Vietcong Pros And Cons

How did the military which destroyed nazis and the japanese 2 decades prior and fought back against the koreans 3 years prior lose to a largely unadvanced guerrilla force? A flawed strategy. The United States’s strategy was flawed in many ways with their war with the Viet Cong. Some of the most prominent ways were that the United States failed to understand the type of conflict resulting in a much harder fight, the United States failed to adapt to the VietCongs tactics, and the Viet Cong had many large advantages and the United States had many disadvantages in the war.

To begin, the United States wasn’t fighting the same type of war as the VietCong. The United States failed to realize that the VietCong were fighting 2 wars, one militarily and

The VietCong used guerilla warfare; guerilla warfare is a style of combat “fought by irregulars in fast-moving, small-scale actions against orthodox military” This style of combat utilizes surprise tactics and sabotages to attack the enemy. The United States decided to not improve on their previous tactics and decided to use new tactics. One of the most used tactics were air bombardments in operation Rolling Thunder; these bombings were ineffective because they were bombing nearly empty jungles making this tactic a waste of money. Another tactic that was used was deforestation. To do this the United states used a herbicide called Agent Orange. This was effective at destroying the vegetation because it was sprayed at up to 20 times the manufacturers recommendation. Although this was effective in destroying vegetation it could also cause up to 19 different diseases including 8 different forms of cancer.The last main tactic of the US was to set up large firebases. These large bases required a large amount of resources to be operated and needed to be in a very strategically beneficial location so the resources were not wasted, many of these firebases were undermined in many different ways to reduce the effectiveness of these bases making many of this a waste of resources. A prime example of this is Khe Sanh, a firebase located on the Vietnamese-Laos border;

One major advantage that the VietCong had was they were fighting in their home jungle which allowed them to do many types of standoff attacks. “A standoff attack was generally a means of exerting military pressure on a target that the VC/NVA couldn't hope to defeat” This military pressure was exerted through indirect fire; these harassments allowed for the VietCong to kill an allied soldier or civilian every 25 rounds fired and usually escape unharmed. One of the major disadvantages that the United states faced in the war effort was the political disaster that ensued during the war. On January 30 1968 the VietCong launched a massive military offensive called the Tet offensive. For months prior to the offencive the VietCong had been conducting a series of smaller attacks. Because of this president Lyndon B. Johnson launched a political relations blitz saying that the war was coming to a close and the United States was coming out victorious. On the morning of the 30th of January VietCong soldiers attacked the US embassy in Saigon; this place was widely considered to be safe and would never be attacked. There were 5 American soldiers killed and 19 VietCong “This was just one of many onslaughts that took place as the communists conducted their offensive in five major cities, 36 provincial capitals and smaller hamlets across the country.” To stop the public outrage Johnson ordered