Posted on 03/16/2003 3:04:15 PM PST by SJackson
Ironically LBJ was handed a potentially decisive victory in 68, Tet, which he allowed the media to turn to defeat. He inherited the war, he clearly didn't want to be the one to "lose" it, but winning, not on the agenda.
I don't think so. Look at map of S.E. Asia, its proximity to Red China and at the same time, the peninsula of Korea. The mistaken strategy of Vietnam is that no one can understand why it wouldn't "behave" like Korea. Geography is the answer, as any good soldier knows. A peninsula can be defended. The waters mined and patrolled, the defenders supplied. But Vietnam lies against the Chinese Mainland, and is therefore, un-defendable. Laos and Cambodia are sieves and cannot be successfully controlled as can the waters around Korea.
When it comes to the comparison of Korea and Vietnam, militarily, it is apples and oranges. But both, unfortunately have been consecrated with American blood by Democrats that do not understand warfare.
Thank you.
Adios.
Ironically, LBJ did not know it. He chewed out his commanders for "Tet" and told them he couldn't "survive politically" if another one happened in Saigon.
I stand by my opinion of Johnson and his motives.
Appointments to the ARVN officer corps were largely political, thus there was a lot of sporadic unit leadership. Some were great. Some competed to see who could break and run the fastest. Their elite units were usually their best. And Provincial Reconnaisance Units in I Corps were also very good...proud and highly motivated.
When in late March of 1972 the NVA mounted a conventional invasion of South Vietnam by the equivalent of 20 divisions, a bloody pitched battle ensued. The enemy's "well-planned campaign" was defeated, wrote Douglas Pike, "because air power prevented massing of forces and because of stubborn, even heroic, South Vietnamese defense. Terrible punishment was visited on PAVN [NVA] troops and on the PAVN transportation and communication matrix." But, most important of all, said Pike, "ARVN troops and even local forces stood and fought as never before."
... Near the end, Tom Polgar, then serving as the CIA's chief of station, Saigon, cabled a succinct assessment of the situation: "Ultimate outcome hardly in doubt, because South Vietnam cannot survive without U.S. military aid as long as North Vietnam's war-making capacity is unimpaired and supported by Soviet Union and China."
Let us summarize:
1964-1968 - Used a flawed 'war of attrition' strategy that held the enemy but didnt win victory.
1968-1972 - Improved strategy to win and hold ground and clean out VCs, by supporting national army.
1973 - Flawed peace agreement signed that gains South Vietnam and North Vietnam the same kind of status quo as Norht and South Korea. Flawed in that North Vietnamese arms are still flowing into the south via Cambodia.
1974-1975 - Threw away the victory we gained by 1972, by failing to support the allies in the south. Communists won by funding their proxies better than we did.
Conclusion: By making it politically impossible to support South Vietnam properly after years of 'anti-war' agitation, the Liberals and McGovern Democrats lost Vietnam - incredibly AFTER we actually won the war (or fought to a stalemate a la Korea). We undermined our *OWN* will to fight better than an enemy could have done and thereby cut the throats of the ARVN in 1975.
Thanks for posting this.
For your list?
Right up my alley. If you want on or off the Western Civilization Military History, let me know.
From the Wall Street Journal, 3 Aug 1995:
Excerpted here:
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.
And (regarding Tet '68):
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.
He was a life-long politician. Look into his WWII "service". He was also a miserable human being. Add Strange McN. as well.
Behind my opinion of the fecklessness of LBJ, it is also my opinion that this was not a war the US should have been involved in at all. I know that offends my fellow veterans, but some have come to understand that Vietnam was the wrong place too start WWIII, as well as the 1960's were the wrong time, as well. (However it was not in vain. It prevented further "Vietnams".)
Having come from a family that had helped some of the Hungarian refugees from Budepest, in 1956, we had the confident awareness that communism would buckle under its own weight. America would prosper and prevail because of its free system. There was not the fear that if Vietnam was lost it would be a bad thing for the US. On the contrary, the more third world countries the Soviet Union had to finance and administer, the sooner the Communist Bloc would crumble. I think Ronald Reagan and the fall of theBerlin Wall proved this strategy correct.
This is what I keep trying to get some of you comprehend. The war in Vietnam had nothing to do with freedom vs communism. That was not the motive of LBJ (or Truman). The Democrats had the "monkey on their back" of commies in the government since FDR (they still do). The Democrats had to put on a show of fighting the communists, or loose elections to the Republicans here at home in the USA! As long as you look for a "Grand Strategy" or an "Art of War or "Bomb them till they Glow in the dark", you will have missed the point. Vietnam was national politics and an attempt to "stuff a ballot box" and not a Geopolitical, "Crusade for Freedom".
Iraq, however, is.
Well said! It still is, as one can witness the behavior of Democrats post 9/11 and pre-'04 election.
The Democrats that are running for president (or any office) right now, would sell military info to Baghdad, for a million votes a pop in the USA.
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