Vietnam war

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>>2892719
needed more flexible strategy, you kinda still see it today
They needed to have promoted a politico-civil-military strategy that 1. didnt install a weak RVN govt 2. didn't include bombing the shit out of peasants 3. created stronger civilian institutions that promoted liberal democracy ic law, justice etc

Like their grand strategy was still based on inter-state attrition warfare instead of counter-insurgency so their tactics were pretty much working to provoke battles that give 'definitive' victories plus helicopters rather than using military force as a stronger version of police to clamp down on insurgent activity

To be fair tho, hindsight is pretty sweet and plus they still would have had to tackle the NVA in the north

>>2892742
They tried all of that shit. Its not like they were retards.


The only Way to win would have been full escalation from the start.

1) Invade the North when a South vietnamese state still exists outside some offices in saigon and washington.

2) Immediately cut of every supply route china could use.

3) Win the war against Soviet supplied china.

No Way in hell that would have happened After Korea and with Johnson more preocuppied with domestic reforms.

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>>2892719
Wasn't the goal to weaken communist russia by making them invest into a proxy-war and destabilise them and their economy?

Seems to have worked.

>>2892879
>the populace hates you

I frequently wonder what would have happened if Eisenhower or Kennedy had decided to send troops to Laos before the 1962 Geneva Accords.

You're talking the Ho Chi Minh trail gets cut off at the source, but there's also US troops within spitting distance of China.

>>2892719
Would an invasion of Hanoi have done anything?

Doesn't seem too winnable to me, especially with foreign support. We got cucked hard by McNamara and Kissinger

>>2894471
China had a defense agreement with North Vietnam, beginning in 1965.

We didn't know this at the time, but we figured as much.

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>>2892719
The problem was that we viewed everything in a black-and-white, Cold War defense of communism. That brought us into the war in the first place and also painted everyone who fought against the South Vietnamese government as a filthy commie. We shouldn't jump into a war without meticulous knowledge of what we're jumping into.

Pic unrelated

>>2894396

No it wasn't. Stop trying to rewrite history.

>>2892719
Keep killing more Vietnamese. Have tighter control of the media. next question pls.

IT AINT ME

>>2894396
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Actual_objective_of_the_Vietnam_War:_Containment_of_China

>>2892719

Start investing in stealth technology 20 years before it starts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War

>>2892719
The only way to win was to not wage it. Vietnamese fought and bled in the jungles alongside Americans against the Japanese, hated China's guts and disliked Russia, and the French were both doomed as an empire and doing jack shit for the US. The US fundamentally misinterpreted a war between nationalists and their colonial overlords as being a war between communism and capitalism, then entered it with no real strategy whatsoever.

>>2892719

It was impossible. We were there to "defend Democracy and stop the spread of Communism."

You can't shoot an idea. Even if we had invaded the North and occupied the entire nation, the influx of fighters and weapons via Russia, Laos, and Cambodia would have continued.

Just look at Korea and the Iraq/Afghan Wars

More bombs