BTW, and this is worth another thread:

I saw "Snowpiercer" which, I started out thinking was so much rubbish: a bunch of unproductive stowaways throwing a mutiny that they knew would ultimately cause the destruction of the only thing keeping them alive, just because they were jealous of the paying passengers? It would never happen!

Then, I thought about it, that's exactly what happens every damn time! The moochers know it'll end badly but, they can't help themselves, they must take what the producers have, even if it will collapse everything around them!

And, all the while being lectured by a parody of Ayn Rand!

Better watch it, sooner or later Fatboy's going to get that ICBM thing down and he might have your coordinates!

Certainly the attitudes of many South Vietnamese contributed to the loss in Vietnam, but the primary reason for the loss was in the stalemate strategy directed by McNamara.

The danger before us in dealing with extremist Islamists is falling into the trap of a religious war, with Islam as the enemy of Judaeo-Christian Western society. While there are more than a billion Muslims, less than 1% are willing to engage in serious acts of violence at present. That still represents a sizable force of over 10 million possible jihadis, but it's nothing like the danger of 100 million or more committed to war with the West if there's a distinct perception we intend to destroy Islam and its believers.

Off topic I've learned from Netflix rentals that South Korea can produce some really good movies, such as my seen the original Oldboy, Snowpeircer (sci-fi), The Host (a very different kinda horror movie) and a couple of war flicks I can't recall the names of.
Just think of it. Capitalist South Koreans are thriving and exporting movies to the world while just across the border North Koreans starve while worshiping a fatboy dictator who lives in the lap of luxury.

I'm not surprised, nor do I doubt the story.

I believe the Chinese felt the Koreans fighting for the Japanese in WW2 were much tougher and more vicious than were the Japanese themselves. The Koreans I knew were physically larger than most Japanese and seemed more aggressive although - judging the Japanese of WW2 by the ones I knew in the late '70s is probably misleading.

I read it. I think he is wrong. We are at war with Islam. Every Muslim is an opportunity or disappointment or offense away from being a Jihadi.

I think most of his 10 steps will result in losing, We used most of them in Vietnam and it didn't work.

The step we didn't use in Vietnam is number 9, exposing the enemy's philosophy for what it was and convincing him it was a mistake.

We're currently using or, have used almost all of his methods and, look where we're at.

One reason I was against the war that caused me to get drafted is a perception already supported here that the South Vietnamese had no heart for the fight. To state that plainer, such were my thoughts BEFORE I got drafted for simply keeping up with the news.
The South Vietmanese (with some exceptions I'm sure) were the polar opposites of South Koreans, who hated the Communists to the point of helping the USA in Vietnam..
Still recall a smirking Parris Island drill institutor who claimed to have witnessed a South Korean interrogation technique in Vietnam.
They would interrogate captives by pushing them one by one out of a helicopter.
Now that's hate.

While we are (who is we? politicians? military?) concerned for "tactics and battles and killing Jihadis", we are not focused enough on the civilian populations which enable the Islamic radical hordes. As long as the enemy can convince the populace to support them, wars will continue. As long as the United States holds the needs of the many to outweigh the rights of one, wars will continue. As long as religious and political actions entail the initiation of force...

Convince the enemy he is wrong in the face of Islam and Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism, and mysticism? Perhaps less expensive and less time consuming than today's "conventional" warfare.

For those who may not have read it, Mr. Craig Biddle published Ten Steps to End Jihad:
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/...

I think your ultimate conclusion is correct, the people of North Viet Nam never considered that their ideology was faulty. If the war had been fought to defeat the army of the north then a short occupation of the country while capitalism was allowed to flourish perhaps their ideology would have changed. The south Vietnamese philosophy was make a living off whomever was occupying the country to get along made them easy pawns.
It is interesting to me that if capitalism is actually allowed to exist people will be driven to get to it from any other circumstance and use it. Once they are in the position of benefiting from it they began to change it toward socialism and slavery demanding money through the force of government.
Most people when involved in interpersonal relations and direct contact will not steal, those who do usually in small quantities. The larger the crime the fewer who are willing to commit it against another. Give these same people the power to use violence through sanctioned regulatory bodies (the government) and almost all will demand and partake in the loot. What this means for your question of how to defeat religious or political tyranny is that it is impossible given the odds you are facing.
I always thought it would be simple to convince people of the morality of liberty and objectivism, it just needed explaining. I don't think there are enough people who are willing to live free in America to populate a small city. If you haven't read 'The Will to Bondage' you should. I am 67 and haven't yet learned how to teach someone that liberty is moral. There have been a few but I think they were of the same mindset already and just needed a way to express their desires or understand them better.
The great question here is; how do you change ideology?

The war was deliberately conducted to create a Korean style stalemate, rather than to win a victory.

That's a direct result of following the rules of the United Nations. It declared all existing nations and their boundaries to be sacred, regardless of the processes that created them or their degree of relevance to the people on the ground. Pretty much all the world's poor countries have boundaries that were drawn by colonial powers and make no sense to leave in place, but let someone try to fix any of them and the UN steps in to try to prevent it. What a useless bunch of idiots.

I was a Korean war combat MP. I think you've nailed it considering the nature of their ideologies.

I would note that if I could choose who would be in my foxhole it would be a South Korean soldier. They were dedicated, loyal and well trained/disciplined. I got real close with a Korean MP and policeman who saved my bacon many times. Just my 2 cents.

Wanderer: I think your analysis is spot on. And the reason we couldn't convey an ideological mission to the South Vietnamese is that we (i.e. the US Government) had no ideological mission itself. The rebuttal to communism is capitalism. Capitalism was not understood or defended in the US during the sixties except by Rand. Instead of fighting to establish capitalism we were told we were fighting to defend democracy which, in the context of Viet Nam, meant fighting to establish a system of free elections. Our government mouthpieces actually said that we would fight to establish those elections even if it meant the communists would win and control the whole country. Hardly an inspiring message for us or the Vietnamese.

You've put time into studying this. You probably already know about the letter from FDR to de Gaulle, promising support for postwar French control of Indochina. That was de Gaulle's price for Free French participation in the invasion of France. Whether FDR would have honored the guarantee, we'll never know but, when de Gaulle presented the letter to Truman, Truman honored it and, the rest is a confused history of national inertia. Once committed to helping the French, we never reexamined our rationale for being there.

As an aside, I've read the first American killed in Vietnam was a liaison assigned to Ho's partisans at the end of WW2, who was killed by the French after the Brits, who had nominal control of the area after the Japanese surrender, acceded to the French

If you would, read my opinion below and give me your opinion:

I'm not a tactician and, even though tactics can certainly lose a battle, I think wars are usually lost because of strategies and conditions having little or nothing to do with individual battles.

At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.

I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.

In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.

Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.

I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.

As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.

My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.

Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.

I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.

And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.

Any thoughts?

Vietnam was a mistake to begin with. Ho Chi Minh's partisans fought the Japanese, having been convinced by American contacts that the U.S. was opposed to colonialism, and would support an independent Vietnam. When we supported the French return as rulers of Indochina, we became the enemy, only making things worse when we stepped in after the French defeat.

Our government remained ignorant of Vietnam's history, thinking China was their ally, when the Vietnamese had struggled to throw off Chinese conquest for a thousand years. It wasn't until the Chinese tried to invade Vietnam after we left that we took the time to learn why.

The war was deliberately conducted to create a Korean style stalemate, rather than to win a victory. Invasion of North Vietnam was off the table, even though the forces we deployed could have readily swept through the land to at least take pressure off the South.

Mining Haiphong harbor was also not allowed, for fear a Soviet vessel might be damaged. The conduct of the war was a case study in how to engineer defeat, even with overwhelming military power.

Left wing journalism played its part as well. Looking at the numbers, the Tet offensive was an absolute military disaster, with the VC essentially wiped out, and horrific casualties in the NVA, with no ground gained, but the journalists, both foreign and American, played it as a defeat of U.S. forces. NVA General Giap was in favor of a declared truce until he realized the effects on American support for the war had been seriously undermined by the distorted coverage of the press.

Finally, even after U.S. forces left, a Democrat led American Congress refused to honor a pledge to keep the South Vietnamese supplied with arms and ammunition. As a result, the outgunned South Vietnamese had no chance against a well-supplied NVA.

The first step in winning a war is to define the conditions for victory. Can anyone define what victory in Vietnam would have looked like?

Then, of course, you have to take steps to achieve those conditions.

Good assessment on your part...lowest common denominator.

Culture and levels of or a lack of Consciousness.
Language plays a vital role in the ability to self inspect one's beliefs and behaviors. See Julian Jaynes.

I'm not a tactician and, even though tactics can certainly lose a battle, I think wars are usually lost because of strategies and conditions having little or nothing to do with individual battles.

At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.

I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.

In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.

Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.

I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.

As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.

My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.

Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.

I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.

And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.

Any comments will be welcomed.