doomshot said:
one reason we couldn't win the Vietnam War was because we were facing an enemy who has lived their entire lives in the jungle our troops fought in.
Simply not true. Take a look at the Australian task force sent to Vietnam. That was a force built along similar lines, albeit on a much smaller scale than the American forces in Vietnam. They hadn't lived their lives in the jungle, yet they easily adapted to the techniques used by the NVA and VC and took the fight to the Vietnamese and fought them on their own terms. American forces very rarely ever did that in Vietnam, and yet, amazingly enough, were rather successful until January 1968.
doomshot said:
Another thing was in WWII the germans weren't allowed to shoot medics while in the Vietnam War the Vietnamese shoot medical help. Also in WWII America knew the terrain because of WWI
It's a rare occasion I hear such a ridiculous statement. Meidcs got shot very frequently in WW2. Often times it was unintentional (especially in NW Europe), other times it was deliberate policy used to disrupt enemy morale - the Eastern Front and the Pacific theatre of Operations are two very good examples of this. The deliberate targeting of medics by the Russians and the Japanese led to German and Allied medics on the respective fronts removing their insignia and carrying small arms for protection. Americans were also known to shoot medics as well. I recall a story related in
Citizen Soldiers of a German Fallshirmjager medic who was stopped by an American roadblock shortly after D-Day with a wounded patient in the car - both Germans were shot by the American troops manning the roadblock.
As to reasons why America lost the Vietnam War, yet won WW2 - you need look no further than television for your answer. Take a look at history. By Christmas 1967, the US military had been telling the American public that they were winning the war, and to a very large extent that was true - the NVA was militarily exhausted and nearly incapable of further fighting. General Giap had one trick left up his sleeve and played it - the 1968 Tet Offensive. Now, I won't go into too much detail except to say that the NVA and the VC rose up all over South Vietnam. Virtually every town and city in RVN was attacked by Communist forces. The American Embassy in Saigon had been captured and held under seige by VC forces for several hours. Can you imagine the blow to public opinion the images of General Westmoreland standing in the American Embassy compound telling the world America was winning, while a pair of VC corpses are at his feet? Keep in mind that Vietnam was a war like no other America had fought in, except the War of Independence. The public didn't understand nonsense about body counts - maps and border lines made sense, and when the TV shows dead enemies hundreds of kilometres behind "the front" they suddenly think the war is lost, no matter what the senior allied commander in theatre says. With the stunning tactical failure of the Tet Offensive, North Vietnam could very easily have been forced to negotiate a cease fire and a permanent end to hostilities had America been able to keep up the pressure for a little while longer. Instead, public opinion in America and elsewhere turned against the war, and North Vietnam was handed a stunning strategic victory over the United States of America.
Now for a radical argument. In a round about sort of way, America did in fact win the Vietnam War. One of the earlier stated aims of the war was to prevent the spread of communism in South East Asia. Discuss.
