Posted on 12/30/2020 3:56:20 AM PST by Onthebrink
A recent NATO report broke new ground by fingering China as a military threat to Europe for the first time. At first glance, this would seem to indicate that Europe has been listening to Washington’s repeated warnings and has finally come around to the American point of view on the salience of “great power competition” that recognizes both Moscow and Beijing as dangers, with the latter perhaps constituting a more ominous threat.
Next year, both the French and British navies are planning major naval exercises, together with the U.S. and Japan, in the Western Pacific, namely in maritime domains proximate to China. Beijing’s “wolf-warrior” diplomats are sure to denounce these exercises, as well as the NATO report. Given the sordid history of European gun-boat diplomacy in the Far East, churlish Chinese diplomats will have plenty to work with. These undertakings by London and Paris—and NATO as a whole—are quite clearly being done at the behest of Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
[After all, the Vietnam War resulted in part from Washington’s failure to appreciate the significance and power of Asian nationalism as inspired by the predations of European imperialism. It is now well known that the Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh even reached out to President Truman in a bid to seek American support in ridding Vietnam of its cruel French overlords.]
During China’s incursion into northern Vietnam, it killed, in 6 weeks, 100,000 north Vietnamese civilians - almost 2x the US count from dropping more bomb tonnage on North Vietnam than were dropped during WWII. That’s another way of saying the US deliberately avoided civilian targets in North Vietnam with the same care that it deliberately sought them out during WWII. That is why WWII ended quickly, and Vietnam dragged out for a decade, against a much weaker opponent.
https://www.historynet.com/war-of-the-dragons-the-sino-vietnamese-war-1979.htm
The Chinese war effort was run by generals, whereas the US war effort was run by lawyers.
>That’s another way of saying the US deliberately avoided civilian targets in North Vietnam with the same care that it deliberately sought them out during WWII. That is why WWII ended quickly, and Vietnam dragged out for a decade, against a much weaker opponent.
Growing up, a friend’s father was a US Army colonel, West Pointer, who after his first Vietnam tour was sent to the language school at Monterey to learn Vietnamese. For his second tour, he was US advisor/liaison to a RVN province chief.
He used to say, and strongly believed, that if we’d really wanted to win the war, we’d have bombed the dams around Hanoi at the height of the monsoon and washed a million North Vietnamese out to sea.
He was probably right.
China can scream at the top our their lungs, but they know better than to start something, because we’ll finish it.
Peace through superior firepower, whether it be on Earth or in orbit. Hence, the U.S. Space Force.
[Growing up, a friend’s father was a US Army colonel, West Pointer, who after his first Vietnam tour was sent to the language school at Monterey to learn Vietnamese. For his second tour, he was US advisor/liaison to a RVN province chief.
He used to say, and strongly believed, that if we’d really wanted to win the war, we’d have bombed the dams around Hanoi at the height of the monsoon and washed a million North Vietnamese out to sea.
He was probably right.]
In 2 nights of incendiary bomb attacks, 100,000 Tokyo residents were killed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)
In 8 nights of firebombing, 37,000 Hamburg residents were killed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
Neither North Vietnam nor any country could have sustained such losses for any extended length of time. I don’t recall where I read this, but a Vietnamese general confided, after the war, that the short duration bomb raids that were nonetheless highly-restricted, target list-wise, brought them to their knees. They would have settled for a lasting peace, Korean-style between North and South. Instead, Nixon caved, ended the bombing (which sounded impressive in tonnage terms, but killed very few people, by WWII standards) and set the stage for a total withdrawal.
Who is we? Would "we" be defending the USA or the Deep State?
So, the Author would prefer that the US and our Allies just "sit out" China's moves for worldwide power?
Well, the unforgettable Fezzik the Sicilian from “The Princess Bride” did warn us to never get involved in a land war in Asia.
CC
The other thing is - dam attacks are overrated. The Ruhr valley dam busting raids killed under 2,000 people, and this was in Germany, which has a 50% higher population density than China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise
The theoretical Three Gorges Dam raid that keeps getting mentioned is probably exaggerated in its expected effects. Dams generally tend to get built far away from settled areas. The idea being that if the dam cracks, casualties will be limited.
The Three Gorges Dam is big, but not some massive monstrosity beyond anything ever built, in terms of the volume of water penned in (39.3 cu km), which is comparable to the Hoover Dam (35.2 cu km):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
Canada’s Daniel Johnson Dam contains 4x the water volume of the the Three Gorges Dam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel-Johnson_dam
Bottom line is that in the worst case, and the dam is completely destroyed, such that every drop of water behind it flushes to the surrounding area, it would inundate, to a depth of ~12 ft (~4m), 39.3/(.004)= 9825 sq km. That’s a 55 km (~34 mile) radius from the dam. Not exactly the kind of flood that got Noah’s home brew yacht project going. No fun for the people within that radius who have to seek shelter either on the roof of single story homes or above the second story of one of the many high rises that China has taken to building, but not exactly the tsunami that took out Japan’s nuclear power plant.
Capacity of dam = 39.3 cu km
Height of flood water = 4 m
Circular area covered by 4 m of flood water
= 39.3 cu km / (4 m * 1 km / 1000 m)
= 39.3 cu km / 0.004 km
= 9825 sq km.
Radius of area covered by 4 m (~12 ft) of flood water
= square root (9825 sq km / (pi = 3.14) )
= square root (3128 sq km)
= 56 km
~ 34 miles
But the reality is likely that after a bomb attack, the super thick base (131 ft, according to Wikipedia) would not be completely washed away, and only the top portion of the dam would release the water behind it. Note even the concrete debris would serve as an imperfect dam, since it would likely settle after traveling a short distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
And that is the likely reason the dambuster attack was such a fizzle in terms of human carnage. It succeeded in cutting hydroelectric power to German industry for a period of time, but as part of the meatgrinder aspect of war, it was a footnote.
[Growing up, a friend’s father was a US Army colonel, West Pointer, who after his first Vietnam tour was sent to the language school at Monterey to learn Vietnamese. For his second tour, he was US advisor/liaison to a RVN province chief.
He used to say, and strongly believed, that if we’d really wanted to win the war, we’d have bombed the dams around Hanoi at the height of the monsoon and washed a million North Vietnamese out to sea.
He was probably right.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood
If we'd fought them with the intensity we did Germany or Japan the war could have been won.
Jane Fonda pushed the false "US Bombing of the Red River Dikes to Promote Genocide" BS as a tool for Hanoi's propagandists. It was never our policy to drown tens of thousands of farmers as a method of "winning' the war. The NVA had POL loading facilities on top of the dikes to load POL that had been floated down the Red River from China. The barrels were loaded on trucks for their drive down the Mu Gia Pass to the Ho Chi Ming Trail and points south. Nice legitimate target and the NVA knew that weren't trying to destroy the dams - we didn't use hydrostatic mines or torpedoes on the dams, just ordinary level bombs. The NVA knew how important the target was and ringed it with heavy AAA and SAM sites.
While you boys are dreaming about how the war would have been "won" by turning it into Dresden, men like me were in the village complexes, fighting the enemy while protecting the villagers.
Wars like these aren't won using Curtis LeMay as a model: they're won by patience, deliberate planning and commitment to the people we're protecting.
I wish we had given fellows such as yourself the full support of this country.
[While you boys are dreaming about how the war would have been “won” by turning it into Dresden, men like me were in the village complexes, fighting the enemy while protecting the villagers.]
I know we’ve sacralized enemy civilians, but if we had fought the Indians the way we fought North Vietnam, there would be no United States of America. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have shielded South Vietnamese civilians. I’m saying North Vietnam should have been burnt to the ground with incendiary weapons until it capitulated.
Sorry to get so grumpy, but I spent 17 months over there and we knew exactly what we had to do to take on the enemy and we knew (thanks to excellent leadership in the Marines) that the whole mission revolved around those villagers.
When we entered a village complex that hadn't seen Americans before, it would appear to be empty, abandoned. We'd stop to search for a bit, then break out the C-Rats and eat.
Then the kids would show up from their hiding places, and we'd give them the tropical chocolate from our C-Rats ("Sh_T Discs") and cigarettes (all the kids smoked).
Then the old people would show up and then the young women, wives. They'd see that we hadn't stolen anything, hadn't wrecked anything, hadn't hurt any livestock and were not as afraid of us.
The next time we went through those villes, they turned out much more enthusiastically, sometimes pointed out where the mines were, and offered us mangoes and pineapples.
They were why we were there.
Uncle Walty wasn't helping the cause.
One of my relatives was also in the Marines. He flew choppers and the A-4. I could listen to guys like you and him all day.
Ya'll put it on the line while most of us just talk about it online.
Again, thank you, sir for your service.
The other issue no one seems to remember was that our leaders had to worry about the entry of other parties into our long-distance war in Vietnam. China was itching to enter, exactly as they did during Korea. The NVA were flinchy, to say the least, about the Chinese coming to their side given their history but if we had gone all-out, there is more that a marginal chance that the Chinese, the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact would have intervened directly. We also had our "allies" to worry about, with Brit and other European ships supplying our enemies through Haiphong and Vinh.
That kind of war will take casualties. It will also take patience and courage over the long haul. I blame our idiot government for not keeping our people informed (or worse, lying) and not executing every single soldier involved with the MyLai massacre. We were not the Waffen SS and their crimes soiled all of our hard-won victories with the Vietnamese people.
We need a monument to our Medevac pilots, to celebrate the bravest, truest pilots to ever exist. I actually watched a UH-34D land to get one of our casualties in total darkness - the only lights were three flashlights, shielded by C-Ration can hoods - and that helicopter landed, rotor blades hitting their tips in the branches of the trees - and got our wounded out.
There are no medals high enough for that kind of courage and they did it every day, day after day. I owe my own life to one of them for getting me when I had only maybe fifteen more minutes to go before I died. He landed in a very hot zone, fire coming from several direction, and waited there for the three of us to be loaded and away.
God bless them all.
[I appreciate your blessings - but please remember that the wars we fought against Japan and Germany were wars of desperation: we were fighting a massive enemy and we were fighting the clock: the American people were impatient to end the bloodletting and we turned to butchery the end the barbarity.]
Re the Russians and the Chinese, note that they intervened seriously in the Korean War, we lost 38,000 men and still held the line. Vietnam was the worst of both worlds - we lost more men and failed to hold the territory, thanks to even more constricted rules of engagement. Truman wasn’t much of a leader, but if anyone had said he couldn’t bomb anything north of the 38th parallel, he’d have told him to go to hell. My recollection may be inaccurate, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that airstrikes specifically avoided the Chinese anti-aircraft units that were deployed in North Vietnam, which is why their casualty rates were nugatory, with 1,100 killed, out of a presence of 320,000 troops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War#Confronting_U.S._escalation
+1
5.56mm
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