Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ia Drang: When Ho Chi Minh knew the war could be won.

Another good read from RealClearHistory.

https://www.historynet.com/ia-drang...and-mcnamara-the-u-s-could-never-win.htm

Good read thanks Birdwatcher.

Galloway was speculating in arrears about a mind he never knew.

Thank you for the link.Great read.

First I ever heard about McNamara's memo, he called it dead on; too bad that fu^cking idiot LBJ couldn't comprehend the POS he created & then stepped in with both feet with his policies & decisions.

MM

decent article. birdie thank you

a strategy of attrition is proof that you have no strategy at all. plus no hot pursuit into Cambodia

what poor leadership. Just repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan . politicians and lawyers managing combat

McNamara was the problem from day one

We won every battle, but lost the war. If the politicians hadn't got involved there would have been a different outcome.

If the politicians hadn’t gotten involved we wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Please don’t take this the wrong way because I have a somewhat limited knowledge of events in Vietnam, but my impression of that war was that there were not many real battles, and it was a war of mostly brief contacts and most of them where not that decisive in their outcome
Our education is probably not as good as it should be in real history and if anyone has some better information I am really interested to hear it
Thanks Birdy for the OP

Good early morning read! Frustrating but good. We haven't learned a phuquing thing and am certain we have refined the mistakes of the past.

As General Giap stated, we didn’t have a strategy. Stuff I’ve read the last few years seems to point to the fact that the North Vietnamese almost felt sorry for us in thinking that we kind of got duped into the conflict by the French and then the corrupt South Vietnamese. To this day, even though we probably killed two million of them, they have far more hatred for the French and the Chinese than they do us.

Maybe we left rather than lost. Google-foo could be your friend. Try Paris Peace Accords.

While you’re at it ask why the North signed off.

We didn't win Dan, just like we didn't win in Afghanistan...not sure who did...but it wasn't us.

Did not suggest we won. We did not lose. The S. Vietnamese lost. The North signed off on the Accords because they had no other rational option.

In the long run, we did. Vietnam today calls itself communist and technically it is, but it is also a thriving economy that's almost capitalist. Look at the things you've bought in the last few years: many of them say Made in Vietnam.

I suspect Vietnam is more capitalist than the USA these days. Long term view? Maybe we won after all.

Subjectively, Dan, I want to think we won just to satisfy myself that we didn't risk our lives for nothing. Objectively, though, I think we can make a case that we showed the people what capitalism meant. And Asians have always been very quick to seize any personal wealth they can. They work damn hard to get ahead no matter where they live. That IS capitalism.

👍

Productive little buggers.