What do American people think about Vietnam war?
There is little consensus and a lot of confusion. These contribute to a tendency to just forget it. People did not understand and were often afraid of the combat veterans. The shift in military personnel into support roles resulted in misleading statistics that made serving in Vietnam seem roughly as safe as driving on the expressway. But that was not the case for those in combat. US casualties mostly came from mines and snipers. Humans are made for violence, but not that kind of violence, where they never see their attacker. Vietnamese villages were fairly self-sufficient, they didn’t give much of a shit about either side, so they often got done over by both sides. Combat vets saw a lot of horrific violence against civilians. The US may have had the best treatment of physical war wounds in Vietnam than any prior war. But the psychological wounds may have been worse than any prior war. Even now, treatments for such wounds are very limited, and soldiers often don’t even get relief from other pressures in order to have time to convalesce.A “stab in the back” opinion about the war is common now in the US. But, since not winning the war did not have a major impact on the US homeland, this opinion is not as strongly felt as it was in Germany after World War I.
To what extent did the geography of Vietnam favored the Viet Cong in its victory over the United States in the Vietnam War?
Geography and terrain (jungles and mountains) favored the communist forces a great deal in negating US and South Vietnamese superiority in mobility and firepower. However, it should be noted that the Viet Cong (or National Liberation Front separate from the North Vietnamese) had been defeated by the Tet Offensive. After the Tet Offensive, most combat in South Vietnam was lead by North Vietnamese. Also, in spite of the jungle and mountains, the US and South Vietnamese won almost very battle involving more than battalion size units. So the terrain did not actually provide that much help in a tactical sense.The aspect of geography that helped the communist forces immensely is the fact that North Vietnam had a border with China and that the US could not invade and occupy North Vietnam because of the threat of fighting another war with China. North Vietnam became a sanctuary and secure base for the communist forces and as long as they could find enough men willing to die to unify their homeland and "liberate" the South (I doubt any of the North Vietnamese stopped to ask if the people in the South wanted liberating) and the Soviets and Chinese could provide the weapons and ammunition (which although were substantial were only a fraction of what the US had to spend), they could keep fighting indefinitely. Perhaps more importantly, the North Vietnamese could chose when and where to fight. So they always had the initiative.The Americans tried to bomb North Vietnam to interdict the flow of men and supplies heading South. However, aerial bombing without boots on the ground has never worked (and probably never will). So even after dropping more tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than on Germany during WW2 (and losing thousands of warplanes), and winning all tactical engagements in the South Vietnamese battle fields, the Americans ended up losing the will to fight before the North Vietnamese, and abandoned their South Vietnamese allies.Also note that it was not the North Vietnamese light infantry/guerilla forces that won the final battle of Saigon, but its regulars supported by tanks and artillery.
In as few words as possible, why did the US lose the Vietnam War?
First it did not lose the war. The South Vietnamese did. Why did the US pull out of the war? Not for military reasons. After the Tet offensive the Viet Cong were beaten and the North could have easily been bombed into submission. The problem was that politicians were micromanaging the war from the beginning and the communist were effective in recruiting the far left in colleges which undermined the popular support for the war. If the war had been managed like the Korean war South Vietnam would still exist. Once politicians give clear objective to the military they should stand back and SUPPORT the military in achieving those goals. If that had been done, as it was with Operation Linebacker, then the war would have ended in 1968. As for the loss of popular support you have to understand that there was still a large number on the far left that WANTED a communist government in the US itself and saw pulling the US out of the war as a good start.Much has been made of the Vietnamese being able to defeat the US but few actually know why and so assume that it was thru military means. Let me make this clear. IT WAS NOT. We were not thrown out like the French. The US defeated itself. It’s civilians hamstrung the military at every turn. It allowed the enemy to infiltrate and subvert it’s places of higher learning. But most damning is the lack of any real desire to end the war.