the coast no problem(something they had wanted to do for years and now with the Americans gone it was a piece of cake) I also heard somewhere where the ARVN had some sort of ammo rationing, it was a crazy low number of rounds allotted to them a day, where as the NVA had spent these years of negotiations building up a massive supply line/ammo cache clear from Hanoi to Saigon, they could sustain a offensive endlessly.

when i see these thread titles, i dont even have to see the author to know who posted it

hammermill thread

So how much trouble would Gerald Ford gotten in if he had ordered bombing of the NVA in 1975?

I agree that the Democrats are and were rat bastards for their conduct WRT Vietnam.

The notion that we were winning in 1972 does not stack up to reality, though. The Communist actors initialed the Paris agreement because they knew the RVN government was in total chaos and was not sustainable by any means. Their victory in the war had been a foregone conclusion for years. They were trying to stop the bombing, get US forces out of the country (and its airspace), and put the US out of the war. Everything else would fall into place. I believe they also understood the political reality in the US- that declaring victory with signatures on a paper would end US involvement for good.

Personally, I believe the outcome of the war was decided by 1960. The majority of people in the South were very displeased with the land ownership scheme in the country and were sold on the idea that they would be given and allowed to farm the land on which they lived and worked under Communist rule. Land ownership and rice farming were the definitive issues of the war. They were the root causes of insurgency, which the US never successfully addressed. From 1960 to 1975, the Communist apparatus in the South only got stronger. The RVN government got weaker. Regardless of how much hardware was supplied by the US, the RVN military was never going to make good use of it. They had too great of a cultural and practical barrier to do so. There is an analogue of this today in the Iraqi military. Regardless of all the bombings in the North and everything else, the US never put a dent in communist political influence in the South.

American involvement in the 1960s and 70s only prolonged the war, and failed to address the root causes of the communist revolution (or insurgency). All the bombing, direct action, money spent on projects, and aid delivered were irrelevant to the issues causing the problems. This is exactly the same way the US has been failing in Afghanistan.

I don't want to make this a long debate thread. I think the American public has the history of the war 100% wrong (us and the Democrats) because we see it from only an American perspective. Incidentally, that's also why the US failed in policy making before and during the war and why the war was ultimately lost. I've molded my opinions based on the books I've read, my knowledge of US counterinsurgency history, and my experience as an intelligence professional practicing counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. The single best source I can point anyone to with regard to the Vietnam War is  this book. I beleive it to be the only English language work which understands the Vietnam war well enough to explain what happened.

He would have had to pay for it out of his own pocket

 

This

 

Interesting. What you are saying is the North basically had to wait the US out.

Interesting. What you are saying is the North basically had to wait the US out.

This I think congress cut all funding even humanitarian.

Nixon told them we would, I don't think it was anything official though, and Nixon wasn't in.

in on a hammermill thread!

Think about the fact that the North was able to keep all there armies in the South there, just goes to show the North wasn't done by a long shot, The US had to realize that when they were negotiating in Paris, just wanted out of it the best way we could.