Did the United States win or lose the Vietnam War?
In late 1972, South Vietnam and the United States were winning the Vietnam War decisively by every conceivable measure. That was the view of our enemy, the North Vietnamese government officials. Victory was apparent when President Nixon ordered the U.S. Air Force to bomb industrial and military targets in Hanoi, North Viet Nam’s capital city, and in Haiphong, its major port city, and we would stop the bombing if the North Vietnamese would attend the Paris Peace Talks that they had left earlier. The North Vietnamese did go back to the Paris Peace talks, and we did stop the bombing as promised.
On January the 23rd, 1973, President Nixon gave a speech to the nation on primetime television announcing that the Paris Peace Accords had been initialed by the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the Accords would be signed on the 27th. What the United States and South Vietnam received in those accords was victory. At the White House, it was called “VV Day,” “Victory in Vietnam Day.”
The truth is that our military won the war, but our politicians lost it. The Communists in North Vietnam actually signed a peace treaty, effectively surrendering. But the U.S. Congress didn’t hold up its end of the bargain.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
General Giap was a brilliant, highly respected leader of the North Vietnam
military. The following quote is from his memoirs currently found in the
Vietnam war memorial in Hanoi:
“What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing
of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder,
just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same
at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you
knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping
us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the
battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!”
My Vietnam Experience 
We never intended to win the war, only to produce a stalemate. Even after we left Vietnam, we cut off all aid to RVN and they couldn’t match what the Chinese and Soviet Union were supplying the North. Don’t let anyone say the South Vietnamese didn’t fight for their country – over 185,000 killed and 500,000 wounded.
The supposed quote from General Giap is spurious. He has never said that the Communist forces were ever on the edge of surrender. There are several versions of this myth floating around, and this one is the most obviously spurious. When Giap writes memoirs, he addresses them to a Vietnamese audience, not to Americans. Any quote that refers to Americans as “you” is not a quote from any memoir by Giap.
So according to your Alternative Facts about the Viet Nam war is media coverage of Tet in 1968 you say ‘lost’ the war because 5 years later the North surrendered and in 1973? So you argue after the last US soldier was freed from prison camp and left Viet Nam and North Vietnamese surrendered to the US and all the fighting stopped, right? But somehow the South was conquered despite total victory by the US? I bet you think we won Afghanistan, Iraq, and Crimea from Putin, too.
once nixon got impeached ford and the new guys came in disrupted and changed all the plans ending the war and most importantly cutting aid to the arvn
Sorry, guys. Congress did lose the war and they cost the lives of some thousand+ MIA’s when they cut off reparations to N. Vietnam after all the stories about the torture of our POW’s came out. Read about how the Viets kept a bunch of French POW’s until the French paid all the reparations owed them fro Geneva in ’54.
The Dimirats cut off funding and US air support to the South Vietnamese – Voila! Successful (this time) N. Viet invasion of S. Vietnam.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
The Master in Military Tactics
Defeated the French Army at Dien Vien Pho 1954
a then, at the Same, Place, Destroyed the US Military some 20 years Late.
William Westmoreland may have been a Politician
but, as a General, he rate Zero 0
& I should know, I was there through it ALL
Except that Americans won every battle 20/1 so no, american military was not destroyed in any place in Vietnam. The defeat was political.
We left Vietnam as the victors. They signed the peace accords because the bombing was destroying their country. Giap was a poor General and had no remorse for the loss of his men. They were destroyed by the thousands and he seemed to care little. It is almost certain that if we did not fight in Vietnam, the rest of the Asian nations around Vietnam would of also fell to communist hands. The Domino theory was real. 101st Airborne 1969-1970 Hue Vietnam
Welcome Home Walter…