You think you could have run the Vietnam War any better?

>>33072204
Step one: Don't get sucked into a full scale conflict where the enemy is being backed by a powerful proxy which limits your options to achieve a military victory.

We shoulda assisted their government, and if the friendly government fell, moved over to assisting and acting as an asymmetric force to disrupt and frustrate the Soviet proxy state. It's a lot more cost effective to be the rebels than it USC to be the occupiers.

>>33072204
Do everything exactly the same except every piece of media leaving the country is subjected to inspection and approval

>>33072263

The media and the home front didn't kill the Vietnam War, they simply sped up the decline.

You censor the media and you don't win the war, you just delay the defeat another 3-5 years

>>33072238
>the soviet involvement in Afghanistan

>>33072204
>Keep level of involvement at Kennedy-era levels
>Teach ARVN counterinsurgency tactics
>Move surplus of advisors and special forces to Laos, Cambodia, and Rhodesia

>>33072204
The vietnam war was a losing proposition from the start, most people seem to forget that.
South Vietnam in the end fundamentally didn't want to be a country and there's no making up for a lack of will to fight. Sure, some south Vietnamese believed in their countries but most hate the govt. and for good reason.
We pretty much left once we finally gave up trying to mould the south Vietnamese into something they weren't

why so some faggot on the internet 45 years later can say you lost even when you won?

>>33072392
>country

Truthfully, we couldn't win the war unless we fixed the government and its military.

>>33072392

They didn't want to fight for a bad government. They had no stake in the war.

>>33072204
>step one
>media observers get thrown out of helicopters.
>there is no step two.

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Capitalism still won in the end.

>>33072444

Why not just embed the reporters in with the units?

>>33072435
exactly, we had no idea just how shit the south vietnamese government was before we were already neck deep.
Hell, we even knocked off one of their presidents because he was an insane dickhead, only for the guy who replaced him to turn out to be a dickhead as well.
Also, assasinating their pres., even if he was a dick shook the people's faith in the US backed government as well

>>33072204
>You think you could have run the Vietnam War any better?

Yes, by not getting into it because it was strategically pointless, sucked resources from the REAL game in Europe, and by nature (geography and long land borders) could not be "won" by any useful metric.

The fail began with the first advisors, was aggravated by the attrition strategy, and was maintained because US pride insisted on saving face.

Apologists for the war are thoroughly ignorant of history and especially strategic context. Viet Nam was view by idiot hickshit Lyndon Johnson and other burgertards as important.

Americans entered the war fearing ChiComs. ChiComs, as proven by the Sino-Vietnamese war afterwards, remained Viet Nam's historic enemy. Now the US pays port calls to Nam and nothing of value is lost.

Airpower narcissists are overly impressed by bombs. The counter to that was seen in North Korea where UN forces ran the fuck out of targets but the Chinks and Norks stayed in the fight.

Many Nam vets are historically ignorant too. Any G.I. knows you only see your small part of a war.

Extrapolating your narrow experience is a bad idea. I've talked to many Nam vets who don't know about combat refusals and other widespread G.I. resistance because it didn't happen in their unit during their tour.

Blaming the media doesn't fly either. The US military made many mistakes, lied about its supposed success, and lied about our worthless South Vietnamese government "ally". No fair forgetting the truth because of ideological butthurt.

The Commies understood. They had a slogan, "two, three, many Viet Nams!". They understood they would fight forever. They understood wasting US blood and treasure was incredibly effective.

They won.

Yeah, not done it in the first place.

>>33072529

They needed a government they had a stake in, and thus were willing to fight for.

>>33072204
>Teach arvn coin ops
>Advisors
>Go all in with Rhodesia because they're actually competent.

>>33072204
Of course I could have, I'm a muhreen...

Hey, did you guys know I'm a muhreen?

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>>33072204
>implying the Vietnam war needed running better
The kill death ratio for America was off the charts, and the US military ended the war with complete military victory i.e. the North had no capability to conquer the South.

What needs improving exactly?

>>33072204
do we have the option to have not backed the French on this one and allowed Ho Chi Minh to create Ameriboo Vietnam?

>>33072724

As I understand it, Ho Chi Minn did reach out to America after the Indo-China war ended.

>>33072668
You're definitely not a mreen.

>>33072704

Which was negated by the fact the Viet Cong were SOUTH Vietnamese. The insurgency won the war for the North, not the North Vietnamese military.

>>33072704
>the North had no capability to conquer the South
Then why did it?

I'm not even one of those fags who thinks the Vietcong "beat" us. We lost because there was simply no reason to stay. We couldn't invade the North to put an end to the insurgency so we were basically stuck in a rut. Furthermore, the South Vietnamese simply did not give a shit. They wouldn't fight to shit, no matter how much we trained them.

Kinda lot another group of shitskins that we're wasting time trying to train right now...

>>33072204
Yes. Starting by backing the right side. Ho sided with us against the Japanese, we should have returned the favor.

>>33072787
>Then why did it?

By conventional invasion. The VC were bled out by Tet, and some contend they were expended so the North would have more political control afterwards. Americans have no attention span. Gooks are different. :)

Some South Vietnamese units fought until destroyed but the US cut off ammo resupply along with air support. Plebs ignore those details.

>>33072204
The American military needed to show the Soviets they would fight for Democracy.

Mission accomplished?

>>33072791

>1950s America
>Standing AGAINST European Whites (France) for the sake of dirty Asians

What?

>>33072748
You're right, I'm not an mreen. I'm a muhreen, just thought I would let you guys know.

>>33072835

We could have waited till the Indo-China War ended.

>>33072204
Jack off on their big gay heads

nuke the entire country

declare war on cambodia and laos as well for aiding the enemy or being complicit. then we'll see where china funds them through. then we end up fighting china by 1975 after scorched earthing southeast asia. the government didnt want to win as evidenced by classifying all operations in cambodia and laos.

>>33072204
Yes, if you eliminate group think on the part of the JCS they all basically had legitimate misgivings with the war and knew of better/different strategies, but were under pressure to deliver to the pres when he wanted options.

Basically focus on securing important economic and political centers while doing your best to improve conditions in the countryside so that the base of support for the NLF weakens. I want little to no emphasis on going out and killing the enemy or trying to clear out the jungle.

>>33072630
One of their president was basically Trump, a media mogul with a distain for the old government.

>>33072204
Pay for the oil.

>>33072204
Sure. H. John Poole lays it out. Embed a unit with local security forces and train them in light infantry tactics that aren't depended on expensive equipment and high explosives that cause collateral damage. Pretty much steal the VC's playbook and teach the loyal ones that.

Root out the corruption and human rights abuses. America has a bad habit of supporting assholes who abuse and steal from their people because they claim to have the same ideology as us, and we are actually surprised when the people toss the thugs out on their ass and support the very causes we fought against.

Nationhood. People claim the SVA, like the Iraqi and Afganistatan security forces are somehow all cowards. I doubt that. They just won't fight for an idea that don't really believe in like a nation, especially if their higher ups are corrupt shits who screw them over. Either figure out how the Europeans kept the various tribal types in line and use that, or figure out how to rally people behind a cloth rectangle.

>>33072204
fuck yes

vietnam was a war fought by politicans get rid of them and it would have been a lot better

>>33072263
This is a big one. The government learned a valuable lesson on PR from Nam. Reporters got held on a much tighter lease in Iraq 1 & 2 and Afghanistan. It's just that Nam was the first televised war, so the army didn't know how to spin it favorably and the public was pretty well shocked by seeing war so vividly for the first time.

>>33072204
A war of insurgency can only be won by committing massive war crimes. America could only have won Vietnam by napalming every square inch of jungle between Saigon and Bangkok, and executing everything still moving afterward.

>>33076820
You've clearly never heard of the Malayan Emergency. The key to successful COIN operations is all about establishing civil-military relations, accurate and efficient intelligence and counter-intelligence, and denying area and resource control to insurgents. Your goal is to completely alienate the insurgents, financially, geographically, and politically, while maintaining and expanding control over the land until the insurgents are completely wiped out.

Back north vietnam before the reds have a chance, Strongarm france into giving NV up and in return teach NV the ways of capitalism and burgers.

They didn't side with the reds because they wanted communism, They sided with the reds because they didn't want to be france's bottom bitch.

>>33076956
Malaya was still pretty brutal though.

>>33077034
COIN ops require a very firm hand to be successful, but it's all about where and how that brutality is directed. COIN is as much a war of PR as it is a physical war.

>>33077055
I absolutely agree. The Brits could run a great COIN campaign on the cheap if cut loose. Governments just don't do that anymore.

>>33076820
Wrong

>>33076956
Right

>>33077061
I don't really get why people think the US military wasn't "let loose"

I mean, you had Project Pheonix killing anyone who looked communist, you had free fire zones, you had villagers being forcibly relocated away from said free fire zones, and you had all the air support you could ever hope for.

>>33077061
Most countries can run a successful COIN op if given the means, the problem is the occupiers generally have shit exit strategies or the governments are to short-sighted to ensure long-term stability. Take Iraq for example. By the time we had pulled out in 2011 we had more-or-less wiped out the bulk of the insurgency. However, while we achieved that objective, we failed to realize we had not left Iraq in an well enough state to handle itself in the event of an emergency. We had trained and armed the Iraqi military, sure, and set up a new government, but these were both very young and largely untested institutions with some deep-seated unresolved issues (tribalism, sectarianism, ethnic divisions) bubbling just under this veneer of stability. It would be like after just taking the training wheels to your bike you were told to bike down a steep, rocky, mountain trail. Well lo and behold that not 3 years later the state almost crumbles to the first threat at its doorstep: ISIS, and we were no longer in position to provide any meaningful immediate assistance. To go back to the bike analogy, even with your training wheels off your parents should still follow close behind you in case you start to topple over.

>>33077097
The US strategy against the VC wasn't half bad desu. We didn't lose militarily, the problem was that South Vietnam was an artificial state kept alive solely by US military presence, with no will from most of the populace to keep the state alive.

>>33072444
>being unamerican to win a war
Sad!

>>33077031
this
imagine the possibilities

burger springrolls
burger pho
peace in our life

>>33072204
>>33072204
THE DEMOCRATS DID VIETNAM
>Resupply plan in place, 1 for 1 swap between US and SV gov't
>SV expends a bullet, 'Merica gives a bullet; SV loses a helo, 'Merica gives a helo

>Dems in Congress under Ford defund resupply agreement
>Ford literally begs Dems to leave funding for S Vietnam
>NV slowly takes SV
>NV leaders admit later they were probing at first to see what USA would do, did nothing because only aid was defunded

tl;dr vote Republican if you're reading this in the early Seventies

>>33072279
>you just delay the defeat another 3-5 years

Another 3-5 years is plenty of time for the south Vietnamese army to get their shit together. The whole reason the south fell was because we caught off all aid to them since politicians were afraid to due to the public mood. If the public was still neutral then congress would have approved more aid preventing the collapse. Ford already really wanted to support them further and the only thing holding him back was the congress at the time.

>>33072435
>They had no stake in the war.

Avoiding slavery sounds like a good stake to me. The problem is our propaganda efforts sucked so most peasants actually thought the north wasn't all the bad and were willing to give them a shot, which they would later regret.

>>33077300
>implying WW1 and WW2 were "unamerican"

Also, more reporters are jewish so we aren't trampling on any american's rights by throwing them out. This is something we understood in past wars but forgot for some reason.

>>33072204

Sure. Fight for the other side.

>>33072568
>I watched a docu on vietnam once and am now an expert!

Lurk more kiddo

>>33077205
>The US strategy against the VC wasn't half bad desu

The US military didn't even have a coherent strategy in Vietnam desu senpai

>>33072754
>The insurgency won the war for the North

You mean the Viet Cong which were largely destroyed after 69?

>>33072704
>the US military ended the war with complete military victory i.e. the North had no capability to conquer the South.

is this the incapable NVA which was allowed to stay inside south vietnamese territory they conquered as per the paris accords which then conquered the central highlands in their next campaign

>>33078610
>Another 3-5 years is plenty of time for the south Vietnamese army to get their shit together.

The ARVN had been equipped and trained by America for over 10 years by the time they got steamrolled by the Communists. Their ineffectiveness had nothing to do with some nebulous window where they could have become effective with more foreign aid and everything to do with the fact that it was more a vehicle for political patronage than an actual army and led by people who were both corrupt and incompetent. You have only to look at the modern Iraqi army, which is basically the ARVN 2.0, to see why the South Vietnamese government and military were absolutely hopeless cases.

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>>33072263
This.

We won the war in Vietnam, militarily.

It was the homefront that caused us to withdraw, and eventually lose.

I'd get the Combined Action Platoon program up and running. Hell, I'd give it priority over SAD missions and bombing NV. Throw in political reforms and humanitarian aid.

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>>33072204

Yes
>Make 300,000 clones of MarkyMark
>Issue them meat hooks
>Order them to build a Micky-Dee's in Saigon (win the hearts and minds of the locals)
>Use vietcong corpses as meat/ration supplies in logistics
>dismantle communist opposition with world's greatest propganda machine

I AINT NO SILVER SPOON
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5-f6XCTOg

>>33079484

VIETNAM FUCKIN' SHITS

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>>33072204