well if america is just so good at fightin wars and what else you guys rave about, then why in the vietname war (where more bombs were dropped on that small country than all the bombs dropped on nazi germany druing the second world war) did the american government suddendly want to "vietnamese" the war? Merely because they couldnt 'beat the shit' out of an army many times smaller than their own.
Capitalism is the source of thw worlds problems, and america is the symbol of capitilism, therefore so mnay people who r socialist-like inclined hate it so much.
Oh and to you rednecks with your "lets nuke everybody who doesnt do what we say" policy, dont you think that is just a little dumb, as pretty much when ever you nuck e someone , you are just destroying the planet some more, and possible starting a nuclear war, wouldnt it be better if there were no no nukes in ANYONES hands? Especiall a texan cowboy such as your present president.

Why is it that in every "I Hate America" debate, someone always brings up the "If America is so great why did it lose the Vietnam War" argument.

Just for your information, Australia did participate in that war.

Wow, capitalism is the source of the world's problems? And here I thought it was more complicated than that. Thank you for showing me the light.

Our objective in Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism. It hasn't toppled all of Southeast Asia, so in that we were successful. Plus, we burned a beatiful country to ashes, destroyed remnants of an ancient civilization, and killed millions of Vietnamese! How can you call that a defeat?

The American military didn't lose the war on in Vietnam, American politicians lost it by putting insane restrictions on the military. The Vietnam war could have been won in 2 weeks w/o ground troops. You want to know how? Bomb the shit out of North Vietnam from the beginnining of the war, bomb the cities, bomb the civilians, bomb the military, bomb their damn cows, and if they went into Cambodia, bomb them in Cambodia.

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Originally posted by brainuser:
The American military didn't lose the war on in Vietnam, American politicians lost it by putting insane restrictions on the military. The Vietnam war could have been won in 2 weeks w/o ground troops. You want to know how? Bomb the shit out of North Vietnam from the beginnining of the war, bomb the cities, bomb the civilians, bomb the military, bomb their damn cows, and if they went into Cambodia, bomb them in Cambodia.

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You are partially correct, only because you omitted a fact.

The morons around the world fail to remember a little thing called Linebacker II. This was when the US finally bombed Hanoi instead of a bunch of bamboo bridges. LB II lasted two weeks and the result of same was to bring the North Vietnamese to the table where they actually signed the peace treaty.

The fact that you omitted was that the Red River dikes (centuries old I might add) were never bombed. Had those dikes been bombed, the war would have been over in minutes.

But we have another 12-year-old thug wannabe who thinks he has a handle on history. Go away punk ... come back when you know a little bit about what you are saying.

And yes, I am being disagreeable because I am dealing with an idiot, namely lenaya.

Nox

The main issue was China. Unfortunetly, for all of our military superiority, we lost the war politcally. 600,000 Chinese troops can be thanked for keeping America from pushing past the 38th parellel and destroying the Red bastards in Korea. If we had done that with China there, we would have started WW3. We tried to keep China out of Vietnam. The politicians did this in a number of ways. Consider some restrictions on pilots.

Fighter Pilots were prohibited from:

-Bombing enemy airplanes on the ground
-Shooting enemy airplanes out of the air, unless they were fired upon first
-Prohibited from attacking fuel depots and ammunition dumps
-Prohibited from bombing airfields

These are just a few of the many unreasonable restrictions that led to the deaths of thousands of American troops. For more on these bullshit flight policies, read Everyman a Tiger, a true account from an airforce pilot, now a general, about how thousands of Americans needlessly died.

40,000 American dead.
2,000,000 Vietnamese dead

So if you want to score it like a soccer game, we won.

We lost however, in the sense that we failed to contain Communism and eventually pulled out. I sincerly believe that if we kept fighting for another 2-5 years even if we had insane flight restrictions we would have completely decimated them.

[This message has been edited by LebaneseFighter (edited 12-26-2002).]

All of the above about losing the war politically is true; I won't belabor it further.

I'd also like to mention, though, that a certain degree of our superiority was negated by the fact that we were fighting a guerilla insurgency for much of the time. Granted, our massive advantage in aircraft and artillery still came into play. But it's not like we could just mass our tanks and smash through their lines in a dozen places, because there WAS no line. We were in a friendly country during the day, and surrounded by enemies within thirty minutes of sunset. A difficult war to fight, and especially hard on the soldiers fighting it.

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Originally posted by Vox:
Wow, capitalism is the source of the world's problems? And here I thought it was more complicated than that. Thank you for showing me the light.

Our objective in Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism. It hasn't toppled all of Southeast Asia, so in that we were successful. Plus, we burned a beatiful country to ashes, destroyed remnants of an ancient civilization, and killed millions of Vietnamese! How can you call that a defeat?

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YEEEEEEEE HAWWWW!!!

Homer

Communism stopped spreading in SE Asia despite the American interference in Vietnam.

America gained nothing from the war and neither did the Vietnamese. Even if America had levelled Hanoi and "won" the war American army and Vietnamese people would still have gained nothing.

Heh...this argument is so boring because every Chomsky-reading leftist teenager has to bring it up

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Originally posted by FuckOffandDie:
America gained nothing from the war and neither did the Vietnamese. Even if America had levelled Hanoi and "won" the war American army and Vietnamese people would still have gained nothing.

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I totally agree.

Nox

For the most part during Korea, Air power basically kept the Chinese intervention from turning into a huge disaster. Also, Stalin was a major factor in keeping the conflict going, as it kept alot of NATO troops out of Europe. Notice that within months of Stalin's death, the fighting ceased