Leon R. answered • 05/09/21
Experienced teacher, writer, historian
There are many specific reasons, but most broadly, it has frequently been shown (us and the British in our Revolution, Britain and India, France and Algeria, France and Indochina, us and Vietnam, Soviet and Afghanistan, etc.) that a major military power fighting a limited war (from their perspective) on the home turf of a less developed military power that is fighting total war is going to be worn down, eventually.
More specific reasons. Of these, the most important is that we never had a strategy to win. When McNamara resigned as SECDEF, LBJ sent McNamara's replacement, Clark Clifford on a fact-finding mission to Vietnam: find out what the generals need and how we get them. It pretty much went like this:
Q: What do you need?
A: Many more soldiers.
Q: OK, what will you do with more soldiers?
A: Kill more VietCong.
Q: OK, what's your plan? What do we need to do to win and how will we know we won?
A: When we killed enough of them.
Clifford went back and reported that the generals had no plan to win and there was no route to winning. From then on, LBJ was wholly motivated to try to figure out how to get out.
Another problem, the South Vietnamese were never as motivated as the North. We made the mistake of thinking South Vietnam was a different country but in fact, they were all Vietnamese and many southerners viwed Ho Chi Minh as the man who fought to iberate their country from the Japanese and the French and us as the latest in a string of occupiers. It turned out after we left that many senior military officers and government officials were really working for the North.
Finally, the corruption and incompetence of what we did worked against us. Bombing from B-52s flying five miles or more above the earth, long range artillery, and "zip in and zip out" raids in helicopters were almost as if calculated to alienate civilians.
Ht T.
China sent 300.00 Chinese soldiers to guard the home front of the North Vn.08/12/24
Ht T.
I agreed that the North Vietnamese had their strong motivation to win all battles more than the South Vietnamese. The motivation to gain independence from French Colonial ruler to happily jump into the Communist ruler with their belief of Karl Marx’s theory: equality, equal possession. Even when to fight in the South for 20 years, the North Vietnamese were exaggerated falsely about the suffers the South Vietnamese endured under Evil America’s ruler. Certainly! After 1975, the end war, many North People have opened their eyes with the truth. The victory of Đien Bien Phu to end French ruled in VN involved many political groups, not just Vietminh later hcm’s Vietcong, simply communist’s usurping with its wickedness. It was about 7O% of non communist leaders of these groups be killed or put in jail by hcm (document from Professor Doan Quoc Si). The fall of Saigon might be the violation of the Paris agreement by the America, that encouraged the north to gain victory. While the South was cut off all aids, as McGovern said in the Congress conference, “ South VN is not food deficit areas, I would favor cutting back on technical and economic assistance. AND to provide support for a continuing military effort is not our interest to fuel a war.” North Communist, as General Khuyen Dong proudly admitted about their abundant lastest military weapons offered from Russia and 300, 000 Chinese “never before” in his document of the Victory of SG. The South military soldiers defended our south with the near empty military weapons, even not enough fuel for air strikes in two years, after Paris agreement in 1973. How could the South Vn government cause corruption with its emptiness? Near five decades after the north communist victory, Vn are selling all of its state owned companies to be now integrated members of the globalised capitalist economy. What the waste of 1.1 million of the life of the young North Vietnamese. We, the South don’t need to count our loss because we did defend our capitalist stance rightly, no regret!08/12/24