What if there had been no Vietnam?

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Joe Demko

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Although I was too young to be drafted, I did grow up during that war and I clearly remember the domestic turmoil it caused. As I was thinking about the US today, I wondered how things might have been different if Presidents Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson hadn't involved us in that conflict.
I believe there would still have been some domestic upheaval on such issues as civil rights for minorities. Those issues had been simmering for a long while already and change was desperately needed. The Watts riots were unrelated to Vietnam. Opposition to the war in Vietnam, though, was a galvanizing and unifying force for the entire counterculture. No Vietnam=No Hippies? I'm not sure where the energies those people directed against the gummint and the war would have been turned instead...
LBJ declined to run again because of the war. So we might have had him for another term. He also would have had more resources to devote to his "Great Society" programs. For those who consider LBJ to have next-thing-to-a-commie, perhaps the US would have gone down the "socialist" road anyway.
Milhouse got elected in large measure on promises of ending that war. No Vietnam=No Milhouse? No Milhouse=No Watergate? No Watergate=People not hating and distrusting the gummint quite so much?
I'm just idly spinning ideas here. Following the war, the military was de-funded and things were very bad for them until Ronnie Raygun took office. Presumably, none of that would have happened. For that matter, w/o the chain of events starting in IndoChina, I don't know whether Ronnie would have ever taken the throne.
Would our own shadow agencies have indulged in their famous excesses from that time period w/o the war as an excuse?
Your thoughts, people?
 
What if there had been no Vietnam war-The men of D Co 3/8th Inf, 4th Inf Div would be alive-most were killed or wounded one day as was A Co the day before. There would be NO WALL for tears of sons, daughters,wives,mothers and fathers and old sweethearts to come to. We would not have found out how much of jerks the American people were when we came back. I would not have the memories I have. Solders would not be dying still of Agent Orange. What would it have been like if there had been no Vietnam War, there is not enough space.
Byron D Co., 3/8th INF,4th INF DIV 68-69
 
You aren't taking into account the results of allowing communism to spread.

Just like a criminal who is emboldended when they know government doesn't allow its citizens to be armed. The communist would be emboldened.

The rest of Asia might be communist because no one bothered to stop the spread of communism.
The direct result being even more tyranny and lives lost.
 
We would then have found some other country to become militarily involved in order to learn the lesson that "graduated response" is not a valid military strategy.

Following WWII, the US had not permitted the military to go all out and win a war. Part of this was fear came from starting a nuclear war with Russia. The other part was getting into a large scale conventional war of the WWII type. If not Vietnam, it was going to happen somewhere.

One of the best descriptions of the Vietnam War that I have seen was made by General Lam Quang Thi, ARVN, in his book The Twenty-Five Year War: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon.
During the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur requested permission to cross the Yalu River to invade Manchuria. He was fired. General Westmoreland kept asking for new troops and didn't know what to do with them. He was later promoted to Army Chief of Staff. This was the sign of the times. It was unfortunate that we did not have generals in Vietnam of Douglas MacArthur's caliber who knew what the objectives were and how to achieve them.

It appears to me that after the Korean War, the US Army experienced a general deterioration of military leadership. The US generals who fought in Vietnam seem to lack imagination and charisma. They forgot the most important factor in a was is man, not technology; victory on the battlefield requires traditional leadership, not bureaucratic management.
Click to expand...

I'm no fan of MacArthur and think the US military went downhill long before the Korean War started, but there is a lot of truth in what Gen. Thi has to say.
 
Hkmp5sd,

Were you now or have you ever been part of the "blame America first crowd"?

:)
 
THere would be over 50,000 men still alive today. But than again maybe we would have fought somewhere else and lost even more. Who Knows...
 
Or what if we had allowed the soldiers to FIGHT PROPERLY and invade the North. Frankly I still don't understand why we didn't do it. The Russians would never have nuked us over it. MAD is a wonderful thing, like a flawless crystal. They could not have sent nukes against us without having every last person in their nation turned to radioactive dust. So that concern was bogus. The Chinese, for their part, were a traditional enemy of the Vietnamese and it was unlikely we would have faced Chinese regulars in the march North, as we did in Korea.

We would have won a conventional war in the North, of course, but we would have been left with a whole lot of people who were not going to give up fighting. On the other hand, Vietnam would be free now instead of under a commie hunta.

If we never did anything in Vietnam, there would have been a much stronger commie government in charge a decade earlier, and it would have been able to extend its influence over Laos and Kambodia, and possibly Thailand. It would have necessitated additional US military forces in those nations. So something was accomplished.
 
Were you now or have you ever been part of the "blame America first crowd"?
Click to expand...

Nope! :) But I am all for blaming politicians and military leaders that screw up and cost American lives. If we're going to fight a war, for whatever reason, let's go in and get it done.

We would have won a conventional war in the North, of course, but we would have been left with a whole lot of people who were not going to give up fighting. On the other hand, Vietnam would be free now instead of under a commie hunta.
Click to expand...
Sounds a little like Iraq. Hope the end turns out better.
 
I was graduated from high school in June, 1966.

Many of my friends and acquaintances joined various branches of the military service, and most were sent to Viet Nam. I went to more than a few of their funerals over the ensuing few years.

I'd have enlisted myself—after all, my father fought World War II before me, and his father fought World War I—but even in 1965 and 1966, it was apparent to me we had no intention of fighting that war to win it. I thought at the time it was worth fighting and worth winning, and still believe so today; I also thought, however, if we weren't going to fight that war to win, we were fighting it the wrong way for the wrong reasons, and would end up regretting it.

55,000 Americans died during the Viet Nam War, along with untold numbers of Asians—and what, pray do we have to show for those deaths today? I believe we should have fought it and won it, and skipped the social and political disruption and consequent lurch to the extreme left, but if wishes were fishes, we'd all have trout for breakfast.
 
If we hadn't gotten involved in Vietnam (or another country, as some here have suggested), Johnson would have expanded the Great Society programs. His resulting popularity would have probably guaranteed him serving a second term. Parties usually don't get the White House three terms in a row, so a Republican would have been elected in 1972, but given the relative peace, it would have been a very moderate Republican. Nixon would have been out of the picture whether he'd challenged Johnson or not.

The public would have been more supportive of small wars. We might not have had the oil crisis of the early 70's, since foreign governments wouldn't have viewed us as a paper tiger.

The Hippie movement would have existed with or without the war. It was about fashion, sex, drugs and rock n' roll, not politics. However, the mush-minded would still be among us. (Thank God I got out of all that early enough).

And I'd have more cousins and old high school friends than I do now.
 
What if there had been no Vietnam?
Click to expand...
A whole lot of good (and some maybe not so good) folks would have lived a while longer. Maybe a long while.

In the bigger picture though, the leftist swine that seek to destroy this nation would have found another point of divisiveness to rally around.

Me? I'm proud to know as many vets of that war as I do, and I make sure to tell them how proud I am of them and their service, any chance I get.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda...the three great philosophers of the modern era. :rolleyes:
 
"If we never did anything in Vietnam,..."

-The USSR would have had all the equipment they sent Uncle Ho, and mayhapse not run into the severe transport problems in the Ukraine they had later. (It has been estimated that the US destroyed a number of transport vehicles equal to the russian stocks at the beginning of WWII. This industrial output might have been able to alleviate the massive grain shortfalls that forced Gorbachev to change the way the USSR dealt with the US.)

-The Chinese army would have had a hell of a lot more expensive toys to play with. Mao was nice enough to give the North, up to 90% of his total production in some years, of SAMs and other high end military equipment. The Russians weren't exactly stingy in this regard, either.

-The US Army, assuming that it was not get sent elsewhere, could very well be still fighting using techniques from WWII. There would not have been the incentive in the 1980's to CHANGE how they went about doing their jobs. There would have been highter casualities in an attack similar to either war on Iraq. (In the 67 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli's were setting records for having such low daily casuality rates--something like 96 per day per division. What was the rate for US troops this last invasion of Iraq? One to five per day for the entire theatre?)

-The Pahlavi dynasty might still rule Iran, the USSR might not have invaded Afghanistan, and the Cold War could still be going.
There might be an even greater problem for the West from that part of the world, especially for Australia, if Indonesia or Malasya had gone over to Communism. India might be pointing it's nukes at SE Asia, instead of at Pakistan, and maybe have had good cause to use some of them.

-We wouldn't have a particular black wall on the Mall in D.C.

-None of us would be here to ask this sort of question, and still others wouldn't be motivated to try to figure out why this happened, how things could have gone differently, and what came of it.
 
Help Me Understand...

Let me say first that my knowledge of history is shameful and I go into this post knowing I may make a complete nincompoop of myself. The purpose of posting is to learn something--not to challenge what has been posted here already. So:
The rest of Asia might be communist because no one bothered to stop the spread of communism.
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I don't understand this. I thought we lost Viet Nam and the North overran and controlled the South. How did our involvement stop the spread of communism?

Also, I've heard/read several opinions that we did not initially participate in Viet Nam because of communism--that it was about helping French colonists keep their farms, land, cheap labor, and keeping the port in the hands of allies. It's always been my suspicion that communism was a convenient scapegoat for escalation.

Am I misguided? Help me out.

Peter
 
How did our involvement stop the spread of communism?
Click to expand...

The theory goes that our involvement in Vietnam's turmoil slowed the big "C" in surrounding SEA nations... which Sounds good now.

Our sound geo-political policy, following closely on the heels of our French Allies, Delayed the inevitable fall... sorry, thats defeatist-speak,... delayed the inevitable rise of glorious social democracy and communism of the Peoples Republic of South Vietnam to finally unite with their brothers in the North to form the One True Peoples Republic of Vietnam for some 10 years. And that's gotta be a good thing... right?

(tinfoil hats on please) What it was, see, We saved Austrailia from becoming Commies is all :D . Oh sure, some of them were there with the US, fighting to save their island/continent once again from the asiatic horde of eeeevil commiskies.

So you see Snake Eyes, it was all about saving Austrailia as well as re-learning the art and science of fighting guerilla style homies in their own back yard, because we forgot everything we learned back in 1775 - 81.

And it was really the only war we had for a while there.

Whaddayagonnadoo?

What if there had been no Vietnam?

It (economic and shooting War w/ Communism) would have been relegated to Africa somewhere with the proper spin.

Adios
 
Snake Eyes,

Vietnam was a French colony. During WWII, Japan occupied Vietnam. After their surrender in 1945, the French moved back in. Unfortunately, there was a large segment of Vietnamese that wanted self rule, so they started a war with the French.

After defeating the French, the country was divided in two. The north went to the communist government of Ho Chi Minh. The south became a somewhat democratic government with aid from the US.

The US vs. USSR cold war produced the theory of the "domino effect." This meant that the USSR would eat up other countries, starting through Asia, one at a time.

The wisdom of the time was that the US didn't want a nuclear or large conventional war against the USSR, so they decided to stop communism from spreading, starting with Vietnam.

Technically, the US didn't lose Vietnam. Nixon got fed up with North Vietnam and unleased a bombing campaign that brought them to the negotiating table (and proved we could have destroyed the North if the politicians would have allowed it). We signed a peace treaty with the North similar to the one in Korea. Unlike Korea, this time we packed up most of our toys and went home. We provided military aid to the South, but no troops. Even with that, the South lasted over a year fighting on their own.

Unfortunately for South Vietnam, Nixon resigned and Ford became president. When North Vietnam broke the treaty and it's entire military machine marched into the south, Ford decided we would completely pull out instead of sending troops back in.

Based on this domino theory, if there had not been a Vietnam war, all of Asia would now be communist like China and North Korea. By fighting the war, the spread of communism was slowed greatly.

Then came Ronald Reagan who destroyed the USSR and won the cold war. As a result, Vietnam remains the only communist country in SE Asia.
 
Before there was Vietnam, there was Greece. I forget what year (1950s I'm pretty sure, maybe late 40's?), but basically, commie infiltrators tried to take over.

We did there (successfully) what we tried to do later in S. 'Nam: support the local anti-communist gov't with limited US troops working with, training and equipping natives. (And yes, fighting alongside 'em.)

The difference: the Greek people were thoroughly anti-communist and the government was relatively respectable as such go.

It worked so well, and so low-key, that most of y'all have probably never heard of it.

Anyways. We failed in 'Nam because of the corruption and stupidity of the SV government...that, more than any other factor, was the difference between 'Nam and Greece.

Without 'Nam, we'd have been a LOT more eager to dive into other "adventures". And given our penchant for supporting jackarses like the Shah of Iran and worse, odds are at least one such hypothetical squabble would have blown up in our faces.

A "Vietnam" of some sort was inevitable, given the scumbags we supported over the years. One of 'em would have gotten us into big trouble eventually - in fact, it might have BEEN the Shah, as a more militarily aggressive US might have taken a much harsher line to the hostage situation. Now you've got us involved in the Middle East MUCH sooner, and an "Osama" of some sort developing faster.

Without 'Nam, you don't have a moronic peacenik like Carter in office riding the anti-military sentiment that resulted.
 
If there were not to have been a Viet-Nam, the United
States of America might not have ever been prepared
to fight a guerrilla war? Sadly, with approximately some
58,000 killed and many more injured; we as a nation
are better prepared should the need ever arise again!

OTOH, one positive from this terrible part of history is
the lessons we learned from the use of "dust-offs";
or the evacuation of the wounded by helicopter's.
Thousands of civilian lives here in the good ole' U.S.A.
have been saved by this technology. It's not a 24-hr
period that goes by, that Life Saver (or Life Flight)
don't have a call for a medical emergency here in my
neck of the woods.

Best Wishes,
Ala Dan, N.R.A. Life Member
U.S. Army 18th Surgical Hospital Medic 1965-1967
 
"Or what if we had allowed the soldiers to FIGHT PROPERLY and invade the North. Frankly I still don't understand why we didn't do it. "

Yeah, that worked so well in Korea. Look at a map and see what large Communist nation is just to the north of Vietnam.

The purpose of the war in Vietnam was to stop the spread of Communism. Kennedy said this over and over. It was moderately successful at that. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia - those places were next and did not go communist. Laos and Cambodia did. As a result of the war, Communist leaders in the USSR and China were a little more cautious about using military force when they saw we were willing to lose 50,000 men in a place with no strategic or economic importance to us whatsoever.

The men and women who died in Vietnam died to stop Communism, which was a good and noble cause, and they did in fact have some effect.

I recognize many users of this board are too young to remember what Communism is eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was like, but as someone who spent some time behind the Iron Curtain, let me tell you that the life and death struggle between freedom and communism was worth the cost. Frankly I think we ought to have a national holiday to remember the end of Communism in Europe, and I hereby suggest October 3rd, known in Germany as the Day of German Unity. It's the day the DDR (the communist part of Germany) ceased to exist.
 
"We failed in 'Nam because of the corruption and stupidity of the SV government..."

That, and because of some really damm stupid ideas, like that of "symmetrical response". The idea was to only send such men and material that would precisley match the resources the other side was willing to commit. The object of this blinkered strategy is to only stalemate the enemy, never to win. (I read one paper for a class that claimed it was counterproductive to win.) It's amazing how otherwise intelligent people bought this load of horse apples.

KC
 
Despite the fact that many mark Vietnam as a loss for the US, it was a success in a less obvious way; outside the more tangable barometers such as individual battles and territory. The war effectively conveyed private information about US commitment to our opposition to expanding communist influence. Though 55,000 died in a war we ultimately pulled out of, it erased any doubts worldwide about how serious the US was in stemming the hegemony of the USSR and China. As many stated above, when any inheriently expansive idealology isn't resisted, it becomes emboldened, and our proxy battle for hegemony communicated our commitment and resolve.
 
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