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  • #46
    Originally posted by Oscar View Post
    Against Arab and Iranian armies equipped with forty year old tanks and AK 47 yes they can still win with awesome facility. With the modernisation of the Chinese and Russian armies in the longer term it may be more challenging.

    The stab in the back is a favored myth the militaries maintain to explain why they didn't win in the first place.

    China could pose a problem at some point, but we are quite a while from that. Russia, on the other hand, would probably get wiped in anything resembling a fair fight.

    I agree about 'stab in the back' theories, though I would add politicians to the military in that scentence.
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    Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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    • #47
      Originally posted by Bigred View Post
      I think the problem with this post is that you really don't know me very well since I am new here.

      I KNOW there were mistakes in the Iraq war. I KNOW that changes have been made and progress is being made.

      However, I ask myself if I can name any war (more than something like Panama or Grenada) where mistakes didn't happen? Sure, there should have been fewer mistakes in this one. They happened. They sucked. But, that doesn't mean the mission and the accomplishments of our armed forces shouldn't be supported.

      In other words, I am not talking about turning a blind eye and waving the flag. Sure, if there should have been more troops in the beginning, there should have been more troops.
      Did the military itself make mistakes? Everyone likes to rag on the politicians. Americans, the British too, just take a look at the ARRSE forums. But it takes stomach to say, yes, our beloved Jim-Bob from Alabama - the type of man, according to various Republicans, who is a 'real' American - made mistakes.

      As far as I can tell, my own British military, not merely at the highest echelons but at many levels of command, started in 2003 with a self-satisfied doctrine - "We've done this in Northern Ireland, we'll know what to do..." and immense, and pathetic condescension to US forces as being arrogant, too geared up, not nuanced enough for COIN. That bit us in the rear when we withdrew from Basra and it's I hardly think it's something you can blame on the politicians. Even on the 'septic-bashing' ARRSE (septic tank=Yank) they admit the US has the skill in COIN now.

      However, what I am talking about is the sad fact (my opinion) that the American public can not stomach a conflict that is prolonged and Americans die. And, I lump into this conflicts that 90% of Americans would say is a justified cause.
      Why is this different from any other period in history? (as Bigfella has argued.)
      HD Ready?

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      • #48
        Originally posted by HistoricalDavid View Post


        Why is this different from any other period in history? (as Bigfella has argued.)
        There has always been opposition to wars. And, that is a good thing. As stated before, everyone should scrutinize how a war is being carried out.

        However, no time in history have we had the 24 hours a day 7 days a week of constant (and a lot of times graphic) reports on the war.

        This is what I think the American public can't handle. Let me give a hypothetical example that I think was carried out over and over again. Let's say the military knows they need to go in and bomb the hell out of a place where they believe enemy leaders are. Our military sends in one missle that is perfectly aimed and hits right on target. BUT, what is shown on TV is the rubble from the building and people crying and running around trying to dig survivors out of the rubble. This is a horrible scene. People died. I am sure some of the people that are on TV lost loved ones.

        The American people don't want to see that. And, the more they see it, the less they care about how evil the people were that were targeted and by killing them, how it helped the war effort.

        Contrast that with the cities in WWII that literally were leveled from bombings and the thousands of innocent people that must have been killed. BUT, this wasn't shown on TV 24/7.

        Because wars today are shown 24/7 and extremely graphically, well executed wars turn into horrible tragedies in the public's mind.

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        • #49
          bigred,

          This is what I think the American public can't handle. Let me give a hypothetical example that I think was carried out over and over again. Let's say the military knows they need to go in and bomb the hell out of a place where they believe enemy leaders are. Our military sends in one missle that is perfectly aimed and hits right on target. BUT, what is shown on TV is the rubble from the building and people crying and running around trying to dig survivors out of the rubble. This is a horrible scene. People died. I am sure some of the people that are on TV lost loved ones.

          The American people don't want to see that. And, the more they see it, the less they care about how evil the people were that were targeted and by killing them, how it helped the war effort.

          Contrast that with the cities in WWII that literally were leveled from bombings and the thousands of innocent people that must have been killed. BUT, this wasn't shown on TV 24/7.

          Because wars today are shown 24/7 and extremely graphically, well executed wars turn into horrible tragedies in the public's mind.
          how's that? the public is still concerned first and foremost about SUCCESS. US/allied action killed anywhere from 20k+ iraqi troops/civilians, but because we destroyed iraqi military power and ended the war victoriously within a month or so time, everyone was talking about how we kicked the vietnam syndrome for good.

          ditto with the 3 week march to baghdad circa 2003.

          what people want to see in return for lives lost is progress. guerilla warfare makes progress a lot less tangible than moving lines on a map, so it is harder for people to get their heads around what is successful and what isn't. but that doesn't mean the american public suddenly can't stomach casualties or blood. i guarantee you that if a nuclear event ever happens in america, we would not blink twice at nuking tenfold whoever it was that did it, collateral damage be damned.
          There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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          • #50
            Militarily: Yes. The United States military can take on pretty much everything than any single plausible opponent in the world can dish out.

            It is politically that is the problem. War is a horrifying thing, and with the news on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, people can see images of the horrors of war pretty much every day. This is the reason why boot camps tend to be such trying experiences, they are intended to both train soldiers for their job, and harden them so they can do their job without falling apart pyschologically. Civilians lack said hardening, and will naturally turn against the war which causes the horrors they see on TV. This is what happened in Vietnam: The Americans won every single major engagement, but lost the war due to politics back home.

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            • #51
              Originally posted by Bigred View Post
              However, no time in history have we had the 24 hours a day 7 days a week of constant (and a lot of times graphic) reports on the war.

              This is what I think the American public can't handle. Let me give a hypothetical example that I think was carried out over and over again. Let's say the military knows they need to go in and bomb the hell out of a place where they believe enemy leaders are. Our military sends in one missle that is perfectly aimed and hits right on target. BUT, what is shown on TV is the rubble from the building and people crying and running around trying to dig survivors out of the rubble. This is a horrible scene. People died. I am sure some of the people that are on TV lost loved ones.

              The American people don't want to see that. And, the more they see it, the less they care about how evil the people were that were targeted and by killing them, how it helped the war effort.

              Contrast that with the cities in WWII that literally were leveled from bombings and the thousands of innocent people that must have been killed. BUT, this wasn't shown on TV 24/7.

              Because wars today are shown 24/7 and extremely graphically, well executed wars turn into horrible tragedies in the public's mind.
              1. No, the American public didn't sour on OIF when we civilians were being killed by the dozen as part of collateral damage in the attempt to get Saddam.

              2. Americans had the war beamed into their living during Vietnam, and it didn't impact support for the war.

              3. People tend to watch TV that supports their worldview, and so additional TV time isn't spent watching CNN if you are a Fox News fan (and vice versa). More TV/news won't be influential.
              "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

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              • #52
                Originally posted by HoratioNelson View Post
                Militarily: Yes. The United States military can take on pretty much everything than any single plausible opponent in the world can dish out.

                It is politically that is the problem. War is a horrifying thing, and with the news on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, people can see images of the horrors of war pretty much every day. This is the reason why boot camps tend to be such trying experiences, they are intended to both train soldiers for their job, and harden them so they can do their job without falling apart pyschologically. Civilians lack said hardening, and will naturally turn against the war which causes the horrors they see on TV. This is what happened in Vietnam: The Americans won every single major engagement, but lost the war due to politics back home.
                Wrong. The US lost the war because it failed to find a regime acceptable to the Vietnamese people, and much of that is because of the strategy chosen by the US military. By the time the US military had finally developed an operational strategy that could engendered strategic success, it had already burned American goodwill and frankly, the US had to cut bait because it couldn't sustain the effort without accepting a huge existential threat from the growing Soviet power.

                Politics back home didn't lose the war. Besides, this view point ignores the fact that war is politics anyways. You cannot win militarily, because the end is always about politics.
                "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

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                • #53
                  Major,

                  Wrong. The US lost the war because it failed to find a regime acceptable to the Vietnamese people, and much of that is because of the strategy chosen by the US military. By the time the US military had finally developed an operational strategy that could engendered strategic success, it had already burned American goodwill and frankly, the US had to cut bait because it couldn't sustain the effort without accepting a huge existential threat from the growing Soviet power.
                  It has always been my personal opinion (no fact behind it) that Nixon administration's genius foreign policy which resulted in Chinese diversion from Soviet pack and consequent friendly posture toward US/West caused Vietnam to loose its value. Vietnam was no longer needed to keep communists expansionism when you had the China, so US left.
                  Don't you think that was a factor to abandon Vietnam?
                  Appreciate the insight.

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                  • #54
                    Originally posted by astralis View Post
                    GF,

                    then when the troops start coming home and posting on blogs...what then?

                    the solution is not more secrecy but more openness within reason. media and public perception is just another part of the modern day operating environment- trying to close it out is fruitless, particularly as technology shrinks things down. replace information or even your side of the story and it gets filled for you.
                    I don't see troops blogging as a major issue.

                    In the absence of a major atrocity committed by a large number of relatively low-level US soldiers, there need not be anything so glaringly inconsistent between what is reported, and "the truth as the troops see it."

                    T1 guys are never going to blog. Most active duty troops are, properly, fairly circumspect about complaining, or contradicting their chain of command on line, even "anonymously" (which, of course, it isn't). Their circumspection comes from a variety of motivations, including (but not limited to) love of country, a sense of duty to their comrades, and a realization that negative posts will probably have a negative effect on their career, certainly, and possibly on their person. If a blogger does post something that seems inflamatory, there are plenty of people higher up the food chain to explain that while the Specialist has passion, he does not have the "big picture." And finally there is the example from Korea, where large numbers of civilians were gunned down by regular troops and the story didn't really become public for over 50 years. So, even regular troops can keep pretty large secrets.

                    Its a myth that technology makes information more transparent and harder to control. Actually, digital technology is putting the control of information in the hands of progressively smaller and smaller groups. If you want to control what gets out, you have to use a mix of hiding the truth, and widely sowing a lot of false information. The second part has always been the stumbling block. But now a well-equipped and motivated party can simply overwhelm media consumers with disinformation.

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                    • #55
                      Originally posted by Bigred View Post
                      However, what I am talking about is the sad fact (my opinion) that the American public can not stomach a conflict that is prolonged and Americans die. And, I lump into this conflicts that 90% of Americans would say is a justified cause.

                      AND, my reasoning is because of the media coverage 24/7 streaming into American's homes and drilled into them constantly.
                      Let me ask you this:

                      Why should anyone in government care about whether or not "the American public can...stomach a conflict"? Its not like we have a parliamentary system where the government can fall and new elections be held, theoretically, at short intervals. We only get a chance (and it is just that -- a chance) to change Congress every two years, and newbie Representatives take a while to spool up, no matter how motivated they are at the time of election.

                      So, even a truly reviled government has a nearly free hand for at least two years, which is plenty of time to create and resolve even the most unpopular and stupid of conflicts.

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                      • #56
                        Originally posted by Bigred View Post
                        There has always been opposition to wars. And, that is a good thing. As stated before, everyone should scrutinize how a war is being carried out.

                        However, no time in history have we had the 24 hours a day 7 days a week of constant (and a lot of times graphic) reports on the war.

                        This is what I think the American public can't handle. Let me give a hypothetical example that I think was carried out over and over again. Let's say the military knows they need to go in and bomb the hell out of a place where they believe enemy leaders are. Our military sends in one missle that is perfectly aimed and hits right on target. BUT, what is shown on TV is the rubble from the building and people crying and running around trying to dig survivors out of the rubble. This is a horrible scene. People died. I am sure some of the people that are on TV lost loved ones.

                        The American people don't want to see that. And, the more they see it, the less they care about how evil the people were that were targeted and by killing them, how it helped the war effort.

                        Contrast that with the cities in WWII that literally were leveled from bombings and the thousands of innocent people that must have been killed. BUT, this wasn't shown on TV 24/7.

                        Because wars today are shown 24/7 and extremely graphically, well executed wars turn into horrible tragedies in the public's mind.
                        Sure, its on, but how many people actually watch it? I don't. I know that the writers, reporters, and editors have the wisdom, intelligence, and education of drunken, retarded monkeys. I will not subject myself to their inane, ill-informed commentaries.

                        The hard core audience for 24/7 news consists of a few news junkies, who watch mostly to have their own opinions validated, some people whose jobs require it, and bored stoners who are up at night when nothing else is on. Most people I know rarely watch news at all, and even then its mostly the local news at 6 or 11. Most of those I know who do watch news are men. Most women I know never watch any news at all, nor do they read newspapers, or get news from the web or any other source. Their lives are already too busy to worry about depressing, sensationalized stories from countries they have only vaguely heard of and could never find on a map.

                        So, they run it, but who is actually watching? Damn few.

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                        • #57
                          Originally posted by Bigred View Post
                          Every war since then, the media has become more and more involved. Vietnam was really the first war that was on TV with reports on the battle field streaming news clips back to the states. The American public answered by not having the stomach to win the war.
                          Bigred,

                          You are basically running yet another version of the 'blood in the living room' thesis, the idea that graphic images of war are simply too terrible for civillians in a democracy to handle.

                          People have been running this line since the advent of battlefield photography. The images of Matthew Brady during the American Civil War were thoght to be too graphic - they would undermine support for the war. Then came early newsreels. During WW1 & WW2 censors banned film footage showing soldiers dying. In the US this ban effectively ensded when George marshall allowed the screening of a John Houston documentary that showed a US soldier being killed in Italy. Curiously non-one seems to have complained much about coverage of Korea (I'm sure someone did, but it isn't widely known). It is curious because Korea was actually as unpopular as Vietnam - go figure.

                          Anyone care to argue that the unpopularity that each of these wars experienced in varying degrees was due to the media, or can we accept that it was all about military & political failures?

                          This brings us to the era of Television, in particular Vietnam. The story that you have accepted is that night after night TV brought graphic & bloody images into American homes, eroding support until the public tired of the war & gave up. Professional historians have a word for theories like this - '*******s'. It relies on a couple of very dodgy premises - one is that an event as remembered is the same as an event as experienced - it isn't. The other is that coincidence equals causality. Unfortunately this theory has gained respectability far beyond the 'stab in the back' crowd.

                          If you are really interested in this I would direct you toward two books on the WAB Amazon site: 'The Living Room War' by Michael Arlen & ;The Uncensored War' by Daniel Hallin. These two men are among the few people to have actually watched & analysed much of the coverage of the war. Arlen actually watched much of it at the time - he was a TV critic. He also made a brief trip to Vietnam as a journalist. Hallin has gone through pretty much everything available at the time (1986) in archives. While not 100% complete, it was comprehensive. Here is part of an honours thesis I wrote many years ago covering this point:

                          As to the arguments about ‘blood and horror’ violating the sanctity of the American home each night, the reality was not quite so dramatic. According to journalism professor Lawrence Lichty, director of media research for Vietnam: A Television History, only about 3 percent of footage actually showed ‘heavy battle’ (defined as ‘heavy fighting, incoming with dead or wounded seen’), with a similar amount showing dead or wounded. Author Daniel Hallin (who has viewed virtually all of the available footage) estimated that about 20 percent of pre-Tet footage showed some dead or wounded, but the shots were often fleeting, and the most distressing moments were often edited so as not to offend viewers. Furthermore, much combat footage consisted of images of distant action, often with the sound muted (combat is too noisy to allow a voice-over). Overall, the images Hallin saw were ambiguous, fragmentary, out of context, and often passed too quickly to allow careful consideration. As the irony in the title of his book The “Uncensored War” implied, what people saw was a heavily edited and sanitised version of war. Film maker Barbara Sonnenborn, whose husband died in Vietnam, said the following: ‘The closest I could get to the war, besides Jeff’s letters, was the news on television. But that was not the war. I could never have imagined what was happening there.’ While memory often focuses on dramatic moments, the repetition of sanitised, often pointless images may have done more to shape people’s view of the war than a few bloody or violent ones.

                          During the war there were a number of people who recorded their observations of the coverage as it unfolded. Writing for TV Guide in late 1967, Martin Maloney noted the unreality of what he called ‘TVietnam’: ‘TVietnam is like all TV news: fragmented and repetitious ... Visually TVietnam is a small, dim war, fought by puppet-like figures.’ Ultimately Maloney saw television as failing to make sense of the war. Michael Arlen, television critic for the New Yorker magazine, echoed many of Maloney’s sentiments. He felt like someone watching an event through a keyhole, seeing and hearing only disconnected and decontextualised bits and pieces of a larger and much more complex whole: ‘Television ... continues for the most part to report the war as a long, long narrative broken into two-minute, three-minute, or four-minute stretches of visual incident.’ The small figures with guns so familiar from entertainment television were now appearing on the news. This was not exactly the ‘living room war’ of popular myth. Again, familiar frames of reference actually undermined much of the drama of the war. Unfortunately for proponents of the war, television’s narrative, like the war itself, went nowhere.
                          If TV told people anything about Vietnam it was that America wasn't 'winning', but it didn't tell them this with lots of bodies & left wing commentary, it did so by accident. TV reporters didn't anaylse the war & work out 'hey, we're getting this wrong'. What TV news did was simply screen segments night after night that cumulatively gave the impression - correct as it turned out - that America was losing tens of thousands of dead without actually 'winning'. Shooting the messenger wouldn't have brought to life those dead GIs or magically changed a failed strategy.
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                          Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Bigred View Post
                            There has always been opposition to wars. And, that is a good thing. As stated before, everyone should scrutinize how a war is being carried out.

                            However, no time in history have we had the 24 hours a day 7 days a week of constant (and a lot of times graphic) reports on the war.

                            This is what I think the American public can't handle. Let me give a hypothetical example that I think was carried out over and over again. Let's say the military knows they need to go in and bomb the hell out of a place where they believe enemy leaders are. Our military sends in one missle that is perfectly aimed and hits right on target. BUT, what is shown on TV is the rubble from the building and people crying and running around trying to dig survivors out of the rubble. This is a horrible scene. People died. I am sure some of the people that are on TV lost loved ones.

                            The American people don't want to see that. And, the more they see it, the less they care about how evil the people were that were targeted and by killing them, how it helped the war effort.

                            Contrast that with the cities in WWII that literally were leveled from bombings and the thousands of innocent people that must have been killed. BUT, this wasn't shown on TV 24/7.

                            Because wars today are shown 24/7 and extremely graphically, well executed wars turn into horrible tragedies in the public's mind.

                            Bigred,

                            You are right, Americans don't want to see America commit acts of mass murder. Killing civillians as a way to eat away tha morale of an enemy is questionable at best, murder at worst. Let me ask you this - if the Allies had been able to cripple the Axis industrial base (the purpose of strategic bombing) without killing hundreds of thousands of people, would this have given the Allies greater or lesser moral force?

                            Indeed, in Indochina America managed to drop an even greater tonnage of bombs than it did in WW2, and these on societies that were barely or not even industrial. If 2-3 million dead from all causes wasn't enough to stop Nth Vietnam then I'm not sure that unrestricted bombing of civillians would have helped. In fact, such bombing as there was actually increased support for the regime & committiment to the war - as it so often does.

                            The technological advances that allow for 24/7 news also allow us to create weapons that can do the job of crippling an enemy without actually killing hundreds of thousands. This doesn't just save the lives of enemy civillians, it saves the lives of our people too. The bomber offensive over Europe cost tens of thousands of Allied lives. The air war over Vietnam was much cheaper, and Iraq & Kosov cheaper still. The pressure to limit military losses on our side & civilian losses on theirs produces better weapons & better outcomes. It is interesting that in the case of the Kososv War, where precision munitions limited Yugoslav civilian casualties to a few thousand, the population, having rallied at the time, then turned against Milosovic. I wonder if they would have done that if NATO had flattened Belgrade & killed 200,000?

                            In Iraq & Afghanistan actions that result in the deaths of civilians HURT the war effort for the most part by making people we need to persuade to support us into enemies. Shek is better on this than I am, but I'm prepared to bet that reducing US-inflicted civilian casualties in Iraq has actually helped American efforts there, not hurt them.
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                            • #59
                              Originally posted by HoratioNelson View Post
                              Militarily: Yes. The United States military can take on pretty much everything than any single plausible opponent in the world can dish out.

                              It is politically that is the problem. War is a horrifying thing, and with the news on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, people can see images of the horrors of war pretty much every day. This is the reason why boot camps tend to be such trying experiences, they are intended to both train soldiers for their job, and harden them so they can do their job without falling apart pyschologically. Civilians lack said hardening, and will naturally turn against the war which causes the horrors they see on TV. This is what happened in Vietnam: The Americans won every single major engagement, but lost the war due to politics back home.

                              Horatio

                              This last sentence is one of those popular lines that says everything about people who think it is significant & very little about what happened in Vietnam. Two points (for a start):

                              1) So what? where does it state that 'winning' 'major battles' is the only way one wins a war. It isn't like there is a rule or someone keeping score. If your opponent is better at 'major battles' than you, only a fool chooses a strategy where they are the decisive factor. Foolish as they sometimes were, Ho, Giap & co. were nobody's fools

                              2) As Shek has so eloquently pointed out, the division between 'military' & 'political' is largely imaginary. Wars are political actions. Even dictators have to take account of political factors - just not in the same way as democracies. The decision to intervene militarily in Vietnam was political. The choice of strategy was political. The decision on how long to stay was political. the decision on how to leave was political. It was a political event from start to finish, all that changed was the extent to which military action was part of those political decisions.

                              I'll give you a quick primer on the war. You or others may disagree - please do.

                              In order to create a stable, defensible & non-communist Vietnam, America needed the following:
                              *A stable government in Saigon able to gain support in rural areas - where the communists had te greatest support.
                              *An indigenous Vietnamese military capable of defending the RVN from without & within.
                              *A military & political strategy to render the VC ineffective.
                              *A military strategy to stop the PAVN & DRV from bringing their influence to bear on the battlefield.

                              Would argue that until 1968-69 America had not really achieved any of these to any great extent, though the PAVN had difficulty operating in large formations. The former remained a problem until 1975. The second was never really achieved & the third only came about after the VC wrecked themselves in repeated offensives in 1968 AND the US changed tactics - all too late.

                              When LBJ found himself unexpectedly President in late 1963 he found himself stuck with a war he didn't really want with no clear path. A decade of poor government & US interference in the RVN had produced an unpopular government in real danger of collapse. In 1964 a string of coups didn't improve things. Remembering the fate of Truman & his 'loss' of China, Johnson knew that if he allowed the RVN to collapse he might lose the election in 1964 or at the least have his legislative agenda crippled. On the other hand, he knew (another Truman lesson) that a long, costly & bloody land war in Asia might do the same. What to do?

                              Johnson was the sort of guy who believed that every issue & every person could be brought to a 'deal' with the right combination of carrot & stick. He genuinely believed that he could make the cost of war to the DRV too high - forcing them to negotiate. Not wanting to commit ground forces in large numbers in an election year he first turned to air power & commando raids - 'Rolling Thunder' & the OPLAN 34A missions. Not only did it not work, it escalated the ground war as Vietnamese forces attacked US airbases.

                              With the election safely won & the bombing not working, Johnson was able to escalate the ground war. This is where it gets messy. Broadly speaking Johnson had two military options presented by his generals & advisors. One, a 'clear & hold' strategy, would work on slowly expanding US areas of control - securing the population bit by bit. This would require fewer troops & less hardware, but it would not be quick. The second planned to use US mobility & firepower to actively seek out & strike the enemy - breaking up their large formations & attritting them to the point that either they could not wage war or Hanoi accepted terms. This strategy would use larger numbers of troops & produce many more casualties, but promised a relatively quick result - before the next election.

                              Johnson went for option two, and chose one of its proponents - Westmoreland - to lead the mission. The problem was that it didn't work. The strategy consumed ever larger numbers of men. It drew in larger numbers of conscripts - upping the political stakes. It also cost a lot of lives. Often US tactics were essentially to use foot patrols as 'bait' to lure or flush the enemy into the open or fix them so that US firepower could kill them in numbers. The problem with this was that it allowed the enemy to choose the eime & place to start the fighting - by one estimate 90% of all engagements were initiated by VC or PAVN forces. From mid-1965 to the start of 1968 close to 30,000 US soldiers died and the VC & PAVN were still able to operate in Sth Vietnam. Only those operating within the statistical wilderness of MACV & its bizarre metrics of victory was 'progress' being made.

                              Worse, US & ARVN tactics caused an enormous backlash inside & outside Vietnam. Within Vietnam the US tried to deny the VC access to the population by simply clearing them out of certain areas. Milions of refugees were created, and in a culture where physical place was a key part of personal & spiritual identity, this was the worst possible PR. Profilagate use of firepower also had a devastating effect on civilian attitudes. If the VC come to your village, kill your headman & take some of your food you may fear & even hate them. If the ARVN or Americans bomb, shell or burn your village you won't just hate them, you will NEVER accept them, you may even fight them. The fact that the fighting was being led by foreigners gave the communists a PR victory without even trying. Ever wonder why none of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who helped in the Nth ever served in combat units? Like I said, Ho was nobody's fool.

                              Johnson knew that the war in Vietnam was on borrowed time from the start. Even before the Tet offensive support was slipping. After Tet it never came back into positive territory. Tet simply sped up a process that was already underway. From that point on the war was no longer about 'how do we win?', but 'how do we leave?'. Personally I think that any hope of 'winning' that might have existed was blown before Tet. The government in Saigon improved, but it remained corrupt, divided & often unpopular. The ARVN improved in parts, but for every quality General or Battalion were many more officers or formations that were somewhere from average to dangerously bad.

                              Neither could survive without direct US military involvement. That involvement could never be a blank cheque. America had other military responsibilities & a polity quite rightly asking why they were being asked to pay for s lengthy, costly & unsuccessful war. If the VC insurgency & the infrastructure that supported PAVN incursions had been more successfully dealt with it might have been possible for the US to maintain a conventional presence sufficient to deter the sort of invasions that took place in 1972 & 1975.

                              There is obviously more to it than this. The disintegration of the Nixon Administration under the weight of its own illegal actions played a role in the final collapse in US support for the RVN. I doubt, however, that the support the US was prepared to give would heve been enough.

                              Anyway, that is my little primer on why American strategy in Vietnam failed. it is possible, perhaps likely, that US action would not have changed the outcome anyway. Local factors always held sway. But the US military & its political masters made bad choices & paid the price. They would have paid the same price no matter who was reporting the war & how - just look at Korea.
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                              Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                              • #60
                                Originally posted by Aryajet View Post
                                Major,
                                It has always been my personal opinion (no fact behind it) that Nixon administration's genius foreign policy which resulted in Chinese diversion from Soviet pack and consequent friendly posture toward US/West caused Vietnam to loose its value. Vietnam was no longer needed to keep communists expansionism when you had the China, so US left.
                                Don't you think that was a factor to abandon Vietnam?
                                Appreciate the insight.
                                Aryajet,

                                The Sino-Soviet rift had been identified as early as 1960 or 1961 IIRC. Then Senator Kennedy had actually participated in some of the (sub?)committee meetings that discussed the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) where this information was reported. So, it was ripe for the picking.

                                However, it took a foreign policy team who didn't take an ideological approach to pick this ripe fruit, which is why it took nearly a decade and the arrival of the Nixon-Kissinger team to confirm this split and show that international communism wasn't a homogeneous entity with Moscow calling the shots. This is their value added out of Vietnam (so it didn't require Vietnam, but in a sense it did because it took Vietnam to get a hardcore realist team into the Oval Office).
                                "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

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