So, /k/, I once read an opinion here that America was actually

Utter bullshit. The war was at a stalemate for years, blaming it on pressure at home was a convenient excuse to withdraw troops and abandon South Vietnam.

More or less correct. But don't argue that >we still won vietnam

>>28051475
Why do that if we'd already sunk such a great cost (capital and human life) into the war? Especially if that would hurt U.S. image abroad.
>>28051482
I wouldn't, but i do think things are a lot more complicated than durrrrr murica lost vietnam, nixon was a retard

>>28051475
>The war was at a stalemate for years
literally no

it was nothing but progress in a northward direction from the very second the US seriously involved itself. We had teams running around stealing your riceniggers in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. That's before we actually invaded Laos and Cambodia.

>>28051659
>your riceniggers

Don't be so stupid as to assume the only reason I say it was at a stalemate is because I must be Vietnamese.

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>>28051691
it was more of a hide yo wife type expression

but seriously, we were kidnapping slants off the ho chi minh trail, it wasn't a stalemate.

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>ITT: Edgy Starbucks socialists in Che T-shirts jerk off to the "America lost Vietnam" meme.

>>28051743
That's exactly what I'm trying to find arguments to counter. I hate them so.

>>28051779

Easy, just look up the casualty reports and compare the overwhelming VC losses to the moderate American ones.

Then for giggles look up the stats that show the alarmingly high correlation between being an anti-war hippy shitter and being an AIDS-positive buttfucker.

Since the US would never have ever invaded the north
At no point could they have ever "won"

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>>28051728
cool photo taken by an SOG operator, stupid gook doesn't even know how close to death he came

>>28051743
This time one million

>>28051807
>just look up the casualty reports and compare the overwhelming VC losses to the moderate American ones.
While ignoring death counts of US allies who did most of the fighting, right?

>>28051838

Who gives a shit about non-Americans? All they do is bitch and moan for us to save the day, then bitch and moan when we do it, and then try and steal our tech, de-stabilize our economy, and export their human trash on us.

Fuck them.

>>28051743
>US lost in Iraq
>4000 dead Americans
>almost a million dead non americans
>lost
>implying money matters to the US
>implying the US is responsable for ISIS
>implying destabalising the region wasn't the goal
Thats the next one. We achieved all of our goals but then our politcal leaders added more goals and removed others and then couldnt decide what it was they wanted but they were tough or saving the world or pulling out american troops who volunteered fight in the shitshow knowing full well what it was like by that point and you should vote for them.

>>28051867

Uh I think you responded to the wrong post, dude.

>>28051807
That doesn't mean much, I need something a bit more concrete. Like, are there any dispatches that have been released of the war that state that the north Vietnamese were on the outs, or anything like that?

>>28051872
Nope simply pointing out parallels in hipster war meme logic. In both conflicts America accomplished its goals militarlly with very little loses and then got fucked up by politicians screwing everybody over. The victory is not remembered as such becuase it was thrown away by people who had no idea what to do with it.

>>28051822
Jesus Christ that is bad ass

>>28051461
A great amount. Our attrition rate was absurd, and if all else failed we simply could have kept going and literally exterminated all communist influence one at a time.

Stupid ass hippy sons (and daughters) of bitches squeeled that the Connors asses were getting kicked too hard and put pressure on those damn politicians who, being politicians, thought "shit, they won't like me if I don't stop 'nam, meaning no more terms" and thus they wanted out of 'nam.
Fuck them, and fuck the shit they screwed up.

This comes up every once in a while.

We lost and could never have won, unfortunately. Literally the entire world acknowledges this. The only ones who don't are USMC poolees.

The same people who insist the US won Vietnam because we achieved our military objectives (as if that actually means anything once the country falls apart) are the same ones who will post about the Sovieg Union losing in Afghanistan.

>>28051461
Military view point yes we were winning, however politically (what actually decides) the local population grew more and more tired of us being there and on the homefront the war became vastly unpopular. When people say we lost Vietnam it is only an accurate statement that we lost the war politically.

>>28052045
I was under the impression that they desperately wanted us there, because if we weren't, the North would steamroll through the country and start locking up/executing dissidents, leaders, and prominent citizens who had been anti-communist. As we can see now, they were totally right in having those fears.

The VC was all but destroyed and the NVA was getting their shit wrecked so hard that US units were operating in North Vietnam with impunity much of the time. We had to start bombing Cambodia and Laos because the NVA had no choice but to flee their own country.

What does that tell you?
The war would have lasted much longer if the US had stayed to finish the job, and I don't think the US should have been there in the first place, so I'm glad we pulled out. However, only idiots say "hurr hurr da Vietnamese kicked ur ass!" when they lost pretty much every major engagement and had their territory snatched left and right.

I thought the Tet Offensive was a way for the hardline communists to purge those who had joined the VC to gain freedom. So instead of having to kill off the VC "freedom fighters" later on when communism took it all away, they could just send them to fight and get away with it.

It worked.

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>>28051956
that was on the ho chi minh trail itself, I forgot to add

>>28052097
Never heard that before. Where'd you get that information?
>>28052094
This is more along the lines of what I thought happened. We never should have been there, the Tonkin Gulf incident was most likely a false flag, but we didn't lose at all militarily.
Just a wasteful war in general.

>>28051461
Winning is a tough word. We crushed the VC/NVA in any open warfare and frequently slaughtered horrific amounts of troops. It's ironic, because many thought of the Tet Offensive negatively for the US when in reality it was a crushing defeat for the NVA. We dropped more bombs, killed more people, destroyed more resources than our Vietnamese challengers, but the thing was. The Vietnamese were in it to win it. They were willing to fight farther and with much more loses than we were. I'm amazed everyday the Vietnamese even exist anymore. It's shocking. The funny thing is, the Vietnamese leader Uncle Ho was a total USAboo. He loved the USA and based most of their declaration of independence (sound familiar?) on the US'. Not only that but his constitution was remarkably similar to ours. Vietnam is a sad war because we went in it due to ideology and blackmailing from ex colonial powers (looking at you France), when we could have had a communist ally in the South Pacific that would have ushered in a new era of peacetime. Vietnam was a waste of time, money and good men. It is nice, however, that despite all that negativity the Vietnamese still have a positive view of the USA and our relations with them are not so overtly hostile.

>>28052077
>I was under the impression that they desperately wanted us there
No, South Vietnam was literally created because after defeating the oppressive french colonial government the US stepped in and partitioned the country because "muh commies are bad", putting a corrupt dictator in charge of the South, who persecuted the Vietnamese people on religious grounds.

The VC had massive amounts of popular support that was only worn away as they used increasingly violent means to conscript and forage supplies from the local populace.

>>28051867
>>28051941
>implying the 1,000,000 dead Iraqis weren't mostly civilians
People like you make me sick. It's the politicians and hippies fault we lost the war? How about the incompetent military who can't conduct a war without killing 10 times as many noncombatants? Because there's nothing unreasonable about people getting upset over the uneccesary deaths of civilians.

>>28051475
Everyone on one side dead, leaving the other with very little to do compared to years previous =/= stalemate

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>>28051461
>Clearly, the US was stabbed in the back by hippies, women, blacks, and jewish college professors. We should throw them all in camps so they don't do it again!
>We didn't REALLY lose vietnam, it was the degenerate's fault
Your modern-day stab-in-the-back myth is hilarious. Admit that you lost. The people of Vietnam were more willing and determined to secure their independence than the US was to force them to accept western domination. It's been 45 years.

>>28052627
>The people of Vietnam were more willing and determined to secure their independence than the US was to force them to accept western domination. It's been 45 years.
wow, that sounds cool until you remember that there are McDonald's in Vietnam

>>28052627
>stab in the back
>myth

chosenite detected

>>28052520
That certainly sounds like U.S. foreign policy.

Did the communists have as much support in the south as they did in the north before the partition took place?

Iraq has been as much or even more of a mess as Vietnam. The military leadership is absolute garbage in both cases and most likely is the root cause of the problem.
>>28052627
T.B. H I don't think the US should have been there in the first place. The Tonkin Gulf incident was so clearly a false flag that the whole ordeal is shady as shit.
BUT. I really hate people who shit on America's ability to wage non-conventional warfare with enemies using guerrilla tactics and cite Vietnam as an example.

>>28052648
The people of vietnam allowing western influence is different from having a west-supported dictatorship imposed on them. It's not about whether they're influenced by the west, but whether its decided by the people of the nation.

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>>28051461
Wars are won on objectives, not battles or bodycounts. Militarily the US lost. Politically the US lost.

The idea that 'we were so close to victory' and a 'premature retreat' when the US was there for a decade is typical retarded revisionism.

>>28052719
What could the US have done differently to win the war, then?

>>28052739

Not choosing to support Diem and his Catholic oriented government in a country that's like 95% Buddhist for starters.

Having your erstwhile ally go about raiding and burn Buddhist temples is probably not the best way of winning hearts and minds.

>>28051743
it's those same faggots that are responsible for turning America into this pussyfied-lawyer-ran country.

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>>28052494
>It's ironic, because many thought of the Tet Offensive negatively for the US when in reality it was a crushing defeat for the NVA.

Why did they think it was negative for the US?

>The VC was all but destroyed and the NVA was getting their shit wrecked so hard that US units were operating in North Vietnam with impunity much of the time.

oh right, because of Baghdad Bob shitheads at the time claiming the VC were destroyed and could never mount another operation. And then they did. And then shithead revisionists conveniently forgetting that fact and pretending all that matters is the VC didn't win the engagement.

>HURR HURR WE NEVER LOST A BATTLE WITH THE TALIBAN AND WE WON THE DECADE LONG WAR BY LEAVING THE COUNTRY FOR THE TALIBAN...

>>28052682
>Did the communists have as much support in the south as they did in the north before the partition took place?
That I can't speak on reliably, but as others have said, Ho Chi Mihn's support of communism was largely because they were the only ones who would support his rebels, the US having been the ones who gave his country back to the French, after WW2 (where they fought with us against the Japanese).

>>28052819
Uncle Ho supported communism because throughout his life he watched his people be oppressed and he thought it would be better for them. Dude was a pretty interesting guy and maybe the only communist leader who at least tried to live by the tenants. He also played the hell out of Russia and China for Vietnam's own good.

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>>28052520
>implying most of the civillian deaths weren't from IEDs or militints with no training going full retard and then running away without bothering to stop and aim or waiting until the civillians were clear to start their ambushes. Not to mention all the times they intentionally targeted innocents.
>implying I personally support the murder of civilians just by pointing out US foreign policy. Yeah some US soldiers did intentionally murder unarmed people, And most if not all of them were tried and brought to justice for their crimes.
You are an aspersion casting ass basket and you can rot in hell.

>>28052843
>Not knowing nearly half the figure comes from deaths due to economic sanctions
>hurr hurr Saddam is an evil dictator who doesn't care about his own people, so we'll punish his people!

>>28052834
Josip Tito was pretty cool, he has the claim to fame of being the only Communist Leader to tell Stalin to fuck off. And he kept everyone in Yugoslavia from killing each other for a long time.

>>28052866
>Not knowing nearly half the figure comes from deaths due to economic sanctions
have you ever even been to the middle east? kek

I won't take a civilian death toll seriously in this world of precision weaponry, ESPECIALLY when mohammad is fucking his sister in the local shit hole that everyone happens to also drink from

>>28052077
Really? Are you sure your not thinking of the Korean War?

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>>28052866
>Muh sanctions from 1990

I didn't even count those.

>survey of war casualties 2003-2007

Politictians don't care. In their eyes they won since they got reelected.

If you want to talk about politicains playing with peoples lifes look no further than the Clintons/Bushes Idk why they hate Iraq. Obama is just continuing the trend.

>>28052939
I just watched a documentary on netflix about evacuating as many people as possible from Vietnam. A LOT of people left Vietnam as the NVA moved into the south. Why would they leave if they loved the Communists? I'm trying to understand.
>>28052760
Good point. Why did the US prop up so many fucking bastards as leaders in the third world? Were there really no moderate anti-communists, or at least governments that weren't murderous?

>>28051691
>Don't be so stupid as to assume the only reason I say it was at a stalemate is because I must be Vietnamese.
Yeah, that would be pretty stupid, seeing as the majority of people that say shit like that are self-hating defeatist liberals, or retarded Yuropoors that insist that "The US totally got its ass kicked by illiterate rice farmers haha!!!"

>>28053007

You can at semirely on fucking bastards to be somewhat loyal given that they're completely reliant upon you.

You can't rely on them being competent in any way shape or form though.

The US tried to arm what we though were "moderate" in Syria though and that didn't exactly turn out too well either.

Honestly this would have played out better if the US had just supported Vietnamese independence from the French at the start, just support them before they got support from the gommies.

>>28051862
They bitch and moan when you kill tens of thousands of civilians in needless daily bombing, that rarely hits any real target.
And when you try to micromanage them to undermine them.

It's a fucking laughable joke to count all kills by the allies while ignoring their deaths.

>>28051461
Vietnam was a total clusterfuck; in which we merrily slaughtered our natural allies. Tons of Vietnamese and Americans fought and bled side-by-side against Japanese imperialism, they fucking loved us and saw the American Revolution as a model for pursuing independence from their colonial overlords who were treating them like shit. The Vietnamese hated China's guts thanks to a long history of fighting off Chinese invasions, and in fact had a war with the PRC shortly after the US pulled out.

The US made the phenomenal fuckup of deciding to prop up the corpse of the frog empire over letting nature take it's course and being on decent terms with the independent Vietnam that would inevitably emerge. It further mischaracterized the war being waged against the frogs as one of capitalism vs communism when it was actually a nationalist revolt for independence against foreign imperialism. Doing so crushed any hope the Vietnamese had for independence and recognition from the West after the gave the French a boot, driving them directly into the arms of the Warsaw Pact and ensuring that the only factions getting any kind of material support were those that vigorously fellated Moscow.

They were perfectly positioned to be our staunch ally in securing SE Asia. But no, we just HAD to back the French puppets and later the demonic hordes of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

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>>28053007
You watched that revisionist shit 'Last Days in Vietnam' and wondered why Vietnamese who collaborated with the US wanted to flee when the NVA took over...

>>28052494
Don't blame shit on france or whoever, when it's all truman/FDR's fault for being a buncha globalist scum bags trying to divide the whole world up without the consent of these third worlders.

Ho wouldn't have been communist if the US didn't try to fuck around in vietnam after WW2.

>>28052739
Actually fight to take objectives?
Actually mount large offensive operations?
And finally, they need to not mass fucking bomb civilian targets to turn the whole goddamn country against them.

USA clearly has absolutely zero ideas on how to fight a unconventional war.

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>>28051904
>look up the casualty reports
>look up the stats
>That doesn't mean much, I need something a bit more concrete
ok i think i see where the problem is

>>28051867
> implying the US isn't responsible for daesh

u wot m8

>>28051867
>imblygn the us is responsible for ISIS

....but it is.

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>>28051461
I haven't read the whole thing yet, OP, but here's an actual quote from the Commander in Chief of the NVA forces. General Vo Nguyen Giap said in his memoir, "How We Won The War," that they were planning a surrender after the Tet Offensive.

After hearing of how far off the mark the media was reporting it, and the reaction at home, this is what he said: "We were delighted. We went from a planned surrender to a policy of needing to persevere for one more hour, day, week month, eventually the protesters in America would help us to achieve a victory we knew we could not win on the battlefield." He also said "If it were not for organizations like John Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the US."

So that's about how it went.

>muh body count

So I guess the Allies lost WWII because they lost more units? I hate to break it to you but IRL War is not call of duty.

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We won the fucking war, at the Paris Peace talks, a treaty was signed with the North vietnamese leaders, agreeing to stay the fuck out of 'nam. Our end of the deal was to supply south Vietnam with supplies, but then we ended up with democrats in charge, and they went back on our word like the rats they are, and south vietnam ended up getting overrun.

>>28053649
Same anon here, I meant to say "stay the fuck out of south vietnam"

>>28053533
I just looked it up and that is disputed as being a falsely attributed remark. What is the memoir even called?

>>28053100
When you put it like that it all seems pretty sad.

>>28053649
>WE WON THE WAR WHEN WE SUED FOR PEACE!

Right.

>>28053159
France essentially blackmailed the US into financing their colonial wars or else they'd back out of NATO. That's why in the 50s we were literally paying for their entire war. It's sad that our stupidity and French allies lead us into an even worse situation we could have avoided.

>>28054305
It's hard to call the little SOG party in the gulf of tonkin blackmail by the frogs

>>28054350
That came after. The French did pull some diplomatic BS on the US government to get them to cave to their colonial demands, and the US really should have stood up to them.

The sickest irony of it is that while they were helping out France, they were encouraging Britain to free its colonies hand over fist. Granted, France and Britain had a hard time stopping their colonial shenanigans, like the Suez canal crisis which led to the Canadian PM getting the UN Peace Keepers created.

>>28051461
You lost, get over it.

>>28054350
You do realize that the French were actively fighting in Vietnam in the 50s and were literally being completely supplied by the US? You're also aware that they threatened to back out from NATO if we didn't do this right? Later involvement in Vietnam is on the US foreign policy, but the Frogs set the stage.

>>28051807
>casualty reports determine the victor
Yeah, by that logic Russia was beaten by Germany.

>>28054416
Most people don't even realize that most of those awful as fuck prisons that were used to house captured Americans (like actual prisons, not bamboo shacks in the jungle) were originally built by the French to use against the Vietnamese.

>>28054460
The French were always fans of concrete. Vietnam is such an interesting place. It's crazy to me how they still love the US, but damn if I don't salute them for it.

>>28051461
>I once read an opinion here
>here

why

>>28053046
Ho Chi Minh was a communist loooong before that.
It would have been like supporting the "moderate" rebels in Syria, and instead of Assad you are fucking with a NATO ally.
Absolutely no reason that could go wrong in any way...

>>28052520

i'm convinced this is bait

doyouknowwhereyouare.jpg

>>28054738
Do you have counter arguments? Not them just wondering.
>>28054606
Because, as this thread has revealed, interesting conversation can be created and new information revealed by such an opinion. I'm enjoying the responses in here so far

>>28051867
>>28051461
>>28051526
>all these keks who were happy about getting the participation ribbon in sports as a kid
not achieving goals = loss

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America totally lost breh

>>28051779
We won the war

>Democrats in Congress two years later cut funding for S. Vietnam
>Lost our backing
>Fell to the North harder than a drunk hooker to the pavement

We won and the South was free, but our politics killed us

>>28051743

>Implying America didn't lose Vietnam
>Implying America can into counterinsurgency

>>28052681

Edgy /pol/ack detected.

>>28051461

chinks make smaller targets than niggers and crackers so America will always lose land wars in Asia, its manlet advantage

>>28051475

This. America lost when we backed Diem. Even if we stayed and kept killing Charlies, there would've been more to take their place. If we managed to take control over the entire country (Several billions of dollars/thousands of lives later), then we'd share a border with Red China, who would start giving us bullshit. If we did anything to counter them, it would be WWIII.

The 'Hurr durr we could've won Vietnam if it weren't for those meddling kids' is a meme.

>>28055870

Fuck off hippie.

>>28055611
>"Won the war"
>The enemy is stronger than when it started, allies are weaker
>whole fucking area falls to communism

Truly it's those liberals to blame!

Maybe blame the democrats for when the taliban take back over afghanistan eventually?

>>28052494
He gets it.

Even a tiny amount of diplomacy could have altered those event in our favor. Imagine Nixon never having to go to China. Imagine the peace movement having nothing to bitch about. Imagine All of Vietnam being like our China. Inexpensive labor....

Sorry, where was I. Oh yes. Anyway- we fucked it up and are probably still paying for it.

And if we were winning- where was that exactly? Yeah, we could do a body-snatcher deal, but if we put a thousand US Troops in the Ho Chi Minh trail- how long would they have lasted?

It was a bad decision on the part of the Hawks in our county at the time.

>>28052494
This. America lost Vietnam because it meant far, far more to the Vietnamese than it did to America. The staggering casualties racked up by NVA forces should be proof enough of that. They kept fighting despite the unthinkable cost in blood. Vietnam could have been 'won' only by turning the country into a smoking hole in the ground, and I'm not sure if that counts.

>>28053007
>I just watched a documentary on netflix about evacuating as many people as possible from Vietnam. A LOT of people left Vietnam as the NVA moved into the south. Why would they leave if they loved the Communists? I'm trying to understand.

The creation of the South Vietnamese regime in opposition to the north meant there were a lot of people who would be persona non grata after the war. Civil war is nasty fucking business no matter how you slice it.

>>28053533
>He also said "If it were not for organizations like John Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the US."

This is specifically right-wing propaganda. Both sides were reeling after the bloodbath that was the Tet Offensive.

>>28053533
>still gone unnoticed
kek

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>>28056942
>Yeah, we could do a body-snatcher deal, but if we put a thousand US Troops in the Ho Chi Minh trail- how long would they have lasted?
Well shit nigger, SOG RTs and LRRPs were dicking around in the northern havens throughout the conflict in teams of 8-12, and the resources dedicated JUST to find those guys was fucking retarded