WHY WE COULD NEVER HAVE WON THE VIETNAM WAR   (Rev 251212)

To understand why we could not win the Vietnam war,
we need to understand what the majority of vietnamese though of us.
The Vietnamese had been fighting French colonialism for about a century.
When the north vietnamese (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) defeated the French,
who surrendered at Dien Bien Phu, there was a Geneva Conference (1954).
A South Vietnam State was formed with the help of the USA and the French who were leaving.
The French had two years to remove their military equipment, from south Vietnam,
and sell any business they had, in south Vietnam, to south vietnamese capitalist.
However, it was agreed at the conference, that after 2 years, there would be an internationally monitored election,
in order to vote for a new government that would govern a unified Vietnam (north & south).

The USA did not honor that agreement.
Instead, the USA wanted to keep Vietnam divided.
The communist to the north, and their newly formed government to the south.
Probably because we (the US) knew that Ho Chi Ming would have won that election,
because he was responsible for the defeat of the French,
liberating Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam from French colonialism.
We wanted to create a truly democratic government in Vietnam.
However, we failed. For many reasons. I am stating some of those reasons here.

Ho Chi Minh was very popular, not only in the north, but also in the south.
He (Ho Chi Minh) wanted our help, he asked for it more than once,
but we would not help him because the French were our allies.
And we thought that the domino theory was valid.
However, history has proven that, the domino theory was only a false hypothesis, and not a valid theory.
That is why Ho had to ask for help from the Russians.
Avoiding help from the Chinese, because they did not thrust the Chinese.
A long time ago, it took the Vietnamese, hundreds of years to throw the Chinese out of north Vietnam.

The french had created a sub-culture within the vietnamese culture.
That sub-culture was mostly catholic and french educated.
That educated sub-culture wanted a true democracy, of course.
However, that educated minority was not very liked, by the majority of the vietnamese,
because the majority are Buddhists.
And most Vietnamese do not like foreign armies from far away countries, from a different culture,
a different race, and different  language, occupying their country, and interfering in their civil war.
A war that would not have happened if the Geneva Conference had been obeyed and
a democratic vote of the whole country would have occurred in 1956.

Many Texans (including LBJ) and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) wanted a war.
They tried to start one in Germany (against the Russians) but Kennedy stopped them.
They wanted to start a war with Cuba and the Soviet Union.
But, once again Kennedy solved the problem diplomatically.
And Kennedy was in favor of helping south Vietnam with weapons and military advisers,
but no regular US Army troops.
He formed the navy seals and the green berets.
He believed that we should train and help any country fighting for a democracy.
However, he also believed that we should not send thousand of our soldiers to do the fighting for them.
So they kill Kennedy so that LBJ could star sending regular troops to south Vietnam.
Nixon claimed that he wanted to win or stop the war, but he didn't know how (lack of intelligence?)
Nixon relied to much on advice from Kissinger, another idiot, who thought that he could bombed the north vietnamese into surrender.

The vast majority of south vietnamese saw the south vietnamese government as a puppet of the CIA, a replacement for the french colonialist.
And the behavior of some of the US soldiers was making more enemies than friends.

  "In all wars, there are many soldiers who act humanely and heroic.
      But there are a few who rape and/or murder innocent civilians.
       And a few that enjoy executing unnecessary torture".
                                                                                 Ivan Q.

Sure, some villages had some young men who were against the corrupted south vietnamese government,
a government rule by many vietnamese that collaborated with the colonialist french.
But that is no excuse for dropping napalm bombs on the whole village.
A village inhabited by civilians (humble farmers).
The My Lai massacre and other "unreported" atrocities against civilians made us less popular than the french.

And what did we accomplished?
We spent more than 300 billion dollars (most of them borrowed)
and lost more than 50,000 brave soldiers, most of them were young men.
Some Texan millionaires became billionaires.
Companies that are part of MIC (Military Industrial Complex) made billions of dollars.
And the secret bombing of Cambodia, destabilized that government and created
the worst communist government ever, the Khmear Rouge.
The Cambodian Khmear Rouge killed about 2 million of their own population (about 20% of their population at that time).
And who defeated the Khmear Rouge? The Vietnamese, after we left Vietnam.

So I was right when I said, in 1967 and beyond, that we could not win in Vietnam.
I said it before I went there, I said it while I was there, and I said it again when I came back.
However, very few people listen to me, probably because I was not a general, nor a celebrity or a millionaire.

REFERENCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Geneva_Conference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm#Antipersonnel_effects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

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