DeadlyAztec11 wrote:I'll always remember what a WWII veteran said to his son before he went to Vietnam.
"We went over there because they were putting people in ovens. You're going to go fight a poor poppy farmer that doesn't want anything to do with you."
Ever since then I have lost my dedication to joining the armed forces.
yea but at the time they believed in what they were doing.. from 1965-1967 morale was high. they sold them vietnam by telling them we were going there to stop communist aggressors... it seemed right to their generation at the time.. bear in mind USA pop culture was more innocent back their, easier to persuade.
the problem was we didnt capture and hold anything, the whole strategy was based on body count which was often not accurate.. it didnt matter that USA killed an estimated 6 million communists because even their civilians were militarized to repair roads and what not.. ho chi min knew that he could not fight the americans conventionally- US air power and artillery.. he had to wear out the american public with a drawn out campaign and not commit his forces to a battle. he tried a fixed battle in 1965, the movie we were soldiers once shows this battle.
after he lost that he committed to a very long campaign of routinely harrassing the americans. the americans were just as badass as their WWII fathers and were pissed off that they could not get the reinforcements neccesary to launch a massive offense, the american public was already protesting and westmoreland was denied about 250000 additional troops. we beat them when they launched the tet offense but we lost a lot of guys in the process and american public went ape sht after tet,
the reporters were filming the carnage and we were loosing hundreds of guys a day. many of the troops were pissed off because they wanted blood but were not allowed to pursue into cambodia where the viet cong would flee to refuge after they would strike. why many vietnam vets refuse to talk about it.
vietnam really fuct up the french in the 50s when french forces tried to win by building a defensive complex in a valley, the viet min set up artillery on the backside of the mountains and just pounded them before finally over running the garrison.. it took weeks but it almost happened at khe sahn in 1968 but the assault on it never came. they over ran a smaller base nearby and viet cong was actually using a russian tank for that, the only time an enemy tank was seen that far south, they totally fuct that base up and was one of the few battles they won coventionally.
the americans won almost every battle but without a policy of capture and hold they would just retake the ground they lost after the americans left whatever ground they took.