One of Westmoreland's biggest issues absolutely was his indiscriminate nature. The U.S. though without a doubt had the logistical elements in place to outmatch the Vietcong which they typically did. Even the Vietcong's guerilla efforts weren't that fantastic against the U.S. (I mean the U.S. has its own thorough history of guerrilla fighting going back to the colonial times, adopting practices learned from the native americans) The part that struggled was the South Vietnamese military side. The local military forces were completely clueless and basically got themselves slaughtered all the time. The casualty rates for the South Vietnamese military was something like what, 85%-90% of all casualties for the entire Southern backing forces? Its why they folded basically in an instant when the U.S. pulled out. They never had their shit together.
Ho Chi Minh was a genius and genuine patriot, and although Maduro is neither of those things, Venezuela would almost certainly still put up more of a fight than Iraq and the everyone in the US's other middle eastern proxy wars have.
The US's military doctrine and training for roughly the past twenty years just simply wouldn't apply to a country such as Venezuela. The geography is entirely different for starters, but in addition, the Venezuelan military is a drilled force with actual tactics, not some ragtag terrorist group. Unlike in the middle east, with little area to hide from aerial superiority, Venezuela is also largely vast swathes of jungle, and vast swathes of mountains. It would probably be Vietnam on steroids, but this time the US can't rely on the use of chemical agents such as Agent Orange to help with that dense jungle.
I actually need to look more into Ho Chi Minh, although the way I heard things doesn't make the US look good at all, basically Minh wanted US support, we woulden't give it to him and as such he had to make a deal with the USSR
You know much of the war was conventionally fought right? NV was given jets, tanks, artillery, food, logistical support, military advisors, support personnel from China and the Soviet union. Soviet ships warning NV positions of incoming bombers, reducing their effectiveness greatly. They still ended up losing 3 times as many troops as the ARVN and U.S. combined over the course of the war.
Also your comment about the Tet offensive having the same number of causalities is incorrect, 9k dead, 35k wounded on U.S./SV side. 45k dead, 60k+ wounded for NV. In the end, pulling out was the shittiest thing to do to a nation you were supposed to be allied with and protect.
The essence of America's failure in Vietnam boils down to the top military officials, particularly Robert McNamara figured that a war could be won by simply killing more of the enemy than they killed us despite the fact that for thousands of years of warfare, wars were won by denying the enemy land. Every hill that we fought over, we abandoned after the battle because "the enemy was dead there" despite Vietcong reinforcements going and recapturing the same hill the next day because we left it. And this help destroy American morale as well, both of the soldiers as much as back home. We had a business tycoon for a Secretary of Defense and he ran the war like a business instead of a war.
A huge pile of shit that was the biggest catalyst for the west to send troops to Vietnam and ultimately the cause of a massive amount of lives lost. He and the viet minh had no problem having political rival parties and civilians that were against communism assassinated. During the land reforms anywhere from 15-100k (depending on what source you believe) of their own citizens were executed.
Man, that all sounds very patriotic.
Ho Chi Minh was highly westernized in that he literally went to school in Paris and so on if I remember correctly. He was pretty important within the French communist movement and he moved around a lot before ultimately landing in his home country and helping there. He spent a lot of time in Soviet Russia, and spent quite a while in China until Chiang Kai-shek clamped down on Communists, and that's barely scraping the surface.
South Vietnam was a failed state that was rife with corruption. The government tax agency was so inefficient that it paid its workers more in wages than it collected in revenue. * On the local level government officials would bully the rural populace by demanding bribes and illegal taxes. It couldn't economically afford to sustain the US-supported military build up it had to undergo just to avoid being destroyed and uprooted by its own people.
It wasn't the "shittiest thing to do", it was the only thing left to do. The US never should have committed to protecting a corrupt dictatorship to begin with under Eisenhower, and it certainly didn't do so out of the interests of protecting the people of South Vietnam.
*Anatomy of a War, Gabriel Kolko, pg. 224-225
The U.S. killed millions of Vietnamese indiscriminately because of their political leanings and we want to advocate for U.S. involvement to topple a socialist government in Venzuela... why? If there was ever a war you could have ignorantly advocated for it would have been the Vietnam war because at least there the people initially supported us, and we had a chance to support Ho Chi Minh fight against Vietnam's colonial oppressors, yet we chose to back stab him & ignore him as our fear of the commies began to take hold.
But now things are different. U.S. intentions have been made very clear over the decades (many declassified documents exist showing the extent of CIA meddling in nations all over the world) and those intentions now and have never had anything to do with the the people of the states they meddle in. The U.S. sole concern is it's supremacy & the powerful economic interests it serves. Calling for U.S. military intervention that will most certainly lead to hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in Venzuela is sickening.
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