How could the US have won the Vietnam War?

Question

It is often said that the US could have won the Vietnam War, I want to know what you think the US should have done that would have led to an American victory. Or was victory impossible? How should the Vietnam War have been handled?

Answer 1

really simple to have a victory you must crush your enemys and grind them to dust and not try to win their hearts and minds like in the iraq war which we will lose like in vietnam that we lost the winning of hearts and minds just doen't work on certain peoples they will always try to stab you in the back the first chance they can get better to grind there bones to dust and have total victory then try to win the hearts and mind of a conquered people. (Vietnam conflict total victory and total occupation strategy). Step #1 send entire pacific fleet to hanoi harbor open up on the city from around 20 miles out with 16 inch guns on the uss iowa battle ship #2 launch B-52 bomber wing from bases in guam carpet bomb the enitre city with incenderary bombs now the city is a pile of smoldering ashes and all the enemys are dead in the surrunding area #3 now start invasion with 2 armoured division with m60 medium tanks and 2 divisions army rangers and 2 division of marines control beach head setup a forward base of operations and supply lines #4 strike neighboring citys leave no civilians alive that supports the communists #5 bring in south vietnamesse forces to aid in quelling the communist uprisiing #6 have public exucutions of communist party members infront of the peoples #7 make new wartime laws for the people put them to work growing rice and opium popies to produce income for the new south vietnamese goverment #8 restore order name the new conquered land a satrap of the united states empire #9 appoint regional governors and leaders and #10 robb the country blind and enslave the people to produce cheap goods and labor that is total victory if it is to grafic or violent then only defeat will come this is the way to conquer ones enemys anything else would be un civilized and a waste of time and money and military manpower and wont turn a profit this way you get the goods and the land and a slave labor force this is victory if this was followed in iraq there would be peace now. its the only way that works for total victory.

Answer 2

Neither the US nor any other Western Nation could have won the Vietnam War. Defeat was inevitable because of the intelligence, resourcefulness, and physical courage of the Vietnamese People. However, the South Vietnamese could have defeated the Communists themselves if they had had the right amount of strength, courage, financial resources and, above all, the right ideological mindset to be willing to go after the Viet Cong until they exterminated them down to the last man, woman, and child and then go on to polish off the NVA. Truthfully, if the South Vietnamese would have had a government and military force with the right sort of ideology, that alone would have made up for their lack of the other three traits and would have ensured their victory against both the local guerrillas and the Socialist North. On the downside, however, the form of totalitarian far-right regime that South Vietnam would have had to become in order to pulverize the Communists would have been too belligerent and fanatical for any of the three superpowers of the day to contain or control. Worse still this regime would have emerged as an aggressive power as or more menacing to the region then the Communists themselves had been. There are some doors that western political science just shouldn't open and Vietnam is one of them.

Answer 3

If we blasted all the northern vietnamese and made vietnam democratic there would be some drama with china as one of the many reasons we got out was because china was backing them up, if we pushed too deep near china then we'd get hell. That's one of the reasons, so if Northern Vietnam backed down then we'd end up buildin some heat with them. People back home wouldn't b*tch so much about war, suddenly we'd be the best, and everyone's ethnocentricity would reach new heights. There'd still probably be issues with veterans and money, some problems within middle-class on down that have occurred now would most likely remain the same (money makes america go round...:/.). But with the government we'd probably be more confident in our capabilities, which would've lead to possibly more aggressive decisions dealing with foreign policy. Cold war might have been worse with China more than anything, hell we might've had a third world war, since any victory that involves control or take over is like a red alarm for world domination, cause we were there on our own mostly, no allies included. I think with the terrorist act this decade there probably would'be been some extreme UN disapproval of us goin over there to retaliate as our victory in vietnam could again signify our slow and steady attempts at democratic control of the world.

Answer 4

The us was not involved in the war at the end we had already pulled out the south Vietnamese didn't have the strength to stem the communist tide.America could have reentered the war but chose not to.There are lots of things militarily we could have done to the north to have destroyed there ability to wage war but most were not done for fear of bring china into the war as had happened in Korea.So i think a better question might be could the us have won the Vietnam war without causing a larger war(ww3) to occur?and the much maligned politicians of the day thought it was not.They probably were right.

Answer 5

I used to believe the same as lots of other people that we lost the war because the enemy confounded us with guerilla tactics. It wasn't until a special I saw where they interviewed North Vietnamese generals that I realized at one point they were ready to quit.

Up until the Tet offensive the V.C. and North Vietnames thought they could win a military victory just as they had with the French. The Tet offensive was to provide both the victory over the Americans and the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government in one action.

You will may recall that the siege of Cassion occured during the Tet offensive. During the Tet offensive the V.C. forces were virtually wiped out in an attempt to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. Far from being a brilliant military leader the seige at Cassion was conducted as a WWI trench warfare, the initial waves of attackers were cut off by concentrated artillery fire and wiped out. Follow on forces were crushed by massive B52 strikes, and a North Vietnamese army was almost destroyed in an attempt to over run a small outpost.

For the first time the North Vietnamese realised they could not win a military victory and they didn't. Their only hope was to just hang on till we quit. The American media just as now gave the Vietnamese Communist the reason to hang on.

The second failure of the war was micro-management by the Johnson Whitehouse and Kennedy's wiz kid defense department desk jockey's.

The last reason for failure was allowing the enemy to have a sanctury, in Lao's, Cambodia and Area's of the North which were not bombed, which includes leaving anti-aircraft batteries which were not attacked because they were placed near hospitals and apartment buildings.

Our failure to prosecute the war, cost millions of lives in Cambodia and untold lives in South Vietnam, not to mention thousands of unnecessary casuaties of our own.

Answer 6

Well, the US would have to sacrific more american's lifes. The only reason we lost the conflict (it wasnt an offical war) was because Americans pressured to pull out. Same as all the Americans wanting to pull out of Iraq and the democrates tried to use that to win the last election but it didnt work.

Answer 7

Viet Nam was not a war. It was a battle in a larger war, the war between Soviet communism and the Free World. We did win. USSR no longer exists.

We lost the battle of Viet Nam. There was never any hope of winning. All we could hope for was to stem the tide of communism. Some say we did. Others say we made no difference. In the end, many good men died because of incompetent leadership.

Answer 8

I can write a book on this topic, but let me give you some important points and highlights to think about instead.

First of all, it needs to be understood that a war was inevitable in Vietnam. However, U.S. involvement could have been a lot different. Vietnam has a very long history of fighting for their freedom and independence. The French had occupied Vietnam and the rest of Indochina as a French colony for over 100 years, and sooner or later the Vietnamese were going to kick them out.

As the French was getting the boot, the U.S. was brought into the picture as an ally of France and a decision made by the UN to split the country in half. This was the first crucial point where we could have made a decision that would have kept us out of a war in Vietnam, but at the time it was popular thinking that the U.S. was doing the right thing by repressing communism.

History books indicate that Ho Chi Minh asked Truman several times to assist Vietnam in removing France from their country and Truman refused to do so. What most don't realize is Ho Chi Minh was a well-known, hardened communist. Truman's support of Ho Chi Minh would have been hypocritical of Truman's own doctrine (the Truman Doctrine) that basically indicates the U.S. would support any country or rebellion fighting against communism. Long story short, there is no way that Truman was going to support Ho Chi Minh because that would have been like giving France to Hitler on a silver platter during WWII. Basically, we were drawn into a conflict of some kind in Vietnam without realizing it at the time.

There is popular thinking that the outcome would have been a lot different if Kennedy was not assassinated. Our role could have remained at an advisory level and Vietnam could have remained two countries indefinitely. At the least, fighting could have been left between the Vietnamese and not between American and communist Vietnamese soldiers.

Although Kennedy did increase the number of advisors just before he was assassinated, U.S. involvement was still limited to an advisory role and equipment support. Actual combat fighting was between ARVN (South Vietnam), Viet Cong and NVA forces. Arguably, this policy was working until Johnson’s administration.

Johnson changed U.S. policy in Vietnam from advisory to combat after the Gulf of Tonikan incident. Recent revelations now indicate that the Tonikan incident was completely fabricated, which leave a big question about why did Johnson decided to pick a fight.

The first U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965 and increased to 500,000 by 1968. Military spending in Vietnam increased to over $2,000,000/day. This is important to know because we had deployed more than enough military equipment and personnel to end the war at any time, yet we still lost. Why?

As Vice President during the Kennedy administration, Johnson was intimately aware of what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how close we came to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He did not want to repeat this situation again, so he and McNamera resorted to micromanaging the Vietnam War. They imposed engagement rules that severely restricted our military to the point that there was no way we could have won. Had Johnson left the fighting to the military, we could have won the war decisively and save thousands of soldier’s lives.

South Vietnam’s government was a puppet administration operating under U.S. policies and the U.S. citizens had lost all hope for Vietnam by the time that the Nixon Administration took over. Kissinger’s secret meeting with China leads to an alliance of peace and friendship between the U.S. and China, which would make any further support for South Vietnam unnecessary. This paved the way for Vietnamization of the War, and the U.S. pulls out. Without support from the U.S., South Vietnam collapses and the war ends.

Vietnam reunites after the war. Communists kill or imprison hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese. They get into another war in Cambodia, which drains their economy and renders practically everyone to live in incredible poverty. A few years later, Vietnam changed their economy from central control to market control. They are currently experiencing historic high levels of economic growth and prosperity. Long story short, communism defeated itself in Vietnam as it has around the rest of the world.

Answer 9

no, the us military will win the battles in vietnam having superior fire power but the will of the vietnamese people will never yeild to the american military, us causalties will rise up and expenditures will be triple, no war will be victorius when you trampled somebody land and morals, all the people want is their own identities not puppets on thier own country.this is what our american forefathers fight for our democracy. rmember that

Answer 10

get rid of the arm chair generals in congress
they screwed up the war.