It was a delaying action in the sense that we're unwilling to force any fundamental structural changes on our puppet, yet somehow expect they will one day "see the light" and become an enlightened capitalist democracy.  News flash: not going to happen.

Newsflash, everything you wrote is grossly incorrect.

One, Look up South Korea's history. They were a dictatorship since before the Korean War until the early 70s and they managed to turn into a relatively stable "enlightened capitalistic democracy." Want to know the secret? They weren't defeated by communists, they had the luxury of peace to start giving more power to the people.

Two, trying to "force structural changes" in the middle of war is stupid, especially in the middle of major communist insurgency, where up to 10-20% of the nation's populace were actively trying to overthrow the new and weak central govt, while being supported by a neighboring totalitarian communist country who was militarily invading their nation, while that nation was in turn were being supported by the two major communist powers, who also just happened to be two of the most powerful nations on Earth. Its not the time to try instituting major democratic reforms. That stuff doesn't work in anything but peace time environment, which is why even in the US we understand that partial of full suspension of habeas corpus/Martial Law is sometimes necessary in worst case scenarios.

Insurgencies take time to win, it isn't done in a year or two or ten even. They need to burn themselves out through lack of success, lack of support, and attrition of cadre personnel. That's where the US lost, because we stopped supporting our allies long before the Soviets and Chinese stopped supporting theirs. We bowed to communism and said "You can have Vietnam" because a large enough sample of the American populace were either war weary or Useful Idiots to Marxist infiltrators. We failed because we had less patience and a significant amount of US citizens were, and still are, traitors to American ideals.

Since you don't seem to have any grasp of what actually happened, there isn't much point arguing.  The fundamental differences in the situation in Korea and Vietnam are so significant that there's no reason to even compare them.  So long as insurgents have access to exterior support, playing the attrition game is just stupid.  Hey, I have a great plan, lets try to wear out the Soviet Union and China by trading US lives for third world peasants they literally couldn't care less about.  I'm sure they'll cave if we just keep spending at a rate almost 100 times theirs for 20 years.

Follow the money.  

"We're stopping the spread of communism!"

"Allies!"

"The poor farmer!"

Hmm...  Cuba was too much effort?  Too far?  

Diamonds?
Gold?
Oil?
Pfft, small potatoes.  Africa has all those + communists, terrorist-training & genocide. Should be a clarion call for US "intervention."

Yet...

Nothing major in Africa.

Hmm...

Follow the money.

Heroin

Still fighting "wars" over it.

It wasn't about wearing out the Soviets or Chinese by trading lives. It was about not letting a mortal enemy ideology to the United States win over yet again another country.

The problem is that you're operating with the hindsight that the US won the Cold War. But there is a reason we did, that most of the world's developing nations didn't fall to the very real communist revolution attempts that happened in their countries. Its because the US stopped it from happening. One noteable spot we failed, even with trying, was Vietnam. Not because we didn't kill enough civilian personnel like you recommend, but because of strategic mishandling, operational failures, and tactical mistakes, but more so, because political pressure from the Left prevented the US govt from seeing the war to its conclusion, when our mortal enemies, the Soviets and Communist Chinese, had no hindrance.

I'm confused by this post since its not strung together in actual sentences. Are you suggesting we were in Vietnam for heroin?

Lies, lies, lies and more lies. The American people have been lied too for so long we've become indifferent to it. It has become the norm, it takes too much effort to decipher the truth.
And our sons, and now daughters pay for it, and have paid for it in blood, innocent blood.
Blood of great warriors who were deceived into sacrificing for a false cause.
Were I 18 or 19 years old again, and knowing what I know now, my wrath would be aimed at the greatest killer of American citizens ever,  the U.S. government, killing innocent Americans since 1861.
There needs to be an awakening in this country, people need to know what is going on and they need to act appropriately.

1. You can't be a warrior if you dodge war...Nor are warriors supposed to pick and choose which conflicts they fight based on their merit. War is their trade, their life, hence WARrior.

2. To die in war always has been, and still is now, the ultimate honor for anyone who actually possesses a warrior mindset. Don't cry when a warrior dies, salute him on his journey to the afterlife.

3. If you aren't a warrior, its not your job to protect them.


So go find some other excuse to against intervening in the very real global communist revolution.

Want to know why we fought in Vietnam? To try to stop this shit from happening: California bill would end ban on communists in government jobs

First of all any warrior worth their weight won't throw their life away on a known false pretense.

Secondly, the threat to America from communism didn't come from Vietnam, it comes from those we elect into office.

First, warriors don't pick and choose the politics of the fight. they just fight the wars they are allowed to fight, because they like fighting wars. If you're going to bring up warriors, at the very least you should understand how they think, that they don't care if there are false pretenses, they just want to fight.

Second, the internal threat America faced from communist was 100% linked to the same worldwide communist movement we were facing off in the Cold War. What that means is that while the Soviets and Chinese were supporting Vietnamese communists, they were also supporting American commies too. The American ones grew up, started calling themselves democrats instead to win elections, and now we're stuck with them. Why? Because we showed our stripes in Vietnam and let those communist win big and know they could decide US national policy.

Sounds a whole lot like you got your history of this conflict either from Howard Zinn or from Oliver Stone...

While there exists a strictly volunteer military, potential warriors have the same opportunity to choose their employer as the rest of us. To do so blindly and neglecting to weigh the actions past, present, and future of said employer is moronic. "Warriors" who put so little thought into the motivations- there own and those their masters- are idiots, plain and simple.

Fighting and dying for a pointless cause- or as is the case now, a government who will never commit the resources necessary to win based on political ineptitude and expedency- does not make their sacrifice heroic, nor does it lend credibility to said cause. If they want to die, fine so long as their decision was made willingly, but do not label them as "having died for their country" when their death, in fact meant nothing. As long as our "leadership" continues to act as it has historically, their deaths will mean nothing.

You have your perspective, I have mine. If you think it was the right war that's great, wave your little American flag and make your symbolic trek to the "Wall" and cry your crocodile tears. I see criminal activity by our government. The best thing I did, and I recommend everyone do, is take off the rose colored glasses and see the world as it is, not as they have been presenting it to you.

A student of history wants to know all the history from different perspectives to paint a truer picture, but that takes work, and for some, that's just too inconvenient. What you might find might well smear the apple pie and Chevrolet image in your head, but keep your perspective if your conscience is ok with that.

1.  Weapons-grade horseshit.  The description above isn't of a "warrior" - it is of a psychopath.
2.  Thankfully, America largely has citizen-soldiers - who have been kicking the world's "warriors" ass for 230 years.

Yours in italics.

Per the OP, you read some books, watched a few movies (), and that supposedly made you "educated" about the Vietnam conflict. That is until you read a single book that blew your mind and made you think the US needed to give in to communists. My bet is it was written by some intellectual win communist leanings. Proving that winners write the history.

Maybe next time we shouldn't hand communists an easy victory and then the kids of the losers wouldn't be indoctrinated by leftist propaganda.

My thoughts-how quickly we forget the lessons we should have learned and how we continue to make the same mistakes we made back then.And yes-I served.

What lessons?

I don't know what makes you think I side with communist, but whatever. I never advocated rolling over to communists, but without the will to defeat, it's pointless to engage. When the communist movement has reached the highest levels of our government, we still lose. I am no fan of communism, especially the ones that infiltrate our government. But until the general masses begin to take notice, they'll keep electing them into office.

The fate of Vietnam doesn't have a finite set of choices. There were essentially two in the late 50s and early 60s. Do nothing and let the Commies take over Vietnam and all of SE Asia, giving them another gigantic victory like China. Or Support the "free" govts against communist revolutionaries, infiltration, invasion, and prevent an entire regional section of the world from becoming totalitarian leftist, who'd use their nations for springboards to corrupt other nations. The US govt chose the latter, the US people chose the latter (Kill a commie for Christ!).

You evidently have a problem the Vietnam war, thinking it was a mistake. So either you support the fight against communism or you don't. If you do, then you fight them on whatever battlefield you can, not just the ones that happen under the very best of conditions.

I bet you have a problem too with the US supporting El Salvador too, or Pinochet, or the countless other "dictators" that we allied with against communist expansion. All because Howard Zinn told you so.

Who the heck is Howard Zinn?

He's the revisionist historian whose book you likely read. If not him, then someone just like him.

Assholes like them only write their versions of Vietnam and discuss the errors, the glaring mistakes. They discuss the supporting of dictators, the injustices, the oppression, blah blah blah. They shit on anything that can ever be construed as anti-communist military endeavors as make believe, as if the power elite of the US fed it to the stupid populace while they actually went to war for rubber, or bananas, or oil, or whatever bullshit they are trying to justify. They make believe the enemy were good and united and absolutely committed 100% to victory with no doubt at all, while the US supported idiots and brutal dictators. They always purposefully leave out the mass murders that happen when leftists take over govts. They discard concepts like the well know fact that communists were and still are part of a worldwide conspiracy to overthrow every single govt.

The fact that you don't know who Zinn is doesn't mean you're stupid. But it does show that you are uninformed about this subject of American history, about who is rewriting it. Nearly the entirety of the "The Vietnam War Was Evil and Wrong" genre of books are written by radical leftists. Zinn is one of them, but not the only one, far from it. If you were to get historical "knowledge" about the Vietnam War from a leftist, its no different than getting economic knowledge from Bernie Sanders.

Know thy enemy.

By your own standards, we were beat like a rented mule.  How does that act as a deterrent? Exactly which Communist Revolution did Vietnam prevent?  The Commie Revolutions that failed, failed because the locals were able and willing to fight it, sometimes with and sometimes without outside interference.  Certainly, Vietnam had no effect on Malaysia or in Indonesia, the only 'victories' in SE Asia, which both happened BEFORE Vietnam was lost.  It actually led, directly, to the fall of Cambodia and Laos. Thailand was a non-starter for the Commies, and arguably our presence, and defeat, in Vietnam briefly gave the local Communists a window to take action (which, as it happens, the Thais crushed without us even being involved).  

In Central America, Cuba was the salient lesson, at least if you're looking through the lens of Central American perception and not the US.  Ironically, our previous efforts in Vietnam caused us to actually avoid intervening even when a relatively tiny force would have been overwhelming.   So, in hindsight, Vietnam actually led to more Communism, while simultaneously costing us a ton.  It's fortunate indeed that the U.S. economy was so overwhelmingly powerful that our efforts there didn't permanently damage our economy, but just our political system.  

In any case, if we could magically go back in time to 1954, what would you suggest we do differently?  Certainly we couldn't apply more force - the amount we did apply was enough to destabilize the country and was bitterly opposed even at that level.  If you're going to say that what we did was fine, well, I'll just have to disagree.

By my standards? What are they? Please, shed some light and tell me what my standards are. Beaten like a rented mule...In no way did we tactically, operationally, or strategically get our asses kicked in the war. That is utter horseshit. Especially since Giap and others had conceded that numerous times during the war they were on the verge of tossing in the towel, especially after the Line Backer campaigns crippled the North's ability to feed munitions and troops into South Vietnam. They didn't waiver though, because Ho was a son of a bitch and tolerated zero decension, while fighting against a democracy full of pandering politicians like LBJ who balked at anything that would hurt them in polls. The communists kept on trucking, and that reason alone is the reason they won. We allowed national policy to be determined by Walter Kronkite's ignorant ass, we let loud, obnoxious, Marxist indoctrinated youth culture movements determine national policy. We allowed that movement to infect the Left in Congress to give them the votes to overrule the veto of President Ford, which allowed South Vietnam to fall to the 1975 conventional attack from North Vietnam, supported by the Soviets and Communist Chinese, which is what won them the war. Not the decade of insurgency before it, in '72 the NVA had been utterly crippled after being repulsed by the Easter Offensive, needing three whole fucking years to rebuild their army. And then they only did it again because they knew the US weren't going to stop them in '75, and only then because our politicians were a bunch of nancy boys.  

There is no deterrent if the enemy know they are tougher than we are. The Vietnam War didn't prove we didn't know how to fight, it proved that if you kill enough soldiers the American public, about a month's equivalent in December '44, it will allow the public to be swayed by our ideological enemies into quitting. It proved that Americans are paper tigers, unwilling to die for what what we believe in, while the Left absolutely is. Awesome deterrent, right?

I never said it prevented. US intervention in Vietnam was designed to prevent what happened. Had we committed instead of allowing our nation to be guilt tripped, or bullied, or persuaded by Leftist in the media and youth culture movement, we could have stayed in the war long enough to prevent what exactly happened. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, all fell. and would have too if the US hadn't chickened out in '75. We quit fighting the communists in Vietnam (and most elsewhere too until Reagan sacked up), meanwhile the communist in Vietnam kept fighting, hence the Vietnamese lost against the Commies. And then Laos fell, then



You're not aware that not everyone in Vietnam was fighting against the US? Let me break it down. The war wasn't between the US and Vietnam, it was between the Republic of Vietnam vs the VC/NLF (South Vietnam's commie insurgency), and NVA/PAVN (the conventional North Vietnamese army that invaded South Vietnam). We were militarily supporting the South Vietnamese with troops and advisers early in the war in the same way the Soviet Union and China were doing for the North. When the South Vietnamese were about to lose, in '63-65, we escalated and added more combat power (airstrikes, then ground troops). But the US was not the only one supporting a side. At no point in the entire conflict did the Vietnamese communist, North or South, not receive total support from the two most powerful communist nation states on the planet.  

Its well known that the communist insurgencies in both Malaysia and Indonesia were both supported by the Chinese communists, who were the same ones who supported the North Vietnamese too, who in turn supported the South Vietnamese, who in turn supported the Laotian and Cambodian communists. Seeing a pattern yet?  



Hence domino effect. Its not rocket science. When one nation goes commie, after taking over (sometimes before it), they use their power base as a foothold to take over more ground. China used North Vietnam as a foothold to spread to the South, and then the Vietnamese communist spread it to Laos and Cambodia. They also tried it elsewhere, Thailand, Burma, but those insurgencies didn't succeed in the long run.

Bull shit. The communist insurgency in Thailand lasted to the 80s and we'd been feeding them money, weapons, advisers the entire time. The only reason Thailand didn't fail is because we stayed the course with them. If you think we weren't involved in Thailand you're absolutely ignorant of this subject.

 

Cuba fell in '59. Nicaragua fell in the early 60s. Honduras, El Salvador, Gaet., and other Latin American nations nearly fell too, if not for US support. Those revolutions proved it could and would happen everywhere and that the Monroe Doctrine didn't apply to communist agitators.

Vietnam only led to more communism because the US lost, and we lost because we quit, and we quit because Americans are full of idiots who are easily duped by Leftists who lie to them.

Loss in Vietnam caused more countries to fall in SE Asia, and also caused major global perceived and real weaknesses of the US political system among communist revolutionaries who tasted blood.  

We made a thousand and one major errors in the war. All of them could have been made differently, leading to a more successful counter insurgency. But because we fucked them up doesn't nullify the reasoning behind fighting the war in the first place, to prevent the further spread of the virus known as communism. In that we were fully and whole heartedly in the right for fighting. That's my point. Not that we fought well or smart. But that the fight was worth it. Anyone that says otherwise is either a leftist sympathizer or has been duped by them.

Steinhab, you are no doubt well versed on this subject and I respect that. I am by no means a socialist sympathizer, quite the opposite, fanatically opposite. I merely feel the war could have been avoided years earlier had we spent a little effort in understanding what was going on in Vietnam.

As I understand the history, they were trying to regain control of their country that had been ravaged by outsiders for centuries for their natural resources. America was asked for help, we ignored them. As I said before, Ho recited the American Declaration of Independence when he declared control, at that time he highly regarded America until he was brushed aside when he came asking for help.

They took help from whomever would lend a hand, unfortunately China and Russia saw it as an opportunity to spread their disease and Ho took them up on it. Ho may have went communist even after getting help from the U.S., but at this point we will never know. I don't believe he would have, had we helped them become independent of foreign influence and abuse I believe we could have had a good relationship and it might have become a capitalist stepping stone in communist China's back yard.

This is my understanding of their history, if you disagree that's fine, but my perspective in no way makes me a communist sympathizer. The enemy is liberalism and progressivism, until we combat and defeat this mindset we are doomed regardless of whose ass we kick for a little while.

Actually, pretty much every point Steinhab made was factually wrong, but his argument can be summed up as "we were winning this totally worthwhile war then got sold out".  He needs to read some actual non-partisan accounts of the fighting.  We actually got manhandled on the ground a lot more than he seems to understand, and in the end, we were never able to inflict sufficient losses on them to seriously consider quitting.  They were able to inflict sufficient casualties on us to make us actually quit.  I simply can't understand how you can say "tactically we were beating them" as if it mattered even if it were true.

Hostory proves this correct after our withdrw all SE ASIA WANT TO SHIT= South vitnamnese - sent to reeducation camps/boat people, Collapses within months.
In cambodia Kymer rouge(red as in commies) commits genocide something like 25% of the population gone, & it just kept on going.  just like , well, domino's.

I know this is an old topic.  I served in the Marine Corps from 77 to 85.  Many of the folks I served with were Vietnam veterans and I hold them in the highest regard.

I just finished reading Gen. H.R. McMasters book "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam"

It's a great read, and very enlightening.

Welcome Home.

The only problem with Vietnam was France losing a colonial holding.

If the European powers had maintained their colonies the world would be a better place.

Even most former colonies admit things were better when the empires ruled. America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are outliers in successful former colonies.

I am all for making lives better for all people, but not through the barrel of a gun. The free market is the best motivator and enabler for that.

The biggest repeatable lesson is; if democratic countries are seen to prop up corrupt regimes, that do not have popular support.
Then the populace will look to someone else to help them, be that communism or religion, or their enemies enemy.

The USA tried to solve this early on, with a military coup d’etat against Ngo Dinh Diem.
But the people didn't like the replacement government any better.

The USA looked to France,
Vietnam looked to communists

That was the thinking of the time.

A quote from a few years later about a different country:
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. Henry Kissinger

and a Movie line I like from Full Metal Jacket I like.
Private Eightball:
Personally, I think, uh... they don't really want to be involved in this war. You know, I mean... they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I guess. Poor dumb bastards.

also replace the term communism with militant Islam, and the reason would be just as valid today.

McNamara admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin was staged and that it never happened.  That cost us our gold reserve as over 10k tons of gold left our nation's vault (we had 20k tons at the start of Bretton Woods in 1944) as LBJ went on a wild spending spree of guns (war) and butter (welfare state).  The other huge cost was 55k in American lives.  I don't think it was worth it.

While Vietnam is now commie, guess who we've loaned money to to buy our military hardware?  Yep.  That was part of Bathhouse Barry (0's Chicago nickname) and Herr Hitlery's Shift to Asia policy to encircle China.  How ironic is that?  It's a spit in the face of all those who served there.

Elaborate. How is building strong ties in an attempt to contain and counter the influence of a mutual enemy in the region spitting in veteran's faces?

I suppose building strong trading ties with Germany is also spitting in faces.

Quoted:

1. Weapons-grade horseshit. The description above isn't of a "warrior" - it is of a psychopath.

Horseshit to what you wrote. Ever actually meet an actual combat Soldier, Marine, Operator? Because if you think the ranks aren't full of people you call pyschos your head would explode. Sure, many are serving for college money, BAH, or pensions, or because they get all teary eyed staring at a flag. But there are a whole lot of fire breathers who really really enjoy combat of all any sort. Men that aren't shitting themselves the first time they waste someone, but instead have a bit ol' shit eating ear to ear grin. The sort that if the US president pointed them at Canada and said "Kill everyone", they'd be stoked. While you might call them psychos, that's because you don't understand their culture, their mindset.

That's rich.  I worked for them for 22 years.  Trained them for 18.  You are 100 percent off base.  My father did 2 tours in VN, and he would tell you himself. Once the war starts, any individual soldier can get to a point where you "enjoy" being competent at your job, and may even like to see the arms and legs fly, as Patton said.  However, nobody hates stupid senseless wars that the troops aren't allowed to win more than the soldiers themselves. If you don't know that, you haven't been around them.

2. Thankfully, America largely has citizen-soldiers - who have been kicking the world's "warriors" ass for 230 years.

This isn't fucking 1941, the Greatest Generation were pretty shitty soldiers. You know why the US Army and Marine Corps are pushing "warrior mindset/culture"? Its because that "Citizen soldier" bullshit doesn't work anymore, it stopped working the minute we were sending young men into combat deployment after deployment after deployment after deployment, while they killed, watched buddies, died, got fucked up concussions, and then deployed them again. Because truly hard men aren't "Citizen soldiers", they are warriors who live for that shit.

You know why US Special Operations Forces face shooters are into growing beards, getting all tatt'd up with sleaves and skulls and shit, promoting Scandanavian pagan lore? Its not because they watched Hist. Channel Viking documentaries. Its because they see themselves as fucking warriors, as modern warriors. Not soldiers, surely not "citizen soldiers." Professional killers who pray for war, who have a code, a mindset, one you evidently you don't possess.

Put down the Casa: The Eternal Mercenary paperbacks and familiarize yourself with army regs re: tattoos and facial hair.

My response in blue.

Without our intervention in VN, there was a real chance of Communist uprisings, if not all-out takeovers in:

Japan
Philippines
Indoneasia
Thailand
South Korea
Taiwan

Furthermore, with the VN intervention, the chance to PREVENT the fall of Cambodia and Laos would be exactly zero.

If you do not whish to be mistaken for a duck, stop quacking.  That which you type is the exact leftist spin on history.  Read up some more on Ho and when he went Commie, and see if what you find out squares with what you typed.  Would Ho be slick enough to lie to the U.S. for guns and goodies?  You betcha.  Who do you think armed and trained the Communists in Vietnam?

The O.S.S. - to raise hell in Imperial Japan's rear areas.

Back in the '60s we told our guys sent there that they were fighting to prevent the spreading of communism.  Domino theory and all that.  Communism in Vietnam won and now we're giving our former enemies assistance.  I don't know about you, but if I were a veteran who fought there and saw friends die and get maimed there I'd feel betrayed.  Concerning the "mutual enemy" issue, I think we're being misled by the neocon adherents to the Wolfowicz Doctrine into WW III.  Maybe we could do that in 1990, but not today.  More on that later.

Germany is a different case and that analogy is too simple.  They declared war on us first and we won.  We rebuilt them into a strong ally.

Returning to current events I don't support our "shift to Asia" policy or Wolfowicz Doctrine because we're broke and our military is exhausted from endless wars.  We as a nation aren't doing enough for the present veterans who have a high suicide rate.  Modernly there is no front line against a nuclear enemy since every major city is threatened.  Instead of ramping up military spending and deployment, I'd rather have our troops on guarding our southern border.  Finally, there is a minor issue of $21 trillion debt which is mathematically impossible for our grandchildren's grandchildren to repay (unless we hyper-inflate ala Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe and now Venezuela).  War is all about depopulation (here) and distraction from the current economic woes. War is wasteful and who has attacked us?

Off topic and turning to Germany, as we know Bathhouse Barry 0 put sanctions on Russia and this affected German exports.  The German response was to open up German companies in Russia  to get around the sanctions. Germans want to do business, not war.  I don't hold that against Germany though.