Vietnam war was fought for the biggest NOTHING in history?

[gryphus]

One example of that was the taking of "Hamburger Hill" it wasn't that big of an operation but still marines gave their lives. Operation took months, tons of explosives dropped on Ho Chi Mins path to stop NVA to carry munitions and supplies up on the mountains, 70+ marines dead even more injured, victory for US army, the soldiers were wondering was it worth to take over this hill, they hoped there's a good reason. Two weeks later US forces abandon the hill, not long after that NVA retake the hill without fight. So why in the F they send soldiers fight for that peace of land and then abandon it and NVA took it back , why? Don't give me carp that it was war against communism that's bulls*it, it was a war without purpose it was just chaos and madness.

[spacemonkey]

[gryphus]

[eynon81]

[BurntOffering]

[battleax86]

[xdangerousxdavex]

[John Galt]

the us could have won the vietnam war if it wasn't for the media

for example, the OP mentions hamburger hill. while a bungling of things by the military command the thing that drove it home was life magazine publishing pictures of war dead that week. they published pictures of 241 people who died in vietnam and gave the impression that they were from Hamburger Hill. Nope, only 5 of those pictured died there, the rest elsewhere. but since the people saw this, they then heard about the relatively small value of the fight, and all these pictures of those dead boys... and perception radically shifted. who cares that really only 72 people died at hamburger hill... those pictures were thought to be all from there, and that was from media manipulation.

this effort by the media continued, for both good and bad. for the good, they did show things that the government was lying about to the american people. however, they declared it could only end in statement (by they, i mean walter cronkite) even though the us was making gains, and it lost most all support for the war. i many respects they told as big of lies as the us government, just different ones

[NAB]

That's all very interesting, but the lead is really being buried here (media tie in?): wtf were we there in the first place? Lots of shoulda, coulda, woulda, but not much why. That's where the media really fails the citizens. It's not like this problem has improved since Vietnam.

[eynon81]