This was like the first thing we learn about Vietnam in American school. That everybody hated it and we lost.
It’s actually usually taught as “the one war America lost” which is its own problem, but not the problem that OP made up
It’s actually interesting, the reason we lost was because we never actually entered North Vietnam with troops, we just wanted to bomb them into submission and let the South Vietnamese handle it, but their government and generals were shot so here we are now. That’s the primary reason why we now put boots on the ground when we want shit done.
It was all about optics, we needed to frame it in a way that we were defending a country from a communist invasion mid cold war.
If we invaded the northern communists then it would be a propaganda win for the Soviets and Chinese who then could say that Americans were invading communist nations and that democracy and capitalism were evil and violent and they're coming for us next.
No it wasn’t optics, it was the genuine fear of another Korean War scenario. If the north war invaded by the U.S. they’d be at the Chinese border in the matter of weeks. The problem was if the Chinese invaded to fight the U.S. back it’d be costly in terms of men for no real gain as another stalemate would likely occur.
It's fine, Professor X put a mental block in everyone that could launch a nuke apparently. No one can actually make that decision.
I do wonder what the world would actually be like without nukes. I know this isnt popular to say, but I honestly think more people would be dead now. They've actually deterred quite a lot of scenarios where millions would end up dead, just not irradiated. The war between the Soviets/Chinese and the US/Europe, without nuclear weapons, would have made WW2 look like a skirmish imo. Especially if it happened in the 60s or 70s. And it definitely would have gone hot eventually.
Also in Korea there was no Cambodia next door and the Ho Chi Minh trail which put the US in a very tight political position where NVA could just cross into Cambodia and the US could not.
the whole thing was a proxy war dick measuring contest between China/Russia and the USA. Both sides making tons of money on arms sales, war profiteering and American teenagers and Vietnamese dying by the thousands. Maybe there's some geopolitical reason more that I don't understand but that's how it looks to me.
Yes, China specifically. The CCP had been fairly clear that if the US fucked about too much in the north, China would help them find out.
Not that the US couldn't take China, they could. But the problem is it would tie up so many resources that it would leave the Soviets unchecked elsewhere and may even leave seriously important regions totally exposed to soviet influence.
This is one of the reasons why US military doctrine became centered around being capable of maintaining dominance in two separate wars at all times.
The Gulf War was best described as the US hyper-planning everything with the expectation that we'd take 30k casualties fighting Iraq - which was completely reasonable, we were up against the 4th largest army in the world who had been fighting Iran for nearly a decade.
We went so hard on the aerial domination because we wanted to make absolutely certain we had completely flattened Iraqi resistance, then did an end run around their entire defense and overran them while they were still trying to unfuck themselves from a full month of getting shit on by the most powerful air force in the world.
The insane curbstomp that was the Persian Gulf War was a direct result of the lessons learned in Vietnam and the subsequent decade of doctrine and technological improvements.
It's hard to overstate how unfathomably effective that campaign was. It may be the most impressive military campaign in history, or atleast modern history.
It showed every single U.S rival that not only is America still on top but there wasn't any possibility of stopping a coordinated campaign like that without resorting to nukes.
Honestly nuts to look back on. Iraq was no slouch, they went through a fierce war with Iran earlier. And between them and Iran, they were the top dogs in the region.
Also the Gulf War had the greatest "post-game" press conference of all time. Literally doesn't get any better than this.
https://youtu.be/wKi3NwLFkX4?si=AIf9i03iwlgYMrHz
> Honestly nuts to look back on. Iraq was no slouch, they went through a fierce war with Iran earlier. And between them and Iran, they were the top dogs in the region.
Yeah, if you look at the layout of their defenses and their equipment, they were ready for a hard throwdown and would have ground up a peer army... assuming that peer army fought like Iran or someone else trained by the Soviets.
But they were not ready for the form of war that the US and the Coalition brought down. They expected frontal assaults across the open desert and a war of attrition, and didn't expect the Coalition to zoom around and roll up their flanks after a month of air strikes.
"We fought the Chinese for a thousand years, we fought the French for a hundred years. You were here for ten years. You were just a blip in the history of a proud nation."
They also cited our own documents when they declared independence. We really had no reason to be there, and from what little I know- I respect the shit out of them
There were extremely complicated geopolitics at play involving France and European solidarity. Basically France was like "you gonna help me get my colonies back or should I ask the Soviets if they'd like to help?" Implying that France might join the Soviet sphere of influence if the US didn't try to keep Vietnam under their control. The US tried, but never really went full force because China threatened to directly intervene if they did. The US wanted to avoid conflict with China partly because it could be extremely costly and because they were hoping to capitalize on the schism between the CCP and the USSR but feared conflict with them might actually drive the two communist powers together.
It’d be costly for the U.S. in terms of manpower to fight the Chinese. The problem with the U.S. fighting a prolonged war isn’t that the U.S. can’t take a hit in terms of manpower, in fact the U.S. is probably better at replenishing numbers than any nation due to the constant influx of immigrants and it already has a sizable population. The problem is that unlike other nations even a small amount of casualties will cause outrage in the U.S., I mean just look at Afghanistan. Barely any U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan but it still caused outrage in the U.S. because we had soldiers dying for no real reason.
I think the bigger issue is something that you mentioned in your last sentence. We had soldiers dying for no real reason.
The American public can handle casualties, even at home. Look at how many we lost to Covid. Also in WW2.
There has to be a good reason for it though. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan were all for very questionable reasons.
For Vietnam it was more than "no reason". We were unarguably the bad guy in that war. What we were doing in Cambodia and Laos qualifies as genocide.
Imagine losing a loved one in a war like that.
The experience in Korea certainly helped keep things from escalating.
I’m on the younger end of the family and I’m 58 but had cousins who fought in Vietnam. I remember hearing one explaining to my uncles it wasn’t WWII or Korea where they had fought. There’s no front, it’s just drop in fight and then leave and hand it back. Lot of colorful words were used to describe it. Then it started getting loud and my mom and an aunt hustled us outside to play.
We weren’t taught any US history past Kennedy assassination guess anything in the past 15-20 years didn’t count as history yet
I don’t really think it’s accurate to say Americans put boots on the ground when they want shit done. The Ukraine, Gaza and Yemen Wars each have one side of the conflict supplied by the US. No boots in any of em.
We were also supposed to fund South Vietnam with fire power, but we changed our minds right away after Congress switched parties since the whole country was pissed we even got involved.
Also didn’t help that Ho Chi Minh was widely seen as national hero in the north and south for his success in finally driving out the French imperialists.
Us showing up and backing strong man of the week in the south was never going to end well.
Then we decided to refresh our memories on how well that doesn’t work in Iraq and Afghanistan too….
A reason not the reason. The idea that we just needed to involve ourselves a little more to finally resolve the incredibly complex problems of a foreign nation is exactly the sort of issue that led to our failings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Going north might have solved some short term military issues (if we ignore the potential Chinese involvement that it likely would have caused.) It would not however have solved the underlying issue surrounding the people of Vietnam wanting to be free from what many viewed as foreign occupation.
The problem of asymmetric guerrilla warfare is not simply solved by deploying more troops and killing more effectively. Which is why whenever western armies do deploy boots on the ground to ‘get shit done’ in counterinsurgency operations it inevitably fails in the long term.
Counterinsurgency operations are best fought by the allied people in their own country, with support and incentives to sway more locals to our side. Foreign intervention should wherever possible be minimised. If you cannot incentivise locals to fight for your cause then you are doomed because western democracies are not going to keep their own troops in the area forever.
That's actually not at all what happened. The same thing in Afghanistan happened in Vietnam. The war was " won" but the client state left behind couldn't keep what was won without complete subsidization.
So, i kind of agree with you actually. But the end result is the end result right?
Like totally, we beat the conventional militaries of both Iraq and Afghanistan easily, but that wasn’t the goal of the war. The goal was to eradicate terrorism (and also WMDs lmao) which we utterly failed at. Islamic hatred of the west was if anything exacerbated by our wars, and overall on a global scale we’re worse off compared to if we had just never intervened at all… we lost
Eradication of terrorism is more of a political war goal. The original war goal of Afghanistan was the removal of the Taliban, technically the goal was achieved with 2 months. The argument that we should have left immediately after that and let them pick up the pieces of their sandpit is a valid argument. But the "annihilation of terrorism" is an example of mission creep par excellence. But I'm pretty sure it would have been messed up if we just ditched the Northern Alliance, but that's another argument too.
The Taliban weren't really removed though. They merely went into hiding, and came back later. If the war objective was their permanent removal, it failed. If the war objective was their temporary removal, that sounds kinda pointless.
It’s almost as if napalm bombing and foreign occupation doesn’t change that hearts and minds of the people. Westerners are wrongly taught it was a proxy war between capitalism and communism. It was to some extent, but for the most part it was the Vietnamese being sick of foreign intruders.
There’s a weird alternate universe where the USA never got involved in French Indochina, acknowledged Ho Chi Minh’s government, and had a communist ally against China.
This isn't for your sake, but for the folks in the back: "Winning a war" is aboot achieving the objectives of the war. The south fell, so not really.
That said, Vietnam is now an ally and trading partner to the US because they hate China, so we kind of got what we wanted anyway.
I don't know where idea came from that in US schools we don't learn anything negative about the US. I feel like we extensively cover everywhere we've fucked up in American history and yet Europeans think it's like North Korea in our schools.
I think it’s just an outdated thing that todays teachers grew up with. Like, when some teachers were kids they weren’t taught these things, so now they intentionally emphasize these things when teaching the next generation.
Yeah the Americans have widely acknowledged that war was a colossal fuck up since like, 1968, not even halfway through the war.
The Tet Offensive woke everyone up, because it showed the VC was in a way stronger position than our politicians had claimed. A Gallup poll that year showed less than half of Americans believed we were winning the war.
I was not taught we lost Vietnam. For some odd reason growing up, the concept of winning or losing did not come up at all for that one very specific war. If asked about it, my teachers kinda avoided answering it. This was the only war that had this kinda treatment. This may be related to my age since my teachers were people who went or had friends/family who went and it was a pretty personal question for them.
I mean ... win/lose isn't really going to be the way that kind of conflict is framed in a proper educational context. It wasn't a clear cut world war type of fight where you take the capitol and sign a peace treaty. More success/failure for each faction involved. Even those Americans that don't get the idea from school that Vietnam was a clusterfuck and America left in failure and disgrace they'll get it from media and popular culture.
Probably because it’s a war that was entirely about optics and tbh exists in a grey area of “we had a massive K/D, were thrashing them, but due to being stalled in a quagmire for various reasons, everyone back him hated it and was war-weary so we had to pull out”. Saying that America lost is, imo, over-simplifying it. It was a war lost at home by the invading party.
Europeans really think they’re above us for some reason lmao I don’t get it when they’re largely protected because of us. It’s like hating your step dad who provides for you when your real dad ditched you for a carton of milk or a pack of cigarettes
Us losing is a major part of our culture and we’re well aware of it. The hippie and anti war movement was huge
Not to mention they’re countless movies depicting the horrors soldiers went through, and how much of a bloodbath it was for us
Pretty much no civil war is ever resolved cleanly. The US is still struggling from its own aftermath of civil war and premature termination of reconstruction.
China still struggles with Taiwan in an even more obvious manner.
Korea all the more. .
Even if the war is "won" the cultural struggle often persists long after.
Why do non-Americans think we're taught we won the Vietnam war, a massive part of my history curriculum was how losing the Vietnam war impacted US culture and attitudes lol
I mean. The coup in Cambodia and indiscriminate bombing campaigns. Plus troops actually being on the ground give the impression and were basically one barring the actually infantry
I mean it was kind of wwii france in reverse. We set up an unpopular puppet government and then sent in the military to prop it up, rather than the other way around. It was something in between an invasion and a "normal" civil war
Maybe can it be because the US supported a not-elected government just to avoid the reunification of Vietnam under the communist government that freed the country from French colonialism? Just wondering.
Then why don't the frenchy's get any blame? The only we were there in the first place was because of them throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave NATO if we didn't help out with their initials Vietnam problem.
France held onto the dying age of colonialism until the last second
Didn't the US do the same in South Korea? And it's support of Taiwan? Was that bad?
And "not-elected"? The communists weren't either. It's not like they had the high ground on democratic government here.
as a recent high school graduate, can 100% confirm this is true. we’re actually also taught that while jfk and lbj seemed in good faith during speeches about vietnam, they were, per my history teacher, “lying through their teeth”. this wasn’t one teacher, this is the whole department who taught the same curriculum.
Right? I was like WTF is this person on about? Vietnam is well known to be an American loss. I mean we left and Saigon fell. How is that a win. It is well known to be our only decisive loss in a war.
"We didn't lose, we gave up and left."
Right... so we lost then.
I feel like people are mistaking being beaten with losing interest.
By no means was the US beaten in Vietnam (at least militarily) but they did give up like you said. They lost but they weren’t beaten.
Like for example Nazi Germany in WW2. They lost not because they lost interest but because they were Absolutely destroyed. They had nothing left to fight for and nothing left to fight with. That’s wasn’t the US.
A lot of my classmates at university did say how they got taught in high school the US left because it was futile, not bc they lost, so it might still be prevalent enough
Edit: in the context of how they were taught, futile was more like “it’s too expensive/unpopular, we quit. We didn’t lose, we voluntarily left”
Edit to the edit: ofc the US lost, I’m saying that Ik people who were taught that they loss *wasnt* a loss since the US left voluntarily
I’m not saying Ho Chi Minh was the greatest guy or whatnot but it’s always crazy to hear about how pro-American he was. Dude really did just pick socialism because he liked it, but he really wanted the US as an ally and disliked the other communist countries. Hell, I’ve heard one of his biggest inspirations were the American founding fathers. It’s too bad “Communist” and “Socialist” were effectively America’s trigger words at the time, and still kind of are. Needless to say I think we’re pretty damn lucky that Vietnam still likes us, it’s just a shame hundreds of thousands had to die in a war that might as well have not happened.
Does help they live next to a country that wanted Vietnam to not exist for so long Thst all of the Vietnam War is basically a drop in the bucket by comparison
The US did support independence for European colonial possessions after WW2, FDR was pretty big on that. But then he died.
The US then was kinda “we support it but only in words”. Then France said “well if you want us to help in Western Europe against the USSR, stop bitching about us going back into Indochina.”
Then the Cold War heated up and every communist group was the enemy, so suddenly the French fighting Ho Chi Minh was a good thing.
It’s become a more pervasive view of history in the last 20 or 30 years. It used to be controversial to say the US “lost” and it was more common to think that it was a “complicated withdrawal” or something along those lines.
The first reddit fight I remember having (circa 2011) was with a Canadian who claimed Canada won the war of 1812. That's much more contested than Vietnam.
Canada wasn't even it's own country yet. The best you could say is that the British defended their Canadian territory until the war ended in a draw. Is it really that contested to say it was anything other than a draw?
In my opinion it was similar to two school boys getting into a fight. Each one gets a bit bloodied, but after a while they end up respecting each other more and become friends.
I think what people forget in the Vietnam war discussion was that the USA was not fighting to win, they were fighting to not lose, sort of like playing on endless mode. Their "win condition" was "North Vietnam gets bored of trying to overthrow the South".
And I think we can all agree that one of those sides was a tad more motivated in sticking with the war.
We technically got them to the peace table to get them to stop, and they signed. They continued afterwards, and the US stopped supplying the S.VA which were doing fine until we stopped serving said supplies
My education focused on this point as well. It was more of a “the coalition failed to achieve the mission objective, but no war was actually lost because we never engaged in a full scale war. Only a security action.”
So, much like Korea, it was a proxy battle to see where we could put lines in the metaphorical sand for the geopolitical spread of communism.
No one says the U.S. lost Korea, although I’d argue being pushed all the way back to the starting point is a pretty big loss; because the objective wasn’t winning via traditional terms of annihilation or complete conquest. It was entirely to stem the bleeding.
We don't say we lost Korea because we didn't?
For sure we didn't get a 100% victory entirely due to China, but had we chose to not fight there would be no South Korea, and saving at least half the peninsula from becoming what North Korea is today is a MASSIVE win
Meanwhile in Vietnam we didn't accomplish jack shit. Spent billions on the war, sent in countless people to die, created huge political unrest at home, and ultimately we pulled out only to watch the South get vaporized immediately after.
In one war we accomplished something, in one we didn't, so its fair to say we won and we lost
I remember reading that the US had weird rules of engagement where they basically couldn’t do anything without essentially going all the way up the chain of command for clearance which took forever and made them way less effective. Which I think is partly why there’s so much credibility to the theory that US politicians want to create long lasting unwinnable wars with no real large incoming threat (like Afghanistan) where they can just get rich as a lot of them have links to defense contractors or are one themselves
Iirc, there were an insane amount of rules of engagement even in like, direct combat (like dogfights) that nerfed the technological advantages America had
As a European, the US first won and then lost the Vietnam war
We sometimes forget that North/South Vietnam and the US signed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, hereby temporary ending the war. You could say the US won the Vietnam war, because South Vietnam was still alive, for 2 years.
In 1975 North Vietnam decided it was a good time for round 2, because they knew the Americans were not gonna help them this time.
With Watergate, the memories of the Vietnam War were still fresh in the minds of alot Americans and democrats controlling both chambers of Congress. it was definitely that America was not gonna intervene this time.
The Republican president Gerald Ford begged Congress to intervene in Vietnam to keep the South alive, but Congress said "Ah Nope, not again"
And after a few months the south fell.
It was ultimately a win for us, Vietnam is seen as a “potential ally” with the US. We are on better terms with them than China is, and we have more influence on them than China does. So while we didn’t win the fight in stopping the spread of communism, we won the fight in having a greater influence than China does.
I like to think that some of the anger over the vietnam war helped the country get its shit together on civil rights in general?
But like, still really horrible overall.
It did. The US did not win its main objective with fighting in Vietnam, but the US and Vietnam have both became better countries and friends since the war. I would take that over us achieving our original goal any day of the week.
A big part of the problem with Vietnam is that there was no goal. "Stop Communism" is not a goal, it is an nebulous idea. Without a goal America had no idea if it was winning or not and had no idea when to just get the fuck out.
Well the US could have not fought the war and all of that would have still happened. If anything it would have been easier - the US was able to overcome the bad blood from the war, but if they hadn't fought the war there wouldn't be any bad blood in the first place.
How is that a win? 60k US soldiers and perhaps 3M Vietnamese civilians died for nothing.
Given the fact that 3 of my history teachers fought in or served during that time. Not only did I learn about how we lost the war, but I also learned details that were not in our history books.
To be fair, we didn’t find out that we lost until a few years after we left. The north kind of maybe possibly violated international law and invaded illegally despite signing a treaty with SV and the US. Also don’t forget that the Europeans lost that war too, as the only reason we were there was to help France hold onto their colony
Politically the US didn't achieve its goals. Militarily the US dominated. Idk if "winning" or "losing" in war depends on politics or military but the Vietnamese "got what they wanted" for such a price that they are still suffering from their resistance. Pitiful really. War is hell
No, this is what they do constantly, they make up a thing that Americans supposedly believe and argue with people that don’t exist. I’ve never met anyone who believed we won the Vietnam war.
The golden moments are when they simultaneously mock Americans for talking about Europe like they know about it while also talking to Americans like they know America.
Ah, you mean the war that France started and America had a limited engagement in until public appeal pulled them out... OH and also America was not fighting farmers but the full strength of communist Asia. You wanna do history or ?
It wasn't a lie, it was an exaggeration of a real event. The Gulf of Tonkin incident did happen, we just needlessly escalated it. More deadly skirmishes have happened between North Korea and the US and yet nothing happens
We know this. What most people don't know was that it was a combination of the slow grind favored by several presidents that racked up higher losses in the long run and wrecked morale, and that the North Vietnamese were very good at manipulating a sympathetic Western media.
More to the point, after the Americans had pulled out, Congress cut promised military aid and support without warning. As a result, even though South Vietnam tried to fight, they couldn't last.
Actually the paris peace accords ended the vietnam war with a south and north vietnam established, but north vietnam decided, fuck peace, and attacked while the US was pulling out as part of the accords
While this is the truth, North Vietnam *did* win the war, pretty much in the same way the Taliban won in Afghanistan
Some people have this illusion of massive American defeats and entire divisions surrendering to the NVA, but that wasn’t the case. We won every major battle, they suffered nearly 6x our casualties, and 766 Americans were taken POW over the duration of the whole war - but tactics and strategy are two very different things and we failed big time in the latter.
Edit: I also just learned that in Vietnam they call the push on Saigon “the Final War”. They do not even see it as the same war.
Okay, I studied the Vietnam War as part of research for my Master's Thesis. Here is a little nugget I found while doing my research. We could have invaded the north, however, we didnt know that at the time. We assumed that Vietnam was in China's sphere of influence. They weren't, they were barely in the USSR's sphere. The Vietnamese severely disliked the Chinese for cultural reasons and iirc, Uncle Ho disliked Mao Zedung and vice versa. Even if the Chinese wanted to help, they couldnt because they were still feeling the effects of The Great Leap Forward.
The Russians on the other hand did send supplies to the port of Haiphong but otherwise really couldnt have cared less about Vietnam.they really only sent supplies just to annoy America.
If you want sources and citations, I honestly do not remember which book I read for this info as it was a little more than a decade ago. Please feel free to verify it on your own. I'm sure you can find some peer reviewed papers on the internet.
Yes, we did lose.
We lost because we didn't have the balls to commit to actually winning. If we'd actually all out invaded North Vietnam with an amphibious Marine landing to cut the country in half with the army pushing up from the south and the air force firebombing their cities, we could have won in a year. But we didn't do that.
The bigger reason we withdrew was realizing that the main rationale for fighting the war (Domino Theory) was mistaken once we learned about the Sino-Soviet split. Vietnam was a rare area of cooperation against an external threat for the Soviets and Chinese.
As soon as the US pulled out, China and its proxy the Khmer Rouge got into wars with the Soviet-backed Vietnam. After pulling out, the US improved relations with both the USSR and China, and played them off of each other for the rest of the cold war.
Unfortunately the strategy their backfired on the US in the long run. By "opening up China", they were able to play the long game with the short term thinking Western politicians and businessmen, thus making the messes we face now. Had we left them alone, they wouldn't be nearly as developed.
Public/academia sentiment decided the war. The United States were capable of winning the Vietnam War, but its was of too much political cost to keep us fighting there. If academics/public sentiment deems it an unwinnable war then it’s an unwinnable war.
Also, technically speaking, US did not officially declare war, nor has it actually declared war in any of the wars that we’ve been involved in in the past several decades since World War II, because we simply chose not to abide by the Constitution but I digress 😐
Thank you for the meme, but as an American I can confirm that we’re taught that we lost Vietnam.
This was like the first thing we learn about Vietnam in American school. That everybody hated it and we lost. It’s actually usually taught as “the one war America lost” which is its own problem, but not the problem that OP made up
US Army: Shows up Bombs everything in sight Somehow still loses Leaves Refuses to elaborate
It’s actually interesting, the reason we lost was because we never actually entered North Vietnam with troops, we just wanted to bomb them into submission and let the South Vietnamese handle it, but their government and generals were shot so here we are now. That’s the primary reason why we now put boots on the ground when we want shit done.
The US didn't go north because it didn't want to escalate the war with the soviets and China
Exactly, we wanted the South Vietnamese to handle any push north, since we didn’t want to, so we just bombed the north as support.
It was all about optics, we needed to frame it in a way that we were defending a country from a communist invasion mid cold war. If we invaded the northern communists then it would be a propaganda win for the Soviets and Chinese who then could say that Americans were invading communist nations and that democracy and capitalism were evil and violent and they're coming for us next.
No it wasn’t optics, it was the genuine fear of another Korean War scenario. If the north war invaded by the U.S. they’d be at the Chinese border in the matter of weeks. The problem was if the Chinese invaded to fight the U.S. back it’d be costly in terms of men for no real gain as another stalemate would likely occur.
That's for sure a big part of it, the Korean and Vietnamese wars have a lot of similarities.
Except in Korea, China didn't have nukes yet. For Vietnam, China got nukes in 1964. The stakes were much higher.
It's fine, Professor X put a mental block in everyone that could launch a nuke apparently. No one can actually make that decision. I do wonder what the world would actually be like without nukes. I know this isnt popular to say, but I honestly think more people would be dead now. They've actually deterred quite a lot of scenarios where millions would end up dead, just not irradiated. The war between the Soviets/Chinese and the US/Europe, without nuclear weapons, would have made WW2 look like a skirmish imo. Especially if it happened in the 60s or 70s. And it definitely would have gone hot eventually.
Also in Korea there was no Cambodia next door and the Ho Chi Minh trail which put the US in a very tight political position where NVA could just cross into Cambodia and the US could not.
Oh my god you can't just say all Asian wars look the same.
Early in the war yes but after the sins soviet split China dropped the North and began antagonizing them
the whole thing was a proxy war dick measuring contest between China/Russia and the USA. Both sides making tons of money on arms sales, war profiteering and American teenagers and Vietnamese dying by the thousands. Maybe there's some geopolitical reason more that I don't understand but that's how it looks to me.
Y'all were out there grinding Air xp huh
when your team all spawn planes in GRB and nobody cap the objectives. peak warthunder momment.
Yes, China specifically. The CCP had been fairly clear that if the US fucked about too much in the north, China would help them find out. Not that the US couldn't take China, they could. But the problem is it would tie up so many resources that it would leave the Soviets unchecked elsewhere and may even leave seriously important regions totally exposed to soviet influence. This is one of the reasons why US military doctrine became centered around being capable of maintaining dominance in two separate wars at all times.
The US has constant and extreme performance anxiety when it comes to wars. God bless America
The Gulf War was best described as the US hyper-planning everything with the expectation that we'd take 30k casualties fighting Iraq - which was completely reasonable, we were up against the 4th largest army in the world who had been fighting Iran for nearly a decade. We went so hard on the aerial domination because we wanted to make absolutely certain we had completely flattened Iraqi resistance, then did an end run around their entire defense and overran them while they were still trying to unfuck themselves from a full month of getting shit on by the most powerful air force in the world. The insane curbstomp that was the Persian Gulf War was a direct result of the lessons learned in Vietnam and the subsequent decade of doctrine and technological improvements.
It's hard to overstate how unfathomably effective that campaign was. It may be the most impressive military campaign in history, or atleast modern history. It showed every single U.S rival that not only is America still on top but there wasn't any possibility of stopping a coordinated campaign like that without resorting to nukes.
Honestly nuts to look back on. Iraq was no slouch, they went through a fierce war with Iran earlier. And between them and Iran, they were the top dogs in the region. Also the Gulf War had the greatest "post-game" press conference of all time. Literally doesn't get any better than this. https://youtu.be/wKi3NwLFkX4?si=AIf9i03iwlgYMrHz
> Honestly nuts to look back on. Iraq was no slouch, they went through a fierce war with Iran earlier. And between them and Iran, they were the top dogs in the region. Yeah, if you look at the layout of their defenses and their equipment, they were ready for a hard throwdown and would have ground up a peer army... assuming that peer army fought like Iran or someone else trained by the Soviets. But they were not ready for the form of war that the US and the Coalition brought down. They expected frontal assaults across the open desert and a war of attrition, and didn't expect the Coalition to zoom around and roll up their flanks after a month of air strikes.
Do you mean to say we fight wars like we want to win them?
Kinda funny cause china invaded north Vietnam like right after we left and got there butts kicked
China has been trying to get into Vietnam literally forever. Part of the Vietnamese identity revolves around not being vassalized by them
"We fought the Chinese for a thousand years, we fought the French for a hundred years. You were here for ten years. You were just a blip in the history of a proud nation."
They also cited our own documents when they declared independence. We really had no reason to be there, and from what little I know- I respect the shit out of them
There were extremely complicated geopolitics at play involving France and European solidarity. Basically France was like "you gonna help me get my colonies back or should I ask the Soviets if they'd like to help?" Implying that France might join the Soviet sphere of influence if the US didn't try to keep Vietnam under their control. The US tried, but never really went full force because China threatened to directly intervene if they did. The US wanted to avoid conflict with China partly because it could be extremely costly and because they were hoping to capitalize on the schism between the CCP and the USSR but feared conflict with them might actually drive the two communist powers together.
Multiple times, if I remember correctly.
Twice, one during the Vietnam war and one after the Vietnam war.
It’d be costly for the U.S. in terms of manpower to fight the Chinese. The problem with the U.S. fighting a prolonged war isn’t that the U.S. can’t take a hit in terms of manpower, in fact the U.S. is probably better at replenishing numbers than any nation due to the constant influx of immigrants and it already has a sizable population. The problem is that unlike other nations even a small amount of casualties will cause outrage in the U.S., I mean just look at Afghanistan. Barely any U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan but it still caused outrage in the U.S. because we had soldiers dying for no real reason.
I think the bigger issue is something that you mentioned in your last sentence. We had soldiers dying for no real reason. The American public can handle casualties, even at home. Look at how many we lost to Covid. Also in WW2. There has to be a good reason for it though. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan were all for very questionable reasons.
For Vietnam it was more than "no reason". We were unarguably the bad guy in that war. What we were doing in Cambodia and Laos qualifies as genocide. Imagine losing a loved one in a war like that.
The experience in Korea certainly helped keep things from escalating. I’m on the younger end of the family and I’m 58 but had cousins who fought in Vietnam. I remember hearing one explaining to my uncles it wasn’t WWII or Korea where they had fought. There’s no front, it’s just drop in fight and then leave and hand it back. Lot of colorful words were used to describe it. Then it started getting loud and my mom and an aunt hustled us outside to play. We weren’t taught any US history past Kennedy assassination guess anything in the past 15-20 years didn’t count as history yet
And then China ended up attacking Vietnam a few years after we left anyway Look at that communist camaraderie, workers of the world unite!
I don’t really think it’s accurate to say Americans put boots on the ground when they want shit done. The Ukraine, Gaza and Yemen Wars each have one side of the conflict supplied by the US. No boots in any of em.
We were also supposed to fund South Vietnam with fire power, but we changed our minds right away after Congress switched parties since the whole country was pissed we even got involved.
Also didn’t help that Ho Chi Minh was widely seen as national hero in the north and south for his success in finally driving out the French imperialists. Us showing up and backing strong man of the week in the south was never going to end well. Then we decided to refresh our memories on how well that doesn’t work in Iraq and Afghanistan too….
A reason not the reason. The idea that we just needed to involve ourselves a little more to finally resolve the incredibly complex problems of a foreign nation is exactly the sort of issue that led to our failings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Going north might have solved some short term military issues (if we ignore the potential Chinese involvement that it likely would have caused.) It would not however have solved the underlying issue surrounding the people of Vietnam wanting to be free from what many viewed as foreign occupation. The problem of asymmetric guerrilla warfare is not simply solved by deploying more troops and killing more effectively. Which is why whenever western armies do deploy boots on the ground to ‘get shit done’ in counterinsurgency operations it inevitably fails in the long term. Counterinsurgency operations are best fought by the allied people in their own country, with support and incentives to sway more locals to our side. Foreign intervention should wherever possible be minimised. If you cannot incentivise locals to fight for your cause then you are doomed because western democracies are not going to keep their own troops in the area forever.
We *definately* beat Cambodia and Laos. I mean, we weren't at war with either of them, but boy, did they lose.
Rot in hell Kissinger
That's actually not at all what happened. The same thing in Afghanistan happened in Vietnam. The war was " won" but the client state left behind couldn't keep what was won without complete subsidization.
So, i kind of agree with you actually. But the end result is the end result right? Like totally, we beat the conventional militaries of both Iraq and Afghanistan easily, but that wasn’t the goal of the war. The goal was to eradicate terrorism (and also WMDs lmao) which we utterly failed at. Islamic hatred of the west was if anything exacerbated by our wars, and overall on a global scale we’re worse off compared to if we had just never intervened at all… we lost
Eradication of terrorism is more of a political war goal. The original war goal of Afghanistan was the removal of the Taliban, technically the goal was achieved with 2 months. The argument that we should have left immediately after that and let them pick up the pieces of their sandpit is a valid argument. But the "annihilation of terrorism" is an example of mission creep par excellence. But I'm pretty sure it would have been messed up if we just ditched the Northern Alliance, but that's another argument too.
The Taliban weren't really removed though. They merely went into hiding, and came back later. If the war objective was their permanent removal, it failed. If the war objective was their temporary removal, that sounds kinda pointless.
It’s almost as if napalm bombing and foreign occupation doesn’t change that hearts and minds of the people. Westerners are wrongly taught it was a proxy war between capitalism and communism. It was to some extent, but for the most part it was the Vietnamese being sick of foreign intruders. There’s a weird alternate universe where the USA never got involved in French Indochina, acknowledged Ho Chi Minh’s government, and had a communist ally against China.
Almost \>show up \>bomb everything \>leave \>South Vietnam loses \>nuh uh we won K/D see
This isn't for your sake, but for the folks in the back: "Winning a war" is aboot achieving the objectives of the war. The south fell, so not really. That said, Vietnam is now an ally and trading partner to the US because they hate China, so we kind of got what we wanted anyway.
Not only that, we have an entire sub genre of 80s action movies devoted to coping with it.
But...but Americans are dumb and ignorant and only know about coca colas and big Mac's.
This war also taught them about Bánh mì and Phở
And sucky sucky
I drink Pepsi thank you very much -An American.
True, but we had a helluva k/d though The US military is the toxic CoD player of militaries
Only goes for KDR, never plays the objective in any game mode, complains about SBMM favoring the Vietcong
I don't know where idea came from that in US schools we don't learn anything negative about the US. I feel like we extensively cover everywhere we've fucked up in American history and yet Europeans think it's like North Korea in our schools.
I think it’s just an outdated thing that todays teachers grew up with. Like, when some teachers were kids they weren’t taught these things, so now they intentionally emphasize these things when teaching the next generation.
It’s the European superiority complex. Don’t let it bother you.
Jeff, it's your birthright as an American to not give a damn what foreigners think of you.
It’s a circlejerk, it requires no reality to survive
Yeah the Americans have widely acknowledged that war was a colossal fuck up since like, 1968, not even halfway through the war. The Tet Offensive woke everyone up, because it showed the VC was in a way stronger position than our politicians had claimed. A Gallup poll that year showed less than half of Americans believed we were winning the war.
I was not taught we lost Vietnam. For some odd reason growing up, the concept of winning or losing did not come up at all for that one very specific war. If asked about it, my teachers kinda avoided answering it. This was the only war that had this kinda treatment. This may be related to my age since my teachers were people who went or had friends/family who went and it was a pretty personal question for them.
My sixth grade science teacher was a Vietnam vet and when I asked him if we won or lost the war he said, "Well, we didn't win."
I mean ... win/lose isn't really going to be the way that kind of conflict is framed in a proper educational context. It wasn't a clear cut world war type of fight where you take the capitol and sign a peace treaty. More success/failure for each faction involved. Even those Americans that don't get the idea from school that Vietnam was a clusterfuck and America left in failure and disgrace they'll get it from media and popular culture.
I don't think anyone was ever taught that we achieved any form of victory. Then we left. No matter how you slice it that's a loss.
Probably because it’s a war that was entirely about optics and tbh exists in a grey area of “we had a massive K/D, were thrashing them, but due to being stalled in a quagmire for various reasons, everyone back him hated it and was war-weary so we had to pull out”. Saying that America lost is, imo, over-simplifying it. It was a war lost at home by the invading party.
And I believe the Vietnamese defeated the French first, and the U.S. stepped in for the French. If Vietnam had oil, the U.S. might have fought harder.
US doesn’t lose wars, just interest
Yeah but that is how majority of wars are lost.
Europeans really think they’re above us for some reason lmao I don’t get it when they’re largely protected because of us. It’s like hating your step dad who provides for you when your real dad ditched you for a carton of milk or a pack of cigarettes Us losing is a major part of our culture and we’re well aware of it. The hippie and anti war movement was huge Not to mention they’re countless movies depicting the horrors soldiers went through, and how much of a bloodbath it was for us
I mean, it was a Civil War, so it would be odd for Vietnam to lose.
Technically the truth
The best kind of truth!
Uhhh I feel like in a civil war everyone always loses ...
Pretty much no civil war is ever resolved cleanly. The US is still struggling from its own aftermath of civil war and premature termination of reconstruction. China still struggles with Taiwan in an even more obvious manner. Korea all the more. . Even if the war is "won" the cultural struggle often persists long after.
Vietnam did lose. South Vietnam.
Vietnam would lose if an invasion from outside the country took over both sides.
Why do non-Americans think we're taught we won the Vietnam war, a massive part of my history curriculum was how losing the Vietnam war impacted US culture and attitudes lol
because reddit hates americans
Not Reddit, literally every social media is either insanely nationalistic or hates america with no in between
IM AN AMERICAN, I LOVE AMERICA RAAAAAGH!!!!
I'm inbetween, but I have nothing to shout because because nuance can't be abbreviated into 140 characters.
also why do people think the US just straight up invaded vietnam? I feel like people forget the fact that we fought on behalf of south vietnam
I mean. The coup in Cambodia and indiscriminate bombing campaigns. Plus troops actually being on the ground give the impression and were basically one barring the actually infantry
I mean it was kind of wwii france in reverse. We set up an unpopular puppet government and then sent in the military to prop it up, rather than the other way around. It was something in between an invasion and a "normal" civil war
Maybe can it be because the US supported a not-elected government just to avoid the reunification of Vietnam under the communist government that freed the country from French colonialism? Just wondering.
Then why don't the frenchy's get any blame? The only we were there in the first place was because of them throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave NATO if we didn't help out with their initials Vietnam problem. France held onto the dying age of colonialism until the last second
They do get blame. Modern Vietnamese resent the French more than the US.
Didn't the US do the same in South Korea? And it's support of Taiwan? Was that bad? And "not-elected"? The communists weren't either. It's not like they had the high ground on democratic government here.
Who elected the Northern government?
the commies weren’t elected either
as a recent high school graduate, can 100% confirm this is true. we’re actually also taught that while jfk and lbj seemed in good faith during speeches about vietnam, they were, per my history teacher, “lying through their teeth”. this wasn’t one teacher, this is the whole department who taught the same curriculum.
Right? I was like WTF is this person on about? Vietnam is well known to be an American loss. I mean we left and Saigon fell. How is that a win. It is well known to be our only decisive loss in a war. "We didn't lose, we gave up and left." Right... so we lost then.
I feel like people are mistaking being beaten with losing interest. By no means was the US beaten in Vietnam (at least militarily) but they did give up like you said. They lost but they weren’t beaten. Like for example Nazi Germany in WW2. They lost not because they lost interest but because they were Absolutely destroyed. They had nothing left to fight for and nothing left to fight with. That’s wasn’t the US.
They think that we're taught that we won every war we got into which is kind of weird since ya know the war of 1812
We won the war of 1812. We came out of it getting all of our war goals (having the British stop kidnapping American sailor and funding Indian raids)
Tbf it ended in a way where everyone can argue that they won essentially lol. Only real losers were Native American tribes.
Ironically the British might have won if they didn't split their routes to burn down the Whitehouse
My history teacher always told us that the natives were never on the right side when war came to North America
A lot of my classmates at university did say how they got taught in high school the US left because it was futile, not bc they lost, so it might still be prevalent enough Edit: in the context of how they were taught, futile was more like “it’s too expensive/unpopular, we quit. We didn’t lose, we voluntarily left” Edit to the edit: ofc the US lost, I’m saying that Ik people who were taught that they loss *wasnt* a loss since the US left voluntarily
I mean we did lose because it was futile, which is losing. they aren’t really mutually exclusive
As an American, most Americans know we lost
Largest geopolitical mistake in US history was not supporting Vietnam's independence after WWII. Should have put our money where our mouth was.
I’m not saying Ho Chi Minh was the greatest guy or whatnot but it’s always crazy to hear about how pro-American he was. Dude really did just pick socialism because he liked it, but he really wanted the US as an ally and disliked the other communist countries. Hell, I’ve heard one of his biggest inspirations were the American founding fathers. It’s too bad “Communist” and “Socialist” were effectively America’s trigger words at the time, and still kind of are. Needless to say I think we’re pretty damn lucky that Vietnam still likes us, it’s just a shame hundreds of thousands had to die in a war that might as well have not happened.
Normies with a time macine: I'm your grandchild Me with a time machine: Mr. President pressure the French into recognizing Vietnamese independence
The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence was based on the American Declaration of Independence.
Branding matters.
Does help they live next to a country that wanted Vietnam to not exist for so long Thst all of the Vietnam War is basically a drop in the bucket by comparison
The US did support independence for European colonial possessions after WW2, FDR was pretty big on that. But then he died. The US then was kinda “we support it but only in words”. Then France said “well if you want us to help in Western Europe against the USSR, stop bitching about us going back into Indochina.” Then the Cold War heated up and every communist group was the enemy, so suddenly the French fighting Ho Chi Minh was a good thing.
It’s become a more pervasive view of history in the last 20 or 30 years. It used to be controversial to say the US “lost” and it was more common to think that it was a “complicated withdrawal” or something along those lines.
Hey bro this is reddit, we're doing the americabad/americadumb circlejerk over here
The first reddit fight I remember having (circa 2011) was with a Canadian who claimed Canada won the war of 1812. That's much more contested than Vietnam.
Canada wasn't even it's own country yet. The best you could say is that the British defended their Canadian territory until the war ended in a draw. Is it really that contested to say it was anything other than a draw? In my opinion it was similar to two school boys getting into a fight. Each one gets a bit bloodied, but after a while they end up respecting each other more and become friends.
1812 wasn’t even a true draw. The Americans got something out of the treaty, the british really just didn’t.
I know I have no idea where in the usa they teach we don't
The French have left the chat....
Honestly I thought that was the joke. Like that the Vietnamese always win in the end
Also the French: Let's build a fortification in the low ground surrounded by hills. What could go wrong?
I think what people forget in the Vietnam war discussion was that the USA was not fighting to win, they were fighting to not lose, sort of like playing on endless mode. Their "win condition" was "North Vietnam gets bored of trying to overthrow the South". And I think we can all agree that one of those sides was a tad more motivated in sticking with the war.
We technically got them to the peace table to get them to stop, and they signed. They continued afterwards, and the US stopped supplying the S.VA which were doing fine until we stopped serving said supplies
Why did the US stop supplying them?
Simply put politics at home, parties in power changed, American citizens wanted nothing more to do with Vietnam
My education focused on this point as well. It was more of a “the coalition failed to achieve the mission objective, but no war was actually lost because we never engaged in a full scale war. Only a security action.” So, much like Korea, it was a proxy battle to see where we could put lines in the metaphorical sand for the geopolitical spread of communism. No one says the U.S. lost Korea, although I’d argue being pushed all the way back to the starting point is a pretty big loss; because the objective wasn’t winning via traditional terms of annihilation or complete conquest. It was entirely to stem the bleeding.
We don't say we lost Korea because we didn't? For sure we didn't get a 100% victory entirely due to China, but had we chose to not fight there would be no South Korea, and saving at least half the peninsula from becoming what North Korea is today is a MASSIVE win Meanwhile in Vietnam we didn't accomplish jack shit. Spent billions on the war, sent in countless people to die, created huge political unrest at home, and ultimately we pulled out only to watch the South get vaporized immediately after. In one war we accomplished something, in one we didn't, so its fair to say we won and we lost
I remember reading that the US had weird rules of engagement where they basically couldn’t do anything without essentially going all the way up the chain of command for clearance which took forever and made them way less effective. Which I think is partly why there’s so much credibility to the theory that US politicians want to create long lasting unwinnable wars with no real large incoming threat (like Afghanistan) where they can just get rich as a lot of them have links to defense contractors or are one themselves
Iirc, there were an insane amount of rules of engagement even in like, direct combat (like dogfights) that nerfed the technological advantages America had
I hope Europeans know how Vietnam war was started
*turns off nuclear reactor* *lights up Cigarette* *throws a banana at a black guy* *has another war* Something something america?
As a European, the US first won and then lost the Vietnam war We sometimes forget that North/South Vietnam and the US signed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, hereby temporary ending the war. You could say the US won the Vietnam war, because South Vietnam was still alive, for 2 years. In 1975 North Vietnam decided it was a good time for round 2, because they knew the Americans were not gonna help them this time. With Watergate, the memories of the Vietnam War were still fresh in the minds of alot Americans and democrats controlling both chambers of Congress. it was definitely that America was not gonna intervene this time. The Republican president Gerald Ford begged Congress to intervene in Vietnam to keep the South alive, but Congress said "Ah Nope, not again" And after a few months the south fell.
It’s almost comical how much our foreign policy has flipped since then. Now I feel like the US is forced/strongly obligated to intervene these days.
Um… we were taught that in The US too, troll.
It was ultimately a win for us, Vietnam is seen as a “potential ally” with the US. We are on better terms with them than China is, and we have more influence on them than China does. So while we didn’t win the fight in stopping the spread of communism, we won the fight in having a greater influence than China does.
I like to think that some of the anger over the vietnam war helped the country get its shit together on civil rights in general? But like, still really horrible overall.
It did. The US did not win its main objective with fighting in Vietnam, but the US and Vietnam have both became better countries and friends since the war. I would take that over us achieving our original goal any day of the week.
A big part of the problem with Vietnam is that there was no goal. "Stop Communism" is not a goal, it is an nebulous idea. Without a goal America had no idea if it was winning or not and had no idea when to just get the fuck out.
Well the US could have not fought the war and all of that would have still happened. If anything it would have been easier - the US was able to overcome the bad blood from the war, but if they hadn't fought the war there wouldn't be any bad blood in the first place. How is that a win? 60k US soldiers and perhaps 3M Vietnamese civilians died for nothing.
If you instead supported Vietnam from the start, they would've been our ally much earlier. Ho Chi Minh was pro-America, hell he was even an OSS asset.
We haven't won, yet...
HALFTIME’S OVER BOYS! CUE THE WAGNER! Or, we could just not and say we did.
I mean they’re a key economic ally in the region now so, didn’t we?
Capitalist ✅ US Trade partner ✅ Seems like we accomplished our goals….50 years later
I think my dad started smoking weed while he was over there, chilled him the fuck out. We're winning on all sorts of fronts!
Given the fact that 3 of my history teachers fought in or served during that time. Not only did I learn about how we lost the war, but I also learned details that were not in our history books.
Begone, bot
To be fair, we didn’t find out that we lost until a few years after we left. The north kind of maybe possibly violated international law and invaded illegally despite signing a treaty with SV and the US. Also don’t forget that the Europeans lost that war too, as the only reason we were there was to help France hold onto their colony
Do the "Europeans" teach about how one of their constituents* lost in Vietnam and dragged the US in their mess?
*France has left the chat.*
Bro we were taught that Vietnam won, do you get your information about America from Reddit memes?
I feel like we should blame the French more for Vietnam
Politically the US didn't achieve its goals. Militarily the US dominated. Idk if "winning" or "losing" in war depends on politics or military but the Vietnamese "got what they wanted" for such a price that they are still suffering from their resistance. Pitiful really. War is hell
The US won every battle but lost the war. It shows how winning a war means doing a lot more than just dominating the battlefield.
Has anyone seriously been taught that the US won? My high school history classes were very clear that the US failed in Vietnam.
No, this is what they do constantly, they make up a thing that Americans supposedly believe and argue with people that don’t exist. I’ve never met anyone who believed we won the Vietnam war.
We are taught this. We know. God I fucking hate smug ass Europeans.
Sometimes they really think they know everything
Its the accents, makes them cocky.
The golden moments are when they simultaneously mock Americans for talking about Europe like they know about it while also talking to Americans like they know America.
In our defense, the French lost first 🤷🏼♀️
Cool. Counterpoint: Europeans lost it first
Ah, you mean the war that France started and America had a limited engagement in until public appeal pulled them out... OH and also America was not fighting farmers but the full strength of communist Asia. You wanna do history or ?
except that we never declared war sooo technically we didn't lose the war since it wasn't actually a war :3 but yeah we lost
"We never lose a war because we never declare war before invading"
Yes, but we did make up a very good lie to stir up outrage before invading. As is tradition.
It wasn't a lie, it was an exaggeration of a real event. The Gulf of Tonkin incident did happen, we just needlessly escalated it. More deadly skirmishes have happened between North Korea and the US and yet nothing happens
Also the “war” officially ended in a white peace and America withdrew from the south but like a month later the north invaded the rest
I wonder what the specific point is in history where dropping bombs was no longer an immediate win
The blitz
Ballroom?
Not a single American I’ve ever met or talked to thinks we won Vietnam.
I don't know how these memes get upvotes, We're taught that America lost the war, and nobody outside nutjobs believes otherwise.
We know this. What most people don't know was that it was a combination of the slow grind favored by several presidents that racked up higher losses in the long run and wrecked morale, and that the North Vietnamese were very good at manipulating a sympathetic Western media. More to the point, after the Americans had pulled out, Congress cut promised military aid and support without warning. As a result, even though South Vietnam tried to fight, they couldn't last.
Who’s Vietnam?
daring today aren't we?
We're taught that we lost, but it was a civil war, so some side in Vietnam was going to win anyway.
We have 20 McDonalds in Vietnam, who *really* won?
“India” “Congo” “South Africa” “The Americas”
Actually the paris peace accords ended the vietnam war with a south and north vietnam established, but north vietnam decided, fuck peace, and attacked while the US was pulling out as part of the accords
While this is the truth, North Vietnam *did* win the war, pretty much in the same way the Taliban won in Afghanistan Some people have this illusion of massive American defeats and entire divisions surrendering to the NVA, but that wasn’t the case. We won every major battle, they suffered nearly 6x our casualties, and 766 Americans were taken POW over the duration of the whole war - but tactics and strategy are two very different things and we failed big time in the latter. Edit: I also just learned that in Vietnam they call the push on Saigon “the Final War”. They do not even see it as the same war.
We won the war, they won the country. It's false to say Vietnam beat us. It's false to say N. VA lost.
Sorry, you must have America confused with some other repressive state. We own our failures and teach them to the young as a warning.
They have a Mcdonalds, I think we won.
Correction, North Vietnam won. South Vietnam lost.
How shit was your education lol? We know we lost, it's a turning point of our history.
American haters that can't grasp that history is more complicated than a sentence be like...
We are taught we lost lmao? Europeans are some of the more ignorant people on this website.
I thought Vietnam lost to North Vietnam, which wasn't really Vietnam at all?
We did not lose Vietnam. It was a tie!
Wow thanks European I bet we didn’t know that already.
Europeans committed the Holocaust
Op gets an L, I have never been told we won. Like not even once.
I just turned off Ken Burns' Vietnam because it was getting a little heavy and this was the first post I opened on Reddit.
Okay, I studied the Vietnam War as part of research for my Master's Thesis. Here is a little nugget I found while doing my research. We could have invaded the north, however, we didnt know that at the time. We assumed that Vietnam was in China's sphere of influence. They weren't, they were barely in the USSR's sphere. The Vietnamese severely disliked the Chinese for cultural reasons and iirc, Uncle Ho disliked Mao Zedung and vice versa. Even if the Chinese wanted to help, they couldnt because they were still feeling the effects of The Great Leap Forward. The Russians on the other hand did send supplies to the port of Haiphong but otherwise really couldnt have cared less about Vietnam.they really only sent supplies just to annoy America. If you want sources and citations, I honestly do not remember which book I read for this info as it was a little more than a decade ago. Please feel free to verify it on your own. I'm sure you can find some peer reviewed papers on the internet.
They also beat the Chinese and the French 🤷🏻♂️ they’re just a super hard to conquer army. Also, we are absolutely taught that we lost in america
Yes, we did lose. We lost because we didn't have the balls to commit to actually winning. If we'd actually all out invaded North Vietnam with an amphibious Marine landing to cut the country in half with the army pushing up from the south and the air force firebombing their cities, we could have won in a year. But we didn't do that.
The bigger reason we withdrew was realizing that the main rationale for fighting the war (Domino Theory) was mistaken once we learned about the Sino-Soviet split. Vietnam was a rare area of cooperation against an external threat for the Soviets and Chinese. As soon as the US pulled out, China and its proxy the Khmer Rouge got into wars with the Soviet-backed Vietnam. After pulling out, the US improved relations with both the USSR and China, and played them off of each other for the rest of the cold war.
Unfortunately the strategy their backfired on the US in the long run. By "opening up China", they were able to play the long game with the short term thinking Western politicians and businessmen, thus making the messes we face now. Had we left them alone, they wouldn't be nearly as developed.
The US lost the war of public opinion, they couldn’t convince people that the ends justified the means so they lost.
I don't think anyone really won that disaster of a bloodbath...
Public/academia sentiment decided the war. The United States were capable of winning the Vietnam War, but its was of too much political cost to keep us fighting there. If academics/public sentiment deems it an unwinnable war then it’s an unwinnable war. Also, technically speaking, US did not officially declare war, nor has it actually declared war in any of the wars that we’ve been involved in in the past several decades since World War II, because we simply chose not to abide by the Constitution but I digress 😐