Get ya every time

It's like one side was fighting for literally everything, and the other side was a bunch of scared teenagers wondering why the fuck some tropical jungle on the other side of the planet was worth dying for. The only ones actually waking up wanting to fight at all were the psychopaths that just wanted to kill someone.

Feel like this is really belittling to the VC and PAVN, the Ho Chi Minh trail is rightfully known as one of the greatest achievements of military engineering in the 20th century.
The North Vietnamese military didn't win because America was just that incompetent, they had arguably a couple of the best generals in modern history. I mean they defended against the armies of France, America, cambodia and China within a couple decades.
- If Vietnam had the PR machine of America, Võ Nguyên Giáp would be heralded as one of the greatest military minds of all time. Instead he is begrudgingly accepted as a good strategist who probably beat 3 of the biggest, most powerful militaries in the world with villagers.
  The West doesn't want to admit that a lawyer who was untrained in military doctrine and strategy beat France then the USA then Cambodia then China in a long 40 year fight. To Americans, the Vietnam was a gruesome 20 years. To Vietnam that was the second chapter of a 50 year period where someone tried to conquer them.
  
  Yeah, Giáp is undeniably one of the greatest minds in modern military history. Not only did he defeat some of the most powerful militaries in the world, he did so in strategically different positions.
  I can't think of another commander who excelled against an occupying force as an insurgent, was successful in counter insurgency, and defeated a better armed opponent in a head to head battle.
  You're totally right, if America had a general as successful everything in the US military would be named after them, we'd never hear the end of it.
  
  Extra exhausting when you hear some chest beating 2A loving conservative insist that Vietnam/Afghanistan proves police states can't ever work in America.
  There's simply no conceptualization of what domestic resistance takes or who you need to win in a protracted insurgency.
  We've just got a bunch of keyboard commanders who think your League of Legends rank would make you a modern day Rambo.
- I feel like racism definitely played a part on America's side too. Just assumed that they couldn't possibly be strategically intelligent because their houses aren't white picket fence nonsense. Clearly they are "lessers".
  
  Definitely and continues to this day beyond the battlefields
- It shows how insidious propaganda is when you can't even avoid perpetuating it when you're trying to boost the people it's against.

Recently saw a photo from Ukraine.
It was an abandoned or unoccupied trench. But it had 6 feet of rebar sticking up every few feet in the trench.
From the top of the trench it's almost invisible.

Well, what did you expect? McNamara sent in the marching morons.
Instead of upping the draft, calling on more young men to go to Vietnam, he lowered the standards for induction to the Armed Services, recalling many young men who had previously been excused from the service for physical and mental disabilities.
The majority of these men were illiterate or even had below average IQs. Many would have been likely classified as “mentally disabled” in a future generation.
Remember Bubba from Forest Gump? He wasn't some random stupid guy, he was one of "McNamara's morons".
I work with a guy like that, probably autistic and not "lemmy autistic". "LOL, I'm so quirky and have totally typical human traits! Don't call me the R word! I have legit mental problems!"
Nah. This guy couldn't hang working at a hardware store, moving mulch and rocks from point A to B, so they made him the "cart boy". All he has to do is bring the shopping carts and sleds in from the parking lot. First day, he took the carts from inside and put them back in the parking lot.
Imagine going into combat with this guy, the most unforgiving quarter in human experience, and you must cooperate or die. I'd frag him to save myself and my buddies.
- "lemmy autistic". "LOL, I'm so quirky and have totally typical human traits! Don't call me the R word! I have legit mental problems!"
  you do realize high functioning autistic people actually exist, right?
  
  Look at the posts on the autism and ADHD comms. They're all about typical human foibles.
  I suspect it's a bunch of young people who want to feel special, stand out. The way GenZ's education went, treating them like identical little prisoners and taking their agency, probably has them screaming to stand out from the crowd. And that's not getting into social media forcing conformity.
- Ufff, that last sentence came hard
  
  Almost deleted it, but it does hit hard and explains how many of those men likely died.
  
  It's fan fiction I think. Being elitist with mental handicap because they have "overcome" theirs with intellect and willpower, most likely. Probably scared they are the one that would get fragged. In dire need of human companionship if I was to take a gander.

Drafted soldiers was a big problem also we may have been facing less trained organized military in the south, but US history didn't teach us the north had a VERY organized and trained military who were experts in jungle warfare.

Well yeah, they hadn't managed to get past bananas in their self defense classes.
- Now, it's quite simple to defend yourself against a man armed with a banana. First of all you force him to drop the banana; then, second, you eat the banana, thus disarming him. You have now rendered him 'elpless.
  
  Third - drop the banana peel on the floor and make him slip on it.
- If we are ever invaded by monkeys with balloons, I am ready to serve.

So that's the trick to defeating American imperialism, pointy sticks.
- Yeah just leave some mcds out as bait. Maybe do it in DC and Florida
- And being willing to have a couple dozen of your own guys get killed for every dead enemy. I feel this tiny detail is being overlooked in this thread.
  
  It was closer to 3 - 1 during the first two Indochina wars, and 1 - 3 (in the other direction) during the third.
  (The US weren't the only enemy)
- Worked well for native Americans
  
  Only at the battle of the little bighorn

The Almighty Stick.
And you're saying you made it even more deadly?

Weren't the pointy sticks like, parts of traps?
- Holy shit! This Lemmite is one of them! The death magic guys!
  
  The ol poopypokeyhole...
- Yeah, pointy sticks smeared with shit as a trap are quite effective when the traps are hidden in dense jungle.
  
  I mean shit, even the predator couldn't avoid those

I would have guessed that more than half of them had below average intelligence to be honest.
- To be fair, that is how averages work.
  On a bell curve half are above, half below the exact average point. If you take into account college students were exempt from the draft, you remove a chunk that's likely mostly above the middle point. So by definition, the group leftover would be of below average intelligence, and more than 50% of people word fall below the average point.
  
  Yes.
  The only thing to add is that the intelligence we are talking about here is a social construct and the numbers used to express it have specifically been adjusted to give a normal distribution (a bell curve).
- Well yeah they were american.