Best President in US History?

[DarthJF]

One of Stalin's prequisites for allowing Kim start the Korean War was that Mao, and not him, would be the one watching over Kim's back. Stalin was not willing to have direct war over Korea and had been prepared to see Americans conquer all of Korea if China was unable to fight the Americans back.

I doubt there would have been escalation in Europe, but Soviets would likely have responded in US starting to bomb Chinese targets by further expanding their role in the air war. Chinese and Korean pilots had poor performance against US pilots, but the Soviet pilots flying newest aircraft had performance level comparable to US forces. Simply expanding the air war over China wasn't a magic solution that would have allowed US to achieve total victory.

 

[Herbert West]

Also if the Chinese and North Vietnamese decide they want war, they shouldn't act surprised when US forces give it to them by bombing and conquering their cities.

Sorry, you could not even control South Vietnam. What, in God's green earth, makes you think the US could reasonably occupy a hostile population in North Vietnam, let alone in SOuth China. Does the US have an infinite manpower pool of cheap, replacable drones?

 

[gagenater]

One of Stalin's prequisites for allowing Kim start the Korean War was that Mao, and not him, would be the one watching over Kim's back. Stalin was not willing to have direct war over Korea and had been prepared to see Americans conquer all of Korea if China was unable to fight the Americans back.

I doubt there would have been escalation in Europe, but Soviets would likely have responded in US starting to bomb Chinese targets by further expanding their role in the air war. Chinese and Korean pilots had poor performance against US pilots, but the Soviet pilots flying newest aircraft had performance level comparable to US forces. Simply expanding the air war over China wasn't a magic solution that would have allowed US to achieve total victory.

Except for 2 things: The U.S. was quite unwilling enough to start a war even with China alone - indeed - Truman sacked McArthur after suggesting this strategy.

Secondly, the U.S. didn't know that the USSR wasn't going to back China. Their intelligence at the time suggested the opposite, so you cannot analyse the decisions made during the conflict based on information they didn't know.

 

[DarthJF]

Except for 2 things: The U.S. was quite unwilling enough to start a war even with China alone - indeed - Truman sacked McArthur after suggesting this strategy.

Secondly, the U.S. didn't know that the USSR wasn't going to back China. Their intelligence at the time suggested the opposite, so you cannot analyse the decisions made during the conflict based on information they didn't know.

I know. I wasn't analysing the decisions themselves, but how things would have likely gone of if US had done as Dinglehoff seems to want.

 

[Director]

What held the US back from occupying North Vietnam was the USSR and China warning that would widen the war.
Occupying North Vietnam would not have been feasible in the long-term as the South Vietnamese gov't was too corrupt to run its own half of the country, much less all of it.
But trying to win a war with mixed conventional and guerilla forces while allowing them a safe haven they can withdraw into at need, and allowing them a safe supply line to outside countries who will endlessly re-equip them - that's a guarantee of failure.

 

[Herbert West]

Well, duh.

But short of occupying all of Indochina AND at least Guangxi province, there was no way to deny the guerrillas a resupply base. And extending the occupation would only mean more guerrillas and more of a more hostile population. IMHO the French played the US for perfect patsies, handing them an unwinnable situation.

 

[Yakman]

The Korean War didn't happen in a vacuum. For 4 years before it the Cold War was getting hotter and hotter, and Americans were realizing they'd have to fight communism around the world. Soviet refusal to get out of Iran, the Czech coup, the Berlin blockade, the Marshall Plan, the Communists winning the Chinese Civil War, all of this had happened recently. There was support for the Truman government to spend billions to help Europe re-construct, and there was support for the armed forces budget to go much higher than it had been right after the war. Support for the Korean War started to diminish as the US armed forces were forced to retreat by the Chinese intervention and after it became a stalemate. But right at the beginning of it, if Truman had allowed North Korea to run over South Korea without firing a shot to intervene, he'd be remembered as a pushover who had lost not only China (in which he had no blame, the issue was much more structural there, but still that was the perception of the time), but another country to communism.

and nobody cared in 1952. people wanted out. they elected a man who said "peace" not "victory"

 

[Dinglehoff]

Sorry, you could not even control South Vietnam. What, in God's green earth, makes you think the US could reasonably occupy a hostile population in North Vietnam, let alone in SOuth China. Does the US have an infinite manpower pool of cheap, replacable drones?

The administration couldn't have devised a more certain strategy for failure if they had tried; so no, your smug pessimism isn't based on the best our military was capable of.

What held the US back from occupying North Vietnam was the USSR and China warning that would widen the war.
Occupying North Vietnam would not have been feasible in the long-term as the South Vietnamese gov't was too corrupt to run its own half of the country, much less all of it.

We should have warned them that North Vietnam widens the war when they attack the South, and that our invasion will be happening as a result of that ASAP. If they have a problem with that, they can put Uncle Ho back on the leash. As for the South running the north; that's not the primary goal, that's the bonus prize. The south will have an easier time sorting itself out cut off from the north, which will also be in disarray; and the communist countries fighting the war might get serious about a peace deal. If not; well annexation of the North by the South is the consequence of that decision.

But trying to win a war with mixed conventional and guerilla forces while allowing them a safe haven they can withdraw into at need, and allowing them a safe supply line to outside countries who will endlessly re-equip them - that's a guarantee of failure

That's what we did. I've been saying we should have been fighting that war much more aggressively and differently from the start.

 

[stevieji]

I've been saying we should have been fighting that war much more aggressively and differently from the start.

Not only does your argument require a quite extraordinary degree of hindsight - requiring the US to look more than 10 years ahead to foresee the level of commitment required to win the war - but would also require that US administration to conclude that the only way to proceed was a massive all-out offensive and occupation of the north.
Quite honestly this was never going to happen. If the US had the slightest idea of what they were getting themselves into, they wouldn't have done it. I'm not saying they would have suddenly recognised the right of the Vietnamese people to self-determination, but they would have found some way to avoid the disaster that Vietnam became for the US.
This counter-factual stuff is all very well - but really it all happened in the only way it could have happened.

I forget - which president are we blaming for this fiasco? Let me guess - you think Kennedy should have sent everybody, immediately.

 

[DarthJF]

US wasn't going to win Vietnam without semi-competent Southern leadership, and unfortunately for the US, Southern leadership was from from competent. There was no South Vietnamese Park Chung-hee.

 

[gagenater]

The administration couldn't have devised a more certain strategy for failure if they had tried; so no, your smug pessimism isn't based on the best our military was capable of.
We should have warned them that North Vietnam widens the war when they attack the South, and that our invasion will be happening as a result of that ASAP. If they have a problem with that, they can put Uncle Ho back on the leash. As for the South running the north; that's not the primary goal, that's the bonus prize. The south will have an easier time sorting itself out cut off from the north, which will also be in disarray; and the communist countries fighting the war might get serious about a peace deal. If not; well annexation of the North by the South is the consequence of that decision.
That's what we did. I've been saying we should have been fighting that war much more aggressively and differently from the start.

An all out invasion of North Vietnam was to much effort, cost and lives lost for the 'prize' of 'winning' South Vietnam. No sane leadership would have made that trade, and thankfully our actual leadership was sane enough to realize that it wasn't worth doing it, and ended the war before 'winning' it that way. You don't blindly fight any old war with full force and maximum agression just so you can tally a win marker on the side of the UN building - you fight if and when doing so will get you something worth having at a cost worth paying, or when you have no other choices. The U.S. had nothing worth having that much in Vietnam, and had lots of other choices other than war available.

 

[DarthJF]

One could even say that US ultimately benefitted from the outcome of Vietnam War. Disentangling themselves from Vietnam allowed US to exploit Sino-Soviet split and restore relations with China, which was far larger geopolitical price than South Vietnam ever was.

 

[Yakman]

One could even say that US ultimately benefitted from the outcome of Vietnam War. Disentangling themselves from Vietnam allowed US to exploit Sino-Soviet split and restore relations with China, which was far larger geopolitical price than South Vietnam ever was.

The USA won the Vietnam War. What was the end point of the war going to be? They were going to drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

What happened?

They drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

 

[keynes2.0]

While I agree that ending the war allowed us to get started on the process of reconciliation, it's not like the war produced that reconciliation. The war didn't produce the passage of decades of time.

 

[Director]

We should have warned them that North Vietnam widens the war when they attack the South, and that our invasion will be happening as a result of that ASAP. If they have a problem with that, they can put Uncle Ho back on the leash. As for the South running the north; that's not the primary goal, that's the bonus prize. The south will have an easier time sorting itself out cut off from the north, which will also be in disarray; and the communist countries fighting the war might get serious about a peace deal. If not; well annexation of the North by the South is the consequence of that decision.

Um. No. Losing Western Europe was not worth winning in Vietnam. South Vietnam wasn't able to run itself before, during or after we came in.

That's what we did. I've been saying we should have been fighting that war much more aggressively and differently from the start.

No. We should have never escalated beyond Kennedy-administration advisors and a bit of equipment. Korea should have been the model, not WW2.

 

[Dinglehoff]

Not only does your argument require a quite extraordinary degree of hindsight - requiring the US to look more than 10 years ahead to foresee the level of commitment required to win the war - but would also require that US administration to conclude that the only way to proceed was a massive all-out offensive and occupation of the north.

No; it requires common sense and a look back at WWI, WWII, and Korea. Using those conflicts, the administration could have devised a strategy that would win and plan for the communist counters I've been seeing suggested, like this Chinese attack people keep talking up.

Um. No. Losing Western Europe was not worth winning in Vietnam.

You don't know that's what would have happened.

South Vietnam wasn't able to run itself before, during or after we came in.

So? That's no reason to condemn them to communist domination or betray our security commitments, or let the North bleed us out for all those years; and we should have been rehabilitating the regime instead of destabilizing it ourselves.

No. We should have never escalated beyond Kennedy-administration advisors and a bit of equipment. Korea should have been the model, not WW2.

The Korean model requires even more of an escalation of the conflict to mimic. We'd have to invade the north to crush their armies, like DMac did in Korea (who was using WWII as his model); we'd have to invade and occupy parts of Cambodia and Laos to cut off supply lines from the North, since Vietnam is not on a peninsula like Korea; and we'd have to supply huge forces to make that happen like in Korea, which we were already doing but using them in a pointless throwaway strategy; and we'd have to bomb the north more and better like in Korea and also hit the Chinese air units they'd throw in.

An all out invasion of North Vietnam was to much effort, cost and lives lost for the 'prize' of 'winning' South Vietnam. No sane leadership would have made that trade, and thankfully our actual leadership was sane enough to realize that it wasn't worth doing it, and ended the war before 'winning' it that way. You don't blindly fight any old war with full force and maximum agression just so you can tally a win marker on the side of the UN building - you fight if and when doing so will get you something worth having at a cost worth paying, or when you have no other choices. The U.S. had nothing worth having that much in Vietnam, and had lots of other choices other than war available.

"Sane leadership" chose instead to lock us in that war for years with no point or purpose for victory, being too prideful to quit and too stupid to win. That's what your "sane leadership" did. That's not better.

 

[stevieji]

No; it requires common sense and a look back at WWI, WWII, and Korea. Using those conflicts, the administration could have devised a strategy that would win and plan for the communist counters I've been seeing suggested, like this Chinese attack people keep talking up.

This doesn't make any sense. They weren't faced with anything like a world war, or even the Korean War - they were looking at a low-level insurgency and reacted accordingly. It just goes far beyond even the fantastical realms of counter-factual speculation, to imagine the sort of response at the outset that you're suggesting. Better by far to have stayed out of that unfortunate country entirely.
You ignored my attempt to drag this thread back to the subject heading - is it Kennedy you hold responsible for not provoking armageddon over an insignificant little country, 8,000 miles from home?

 

[gagenater]

SNIP

"Sane leadership" chose instead to lock us in that war for years with no point or purpose for victory, being too prideful to quit and too stupid to win. That's what your "sane leadership" did. That's not better.

I didn't say that the U.S. leadership was entirely sane. I said "An all out invasion of North Vietnam was to much effort, cost and lives lost for the 'prize' of 'winning' South Vietnam. No sane leadership would have made that trade, and thankfully our actual leadership was sane enough to realize that it wasn't worth doing it, and ended the war before 'winning' it that way" They weren't sane enough to stay out of Vietnam altogether, but eventually they learned after repeatedly screwing up, that there was nothing more worth having to be gained by escalating the war, and they ended it. Years of war with no point or purpose for victory is still better than years of war with no point or purpose for victory that kills 10 or 20 times as many people at 10 times the cost.

 

[Imgran]

The USA won the Vietnam War. What was the end point of the war going to be? They were going to drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

What happened?

They drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

We won the Cold War. We accomplished none of our longterm objectives in Vietnam, at least partly because I'm not convinced we ever had any.

Take it on the chin man. We fought a bad war in Nam, we never should have fought Communism there in the first place, we put hundreds of thousands of our young men into a situation where the short term objectives were impossible and the long term objectives didn't exist, we failed to protect the South Vietnamese people in any meaningful sense. killed a whole lot of people that didn't need to die, and Ho Chi Minh still took Saigon. Any victory we had was Pyrrhic. Own up, man up, move on.

 

[Eusebio]

The USA won the Vietnam War. What was the end point of the war going to be? They were going to drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

What happened?

They drink Coca Cola and make our shoes.

That's like those idiots who say Germany won WW2 because they dominate the EU.