In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871137992/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0871137992&linkCode=as2&tag=tra0c7-20&linkId=d1bb53399f448906b40e7c954de052ac As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted, "First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous." Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... The...Vietnam War...legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military...Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam." U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail." Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion." Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing. As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job." Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented." The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours...But even at these odds you will lose and I will win." The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome." In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces. Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. James E. Westheider wrote that "At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops." Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973." By war's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. According to Dale Kueter, "Sixty-one percent of those killed were age 21 or younger. Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races." The youngest American KIA in the war was PFC Dan Bullock, who had falsified his birth certificate and enlisted in the US Marines at age 14 and who was killed in combat at age 15. Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft dodgers. The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

Comments

1. Not to over simplify it, but...  The Americans COULD LEAVE.  The Vietnamese People COULD NOT LEAVE.  The Americans got tired of the cost in lives and money and they LEFT.  You can't make it any simpler than that.  Sun Tzu understood this premise quite well and the American Generals were clueless about the time constraints and tried (unsuccessfully) to blame the media, hippies or anything else they could think of.  Americans left in 1975 and the Vietnamese are STILL THERE.
2. The US economy is dependent on perpetual wars.
3. who is that filthy kike?
4. It takes soldiers years to become experienced and competent at fighting guerrilla tactics on the opponents territory, sending draftees over for just one year is counter-productive as the lads are just getting used to the tactics of the VC and how they live , fight, move and then they are sent home and a raft more inexperienced draftees have to start at square 1? You should have 2 year tours.
5. Glory to the Vietnamese people and Soviet officers!
6. I'm impressed with the writers forthrightness and realism regarding his honest assessment of the war. It's basically 'globalism' elitists/Zionists and those complicit with them/bribed by endless fiat currency(infinite wealth). It's sickening to hear how they viewed the military doctrine as just a genocide machine, soldiers, citizens, civilians all disposable garbage to throw away to achieve the elitist globalist agenda. In the US we have a history of the central bankers driving the country to ruin(as today, and the past great depression)... they drive the country to economic ruin and the people become completely desperate to find a 'meaning to go on', a way to survive and make sense of life in general. Then come the religious and political propagandists who further spurn on some new 'just cause/wars', which the gullible masses desperate find a way to survive willingly sign up to throw their lives away for some false cause/propaganda that the elites have scripted for them to play out.
   
   If you search you can find the actual letters/correspondence of the elite/rich/Jews/Zionists/bribed rulers of Europe and their central bankers; Rothschild's, Sassoons etc, and you read in their letters to one another how they planned everything that's happening today centuries in advance. It's true, the Zionist Jews planned taking land by force in Palestine to found modern Israel centuries before it finally happened. It's in their letters. Anybody who was against Zionism was instantly accused of being 'anti-Semitic' and this was long before Hitler.
7. gggh
8. 42:00-44: 25 RELEVANT TODAY,
9. There is only one way to win a war, and that is to flatten the enemy on his ground. And I suspected China has a lot to do with the war, the supplies and manpower was supplied by them.
10. I'm glad the USA lost the Vietnam war. The way they behaved is disgusting.
11. ACCORDANCE TO THE BOOK, WHY FIGHT WARS WHEN YOU CAN GO AND SELL YOUR PRODUCTS, IF SOMEONE DOES NOT HAVE NOTHING, AND WANTS TO SELL THE VERY PERSON SOMETHING HOW WOULD THAT PERSON PAYS FOR IT????????? TO IVADE ANOTHERS COUNTRY OR TAKE SOMETHING FROM A NEXT PERSON, THE INNVIDERS AUTOMATICALLY BECAME THE BAD GUY, BECAUSE IS HE THE ONE DOING THE TAKING...
12. they should have got better voice actors
13. Vietnam have been at war With China over thousand years, then we fought the Japanese, French and America. the only reason vienam became communist during american war was because we had no other option, and this was the only chance we had to win against super Power americans. today its lesser and lesser communists in Vietnam so we actually used communists to get Equipments basically. if there was no French and americans invastion, Vietnam would have never joined communism.
14. madıfak abanızı sikim oruspular
15. we did not lose. mccain was the reason missels and anti aircraft blew Americas planes out of the sky, traitor. was never abused because he sqweeled minute one.
    this book writer is an asshole just trying to get rich.
16. The U.S. mission never lost the war in the target war but the vietnam war is complecated by other neighbor country is to assist
    vietnamese rebel to increase
    the tactic war against the U.S.
    army.
17. The wrong war at the wrong place and at the wrong time.
18. Fuck USA United sick terrorist
19. so many ignorant statements. it was politics why we lost the war. and we did not lose the war. we were never meant to win the war.
20. they lost because vietnam won..