Quote from inandlong:
About the civil war stuff.... the problem was we didn't go in there to win. That was the lesson learned and not to be repeated. Go for the jugular, or don't go at all.
Well, yes and no. It is important to remember that we did not enter the "Vietnam War" with a plan to "win", we entered to "stabilize" a country that had been unstable for hundreds of years. The French tried to impose their culture, were unwelcome, and mistakenly did not give up for far too long. (another "benefit" of religion being forced on "heathens")
Then the US got involved because the old "Domino Theory" was still our official policy.
Assassinations, political corruption, Viet Nam had it all. And the CIA had a free hand and this was a place to implement their tactics. We had already failed in Korea, and the US needed to turn the tide. So in the late 50's, we started slowly with a few "military advisors". Then more. And more.
By the time Kennedy was in office, he was facing a Soviet Union that posed a direct and serious (and imminent ..Cuba..)threat. He was apparently so occupied with the USSR, that his advisors, like McNamara and his military leaders like Maxwell Taylor, and later Westmoreland (Waste More Land) had their hands untied. They wanted to demonstrate American military superiority. They also probably felt that China would not be such a willing partner with North Vietnam, because China had their own problems with Russia at that time.
But the generals won out. By the time LBJ was in the Whitehouse, the joint chiefs, and the hawkish cabinet members had gotten bored with the passive role our military was playing. So they conjured up an excuse to engage the enemy directly (Gulf of Tonkin). They probably thought they understood jungle combat, having engaged in some in the South Pacific with Japan during ww2. (talk about living in the past!). And then more recently in Laos (a role which I am not familiar with, but I remember not understanding why we were fighting in some place I never heard of when I was a little kid).
So while it is true that we entered into a "conflict" without the clear objective of "winning", we really did ourselves in. We gradually committed more and more troops, money, etc. to an action in which we had no real interest other than as an "exercise". A symbolic display of "democracy vs. communism".
By the time it became a real imperative to "win" (and that time did come, years later), it was just too late. We were ill prepared militarily, and psychologically.
It was NOT our war. It was, as Optional777 pointed out, a Civil War. But to further the point, it was not a Civil War in which we fought on the side of the "good guys". There were no good guys. There were ideologies with which WE disagreed. But the popular side of the issues won out. For Vietnam, at that time, communism was a logical alternative to the colonization they had suffered through for so long. We had no business being there in the first place. We had no right to dictate the internal political policies of a sovereign foreign land. And we sure as hell had no business backing a corrupt regime. An unpopular regime.
But most importantly, we just had no reason to interfere with the natural events of a place in which we had no real interests other than as a proving ground. And as an example of unwarranted fear...the "Domino Theory". It all seems so simple now in hindsight. But I guess at the time it made sense to a bunch of scared old men who thought they could control a part of the world from 12,000 miles away. (And not be at risk themselves, which is always nice).
Bunch of misguided fools, who lived in a fantasy game world but used real kids to play their games. A shame it happened. But hopefully it will pay off in the long run in preventing us from ever making the same mistake again.
Peace,
rs7
