Posted on 08/25/2014 12:12:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Says who? In 1965-66 I huddled at night inside my dug-in defensive perimeter and watched the flickering lightning of the explosions of Operation Arc Light, an aggressive use of American heavy bombing capabilities against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese enemies we faced. The sky-lighting flashes accompanied seconds later by muted rumbles gave only the barest hint of the unbelievable violence being unleashed upon our enemy a few kilometers distant.
Days later, our ground patrolling into the bombed areas gave us an awed appreciation of the power of America’s Air Forces. The former jungle terrain was a scorched and scarred moonscape with the only visible life being the green shoots pressing an inch or two upward to the tropical sunlight, testament to the eternal renewability of life.
But those green sprigs were it. Every other thing in that landscape was dead. Irregularly spaced craters, several yards across and several feet deep depending on what the original topography had been, covered the area where the bombs had impacted. There was the occasional indication that humans had once been there, small bits and pieces of weaponry and the various metal accouterments of any infantry force, helmets, canteens, and so forth. Of human remains my patrols found none, at least none that were recognizable as such, nor did we find the remains of the indigenous animals like monkeys and water buffalo that we knew had lived there, possibly even tigers.
[SNIP]
That’s a long preface to get to the premise of my piece about the issues challenging America and other Western democracies today. We are facing Muslim insurgencies throughout the areas where the teachings of Mohammed have poisoned millions of minds into believing that the only way they can survive is to dominate the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Vietcong and NVA had extensive underground tunnels and compartments beneath civilian homes. With all that tunnel networking and disguise as well, they could get around the carpet bombings abd strike inside where our forces were.
Hirohito disagrees with that statement.
Anyone who remembers the arc-light strikes back in Vietnam could give you a very good argument.
Get the Air Force off the golf courses and out of the 'O' clubs put them to work. They could use a little bombing practice.
A lying, conniving, cowardly administration back home. Kinda like now.
IIRC, the BUFF carried as many as 129 MK-82 “dumb” bombs. That would be 64,500 lbs!
On several occasions, shortly (two or three days!) after an Arc Light bombing raid, I flew over the area that had been bombed.
Looked to me like a moonscape had been carved into the jungle!
Lip-to-lip craters for what seemed like one mile wide by three miles long. Probably not that large an area, but I will tell you that nothing was alive in the target area - no trees, no moneys, no gomers!
RE: A lying, conniving, cowardly administration back home.
Gerald Ford? I thought he was pro-military...
The Sultan in Washington would like to send the B52s over Israel.
Don’t want to submission,.....
Just use Fuel Air Explosive to fill an ash tray with them.
You can’t bomb someone into submission who won’t submit.
You can bomb someone into submission who will submit.
“So, how the hell did we lose Vietnam again? /s”
Democrats got us involved in Vietnam. LBJ: Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Congress voted for it (like Iraq). Then, when the sledding got rough, they bailed.
Obama “I ended the Iraq war”.They like to start them and end them.
Winning or losing a war is determined in large part by the discipline or morale—or lack thereof—of the participants. Democrats started the VietNam war—the Kennedies, LBJ—then when the public turned them out, they turned on the party in charge of fighting it and tossed Nixon out, aided by “concerned Republicans” like the ones we see today.
We never lost a major battle in Vietnam. Moore’s battalion was dropped at the base of a mountain that garrisoned a NVA division, but the Airborne prevailed. The Tet offensive was a disaster for the NVA, but the Democrats and their MSM sold America out.
So, again, most problems can be resolved with applications of massive firepower. i.e. Arc Light.
And the only way to end a war once begun is by winning it. The problem is finding a non-choom or limpwristed CIC unafraid to use military power, and knowing when to use it.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Deja vu all over again? It’s what Democrats did and still do. Jmp: Obama has done his best to degrade the American military, so who knows what our combat effectiveness or readiness is now.
Because the Vietnamese NVA and occasionally the VC, in many cases, not all, were fighting away from population centers. The Central Highlands, the DMZ area (Khe Sanh, etc.), the Ia Drang valley, Laos, the Parrots Beak, etc.
Because they had to infiltrate formed bodies of troops down the trail, and because they often tried attacking US and Viet positions on the edges of the controlled areas, they were often good targets in the “open” (actually under trees usually) but away from heavily populated areas.
There was no Arclight on Hue or Cholon, think about that.
The ISIS, when they were fighting the US in 2003-2009, did not do this. They very rarely had formed bodies of troops slugging it out in the countryside vs US or Iraqi forces. They were much more like the purest VietCong, hiding among the people, laying mines, attacking by surprise, and then fading away among the people. Much as one would fantasize over it, its just not reasonable or humane to drop MOABs on Ramadi or Falluja.
How does ISIS become a cohesive military threat unless they assemble their military units somewhere to fight it out?
They have Humvees, military vehicles and tanks they took from the fleeing Iraqis and THAT is what they used to defeat the hapless Iraqi soldiers.
It requires CONCENTRATIONS of forces in key positions to attack, overrun, and then hold that portion of the world you intend to make part of your empire (or caliphate as the case may be ).
” Can’t Arclight every hamlet in northern Iraq.”
Actually, given the cost of fuel air munitions on target, we can. Will we?
“If you support a terrorist, you are a terrorist”. Which justifies making the hamlet rubble bounce.
Turning the governments supporting these Koranimals into fused glass will have a salutary effect.
I’d be willing to bet their lives on it.
;-)
“Much as one would fantasize over it, its just not reasonable or humane to drop MOABs on Ramadi or Falluja.”
Care to debate that with Boethius?
Those who support terrorists ARE terrorists.
Walter Cronkite?
Regards,
GtG
The battle is won before the final attack.
In cases like this the opponent is defeated in their morale before they are conquered. This was done over two years of guerrilla attacks and terrorism.
Recall what happened to the Iraqi army corps (yes, there were a lot of Iraqi soldiers defeated there). Many survivors stories told of broken morale due to constant heavy casualties from snipers, IEDs, suicide bombs, etc. Particularly targeting the more effective officers. Until they were too scared to leave their bases and would run when openly attacked. A great deal of this loss of morale was apparently due to the usual Arab bad leadership, corruption and mismanagement, but thats normal over there.
So the probable course of any reconquest of this region will be that ISIS reverts to what they were, and they will stay in that mode and try to repeat their former success. This will will force a great drain of resources on whoever tries to hold territory in the Sunni areas.
The beheading of Foley is proof that the air strikes, even as minimal as they have been, are scaring the Islamic Swine leadership. And they even actually admitted to that in the video.
+1 on the “Walter Cronkite”.
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