The U.S. struggles against the Communist in Vietnam

1. Now think about the overall picture - how the strengths and weaknesses work together.

a) Were the armies finely balanced or was the balance strongly weighted to one side or the other?
On some levels the armies were finely balanced and in others completely weighted to one side. With the tatics, the guerilla war fare was deffinatly more effective than open war. It gave Viet Cong the advantage. However the U.S had much more effective technology like operation Rolling Thunder. Soildiers for both sides were very efficient.

b) Which quality was most important in determining who won the war? Was one feature so important that being ahead in that area meant that other advantages or disadvantages did not matter?
Most likely it would be guerilla tactics. With this the Americans would have won the war. Effective tactics were essential especially because America was not in their native land and the Viet Cong were more familiar with the land surrounding. Because of the Guerilla tactics the U.S never really had a chance to use their high performance weapons because the Viet Cong attacked already from the jungle. The U.S tried to counter act this using agent orange chemicals however, this didnt really affect the viet cong and only lost support for the U.S because the Vietnam War was the first war to be shown on T.V.

Stage 3: Explaining your conclusions
The failure of the U.S. army to beat the Communist in Vietnam was the result of its own weaknesses and Viet Cong strengths.

2. Now write up your answer. Use this structure:
a. The U.S. weaknesses were:
Search and Destroy tactics: Inexperianced soildiers walked into booby traps, innocent villagers destroyed, and many civilian casualties.
Bombing: only slowed down the Communists, didnt really stop them.
Fearful soildiers: They were in efficient because they lost morale and were afraid to take risks and kill.

b. At the same time, the Communist strengths were:
Guerilla war tactics: This was the most effective method and pretty much won the war for the Communists. The fact that they could attack without being attacked themselves and how they could go on after being hit was most impressive.

Motivated soildiers: The Viet Cong soldiers had a reason to fight which fueled their cause.

c. The U.S. forces did have some successes. For example:
The bombing raids did allow the U.S to slow down the war effort and continue attacks while the ground forces were retreating .

d. However, there were some major failures as well. Examples of these were:
The My Lai massacre was the greatest failure of the U.S. 300- 400 civilians were killed by young, inexperianced U.S soildiers who were told that Viet Cong headquarters were in this town. However no Viet Cong were discovered.

e. The Viet Cong had some major successes, such as:
Once again Guerilla tactics were the Viet Cong's major success. Without uniform, their swift attacks were the win for the Communists. They did not have a headquarters and blended in with peasents. Their goal of wearing down U.S troops was most effective.

f. However, they also suffered defeats, for example:
The Tet Offensive was a large defeat because, without help from South Vietnam, Viet Cong was weakened and lost many soildiers. However this was not necassarily a success for the U.S.

g. If I had to identify one major American weakness, it would be [their war tatics] because: They were very inaffective towards crushing the communists. If anything the U.S tactics worked against the effort by turning both the vietnemese people and the American people against it through the media. The attempt to cut off supply lines to the Viet Cong was useless because Viet Cong was still getting their supplies brought to them through villages.

h. The key Viet Cong strength was [Guerilla war fare] because:
It confused the United states and made them fearful of what was around the corner. Like i have said these tactics were what mainly caused Vietnam to win.