The REAL Attrocity of Vietnam...

[SteyrAUG]

Where to start? How about the idea that we lost.

US troops left Vietnam after the ceasefire was signed on January 27, 1973, the United States had 60 days to withdraw its troops from Vietnam. All US forces were OUT of Vietnam and we handed it over to the Southern Vietnamese with the assurance that if the North violated the border we'd return to support them.

The North didn't invade the south until the Spring offensive of 1975 and we abandoned the US embassy in April of 1975.

So for two years the threat of force kept the commies in the north. But if you watch just about any documentary, including the Ken Burns one you see footage of the Tet Offensive of 1968 combined with footage of the Spring offensive of 1975 and the evacuation of the Embassy presented as the same event that showed our "defeat" at the end of 1972.

As if the communists hit us hard and drove US forces out of the country by force with our tail between our legs fighting a running retreat as we tried to evac military forces out of the country to the point we had to abandon helo's to the see to make room for fleeing US forces.

And because the footage has been staged that way since about 1975 that is the version 99% of people believe, including a lot of vets who were there and should know better.

So how did we lose the war? Well for starters Watergate. Following the scandal President Nixon resigned office August 9, 1974 and that was the beginning of the North wondering if the next President would keep his pledge to return to Vietnam if necessary to support the south. And by April the next year it became obvious to Hanoi that President Ford could never get Congressional approval to send US forces back to Vietnam and the North easily defeated the ARVN forces and it was then we had to evac embassy personnel and as many Southern allies as we could manage to cram onto ships so we didn't leave them to the fate of the communists.

So there was a period of over a year from the withdrawl of US forces in Vietnam to the invasion by the North, we didn't lose a goddamn thing. Point of fact we slaughtered them during the Tet Offensive of 1968. During the first part of the surprise attack the North suffered 33,249 killed and allied dead numbered 3,470, one-third of them Americans. Basically we inflicted a 10:1 kill ratio on the enemy forces.

At the time journalist like Walther Cronkite were declaring the war unwinnable despite the fact that we just dealt the enemy one of the greatest defeats in the history of their conflict.

As the offensive continued another 4,000 Americans died but enemy deaths numbered at 58,000. But if you ask the history books, Tet is where we lost the war but somehow it took another four years for us to actually leave the country.

Now you can blame the Nixon scandal for making Hanoi realize he couldn't back up his pledge to Vietnam, or you can blame the Hanoi sponsored anti war movement in the US for undermining Nixon to the point that a couple of reporters decided it was more important to yank his carpet even though it might undermine the war effort in Vietnam.

Either way, because of amazingly effective propaganda, Hanoi convinced the US population that we were losing the war badly when the truth of the matter is we were eliminating nearly an entire generation of Vietnamese conscripts.

Of course the greatest atrocity related to Vietnam is that despite OSS pledges of support for the cause of the Viet Mihn and their independence movement from France (who was a collaborationist government with Japan and Germany during WWII) the biggest POS in the history of France, Charles De Gaulle threatened to move France into the Soviet sphere of influence if the US interfered with France regaining control of their colonies. Didn't seem to matter that we had just recently sacrificed a bunch of US and UK soldiers on Normandy so that the "Free French" could one day strut into a liberated Paris lead by a General who did nothing but make demands of the allies during the war.

Stalin was actually more directly useful to the war effort than De Gaulle ever was, but you'd have thought he liberated France all by himself. Sadly we weren't sophisticated enough to tell him to "run to the commies" and help the Viet Mihn fight for independence.

And that should be in every history book, but it isn't. Instead we see footage of the Tet assault on the embassy in 68, Cronkite and the other pinheads declaring we can't win and then footage of the 75 evacuation of the embassy despite the fact that our fighting forces had left more than a year ago.

[Honu]

Politics
Sadly not to win but pure political idiocy

[Diamondback]

Truth, Steyr. Truth. We shoulda told CdG "this is how it's gonna be and if you don't like it you can solve your own Hun Invasion problem"... as it is, de Gaulle only flipped to the Allies because he was a butthurt little bitch that Hitler passed him over in favor of Petain as his puppet.

#F-ckFrance

Edit to add: I find it curious to note how many of the world's problems have started with the French: the Seven Years' War, Quebec, Napoleon, WWI (in part)...

[JediGuy]

I had a history professor who fought as a Marine in combat in Vietnam. I was very surprised to hear his presentation on why we should have been on Ho Chi Minh’s side decades earlier. He was a moderately hard line conservative on most things.

[flenna]

Tet 1968 was a resounding defeat for the communists, although our own subversive press made it look like quite the opposite. The Viet Cong were virtually eliminated during Tet and were not a factor for the remaining part of the war. Some theorize this was one of the North's goals since they knew they would have to deal with the VC after the war was over. There was an interview with General Giap after the war in which the interviewer said "General, you lost a million men in that war". His reply was a simple "yes". A war of attrition can only be won by the side that does not care how many men they lose.

[prepare]

Fear, lies, manipulation, intellectuals in Washington wasting lives on both sides, invading a country that posed no threat to the U.S., cover ups, billions of dollars, and the atrocities go on and on. And very little was learned. The same mistakes are still being made with intellectuals in DC making decisions that cost/waste American soldiers lives.

[m24shooter]

I had a history professor who fought as a Marine in combat in Vietnam. I was very surprised to hear his presentation on why we should have been on Ho Chi Minh’s side decades earlier. He was a moderately hard line conservative on most things.

From what I understand the reason they went with the Communists was that in effect that was their only option after the US backed out of the wartime commitment from the OSS and then allowed CdG to strut.

[sundance435]

Truth, Steyr. Truth. We shoulda told CdG "this is how it's gonna be and if you don't like it you can solve your own Hun Invasion problem"... as it is, de Gaulle only flipped to the Allies because he was a butthurt little bitch that Hitler passed him over in favor of Petain as his puppet.

#F-ckFrance

Edit to add: I find it curious to note how many of the world's problems have started with the French: the Seven Years' War, Quebec, Napoleon, WWI (in part)...

The early 50's was peak influence for Soviet communism. You can't just dismiss the impact of closer French/Soviet relations - French communists were many in number. Many Western European countries were in real danger of electing communist governments or being overthrown by them (namely Italy and Greece). Was backing France in Indochina the morally responsible choice? Probably not. Did we have to? Arguably, yes.

I will say that Ho Chi Minh was the most pragmatic communist leader of the time, along with Tito. Ho was not an ardent Marxist or Maoist, but they were willing to support his cause after the U.S. abandoned the Viet Minh.

[1168]

It is possible to definitively win all, or a majority, of battles tactically and still not get a favorable outcome strategically or politically. And that sucks.

[The_War_Wagon]

At the time journalist like Walther Cronkite were declaring the war unwinnable despite the fact that we just dealt the enemy one of the greatest defeats in the history of their conflict.

Good ol' RED Cronkite. I NEVER liked that S.O.B. after that.

He could be everybody ELSE'S "Uncle Walter." Our household (my dad was active duty USCG at the time) called him "Uncle JOE"...