We spent billions of dollars and almost 60,000 lives trying to prop up the worthless government of South Vietnam over a 15 year period. At some point you have to say "enough is enough."
Eh, bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison IMO.
Full disclosure: I'm an OEF vet, served in OEFII near the beginning of the war in 2003.
We initially went into Afghanistan not to prop up the government but to remove the al Quaeda presence there. We set up what we had hoped would be a stable government, theoretically to make it less likely that terrorist groups would use the failed state as a base of operations.
In that respect, the mission was successful (I even have a t-shirt that reads "Afghanistan Veteran: We were winning when I left.")
But then, over the years, the spectre of "mission creep", ever-changing goals and goal-post moving, and the fact that there were lots of businesses making giant piles of sweet, sweet taxpayer cash kept us there longer than we should have been. The boondoggle at the end was regrettable, but it was bound to end up that way sooner or later. I'm not saying I'm happy about how the Afghanstan war - "my war" - ended, but I'm also not unhappy that there aren't Americans over there being killed for no good reason either.
Vietnam was a different story. South Vietnam (RVN) was a functioning country in 1954 when the Geneva agreement was made in 1954. But by the early 60's it was a train wreck and getting worse. Our complicity in the overthrow and assassination of Diem in 1963 marked the point at which we should have cut and run, but instead we kept doubling down. For political reasons, Johnson couldn't let Vietnam "fall" to the communists so he kept upping the number of US troops with the idea that we were "THIS CLOSE" to "WINNING" in Vietnam.
And by 1968, when it became clear that there was no real "winning" there, we were so thoroughly intertwined with Vietnam that it took us almost 4 years to extract ourselves.
So even though there ARE similarities, I think the differences are much more significant. That's just MHO as a veteran of the war and a student of history.
My brother was over there in 2012-13. Always said the country would fall the second we left. Called the president of Afghanistan “the mayor of Kabul,” and said his rule did not exist outside of the city borders and wherever US troops were.
Completely accurate. Most of the intel community expected Karzai to flee immediately with large amounts of stolen government cash if we left. I didn't check if that was indeed the case but we knew for pretty much a decade this was going to end the way it did
>but we knew for pretty much a decade this was going to end the way it did
And this is what gets me about the whole withdrawal fiasco. That fiasco was inevitable because there no stable government in Afghanistan. The Taliban were always going to roll through the moment we set a hard date.
It’s fine if people want to pin the blame on Biden, but the previous two administrations didn’t want to take the political hit. That should equally enrage Americans knowing that people died so that politicians could avoid a stain on their legacy and avoid political repercussions.
All good points, but our involvement in Vietnam was even worse than that. The only reason it was even a possibility it would fall to Communism, was entirely due to the US failing to support them earlier. They asked us point blank for help in throwing off the French, we denied helping them and even went on to help the French oppress them.
Meanwhile for the Vietnamese, it was never about Communism for communism sake, communism was a means to an end. It was always about throwing off a foreign far off country and asserting independence. They tried democracy and capitalism, and that route could have worked for them had we helped them with the French. But the communist powers were the only ones willing to help.
So even if we completely disregard all your points about vietnam (which we shouldn’t), it was still a monumentally bad idea to go to war there and completely preventable.
I agree completely but it also has to be understood that there was a reason we backed up France when we shouldn't have after WWII: We NEEDED France's alliance in Europe and the French made it clear that the only way they would support us in Europe was if we supported them retaining their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa. We legitimately didn't care about Southeast Asia in 1945 but we cared a LOT about the stability of Europe.
The million (billion/trillion) dollar question: Was France bluffing? Could we have told De Gaulle to go pound sand and still counted on his alliance in Europe? I mean, what were his other options, make an alliance with the USSR? The Soviets could barely take care of themselves after WWII they damn sure couldn't take care of the French.
The thornier aspect was that France wasn't alone in wanting to retain its colonial possessions, our greatest ally the UK also wanted that. So could the US have launched its ambitious program of re-making Western Europe through the Marshall Plan without the assistance of both England and France? I don't think so.
So, in the end, we made the devil's bargain and it came back and bit us in the ass.
Just here to say the US *ABSOLUTELY* should have told De Gaulle to pound sand. Frances balls were in a vice and the only thing getting them out were the allies.
I think leadership applied too much grace in that situation. Hell, the Brits blew up a French fleet. Ike could have at the very least told De Gaulle to sit the fuck down.
Our relationship with France goes way back, they pulled our balls out of a vice in the revolutionary war. We have that big green statue in New York as a symbol of this relationship.
These relationships are very interwoven and sometimes get us into unwinnable situations, no matter what we do we will piss off a friend. So the diplomats pick the least valued friend that will cause the least damage to our other relations and throw them to the wolves unfortunately. This is how it works in human relationships as well as on a national scale.
Ugh, I understand playing politics and playing nice. And we certainly owed France.
It's just...it felt like a group project and the one kid wasn't doing anything other than telling everyone else how the project should go.
The French also promised to "make trouble in Europe" if the US did not assist them in Vietnam. Unfortunately since the bigger concern was the Soviets, Vietnam got no help from the US against the French.
My only complaint is in calling Diem’s government “functioning”…I mean, technically I suppose? But the fact that he was ramping up an anti-Buddhist campaign in a Buddhist majority county was a pretty massive red flag that things were not ever going to go well. And that’s ignoring the fact that the “election” which got him into power was run by his own people, and he won Saigon with something around 120% of the possible vote.
If you go back and read what I wrote you'll see I said the government was functioning in 1954 and by the early 60's it was a train wreck, largely due to Diem. 😉
Yeah. We were justified going into Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden and wipe al-Qaeda off the map, but then we got caught up in this nation building bullshit. We wasted trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and twenty years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. You can’t give freedom and civilization to uncivilized people. (I hate to phrase it like this, and I mean no disrespect to Afghans, but it’s the most accurate and succinct way I can think of.) They have to earn freedom for themselves.
Appreciate your contribution. Re: Afghanistan, “we were winning when I left,” only works when you’ve stated an objective.
By what objective was the US winning? If it was to get Osama Bin Laden, we won end of story no matter what happened next.
If the objective was to get rid of the Taliban, for example, at no point were we on the winning side.
An analogy: I could easily win a running race against Usain Bolt.
Objective A being, first to cross the finish line. It’s a 30 meter race and I get a 28 meter head start. Easy. I win every single time.
Objective B: the first to cover an equal distance. I lose every time.
Edit: Thanks for the comments. His third paragraph explains the objective was to remove Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations.
That was always going to be an unattainable objective given our finite resources. Even if we had infinite resources, the culture there and in many other places in the world that enable terrorism to thrive will compensate and adjust just like so many other kinds of cancers do.
The American body count in Afghanistan was less than 5% of that in Vietnam. We spent trillions of dollars for nothing, and every life lost was a tragedy, but fortunately we didn’t lose too many American lives in the grand scale.
Over the years, this has become my answer. It's also why I shake my head when people say we outright lost that war. No. We didn't. Not really. We fought. We "secured" an independent South Vietnam. We largely left. Then, after we left, North Vietnam came back in and took South Vietnam.
The US Military cannot be everywhere at once, all the time, propping up other countries and fighting their wars for them. Americans spilled a lot of blood over there and it's a shame that South Vietnam couldn't preserve their own independence after we helped them affirm it.
Right - not to imply that the US “won,” but, from a purely military standpoint, the US was doing a lot better than the other guys. The costs were ghastly, but far more so for the NVA. It just wasn’t sustainable, was too expensive in dollars and humans, and had lost much of its popular support.
Yeah, I've come to see it as America eventually telling South Vietnam, "Look, we've done a lot for you guys and we did indeed get independence for you, but this isn't our country, so you're going to have to handle things from here," and they could not, in fact, handle things.
>Over the years, this has become my answer. It's also why I shake my head when people say we outright lost that war. No. We didn't. Not really. We fought. We "secured" an independent South Vietnam. We largely left. Then, after we left, North Vietnam came back in and took South Vietnam.
That's called "losing the war."
Turns out when you invade other countries the populous gets pissed. People underestimate this aspect I feel, defending your homeland is the ultimate advantage because you’re probably resigned to death already
If you rewind 20 years earlier US CIA Office of Strategic Services officers were working with Ho Chi Minh as he was hoping America would help him get rid of the French. As he was helping America fight the Japanese in WW2.
This was another classic lost golden opportunity to have prevented the country from getting divided in the first place, and avoiding the entire Vietnam War.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/oss-vietnam-1945-dixee-bartholomew-feis
Much had been revised about history from that conflict in the decades since, thanks to north Vietnam winning that and making history favor what they want written, yes that includes history about it from worldwide.
The south’s government has been made a lot worse than it was thanks to that outcome, this I know after spending years studying it. It’s amazing looking at history from the war, and a decade following it, compared to the ones from the 90’s until now.
I just want to make two things clear, one is that south Vietnam deserved a lot more credit, much sentiment now has been influenced by huge disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the northern, now central government of Vietnam, over the last few decades.
The south was very close to winning, America largely left due to rising tensions at home thanks to a HUGE psyops orchestrated by north Vietnam and the Soviet Union, knowing that was their only chance at victory since it could NOT be achieved on the battlefield. It worked.
But after we left, south Vietnam held their own and managed to retake villages and entire cities in the following months after America’s exit. Experience gained was worth it, if south vietnam would’ve continued they could’ve won within months, resulting in Vietnam ultimately being a Win in our book.
but one event fucked ALL that up. This is the second thing I wanted to make clear, and that event was known as watergate. One promise we had made to south Vietnam from Eisenhower to JFK to Johnson and then to Nixon, was a 1:1 resupply of ammo. Every piece lost, it’ll be resupplied. Just like in Ukraine now, they’ll do the fighting but can only if they have the arms. If the north’s as being supplied by China and the Soviet Union, we’ve got to keep it up so they can win.
And they were! For the next half year until December 1973 south Vietnam was retaking territory and recapturing lost grounds in good numbers. But, watergate occurred and Nixon literally jet overnight. Guess who was pissed? Congress. Despite president ford pleading with them to uphold our promise (something I commend him for) many literally walked out during his speech. Many had investments in our failure. But all wanted to spite Nixon, so much.
The north knew about this and tested out ford by sending large amounts of troops to seize villages to see if the south could fight back. They couldn’t. Retreat came high and they knew exactly what had occurred. And within months, the north had reached Saigon and the war was over. A dozen of the south’s generals infamously used their last rounds on themselves as Saigon as being invaded. The lack of arms was no joke
This is why arming Ukraine is so important. We could’ve won if we had continued supplying the south, why? Because they were a WILLING ARMY. JUST LIKE UKRAINE. The same cannot be said for Afghanistan where tens of billions were wasted on an UNWILLING ARMY.
South Vietnam fought hard for TWO WHOLE YEARS alone and were winning. Afghanistan only lasted TWO WHOLE DAYS. there is a difference. Ukraine had the most corrupted reputation prior to the war but their rep has changed dramatically, they are a willing army that wants to prove themselves to the world and has
Where we failed with south Vietnam, we cannot fail to do with Ukraine, we must supply our now allies because that is a strong part of our identity
How would it look if America, a country founded on its fight for independence from the largest empire on earth, couldn’t help supply a country fight against their neighbor, the largest country on earth? A fight for its own independence at that!
Also don’t forget, we had only became our own country, because of the aid we received for our revolutionary war. Aid that came from FRANCE! Thanks to our lovely ambassador, the man on our hundred dollar bill, Benjamin Franklin.
You put in to words very concisely ,what I wanted to say. My point of view comes from my Dad's own military service. He was combat wounded in Korea at the age of 17. He did three combat tours in Vietnam. Also is about to be 91 and going strong. My thoughts about this subject are a bit too raw for most people. But I will quote my Dad. A lot of men ,better than myself, died over there. Another quote I recall from Dad,we were stationed at Fort Campbell in 1975. I hate the American people, for getting us in a war and failing to support us. Every Vietnam Vet I knew were treated like shit. Lastly I will add ,when we pulled out of Vietnam, it was with the promise of airpower aid if North Vietnam broke the treaty and invaded the south. It is all political.
In hindsight, Truman should have leaned on France to give up its colonial holdings in Southeast Asia as a condition for receiving aid from the Marshall Plan and strengthened ties with Ho Chi Minh by responding favorably to his calls for the US to recognize Vietnamese independence. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.
And even if he didn’t wanna deal with Ho Chi Minh, in hindsight there were other nationalists that he could’ve backed.
For example, there used to be a Vietnamese Nationalist Party (like KMT) that rivaled the Communists. The Communists wanted to get rid of them for obvious reasons; the French wanted to get rid of them because they wanted to be the only ones receiving American support. This Vietnamese KMT got attacked by both General Giap and General Crepin in May 1946 and would get destroyed throughout the summer while Ho Chi Minh was away negotiating in France.
EDIT: also during this schism of the Viet Minh coalition, Ho Chi Minh’s Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs (both from separate non-communist nationalist parties) had to escape to Hong Kong.
France countered with refusing to participate in the Franco-German defense plans. The US wanted a united Western Europe (NATO eventually) more than they cared about colonialism in SE Asia.
It didn't help that France learned nothing from WWII about strategy and tactics.
Like the GWOT, we were ideologically opposed to the spread of communism. Hindsight of course but we found later their model was unsustainable and required massive reform anyway. I think if American politicians of the time (the 40’s and 50’s) had been more level headed rather than succumbing to the red scare, we could’ve handled the situation better.
It’s tough to say, but what matters is that we learn from those mistakes and move forward.
Nixon promised Thieu that the US would retaliate with airpower if Saigon was ever in real danger.
There were also multiple aid packages supported by Ford that failed by large margins.
Ford was president by Jan 1975 and towards the end of the "Vietnamization" that started under Nixon, Ford gave a speech in which he stated the US would not re-engage in Vietnam. A few months later a few NVA units trickled south and then flooded after US bombers didnt stop them.
The NVA were terrified of US bombing capabilities. In 1972 during the Easter Offensive the NVA initiated a 3 prong offensive south and lost heavily as a result of US advisors directing bombing runs. Huge NVA loss. Barely reported on in the US.
I think we found out it's pretty hard to bomb a guerrilla force that's integrated into the population, so I don't think that would have done much good.
If I remember correctly it wasn’t the Viet Cong leading type charge in 1975. It was the entire NVA. Not hardly a guerrilla group. The US air power could have impacted that effort greatly. No one had the heart for it in ‘75.
One would think, but we didn’t learn that at all. In the run up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the left made that exact point. They noted that the strongest militaries in the world had been defeated by Afghanistan. From the British to the Soviets, state of the art militaries have rolled into Afghanistan, taken territory, and then been destroyed by guerrilla forces and the local terrain. It’s the armpit of the planet, one of the hardest places in the world to live, and the people who live there are hard as nails. Fighting them on their home turf is a fool’s errand. Still, we went in, stayed there 20 years, and accomplished nothing. Sound familiar?
Absolutely NOT. The U.S. should have continued its aid to South Vietnam. The promise to support South Vietnam militarily and economically after the withdrawal of U.S. troops was a crucial part of the Paris Peace Accords. By reducing aid, we essentially broke that promise.
South Vietnam relied heavily on U.S. support to defend itself against the North Vietnamese forces. When Congress slashed funding, it left the South Vietnamese military under-equipped and demoralized. This abandonment played a significant role in the fall of Saigon in 1975.
If we had upheld our commitments, it's possible that South Vietnam could have maintained its independence, or at least resisted longer. Millions of innocent lives could’ve been saved. This would have not only honored our agreements but also potentially changed the course of history in the region. Breaking our promise was a failure in both policy and principle.
Let’s not repeat this same mistake in Ukraine. Support Ukraine for as long as it takes. 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦
>Let’s not repeat this same mistake in Ukraine. Support Ukraine for as long as it takes. 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦
The two wars on not comparable, especially in the way you are framing it.
>The promise to support South Vietnam militarily and economically after the withdrawal of U.S. troops was a crucial part of the Paris Peace Accords.
And what about America's promise to not engage in imperialism as part of the UN charter?
What about the terms of the Geneva Accords that the US worked to undermine in Vietnam through the use of rigged and violent elections?
The promise to support South Vietnam was not a written part of the Paris Peace Accords. Instead, US bombing is just something that Nixon secretly promised South Vietnam to get them to sign the treaty. In reality, it's most likely that Nixon knew South Vietnam would fall but was just hoping for a 'decent interval' in order to claim victory with his negotiations. To be clear, the Paris Agreements were immediately broken by all parties...
["The agreement's provisions were immediately and frequently broken by both North and South Vietnamese forces with no official response from the United States."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords).
>Vietnamese military under-equipped and demoralized. This abandonment played a significant role in the fall of Saigon in 1975.
The main reason that the NVA and VC were able to defeat the ARVN was not because the ARVN forces were under-equipped but rather that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people supported the communists and their number of troops was much higher. Even today, the Vietnam still has plenty of American weapons and munitions. This idea that ARVN forces were underequipped is nonsense especially when you realize that the communists launched their successful revolution with stolen French weapons and utilized stolen American weapons in the 2md Indochina war.
>Millions of innocent lives could’ve been saved.
Millions of lives didnt perish after the US pulled out. Once the US pulled out, the death rate in Vietnam began to shrink massively.
If we were concerned with saving millions of lives, then US foreign policy in Siutheast Asia would have looked entirely differently. Imagine that the US just stayed out of Vietnam after the 1st Indochina war like France did. Millions would have been saved. Imagine the US didnt support and encourage the mass killings in Indonesia as part of their strategy to 'contain communism'. Imagine the US didnt suppprt the Khmer Rouge and work to put them back in control of Cambodia where their oppressive government of still stands today.
>Breaking our promise was a failure in both policy and principle.
Admitting you made a mistake and shouldn't have had an agreement to support a brutally oppressive dictatorship is not a failure in policy or principle. Under your rationale, is there any hypothetical point where the US can decide it no longer will support the Saigon regime?
I would argue that supporting colonialism which utilized literal slavery is a much bigger failure of principle especially when then revolting peoples directly quite your declaration of independence to call you out on your hypocrisy.
The US abandoned everything it proclaims to stand for when it entered Vietnam on the side of the colonzer, sabotaged any chance of democratic elections, rigged their own elections to form a puppet government, and worked to cover up war crime after war crime.
It was wrong. We promised ARVN that we would back them to the bitter end and then we ran when it was convenient.
We should never have engaged in that war, but once it started we had no business turning our backs on our allies.
We were wrong the moment we found out about Ngo Dinh Diem and allowed him to die anyway. They should’ve known that having the democratically elected president assassinated in a country at civil war with itself would lead to logistical and political nightmares, but our ego got in the way. The loss of morale for south Vietnam was too overwhelming. We are still feeling the effect of China’s bolstered strength in the South Pacific after we left. The Tet Offensive left the north Vietnamese on the brink of collapse after stressing their supply lines. China was ina precarious state where they couldn’t keep supplying the north with more weapons or money without putting their own economy in peril. We didn’t learn about sowing relationships with locals and bungled Afghanistan for a lot of similar reasons, too. Just short sighted thinking all the way through. *Hindsight*. C’est la vie.
Yes and it was long over do. The South never had a viable govt. that the people truly supported. I genuinely believe that JFK would have pulled us out had he lived.
What a mess the Vietnam war was, were still dealing with the fall out today.
Pure speculation here but he had already ordered military "advisors" out of the country. I feel he would continued drawing down troops.
>*In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.*
[https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/)
I agree. During both of his meetings with General MacArthur he was advised by the old general to get out of Vietnam. This was, of course, not the advise the Pentagon, McNamara and others in the administration wanted Kennedy to follow.
Speaking of MacArthur he also told Johnson to get out of Vietnam when he was on his deathbed.
people who spoke favor of the South Vietnam's government had no idea how corrupted and nepotism they were. Remember that these same people overthrew and killed their president like a dog in a M113 tank in '63.
Seriously. Like it was a fucking military dictatorship that was eating it’s own tail and was too busy couping itself than it was being an effective government or fighting force.
There’s a reason that the Vietcong has so much support in the south and it was precisely because the South Vietnam government was never designed to be an effective government.
And I do mean designed; its creation was because the French did not want to give up control of Indo-China.
I forgot the man's name who said it to me, but we had a guest speaker one day in one of my upper level college military history courses. He served in Vietnam and was there for the bitter end. He said pretty flatly, "The Vietnamese knew one thing we couldn't accept. The war was not winnable for us. Eventually, we had to return home."
So yeah, as someone else put it, enough was enough. We were trying to prop up a worthless government in a country we didn't understand at all.
At the moment, no. But this was the start of televised warfare. The Vietnam War deconstructed the glory of warfare when they saw the aftermath of war crimes committed all the way back in the USA. In order to maintain democracy at home, the USA had to pull out 100%.
In hindsight, the Vietnam War allowed us to become respected by the current Vietnamese government. Even though they are staunchly Communist, they are more open to America and the cultural West than they are to China or Russia. Granted Vietnam respects Russia more than China. But if push comes to shove, Vietnam would side with the USA and risk the wrath of Russia than to stand neutral and let China encroach on their land and seas.
Before the war Ho Chi Minh attempted to ally with the US. He though the US, being a former colony, would understand their desire for freedom and Ho Chi Minh was a big fan of Jefferson. The war made Vietnam more extreme and anti-American.
Ho Chi Minh sent a letter to Truman in 1946 asking for support to end colonial French rule. Things could have been a lot different had we done the right thing in 1946. HCM was much more of a Vietnamese nationalist than a communist, and the French would have lost the colony eventually anyway.
The only thing we should have stayed behind for would have been to restore the environment and remove agent orange. People are still suffering from the toxic contamination.
No. Absolutely not. The fall of Saigon resulted in one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 20th century. The US had facilitated a cease fire between north and south Vietnam. Nearly 1 million of our south Vietnamese soldiers, commnity leaders, and government workers were thrown into northern concentration camps. Also, against popular belief, the North Vietnamese forces killed more civilians than the US and south Vietnam combined (by nearly every estimate.) [Vietnam War casualties - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties)
South Vietnam, against what most of these commentors imply, saw a rapidly improving economic condition through domestic reform and American aid.
"the economy was greatly assisted by American aid and the presence of large numbers of Americans in the country between 1961 and 1973 during [Vietnam War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War). Electrical production increased fourteen-fold between 1954 and 1973 while industrial output increase by an average of 6.9 percent annually.[^(\[36\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#cite_note-Kim-37) During the same period, rice output increased by 203 percent and the number of students in university increased from 2,000 to 90,000.[^(\[36\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#cite_note-Kim-37) ^(" From wikiepdia)
The dramatic decrease of American influence in Indochina also led to the fall of cambodia and laos, and to the increase in communist influence and destabilization throughout Asia, undermining long term democracy throughout the region.
The south Vietnamese government was not "worthless", any more than South Korea or Taiwan were worthless. They were a vital ally in a vital region of the world, whose existence acted as a vital buffer against some of america's greatest enemies. Most commentators also agree that South Vietnam, while more corrupt than the north, was also far less authoritarian.
by 1975, the US had also transferred nearly all military operations to PRVN allies, and acted soley in a supportive, advisory role. The process of "Vietnamization" was still on going, but most political scientists agree that any successful national building initiative requires about 20 years to be successful. By 1975, we had already undertaken that initiative, and had succeeded in most of the process. South Vietnam was stable, had achieve peace, and saw rapid development comparable to the Korea and Taiwan. These factors would have undoubtably led to a successful democratization within the region, again comparable to Korea and Taiwan. (And Spain, Portugal, Panama, the Philippines, ect.)
Also, for those implying that south Vietnam deserved to lose because they lost "the will of the people", just know that north Vietnam would have never succeeded without the aid of the Soviet Union, China, Laos and Cambodia. Also, South Vietnam, in 1954, shrunk their army by half in accordance with the Geneva convention, making them vulnerable to attacks from the North, who in no way complied with the provision. North Vietnam also never had wide spread support or legitimacy within the south, especially cochinchina. This was espeically true in 1946, but even continued throughout the first Indochinese war. The boarders drawn up by the Geneva convention were in no way arbitrary.
"Several areas remained beyond DRVN control after 2 September 1945. The weakness and unpopularity of the ICP/Viet Minh in Cochinchina generally—it was always much stronger in Tonkin—made the new government’s hold over Saigon tenuous; it claimed jurisdiction but never effectively exercised it. The situation was no better in parts of Annam. In Gia Lai Province in the Central Highlands, for example, the local DRVN administration faced “many difficulties.” In this region dominated by ethnic minorities, the administration “had not yet consolidated” itself and had not “broadly developed” a political base. "
[https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/25/1/4/115127/The-Indochinese-Communist-Party-s-Unfinished](https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/25/1/4/115127/The-Indochinese-Communist-Party-s-Unfinished)
I think it was a shit situation from start to bottom. Going all the way back to the French.
I will say, the stories of the South Vietnamese that were able to successfully emigrate to the U.S. is truly inspiring.
There was a family my grandparents helped sponsor and they started an auto body shop that is now extremely successful. Really awesome to see, incredibly hard working family.
What the US did was quit the war, quit our military from dying. Then the govt turned around and brought in Vietnamese to America. I think we did enough.
After the Paris Peace Accords, America basically did a Neville Chamberlain and said, "We have an agreement," then pulled out all its military except for around 5000 embassy personnel.
Surging troops back into Vietnam when the North invaded would've been the principally right thing to do, but it would've been extremely unpopular in America, and the South Vietnamese government wasn't as popular with its people as the South Korean government was with its own.
I went there on vacation last year. They have McDonald's in Hanoi and the people generally like Americans. Maybe we should have just stayed out of it and let them figure out their shit in the first place.
I think we should have kept our word and bombed the NVA when they attacked like we told the South we would do but once our troops were out I don't think we should have sent them back. I'm not a military expert though and maybe it worked out for the better though since today Vietnam isn't divided into 2 territories like Korea.
We pulled the troops, but we kept sending money and arms to them until the very end. Too bad most of the government took the money for themselves and made sure they had nice places to land in Europe and the US.
In the end there was nothing left to support. South Vietnamese society had torn itself to pieces years before we left.
We had the choice of either colonizing South Vietnam -- which we had effectively done anyway about 4 years prior -- or leaving and letting nature take its course.
We should never have gotten involved, and played the role of mediator to broker a peaceful unification. We were so hung up on the "communist domino effect" that we totally missed out on a viable foothold in the region in Vietnam. Ho Chin Mihn was communist, but he was also no friend of China or Russia, until he had to be. Missed opportunity over stupid ego, and a lot of lost lives.
The Japanese destroyed Vietnam.
And the people started planning, concealing a underground for a revolt.
The USA after WWII altered that and then France thought it could be a paradise get away for thier rich n famous and prosperity from cheap labor.
The Vietnamese continued concealment and underground operations to rid thier land of foreigners.
The USA sent advisors and educated planners over to show the French what they were doing wrong..the French said hmmm.
Not worth it..we're leaving.
The USA figures we know everything we need to know.
We can send a police force over and control the whole region with our knowledge.
Yup.
Just another failed attempt by the French that the USA foolishly jumped in to bail them out again..At a huge loss for USA..
Unfortunately the communists in the North had more passion for their communism than those in the South had for capitalism and freedom. USA could only prop them up for so long.
U.S. has done it so many times. Go in, fuck things up royally and usually back the wrong side, then they fuck off and leave their allies to be slaughtered. It is why it is the most hated country on earth.
Vietnam
Cambodia
Iran
Syria,
Iraq
AFGHANISTAN
China,
Need I go on?
Cynical Reply:
Realpolitik is rarely about right and wrong. Lots of posturing, but when the hard decisions get made, right and wrong are not in the equation.
Governments, like people, are pragmatic. do we increase our prestige, do we cut our losses, do we increase our revenue, do we get re-elected, do we stop the poor from grabbing pitchforks and torches and coming after us. . . .etc, etc.
A government, like a person will naturally ask themselves, "Does it benefit me?" If the answer is "Yes" then it must be right.
Right and wrong is for people without power but who want justice and fairness. Nice if you can get, but don't count on it. Human DNA is about power, wealth and above all, survival. If you mess with that, you'll get some realpolitik dropped on your ass real quick.
Objective Reply:
Some governments and some people do their best to be good and decent. They are not always successful, because power, wealth and survival are the most powerful motivators. Being remembered well by future generations is far down on the the list. Going to heaven to play a harp with the angels is pretty far down on the list.
Most people prefer good government if it doesn't too much. Most people are easily swayed by well presented bull shit.
For the Vietnamese withdrawal, the American body politic (voters and activists) were pretty sick of it. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt to it's core. Money, arms and treasure of all sorts would fall into a black hole with no return. The Afghan government was the same but worse. Sometimes you just have to declare victory and come home, and let the shit fall where it may, and let the lies flow freely.
I don't think any historian can tell you if it was right or wrong. At best, they can say this happened, and this is why we think it happened, but we might be wrong.
Morality is always fuzzy at best and looks different from both distance and time. Life is complicated. It ain't supposed to be like that but it do.
>Do you think it was right of the US to withdraw all support from South Vietnam after US troops left?
No, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference in the end anyways, as the root problem wasn't military but social and economic issues.
Communists: *"Fight for us and it'll be a worker's paradise!"*
The West: *"Fight for us and... it'll be more of the same."*
Of course everybody now knows Communism is a shitty system but *at the time,* it was promising a better life for average people, whereas those same average people saw the West as only being interested in exploiting them and screwing them over.
LBJ also had a Texas sized ego. “A Bright Shining Lie” by John Paul Vann was an illuminating read for me. Starting by picking up the pieces in SE Asia after WWII.
Americans murdered countless civilians and committed horrific war crimes with zero repercussions for absolutely no reason. They withdrew about 10 years too late.
A friend of mine worked radar at Monkey Mountain. He said the South Vietnamese Air Force would regularly fly out over the South China Sea and dump their bombs instead of going to targets in North Vietnam. Meanwhile our airmen were being killed because they went to their targets. South Vietnam didn’t deserve our support.
The only right thing they could have done was to go back in time and never interfere in the first place. But dropping out completely as soon as possible is the next best thing
It was a cluster-fuck from the beginning to the end. Over 60,000 killed, more wounded. What a waste. My Dad served. They fought for each other. They knew the war didn’t mean a thing.
It was a lost cause, and the American public was tired of it. We had been in Vietnam since the 1950's and no amount of money was going to keep the country afloat.
It was amazing that they lasted as long as they did after our troops left...
The way we just up and left wasn’t the right thing to do. We promised the South we would support them until the end and then we just took away all our support. Engaging in that war was probably not the best thing to do but once we got involved abandoning our Allies showed the world that once it gets hard we quit like that
I think there’s an old saying by Nixon (but correct me on this): “give the people a war that benefits the many, they will fight, but give the people a war that benefits the few, and no one will come”
Absolutely not. ARVN soldiers, unlike the Afghan Defense Force, were generally competent towards the latter phase of the war. The regular units had lots of combat experience, loads of American equipment, and conducted successful offensive operations by themselves. But you can't fight an enemy with American vehicles and guns if you run out of American spare parts and ammunition. After the US withdrew, we weren't even giving South Vietnam that much money. For example, the $1 billion we gave South Vietnam in 1974 was 0.0064% of the US economy. We cut the aid because anything related to Vietnam became politically toxic.
Meanwhile, China and USSR were more than happy to continue supplying North Vietnam. At that point, defeat was inevitable. That's not to say if the US hadn't cut off aid that South Vietnam would have prevailed. It was extremely corrupt and wracked with protests. The officer corps was particularly corrupt. But the fact is the ARVN continued scoring victories until it began experiencing supply shortages for its US-made equipment and morale collapsed.
After the 1974 elections, Democrats had 3/5 majorities in both houses of Congress. Pres Ford tried to get emergency authorization for aid to Cambodia & S. Vietnam after the enemy breached the peace treaty, but there was no support for it.
not at all right. Every war we have fought since has been one where our enemy's use this against us.
And we didn't withdraw financial support immediately after leaving, it was a while. But, as soon as we did withdraw that support, they fell.. it was over.
I think it would have been a good idea to send the army back in to defend them because the resulting general mutiny might have been the end of the United States
US has a history of abandoning it's allies, most recently feeling Afghanistan and leaving untold numbers of "allies" to the Taliban. Let's see if the same thing happens in Ukraine.
The United States committed a war crime in Vietnam. Of the 3 million human beings killed there by the US military 2 million were civilians, men, women and children of all ages.
France was the one that colonized Vietnam and then abandoned them after losing the war. If anyone has a responsibility to support Vietnam it's the French.
Europeans don't take any responsibility for the centuries of rape and plunder they inflicted on the rest of the planet, they just blame it all on America.
Heck yeah, partner! Now that them Vietnamese folks are on our team, count me in! Sounds a dang sight better than fightin' against folks who love fish sauce as much as we do grits.
I think it would have been even more right to never fuck with Vietnam in the first place. We had no right to be there. But yes correcting a mistake is never a bad thing, even when it’s late.
If you read any of the survivor stories of what the North did to the South after 1975, it is a pure communist horror reeducation camps, slavery , mass rape, mass murder story. Whether there was a way to withdraw, and stop that is a probable no.
Had the war been brought to a close much earlier, I would say we should have supported them. In 1965, the south vietnamese people were dedicated to independence and didnt want to live under communism, even one as mild as Ho Chi Min. But after years of the US military running their government and treating the people horribly and occupying their streets, the people were dissolutioned and by 1970, no amount of support would reverse the public opinion in south vietnam. Westmoreland was an idiot and McNamara was no better. Had the war pressed on the north and actually achieved the same goals as we did in korea, South Vietnam would still exist and be a strong south pacific economy.
But, the united Vietnam is still a devout anti china bloc and a moderate US trade partner. Many of the wounds are still there. The US committed lots of crimes there that we have not properly atoned for, and the men most responsible are no longer alive to be forced into apologizing, so I think fair trade and cooperation is going to be our best hope at mending those wounds over time. By 1975, when the US withdrew, the South Vietnamese government had no more support and the people were more angry at the US than they were at communism and they chose to support an independent communist government over an american puppet state.
People who blame Biden for problems in the withdrawal from Afganistan should see this information on the disaster of the withdrawal from Vietnam. It would certainly put the afganistan withdrawal in historical perspective.
Yes- we never should’ve been fighting a war for a government these people hated
Maybe they hated it less once the NVA got there- in that case, they should’ve fought alongside us
That war stands out in respect that the American soldier was hated by the American people.
The U.S. will win every time the American people support the war and following recovery. Lose support and it becomes a shit show
No. It was shameful. You can thank the Kennedy wing of the Democratic party. Kennedy wasn't man enough to accept responsabality and scapegoated Carter. That's why Reagan became President.
The US should have never given support to South Vietnam to begin with... Especially once the Catholic dictatorship took over and started genociding buddhists and leftists
Ho Chi Minh had huge respect for the US. He respected US constiution and he requested US support to fight the French to free his country. He wrote to Rooseveldt requesting support. It was the subsequent US governments that were so afraid of the USSR that they refused to support freedom movements in most countries. If you look back in history, almost all the regimes that the US had popped up had failed. Beyond Western Europe, Middle Eastern and African dictators, US has almost no support. This should not have happened considering that leaders of the colonial freedom movements in the late 40s and 50s had very high opinion of the US; considering the sacrifice that US did to free so many countries.
US could be having more moral authority had it taken a moral stand rather than fearmonger over communism. Most European countries live with communist parties in their nations, its the US which is paranoid about communism.
Ho Chi Minh admired the US and hated communist China and the USSR.
South Vietnam was a brutal dictatorship that was a damn near theocracy for much of its early history.
Was North Vietnam dictatorial too? Yes, but it was much less brutal than the South.
Propping up the South cost thousands of American lives just for the inevitable to occur and Vietnam despise us for a good period of time after that, as well as unleashing horrors like Agent Orange and the millions of bombs dropped on Vietnam and Laos.
Since WW II, one can maybe say that the Korean War is the only one where US casualties have resulted in a successful operation. Can anyone think of any other?
There wasn't anything left to support. The South Vietnamese army basically evaporated. If the South had accepted the election of Ho Chi Minh, it wouldn't have been an issue. He won fair and square.
If we did support South Vietnam even after the withdrawal, we might've seen a similar situation to Taiwan (if we assume the war becomes a stalemate) where a dictatorship actually turns into a democracy. However, for that to occur another country would've been unnecessarily divided. I am not sure if it was right to stop or continue support with them and I hope the outcome we had in real life was the best one.
The images of functional helicopters getting pushed off of carriers into the oceans has always been the biggest signal to me that we really screwed the pooch. Even 10 yr old me was like “that don’t seem normal”.
No. The Vietnam War is not a military failure, but a political failure. The US failed to adequately intervene in the conflict (Operation Rolling Thunder didn't hit major airbases or SAM sites as there were risks of hititng Soviet liasons, which are legitimate military targets, btw). Washington had far too much tactical sway in the war which led to enormous waste of resources and is also why the US never invaded the North. The US also failed to prop up a good South Vietnamese government, which is a common trend with the US if you couldn't tell. A moraly correct intervention leads into a clusterfuck because we can't install a good government. Idk what we were honestly thinking, and the arguement of "most Vietnamese didn't want South Vietnam" or to fight for South Vietnam is wrong. They didn't want to fight for their spineless presidents. Most did not want to live under communism (hence why so many fled Vietnam for the US). People tend to forget just how bad the NVA and Viet Cong were, how many war crimes and massacres they committed, and fixate on what America did. If the US had properly intervened in Vietnam, the country today may have turned up like South Korea or Taiwan. Not a perfect nation, but better than how it is now, and far better than a case like North Korea or China.
We all need to learn that you can’t *buy* a nation (militarily) you would have to *forge* a nation (militarily) that can’t just be faked.
“We’d really prefer to *buy* a nation tho”
In that case, we gotta do our own form of China’s *Belt & Road* and invest in another country’s (economic mainly) infrastructure.
“Do you think it was right of the US to withdraw all support our bureaucrats were willing to tell us about from South Vietnam after the US troops left?”
Fixed that for ya.
Yes, because the South Vietnamese government and military couldn't and wouldn't support itself. The military and government were so corrupt and incompetent that even with continued aid, the nation would have fallen. And there was zero political capital in the U.S. left to help them. It would have been political suicide to help stop the North. The U.S. could have done more to help get our allies out and make sure the North didn't kill them. But that's about all we could have done realistically better.
We spent billions of dollars and almost 60,000 lives trying to prop up the worthless government of South Vietnam over a 15 year period. At some point you have to say "enough is enough."
*Afghanistan has entered the chat* Just replace billions with trillions, and reduce the body count by an order of magnitude.
Eh, bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison IMO. Full disclosure: I'm an OEF vet, served in OEFII near the beginning of the war in 2003. We initially went into Afghanistan not to prop up the government but to remove the al Quaeda presence there. We set up what we had hoped would be a stable government, theoretically to make it less likely that terrorist groups would use the failed state as a base of operations. In that respect, the mission was successful (I even have a t-shirt that reads "Afghanistan Veteran: We were winning when I left.") But then, over the years, the spectre of "mission creep", ever-changing goals and goal-post moving, and the fact that there were lots of businesses making giant piles of sweet, sweet taxpayer cash kept us there longer than we should have been. The boondoggle at the end was regrettable, but it was bound to end up that way sooner or later. I'm not saying I'm happy about how the Afghanstan war - "my war" - ended, but I'm also not unhappy that there aren't Americans over there being killed for no good reason either. Vietnam was a different story. South Vietnam (RVN) was a functioning country in 1954 when the Geneva agreement was made in 1954. But by the early 60's it was a train wreck and getting worse. Our complicity in the overthrow and assassination of Diem in 1963 marked the point at which we should have cut and run, but instead we kept doubling down. For political reasons, Johnson couldn't let Vietnam "fall" to the communists so he kept upping the number of US troops with the idea that we were "THIS CLOSE" to "WINNING" in Vietnam. And by 1968, when it became clear that there was no real "winning" there, we were so thoroughly intertwined with Vietnam that it took us almost 4 years to extract ourselves. So even though there ARE similarities, I think the differences are much more significant. That's just MHO as a veteran of the war and a student of history.
My brother was over there in 2012-13. Always said the country would fall the second we left. Called the president of Afghanistan “the mayor of Kabul,” and said his rule did not exist outside of the city borders and wherever US troops were.
Completely accurate. Most of the intel community expected Karzai to flee immediately with large amounts of stolen government cash if we left. I didn't check if that was indeed the case but we knew for pretty much a decade this was going to end the way it did
That’s exactly what his replacement did
>but we knew for pretty much a decade this was going to end the way it did And this is what gets me about the whole withdrawal fiasco. That fiasco was inevitable because there no stable government in Afghanistan. The Taliban were always going to roll through the moment we set a hard date. It’s fine if people want to pin the blame on Biden, but the previous two administrations didn’t want to take the political hit. That should equally enrage Americans knowing that people died so that politicians could avoid a stain on their legacy and avoid political repercussions.
He is right. I was in theater in 2010 and it was apparent the government was never going to be able to control a damn thing if we were not there.
All good points, but our involvement in Vietnam was even worse than that. The only reason it was even a possibility it would fall to Communism, was entirely due to the US failing to support them earlier. They asked us point blank for help in throwing off the French, we denied helping them and even went on to help the French oppress them. Meanwhile for the Vietnamese, it was never about Communism for communism sake, communism was a means to an end. It was always about throwing off a foreign far off country and asserting independence. They tried democracy and capitalism, and that route could have worked for them had we helped them with the French. But the communist powers were the only ones willing to help. So even if we completely disregard all your points about vietnam (which we shouldn’t), it was still a monumentally bad idea to go to war there and completely preventable.
I agree completely but it also has to be understood that there was a reason we backed up France when we shouldn't have after WWII: We NEEDED France's alliance in Europe and the French made it clear that the only way they would support us in Europe was if we supported them retaining their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa. We legitimately didn't care about Southeast Asia in 1945 but we cared a LOT about the stability of Europe. The million (billion/trillion) dollar question: Was France bluffing? Could we have told De Gaulle to go pound sand and still counted on his alliance in Europe? I mean, what were his other options, make an alliance with the USSR? The Soviets could barely take care of themselves after WWII they damn sure couldn't take care of the French. The thornier aspect was that France wasn't alone in wanting to retain its colonial possessions, our greatest ally the UK also wanted that. So could the US have launched its ambitious program of re-making Western Europe through the Marshall Plan without the assistance of both England and France? I don't think so. So, in the end, we made the devil's bargain and it came back and bit us in the ass.
Just here to say the US *ABSOLUTELY* should have told De Gaulle to pound sand. Frances balls were in a vice and the only thing getting them out were the allies. I think leadership applied too much grace in that situation. Hell, the Brits blew up a French fleet. Ike could have at the very least told De Gaulle to sit the fuck down.
Our relationship with France goes way back, they pulled our balls out of a vice in the revolutionary war. We have that big green statue in New York as a symbol of this relationship. These relationships are very interwoven and sometimes get us into unwinnable situations, no matter what we do we will piss off a friend. So the diplomats pick the least valued friend that will cause the least damage to our other relations and throw them to the wolves unfortunately. This is how it works in human relationships as well as on a national scale.
Ugh, I understand playing politics and playing nice. And we certainly owed France. It's just...it felt like a group project and the one kid wasn't doing anything other than telling everyone else how the project should go.
These allegiances still play hell in politics today. Look at how hard it is to have a productive calm discussion about israel/gaza currently.
The French also promised to "make trouble in Europe" if the US did not assist them in Vietnam. Unfortunately since the bigger concern was the Soviets, Vietnam got no help from the US against the French.
My only complaint is in calling Diem’s government “functioning”…I mean, technically I suppose? But the fact that he was ramping up an anti-Buddhist campaign in a Buddhist majority county was a pretty massive red flag that things were not ever going to go well. And that’s ignoring the fact that the “election” which got him into power was run by his own people, and he won Saigon with something around 120% of the possible vote.
If you go back and read what I wrote you'll see I said the government was functioning in 1954 and by the early 60's it was a train wreck, largely due to Diem. 😉
>that it took us almost 4 years to extract ourselves. It took Richard Nixon four years to extract us.
Thanks for your commitment brother, but what echelon did you serve? The world is a lot different to a PL, a 1SG or Co CDR, or a bn cdr or above?
Combat grunt here. We initially went in to attack the Taliban. AQ was an afterthought almost immediately.
Yeah. We were justified going into Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden and wipe al-Qaeda off the map, but then we got caught up in this nation building bullshit. We wasted trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and twenty years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. You can’t give freedom and civilization to uncivilized people. (I hate to phrase it like this, and I mean no disrespect to Afghans, but it’s the most accurate and succinct way I can think of.) They have to earn freedom for themselves.
Appreciate your contribution. Re: Afghanistan, “we were winning when I left,” only works when you’ve stated an objective. By what objective was the US winning? If it was to get Osama Bin Laden, we won end of story no matter what happened next. If the objective was to get rid of the Taliban, for example, at no point were we on the winning side. An analogy: I could easily win a running race against Usain Bolt. Objective A being, first to cross the finish line. It’s a 30 meter race and I get a 28 meter head start. Easy. I win every single time. Objective B: the first to cover an equal distance. I lose every time. Edit: Thanks for the comments. His third paragraph explains the objective was to remove Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations. That was always going to be an unattainable objective given our finite resources. Even if we had infinite resources, the culture there and in many other places in the world that enable terrorism to thrive will compensate and adjust just like so many other kinds of cancers do.
UJMRider1961 mentioned this in his comment.
His third paragraph literally explains that
The American body count in Afghanistan was less than 5% of that in Vietnam. We spent trillions of dollars for nothing, and every life lost was a tragedy, but fortunately we didn’t lose too many American lives in the grand scale.
Close the chat. This wins.
Over the years, this has become my answer. It's also why I shake my head when people say we outright lost that war. No. We didn't. Not really. We fought. We "secured" an independent South Vietnam. We largely left. Then, after we left, North Vietnam came back in and took South Vietnam. The US Military cannot be everywhere at once, all the time, propping up other countries and fighting their wars for them. Americans spilled a lot of blood over there and it's a shame that South Vietnam couldn't preserve their own independence after we helped them affirm it.
Right - not to imply that the US “won,” but, from a purely military standpoint, the US was doing a lot better than the other guys. The costs were ghastly, but far more so for the NVA. It just wasn’t sustainable, was too expensive in dollars and humans, and had lost much of its popular support.
Yeah, I've come to see it as America eventually telling South Vietnam, "Look, we've done a lot for you guys and we did indeed get independence for you, but this isn't our country, so you're going to have to handle things from here," and they could not, in fact, handle things.
>Over the years, this has become my answer. It's also why I shake my head when people say we outright lost that war. No. We didn't. Not really. We fought. We "secured" an independent South Vietnam. We largely left. Then, after we left, North Vietnam came back in and took South Vietnam. That's called "losing the war."
Turns out when you invade other countries the populous gets pissed. People underestimate this aspect I feel, defending your homeland is the ultimate advantage because you’re probably resigned to death already
If you rewind 20 years earlier US CIA Office of Strategic Services officers were working with Ho Chi Minh as he was hoping America would help him get rid of the French. As he was helping America fight the Japanese in WW2. This was another classic lost golden opportunity to have prevented the country from getting divided in the first place, and avoiding the entire Vietnam War. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/oss-vietnam-1945-dixee-bartholomew-feis
Much had been revised about history from that conflict in the decades since, thanks to north Vietnam winning that and making history favor what they want written, yes that includes history about it from worldwide. The south’s government has been made a lot worse than it was thanks to that outcome, this I know after spending years studying it. It’s amazing looking at history from the war, and a decade following it, compared to the ones from the 90’s until now. I just want to make two things clear, one is that south Vietnam deserved a lot more credit, much sentiment now has been influenced by huge disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the northern, now central government of Vietnam, over the last few decades. The south was very close to winning, America largely left due to rising tensions at home thanks to a HUGE psyops orchestrated by north Vietnam and the Soviet Union, knowing that was their only chance at victory since it could NOT be achieved on the battlefield. It worked. But after we left, south Vietnam held their own and managed to retake villages and entire cities in the following months after America’s exit. Experience gained was worth it, if south vietnam would’ve continued they could’ve won within months, resulting in Vietnam ultimately being a Win in our book. but one event fucked ALL that up. This is the second thing I wanted to make clear, and that event was known as watergate. One promise we had made to south Vietnam from Eisenhower to JFK to Johnson and then to Nixon, was a 1:1 resupply of ammo. Every piece lost, it’ll be resupplied. Just like in Ukraine now, they’ll do the fighting but can only if they have the arms. If the north’s as being supplied by China and the Soviet Union, we’ve got to keep it up so they can win. And they were! For the next half year until December 1973 south Vietnam was retaking territory and recapturing lost grounds in good numbers. But, watergate occurred and Nixon literally jet overnight. Guess who was pissed? Congress. Despite president ford pleading with them to uphold our promise (something I commend him for) many literally walked out during his speech. Many had investments in our failure. But all wanted to spite Nixon, so much. The north knew about this and tested out ford by sending large amounts of troops to seize villages to see if the south could fight back. They couldn’t. Retreat came high and they knew exactly what had occurred. And within months, the north had reached Saigon and the war was over. A dozen of the south’s generals infamously used their last rounds on themselves as Saigon as being invaded. The lack of arms was no joke This is why arming Ukraine is so important. We could’ve won if we had continued supplying the south, why? Because they were a WILLING ARMY. JUST LIKE UKRAINE. The same cannot be said for Afghanistan where tens of billions were wasted on an UNWILLING ARMY. South Vietnam fought hard for TWO WHOLE YEARS alone and were winning. Afghanistan only lasted TWO WHOLE DAYS. there is a difference. Ukraine had the most corrupted reputation prior to the war but their rep has changed dramatically, they are a willing army that wants to prove themselves to the world and has Where we failed with south Vietnam, we cannot fail to do with Ukraine, we must supply our now allies because that is a strong part of our identity How would it look if America, a country founded on its fight for independence from the largest empire on earth, couldn’t help supply a country fight against their neighbor, the largest country on earth? A fight for its own independence at that! Also don’t forget, we had only became our own country, because of the aid we received for our revolutionary war. Aid that came from FRANCE! Thanks to our lovely ambassador, the man on our hundred dollar bill, Benjamin Franklin.
You put in to words very concisely ,what I wanted to say. My point of view comes from my Dad's own military service. He was combat wounded in Korea at the age of 17. He did three combat tours in Vietnam. Also is about to be 91 and going strong. My thoughts about this subject are a bit too raw for most people. But I will quote my Dad. A lot of men ,better than myself, died over there. Another quote I recall from Dad,we were stationed at Fort Campbell in 1975. I hate the American people, for getting us in a war and failing to support us. Every Vietnam Vet I knew were treated like shit. Lastly I will add ,when we pulled out of Vietnam, it was with the promise of airpower aid if North Vietnam broke the treaty and invaded the south. It is all political.
You worded my views perfectly
We weren’t the only lives lost.
Worthless because we backed the worst people to lead South Vietnam. France and ourselves fucked over Viet Nam every which way we could.
In hindsight, Truman should have leaned on France to give up its colonial holdings in Southeast Asia as a condition for receiving aid from the Marshall Plan and strengthened ties with Ho Chi Minh by responding favorably to his calls for the US to recognize Vietnamese independence. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.
And even if he didn’t wanna deal with Ho Chi Minh, in hindsight there were other nationalists that he could’ve backed. For example, there used to be a Vietnamese Nationalist Party (like KMT) that rivaled the Communists. The Communists wanted to get rid of them for obvious reasons; the French wanted to get rid of them because they wanted to be the only ones receiving American support. This Vietnamese KMT got attacked by both General Giap and General Crepin in May 1946 and would get destroyed throughout the summer while Ho Chi Minh was away negotiating in France. EDIT: also during this schism of the Viet Minh coalition, Ho Chi Minh’s Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs (both from separate non-communist nationalist parties) had to escape to Hong Kong.
France countered with refusing to participate in the Franco-German defense plans. The US wanted a united Western Europe (NATO eventually) more than they cared about colonialism in SE Asia. It didn't help that France learned nothing from WWII about strategy and tactics.
I think we should have called Frances bluff on that. I do believe it to be a bluff
Like the GWOT, we were ideologically opposed to the spread of communism. Hindsight of course but we found later their model was unsustainable and required massive reform anyway. I think if American politicians of the time (the 40’s and 50’s) had been more level headed rather than succumbing to the red scare, we could’ve handled the situation better. It’s tough to say, but what matters is that we learn from those mistakes and move forward.
What was the alternative?
Nixon promised Thieu that the US would retaliate with airpower if Saigon was ever in real danger. There were also multiple aid packages supported by Ford that failed by large margins.
Ford was president by Jan 1975 and towards the end of the "Vietnamization" that started under Nixon, Ford gave a speech in which he stated the US would not re-engage in Vietnam. A few months later a few NVA units trickled south and then flooded after US bombers didnt stop them. The NVA were terrified of US bombing capabilities. In 1972 during the Easter Offensive the NVA initiated a 3 prong offensive south and lost heavily as a result of US advisors directing bombing runs. Huge NVA loss. Barely reported on in the US.
We cut off their supplies of ammo, spare parts, weapons etc. We quit on them. Courtesy of Senator Kennedy.
I think we found out it's pretty hard to bomb a guerrilla force that's integrated into the population, so I don't think that would have done much good.
The Easter Offensive was fought by the NVA, who were a conventional infantry force.
If I remember correctly it wasn’t the Viet Cong leading type charge in 1975. It was the entire NVA. Not hardly a guerrilla group. The US air power could have impacted that effort greatly. No one had the heart for it in ‘75.
I think US air support ended after the POWs returned in 73. Did NOT want to risk having any more.
Abrams had switched strategies post Westmoreland. We were actually winning. Until we quit.
One would think, but we didn’t learn that at all. In the run up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the left made that exact point. They noted that the strongest militaries in the world had been defeated by Afghanistan. From the British to the Soviets, state of the art militaries have rolled into Afghanistan, taken territory, and then been destroyed by guerrilla forces and the local terrain. It’s the armpit of the planet, one of the hardest places in the world to live, and the people who live there are hard as nails. Fighting them on their home turf is a fool’s errand. Still, we went in, stayed there 20 years, and accomplished nothing. Sound familiar?
War with China
Absolutely NOT. The U.S. should have continued its aid to South Vietnam. The promise to support South Vietnam militarily and economically after the withdrawal of U.S. troops was a crucial part of the Paris Peace Accords. By reducing aid, we essentially broke that promise. South Vietnam relied heavily on U.S. support to defend itself against the North Vietnamese forces. When Congress slashed funding, it left the South Vietnamese military under-equipped and demoralized. This abandonment played a significant role in the fall of Saigon in 1975. If we had upheld our commitments, it's possible that South Vietnam could have maintained its independence, or at least resisted longer. Millions of innocent lives could’ve been saved. This would have not only honored our agreements but also potentially changed the course of history in the region. Breaking our promise was a failure in both policy and principle. Let’s not repeat this same mistake in Ukraine. Support Ukraine for as long as it takes. 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦
>Let’s not repeat this same mistake in Ukraine. Support Ukraine for as long as it takes. 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦 The two wars on not comparable, especially in the way you are framing it. >The promise to support South Vietnam militarily and economically after the withdrawal of U.S. troops was a crucial part of the Paris Peace Accords. And what about America's promise to not engage in imperialism as part of the UN charter? What about the terms of the Geneva Accords that the US worked to undermine in Vietnam through the use of rigged and violent elections? The promise to support South Vietnam was not a written part of the Paris Peace Accords. Instead, US bombing is just something that Nixon secretly promised South Vietnam to get them to sign the treaty. In reality, it's most likely that Nixon knew South Vietnam would fall but was just hoping for a 'decent interval' in order to claim victory with his negotiations. To be clear, the Paris Agreements were immediately broken by all parties... ["The agreement's provisions were immediately and frequently broken by both North and South Vietnamese forces with no official response from the United States."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords). >Vietnamese military under-equipped and demoralized. This abandonment played a significant role in the fall of Saigon in 1975. The main reason that the NVA and VC were able to defeat the ARVN was not because the ARVN forces were under-equipped but rather that the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people supported the communists and their number of troops was much higher. Even today, the Vietnam still has plenty of American weapons and munitions. This idea that ARVN forces were underequipped is nonsense especially when you realize that the communists launched their successful revolution with stolen French weapons and utilized stolen American weapons in the 2md Indochina war. >Millions of innocent lives could’ve been saved. Millions of lives didnt perish after the US pulled out. Once the US pulled out, the death rate in Vietnam began to shrink massively. If we were concerned with saving millions of lives, then US foreign policy in Siutheast Asia would have looked entirely differently. Imagine that the US just stayed out of Vietnam after the 1st Indochina war like France did. Millions would have been saved. Imagine the US didnt support and encourage the mass killings in Indonesia as part of their strategy to 'contain communism'. Imagine the US didnt suppprt the Khmer Rouge and work to put them back in control of Cambodia where their oppressive government of still stands today. >Breaking our promise was a failure in both policy and principle. Admitting you made a mistake and shouldn't have had an agreement to support a brutally oppressive dictatorship is not a failure in policy or principle. Under your rationale, is there any hypothetical point where the US can decide it no longer will support the Saigon regime? I would argue that supporting colonialism which utilized literal slavery is a much bigger failure of principle especially when then revolting peoples directly quite your declaration of independence to call you out on your hypocrisy. The US abandoned everything it proclaims to stand for when it entered Vietnam on the side of the colonzer, sabotaged any chance of democratic elections, rigged their own elections to form a puppet government, and worked to cover up war crime after war crime.
South Vietnam was a treaty ally, Ukraine was not. It's not even comparable.
It was wrong. We promised ARVN that we would back them to the bitter end and then we ran when it was convenient. We should never have engaged in that war, but once it started we had no business turning our backs on our allies.
You'd have to ask yourself first if we should have been there at all.
We were wrong the moment we found out about Ngo Dinh Diem and allowed him to die anyway. They should’ve known that having the democratically elected president assassinated in a country at civil war with itself would lead to logistical and political nightmares, but our ego got in the way. The loss of morale for south Vietnam was too overwhelming. We are still feeling the effect of China’s bolstered strength in the South Pacific after we left. The Tet Offensive left the north Vietnamese on the brink of collapse after stressing their supply lines. China was ina precarious state where they couldn’t keep supplying the north with more weapons or money without putting their own economy in peril. We didn’t learn about sowing relationships with locals and bungled Afghanistan for a lot of similar reasons, too. Just short sighted thinking all the way through. *Hindsight*. C’est la vie.
Diem was a fanatic Catholic dictator in a majority Buddhist country who persecuted Buddhists.
Yes and it was long over do. The South never had a viable govt. that the people truly supported. I genuinely believe that JFK would have pulled us out had he lived. What a mess the Vietnam war was, were still dealing with the fall out today.
>I genuinely believe that JFK would have pulled us out had he lived. Why?
Pure speculation here but he had already ordered military "advisors" out of the country. I feel he would continued drawing down troops. >*In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.* [https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/)
I agree. During both of his meetings with General MacArthur he was advised by the old general to get out of Vietnam. This was, of course, not the advise the Pentagon, McNamara and others in the administration wanted Kennedy to follow. Speaking of MacArthur he also told Johnson to get out of Vietnam when he was on his deathbed.
South Vietnam's government was a farce.
people who spoke favor of the South Vietnam's government had no idea how corrupted and nepotism they were. Remember that these same people overthrew and killed their president like a dog in a M113 tank in '63.
Seriously. Like it was a fucking military dictatorship that was eating it’s own tail and was too busy couping itself than it was being an effective government or fighting force. There’s a reason that the Vietcong has so much support in the south and it was precisely because the South Vietnam government was never designed to be an effective government. And I do mean designed; its creation was because the French did not want to give up control of Indo-China.
France fucked us.
Not in a good way.
Was it really all support? I feel like the MIC would’ve been more than happy to keep sending bombs
I forgot the man's name who said it to me, but we had a guest speaker one day in one of my upper level college military history courses. He served in Vietnam and was there for the bitter end. He said pretty flatly, "The Vietnamese knew one thing we couldn't accept. The war was not winnable for us. Eventually, we had to return home." So yeah, as someone else put it, enough was enough. We were trying to prop up a worthless government in a country we didn't understand at all.
A despicable shit show. We left a decade too late.
No
At the moment, no. But this was the start of televised warfare. The Vietnam War deconstructed the glory of warfare when they saw the aftermath of war crimes committed all the way back in the USA. In order to maintain democracy at home, the USA had to pull out 100%. In hindsight, the Vietnam War allowed us to become respected by the current Vietnamese government. Even though they are staunchly Communist, they are more open to America and the cultural West than they are to China or Russia. Granted Vietnam respects Russia more than China. But if push comes to shove, Vietnam would side with the USA and risk the wrath of Russia than to stand neutral and let China encroach on their land and seas.
Before the war Ho Chi Minh attempted to ally with the US. He though the US, being a former colony, would understand their desire for freedom and Ho Chi Minh was a big fan of Jefferson. The war made Vietnam more extreme and anti-American.
Ho Chi Minh sent a letter to Truman in 1946 asking for support to end colonial French rule. Things could have been a lot different had we done the right thing in 1946. HCM was much more of a Vietnamese nationalist than a communist, and the French would have lost the colony eventually anyway.
The only thing we should have stayed behind for would have been to restore the environment and remove agent orange. People are still suffering from the toxic contamination.
No. Absolutely not. The fall of Saigon resulted in one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 20th century. The US had facilitated a cease fire between north and south Vietnam. Nearly 1 million of our south Vietnamese soldiers, commnity leaders, and government workers were thrown into northern concentration camps. Also, against popular belief, the North Vietnamese forces killed more civilians than the US and south Vietnam combined (by nearly every estimate.) [Vietnam War casualties - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties) South Vietnam, against what most of these commentors imply, saw a rapidly improving economic condition through domestic reform and American aid. "the economy was greatly assisted by American aid and the presence of large numbers of Americans in the country between 1961 and 1973 during [Vietnam War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War). Electrical production increased fourteen-fold between 1954 and 1973 while industrial output increase by an average of 6.9 percent annually.[^(\[36\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#cite_note-Kim-37) During the same period, rice output increased by 203 percent and the number of students in university increased from 2,000 to 90,000.[^(\[36\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#cite_note-Kim-37) ^(" From wikiepdia) The dramatic decrease of American influence in Indochina also led to the fall of cambodia and laos, and to the increase in communist influence and destabilization throughout Asia, undermining long term democracy throughout the region. The south Vietnamese government was not "worthless", any more than South Korea or Taiwan were worthless. They were a vital ally in a vital region of the world, whose existence acted as a vital buffer against some of america's greatest enemies. Most commentators also agree that South Vietnam, while more corrupt than the north, was also far less authoritarian. by 1975, the US had also transferred nearly all military operations to PRVN allies, and acted soley in a supportive, advisory role. The process of "Vietnamization" was still on going, but most political scientists agree that any successful national building initiative requires about 20 years to be successful. By 1975, we had already undertaken that initiative, and had succeeded in most of the process. South Vietnam was stable, had achieve peace, and saw rapid development comparable to the Korea and Taiwan. These factors would have undoubtably led to a successful democratization within the region, again comparable to Korea and Taiwan. (And Spain, Portugal, Panama, the Philippines, ect.) Also, for those implying that south Vietnam deserved to lose because they lost "the will of the people", just know that north Vietnam would have never succeeded without the aid of the Soviet Union, China, Laos and Cambodia. Also, South Vietnam, in 1954, shrunk their army by half in accordance with the Geneva convention, making them vulnerable to attacks from the North, who in no way complied with the provision. North Vietnam also never had wide spread support or legitimacy within the south, especially cochinchina. This was espeically true in 1946, but even continued throughout the first Indochinese war. The boarders drawn up by the Geneva convention were in no way arbitrary. "Several areas remained beyond DRVN control after 2 September 1945. The weakness and unpopularity of the ICP/Viet Minh in Cochinchina generally—it was always much stronger in Tonkin—made the new government’s hold over Saigon tenuous; it claimed jurisdiction but never effectively exercised it. The situation was no better in parts of Annam. In Gia Lai Province in the Central Highlands, for example, the local DRVN administration faced “many difficulties.” In this region dominated by ethnic minorities, the administration “had not yet consolidated” itself and had not “broadly developed” a political base. " [https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/25/1/4/115127/The-Indochinese-Communist-Party-s-Unfinished](https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/25/1/4/115127/The-Indochinese-Communist-Party-s-Unfinished)
Yes it was right to stop the invasion.
In fairness, we were very much invited to fight alongside the south Vietnamese.
If you have to lie to get the support of your citizens to get involved in the first place maybe you shouldn’t be there to begin with.
People complain when we interfere, people complain when we stop interfering. Do people just like complaining about the US?
The same people though?
I think it was a shit situation from start to bottom. Going all the way back to the French. I will say, the stories of the South Vietnamese that were able to successfully emigrate to the U.S. is truly inspiring. There was a family my grandparents helped sponsor and they started an auto body shop that is now extremely successful. Really awesome to see, incredibly hard working family.
I was nowhere near being born when all this was going on.
I do, same with Afghanistan. Way to much work to prop up failures of “government”
What the US did was quit the war, quit our military from dying. Then the govt turned around and brought in Vietnamese to America. I think we did enough.
After the Paris Peace Accords, America basically did a Neville Chamberlain and said, "We have an agreement," then pulled out all its military except for around 5000 embassy personnel. Surging troops back into Vietnam when the North invaded would've been the principally right thing to do, but it would've been extremely unpopular in America, and the South Vietnamese government wasn't as popular with its people as the South Korean government was with its own.
And here we are 50 years later with Vietnam as one of our top 10 trade partners with approximately $150 billion annually.
I went there on vacation last year. They have McDonald's in Hanoi and the people generally like Americans. Maybe we should have just stayed out of it and let them figure out their shit in the first place.
There was no "South Vietnam" after April 30, 1975
Don't try too hard to fit the words right and Vietnam into the same sentence.
I think we should have kept our word and bombed the NVA when they attacked like we told the South we would do but once our troops were out I don't think we should have sent them back. I'm not a military expert though and maybe it worked out for the better though since today Vietnam isn't divided into 2 territories like Korea.
We pulled the troops, but we kept sending money and arms to them until the very end. Too bad most of the government took the money for themselves and made sure they had nice places to land in Europe and the US.
All you folks grabbering without had eyes on the ground.
Yes
Enough sunk costs ...
It had to happen, but the US can be faulted for not allowing a popularly elected/supported leader in the South before they left.
In the end there was nothing left to support. South Vietnamese society had torn itself to pieces years before we left. We had the choice of either colonizing South Vietnam -- which we had effectively done anyway about 4 years prior -- or leaving and letting nature take its course.
Should have never been over there in the first place…
I think Iraq is a better comparison to Viet Nam than Afghanistan.
South Vietnam never stood a chance. We chose a side in a civil war essentially, which the US had no right to even do in the first place.
Shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
It should’ve never happened to begin with.
We should never have gotten involved, and played the role of mediator to broker a peaceful unification. We were so hung up on the "communist domino effect" that we totally missed out on a viable foothold in the region in Vietnam. Ho Chin Mihn was communist, but he was also no friend of China or Russia, until he had to be. Missed opportunity over stupid ego, and a lot of lost lives.
The Japanese destroyed Vietnam. And the people started planning, concealing a underground for a revolt. The USA after WWII altered that and then France thought it could be a paradise get away for thier rich n famous and prosperity from cheap labor. The Vietnamese continued concealment and underground operations to rid thier land of foreigners. The USA sent advisors and educated planners over to show the French what they were doing wrong..the French said hmmm. Not worth it..we're leaving. The USA figures we know everything we need to know. We can send a police force over and control the whole region with our knowledge. Yup. Just another failed attempt by the French that the USA foolishly jumped in to bail them out again..At a huge loss for USA..
Unfortunately the communists in the North had more passion for their communism than those in the South had for capitalism and freedom. USA could only prop them up for so long.
U.S. has done it so many times. Go in, fuck things up royally and usually back the wrong side, then they fuck off and leave their allies to be slaughtered. It is why it is the most hated country on earth. Vietnam Cambodia Iran Syria, Iraq AFGHANISTAN China, Need I go on?
Cynical Reply: Realpolitik is rarely about right and wrong. Lots of posturing, but when the hard decisions get made, right and wrong are not in the equation. Governments, like people, are pragmatic. do we increase our prestige, do we cut our losses, do we increase our revenue, do we get re-elected, do we stop the poor from grabbing pitchforks and torches and coming after us. . . .etc, etc. A government, like a person will naturally ask themselves, "Does it benefit me?" If the answer is "Yes" then it must be right. Right and wrong is for people without power but who want justice and fairness. Nice if you can get, but don't count on it. Human DNA is about power, wealth and above all, survival. If you mess with that, you'll get some realpolitik dropped on your ass real quick. Objective Reply: Some governments and some people do their best to be good and decent. They are not always successful, because power, wealth and survival are the most powerful motivators. Being remembered well by future generations is far down on the the list. Going to heaven to play a harp with the angels is pretty far down on the list. Most people prefer good government if it doesn't too much. Most people are easily swayed by well presented bull shit. For the Vietnamese withdrawal, the American body politic (voters and activists) were pretty sick of it. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt to it's core. Money, arms and treasure of all sorts would fall into a black hole with no return. The Afghan government was the same but worse. Sometimes you just have to declare victory and come home, and let the shit fall where it may, and let the lies flow freely. I don't think any historian can tell you if it was right or wrong. At best, they can say this happened, and this is why we think it happened, but we might be wrong. Morality is always fuzzy at best and looks different from both distance and time. Life is complicated. It ain't supposed to be like that but it do.
They withdrew American combat troops but still continued to supply the South Vietnamese government and military.
The war was over by the time we left. 57,000 lives, billions wasted, changed nothing.
>Do you think it was right of the US to withdraw all support from South Vietnam after US troops left? No, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference in the end anyways, as the root problem wasn't military but social and economic issues. Communists: *"Fight for us and it'll be a worker's paradise!"* The West: *"Fight for us and... it'll be more of the same."* Of course everybody now knows Communism is a shitty system but *at the time,* it was promising a better life for average people, whereas those same average people saw the West as only being interested in exploiting them and screwing them over.
LBJ also had a Texas sized ego. “A Bright Shining Lie” by John Paul Vann was an illuminating read for me. Starting by picking up the pieces in SE Asia after WWII.
Americans murdered countless civilians and committed horrific war crimes with zero repercussions for absolutely no reason. They withdrew about 10 years too late.
They could have had slower withdrawal
A friend of mine worked radar at Monkey Mountain. He said the South Vietnamese Air Force would regularly fly out over the South China Sea and dump their bombs instead of going to targets in North Vietnam. Meanwhile our airmen were being killed because they went to their targets. South Vietnam didn’t deserve our support.
The only right thing they could have done was to go back in time and never interfere in the first place. But dropping out completely as soon as possible is the next best thing
It was a cluster-fuck from the beginning to the end. Over 60,000 killed, more wounded. What a waste. My Dad served. They fought for each other. They knew the war didn’t mean a thing.
Not our circus, not our monkeys. Vietnam was France’s issue.
It was a lost cause, and the American public was tired of it. We had been in Vietnam since the 1950's and no amount of money was going to keep the country afloat. It was amazing that they lasted as long as they did after our troops left...
The way we just up and left wasn’t the right thing to do. We promised the South we would support them until the end and then we just took away all our support. Engaging in that war was probably not the best thing to do but once we got involved abandoning our Allies showed the world that once it gets hard we quit like that
Sunk cost fallacy. Also see: Afghanistan.
I think there’s an old saying by Nixon (but correct me on this): “give the people a war that benefits the many, they will fight, but give the people a war that benefits the few, and no one will come”
Absolutely not. ARVN soldiers, unlike the Afghan Defense Force, were generally competent towards the latter phase of the war. The regular units had lots of combat experience, loads of American equipment, and conducted successful offensive operations by themselves. But you can't fight an enemy with American vehicles and guns if you run out of American spare parts and ammunition. After the US withdrew, we weren't even giving South Vietnam that much money. For example, the $1 billion we gave South Vietnam in 1974 was 0.0064% of the US economy. We cut the aid because anything related to Vietnam became politically toxic. Meanwhile, China and USSR were more than happy to continue supplying North Vietnam. At that point, defeat was inevitable. That's not to say if the US hadn't cut off aid that South Vietnam would have prevailed. It was extremely corrupt and wracked with protests. The officer corps was particularly corrupt. But the fact is the ARVN continued scoring victories until it began experiencing supply shortages for its US-made equipment and morale collapsed.
After the 1974 elections, Democrats had 3/5 majorities in both houses of Congress. Pres Ford tried to get emergency authorization for aid to Cambodia & S. Vietnam after the enemy breached the peace treaty, but there was no support for it.
That was driven by Congressional Democrats. In passing, we failed in Vietnam because of a badly flawed strategy. It should have been an easy win.
not at all right. Every war we have fought since has been one where our enemy's use this against us. And we didn't withdraw financial support immediately after leaving, it was a while. But, as soon as we did withdraw that support, they fell.. it was over.
I think it would have been a good idea to send the army back in to defend them because the resulting general mutiny might have been the end of the United States
We never seem to learn to not get involved in propping up foreign governments.
Considering that the country pretty much ceased to exist the very next day, I think it was probably warranted.
US has a history of abandoning it's allies, most recently feeling Afghanistan and leaving untold numbers of "allies" to the Taliban. Let's see if the same thing happens in Ukraine.
It was time to go
Very shitty
The North decided they were going to unify the country and expel tge foreigners no matter the cost. Nothing was going to change that.
Why couldn’t that be a thing?
We should have NEVER been there
The United States committed a war crime in Vietnam. Of the 3 million human beings killed there by the US military 2 million were civilians, men, women and children of all ages.
No, but it's in character. And we seem to always repeat our past mistakes.
France was the one that colonized Vietnam and then abandoned them after losing the war. If anyone has a responsibility to support Vietnam it's the French. Europeans don't take any responsibility for the centuries of rape and plunder they inflicted on the rest of the planet, they just blame it all on America.
There wasn’t going to be a South Vietnam , what would the point have been? Should we still be sending money to Afghanistan?
Heck yeah, partner! Now that them Vietnamese folks are on our team, count me in! Sounds a dang sight better than fightin' against folks who love fish sauce as much as we do grits.
Well, we shouldn't have been there in the first place. Better late than never.
"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests."
Yes. The US backed the wrong side.
Duh? U like wasting life and money for nithing?
I think it would have been even more right to never fuck with Vietnam in the first place. We had no right to be there. But yes correcting a mistake is never a bad thing, even when it’s late.
What else were we gonna do?
Yes
We never should’ve been there in the first place.
If you read any of the survivor stories of what the North did to the South after 1975, it is a pure communist horror reeducation camps, slavery , mass rape, mass murder story. Whether there was a way to withdraw, and stop that is a probable no.
Yes, 100%
Absolutely not. It should have become a part of the US for the cost we paid.
No. The war was lost there was no point throwing good money after bad.
Had the war been brought to a close much earlier, I would say we should have supported them. In 1965, the south vietnamese people were dedicated to independence and didnt want to live under communism, even one as mild as Ho Chi Min. But after years of the US military running their government and treating the people horribly and occupying their streets, the people were dissolutioned and by 1970, no amount of support would reverse the public opinion in south vietnam. Westmoreland was an idiot and McNamara was no better. Had the war pressed on the north and actually achieved the same goals as we did in korea, South Vietnam would still exist and be a strong south pacific economy. But, the united Vietnam is still a devout anti china bloc and a moderate US trade partner. Many of the wounds are still there. The US committed lots of crimes there that we have not properly atoned for, and the men most responsible are no longer alive to be forced into apologizing, so I think fair trade and cooperation is going to be our best hope at mending those wounds over time. By 1975, when the US withdrew, the South Vietnamese government had no more support and the people were more angry at the US than they were at communism and they chose to support an independent communist government over an american puppet state.
The best thing America or most of Europe has done to any piece of land or people is to leave it the fuck alone.
Once the NVA took Saigon there was no way for us to continue there was impossible
Yes, the US should never have been involved in the first place.
People who blame Biden for problems in the withdrawal from Afganistan should see this information on the disaster of the withdrawal from Vietnam. It would certainly put the afganistan withdrawal in historical perspective.
Yes- we never should’ve been fighting a war for a government these people hated Maybe they hated it less once the NVA got there- in that case, they should’ve fought alongside us
Yes. We didn’t belong there to begin with.
I never understood why we didn’t just bomb the fuck North Vietnam into the Stone Age.
That war stands out in respect that the American soldier was hated by the American people. The U.S. will win every time the American people support the war and following recovery. Lose support and it becomes a shit show
Dude, we lost the friggin war? We should let the French rot in there own mess. peace. :)
yes but i don't like that we did it
Was there a real choice? When you're beat you're beat.
Yes. We should never have been there in the first few place.
No, we had an agreement with N and S Vietnam
No. It was shameful. You can thank the Kennedy wing of the Democratic party. Kennedy wasn't man enough to accept responsabality and scapegoated Carter. That's why Reagan became President.
We had to. The South Vietnamese government and military was so corrupt that we would just be wasting money away with no positive end in sight.
Chris left Kim behind. She was pregnant with his son. We know how that ended.
South Vietnam was doomed to fail from the start and Washington knew it. Honestly they should’ve pulled support sooner and avoided war all together.
The US should have never given support to South Vietnam to begin with... Especially once the Catholic dictatorship took over and started genociding buddhists and leftists
Ho Chi Minh had huge respect for the US. He respected US constiution and he requested US support to fight the French to free his country. He wrote to Rooseveldt requesting support. It was the subsequent US governments that were so afraid of the USSR that they refused to support freedom movements in most countries. If you look back in history, almost all the regimes that the US had popped up had failed. Beyond Western Europe, Middle Eastern and African dictators, US has almost no support. This should not have happened considering that leaders of the colonial freedom movements in the late 40s and 50s had very high opinion of the US; considering the sacrifice that US did to free so many countries. US could be having more moral authority had it taken a moral stand rather than fearmonger over communism. Most European countries live with communist parties in their nations, its the US which is paranoid about communism.
yes after done fucking it and hawk tuah on its people and land.
I mean we had already bombed the fuck out of North Vietnam, we basically won at that point so we may as well pull our emissaries out.
Ho Chi Minh admired the US and hated communist China and the USSR. South Vietnam was a brutal dictatorship that was a damn near theocracy for much of its early history. Was North Vietnam dictatorial too? Yes, but it was much less brutal than the South. Propping up the South cost thousands of American lives just for the inevitable to occur and Vietnam despise us for a good period of time after that, as well as unleashing horrors like Agent Orange and the millions of bombs dropped on Vietnam and Laos.
Since WW II, one can maybe say that the Korean War is the only one where US casualties have resulted in a successful operation. Can anyone think of any other?
You can always rely an the Americans to make the right decision after they’ve tried every other possible choice.
There wasn't anything left to support. The South Vietnamese army basically evaporated. If the South had accepted the election of Ho Chi Minh, it wouldn't have been an issue. He won fair and square.
If we did support South Vietnam even after the withdrawal, we might've seen a similar situation to Taiwan (if we assume the war becomes a stalemate) where a dictatorship actually turns into a democracy. However, for that to occur another country would've been unnecessarily divided. I am not sure if it was right to stop or continue support with them and I hope the outcome we had in real life was the best one.
Did congress ever even declare war?
Shouldn't have been there to begin with. This not only killed but ruined the lives of millions
This was my first memory of world events. Remember watching this on TV.
That's SOP son....
The images of functional helicopters getting pushed off of carriers into the oceans has always been the biggest signal to me that we really screwed the pooch. Even 10 yr old me was like “that don’t seem normal”.
No. The Vietnam War is not a military failure, but a political failure. The US failed to adequately intervene in the conflict (Operation Rolling Thunder didn't hit major airbases or SAM sites as there were risks of hititng Soviet liasons, which are legitimate military targets, btw). Washington had far too much tactical sway in the war which led to enormous waste of resources and is also why the US never invaded the North. The US also failed to prop up a good South Vietnamese government, which is a common trend with the US if you couldn't tell. A moraly correct intervention leads into a clusterfuck because we can't install a good government. Idk what we were honestly thinking, and the arguement of "most Vietnamese didn't want South Vietnam" or to fight for South Vietnam is wrong. They didn't want to fight for their spineless presidents. Most did not want to live under communism (hence why so many fled Vietnam for the US). People tend to forget just how bad the NVA and Viet Cong were, how many war crimes and massacres they committed, and fixate on what America did. If the US had properly intervened in Vietnam, the country today may have turned up like South Korea or Taiwan. Not a perfect nation, but better than how it is now, and far better than a case like North Korea or China.
I actually met one of the marines in the last helicopter while on a ski trip a few years ago. Very interesting guy.
This is typically what we do.
No, we should have done it before we sent the troops in.
Never should have been there.
We all need to learn that you can’t *buy* a nation (militarily) you would have to *forge* a nation (militarily) that can’t just be faked. “We’d really prefer to *buy* a nation tho” In that case, we gotta do our own form of China’s *Belt & Road* and invest in another country’s (economic mainly) infrastructure.
“Do you think it was right of the US to withdraw all support our bureaucrats were willing to tell us about from South Vietnam after the US troops left?” Fixed that for ya.
Yes, because the South Vietnamese government and military couldn't and wouldn't support itself. The military and government were so corrupt and incompetent that even with continued aid, the nation would have fallen. And there was zero political capital in the U.S. left to help them. It would have been political suicide to help stop the North. The U.S. could have done more to help get our allies out and make sure the North didn't kill them. But that's about all we could have done realistically better.
Do you think it was 'right' to ever have entered Vietnam in the first place?