Comment by xnyan

11 hours ago

Would you say that the United States had a much larger and more expensive military than Vietnam? How did that work out for the United States?

10 comments

xnyan

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jonnybgood  11 hours ago

The US was winning the Vietnam war militarily. The US pulled out because it wasn’t winning it domestically.

  • randallsquared  10 hours ago

    Another potential goal of the war may have been to demonstrate that the USSR couldn't hope to win a conventional war against the US (the 1973 Easter offensive fielded 700-1200 tanks of various kinds, and the US destroyed 400-700 of them with trivial losses to US forces). The Soviets were using 15-20% of their economy to produce, among other military items, 4000 tanks a year, so a demonstration that the US could destroy so much without significant losses or any particular economic strain could have been shocking. If that was a real goal, though, it probably couldn't be openly discussed at the time, which would have contributed to the "why are we even there?" mood of the American people.

  • praptak  10 hours ago

    Well, "not winning domestically" can happen as likely today as it did in the sixties.

    If anything, the US society is more divided today.

    • randallsquared  10 hours ago

      In the event that someone is directly attacking Americans in America, I think you'll find that Americans are more united than it appears.

      Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.

      3 replies →

  • DiogenesKynikos  6 hours ago

    The US was barely treading water militarily, at enormous cost in both lives and cash. It was not progressing towards its military and political goals. That's why the US public pulled the plug.

    The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.