do you really believe that the U.S was lost in the Vietnam War?
370927
While technically the United States withdrew from Indochina in 1973 as a means of taking peoples' minds off of Watergate and potential impeachment, the American military had basically been fighting the war on auto-pilot without any actual plan for winning the war since at least 1968 and perhaps earlier. With such a constant drain on the national will and the national economy without any new ideas from either administration involved, defeat was inevitable.
705952
Vietnam was the biggest military blunder I've seen in my lifetime. And ya know, people said back then, "This is one grade "A" boneheaded disaster!"\n\nBut there were a whole lot of Americans who had an answer for that. They said, "How do we know it's a disaster? Don't you think our Government would pull our boys out if there wasn't very good reason for them to be there?? This will probably turn out to be...a blessing!"\n\nWell, only if you call many thousands of dead Americans, a country left in ruins and absolutely no good achieved..."a blessing".\n\nBut it did teach us something didn't it? It wasn't for nothing, because we learned our lesson, didn't we?\n\n...No. No, I guess we didn't.
418544
Vietnam was before my times. But I've been following the Iraq war in great depth. Yes, we shall lose, but not without hurting our political image thro'out the world and destroying the social fabric of Iraq. Despite lack of democracy, atleast Saddam ensured that Shiites and Sunnis didn't fight and children could go to school, oil was available to the world and he never(ever) harboured Osame and his ilk. So its all a great sham by the US to flex its muscles, and in that endeavor its own borders are being breached, health care costs are rising and gang violence and drug abuse are at an all time high. When will Bush and party learn?? \n\nOkai, point blank answer - the war would be on until the next President is elected. Even then it would never be potrayed as a loss/defeat, it would just be "strategically withdrawing" our troops.
1156834
I have been saying this to anyone that will listen!!!  People look back at the Vietnam war as a failure of the US.  The US went in there and tried to implement the form of government they saw best.  And now we are trying to transform the government of Iraq?  See the comparison, this war will be viewed as another US failure.  How many more wars will the world tolerate that Americans step in and try to force their ideas.  These wars also hurt our economy.  Are these failed wars the beginning of the end for the US as the leading "empire" of the world.
465670
Agree on the tactics that the US implemented in THe Viet war >no\n\nAgree on the overtaking of SAigon by VietCOng> No\n\nAgree on North Vietnam breaking the Geneva conventions > The VietCong Did and yes\n\nIm not sure. Your question is too open ended, try narrowing down the range for people to give more efficient answers
242056
In Vietnam, the politician's back home 'lost' the war, in Iraq, the tactical operations were left to the military and victory was achieved in days.  The current violence, insurgency and more soldiers dying are the result of an occupation force trying to install a democracy over a people that don't seem to want it. A civil war is brewing and were caught in the quigmire.  \n\nIn Vietnam, tactics of conventional warfare were used to fight non-conventional enemies.  The US Armed Forces relied too much on their great fire power and modern weaponry and equipment. American leaders seemed to be overconfident in their "know-how" in fighting a war that required the more know-how on psychological strategy than just on modern technology\n\nThe Vietnam Communist Party and its regime were strongly supported by the whole Communist bloc. Immense military aids came from Beijing and Moscow. Unofficial sources estimated that aids from Red China and the Soviet Union had been in tens of billion dollars, not far lower than US aids to South Vietnam and American military expenses in the Vietnam War. \n\nMoreover, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and possibly Cuba joined North Vietnamese Communist forces in direct fighting the Americans in North Vietnam with their combat pilots, and air defense SAM-6 surface-to-air battalions (Soviet). Beijing also sent some infantry divisions to safeguard the northern mountainous area of North Vietnam and many engineer regiments to repair bombed bridges and road in North Vietnam\n\nWe were defeated in Vietnam by the communist bloc at the time, sent packing from the rooftops of the American Embassy.  I don't see a similarity with Vietnam except maybe the discontent among the liberals back home.
364721
The Causes of the Vietnam War\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\nAndrew J. Rotter\n\nMost American wars have obvious starting points or precipitating causes: the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the capture of Fort Sumter in 1861, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, for example. But there was no fixed beginning for the U.S. war in Vietnam. The United States entered that war incrementally, in a series of steps between 1950 and 1965. In May 1950, President Harry S. Truman authorized a modest program of economic and military aid to the French, who were fighting to retain control of their Indochina colony, including Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. When the Vietnamese Nationalist (and Communist-led) Vietminh army defeated French forces at Dienbienphu in 1954, the French were compelled to accede to the creation of a Communist Vietnam north of the 17th parallel while leaving a non-Communist entity south of that line. The United States refused to accept the arrangement. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower undertook instead to build a nation from the spurious political entity that was South Vietnam by fabricating a government there, taking over control from the French, dispatching military advisers to train a South Vietnamese army, and unleashing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct psychological warfare against the North.\n\nPresident John F. Kennedy rounded another turning point in early 1961, when he secretly sent 400 Special Operations Forces-trained (Green Beret) soldiers to teach the South Vietnamese how to fight what was called counterinsurgency war against Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, there were more than 16,000 U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam, and more than 100 Americans had been killed. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, committed the United States most fully to the war. In August 1964, he secured from Congress a functional (not actual) declaration of war: the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Then, in February and March 1965, Johnson authorized the sustained bombing, by U.S. aircraft, of targets north of the 17th parallel, and on 8 March dispatched 3,500 Marines to South Vietnam. Legal declaration or no, the United States was now at war.\n\nThe multiple starting dates for the war complicate efforts to describe the causes of U.S. entry. The United States became involved in the war for a number of reasons, and these evolved and shifted over time. Primarily, every American president regarded the enemy in Vietnam--the Vietminh; its 1960s successor, the National Liberation Front (NLF); and the government of North Vietnam, led by *Ho Chi Minh--as agents of global communism. U.S. policymakers, and most Americans, regarded communism as the antithesis of all they held dear. Communists scorned democracy, violated human rights, pursued military aggression, and created closed state economies that barely traded with capitalist countries. Americans compared communism to a contagious disease. If it took hold in one nation, U.S. policymakers expected contiguous nations to fall to communism, too, as if nations were dominoes lined up on end. In 1949, when the Communist Party came to power in China, Washington feared that Vietnam would become the next Asian domino. That was one reason for Truman's 1950 decision to give aid to the French who were fighting the Vietminh,\n\nTruman also hoped that assisting the French in Vietnam would help to shore up the developed, non-Communist nations, whose fates were in surprising ways tied to the preservation of Vietnam and, given the domino theory, all of Southeast Asia. Free world dominion over the region would provide markets for Japan, rebuilding with American help after the Pacific War. U.S. involvement in Vietnam reassured the British, who linked their postwar recovery to the revival of t
535810
There was no official start to Viet Nam war. It started back in about 1954 for the United States, that is about the time that the French pulled out. They had come to the conclusion that it was to costly and a lost cause. We sent advisers in at first. Kennedy continued with the advisers and Johnson Sent in the most troupes to actually fight the war that was about 1964 or 1965 Nixon got us out of there finally about 1973 or 1974, those are as close as I can come to dates from memory.
433051
I agree with most of the results. I'm a bit iffy on the UK and Russia battle.\n\nUK has better weapons (non-nuclear), meanwhile Russia has a higher population. I think in the long run, Russia might take that battle.\n\n\n.... and I disagree with above response. It's proven that US can't defeat Vietnam. Open a history book.
1079626
Even though we had all the technology, we lost to peasants on bicycles.\n\nThe same is coming in Iraq\n\nAs for the idiot "Polaris" below:\n\nNot everyone in Vietnam was American. You just dragged other nations into it so that you could push the responsibility for it on to others. Once again, the same in Iraq
612060
No, we already LOST.\nLost money\nlost troops\nlost world-wide respect\nlost faith in our president\nlost direction
737923
No thanks needed. But thanks for mentioning it. As a Vietnam era veteran, I didn't hear that from anyone for a couple of decades.
738727
Even though I support trade, and full diplomatic recognition of Vietnam.....there's a lot of unanswered questions.\n\nMia's need to be accounted for.....BEFORE we have full ties to Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was a somber tale in our history. The brave Americans that died there need to be brought home.
962556
You might be surprised to learn that many of us that were in Vietnam in the early 60s thought that the conflict in Vietnam was a little deal, and that Vietnam would be used as a staging aria for war against Laos. At that time Laos was in far more danger of falling to the domino theory than was South Vietnam.
788845
Considering the fact that we have yet to lose as many soldiers in this entire war as the average number lost in a week in Viet Nam, I would have to say a resounding, NO.  There is also the fact that our current military is 100% volunteer and 80% of the men and women in Viet Nam were drafted.  And let's not forget about all those who dodged the draft back then, including a whole bunch of Kennedy's and Bill Clinton.  Oh wait, didn't John Kerry serve and get all those fake medals?  \n\nViet Nam and Iraq are NOTHING alike.
729995
Overestimation of their military power, lack of knowledge on the internal structures in Vietnam, ignoring the facts and a strong believe  that everything the US does is automatically the right thing.\n\nBasically the same like in Iraq?
659439
America was there to aid the French in the beginning, and then were military advisers. Ho Chi Min started a cue that led to troops coming in from China, and Russia aided with weaponry. Lindon Johnson decided to send in more troops, and America started bombing Viet Nam for ten years. The rest is history. It all started a draft, and full scale war against Communism. We lost.