Do you think the Americans could have won the Vietnam war?

Question

If the media had been kept out and the U.S. had used all means at it's disposal do you think the war would have been won? i.e. NO political restraints e.g. Unrestricted bombing of the North and Cambodia during the early part of the war. The continuation of the search and destroy missions etc?

katlvr125 "Just so you know" Korea was a police action. It was sanctioned by the U.N. to stop the unlawful invasion of the South Korea. Vietnam was NOT classified as such. However, war was never declared on the North because America was there as "Military advisors" to the south Vietnamese army. They were not there under the U.N. as a police action. It WAS a war between North and South with the U.S. to supply "aid" (if you call sending armed troops aid) to the South.

Answer 1

Yes - absolutely. In fact, early in Nixon's Presidency, there was a talk of using Nukes on the North - but Nixon did not want to be responsible for such a thing. It was all but decided, and then he said no.

The media has really screwed up our wars - if we let them go in embedded with soldiers, they're going to sensationalize everything. I think that if they weren't there, we would have won. Also, the politicians have to stay out of it, and just let the soldiers and their commanders do the soldiering.

I think that, if we would have done that, it would have been over before the Tet Offensive in '68, and China and Russia would have been cowering in their boots over how quickly and decisively we won that war.

Answer 2

I think we should read these answers and remember when a few years down the road we are talking about the Iraq "war". Honestly I dont think we had a rats chance in hell of winning that war. We should never have been there and were completely out of our element there. Even without the politcians and the media the American people did not want us there and thought we should have stayed out of a internal problem like that. And 20 or 25 years from now thats how we will feel about the "war" we are in now. I say "war" because we declared war on terror not war on Iraq.PS just in answer to the young woman who said the soldiers were convicts I take exception to that because it simply isnt true. I lost 24 members of my high school graduating class in Viet Nam and i resent someone saying all the soldiers were convicts none that I knew were, They were just ordinary guys like our brothers and uncles.If any judge sent someone to Viet Nam I never heard of any such thing. I did hear that if a young man got into some minor trouble MINOR then he might not get jail time if he joined up but thats the most I ever heard of.

Answer 3

The political strictures placed upon American commanders made the war unwinnable. Bombing foreign ships in Haiphong, cutting off the rail route from China and giving the air commanders more than their limited access routes into the North would have been a start. The NVA did not so much win the war as we lost it. A land war in SE Asia is a nightmare but, given sufficient political will, winnable - using every means at our disposal. We won the battles but lost the war. Never again.

Answer 4

Yup, it was supposed North Vietnam was on the brink of surrendering when the American top leaders pulled the plug on continuous carpet bombing by B-52s.

If the American troops were allowed to take the fight to Hanoi, perhaps the fighting would mostly have taken place in the north & the commies would have been busy defending their own bases rather than bringing havoc to South Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia.

Answer 5

They could have won if they weren't so sure of their victory against some South-East-Asain country they'd never heard of before. The Vietnamese had their country to fight for they believed in what they were doing and wouldn't have just all surrendered at once(almost) like at the End of WW2. Even if they had been ordered too, they had a cause the American military just thought it was another theatre of the cold war.

Answer 6

It was impossible to win if we followed the UN sanctions on it being a police action. We would have won all we did was have to keep the bombing up and attack cambodia. and the other 2 countries that where ahelping it. China Russia. Russia would have pulled out support as soon as we started winning and China would have been forced out by the casualties and the threat fo Nuclear war

Answer 7

Americans, along with the media which has no concept of war, has developed too much of a bleeding heart mentality to win. Any of our generals could have easily won if they would have had restrictions lifted from them. We are now doing the same thing in Iraq.

You go in, blow everything up, and kill everyone, including anyone who supports your enemies, until they stop doing what made you mad in the first place losing as few of your own soldiers as possible in the process. You put traitors like Jane Fonda on trial and hang them.

Schwartzkoff showed us how to do it in Desert Storm but, they didn't allow him to go to Bagdad and look where that got us. If he had been told to flatten Bagdad, we would have lost a lot fewer American boys and girls than we have now and it would have been over, permanently. The entire population of Iraq and Viet Nam combined is not worth the life of one American soldier.

Answer 8

Just so you know the US government's official stand on Vietnam (and Korea for that matter) where that it was a police action not a war. The rest of the world considered it a war!!

Answer 9

It is possible, but only if they could have won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. If the U.S. would have unrestricted bombing, it could have possibly put more people in with the Viet Cong.

Answer 10

In a total war, such as against Japan in WWII, we could've won. But being hamstrung by politicians and politics, it was never to be.