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Quote by: Trotsky I didn't think the US lost the war in Vietnam, in fact Militarily speaking didn't they win almost every single major engagement? Vietnam from my understanding was lost at home rather than in South East Asia. Also wasn't there peace for a while until the US renaiged on reparations to the North Vietnamese so they just invade and took the south in '75 wasn't it? |
Certain military apologists continue to claim that the Vietnam war was never lost, but rather that they were stabbed in the back by opposition to the war at home. Anyone with a knowledge of history might find this familiar. Similar claims were made by the National Socialists regarding World War I in which they claimed that Germany didn't lose the war either. The Nazis blamed Jews for stabbing the Fatherland in the back. The post Vietnam militarists blame Jane Fonda and John Kerry, but the refrain is about the same.
Sure the US won "almost every single major engagement" in Vietnam. The same thing was true of the British in their North American colonies in 1775-1783, which didn't change the outcome of that war either.
There was never any real period of peace in Vietnam that you refer to. There was a partial withdrawal of US troops to let the South Vietnamese Army defend itself, which they failed to do.
General Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, went to his grave claiming that he could have won the war if only the politicans had given him an unlimited number of troops. With 500,000 US troops in Vietnam he asked for another 200,000 and was told "no." Given that almost 60,000 Americans died in Vietnam, one wonders how many more would have died if Westmoreland had gotten all the troops he asked for.
So, yes, the US lost the war in Vietnam. Claims to the contrary are shoddy revisionism at best.