This should be a quite easy answer, but the British Army destroyed communist insurgents in Malaysia.

What was so different between Malaysia and Vietnam?

There has already been a thread about this recently. Anyway Nixon should be here soon to tell that the Americans did not lose the war;)

This should be a quite easy answer, but the British Army destroyed communist insurgents in Malaysia.
We have a better sense of humour.

Yoda and Mr President, the two of you are cautioned NOT to spam this forum.

If you don't want to contribute to the topic, then don't post in it.

Redtom, basically the US as a people didn't want to win, the feeling was the war was immoral, and was extremly unpopular.

Depends on what you mean by 'losing'?

A lot of people still don't know why we were there, and those blaming a single presidency for involving us in the war are wrong. We didn't lose the war in the military field, in fact our soldiers were more than happy to finish them off, they had the means and the military foundations needed to strike succesfully against the communist sancturaries - and literally blasted them on several occassions during the Nixon Administration. Those who say that the Tet Offensive was a giant military defeat for the United States are also wrong. In fact, that was the only moment in the war when we really crammed them. The problem was that the political foundation for war was smoldering, which caused our defeat. A number of factors are guilty of our defeat: the media, and the hippie socialist traitors on the campuses. Whipping up an anti-war attitude caused only our cause in Vietnam to smolder. These smugs labelled the war immoral, questioning our presence in Vietnam to the extreme etc. All of them believed that we weren't supposed to be there; that the war simply was a 'civil war' between the two Vietnams, and that we shouldn't interfere. The media took care of business too. They made it seem like our soldiers committed heinous acts of barbarism every day, leading all the focus over to the 'lack of morale' and 'confidence' in the war, saying that our soldiers were ready to give up. I think it's a very sad chapter of our great nation's history; that the media deliberately deluded the silent majority of Americans with their isolationist behavoir and moral hypocrisy. Just outrageous. And some of these 'peaceful' anti-war protesters were bomb makers and sinister perpertrators of bombing campuses, killing dozens of innocent civilians just to promote their 'righteous' cause. Traitors is the only befitting word is this context. The different administrations, notably Kennedy and Johnson contributed in the wrong direction, with Johnson ending up giving the population no reasonable presention as to how we were there and what we fought for. Kennedy's decision to take out Diem was, with all due respect, retarded, and helped pushing us further toward defeat. But again, why was he iultimately assassinated?? Because the media had long been running an extensive smear campaign agains everything Diem stood for, instead backing up communist priests in South Vietnam who contributed to his death. The media chose this path to stir up commotion in the population, and with Kennedy ultimately forced to pick him out - both because of the population's overall discontent with Diem, but also because of the pressure from his utterly fatheaded surroundings, McNamara and the Generals.

Defeat came closer when the media had run this red herring for a decade; no wonder the average American got tired of the war. Johnson unfortunately failed to stand up and state our cause, had he done that, things could have turned out different. Instead, the media functioned as the only orator of the war; they were the only ones to turn to - no viable account of the war from the president or his administration.

This is really comparable to the fall of Rome - no one can state with 100 pct certainly why Rome collapsed - and this goes for the Vietnam War too, although there are obvious mistakes made by different parties.

I think it was because of luck of popular support and because of the fact that the American army wasn't prepared to fight guerilla forces in such a landscape.

The military was fighting with one arm tied behind it's back. The fact that Hanoi and Haphong were "off limits" as far a bombing raids go is insane. Who ever heard of a country fighting a war with someone but not being able to bomb them.

crazy

I spent alot of time on this one in university, and my view (developed, I might add, round about the same time I was protesting the Gulf War) is quite similar to Nixon's. I believe the war was a strange effort that seemed altruistic when decided in the boardroom but grew brutal in the practical attempts to meet that ideal; the U.S. won the war but lost the guerrilla war in the sense that each time the Reds tried to move into "Mao's Third Stage" - e.g. conventional warfare to surge and destroy the battered enemy with popular support, they failed spectacularly.

My dates are off: there was one such offensive in the mid-60s, one in '68, one in '72 and one in '75, and in each case, the conventional firepower of the US/RVN found the concentrating Red forces in the open and massacred them. Sort of: the exception, of course, is 1975. What happened there, as virtually every military history I've seen argues, is that the South Vietnamese units held, the AFRVN bombed the snot out of the NVA troop concentrations just as the yanks did in '72 and '68, and all was working as it should until the RVN ran short of the vast pools of US supplies needed to maintain their highly conventional defence. Only then did the South Vietnamese break.

That support was not there because of Congressional resolutions to stop that support, driven by anti-war sentiment. Politically, that attitude appeared because US and the US public had the wrong standard for winning the war: winning it was never a matter of "winning," but a matter of "not losing," isolating and destroying the periodic attempts by the Viet Cong to come out of hiding into bomb's reach, and doing it with enough savagery that the guerrillas would become an afterthought like the Karen are in Burma. That mistake translated just as much into bad generalship as it did into bad political policymaking.

R.III

McNamera. He was a dolt and should have been sacked after the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Originally posted by redtom
What was so different between Malaysia and Vietnam?

Just about everything.

To list the main points:

a) The war in Malaysia/Malaya wasn't being fought for national 'libereation', the war in Vietnam was. The British had promised Malaya independance prior to the war breaking out, and this promise had been believed by most Malays. In contrast, the Communists in the Vietnam war were able to gain public support under the guise of 'liberating' South Vietnam from its foreign influenced government.

b) Race. Almost all the communists in Malaya were ethnic Chinese, who were an extreamly unpopular minority in the eyes of the ethnic Malays. Hence, the communists had no realistic hope of ever gaining mass support. In Vietnam this wasn't an issue as the population was almost totally Vietnamese ethnic.

c) Logistics. None of Malaya's neighbours wanted anything to do with the communists, and even if they had British dominance of the seas, and the rugged terrain of northern Malaya would have meant that any foreign aid could have been little more then token. In contrast, North Vietnam had road and rail links with China.

Mr President...you are cautioned NOT to spam this forum.
Just to show that I don't also spam in this forum I will answer the question.

I think the single most important reason for America "losing" the Vietnam war was that the South Vietnamese government was never a popular one.

Originally posted by sabo10
The military was fighting with one arm tied behind it's back. The fact that Hanoi and Haphong were "off limits" as far a bombing raids go is insane. Who ever heard of a country fighting a war with someone but not being able to bomb them.

crazy

You got it right. The war was lost because politicians ran the war instead of the military. The military wanted to attack into Laos and close the Ho-Chi-Minh trail, where all of the supplies for the NVA were coming in. Congress feared widening the war (to a large part due to public pressure on the home front) so they nixed it, thus the NVA never lost its lifeline. A high-ranking NVA commander admitted after the war, that if the USA had closed the trail, the war would have turned out differently.

Here is a recent thread about the topic.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32073

Adn I stand by my extensive comments in that thread - they did not lose, but rather failed to win, by not having the political will to do what was necessary for victory. As one said, if Rolling Thunder had been of the character of Linebacker, and the likes of Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara had let the warriors do what they did best, then things would have been vastly different.
As such, it was more the non-application of force at the right place and time, than a question of will, but will was still a factor.

Originally posted by Simon Darkshade
Adn I stand by my extensive comments in that thread - they did not lose, but rather failed to win, by not having the political will to do what was necessary for victory. As one said, if Rolling Thunder had been of the character of Linebacker, and the likes of Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara had let the warriors do what they did best, then things would have been vastly different.
As such, it was more the non-application of force at the right place and time, than a question of will, but will was still a factor.

I subscribe to your sentiments, Simon. I also believe that the failure to lay out objectives from the beginning, was a request for defeat. Also, by handing out the ticket to Diem so early in the war, was just a fatuous way to deal with the situation. Johnson surroundings was filled with egocentric SOBs, who sought to escalate the war, without devoting any further mindset as to what the consquences might have been. You don't blindly send in hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and then direct the forces halfheartedly.

The fact that the deteriorating political scene at home was impeding our effort so immensely, made Johnson believe that the war was unwinnable toward the end of his presidency. In order to win that war, the political aims have to be set from the start, in order for military to conduct their operations with continuing fighting spirit and faith in both the administration and in the hearts and minds of the American people. No war fought abroad has ever been cheered by the people, but you can make them think somewhat neutrally about what to say; make them find a balance between opposing the war and cheering it.

Originally posted by Case


Just about everything.

To list the main points:

a) The war in Malaysia/Malaya wasn't being fought for national 'libereation', the war in Vietnam was. The British had promised Malaya independance prior to the war breaking out, and this promise had been believed by most Malays. In contrast, the Communists in the Vietnam war were able to gain public support under the guise of 'liberating' South Vietnam from its foreign influenced government.

b) Race. Almost all the communists in Malaya were ethnic Chinese, who were an extreamly unpopular minority in the eyes of the ethnic Malays. Hence, the communists had no realistic hope of ever gaining mass support. In Vietnam this wasn't an issue as the population was almost totally Vietnamese ethnic.

c) Logistics. None of Malaya's neighbours wanted anything to do with the communists, and even if they had British dominance of the seas, and the rugged terrain of northern Malaya would have meant that any foreign aid could have been little more then token. In contrast, North Vietnam had road and rail links with China.

Well said. Plus of course it was a peninsula and isolated. And there was no veteran NVA to worry about.

We Lost?

Who? There were very few if any american soldiers in S Vietman when the North Vietnamese took over. It was a political decision not to send support the South needed to keep fighting. And, 40 years later (+ or -) the "loss" of South Vietnam doesn't seem to have been such a big defeat for the US. Pretty final for the S Vienamese who worked to maintian their independence, but are you sure the US lost? More like we took our ball and went home. Some of the people who had been on our team lost, but we just made a political decision not to spend any more resources.

This may not have been the right decision, but the US armed forces did not lose.

The problem started with Truman when he didn't help Ho Chi Minh. Just another one of his Asian screwups of his presidency.

Originally posted by Case
a) The war in Malaysia/Malaya wasn't being fought for national 'libereation', the war in Vietnam was. The British had promised Malaya independance prior to the war breaking out, and this promise had been believed by most Malays. In contrast, the Communists in the Vietnam war were able to gain public support under the guise of 'liberating' South Vietnam from its foreign influenced government.I don't believe the Brits 'promised' Malaya anything of independence. Independence only came about because India, the crown jewel in the British empire, got their independence and the Brits began to divest their imperial holdings; having finding it more difficult to keep the colonies w/o India.

b) Race. Almost all the communists in Malaya were ethnic Chinese, who were an extreamly unpopular minority in the eyes of the ethnic Malays. Hence, the communists had no realistic hope of ever gaining mass support. In Vietnam this wasn't an issue as the population was almost totally Vietnamese ethnic.As I had mentioned in the other thread, the Chinese were the majority of the population during the 40s/50s, if you add in Singapore's Chinese. Had the Communist received full support fr all Chinese, the British would have a serious uprising in their hands. As it was, the Communists only had major support fr the squatter Chinese and fr one dialectic group. The mainstream Chinese communities mostly ignored the Communists; as they were more pro-KMT (the Communist-Nationalist rivalry having extended to every overseas Chinese community). The KMT had overseas Chinese roots; Sun Yat-sen himself came to Nanyang to find support for his fledging movement at the turn of the century.

And to say the Chinese were an extremely unpopular minority is to stretch things a bit. Sure there're some bad blood, in some areas but generally the two peoples just kept apart, with some interaction.

Only bad blood I can think of was 'cause during WW2, the Chinese were actively resisting the Japanese (because of the Japanese invasion of China), whereas most of the Malays were actively collaborating with the Japanese....

The military actions involved seem to have been pretty well dealt so far. So I ask the question - did the people of South Vietnam feel they had "lost"? And by "people" I mean those outside the ruling classes deposed by the Communists.

I know little of South Vietnam's history after 1975 - were the NVA/VC welcomed in any genuine way? Did life improve or worsen for the average South Vietnamese? (excluding the obvious benefits of not being at war any more).

I'd prefer answers that didnt just say "the stinking Commies won - of course they were worse off" - I'm thinking of quantifiable improvements/decline in their lifestyle/standard of living/effective freedoms etc.

Isnt that more important?

Originally posted by Rodgers
The military actions involved seem to have been pretty well dealt so far. So I ask the question - did the people of South Vietnam feel they had "lost"? And by "people" I mean those outside the ruling classes deposed by the Communists.

I know little of South Vietnam's history after 1975 - were the NVA/VC welcomed in any genuine way? Did life improve or worsen for the average South Vietnamese? (excluding the obvious benefits of not being at war any more).

I'd prefer answers that didnt just say "the stinking Commies won - of course they were worse off" - I'm thinking of quantifiable improvements/decline in their lifestyle/standard of living/effective freedoms etc.

Isnt that more important?

The south vietnam is still different from the north and the center. Right now, Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon), is the major commercial city of Vietnam. The situation is is similar to Hong Kong and mainland China (to a lesser degree of course). They are lots of foreign restaurants and western and japanese culture is present. I've seen many people speaking fluent english and japanese here. They are also rich people. By rich, I mean someone who can owe more that one house for example. It's hard to say if the quality of life would have been better if the US would have win. I honestly don't know.

Edit: I forgot to answer another part of your question: the south vietnamese who think they lost the war are no longer in the country. The others try they best to forget the past.

Personally, i would've started to push 'Linebacker' all the way up to Ho Chi Minh City and into Uncle Ho's ass, that would've won the war, or well from what Nixon thought, Dropped the bomb on the north :nuke:

Originally posted by barron of ideas
We Lost?

Who? There were very few if any american soldiers in S Vietman when the North Vietnamese took over. It was a political decision not to send support the South needed to keep fighting. And, 40 years later (+ or -) the "loss" of South Vietnam doesn't seem to have been such a big defeat for the US. Pretty final for the S Vienamese who worked to maintian their independence, but are you sure the US lost? More like we took our ball and went home. Some of the people who had been on our team lost, but we just made a political decision not to spend any more resources.

This may not have been the right decision, but the US armed forces did not lose.

They also should not have been there in the first place. A huge waste of our national resources.

Before the war Johnson talked about the Pacific becoming a "Red sea" if South Vietnam "fell". JFK spoke of Thailand and the Philippines going Communist. All those dominoes.

What countries became Communist after Saignon was taken over?? JUST ONE - Laos. A tiny illegitimate "country" the French created as a buffer between Vietnam and Thailand.

So much for those dominoes. :rolleyes:

Contrary to the opinions given on this board, the US lost the war in Vietnam badly. They lost in the military sense that the enemy held the field at the end of the shooting. They lost in the political sense massively. After the war the US was almost afraid to touch anything in the region.

As to why. That is simple. There was no plan. It is an old saw that people do not plan to fail, they fail to plan. This is what happened. There was never a goal, at least not in a clear cut, words on paper sense. There was never an exit strategy. There was never any attempt to involve the nation. In the end it came across as pointless mercenary work.

I respect the views of Nixon and the others in the sense that any time there was clarity of objective, the American soldiers claimed that objective. However it was a military and political disaster of the first order.

J

PS You karate yes. You karate no. You karate ghe so, squish, just like grape. The Karate Kid.

I think America lost because the Veitnam people knew the place a lot better, America wasn't prepared to fight in that kind of terrain. The Vietnam people already had tunnels built under ground and seemed to have an unlimited source of people willing to fight. I just saw a movie on this, "We Were Soldiers." It was a good, but bloody movie on this topic. Go see it if you already haven't.

Originally posted by Knight-Dragon
I don't believe the Brits 'promised' Malaya anything of independence. Independence only came about because India, the crown jewel in the British empire, got their independence and the Brits began to divest their imperial holdings; having finding it more difficult to keep the colonies w/o India.

After the loss of India and the trauma of WW2, Britain made no effort to keep Malaya as a colony, and made this pretty clear to the Malayans. As Malaya was the most profitable colony before WW2, this is a good indication of how bad a shape Britain was in, and how humiliating WW2 had been.

As I had mentioned in the other thread, the Chinese were the majority of the population during the 40s/50s, if you add in Singapore's Chinese.

AFAIK, all the fighting was in rural Malaya, meaning that Singapore was an irrelevancy.

Had the Communist received full support fr all Chinese, the British would have a serious uprising in their hands. As it was, the Communists only had major support fr the squatter Chinese and fr one dialectic group. The mainstream Chinese communities mostly ignored the Communists; as they were more pro-KMT (the Communist-Nationalist rivalry having extended to every overseas Chinese community). The KMT had overseas Chinese roots; Sun Yat-sen himself came to Nanyang to find support for his fledging movement at the turn of the century.

Good point, I should have been more specific. :o

And to say the Chinese were an extremely unpopular minority is to stretch things a bit. Sure there're some bad blood, in some areas but generally the two peoples just kept apart, with some interaction.

OK.

Only bad blood I can think of was 'cause during WW2, the Chinese were actively resisting the Japanese (because of the Japanese invasion of China), whereas most of the Malays were actively collaborating with the Japanese....

From what I've read, the Japanese went out of their way to kill Chinese (as KMT supporters).

Originally posted by SunTzu
[B]Personally, i would've started to push 'Linebacker' all the way up to Ho Chi Minh City and into Uncle Ho's ass, that would've won the war, or well from what Nixon thought, Dropped the bomb on the north :nuke:

Why would you have bombed Saigon? (which is what Ho Chi Minh City used to be called). Droping nukes, or destroying the dams on the Red River (which would have had the same effect) would have achieved little other then turning the US into an international pariah. North Vietnam had no industry to speak of, and all the devestation of such an attack could have achived would be to really piss the North Vietnamese off, and increase the numbers marching south.

Originally posted by Case
After the loss of India and the trauma of WW2, Britain made no effort to keep Malaya as a colony, and made this pretty clear to the Malayans. As Malaya was the most profitable colony before WW2, this is a good indication of how bad a shape Britain was in, and how humiliating WW2 had been.Britain only 'lost' India after WW2, after the Viceroy (Lord Mountbatten?) advocated letting India go away altogether. During the course of WW2, the Brits never promised independence to the Malayans, contrary to what you had posted in your first post. ;)

AFAIK, all the fighting was in rural Malaya, meaning that Singapore was an irrelevancy.Only because the Communist never had support fr the mainstream Chinese. If we had followed the original thrust of your original post, it would seem that all Malayan Chinese were Communist supporters. In which case, Singapore's Chinese would come in big in the picture. In those days, no difference betw the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya.

Actually, still not much difference now.... ;)

And there were Communists in Singapore. After Lee Kuan Yew and co came to power, they were quick to cut the Communists off fr their support base, hence the Communist problem never turned serious in Singapore. IIRC.

From what I've read, the Japanese went out of their way to kill Chinese (as KMT supporters).Yeah, some of the Japanese units in Malaya had served in China....

OK, I admit my ignorance on all things Malaysian and Singaporean ;)

For America, the Viet Nam War was lost in Washington, not on the battlefields where American soldiers prevailed in nearly every fight.

It was lost in small town America, the homeland, where people felt their loved ones were being sacrificed for a misguided, mismanaged conflict with no clear objective, and no end in sight.

Victory was never an option.

how humiliating WW2 had been.
On the contrary, to quote Churchill, WW2 was our "finest hour".
to have an unlimited source of people willing to fight.
*couigh* propaganda
Victory was never an option.
Surely if America had conducted a swift, effective and above all quick campaign then the small town effect you described would not have occured and therefore victory would have been an option.

Rodgers and Spaniel have the best responses IM not so HO.

The French lost:p :lol:

whoops, meant Hanoi :(
my bad

Originally posted by gr8ful wes
The French lost:p :lol:
Yes, thats right. Lets blame France.

Originally posted by MrPresident

On the contrary, to quote Churchill, WW2 was our "finest hour".

Whatever it was in Europe, in Asia WW2 was a total humilitation for Britain. The crushing defeat of the British army by the smaller Japanese army in 1941-42 swept away the bluff which sustained the British Empire. While the British ultimatly defeated the Japanese in Burma, this wasn't sufficiant to restore British prestige in Asia to anything resembling the pre-war level.

Originally posted by Case
Whatever it was in Europe, in Asia WW2 was a total humilitation for Britain. The crushing defeat of the British army by the smaller Japanese army in 1941-42 swept away the bluff which sustained the British Empire. While the British ultimatly defeated the Japanese in Burma, this wasn't sufficiant to restore British prestige in Asia to anything resembling the pre-war level.

I accept your point on 41-42 and the consequences for the Empire, but I find it a bit hard to dismiss the whole period as a "total humiliation" after my grandfather and his colleagues spent '43-'45 killing veteran Japanese soldiers in the jungle at ratios as high as 10 to 1. Call it a draw, at least!

[EDIT: the graph that was here was, um, threadjacking]

R.III