Quote Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus View Post
Yeah, true. The North Vietnam, the VPA, was a solid front, a coherent conventional army. Of course, the Viet Cong were mostly guerillas in the Southern Vietnam, but that is an another story. Still, even with all as it was, even if US did manage to destroy the VPA, the war would be far from won, due to the insane numbers of partisans remaining. And I find it stunning that US could not make significant progress against the conventional VPA. I guess the terrain really was that bad...

Wait, volunteer military? Haha, good joke. After almost exactly 60,000 American dead, I doubt very many wanted to join... Logically, the US population is so large that it should have found enough willing recruits, but why then did they institute the draft? Because they needed more men who did not sign up I suppose. Which means the sentiment really was that opposed to war. And the lack of backbone is as much of a problem as a lousy military. Look at the Russian Empire in WWI. Internal strife is more dangerous than enemy munitions. Many wars are won by words, not weapons, and the DRV won that war.
Actually, the Thet Offensive pretty much finished off the Viet Cong, if you read Into the Storm by Tom Clancy and Gen. Fred Franks, you'll see that the major problem was the desire to institue a DMZ and political division between North and South, as in Korea. Essentially, the American Police Action failed because it was not preceeded by an actual war in which any attempt was actually made to defeat the NVA.

The Cage by Tom Abrahams is a more personal analysis by a British Officer of the problems he faced in the American Army.