What Were Some Of The Military Tactics That The United States Used In Vietnam That Made Their Defeat Inevitabl?
Posted by IT CommentatorAug 24
I’ve been trying to find some details, but I could not find anything online. I am now turning to the kind people of the internet! I would just like to know some of the military strategies (or lack of) that the United States used in the Vietnam war that made their defeat inevitable. It is for a grade 11 history paper!
Please cite your sources! Thanks!
Johnson ran the war from the WHite House. HE had no military experience of his own and depended on yes men. If they were not yes men, he fired them. He did not like educated generals who could think for themselves. He surrounded himself with Losers like Earl Wheeler, John Momyer, U.S. Grant Sharp, WIlliam Westmoreland.
The good generals were kept out of the war. Because they would expose it for what it was. A power grab by Johnson. He was the first to be so stupid as to think he could force our way of life on indigenous peoples.
Strategy was his least worry. Headlines is what he wanted. He and MacNamara made millions off of kickbacks from Ford, General Dynamics, Colt firearms, Dow Chemical, Boeing aircraft. MacNamara admited this himself in his memoirs. Too late for my brother and 45,000 other young men and women.
the U.S military tactics were search and destroy go to the jungle and kill everyone. the U.S never caught the vietnamese by “surprise” because of vietcong spies and hookers in south and north vietnamese cities. also the U.S would always fire artillery at an area for helicopter landings giving the vietcong the position of U.S infantry. the U.S saw vietnam as a chess board take out all key pieces, the only problem is there weren’t any objectives! in previous wars there were always a city to overtake or a base to capture to win the war but in vietnam the enemy hid in tunnels and got supplies from china and moved between laos and cambodia. the soldiers didn’t want to be there, you can’t win a war if the soldiers didn’t believe in the same cause.
Your teacher may be merely a tired old 60′s liberal or a student of those in the Univ. who were. Nothing was wrong with the tactics – the reason we were pushed out is that (not to put it too simply) the most important newsman in the world at that time, Walter Cronkite, said publicly that we had lost after the Tet offensive. In point of fact, we had actually won, and had them on the run, but because of public reaction to Cronkite’s broadcast, our Generals were not allowed to take up the pursuit that would have utterly crushed the enemy. In recent years, North Vietnamese generals have publicly expressed their amazement that we did not follow up and pursue them – they were running a fast as they could to get away, and knew they had been completely overcome — and then the pursuit to administer the coup de grace did not happen – leaving them mystified, and able to recoup, reassemble, and then fight again. We had them, and public opinion falsely created, lost it for us – the tactical failure was the loss of nerve in bending to public opinion instead of listening to the Generals in the field. Same thing happened in Korea – leaving a mess there, and in WWI, ending with an “armistice”, not a victory, thus guaranteeing that the war would be resumed as,indeed,it was just 20 years later. Unwillingness to win is the great sin in the conflicts of modern nations.
The site below will have some good sites dealing with Vietnam. It was not inevitable that the US would be defeated. Our troops never lost a battle during the Vietnam War. The politicians ran that war. That was the first mistake. Troops were rotated “in country” every year of two years. (not sure which) This did not allow the experienced troops to continue the fight. It took a while to learn how to fight in the conditions of Vietnam. The military was not really prepared to fight a jungle war at the time.
Kind of hard to defeat a country if you don’t allow your ground forces to invade. Only the US Airforce was allowed to enter North Vietnam(ese airspace). As long as the ground forces weren’t allowed to fight North Vietnam, the Vietcong could resupply and reorganize any defeat.
Not occupying ground that had been won and the casual murder of civilians which made all Vietnamese into enemies of the USA.
The US soldiers called the Vietnamese geeks.
If you don’t respect the people you are supposed to be fighting for they won’t support you