West Point Is Divided on a War Doctrine’s Fate

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

How can you say that our efforts in Vietnam worked when we had been be using them since the late 50's and had some advisers in combat from 1961 our strategy failed miserably in Vietnam we spent over ten years trying to fight the insurgency in one way or another and failed.

Depends how you look at it. Even though the U.S. was blundering around and had only a vague inkling of proper counterinsurgency warfare, by the end of Tet, the South Vietnamese Vietcong was essentially destroyed and the insurgency could only be fed by sending down North Vietnamese guerillas/regular troops. Even then, it was not enough to win unless the NVA invaded with conventional forces (i.e. the Korea 1950 scenario). The first invasion in 1972 failed because the ARVN was backed up by U.S. air forces, the second one in 1974-75 succeeded once all U.S. forces had left.

The U.S. could have won if they had kept troops there. However, Vietnam would now look like South Korea, with U.S. troops still stationed along the DMZ. The U.S. was winning in 1968 and could have "won" the war if they had the political will to see it through.