Posted on 08/26/2007 11:07:49 PM PDT by neverdem
The Vietnam analogy looms ever larger in the debate over Iraq, but the U.S. military has memories of that conflict that the public doesn't.
In 1943, at the age of 18, George Everette "Bud" Day of Sioux City, Iowa, enlisted in the Marines. He served in the Pacific during World War II, and later became a fighter pilot. He flew the F-84F Thunderstreak during the Korean War and the F-100F Super Sabre in Vietnam. Bud Day, a legendary "full-blooded jet-jock" as one recent account dubbed him, would see service in all three wars as a sanctified whole: For him the concept of the "long war" was something he had built his life around in the middle decades of the 20th century. As an Air Force major, he was the first commander of the squadron of fast FACs (forward air controllers), who loitered daily for hours over North Vietnamese airspace, seeking out targets for other fighter bombers. With the most dangerous air mission in the Vietnam War, Day and the other fast FACs were known as "Misty warriors." Misty was the radio call sign that Day himself had chosen for the squadron, inspired by his favorite Johnny Mathis song. The Mistys were "an aggressive bunch of bastards who pressed the fight; they got down in the weeds" and "trolled for trouble," writes Robert Coram in a recently published book about Bud Day, American Patriot. On August 26, 1967, Bud Day's luck ran out. He was shot down over North Vietnam.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Thanks for the link.
Good read.
Sounds like some good reading material on Vietnam and irregular warfare. Those of us here at home are on the front lines of the propaganda war.
Great article. Thanks for posting!
Good article. Thanks for posting it.
This was an interesting read. It brought back memories for me and I didn’t even serve in Vietnam. I respected the men that served there. It was a tough time. I realized that some were angry to be there, others devoted to the mission. I did respect what Nixon tried to do there. It drove me crazy what the left was doing in the day. I have never forgiven the democrats and their beastly fellow travelers for what they did to our troops, the Vietnamese people and those who died by the millions in the region after we left. In some regard I have never forgiven myself for not finding a way to support the troops more, and defeat their enemies at home unilaterally.
The one thing I determined when watching our young men come home, was that I would never betray their efforts. I would never accept an accounting of that war that said we were wrong to go there, and were wrong to do our best to give the Vietnamese in the south a nation of their own. I refused to accept that we couldn’t have won. I am convinced that we could have, to this day. And Nixon bombing them back to the stone age was the way. It was working.
As a teenager and early adult, I read up on mass re-education camps. I read up on the communist tactic to kill all the educated people because they could be a threat. I read up on the families that would be split up never to see each other again, just to disrupt personal connections, something that could also be used to combat an iron fist rule. I read up on the upwards of two million Cambodians (half the population at that time) that died. I read up on those who escaped across the killing fields and the bones of their fellow Cambodians into neighboring nations.
When stories of Day and other men come along, I can only read with awe and respect. I can’t pretend to fully understand. I sit here and think of being hung upside down and wonder how many hours I could take it. How many days could I put up with the torture? How long could I hold out? Could I refuse a chance at freedom? Could I refuse to reveal information? Would others die because of my weakness? Would I have to live for decades knowing I sold others out? It’s something I could never know unless I spent time as these men did. They did hold out. I have the deepest respect for their valor.
John McCain is a man I’ve never fully been sure about. It has bothered me for years, the story of McCain. I have read reports that he didn’t serve with as much honor as some would think. Yet here Day provides an accounting of heroism and honor as it relates to McCain. And I think to myself that John deserves an apology from me for ever having doubted. If Day says John’s service was totally honorable, it was. I am sorry John.
Who can read the story of the wall and not be moved? Who could return to it and not be struck with a myriad of thoughts, regrets, pride, sadness, happiness.
You almost feel like a voyeur reading the article you linked. You wish you could fully understand and it does help to read the actions involved, the mindset, the different roles these men took on as they became deeper and deeper involved. You can to a small degree understand their progression until the ultimate warrior mindset would separate them from some of their own, and almost bind them to men on the other side.
It’s a gripping report. The books listed would be very important to read if you really wanted to be able to identify with the men who served in Vietnam.
As a person who supports our military, I think I should locate these books and read them. I will never fully understand what our men went through, but I owe it to them to try.
Bud Day is a great American and a great patriot. It is about time someone decided to write a review of the Vietnam War books.
The terms “stories warriors tell themselves” and “politically handicapped war” were particularly poignant for me and very telling of the era.
As one who did serve there, your words are very appreciated. Of all those I served with, I can’t think of one who expected glory, just a little respect. Respect we haven’t been given except in individual accounts like yours.
Thank you.
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.
Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids. [lloks like a re-writing of history with the benefit of hindsight]
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
"Johnson's determination to both commit to a limited war without the approval of Congress and hide his actions from the American people was breathtakingly cynical, even by US political standards. All his decisions were based on domestic political criteria (the Great Society programme) and he always seemed to believe that his reputation as a deal-maker would allow him to pull any iron out of the fire."
You'll find the quote almost halfway down the link. I'm sorry, but I can only conclude that those who served in and around Viet Nam were just cannon fodder in the calculus of LBJ in order to pass his Great Society programs. Listen for yourself.
It's a little over 46 minutes. The relevant part about LBJ's despair over Viet Nam in 1965 begins at about 34 minutes into the recording.
Four decades later, they're still pushing socialism domestically and defeat overseas, except now we have a new existential threat that they wish to deny.
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From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
.
NEVER FORGET
After Sen. TED KENNEDY pushed a post-WATERGATE Democrat Congress into cutting off all our funding for the then Free South Vietnamese to fight for their own Freedom with during the Vietnam War,
...just as the Soviet Union gave $6 Billion in 600 tanks, 1,000’s of mobile Artillery pieces and Ammo to Communist North Vietnam for its planned ‘Final Solution’ in the Free South,
..horridly came:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education (SLAVE LABOR) Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts
All with the support of Anit-Freedom Activists here in America:
HILLARY RODHAM
WILLIAM CLINTON
JOHN KERRY
BARBARA BOXER
JANE FONDA
TOM HAYDEN
JESE JACKSON
RAMSEY CLARK (21st Century’s SADDAM Defense Attorney)
...and all.
.
With these same Anti-Freedom Activists pushing real hard to get back into our Oval Office..
..in a new time of war
..in a new century
..with our own Freedom
..directly at stake
..right here at home,
...what price is left for US, the still Free, to pay now..?
.
Signed:..”ALOHA RONNIE” Guyer
Veteran-1st Major Battles for Freedom of the Vietnam War 1965-66
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set2.htm
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set3.htm
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
.
NEVER FORGET
.
Bump for a good read
From the text:
The Vietnam analogy looms ever larger in the debate over Iraq, but the U.S. military has memories of that conflict that the public doesn't.Much of the reason for this, is because of the propagandistic reporting of the war from our Left-leaning media.
In the same vein, we have:
Yet my favorite story in Bury Us Upside Down is about a different sort of serviceman: Air Force flight surgeon Dean Echenberg of San Francisco—a former hippy who helped start a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury, did drugs, went to the great rock concerts, and then volunteered for service in Vietnam, more-or-less out of sheer adventure. He ended up with the Mistys, billeted among men whom Bud Day had trained. If anyone lived the American Experience of the 1960s in its totality, it was Echenberg. One day in 1968, his medical unit was near Phu Cat, just as it was attacked by Viet Cong. "The dispensary quickly filled with blood and body parts," write the authors. "Parents and family members staggered around in a daze, desperate for their children to be saved." Echenberg worked almost the entire night with a pretty American nurse. Near dawn, emotionally overwrought, the two laid down to rest near the end of the runway on the American base, and "made love in the grass while artillery boomed in the distance."Again, we find that once someone sees what was really going on, versus the picture the media was painting at the time, he becomes very anti-communist and supportive of the war effort.
"Echenberg struggled to understand how anybody could be so savage as to murder children." The authors continue:The young doctor had been ambivalent about the war when he first showed up in Vietnam. But he could no longer humor the anti-war protestors he knew. Yes, combat was inhumane, and atrocities happened on both sides, especially during the heat of battle. But he didn't see the communists as "freedom fighters" or "revolutionaries" like the crowd back in San Francisco. To him the communists were savages who terrorized civilians ...
Thanks. Interesting.
Thanks for the ping!
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