What were the natural advantages the vietcong had over the U.S. troops in Vietnam?
Sadly, their biggest advantage was that they were much more willing to die for their cause than US troops were. They were fighting with their backs against the wall, so they were more committed. But other than that, they understood the whole idea of war differently than we did. We were expecting to fight a war on battlefields against uniformed soldiers, but it ended up being a war against civilians. We couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. If you were an American soldier, any peasant you met could be a Vietcong and could kill you. The Cong sent 8 year old shoeshine boys into barbershops with bombs in their shoeshine boxes, stuff like that. Plus they knew how to use the natural topography, how to hide in jungles, or underground. We couldn’t interrupt their lines of supply because we couldn’t see anything moving. In the end, we were destroying whole villages out of frustration. If word came that one or two Vietcong were in a village, hiding among its people, we’d just bomb the w
