Vietnam got me drafted, being among an intelligence test proven top five smartest of a Greyhound bus load got me placed in the Marines but I got to stay stateside because I was smart enough to be a good supply clerk--good enough in a satellite communications squadron to bag a meritorious promotion to corporal. .
I believe the reason(s) we got beat is presented in an excellent History Channel documentary about ancient general Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." It was truly fascinating.
Click the link to see a condensation the documentary's Vietnam portion~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR4PZ...

In, Out starting in mid 67. Interesting and complicated place. Simple people, so were many of ours.

Thanks.

Were you in country 4 years? Long time in a place like that.

I went back in '92. The communists won but, the people lost. Those not high in the government were dirt poor and hopeless. The cops ran the brothels and put all the village girls to work.

At 6800 dong to the dollar, I carried a knapsack full of dong around to pay for a $2 steak (of unknown origin) and a six pack of Saigon beer (25 cents at the Rex).

1966 to 1970
It was never the intent of the gov't to win that war(?). It was a reason to: 1.Spend money to defense industries. 2.Grow the military. 3.Distract American attention off of the Race War.

I'm surprised Mike didn't take a college deferment to avoid the issue for a while.

Want a hilarious story?

My friends and I were in the big city for the state high school basketball tourney. We were staying with someone's older sister, who got us into the bars. We slept on her living room floor and, one morning she woke us up by throwing a newspaper on the floor in the middle of us..

"Read it and weep!"

It was the draft lottery. My buddy Mike's number was...drum role...ONE!

The following week, when we got home, instead of waiting for the Army, he signed up for 6 years in the Air Force because they promised not to send him to Nam.

He spent 6 years on bases in Texas and Mississippi while we went to college. Vietnam didn't ruin his life but, avoiding Vietnam certainly delayed his education.

Same here Wanderer, #323. Have considered it my lucky number ever since.

I had to register for the draft but, my number was high enough so I wasn't going to be drafted. Some of my friends enlisted but, by that time the war had wound down. Just missing the Vietnam War meant I missed an experience that molded many of the people around me but, about which most of them chose not to speak.

My WW2 elders knew things about that war, how things worked, why things worked, things I'd not know if not for them. I wonder if Nam vets have the same knowledge about why things didn't work.

We won the war against Japan without invading the Japanese mainland and, after inflicting fewer than 5% casualties on the Japanese population (the Germans suffered 10% casualties.)

MacArthur was prohibited from invading or bombing China but, we retook South Korea from the North Korean and Chinese troops (who had Russian equipment and support) and established the DMZ between the two.

We won the Cold War without invading or attacking the Soviet Union.

So, I think there's a deeper, more fundamental reason we won other wars but, didn't win the Vietnam War.

I was born in '75. My very crude and bsaic understanding is the US had a policy of not crossing into North Vietnam or into Laos or Cambodia. The VC did not have this restriction. So they could fight at times that worked well for them, and stop fighting by moving their forces. The need to have the initiative, to make the enemy respond to what you're doing rather than the other way around goes back to Sun Tzu.