MovieChat Forums > Path to War (2002) Discussion > The war was lost before it was fought

The war was lost before it was fought


The film shows how divided the foreign policy team of Johnson's Administration was. People like George Ball was opposed to intervention while Robert McNamara was the driving force behing escalation.There was no clear strategy.Johnson tried to find a middle way without actually declaring war.

The Cold War mentality meant that Vietnam was seen as crucial in the fight against Communism. All politicians , including LBJ, JFK and Richard Nixon bought into the domino theory.

What is amazing is that no one calculated that the North Vietnamese/VC were prepared to fight America despite the technological adavantage that they had.
The Americans made the cardinal mistake of failing to understand their enemy.The American armed forces are not equipped to fight an endless guerilla war in hostile terrain.

Lyndon Johnson, for all his intelligence and political skill, did not what understand what motitivated Ho Chi Minh.The film depicts him being frustrated that Ho won't sit down and talk with him. Ho would not do that on America's terms. so any financial inducement or development aid was not going to work.
With aid from China and Russia,Ho knew that all he had to bleed the US until weariness and frustration took is toll.

Massive bombings, napalm, and search and destroy missions were not going to defeat an enemy that had previously fought the French, the Chinese and Japanese.

Robert McNamara realises that for all his calculations and assessments, the war was a catastrophe. The scene at the end when he resigns shows a man cracking under the strain of a war that he advocated and implemented.

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The war was unwinnable

The whole Vietnamese race had been at war all there life. That was all they knew. How can you fight that?

It was not like ww2 or Korea. There is the enemy go and go kill him. The "Enemy" was old women, school children and men too

The scene in the film with CIA briefing LBJ about the bridges being rebuild was very telling

They were willing to endure any hardship and Ho was willing to take 10 bodies for every 1 US body

It was a quagmire that LBJ and the US were desperate to escape from

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Isn't amazing the courage and devotion that people can muster up for a despicable and unjust regime. The Vietnamese were willing to bear any burden, suffer any agony, in order that Ho Chi Minh become their dictator and oppress them. Like trhe German & Japanese soldiers who fought so doggedly and heroically for Hitler & the Emperor.



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It wasn;t entirely lost.
If we had adopted the british style counterinsurgency.
They did stuff in Malaysia, that made this look like a pinic, but they won.
Also 4 years of chaos between diem death and the rise of thieu, is what caused the trouble. Lyndon thought he could yak yak with Ho.
Sir Robert Thompson was right resettlement, and conversions work better than killing.

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[deleted]

Isn't amazing the courage and devotion that people can muster up for a despicable and unjust regime.


You have it all wrong. The Vietnamese were fighting to unify their country. They were tired of being subjects of the French and were not about to let Americans take their place. Their courage and devotion grew out of their fight for freedom. Do you really think that they fought so hard to escape freedom? Do you really think that the Vietnamese wanted to have their country once again run by foreigners?

Consider the Spanish-American war. We (the U.S.A.)simply took over as a colonial power in the Philippines after the Spanish left. The Vietnamese wanted no part of that (excluding our puppets like the Diem brothers).

You compared the Vietnamese to the Germans and the Japanese. They were invading other countries. The Vietnamese simply wanted independence. Who can argue with that?

What did Vietnam ever do to the U.S.A. to deserve what was done to them?

R = f(B), where:
R = Reality, B = Belief

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They were invading other countries. The Vietnamese simply wanted independence. Who can argue with that?


If you comprehend, ALL fought for dictatorships. I'm not arguing against independance, I'm arguing against totalitarian dictators which Ho was, according to every authority who ever wrote about him.

"Their courage and devotion grew out of their fight for freedom."

Do you mean the glorious freedom they enjoy now? You mean the "freedom" to obey the leader without fail? It's been 35 years since the last American soldier left and they are not one millemeter closer to freedom then they were in 1945. When someone chooses a cause to fight to the death for, it's always a GOOD IDEA to make sure that the cause is JUST, HUMANE, and FREE. The Communist leadership of Vietnam exploits the people more completely and cruelly than the French ever did! People always have the kind of government they DESERVE, and the Vietnamese deserve theirs because they didn't insist on independance WITH POLITICAL RIGHTS for the people!

Korea is a case in point. When the nation was divided, they supported the corrupt and inept Sygman Rhee government and supported the UN/US effort to free them of a communist dictator's control. Eventually, their system evolved into a democracy, because it didn't have to bear the heavy yoke of communist totalitarianism. Or do you think the average Korean would fare better under a Kim il Sung?



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Hi MrPie7:

You just don't get it, do you? The Vietnamese were fighting so that Vietnam would be run by the Vietnamese themselves. After being bombed and poisoned (you have heard of Agent Orange I assume?) for 10 years, you expect perfection from them? We were not offering democracy in any real sense. Did the Diem brothers seem interested in democracy to you?

Think! Do you really believe that the Vietnamese people would fight so hard to escape freedom?

Please! Check out The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Before his death,he understood the errors that we made.

Check out what we did to Argentina, Chile, and the Congo. The world realizes that American interests generally do not lead to JUST, HUMANE, and FREE. I do concede that Korea is an exception but recent history tells a different story.

Don't let FOX news be your only source of information.

R = f(B), where:
R = Reality, B = Belief

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Do you really believe that the Vietnamese people would fight so hard to escape freedom?

They were in NO WAY fighting for FREEDOM. What they were fighting for was INDEPENDANCE. Absolutely not the same thing. A politically inexperienced nation often benefits from a "caretaker" period, where they learn how to govern themselves and gain some insight into the dangers of factions, demogogues and one-man rule. But such people usually want immediate independance, because in their minds it equals justice and prosperity. The reality is almost always the exact opposite. Power hungry "strongmen" and would-be totalitarians, take advantage of this impatience to grab power immediately. These nations seldom recover from such regimes and are forever dominated by whoever seizes power. In the case of communism, the ideology creates a false immpression of legality and stability which those in power use to maintain their rule in perpetuity.

"Before his death,he understood the errors that we made."

When did i claim we didn't make mistakes? Our biggest mistake was to support the French in their post-war colonialism. Esentially they blackmailed us into it against our wishes by refusing to join NATO unless we gave them the means to restore their empire. At the time it was absolutely essential that NATO have a stable, resonably strong ally to anchor the continent. The UK is of course off the continent and Germany was divided into 4 parts at the time. We needed (gasp!) the French at the time and they milked it for all they could. So from the begining we were associated with the French in the minds of the Viet Mihn. The Diems never had enough support to face the Cong and we were forced to prop the bastards up in order to prevent complete colapse. If the Vietnamese could have seen a tiny bit past "independance" to justice and experience we might have stood a chance to eventually have a better result, at least in the South.

"I do concede that Korea is an exception but recent history tells a different story."

What about Japan, Germany, the Phillipines, and Panama? Places we had a CHANCE to help. The Congo was a Belgian show and the US was merely aiding anti-communism. At least the Congo finally got rid of Mobutu, and has a chance to go in a different direction. Communism is MUCH more difficult to get rid of ie: Cuba, Albania, N. korea and a few other "worker's paradises" where regimes last 50 years or better. Name one time that communism was good for either the people OR democracy.


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The situation in Malaysia and Vietnam are not comparable, dispite their obvious similarities.

1. Vietnam has common borders with (at the time) a friendly China. Massive amounts of war material was funneled into North Vietnam from this border and because of this, the NVA in particular and VC rarily had weapon shortages (most shortages came from transport problems within Vietnam, not getting the weapons into the country). Malaysia had no such border with a strong, friendly nation willing to funnel arms to it, and never possessed weaponery heavy or plentiful enough to break the Brits.

2. The North Vietnamese felt they were fighting a patriotic war of nationalism against yet another foreign power. Communism was seen as a means to facilitate the end, a unified Vietnam ruled by the Vietnamese.

The majority of communists in Malaysia were Chinese immigrants that had relocated as labourers before and during the war, and had been increasingly marginalizied in the late-war/ post war years. There was no patriotic basis for the insurrection in Malaysia and nationality actualy worked against them, while in Vietnam there was a strong undercurrent of patriotism, further bound and focused by a common nationalism and history.

In short, alien residents of Malaysia attempted to start a philosophically based insurrection in a population they shared no common history with. The Vietnamese fought in their homeland for a nationalistic goal that had a history over a thousand years old.

3. The scales don't match. At most, the MCP (Malaysian Communsit Party) could field 10,000 poorly equipped soldiers. At the peak of the Vietnamese war the North Vietnamese Army alone (not counting VC or guerrila soldiers) numbered at least 300,000.

4. The styles and attitude of government in both countries before thier wars was vastly different. The Brits, even before WW2, had begun to come to terms with the idea of self rule for their colonies, and economic conditions in the immidiate post war made this a neccesity. The French wanted to cling to their colonial posessions for national pride after the humiliation of WW2. The Americans saw the war as a periphery war in the wider Cold War. The Malaysians knew they would get self-rule, the question was when? The Vietnamese never had this security from the French or Americans and fought as such.


Man becomes the food of the divinity he worships.

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[deleted]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam War, it broke the U.S. economy in the long run. The U.S. should have spent all that money renewing their manufacturing base, instead of letting it all go to rot. If you want to see the legacy of the Vietnam War look at the old Packard building in Detroit.

If the same amount of resources and planning had been put into updating the U.S. economy, every american would now own their own homes. But we can't have that, can we? Everyone has to be on the treadmill.

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The Vietnam war was a huge mistake. My late husband was a Marine Corps. Medic in the war and he never talked about it. It was that disturbing. A shame for the USA.

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