RetiredGySgt
Diamond Member
In 1950? We had nukes they didn't we had a modern army they didn't. The threat was never China it was Soviets. We could have wiped the floor with China if we had just sent enough troops and been willing to enter China.you--like a lot of people--think unrealistically and like it's a board game--this is a common problem with people--and you don't know history:..we are talking REALITY--not nuking anyone....not invading the north like the Russians and US did to Germany --that wasn't going to happen--even if they did invade the North, they couldn't stay there forever.....
..first--the French lost--and after we gave them MILLIONS$ and with all their '''advantages'' ....this should've been a lesson
......a big problem was the Vietnamese government [ and military ] = for a long time it was corrupt/unstable/etc = they had 3 heads of state changes in less than 2 years--one with a MURDER..with many attempted coups before and after......that mess was still there after Thieu took over
...N Vietnam did not have to even beat the US ......
.......the US could cut off Korea because it was peninsula--where as NV could bring troops/etc to the South over land
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Yes, and no.
Obviously if you put in place all of the restrictions on how to win the war.... then yes, you can't win the war.
It's like going into a boxing match, and saying
"You can't move from the spot you start on, and you can only hit back, if you have been hit yourself."
If you put those restrictions on yourself in a boxing match, you are going to lose the boxing match.
If the government had sent in the military in a completely unrestricted, full scale war on North Korea, we could have easily flattened and defeated North Korea in a matter of... maybe a month.
As soon as Nixon in 1972, ordered a theater wide unrestricted war on North Vietnam, the N.Vet came to the negotiating table. Nixon approved of the mass offensive in February. Intensified the attack in May. By October, the North Vietnamese were the ones asking for negotiations.
If we had done that in 1965, we would have ended the war.
There is not a single time, at any point in the entire Vietnam war, where enemy troops confronted US troops directly, and did not lose. The US military was better trained, better supplied, better equipped, had better air and ground support, artillery support, navel support, and so on.
Every time we confronted enemy troops, they folded... even when they out numbered US troops, and sometimes by a wide margin.
We could have gone straight to Hanoi, and won the war.
Instead we put restrictions on ourselves, that made it impossible to win. You can't win a war, by not attacking the enemy. You can't win a war, by only playing defense.
Think about it like Football. Can you ever win a game of football without offense? Can you ever win the game, without ever going on the other teams side of the field?
But that is exactly how we played the Vietnam war. We stayed on our side of the field, and marched around, expecting... what? The enemy to all commit suicide? Of course you can't win, without ever going at the enemy.
--so, to very easily refute your post---we go ''flatten North Korea and then we are at TOTAL war with China!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..so Mr Genius--please tell me how do we defeat China?
But we were not wanting a war with China and China didn't want a war with us the Soviets pressured China into that war and the Soviets not the Chinese supported North Korea at that time NOT China.
Now if Mc Arther had kept his mouth shut and not made the statements he made we probably wouldn't have had to fight China. Truman should have fire Mac as soon as he started spouting off.
But Vietnam was different. We won the insurgency war in 1968 when North Vietnam initiated the Tet Offensive. We slaughtered the Viet Cong, after that there simply was NO Viet Cong they were all North Vietnam regulars smuggled in. But the Press started ranting about how we were losing and destroyed the moral at the home Front. Even North Vietnam admits they lost Tet and were finished, then OUR press got in the act and the North salvaged a political win. But by 72 South Vietnam was stable. They did NOT need US troops any more. They just needed artillery and air support. And our supplies ammo and parts.