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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I would restfully disagree.
the thing that handicapped the Americans were that the war was run and planned by the politicians who decided that they wanted to fight a limited engagement war. There were never clear objectives, this wasn't a war about gaining and holding grounds, but built around body counts and no inherent military objectives.
The American Military Leadership was shockingly weak considering that a lot of their senior officers were built in the forges of WW2 and Korea.
On top of that the American's didn't have a professional army, Vietnam was the end of the conscript or drafted military, because of that the NCO core which is the heart of any army was weak.
The Americans fought the wrong type of war, and flailed around uselessly. If you look at the individual battles there weren't a lot of them that were lost. but when you look at the cohesive picture on a map you'd ask yourself the question "What were they thinking".
The other thing was that the whole strategy of winning the hearts and minds was a abject failure and again a strategy that was created in the State Department and in the offices of the President and Vice President.
You would hope in this current situation that ISIS who are incredible butchers aren't winning the hearts and minds and forces on the ground could exploit that, but the best way to achieve that is if the forces on the ground were from the Middle East Nations. But unfortunately the Middle Eastern militaries aren't exactly professional or known for their gentle treatment of the civilian populations.
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I don't know what you're disagreeing about. My "no real plan to defeat the enemy" gibes with your "never clear objectives" as far as I'm concerned. I pretty much know what was going on in Viet Nam as I was protesting the war at the time.
Yeah, the West would be happy if they could get enough locals (Arabs) to fight Isis as they did in Afghanistan, first against the USSR and later the Taliban. Of course that didn't work out perfectly either. Maybe just leave them to sort out their own problems. Our interference always seems to backfire.