>>509402495 (OP)Nonsensical war goals, undefined tactical objectives, and the US just doesn’t have the stomach for long ears like that.
The official objective was a free and democratic™ Vietnam, but this was always something the Vietnamese people would have to decide they wanted. And to prevent the spread of communism under the domino theory, but given how Vietnam had been treated siding with the communist over the west was pretty much a default for Vietnam.
Tactically all we had was drop bombs and go out and kill Vietcong and NVA, point at the kill count, and declare victory. Hard strategic objectives didn’t exist or weren’t something the US could easily get to so dead gooks was the only real metric of success.m
And the us public just isn’t used to long grueling wars and getting to see what that looks like. Most wars the US had been in up to that point had been either quick, isolated from the general public, easy to justify, or some combination. The US doesn’t have the same history as a lot of the world where regional and occasional large scale conflict pop up every generation or mass suffering is the standard day to day. Or extremly limited involvement in World War One heavily scarred us to the point the majority of Americans had a “those European fags tricked us. I ain’t fighting their wars for them no more” mentality until Japan directly attacked us in 41
If the US actually continued pushing we would have eventually ground the NVA to dust and occupied the whole thing, but the will just wasn’t there to do it.