So whats the consensus here?
Did the USA win? Did they lose? Or did they just say fuck it and it was a true stalemate
>in my opinion, the ideals of the west failed, USA gave up and left, and the vietnamese were the true losers because they adopted communism and starved in the millions after being decimated by american ordinance, then got into another war with china and even more people died
Thoughts?
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It aint me
It ain't meee
I ain’t no senataaahs saaaahn no no
I ain't no senator's son
Everytime I see a Vietnam pick that stupid fucking song starts playing. Why is It Ain't Me by The Fortunate Sons the quintessential 'Nam song?
Vietnam war 1 (second Indochina war) was won when the Paris peace accord were signed.
the communists won Vietnam war 2 when after political changes (Watergate) the us did not enforce the accords, and did not provide support to south Vietnam and allowed the north Vietnamese to attack the south
Lost. Just like every other "world policing" ameritards tried in asia.
A sign reading "Kiss my ass Kissinger"
>it ain't me
>by fortunate sons
I hope this is b8, son
US technically won, as in they had a negotiated peace treaty between north and south and then withdrew with an intact south. They spiritually lost because the north knew there was no will to continue so therefore invaded anyway after the withdrawal. But they meta world won anyway because they eventually grew closer to the west as opposed to China. At least enough to not form a united communist front as was feared.
I got into this conversation with a coworker. He disagreed and pointed me to a Snopes article he pulled up in the middle of our conversation...
snopes.com
It's hilarious Snopes says False but if you read the article it seems like a long laundry list that would lead one to say True, except a couple points of contention which leaves enough space for someone with little ground to argue false.
Yeah, Japan and South Korea total losses.
The only consensus is that there isn't one.
It's a mixed outcome. The US wasnt forced out against it's will. The US citizens and then government pushed to withdraw and not because they were losing but because there were no clear objectives other than kill the enemy.
And if you aren't willing to genocide the whole population, where does that end?
The US killed the enemy in numbers the french could never replicate. But in doing so hurt many families making more enemies. The north viets weren't incompetent they had outlasted foreign Invaders for the last 20-30 years.
America wasn't winning hard enough or clearly enough so their people scrapped the program. It's like if a champion boxer got tired of pummeling a person stuck on the ropes and left.
The US did leagues better than any other foreign power.
Vietnam's Asian neighbors couldn't control them and the french were embarassed at dien bien phu and quit.
At least American motivations had a veneer of morality. What were the french colonists motivations?
>Did the USA win?
US goals was the preservation of South vietnam
it was able to delay a northern take over for at least a decade, but ultimately failed
>Did they lose? Or did they just say fuck it and it was a true stalemate
it was a stalemate until the public finally had enough and got the troops pulled out
Snopes is OSF-funded bullshit but the USA still lost. Wars are won in political outcomes, not in body count.
>Wars are won in political outcomes, not in body count
That's one way. You have to constrain your vision to a very small set of criteria.
In this case we're defining who was victorious by the political ideology in the heads of the survivors after the invader left.
Their victory was incredibly more costly than a quicker defeat. 100% Pyrrhic. The Vietnamese had reason to grieve for a century. The US conceded the territory and went back home to their families, while so many Vietnamese remained with no more family and no home.
I don't know if it felt like victory to very many.
Lurk more newfag
The US never lost a battle, but they didn't achieve their goals, so they objectively lost. It doesn't matter if you win battles if you don't actually achieve your operational objectives.
What are some good books about the Vietnam War? I'm not American but I'm fascinated with that period of history.
Nobody won. We fucking killed each other and left
If the Troubles was a stalemate, then the Vietnam War was too
>inb4 America lose
We pulled out 3 years before war ended. It wasn’t like once we left that SV fell immediately, they held their own and fought their own war
>starved in the millions
Citation? As far as I know Vietnam under the commie rule never faced starvation
>got into another war with china and even more people died
Not really a war, more like a skirmish to be honest
Dispatches
By Michael Herr is a good book.
It's his personal account as a war correspondent. It's very stylized and emblematic of its time. It also was used as source material for every US Vietnam War movie.
Michael Herr personally worked on apocalypse now. Events in apocalypse now occur in the book.
Here's a quote so you can get the flavor:
"some people think 1963's a long time ago; when a dead American in the jungle was an event, a grim thrilling novelty. It was a spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but irregulars, working in remote places with little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know."
This is the real answer.
I always hear "gimme shelter" when daydreaming about 'nam
my dad first went there in '62
Took a class on the Vietnam War from this guy.
Rather than tell you what I learned, let me ask you a simple question based on The Donald's recent summit.
Where would you rather spend two weeks?
A. Seoul in 1998
B. Hanoi in 2019
Your answer should reveal who won and who lost
Watch "The Vietnam War" by Ken Burns and make up your mind.
If you need any convincing, it has a lot of combat footage and awesome pics like this one
Hanoi desu, but I'm heavily biased
What's the difference? Weren't both Trump and Kim fine during the recent meeting? I don't think there was any attempt for assassination.
The US won just about every major engagement. They had no Dien Bien Phu like the French. At the end of the day though, the US did not meet its objective of keeping South Vietnam alive and stopping the spread of communist revolutions, albeit, most of those revolutions occurred in Africa instead of southeast Asia as US policymakers had predicted. In a way, losing the Vietnam War was actually beneficial for the US long term since Vietnam ended up allying with Russia instead of China. And, of course, Vietnam now has friendly relations with the US and still has quite a bit of animosity towards the US' biggest current adversary, China.
All I know is that the French are assholes
The opening scene of We Were Soldiers is the best part of the movie kek
We didn't lose, merely failed to win
Absolute American victory
What'd we win for our trouble, chief?
Cool military vacation where we got to blow alot of shit up. We set the film footage to awesome music. Some great movies and books. That's not worth what was paid but those are some bright points.
Tactical victory
Strategic defeat
Long term diplomatic victory
We lost. Although 90% of the defeat can be attributed to the South Vietnamese being retards and the North Vietnamese only won at an appalling cost of human life.
What was Seoul like in 1998?
US won nearly every engagement they fought in, however the South Vietnamese government didn't really have a mandate and was corrupt as fuck, and their military was extremely incompetent, so when hippies forced us to withdraw(I reckon we could've stayed despite the hippies, I mean we were there until 1975 and they stopped bitching around 71) the South Vietnamese just couldn't fight the North.
Technically a loss, but because of the boomer American public being faggots not any flaw of the US military. Communist spys and provocateurs in the US might have played a part in the protests and hippies as well, further supporting the idea of a Communist victory.
Vietnam was kinda geostrategically fucked anyway, hence the war with China who basically fought the war for them four years after it was over, and an ironic shift back into the US sphere of influence after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Vietnam in total was a complete waste of life for both sides and was instrumental in destroying the America our troops went over there to defend.
After all, the war did make a good handful of people rich. Such a sad waste of America’s best and a sad waste of Vietnamese lives.
Its not really a victory if not fighting would have achieved the same outcome.
pretty good answer
Dispatches is essential reading if you have any interest at all in 'Nam. The origin of the chopper gunner scene in Full Metal Jacket, a wild Dale Dye appearance, and the tale of Luke the Gook can all be found within its pages. Read it or forever be like OP; a complete fucking faggot.
The US literally snatched defeat from the Jaws of victory. Nixon knew what he was doing and actually turned things around successfully, but the amount of pressure from hippie faggots made the government squeamish, and ultimately they abandoned their effective strategy in order to appease peace advocates, ultimately resulting in untold death, suffering, and oppression.
I would more say the US didn't lose but it was their fault the South Vietnamese lost by leaving them while the NVA continued to get stronger. ARVN couldn't rebuild after years of warfare. They were in over their heads.
US lost.
Tried to win with technology instead of people. Also ROEs were forever fucked. Tried using morons and convicts as infantry and turned it into a meat grinder slog where fragging and fratricide weren't uncommon events.
As fought it was an unwinnable unless you count the MIC profits.
By contrast the US has held Afghanistan for 19 years way more success, but only because of lessons learned from Nam.
more like only because their is only some poo in loo 3rd word power backing their enemies in afghanistan this time
Not applicable. There were 2 states flowing arms to the insurgency. And some arms left that America supplied the muj with. You're also forgetting the lack of "my Lai massacres" in the mideast.
The US did better for 2 reasons:
>They turned down the collateral damage
>They established their own outposts and made connections with the local communities.
>be apathetic saltdog with nothing to lose anymore hosing gooks down
>mfw no death sound blues playing while sauntering innajungle waiting for the one
I agree with your points that the ROEs were bad but to compare Nam to Afghanistan is laughable because the "insurgency" paled in comparison to the NVA which was a large army fully supported by the Chinese and Soviet Union. The ARVN were not fighting VC anymore, they were facing T-55s and the best arms the Soviet Union could give them when the US left.
I take Hitler's stance on WW1. We should have won, but bastards at home ruined it. They didn't even allow us to send aid to South Vietnam once the ceasefire failed. It should be illegal to protest an ongoing war.
Alright, you can't make a 1:1 comparison. Too many variables to even consider.
But there are alot of things that can cross over.