"Success Amid Failure — America Lost in Vietnam, But" Topic

….the U.S. Marines Accomplished Their Mission, Historian Argues

"IN THE CONTEXT of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, concepts such as success or failure and victory or defeat are still hotly contested.

And although the war did not end well for the United States, there were still some success stories. The U.S. Marines provides one of them.

The Corps' primary mission was to defend three bases along the coast of the northern provinces of South Vietnam. And their decision to employ counterinsurgency to provide defence-in-depth around theses bases meant they were successfully able to achieve that mission and, at the same time, demonstrate the utility of counterinsurgency as an operational level tool…"
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Amicalement
Armand

We could argue/discuss this again until the end of time. AFAIK the US Military generally did accomplish it's mission, the USMC was not the only one if in fact anyone in the US Military did … but as we know, it just didn't matter.

Legion and I don't agree about much but we seem to agree on not going over this topic again and again.

The US and allies won every battle in 'Nam. That is established.

It was just the weak civilians and politicians that lost the war.

Still, they stood up to Communism and millions of American kids sice have said to their Vietnam vet dads and uncles and grandfathers: "what's Communism?" and those men have replied back "that's why I fought in 'Nam, so you wouldn't havta know"…

'Nam was an important fight for the West to fight.

Not this tired old trope again.

It's much more complicated than that. I wish people would stop resurrecting these zombie arguments over and over.

Give Tango a break. He is currently rated by me as 80/20 brilliant/rubbish for posting. That is a long way from my original 40/60 (but even at that, I thought he was simply outstanding).

This is one of the 20%, flogged to death, and not worth resuscitation. The US won every pitched battle, whether Marines or Army, against the NLF, but lost the war, even then only after it pulled out its military and abandoned its allies.

The key word is 'pitched' in your comment deadhead. There were not many pitched battles – it was not that kind of war.

The US was always trying to fight 'the big war' but their enemy would not play along – barring a few early missteps.

I don't mind Tango posting stuff he thinks might be of interest, even if it duplicates other posts.

I just think we don't need to discuss this topic again.

Legion and I don't agree about much but we seem to agree on not going over this topic again and again.

Indeed …