Novus America wrote:Jolthig wrote:Yeah. We hardly knew the terrain over there. Plus, the guerillas used that to their advantage.
The trick party with Vietnam was that we were fighting a guerrilla war AND a real war against a state actor. The problem is we sat on the defensive, gave the North Vietnamese the imitative.
We should have invade North Vietnam up to the Mu Gia Pass (the key to the whole Ho Chi Minh trail). We should have focused on fighting the North Vietnamese and left the ARVN to fight the Viet Cong, with us providing special operations, air and artillery support, but not our infantry.
True, but then you got the USSR and pre-1968 China that would've flowed arms and maybe even sent some troops to help defend North Vietnam. Maybe the ideological divide between the USSR and China plus their border war in 1969 as well as the 1972 reproachment would've helped, but invading north Vietnam would have been very risky. Just like how we tried to invade Cuba in 1961.