Posted on 07/28/2007 2:58:41 PM PDT by do the dhue
"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 were definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!" - General Giap, North Vietnam (memoirs)
Our fighting men in Vietnam took back the ground the NVA took during Tet. Before the Tet dust was even settled, people like Kronkite and Hanoi Jane convinced the American people the US Embassy in South Vietnam had been over run and it was time for us to run. As a matter of fact, a wall was breached. I believe a few Marines on the roof shot the leader and the rest turn tail and fled. But to Kronkite and the rest of the news media the Embassy had been over run.
Read the words of General Gaip. Once the North Vietnamise saw what our media was doing, they said hang on one more day, one week, one more month. Their Army was defeated but the media still gave the enemy resolve. Now, let's look at the resolve of Scary Reid and other demortic leaders.
Reid has no resolve. He thinks the war is lost. Gaip had his Army destroyed and he still had resolve. Reid has the greatest Army in the history of the world and he thinks the war is lost. The leaders of the demoratic party must understand that we live in a nuclear age. We can not wait for the enemy to bring the war to us. We must bring the war to them.
The media and the demoratic leaders must understand that the stakes are higher then they were in Vietnam. They say the war is going bad. Well, we were in WWII for four years and we lost 290,000. We have been in Iraq for four years and we lost 3,500 people. I am damn proud of my Troops. They are in the heart of the Middle East. A place that burns my flag and hates my guts. They are hunting and killing Al Qeada over there. We are taking the war to our enemy. Thank God for our Troops.
I can not thank God for the leaders in the demoratic Party though. More like, thank Satan. The rats say I was optimistic 2 years ago, so we need to pull out. Your dang right I was optimistic. I am still optimistic. I see that we have rebuilt infrastructure, there is a Iraqi Stock Market, I have heard of good reports in regards to the reflection of the Iraqi economy. I have heard that over 300,000 Iraqi Troops have been trained. I have heard the Police force is growing. I have heard that tribal leaders are working with the Iraqi Army and Police. Tough times don't last. Tough people do. We will help the Iraqi people stand for them self in times of trouble. We have to.
Pull out pf Iraq to early and what happens next will be on the liberals. Not on me. I hear there is some scuffling going on in Southern Iraq now. Well, I believe the British have pulled out or have begun to pull out of Southern Iraq. They may have left to early. We don't need to be listening to our media and treasonous politicians. I think Gaip was a right. I think we should listen to his words.
If Gaip is right, then resolve at home is mighty important. Resolve can win or lose wars people. If thge rats support our Troops, then they support victory. Our Troops are not fighting to lose. The rats need some resolve and they need to support the mission. Tight now, we need that Defense bill passed and I do mean now. And we don't need any crazy Amendments to it that effect the execution of the war.
I want to ask the demorats this:
When was the last time you heard anyone in your party say "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival of liberty"?
- JFK
I don't hear that from the likes of Hanoi Jane. If she had it her way, she would change her name to Jihad Jane. I stood with a bunch of Vietnam Vets on March 17th at the Gathering of eagles in DC. I heard a lot of them say that they did not want Hanoi Jane to do to our Troops what she had done to them in Vietnam. I stand firmly with these people. And I say Don't Let Hanoi Jane turn into Jihad Jane. I will be in DC on September 15, 2007 at the Gathering of Eagles. I have resolve. I wish liberals recognized the importance of resolve. (I think they do and that is why they act the way they do. They really want us to lose.)
Thanks for listening,
do the dhue
http://www.youtube.com/user/scenesofaudio
http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/crandall/profile/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Camp/7624/Generals/giap.htm
.
Actually make that the...
C-54 ‘PUFF the MAGIC DRAGON’ Gunship lifesaver....
.
.
I guess when I was on point guard duty on a moonless night just east of Plei Me Special Forces Camp shortly before we went into the IA DRANG Valley in November 1965...
...it was ‘PUFF the MAGIC DRAGON’ No. 1 that was looking down over me.
Man, what a great feeling insurance policy it was.
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
.
It is cool to put a face with a poster.
Excellent essay bump
Thanks 4!
“I have heard and seen that Giap quote many times. Does anyone know if this is really what is written in the book? Or is a ready for snopes.com story?”
Don’t know if it’s true or not, but I do remember an interview with Giap that was included in the old BBC series “The Ten Thousand Days War” where Giap said that the North Vietnamese Government spent three times as much supporting the antiwar movement in the United States as they did on actual fighting in Viet Nam.
I wonder how much the terrorist are spending in the United States to support the antiwar movement in the United States?
Soros is spending billions, I hear.
Wilco. It’s time to pop the fougasse and fire the FPF’s cause the BASTARDS ARE IN THE WIRE!!!! (Anybody checking to see if Spooky’s on call?)
"What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war'
Then, three weeks later, Uncle Walter delivered Giap an unexpected victory when he spoke these words during his 2/27/1968 CBS News broadcast:
"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and in Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.... To say that we are mired in a stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.... It seems increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate.'
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/07/the_ho_chi_minh_trail_to_beiru.html
I have not read the book. I don't know if Gaip or Minh mentioned Kronkite and/or our media. But let's look at the words of Cronkite and the words of our media and Demoratic leaders today.
Also, and I don't know, but it says Jonathan Winkler wrote Did General Giap Say the Vietnam War Was Won on the Streets of America?
So, far, this is all I have found on Jonathan Winkler:
I don't know if it is the same Jonathan Winkler from the University of Maryland who wrote about Gaip. IF it is, he is the one in the middle.
http://www.enme.umd.edu/ceee/personnel/vikrant.html
And: With the Vietcong wiped out in the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese regulars moved south down the Ho Chi Minh trails through Laos and Cambodia to continue the war. Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.
http://www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20040406-032203-3282r
This is a good one for snopes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1dWrf-k_E&mode=related&search=
This Ranger has not failed. He will win if we support him. The only way he loses, is if we fail him. He has not and will not fail us. Let him do his job.
ping
Funny thing about it is that when we look back on this 10 years down the road we'll see just how much terror the President saved us from. Of course that's only if we still have a road to go down by then.
We'll see who the idiots elect to take his place. If we lose this next election we will all be screwed, but there will be no turning back then. The media will have convinced enough morons that we need a liberal running the show. Then we are all screwed.
My frustration level is a high as ever. That could be the result of my rapidly approaching deployment? Or maybe it's just that freedom of speech has taken such a turn? Could you imagine congress voting on a troop withdrawal during the Battle of the Bulge? I think not. We just come to expect the world on a silver platter here and the islamofacists are waiting to shove that platter down our throats, or up our asses.
What will we do then? Maybe we should just give them what they want? Of course someone less learned than you might think that would be okay. But what they want is nothing less than complete and total destruction of everything we have and everything we believe in. And don't give me that crap about the peace-loving religion. If that is the case, where the hell are the peaceful leaders?
Keep fighting the fight, and thanks for the support.
Thank God we have people willing to fight. To bad we don't have a Congress full of people like the Troops who wrote the above email to me.
As a veteran of the Vietnam War from August of 1969 to January of 1971, serving as an infantry squad leader in a mechanized infantry company, and with another unit as a tank commander on an M48A3 tank; I am keenly interested in the distortions, lies, and half truths perpetuated about the Vietnam war by many of those who helped to undermine the US effort there. Much of the conventional understanding of the US involvement in the South East Asian conflict indicates a general disapproval of the United States war effort, and an acceptance of the oft regurgitated leftist conventional wisdom as to it’s historical course and outcome. That is painting the American war effort in Vietnam as misguided at best and an imperialistic effort to establish SE Asian capitalistic hegemony at worst. The antiwar left is portrayed as being noble and idealistic rather than populated by a hard core that actively hoped and worked for a US defeat, the US government as destructive of basic civil liberties in its attempt to monitor their activities, and the North Vietnamese and Vietcong as nationalists who wished to preserve their unique culture against an imperialistic onslaught. The South Vietnamese government’s struggle to survive a ruthless Communist assault while engaging in an unwarranted assault on human rights .while ignoring the numerous genocidal atrocities of the Vietcong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) is also part of this narrative. The deceptive reporting of the Tet Offensive, the Communist’s worse defeat among numberless hundreds of others was probably the most grievous deceit perpetuated by the Press .
The reason that the United States opposed nationwide elections that were to be held in accordance with the 1954 Geneva accords was due to the murder and intimidation campaigns carried out by Ho Chi Minh. This fact is in Professor R. J. Runnel’s book Death by Government, in which he cites a low estimate of 15,000 and a high figure of 500,000 people in the murder by quota campaign directed by the North Vietnamese Communist Party Politburo that would have made the election a corrupt mockery. This campaign stipulated that 5% of the people living in each village and hamlet had to be liquidated, preferably those identified as members of the “ruling class.” All told says Runnel, between 1953 and 1956 it is likely that the Communists killed 195,000 to 865,000 North Vietnamese. These were non combatant men, women, and children, and hardly represent evidence of the moral high ground claimed by many in the antiwar movement. In 1956, high Communist official Nguyen Manh Tuong admitted that “while destroying the landowning class, we condemned numberless old people and children to a horrible death.” The same genocidal pattern became the Communists standard operating procedure in the South too. This was unequivocally demonstrated by the Hue Massacre, which the press did a great deal to downplay in its reporting of the Tet Offensive of 1968.
The National Liberation Front was the creation of the North Vietnamese Third Party Congress of September 1960, completely directed from North Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a disastrous military defeat for the North Vietnamese and that the VC were almost wiped out by the fighting, and that it took the NVA until 1971 to reestablish a presence using North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. The North Vietnam military senior commanders repeatedly said that they counted on the U.S. antiwar movement to give them the confidence to persevere in the face of their staggering battlefield personnel losses and defeats. The antiwar movement prevented the feckless President Lyndon Johnson from granting General Westmoreland’s request to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail or end his policies of publicly announced gradualist escalation. The North Vietnamese knew cutting this trail would severely damage their ability to prosecute the war. Since the North Vietnamese could continue to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail lifeline, the war was needlessly prolonged for the U.S. and contributed significantly to the collapse of South Vietnam. The casualties sustained by the NVA and VC were horrendous, (1.5 million dead) and accorded well with Gen. Ngyuen Giaps publicly professed disdain for the lives of individuals sacrificed for the greater cause of Communist victory. They were as thoroughly beaten as a military force can be given the absence of an invasion and occupation of their nation. The Soviets and Chinese recognized this, and they put pressure on their North Vietnamese allies to accept this reality and settle up at the Paris peace talks. Hanoi’s party newspaper Nhan Dan angrily denounced the Chinese and Soviets for “throwing a life bouy to a drowning pirate” and for being “mired on the dark and muddy road of unprincipled compromise.” The North Viets intransigent attitude toward negotiation was reversed after their air defenses were badly shattered in the wake of the devastating B-52 Linebacker II assault on North Vietnam, after which they were totally defenseless against American air attack.
To this day the anti-war movement as a whole refuses to acknowledge its part in the deaths of millions in Laos and Cambodia and in the subsequent exodus from South East Asia as people fled Communism, nor the imprisonment of thousands in Communist re-education camps and gulags.
South Vietnam was NOT defeated by a local popular insurgency. The final victorious North Vietnamese offensive was a multidivisional, combined arms effort lavishly equipped with Soviet and Chinese supplied tanks, self-propelled artillery, and aircraft. It was the type of blitzkrieg that Panzer General Heinz Guederian would have easily recognized. I didn’t recall seeing any barefoot, pajama-clad guerrillas jumping out of those tanks in the newsreel footage that showed them crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. This spectacle was prompted by the pusillanimous withdrawal of Congressional support for the South Vietnamese government in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which particularly undermined this aspect of President Nixons foreign policy. It should be noted that a similar Communist offensive in the spring of 1972 was smashed, largely by US air power; with relatively few US ground troops in place. At the Paris Accords in 1973, the Soviet Union had agreed to reduce aid in offensive arms to North Vietnam in exchange for trade concessions from the US, effectively ending North Vietnams hopes for a military victory in the south. With the return of cold war hostilities in the wake of the Yom Kippur war after Congress revoked the Soviet’s MFN trading status, the Reds poured money and offensive military equipment into North Vietnam. South Vietnam would still be a viable nation today were it not for this nation’s refusal to live up to it’s treaty obligations to the South Vietnamese, most important to reintervene should they invade South Vietnam.
There is one primary similarity to Vietnam. A seditious near traitorous core of anti-war protesters is trying to undermine U.S. efforts there with half-truths, lies, and distortions. In that respect, the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam are very similar. A significant difference is that thus far the current anti-war movement has not succeeded in manifesting contempt for the American military on the part of the general U.S. public as it did in the Vietnam era.
When I was in Vietnam, I recall many discussions with my fellow soldiers about the course of the war in Vietnam and their feelings about it. Many, if not most felt that “We Gotta Get Outta this Place,” to cite a popular song of the time by Eric Burden and the Animals, but for the most part they felt we should do it by fighting the war in a manner calculated to win it. I do not recall anyone ever saying that they felt the North Vietnamese could possibly defeat us on the battlefield, but to a man they were mystified by the U.S. Governments refusal to fight in a manner that would assure military victory. Even though there was much resentment for the antiwar movement, and some (resentment) toward career professional soldiers, I never saw anyone who did not do his basic duty and many did FAR MORE THAN THAT as a soldier. Nineteen of my friends have their names on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington DC. They deserve to have the full truth told about the effort for which they gave their young lives. The U.S. public is not well served by half-truths and lies by omission about such a significant period in our history, particularly with their relevance toward our present fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.