The war in Vietnam was a difficult war for many different reasons. I'll do my best to cover some of my thoughts. The war was not a "conventional war" with opposing sides, working from a set base, attacking still targets. The southern communist Vietcong where a guerrilla army on the move the entire time. I'm sure you are aware of the tunnels systems they built, some directly under US army posts. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a vital source of supply for the army. Even though it was attacked many times, it was either rebuilt or the path moved so the supply of food, ammunition and medical supplies was never halted. Bridges that where blown up, where rebuild seemingly overnight. The terrain was also very difficult to deal with. Something the US forces did not take into consideration until it was too late. Australian forces and US sprayed thousands of liters of chemicals from C30's to kill off the jungle. The side effects of this are truly horrible and children are still being born today with horrendous disfigurements. There was some difficulty in telling friend from foe, from innocent villages going about their business. The weather even played apart in the war. The Vietcong where used to the tropical conditions, the US where not. The US forces used very "high tech" devices to attack the enemy. It was one of the first times that laser guided missiles where used to attack enemy forces. The Vietcong was very "low tech" using the materials around them. Punji sticks are a good example. The weaponry the US used was heavy and at times unreliable. The Vietcong used Russian guns and captured weapons, but often used booby traps. Slowly, this wore down the US forces. A hill would be taken one day, then lost the next. They’re where no clear lines to indicate advancement. As the war dragged on, there was less and less support from the American people themselves. The body count continued to rise and there was end clear end in site. Soldiers where forced to do more tours than they wanted. The moral dropped as the months went on. There appeared to be no end of Vietcong soldiers to fight the US. Men, women, even children where happy to fight which caused even greater moral issues for the US. They came to fight men, not children. I suggest that there may have been a break down in the lines of command and the willingness for soldiers to carry out orders. Many became disillusioned by the stalemate. As things continued, many thought there was no way to finish the war. Although some American's think that they did not lose the war in Vietnam, the true of the matter is that with the assistance of the southern communist Vietcong, on the morning of April 30, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, ending the Second Indochina War. There are some interesting web sites to look at for further information http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/history/index.html http://www.vietnampix.com/ I trust this has been of some help to you

My father served four tours in Viet Nam and served four combat tours in Korea. He explained the basic problem with both wars as follows: You can't win a political war with military might. The U.S. Government wasn't thrilled with the South leader, Diem, but they preferred him to the government of North Viet Nam. In the early days, the U.S. Government still accepted the "domino effect" as the ongoing threat of communism. Whether the domino theory was right or wrong didn't really matter. Johnson and his administration wanted to prosecute the war, but they were afraid that the other communist powers would enter on the side of North Viet Nam if we escalated the war or started hitting important targets in the North. Therefore, we limited our air forces to specific targets, mandating that the target be approached from the same direction every day, and frequently hitting the same target day after day. One of the problems with the directions from Washington was that they felt that we could convince the North that we could destroy them at our discretion, but that we weren't doing so because we were a benevolent foe. Aircraft that could carry 24 separate bombs weighing 500 pounds each were sent North with only 2 or 4 bombs, theeby making it much more difficult to knock out a specific target. So, instead of one plane attacking with 24 bombs, Washington had 12 airplanes carrying two bombs each. While this was strategically worthless, it generated good statistics, which Johnson's Secretary of Defense liked. We could show the enemy that we could continue to generate sorties and they couldn't stop us from doing so. The Secretary figured that the enemy would eventually realize that we were the stronger force and that they would negotiate a settlement. It sounds logical, but the Secretary felt that the enemy would see the rational facts and would give it up. Unfortunately, he failed to realize that we were facing an irrational enemy, one that really didn't care about the loss of life, and they just felt that we were being silly. The Army had the same problem. We would send out large forces to take a specific hill or area from the enemy forces. As soon as we fought them and defeated them on that hill, we frequently left the area. So this was not a war designed to win territory (which World War II was definately all about). We took hills and then abandoned them. One of my friends was on the ground for 11 months (before he was wounded) and he said that he fought for the same hill five times. They took the hill each time, and then they left and stayed away until some politician decided to take the hill again. I don't know many of the Navy types, but I have spoken to a number of ex-Navy F-4, A-4 and A-6 crews, and they described the situation in much the same terms as I heard from the Air Force crews. I started flying after the war, so I never had to face that problem, but a lot of my instructors in the Air Force made it real clear that we had some stupid rules of engagement that cost a lot of our people their lives. There are a number of parallels with the situation today. We are dealing with a foe that has no concept of the value of human life, and a foe who believes that killing the Christians is the fastest way to get to their heaven. So, we have suicide bombers and all of the rest of the aspects of war that we don't want to deal with. If you want to read a very good discussion about why governments get themselves into wars that aren't justified or aren't in the national interest, read Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly," which discusses the bad decisions to go to war from Troy to the Viet Nam War.

Just a tidbit of historical fact. Eisenhower supported Ngo Diem as ruler of S. Vietnam. Diem was a corrupt tyrant, but aided Catholics. The US at this time was on a Christian ferver ("In God We Trust" on money and the pledge changed to "...one nation under God" in 1954). However, South Vietnam was 70% Buddhist. Diem was so suppressive that Buddhist monks would set themselves on fire in demonstration of protest. The atrocities and injustice by the US supported regimes sucked. An election in two years to unify the country as one had been agreed to by both the north and the south. The United States' backed faction, Diem, renigged on the deal. Justice in the US sucked. Blacks could not even register to vote in Mississippi without risking death. Things started tochange in the 60's, but... ...here you have a country itself full of injustices trying to impose "virtue" by force.