Why do people think we lost Vietnam?

Question

We did not loose..America has never lost a war..

America started out by just aiding S. Nam (Giving them Weapons and Supplies), but then things started to escalate and we started getting pulled into a war that we didnt want to enter..

We NEVER lost a SINGLE battle in Nam, and for every 1 American that died, 20 Communist died, If you go through a war not loosing a battle and killing 20 times as many enemies than your troops i concider that a great victory..

The ONLY reason we left is because the Democrats (Using the Media) made it looks like we were loosing very badly. Even though it wasnt our fight we were still kicking @ss and wouldnt and left if it wasnt for the Democrats brainwashing American Citizens into thinking that we were getting slaughtered. W/ It not being our fight and w/ most of America thinking we were loosing, we pulled out of a war that we never wanted to be appart of in the first place..

Does killing 20x more men than your loosing, and never loosing a battle and ONLY having to leave because your country doesnt think its their fight sound like a loss to you? It doesnt to me

"Because US didn't accomplish their goal and had to leave no matter what people said, vietnamese people were better in their turf. "


How are they better at fighting on there turf if there loosing every battle and alot more men than who their fighting?

To everyone that says America lost Vietnam look at this:

http://www.aiipowmia.com/sea/ppa1973.html

Answer 1

Your reasoning kind of breaks down over the 58,000. thousand names on the Vietnam Wall. And counting the thousands of wounded Americans who are still suffering because of that terrible war further speaks to the horrible mistakes made in going to war in the first place. Also, we killed over a million Vietnamese.
The United States of America killed over a million Vietnamese. I was partly responsible for some of those deaths, but the question is not if we won or lost, but why did so many people have to die in that war, and for what?
The sky did not fall when we left Vietnam. The earth's surface did not fold up and dive under a continent. Angels did not appear out of nowhere. The blunt truth is that all those people died for no good reason. The crime was not leaving, the crime was starting a major war in Vietnam.
I am sorry for your pain, but the lessons of Vietnam were not even understood by the following generations of United States Leadership.
First, you don't attack another country when you have no idea who you are attacking or why.
Second, you don't assume that the enemy is weak, stupid, ugly, godless and does not dress well.

Answer 2

The Vietnam war is a case study in how a small insurgency can defeat a major power (yes, we lost). The Viet Cong were very clever at timing attacks to influence domestic (American) political opinion. For instance, while the Tet Offensive wasn't successful in the sense that the Viet Cong gained any new ground, it achieved its political objective: timed to influence the Democratic party primary, the country-wide coordinated attacks undermined the Pentagon's assertions that progress was being made in the war, and public confidence in Johnson and the future of the war began to plummet. In particular, the successful raid on the U.S. embassy in Saigon really projected a sensibility that the U.S. was not in control of the situation in Vietnam.

This is standard fare in the curriculum of advanced officer training now. It's not really open to dispute, in that we are teaching the next generation of young officers not to undervalue the political, and therefore military, impact of PR. They are even beginning to work in seminars on how to handle yourself in front of the media, since the CNN effect is now better known and understood, and conducting military operations in the full glare of public view is a fact of life. But the fundamental lesson they try to get across when they teach Vietnam is that winning battles isn't necessarily the key to victory, if it doesn't lead to achieving the political objectives, and particularly, the hierarchy of needs that has to tie the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of planning and operations always to the overarching political objectives. If there's a disconnect, then you can win the battle and sow the seeds for losing the war all on the same day.

In fact, it's funny you toss out that old canard about body counts and ratios. That was indeed Westmoreland's assertion after the fiasco that was the battle of the Ia Drang valley, and this kind of attrition warfare theory has been long discredited. Even in Army basic combat training, the NCOs talk about the operational blunder of Ia Drang, and how not to repeat those mistakes.

Answer 3

You don't win a war by killing people.

You win a war by completing your objectives ... and we weren't doing that
in Vietnam. We were not lessoning there ability to fight because for
every person we killed, we inspired another to join the war against us.

The American people (Republican or Democrat) were not willing to kill
off every North Vietnamese person to win the war. If we had been, we would
simply have dropped the atomic bomb on them (and it WAS suggested).

We have entered a new phase of warfare, and I don't think most people
understand how profoundly different it is: Americans are not willing
to kill off more civillians than militants. The more we see of what happens
during a war, the less willing we are.

If you don't care about who you kill as long as it isn't one of you, high
technology is actually enough to be the biggest bully on the block.
We could drop a-bombs everywhere we don't like the government
and still have thousands left over to scare sheep with.

The problem is: Terrorists know that. Terrorists are willing
to kill innocent civillians where Americans and more formal fighting
forces are not.

Most people believe that Democrats started American involvement in
Vietnam (Kennedy & Johnson). The dissent for the war was growing
well before Nixon became president - and one of his principle
slogans was that he would get us out of that war - though he ended
up escalating it before removing our forces.

Answer 4

Mainly because the American people were manipulated by the leftist press into believing that the US was losing more battles than they really were. Once the support of the American people was lost, the war was lost. People like John Kerry and Jane Fonda didn't help either.

Answer 5

Sadly, as bad as Vietnam turned out, we did accomplish our goals. The mission of our intervention in Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism in the South Pacific. Although we unfortunately lost the battle (Vietnam), we won the war. Because no other countries in Southeast Asia adopted Soviet Communism as a form of government.

Answer 6

If you don't win you loose, simple. The Vietnamese win the war that's the only truth. The History is repeating again. You can't win a war like that. The only way of wining is not entering in it.

Note: I read the answer of zclifton2 and I agree 100% with it. This one shall be the best answer.

Answer 7

The same is happening now. The insurgents of Iraq don't hold territory, must resort to terrorism, and have not won a battle - period in Iraq. Still the left in America views the US as wrong and losing. We never learn from history - very darn sad.

Answer 8

You're right. We did 'win' with the Paris Peace Accords brokered by the Republican President Richard Nixon. We pulled out only to see the Communists take over ..two years later. We lost our goal to prop up an 'ally' with financial and military support.
I don't remember any left wing media conspiracy. weirdo.

Answer 9

We were fighting for the unpopular side. The South government was very corrupt and the citizens didnt want to live under such corruption. Thats the bottom line

Answer 10

Because US didn't accomplish their goal and had to leave no matter what people said, vietnamese people were better in their turf.