Why did the USA lose in Vietnam?

Question

What were they trying to acheive, How were they beaten, and will the same thing happen in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Answer 1

Watch the documentary "The Fog of War" about Robert McNamara who was in Kennedy and Johnson's cabinet.

Gives good perspective about that.

U.S. didn't know the enemy well and Johnson was stubborn.

Seems similar to Iraq and Afganistan.

Answer 2

We "lost" because we lacked the political will to achieve victory, though it might not be accurate to say the U.S. lost, since we'd left the country 2 years before the war ended. In 1973, a peace treaty was signed and the U.S. left South Vietnam, except for a few dozen non-combat troops. In 1975, North Vietnam violated the treaty and invaded the South again, America was unwilling to intervene a second time, and the South fell. The main thing the U.S. wanted to achieve was to stop the country from becoming Communist. The same thing won't happen in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the Vietnam war was won by North Vietnam's regular army, not the Viet Cong insurgents, and there is no regular army backing up the insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan.

EDIT: After reading some of the other answers, I thought I should clarify something... In 1968, the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese communist insurgents) were nearly wiped out during their failed Tet Offensive, and from that point on, the vast majority of the fighting was against the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), who generally fought as a conventional army, not as insurgents. To say that the US and South Vietnam were defeated by the insurgency is wholly inaccurate.

Answer 3

“Victory” is a political term. The military cannot “win” in Iraq. It can succeed in achieving defined military objectives. (see Source)

There is (and always will be) an endless debate on whether or not the USA DID win or lose the war in Vietnam. The quote above puts it fairly succinctly. There were different wins and losses at different times in that war, as there are in any war. The concept of winning a war is a difficult one to debate unless the terms are clearly defined. One can win every single military encounter, and yet "lose" the war because the political objectives are met by politicians negotiating a settlement. Unfortunately, most countries enter a war with a Jingoistic program of propoganda to convince their population to support their war effort. Often, this does not reflect the underlying realities of the political decision to enter the war, and sets up the situation where the politicians have objieved their objectives, but the general populace has been set up to believe a different outcome was required.

I believe that this is the case with the current situation in the Middle East, and that once again the Military is fighting many battles, but they have little or no relation to the geo-political war that is in progress.

Answer 4

I won't say we lost because given the support our guys would have ultimately won , but the support just wasn't there the guys needed so the government called for a pullout of our troops. The question of what we were trying to achieve is a good question because it wasn't clear enough to continue the fighting since the north was no threat to us directly. I think Iraq will prove itself to be a similar scenario , The secretive nature of our current government and the recent scandal's lead many to wonder what we may have been doing prior to 911 which would cause such hatred toward the United States. For instance would we know if the government was meddling in affairs of others without our knowledge? Don't get me wrong 911 was a horrific and despicable act of aggression , as for Iraq though I think we had more pressing targets than them at this time. We now approach as many troop casualties in Iraq as lost in the trade center and no proof the two were related.

Answer 5

The USA didn't lose the war to Vietnam. The war was called on a count of bad feelings at home. We were doing the majority of the fighting, over a treaty that we didn't even sign. We only got into the war because our allies ask us to back them up. But as usual, we got stuck holding the bag while our allies sat in the back ground. We didn't go into the war to win it, only as back up. Then the CIA started making so much money off of running drugs that they didn't want it to end. We could have easily won it, had that been the plan. Unlike any other country in the world, we try not to create too many civilian casualties and yet we're the ones who get the most flack when it happens. Usually by those who do it on purpose.

Answer 6

If the USA pulls out of Iraq before the government is able to stand up on its own then yes it will end up like Vietnam. The difference is that the side we support controls all of Iraq. Unlike Vietnam where there was always a distinct battle line between North and South Vietnam.

Answer 7

It was the first counter insurgency campaign the US Army faced since the Philippines at the turn of the century.

Counter insurgencies are hard to win. If you look back at all the guerrilla warfare in modern history, most have been successful. Victories are pretty slim for the occupiers. You have to go way back to Malaysia in the fifties where the Brits beat the communists for a major defeat of an insurgent movement. Even so, the British left Malaysia in the aftermath.

The problem with an insurgency is that the guerrillas generally don't stand and fight. They ambush, hit supply lines, even resort to suicide bombing campaigns. But their job is not to take territory from the occupiers. If they did that, and attempted to hold it, they would quickly be crushed. Instead, they are a fish in a school of peasantry.

This of course leads to the bigger problem. The guerrillas who fight have brothers, sons, daughters, wives, cousins and friends. If you kill one, a family member may join in revenge. Similar problems develop when civilians are killed as collateral damage.

Winning a guerrilla war requires an ability to make an acceptable political solution to the conflict. As long as enough of the local population views the occupier in hostile terms and is willing to hide the insurgents, the conflict will go on. Tactics do not matter. The Nazis in Yugoslavia and the Soviets in Afghanistan both employed horrendous rules of engagements and committed tremendous atrocities. The Soviets left Afghanistan and the Nazis were driven from Yugoslavia by Tito even so.

In the United States, the population grew weary of fighting Vietnam. In fact, they are weary of fighting in Iraq. The political leadership has failed in both cases in living up to its rhetoric (winning hearts and minds in Asia) and (Spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East as a means for transformative change*) Politicians kept trying to find "an Honorable way out" as casualties mounted.

In the end, resistance to the Americans in both Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam was national in character. A lot of Vietnamese resisted what they say as American Imperialist aggression. Most
Iraqis also see Americans not as liberators but as occupiers.

In the end, the Americans, despite their massive firepower were unable to achieve any sort of political solution and withdrew as the war grew more and more unpopular and casualties mounted and mounted. In Iraq, they too have yet to show any real political solution to the ongoing ethnic strife. Unless the US government achieves a remarkable new competence and manages to turn one of the corners it has turned into actual momentum, eventually they will be forced to withdraw regardless.

*Offer not valid in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, Oman, Egypt or Kuwait.

Answer 8

My friend th US did not loose in Vietnam, it withdrew because of the AMERICAN PUBLIC OUTRAGE about the atrocities (bombing refugees and killing civilians) the US were committing in Vietnam..

Actually before it withdrew from Vietnam, the US commited another atrocity against the population of Vietnam, it spread agent orange on half the agricultural land in Vietnam.. This was a deliberate attempt to deny any chances of success for Vietnam..

about 1 million people died in veitnam due to the contaminated land within a perod of 30 years..

BTW mr Buffalo and tman, Iraq is lost. The US may have won the war but it lost the political power to the fundamentalists, may be 95% iraqis want the US out.. you lost..please try to leave without causing a civil war will you?

Answer 9

There are several reasons we lost in Viet Nam. Some of those reason include:
1. None of the military forces wanted to coordinate any of their efforts. A side effect was that one force would accidentally kill our own troops.

2. The politicians ran the war, not the generals.

3. We US troops were never trained in jungle warfare before the war.

4. We didn't want the Chinese to get directly involved, so we held back on a lot of North Vietnamese targets.

There are a lot more reasons. These are just a few.

Afghanistan isn't having any of the same problems Viet Nam did.

Answer 10

Okay, three things "lost" Viet Nam for us: The war protesters, the government that wouldn't let the generals dictate the war, and the war protesters.
If ignorant people who know nothing about what's really going on in Iraq and Afghanistan won't stop trying to dictate the war from their living rooms, and the wars aren't over by the time elections come around in 2008, and we elect someone like Kerry, yes, we will lose.

Answer 11

We retreated Vietnam because we couldn't stop the spread of Communism, the Vietnamese people didn't care they worked within the system , but our government wanted a strong ally within South Vietnam, but we started off with bad Karma by going on the offensive with the strike at the Gulf of Tonkin, and we continued as aggressor until 85,000 American patriots were dead! Will it happen again in Iraq? Of course it will! In Afghanistan? You bet. Did we learn anything from Vietnam?