05-17-2015, 11:21 AM
Zona pretty much covered it. From someone who didn't live through it and only studied it, here's a take. From a cultural standpoint, Vietnam was a stark contrast to WWII.
In WWII, we had a defined enemy that had attacked us. Defeat these nations and you win the war. In Vietnam, we didn't have a defined enemy. We weren't attacked. There was the North Vietnamese Army, but there was also the Viet Cong. As Ho Chi Mihn said, the occupying force loses if they don't win. The guerrilla wins if they don't lose. He said that even if they lose 10 for every 1 of ours, they'd fight to the end or until the US grew tired of the war. It ended up being closer to 60 Vietnamese killed for every American. And we couldn't just drop a bomb on the North to end it. The enemy was also in the South. Even in the North, our tactics of destroying their infrastructure was ineffective because they had Chinese and Russian engineers come and repair their cities. We couldn't risk killing them and draw those forces into the conflict. If they weren't involved, we would have starved the North into surrender within a year. Our advance weaponry and better tactics provided no advantage in this type of war. As Zona stated, it came down to skirmishes while on patrol.
Vietnam wasn't the first Cold War era war. Korea was. Korea was actually far more destructive in terms of American casualties per year there than Vietnam. 36k deaths in 3 years (and 4k missing) compared to 58k over 11 years (if we count from the time of the GoT resolution) with 2k missing. Korea was very similar too. The Communists in the North invaded the Democratic people in the South. China supported the North, we supported the South.
Vietnam was a completely different generation, though. The guys who fought in Korea were either veterans of WWII or guys who were 5 or so years younger than the WWIII veterans. They were pretty much the same generation. Vietnam, however, was mostly the children of that generation. Huge cultural shift from '42-'53 to '64-'75.
In WWII, we had a defined enemy that had attacked us. Defeat these nations and you win the war. In Vietnam, we didn't have a defined enemy. We weren't attacked. There was the North Vietnamese Army, but there was also the Viet Cong. As Ho Chi Mihn said, the occupying force loses if they don't win. The guerrilla wins if they don't lose. He said that even if they lose 10 for every 1 of ours, they'd fight to the end or until the US grew tired of the war. It ended up being closer to 60 Vietnamese killed for every American. And we couldn't just drop a bomb on the North to end it. The enemy was also in the South. Even in the North, our tactics of destroying their infrastructure was ineffective because they had Chinese and Russian engineers come and repair their cities. We couldn't risk killing them and draw those forces into the conflict. If they weren't involved, we would have starved the North into surrender within a year. Our advance weaponry and better tactics provided no advantage in this type of war. As Zona stated, it came down to skirmishes while on patrol.
Vietnam wasn't the first Cold War era war. Korea was. Korea was actually far more destructive in terms of American casualties per year there than Vietnam. 36k deaths in 3 years (and 4k missing) compared to 58k over 11 years (if we count from the time of the GoT resolution) with 2k missing. Korea was very similar too. The Communists in the North invaded the Democratic people in the South. China supported the North, we supported the South.
Vietnam was a completely different generation, though. The guys who fought in Korea were either veterans of WWII or guys who were 5 or so years younger than the WWIII veterans. They were pretty much the same generation. Vietnam, however, was mostly the children of that generation. Huge cultural shift from '42-'53 to '64-'75.
![[Image: ulVdgX6.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/ulVdgX6.jpg)
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
