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The Japanese In World War Ii

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Praxus

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I recently started to read "Ripples of Battle" by Victor Davis Hanson, and he brought up what seemed to me as a very good point. His point was basically that because of the means by which we had to defeat the Japanese was by annihilation, it convinced us that all Asians fought in the same manor. So when we fought in Korea and especially in Vietnam, instead of fighting for territory (such as Hanoi) we tried to annihilate their forces, and this is what lead ultimately to our pullouts. What do you guys think?

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Complete nonsense.

The Korean War *was* a land war for territory between the US and China (after Chinese intervention).

The Vietnam War was a guerrilla war where the US was nominally supporting a South Vietnamese government, and so in theory "controlled" all the territory of South Vietnam. Basically though it was a colonial war where the US was trying to keep a puppet government in power, while a popular resistance movement (the Vietcong) didn't want a foreign controlled government. Lao, Cambodia, and North Vietnam were just foreign nations either supporting or being used by the indigenous guerrillas. This is an entirely different type of war from the Japanese War in the Pacific.

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The Korean War *was* a land war for territory between the US and China (after Chinese intervention).
Absolutely, never denied that. He simply stated that the belief was held in both wars and affected how we fought. He also stated that it was exspecially the case in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was a guerrilla war where the US was nominally supporting a South Vietnamese government, and so in theory "controlled" all the territory of South Vietnam.  Basically though it was a colonial war where the US was trying to keep a puppet government in power, while a popular resistance movement (the Vietcong) didn't want a foreign controlled government.  Lao, Cambodia, and North Vietnam were just foreign nations either supporting or being used by the indigenous guerrillas.  This is an entirely different type of war from the Japanese War in the Pacific.

The fact is that we did not control a lot of the the territory in South Vietnam and we controled next to none of the territory in North Vietnam. We would find where the enemy was, engage him, and try to destroy him, but we would never take hold the ground, and we certainly didn't try to capture Hanoi, which was probably the best bet to ending the war.

Yes it is a different type of war that the enemy was fighting, and that's his point. We tried to apply the same strategy as in World War II to this extent: Instead of capturing North Vietnam, we tried to defeat the enemy by annihilation like we did with the Japanese.

Edited by Praxus
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So when we fought in Korea and especially in Vietnam, instead of fighting for territory (such as Hanoi) we tried to annihilate their forces, and this is what lead ultimately to our pullouts. What do you guys think?

I'm not sure if you can draw too many strategic parallels between WWII and the wars that followed it. Towards the end of WWII, the US had two choice in dealing with Japan, they could blockade the island and starve them out or nuke them. Due to the geographical and political climates, they didn't have either of these options in Korea or Viet Nam.

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I recently started to read "Ripples of Battle" by Victor Davis Hanson, and he brought up what seemed to me as a very good point.  His point was basically that because of the means by which we had to defeat the Japanese was by annihilation, it convinced us that all Asians fought in the same manor. So when we fought in Korea and especially in Vietnam, instead of fighting for territory (such as Hanoi) we tried to annihilate their forces, and this is what lead ultimately to our pullouts. What do you guys think?

We were initially fighting for territory in Korea, liberating Seoul from the Commies, before the mission evolved into removing the Commies from the penninsula. Once China entered, it became more important not to use nuclear weapons and to focus on trying to maintain the ROK as an entitiy.

Vietnam, I don't want to touch right now since my understanding of the war is more limited then I would like.

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