I have met more Veitnam veterans then I can count and it would seem that they believed the war was lost due to the incompetance of polititions. A common view is that had they been allowed to go into Laos and Cambodia the enemy could have been pursued and destroyed. This one seems reasonable and I don't see any one really contradicting it. What about the supply lines? Its common knowledge that the Ho Chi Minh trail was never broken. I'm not really interested in whether or not we should have fought the war in the first place even though I would welcome the view that this would have achieved our objectives. There is also something to be said for what may have actually been acomplished short of victory, at least the Communists knew we meant buisness.

Still the question for debate is: What could we have done to win the Vietnam War?

Depending on whether or not there is any interest I have some thoughts on the military tactics used. Any and all thoughts, insights, and opinions with regards to how the Vietnam War could have been won are invited. Even rants about the stupidity of the war for ever being started could a valid point of view.

Good lord, I wish I had more time to post on this right now. But a few comments for starters.

1. The covert (black) operations were far more successful than the public was led to believe. The number of Navy Seal platoons should have been doubled, as their success rate was above and beyond that of conventional forces.

2. Vietnamization and the fortified hamlet program should have been started earlier.

3. Interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We did not officially enter Laos in force until Operation LAMSON 719. We should have fought the enemy wherever he was instead of dying to hold pieces of real estate.

4. This goes way back, but after WWII, Ho Chi Minh made overtures to the US concerning aid and an independent Vietnam. But we sided with the French, and blindly travelled down the same road that they did.

I'd say the first thing we needed to do was reconcile the two conflicting aims of the war:

1. Halt the spread of communism in Asia.

2. NOT enter into a war with China, the main sponsor of spreading communism in Asia.

We were unwilling to expand the scope of the war to include the country that was the main instigator of the war and the main supplier of the North Vietnamese.

Part of this was a left-over feeling from Korea, where we went after North Korea (after fending off North Korea's incursion into the South), only to get attacked back by a huge force of Chinese fighters once we got near the Chinese border. If we had gone after China, as MacArthur had wanted, we might have triggered WW3 and this time with nuclear weapons. That option was never something that a US President wanted to contemplate. So we kept trying to play to a draw with a country that didn't worry about whether THEIR "boys" were being killed. It's a no-win situation; best you can hope for is a draw.

Hmmmmm.....

I voted for the politicians option because that seemed to be the most encompassing option available, and there were a whole lot of things wrong with that war. Since politicians set policy, hence objectives that lead to strategy and eventually orders and rules of engagement, blame them to start.

It seemed to me at the time that we were never there to "win", we were only there to fight. Winning to the troops meant getting the hell out of that country alive, period. It was like some sort of macabre game of hide and seek where you could shoot at the enemy sometimes and sometimes you couldn't, and there really seemed no rhyme or reason to it. It certainly didn't have to do with collateral damage, there was plenty of that anyway.

And we didn't really know who the enemy really was. We just mainly called him "Charlie", but he could be VC, NVA, or even our supposed allies in the South which was rampant with corruption. We'd go out and run a sweep to supposedly disrupt Charlie's supply lines, those were always a ton of fun and next thing you know, he'd be shooting at us with US weapons that he bought on the black market. Didn't really seem to matter, just as long as the "body count" was good the sweep was "successful" and if we found some enemy weapons, that was a bonus for us. Often times, Charlie had better supply lines to American weapons than we did so we could "re-supply" from him. Things were really screwed up over there and I have to blame that on the politicians to start. After all, they were a heck of a lot higher on the food chain than any of the ground troops were.

Edited to add a comment to DTOM's comments about Ho Chi Minh.....

Actually, Ho was a strong ally in WWII against the Japanese and it is my understanding that a number of promises were made to him for after that war which weren't kept. If they had been, I suspect things would have been considerably different in SE Asia.

I know so little about the Vietnam war I probably shouldn't even qualify for being able to respond to the poll. I voted for the second choice, though, because of my father's experiences over there.

He was a squadron commander for a group of F100s (during his second tour), and he was given orders to bomb a small village. Those orders were signed by THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I believe that's micromanagement in the extreme, and certainly not conducive to winning a war. He arrived at the village and found some shacks, children playing and women putting their laundry up right where he was supposed to bomb. He called off the mission.

Thats not the first time I have heard this, the seals were very successfull with regards to things like ambush and destroying specific targets. It hardly constitutes a stradegy that translates into a free vietman but the tactics were the best in the buisness.



I assume you will offer some of the specifics on this later but strenghtening the occupied areas would have been a big boast.



I'm not following you here, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was composed of, among other things, people pushing 250 pounds of munitions on a bicycle along mountain trails. Interdiction would have been like finding a needle in a hawstack at best. Also LAMSON 719 was not a big success and it was orchastrated by Kissenger, I'm thinking this is a little dubious. The last part I have to agree with but how to find them was a major problem.



Dien Bien Phu was the disaster that got the French out of Vietnam but the Marines went back with very different results. The French had fielded troops through the Foreign Legion and the didn't care what kind of troubles they had had with the law before. When the French changed their recruiting tactics so did the quality of their fighting troops, they just didn't fight as well. Maybe we can get back to this one, I'm not sure that we are comparing apples to apples here.



I agree in part but I think the way we wadded into that conflict was a disaster. If the First Marine Division had not hit Inchon with veterans from WWII it would have actually been worse then Vietnam. China only committed about 100,000 troops and most of them just wanted to surrender. There was far more resolve on the part of the Vietnamise forces we faced, these people were absolutly commited and seasoned.



This one is good, if the polititions had kept their word we might have avoided this entirely. You are probably right about one thing, a lot of this was left over from WWII. Its obvious to me that this was a political solution that turned into an oxymoron. I remember Bobby Kennedy's book, 'Toward a Newer World', where he said he was one of the ring leaders calling for more intervention only to find that it was a no win situation.

Interesting first round, I think the incursions from Laos and Cambodia should have been dealt with with a lot more resolve. Also I think those mindless bombing raids that turned so many against us in Vietnam were a disgrace. Give the military and objective and tell them to do it by any means available, sparing all the civilians they can and going where they need to, would have helped. The key would have been carefull planning before the fact with victory clearly defined. For some reason this did not happen. The jury is still out though, there is a lot of other things to consider still.

Mrs. Pigpen, just wanted to add. Good for him and also, all you have to be is a member to offer an opinion on AD. You may in fact of made the best insight so far into what went wrong, those people hanging laundry weren't our enemy.

I am sure I am outclassed in knowledge in this group of posters, but I will set myself up to be shot down.

Number 1. We should have allowed the elections to happen in 1956. The Truman Doctrine did not have to apply to a place where the people of the country opted for the leader who chose to rule with Communism.

Number 2. I think it was lost by the politicians who weren't tinkering around with the military. We placed a Catholic, clannish leader, who favored the landlords in his country in charge of a Buddhist, peasant country.

When Buddhists start lighting themselves on fire it probably isn't to embrace a political philosophy that says religion is the opiate of the masses. We were fighting on the side of an extremely government against the an established nationalist who first earned the reputation as a Vietnamese patriot at the Treaty of Versailles.

Now into the area that I will be outclassed

I think the Lyndon Johnson/William Westmoreland combination was disastrous. Large amount of troops were sent into the country without a clear plan for victory. I show a video with some excepts from Westmoreland in my class every year and the quote to the effect that "we were on a learning curve in Vietnam." I don't think that the battlefield is the place to put in trial and error military campaigns. (Here I don't mean that there doesn't need to be accommodations between the plan and battlefield realities) But we waded into a guerilla war with the objective of not losing.

Our search and destroy mission made the peasants the battlefield and we never (IMHO to this day) came to the realization how many South Vietnamese were fighting us.

With these factors as part of the scenario, the only way I see winning (possibly) would have been to take out the government in North Vietnam. With that government in place and an unpopular govt in place in SV it was a sinking ship that we tragically delayed the sinking by our exhaustive efforts to prolong the lifespan of the ship in hopes that something miraculous would happen.

There's nothing we could have done. If if we killed every living thing in North Vietnam and put so many troops in we suppressed the NLF, as soon as we pulled troops out, the NLF would come right back and take over the country. The Vietnamese really resented having their country being invaded, they resented their illegitimate government, and they resented the fact that America went back on its promise to allow elections and reunification.

We could have had a democratic Vietnam if we had just let elections be held in 1956 as scheduled. However, that wasn't our goal. If the goal is destroying socialism in Vietnam, the task is impossible.

I have often wondered about this and other "lost" military campaigns and battles.

I can't remember a single time in all of history where serving frontline soldiers have been blamed for the loss of a battle, only a few where the commanding officers in the field or at headquarters have been blamed (and even fewer where they have admitted the blame, most notably in the case of Churchill, who wasn't technically a military commander at the time of Gallipoli). Usually the finger gets pointed at the politicians back home who didn't give enough support, or should have avoided conflict in the first place, or what have you.

Witness the subset of military historians who say that the Germans lost WW2 because their political masters made mistakes (the Russian invasion, not beating Britain when they had the chance to crush the B.E.F. at Dunkirk, etc.).

Now, in a particular skirmish or battle, it's easier to say that this platoon or that general made this or that mistake that caused the skirmish or battle to be lost. It's a lot harder to say that in a war, especially one where many politicians are involved in the decision-making process before it and during it. In the days where a single person (say, and absolute monarch) made all the decisions, maybe the buck could be said to stop with them, but for the last 150-200 years such people have been few and far between.

And it may seem obvious to point out, but for every war or battle lost, the other guys think they "won", and you can be damned sure that they aren't beating themselves up by saying to themselves "gosh, we were lucky to get away with that by the enemy being so badly led, poorly supported at home, etc.". They are far more likely to say to themselves that they were tougher, stronger, and generally better, and maybe even get delusional and decie that somehow their "victory" makes them "right".

I can't help thinking, then, that when a country is at war, all parts of the war effort - political, military, and civilian - should take part of the blame.

Certainly the politicians and the home civilian population is quick enough to pat themselves on the back whenever the serving military wins any of the conflicts they get involved with.

Now I don't mean to offend any of the veterans that frequent this site by implying that it's them alone and not the politicians or the peace protesters that were responsible for losing the Vietnam War. Far from it. What I am trying to say is that in any war, the whole country and culture are involved, whether they are aware of it or not.

The plain truth is that any war is a damned sight more complicated than the simple "we go in, we fight, we win, we come home" idea that always gets sold to us, civilian or military, before and during the conflict, and which we always buy into, mugs that we are.

I agree that assigning blame for the miserable outcome is far too simplistic. I once asked a veteran of the conflict who now serves in my unit in the Guards what he thought. He simply said that there wasn't that much territory to fight over. Just form a perimeter and start walking till you reach the border. Again this sounds a little simplistic even though I respected the mans opinion and thought it was an interesting point.

I don't know if this is a good source but there was an HBO movie called "The Bright Shinning Lie" were one of the commanders gave a presentation that was meant to reach the Pentegon. He said we can win if we do less of this (showing bombs being droped from a B-52) and use more of this (holding up a knife in one hand and rice in the other). My Dad was a Korean War veteran and read extensivly on the subject and quoted a statistic from one of the Generals who served in Veitnam. He said that only about 1 soldier in 50 actually faced the enemy there. Now I realize that now I may be getting too simplistic here, still, I wonder if we are making war too impersonal. What marked the difference in the American war effort and the one in the Veitnam war effort was they were wholeheartedly committed and everyone of them were involved in the actual combat.

Our technology has given us a decisive edge but combat will allways come down to the infantry fighting the enemy on a basic level. The actual fighting on that level is the most brutal and arguably the most decisive element in any military campaign.

What could we have done to win the Vietnam War?

Wars are mostly won by will power, and with all respect to the Vets, the plain fact is, the Americans are not a warrior people. I do not believe the American people had the strength of will needed to have defeated the Vietnamese.

This is not a criticism, as such. There is nothing wrong with being an American, it is far better to be peacefull than warlike. However, it strikes me that this is not something which Americans like to admit. The current situation in Iraq illustrates what I mean.

American soldiers, who have the courage, intelligence and technology to defeat their enemy, still do not have the capacity to bend the Iraqi's to their will, but must hope for reason to prevail amongst the Iraqi population... a hope which is almost certainly in vain considering the powerful influence of religon n the region.

It was much the same in Vietnam I fear. Everything points to a Vietnamese population indifferent to the American agenda... and an American population who seemed to think like wise.
I think its safe to say that America's politicians must have understood this, but decided to sacrifice American lives regardless in order to stem the spread of communism.

Considering this agenda, then one might say that America did in fact win the Vietnam war... since, as far as I know, no nation went communist after Vietnam.

We could have listened to the French as they left that colony behind.

Seems there is yet one more ironic parallel with Iraq. Except with Iraq it was the English who could have enlightened politicians too eager for war.

Ho Chi Minh commented famously that the imperialists could kill ten NLF soldiers for every one of their soldiers who perished and America would still tire of it first. He was right.


The Vietnamese fought the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, the French again and finally the Americans. They would have done whatever they needed to in order to liberate their country from colonialism. The people of the United States could not be expected to make the same sacrifices to rule Vietnam that the Vietnamese where willing to make to rule themselves.

The US and South Vietnam could have won the war following the Tet Offensive. Tactically it had been nothing less than a disastrous defeat for the Communists, particularly for the Viet Cong. Even Giap admitted this. After Tet the NLF were finished as an effective fighting force. The US failed to capitalize on its tactical successes during the Tet Offensive however. Opposition to the war on the American home front reached a fever pitch, and Washington switched gears. Winning the war was no longer a goal, replaced instead by a desire for an "honorable" withdraw.

Westmoreland also failed to capitalize on Tet. He should have immediately gone on the offensive. Instead the NVA and NLF were given valuable time to lick wounds and regroup. Of course even a follow up victory over the Communists in a counter-offensive would have been meaningless without the political will to win the war in Washington. That will no longer existed following Tet.

The US squandered its chances of a Korean-style stalemate following the its withdraw in 1972 as well. During the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive in 1972, continued American support from the air and in equipment and advisors enabled the South to defeat the North rather convincingly. This support was witheld by 1975, ultimately leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese military.

In the poll I voted for the politicians being the major cause of the American defeat in Vietnam. You cannot fight a war and expect to win if you tie the hands of the military force you deployed to wage that war. Military operations for the most part, were limited to South Vietnam. Besides bombing campaigns (which were also stopped because of political fallout) there was no real effort to destroy North Vietnam's capability for waging war. The most effective means of doing that would be by taking the war to North Vietnamese soil, rather than attempting to sit back and defend South Vietnam in a war of attrition. The incursions into Cambodia and Laos were also limited and half-hearted. You should never allow the enemy to dictate to you how the war will be fought. Unfortunately the Johnson and Nixon Administrations did just that. If the US was not prepared for a total effort to destroy the NVA and the NLF, it should have not intervened in Vietnam to begin with.


In my opinion the US could have done several things in order to win the war in Vietnam.

1) First and probably most importantly, have clear objectives. Washington never seemed to be quite sure what its actual objectives were in Vietnam.

2) A complete and total effort to win the war, rather than attempting to fight a limited war through limited means. This would include:

a. A willingness in Washington to deploy adequate forces and mobilize the reserves that were needed and requested by the military, instead of dragging feet and committing forces piecemeal in an attempt to avoid political backlash.

b. An Offensive mindset. The advantages the US forces possessed were their firepower, maneuverability and the level of training of its forces. All of these should have been utilized, bringing the war to the enemy rather than largely reacting to his moves. By waging a war of attrition in South Vietnam, the US allowed North Vietnam to dictate the course of the war and utilize their advantages.

c. Intense diplomatic efforts behind the scenes to keep Russia, and particularly China reassured and out of the war. This was possible considering the long standing animosity between China and Vietnam. If the US was not willing to accept the risk of Chinese intervention in North Vietnam, the US should not have attempted to save South Vietnam.

d. An unlimited and continuous bombing campaign aimed at destroying North Vietnam's military infrastructure, as well as the supply lines to the NLF in the South.

e. A willingness to follow the North Vietnamese into Cambodia and Laos, destroy them there and deny them supply routes to the NLF in the South. Not doing so was the equivalent of going to war with Germany in WW2, but deciding not to launch any real attempt at chasing them out of France.

f. The mining of the harbors in Hanoi and Haiphong.

3) Leaving the military planning to the military. Presidents should dictate policy, not strategy. That's what we have generals and admirals for.

4) An effort from the beginning to make the ARVN capable of defending the South and destroying the NLF. A key US mistake in the Vietnam War was to largely ignore the South while Americanizing the war. The South Vietnamese military was hampered by ineptitude and often not well equipped. The end result was that the South Vietnamese remained largely incapable of defending South Vietnam for the duration of the war. When the US withdrew they eventually collapsed predictably like a house of cards.

5) Pressuring South Vietnam into enacting land reform measures in the rural areas that were ripe recruiting grounds for the NLF.

6) Utilization of and expansion of the CAP program in rural villages. This would obstruct NLF recruiting and tax collecting efforts.

7) Much more reliance on special operations in a counter-insurgency role.

What does "win" mean in this context.

It seems that the goal was to have a US dominated capitalist democracy - -All very laudable except that the people didn't want it.

It always struck me that it was like a spurned suitor threatening the object of his affections - "Love me or I'll kill you"

Looked at that way then there was never ever going to be a positive outcome from a US point of view

I voted keep the polititions out of it and I'll tell you why.

The Geneva Peace Accords in 1954 divided Vietnam down the middle at the 17th parallel. One of the goals of the Kennedy administration was to reunite Vietnam, this might seem a little simple minded but how about not splitting it down the middle in the first place. Did we learn nothing from the Korean War, or, our own Civil War for that matter?

The Strategic Hamlet Program(1961) was another bad move. They gather up villagers and relocate them away from those pesky insurgents. The trouble with this is that Deim (President of Vietnam) goes from being a far away annoyance, to being a very present pain in the neck. This had a marginal effect on the insurgence and it turned many people against him.

In 1963 Kennedy supported the coup of Deim because his government was on the brink of collapse (for good reason I might add). I don't know how we get from insisting that there be free election to supporting the ousting of the freely elected president but this was another ridiculous mistake. Kennedy was killed in November, Deim was eventually assassinated and you would think that things can't get any worse. Wrong!

On August 2 there was supposedly an attack on a Naval ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed just days later resulted in Johnson having broad war powers. He started an air campaign against guerilla fighters which resulted in turning more dirt poor peasants into out raged revolutionaries.

The biggest problems were:

1. Imposing laws without consensus
2. Condoning the coup of a freely elected leader.
3. Carpet bombing of guerilla insurrgents rather then getting up close and personal

Bottom line, identify the enemy, seperate him from allies and civilians, and kill him using his own tactics.

Read the Pentagon Papers, the only purpose of the war was to show the Communist, (Meaning Russia) that we were willing to bleed to halt the spread of communism. We picked the wrong country to make a point.

It was not the Truman Doctrine of intervention in the Vietnam election in 1958 it was Ikes and Nixons. Fact is VP Richard Nixon made a speech in French held Hanoi in 1954 which amounted to the American Declaration of war.

The so called Domino theory was concocted by John Foster Dulles, claiming if Vietnam went communist, then one country after another would fall to the communist as if there was an alliance between them. The fact is Ho Chi Mien and his peoples Army was already in Control of Vietnam following the defeat of Japan and he was our Ally. Japan knew full well the French may come back, so they left behind all of their weapons and equipment when they withdrew for Ho to fight with.

Vietnam was the only country not freed from Colonial rule, or where a time table was not set for ending colonialism. The real reason was more likely the influence of Michelin Rubber. If that sounds to far fetched consider the fact that we reimbursed Michelin $2500.00 for each rubber tree we destroyed.

The point I wish to make is we never intended to win the War, we were limited to what we could do without invoking a Mutual defense treaty North Vietnam had with Russia and China, had we invaded the north across the 38th Paralelle we would have been at war with both. Same holds true of bombing Haiphong harbor. In other words WW3 with China and the Soviet Union and Vietnam, and god knows who else considering all the mutual defense treaties.

It was perhaps the worse Foreign Policy decision in American history, to invade Vietnam, defeat was assured simply because we could not invade the north, we could not risk involving China and Russia, our hands were tied from the beginning.
It was a hopeless venture to demonstrate our resolve at stopping the spread of communism, I think it proved the opposite.

The only way we could have won, was to take on the entire Communist World at the same time, fight WW3 on the ground in Asia. Nuclear Madness would have been the result.

There seems to be some confusion by people about the war itself.

First the Country was divided by the Geneva Convention ending the French Indo China war. It was not Kennedy. When Kennedy came into office there was already 16,000 U S troops in nam. I think that was a lie, and more like 30,000.

The Geneva accords spelled out an Election of Unification to be held in 1958, Ike send a sufficient number of military and covert operatives to Nam to insure the Election did not take place in a fair manner, as Ho was a shoo in for Election, he was the George Washington of Veitnam for christ sakes.

Following the intevention in the election, which resulted in the Puppet government of Diem remaining in control of South Vietnam, a Civil war broke out in South Vietnam and the Viet Cong represented the rebel forces. The south could not contain them as they were winning the war, that forced the U S to escalate our involvment, when we did, the North started sending troops south to aid the Viet Cong again the south was loosing the war, so LBJ concocted the Gulf of Tonkin incident to further escalate and begin bombing of North Vietnam.

It was not long until information leaked out about why we were in Nam, the Pentagon papers, and other leaks and finally the American people were fed up with a win less, needless war, and took to the streets to protest, "Hey, hey, LBJ ,how many kids did you kill today" was the protest slogan, LBJ decided not to run for re-election, Nixon came into office, thinking he could bully his way to victory by stepped up bombing and covert operation into Laos and Cambodia, it all proved futile, and finally to end what was near Anarchy in America, we found a way to withdraw.

Seems to me nothing bad has happened ever since in that region of the world, a few revolts in Cambodia ,some killing , and even that has all but stopped.

I opted for "Nothing, the war was doomed for disaster from the start" because we should have gone with "Use diplomacy to create a political solution" before the first US soldier was on the ground. In that regard, I would have to agree with DTOM's fourth point (!) and with Aquilla's coda (!!!). It was a very sorry chapter of our history which could - and should - have been avoided altogether. The direction we took - across several administrations - resulted in several lessons which our administrators have not yet learned. Chief among them? When one's country is fighting an unpopular war, maybe the populus is right.

Simply do more of what we did at a larger capacity. It isnt as if the US troops were being outperformed by the Vietmanese. Militarily, contrary to certain movies and popular opinions the US troops were whipping the Vietmanese in every major engagement and in every aspect. The illusion of American troops falling prey to better Vietmanese forces is a myth. Militarily they were dominated. However we were not able to break their will and as our casualties mounted (nothing compared to the casualties they suffered) the public became anti war. I think bigger troop concentrations or major carpet bombing would have broke their will. Giap was better then Westmoreland but the Vietmanese troops were our of their league for the most part.

I agree kalabus. Bui Tin, an NVA Colonel who served on Giap's staff, stated that the North would not have been able to win the war had the US cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. He also stated that Tet had been a military defeat though political objectives had been achieved. (quoting Giap)
The US was certainly capable of winning the war in Vietnam, but doing so would require the political will in Washington to do whatever was necessary to win. That political will never existed in Washington and the military was often forced to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

What exactly would that political will to win be? In Korea McArthur had the will to win and we brought the Chinese into the war. We always had the option of invading North Vietnam and taking out Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, but at what consequence?

It was the wrong war at the wrong time. We got caught fighting communism instead of supporting democracy. In 1956 we should have let the elections be held and then the only valid nationalist leader, Ho Chi Minh would have won. He likely would have behaved like a lot of other dictators we supported who were anti-communist.

I don't know if we could have done anything to win in vietnam, when people depply believe in a cause, they often are willing to die for that cause.

what I voted for thought was for the politicians to have stayed out of strategy and tatics. this is basic military tatics. according to sun-tzu's "the art of war" the sovereign should remain out of tatical affairs, and leave thatto the generals (i.e. leave it up to those that know what they're doing)

personally, I think we should have let the vietnamese vote for who they wanted as their leader. when it appeared that ho chi mihn was going to take the planned election 4-1. the south said they weren't participating and we said okay. we could have avoid the whole mess to begin with.

There were notable differences between Korea and Vietnam. Unlike Vietnam the Korean peninsula could be used as a base to invade resource-rich Manchuria, which was the industrial heartland of China. Beijing also is only 400 miles from Korea. Mao Zedong feared for the survival of his government, which had only been in power for nine months, and believed that an invasion of China was imminent. The existence of a Korean buffer state (or ideally the complete ejection of UN forces from the peninsula) was far more important strategically to China than North Vietnam.

North Vietnam provided a poor base for any incursion into China, China's industrial heart and the capital lay far from the Sino-Vietnamese border. Additionally by the time of the Vietnam War, the PRC was much more secure in its rule over China, and viewed the USSR as the principle threat to the security of China rather than the United States. More importantly the military edge held by the US over China had widened greatly since 1950, due to both Mao's disastrous Cultural Revolution policies and reforms in the American military that began during the Korean War. China possessed only 13 poorly trained and armed light divisions which were capable of intervening initially in Vietnam, hardly enough to inflict a catastrophic defeat upon the United States. The terrain and American air superiority would have caused logistical nightmares for China, and it also could not depend on early suprise victories like it had achieved during the Korean War. Any American/South Vietnamese incursion into the DRV would have been fully prepared for the possibility of a Chinese attack. Mao wanted to avoid another war with the United States at all costs.

While the PRC may have have intervened had the existence of the DRV been threatened, it is extremely doubtful that it would have had the US expanded its operations into Cambodia and Laos. It is even doubtful that China would have intervened directly had American forces carried out limited offensives into North Vietnam. The severing of the Ho Chi Minh trail would have prevented the DRV from reinforcing and supplying its own forces in the South, as well as the insurgency. The lifeblood of the the DRV's war effort in the South would have been cut with predictable results. They could not have won the war without the Ho Chi Minh trail. Washington however never was willing to fully expand the war in order to sever the Ho Chi Minh, and instead relied on inadequate half measures. The Johnson and Nixon Administrations did not have the intestinal fortitude to face the public outcry at home over doing what was necessary to win the war.



On that I agree, but whether or not the US should have been there has no bearing on whether we were capable of the winning the war. IMO the notion that the Vietnam War was 'unwinnable' for the US is a myth.

ill try to steer clear of the reasons this war happened and the politics behind it (should we have even fought it?) and try to focus on the question itself. how could we have won it?

first of all, we didn't have a clear idea what winning it would even be. we didn't have a clear, set, non-negotiable desired outcome.

also, the politicians in america kept the hands of the military tied. you fight a war when all diplomatic options have been exhausted. or when diplomacy isn't even an option (see al-queda). when you finally unleash the military, you tell them the outcome that is needed and let them "do their thing."

i also believe our military didn't know how to fight this war. the command structure had a ww2 mentality.

I've been in VN and the phenomenon of Northerners is patriotism. They believe and they're willing to sacrifice their lives for independence, which was considered being violated by the US.
Morever, if you have chance to read throughout Vietnamese history, this nation is pretty special. They have had been a colony of China for 1000 years, been braiwashed and imposed Chinese culture and still, they remained Vietnamese and finally forced the Chinese out.

I believe that we could of easily won this war. Problem was we were fighting it in the wrong way. This was not a conventional war yet we treated it as such. If we had listen to a Marine General at the time things would of been different. most of the people living in Vietnam were living on like 10% of the country yet the US ignored that part of the country. if we had been more involved with the population and protected them then we would of taken away the viet cong's source of man power, food, supplies, ect. there was also an experiment that had huge success yet was not implemented on a large scale. it involved a squad or two to live in a village. the villages that had these groups of soldiers soon had huge support for the U.S. If we did this more and bombed the hell out of NV then we could of won the war with fewer troops.

When you loook at it we did win, it was the Christmas Bombings when the vietnamese said they would surrender that makes america look weak and say that we did not when, but we did.

I do not believe it was winnable. From a military standpoint the Vietmanese were dominated. They lost time after time. Even during the TET offensives they had their behind handed to them. It was a complete military dominance. They however would not give up. They had nothing to fight for other then the sake of repulsion. Some notable quotes from this time are indicative of just how irrational and unbelieveable the Vietmanese resistence was a famous quote being "I cant believe this third world nation doenst have a breaking point." Some generals made statements that they had to destroy a village in order to save it. This was nam. The US was fighting a foe that had nothing physical to fight for. The only way we could have won was to drop nuclear bombs on the whole region until nothing remained. Capturing cities, killing them by the thousands, winning every single military engagement of note could not break their spirit. What the Vietmanese fought for was completely internal. The US could have never taken away that will.

I mean what do you do? Kill their families? Destroy their homes? Desecrate their shrines? Starve them? Dominate them in every engagement? We did all that. They didnt care. They kept fighting us. I dont care if you go in with Hannibal Barca, Alexander the Great, Robert E. Lee, Erwin Rommel, Napolean Bonaparte anyone you want with as many trrops as you want and it would have never been enough to subdue the Vietmanese. Extermination would have been the only way to defeat them.

Dispite the fact that none of the things you listed here were obviously not going to win the war in Veitnam I am not sure that the outcome was impossible to avoid. Lets look at Tet, the Veitnamese had entered into an agreement in good faith and at the Veitnam memorial at the National Headquaters of the American Legion in Indianapolis they call the Tet offensive and act of sheer treachory (I am paraphrasing here so don't quote me). Perhaps I am naive but I still feel that we were fighting everything from behind the lines and there is only one way to win a war, up close and personal with the actual enemy.

I still think it came down to isolating the enemy from the civilian population. The biggest problem was that the military was never given a chance to find the main concentrations of enemy military units and their supply lines were virtually unbroken. We did not have to kill everybody to win, we just didn't have a winning stradegy that targeted the enemy. I am convinced that the military knew what to do and the political policies were to blame for our demise in Veitnam. Only two things could have made the crucial difference:

1. Let the military decide the overall game plan.
2. Seperate the enemy from the civilian and destroy the enemy anywhere he goes.

In short, go into Laos and Cambodia if they give aid and comfort to your enemy and take control the whole country, not just the southern half. Had we done that then the Tet offensive would never have happened.