That’s a serious, if delusional claim that requires a loooooot of support. “Handily” in particular seems like a ridiculous way to state it, even if you only look at US casualties.
This is a valid point: we though it was going great because hey - look at the 'battles won' and 'body' count, but really it wasn't.
But the US did not remotely lose the war.
There is no rational basis for suggesting this - it doesn't even make sense.
This is the weird delusional pop culture response that is the problem: misquotes, lies, exaggerations, political statements - all of this about this war specifically that lends reasonable people to think something happened ... that did not happen.
It got a little ugly but the US won on fairly hard terms: South Vietnamese insurgency was wiped out, and the North Vietnamese Army was in tatters. This only after a few short years of heavy fighting, with limited engagement by the US, an something like 10-1 casualty rates favouring the Americans.
It's ironic because the Americans actually did kind of 'lose' in a way in Korea and we don't look at it the same way due to the different political nature of the war.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-330-...
Subject: Program of Action to Prevent Communist Domination of South Viet Nam
The US Objective: to prevent Communist domination of South Vietnam and to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society.
The US had not achieved those objectives 12 years later. The communists won control over the whole country a few years after US withdrawal finished. Vietnam's government is still communist today.
This is basically what I learned browsing through encyclopedias when I was a kid. I did a quick fact-check just now in case I had been misled or misremembered. I can sort-of understand saying that the communists didn't achieve victory over the USA either (because they also didn't manage to install an allied government in the territory of the USA), but claiming that the US won is weird.
Yes. They did.
The US did achieve those objectives in the early 1970s'.
The US vanquished the South Vietnamese forces, and did considerably damage to North Vietnamese forces using air power - to the point where North Vietnamese did not have a capable fighting force.
Communism was basically gone in the South, in the North, inoperable, at least militarily.
Then the US left.
A few years later, the North built up their armies and waltzed into the South.
It's really crazy, strategically that the US withdrew - all they had to do was leave about 50K soldiers, sitting 'behind the wire' not really fighting, maybe an aircraft carrier, i.e. 'the threat of violence' and S. Vietnam would be as free today as S. Korea. The Americans withdrew because of populist political pressure back home i.e teens protesting. I don't believe the US should have necessarily gone to war in Vietnam, but after they did, they should have stayed - it would have cost very little.
Anyhow - as per the article - 'points of measure' can be misleading, as it was with 'bodycount' in Vietnam, but they're not entirely misleading.
Number of enemy combatants, civilians, allies killed or wounded is a very important metric in every conflict. It's just not 'the' metric.
By that measure, fine, yes, the US strategy in Vietnam failed, and it was basically due to the fact they left.
It had nothing to do with 'bad measures' like 'body count' and nothing to do with military failures or ventures.
The misleading metric of 'body count' really didn't change the fact that the US wiped out the VC and destroyed most of the North's ability to fight.
Militarily it was a definitive victory for the US.
And then the US bailed and it fell apart.
Let's not confuse the fact it was a terrible and ugly war, with way too many civilian casualties with things like 'bad measures'.
The 'bad measures' of 'body count' did not create an existential problem for the US strategy, really.
This needs to be said a lot more in our civilization, in 2018.
By that argument, all of western Europe didn't save a viable society since Germany was able to defeat them.
I don't agree with that.
France today is not the same as France in 1939 - the period from 1870-1940 is generally considered the French Third Republic, and they're on the Fifth Republic now. Poland today is not the same as Poland in 1939. Germany today is certainly not the same as Germany in 1939. Not only are the people in charge different, but the whole system of government is different, the cultural values are different, and many of the cities were rebuilt from the ground up.
Just because a society collapses doesn't mean the people disappear, or even that they start to think of themselves as a different nationality. Society is all of the organizational superstructure on top of that, and barring rare cases like governments-in-exile-that-can-pick-up-where-they-left-off-when-liberated, that usually doesn't survive being defeated in warfare.
France had a credible defense. Also, France certainly survived their enemy in the long term.
What's delusional and troubling is the degree to which this war is completely misunderstood in pop culture.
The US handily won the Vietnam war, full stop.
In classical terms is was a clear and unambiguous outright victory.
Think of Korea for example: a stalemate, whereas the US obliterated their oppponents in Vietnam.
The US hardly lost a single battle and losses in the war are consistent with the losses forces have in a 'regular war' - it's just that they seem large today's because the US hasn't fought against capable forces. Losses were consistent with Korean war, just a decade previous.
The Vietnam experience is often misunderstood because the US technically did spend a very long time there, they had trouble initially with the South Vietnamese insurgency, because the US eventually resorted to heavy bombing campaigns with too many civilian casualties, and because of complex political issues such as North Vietnamese forces hiding out in Cambodia etc..
But really the 'hard war' was not very long - you can see the troop buildup and then withdrawal here [1]
The US 'under committed' to the effort early on, and then did a slower build up to defeat the insurgency, and relatively handily defeated them after the buildup and then withdrew after a major air campaign.
The length of direct engagement by US forces in Vietnam is shorter than for Iraq and Afghanistan, and roughly on par with Korea. The number of US casualties was roughly on par with Korea as well.
The Vietnam war is understood by most people via Hollywood films and very poorly conceived documentaries. It was a turning point in some ways because it's the first time that American citizens were given insight into how horrible war actually is (i.e. reporters on the front lines etc.).
The only measure of success is whether or not you accomplish your objectives. The US did not accomplish its objectives in Vietnam of keeping a US-friendly government in power. Regardless of tactical measures of success, the US failed in its strategic objectives. I agree that popular culture has not accurately portrayed the Vietnam conflict, but saying that the US won in Vietnam is completely untrue.
Yes. They did. While there was conflict.
Then they left, and effectively abandoned those objectives.
When the North Vietnamese rebuilt it's army and re-invaded the South - propping up the S. Vietnamese government was obviously no longer a military objective, and barely a political one.
So the US won a war, withdrew, and then abandoned their ally.
Which is crazy.
Until such was achieved, we had _always_ lost the war. Winning battles, paid for with American blood, was only a means of temporarily staving off the likely collapse for another year or two.
As for "abandoned", what does that even mean? The South had: large material advantages in artillery, vehicles, and AFVs; a significant air force (2000 craft), plus >10 years of a huge US training effort.
Which is crazy.
Sounds an awful lot like our government was gaming their "target" just to say they achieved it, even though hitting the target wasn't in everyone's best interests.