quote:

Again, I say we were limited to what we could do.

By whom? Not protestors and hippies in the US - what power did they have over the US army and what it did? The army was limited surely by government decisions - and those decisions were made partly in light of protests but also surely in light of the fact that no matter how many battles the US army won in Vietnam, "victory" was not possible.

"While negotiating in Hanoi a few days before Saigon fell, U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers, Jr. [later author of On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War], said to a North Vietnamese colonel, ‘You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield.' The Vietnamese colonel replied, ‘That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.'" www.tomdispatch.com

The article that quotes the above makes explicit some Iraq and Vietnam parallels. One is the unpreparedness (again) of the US army for unconventional - 'asymmetric' - war.

The Time article I linked to above, on how the army is broken, also points out how the army was not prepared for guerilla warfare. Partly, that must be the politicans fault - the idea seems to have been that Hussein would be overthrown and then (somehow) a new and US-friendly government would take over peacefully, and it would all be over in a few months. Nevertheless, what blame should the generals shoulder for not having, or advocating, contingency plans for 'worst-case' scenarios?

quote:

By whom? Not protestors and hippies in the US

Certainly not. Have you read anything on Vietnam?

So Johnson sowed the seeds of, and Congress brought about, defeat? Why? Why didn't they pursue the military success you, and the writer of that article, say was entirely possible?

Could it be that it was eventually recognised, no matter how many military engagements were won, 'victory' in Vietnam was not feasible?

(And if hippies and protestors 'certainly' did not limit the military, why did you say "the hippies and protesters eroded all of the support that we had, and we had to throw in the towel, and withdraw" a few posts back?)

Apparently this is like other posts, you are unwilling to read and accept the truth about things that you differ with, so this will be my last post on the subject.

quote:

So Johnson sowed the seeds of, and Congress brought about, defeat? Why? Why didn't they pursue the military success you, and the writer of that article, say was entirely possible?

Most say it was entirely possible.

quote:

And if hippies and protestors 'certainly' did not limit the military, why did you say "the hippies and protesters eroded all of the support that we had, and we had to throw in the towel, and withdraw" a few posts back?)

Yes! They played a big part in it.

quote:

...you are unwilling to read and accept the truth about things that you differ with..

No, I'm not. I've read what you posted, and the article you linked to, and I asked questions to clarify. If you can explain how the point you're making is 'the truth', of course I'm perfectly willing to accept it.

The point you seem to have avoided is that it didn't matter how many battles the US army won in Vietnam - just as, in Iraq, how many insurgents are killed is not a measure of overall, real 'success'.

The point is the wider picture; 'victory'- in Iraq and Vietnam - is and was not just about military prowess. That's part of what the original article in this thread implies; rolling over Hussein's sorry army at first was relatively easy, but it was up to the generals (as well as the politicians) to consider some "what if"s of what would follow in the wider context. They didn't adequately.

No doubt in Vietnam, it was technically and militarily possible to go on blowing things up and killing people indefinitely - but to what likely end?

(Hippies and protestors 'played a big part' in limiting the military, or 'certainly' did not limit it? Which?)

Whatever is right or wrong,I'll tell you one thing that America, as a nation, and her military can be very proud of.
It's that the Armed Forces Journal is able and willing to publish a piece like the one that started this thread.

My two cents worth:
Scotty has an opinion about why we lost the war in Vietnam.
The people he links to have an opinion about why we lost the war in Vietnam.
Scotty prefers the opinion that conforms to his own, in some respects. Most of us do!
This Lt.Col has a long, detailed explanation of his opinion and how he reaches his conclusions. I think he let's no one off the hook as blameless, including the people who determine his military career's future progress. I think the man has guts and very persuasive arguments. I would hope we, including the "decider in chief", benefit from his recommendations in our pursuit of the Iraq war.

I remember those days very well.

At first, most voters were simply annoyed by the young protesters. Those who were the 'Scotties' of their day talked about Pinko Commie influence and wanted to completely revamp the university education system, firing history professors who mentioned embarrassing things about Viet Nam's deal : France had hauled itself out of Vietnam when the Japanese invaded, leaving its colonials to their fate; in return for the Vietnamese fighting against the Japanese in WWII, the allies agreed they would not assist France if she were to try and re-take Vietnam after the war. Of course the allies reneged.

Anyhow, 'Scotty' wanted to pack the schools with professors hand-picked to be interpreters of the Party Line.

Much like to-day as Bush hires scads of Regent University's (Pat Robertson's very mediocre law school) grads instead of grads of the academically superior law schools.

Well, that was the plan. But it created an uproar from those who placed some importance on academic freedom. So a lot of middle-class kids on campuses were 'politicized'. The issue broadened. It wasn't just Viet Nam any more. Racism and sexism began to be seen as important social problems, and no longer just taken for granted. Of course the 'Scotties' opposed change there, too.

Then as now some servicemen suffered as the anti-war movement strove to make the military an unattractive career goal. Returning troops were mocked and insulted. This had never been seen before. The young troops, many of whom had 'bought' the rationale that they were going in to save the innocent people, were of course shocked and confused.

But in the long run it was the news media coverage, showing the horror of the lives of the Vietnamese themselves, as year after year their crops and villages were sprayed with toxic herbicides, napalmed, bombed -- all in order to create a 'scorched earth' in which no Viet Cong could survive.

In the last instance, it was the American people who ended the war. They were revolted by the brutality of their own actions, and the loss of American lives, and the stagnation of the war. Each year American costs increased, and the number of troops increased, but no progress was being made. And intelligent Americans were disgusted and enraged to learn that their government had lied to them.

They were indignant that rather than being the saviors of the Vietnamese, they were the invaders and the oppressors. The press showed them the burned children, the torture victims --

This senseless, stagnated war was not the package they had bought. It was the revulsion of decent Americans that ended the war.

But George Bush Sr. decided that there would be 'no more Vietnams', (this had been a slogan before him, but he brought it to maturity) and clamped the lid on Vietnam-style war reporting, using press censorship, public relations and information management.

So now the U.S. is once again locked into another Vietnam.

Wow! I didn't know that we "Scotties" were so powerful.
Hey, if I didn't get insulted by a liberal, I would have a bad day. I consider it a badge of honor. Thanks.

Some of us were in uniform dodging bullets, while some of you were smoking pot and protesting, or running off to Canada to save your behinds.
Don't tell me what Vietnam was all about, I spent two years of my life there, and like the others polled, I would do it again.
I am constantly in touch with other Vietnam veterans each day and I know how most of them feel about their service, but some of you are going to tell me different.
Typical liberal gibberish.
They are proud of their service to their Country and a lot still harbor hard feelings toward the long haired pot smoking hippies of that day.

Scotty tells us, "... a lot still harbor hard feelings toward the long haired pot smoking hippies of that day."

Do they still harbor hard feelings toward the politically aware people who noticed your masters were lying to you, and called your attention to it?

quote:

Scotty tells us, "... a lot still harbor hard feelings toward the long haired pot smoking hippies of that day."

Yep! That's what Scotty tells us.
Ask them if you want to find out.
The answers that you get may surprise you. They don't think of you as their saviors.
In fact some of them would love to get their hands on "Hanoi Jane's" neck. Literally.

But it wasn't just the hippies who were smoking pot and calling for an end to the war on principle.

'By this time, American participation in the war in Vietnam had lost any remnant of popular support. A Gallup poll in January 1971 showed that 60% of Americans with a college education favoured withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, 75% of those with a high-school education favoured withdrawal, and 80% of those with only a grade-school education favoured withdrawal.

As support for the war effort continued to decrease within the United States, so did the morale among the American troops in Vietnam. A Defense Department task force report released in January 1971 stated the drug abuse by American military personnel in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Far East was becoming a 'military problem'...

...During March 1971, public opinion polls showed that President Nixon's approval rating among Americans had dropped to 50%. Approval of his Vietnam strategy has fallen to 34%. Half of all Americans polled believed the war in Vietnam to be 'morally wrong'.' www.bbc.co.uk

Do those vets who feel they were 'stabbed in the back' have hard feelings towards at least half of America?

(Are current opinion poll figures on Iraq similar to those quoted?)

quote:

Do those vets who feel they were 'stabbed in the back' have hard feelings towards at least half of America?

quote:

A Defense Department task force report released in January 1971 stated the drug abuse by American military personnel in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Far East was becoming a 'military problem'...

There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non veterans of the same age group (from a Veterans Administration study)

quote:

'By this time, American participation in the war in Vietnam had lost any remnant of popular support. A Gallup poll in January 1971 showed that 60% of Americans with a college education favoured withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, 75% of those with a high-school education favoured withdrawal, and 80% of those with only a grade-school education favoured withdrawal

SO?

What is it you don't understand Scotty? I thought it was pretty clear; "Half of all Americans polled believed the war in Vietnam to be 'morally wrong'", so do some vets resent that 'half of all Americans'?

And the 'SO' is that those figures seem to support Babs - "In the last instance, it was the American people who ended the war. They were revolted by the brutality of their own actions, and the loss of American lives, and the stagnation of the war." - it wasn't all down to Jane Fonda and some college peaceniks.

("There is no difference in drug use..." - yes, it wasn't just the long-haired hippies smoking pot [and protesting the war])

Another General (a retired one) speaks out on Iraq:

"In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.

“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.

“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.

“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.

“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did..." www.commondreams.org

Is it possible that this Lt Col knows exactly what he's doing? For instance: The administration blames the intelligence for the decision to invade, and now this guy's "generalship" issue blames the execution on the military's inappropriate and outmoded methods, and failure to properly and timely advise the prez and the congress. The original architects, Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rummy,Dubya et al are blameless! He could end up promoted!

I enlisted in the Army because of Vietnam. I had studied the history of Vietnam in school and I firmly believed that the US was fighting to provide freedom to a people in danger from the communist influence. As it happened, I was never sent to Vietnam, getting orders instead to South Korea as part of the build up of US troops after the capture of the USS Pueblo off the coast of North Korea on January 23, 1968.

At the time I was very disappointed to miss out on Vietnam because I thought our nation's motives in Vietnam were right and our country needed to do this. In the years since I've come to change my viewpoint. I do think that if the US military were allowed to fight the war without political regard, the war would have been different, but in the end I'm not sure there would be much difference. Our enemy was very determined and our people never really supported the war effort. I feel that the troops doing the fighting never did get the kind of appreciation that they deserved and many are still justifiably bitter about the experience.

From former Defense Secretary ROBERT S. MCNAMARA's book:
IN RETROSPECT
THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM

FROM THE PREFACE:
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

"A fascinating and extraordinarily candid examination of the errors of judgment of the 'best and the brightest' of our civilian and military leaders during the Vietnam War. This book should be read and carried throughout their careers by every current and future military officer for decades to come." --LT. GEN. ROBERT E. PURSLEY (USAF, RTE.)

"Can anyone remember a public official with the courage to confess error and explain where he and his country went wrong? This is what Robert McNamara does in this brave, honest, honorable and altogether compelling book." --ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.

From book critic Jason Hill:

McNamara's failure to grasp reality conclusively shows through when he mentions that "we failed to retain popular support in part because we did not explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we did. We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced and how to react constructively." This statement, if anything, implies that those who objected to sending troops were [naive], and had they truly understood the purpose of US intervention, they would have had no reason to protest. The fact of the matter is that not only did many believe that American intervention was immoral, but many simply objected to the killing. No amount of explaining by any government official, including Robert McNamara himself, could ever have changed this. America's War in Vietnam 1954-1973

Does anyone remember the "Pentagon Papers" and what they revealed about the actions of the US Government in Vietnam?

"When one delves into the Pentagon Papers it becomes immediately clear why the government wanted them kept secret, for they expose the many lies that our government generated in order to get the American people strongly behind the war effort. Yet, the importance of these documents goes beyond their intrinsic historical value since they establish a precedence of governmental deceit that would be practiced again and again."
.Jeff Drake, Vietnam Vet, "How the U.S. Got Involved In Vietnam"

From the article: In 1965, President Johnson went before the American people and gave a speech, "Why We Are in Vietnam," which he said in part: If we don't stop the communists in South Vietnam, then other countries will fall to the communists and we will see "falling dominoes" of country after country becoming communist. Johnson concludes that in order to protect the free world and live up to its pledge to defend freedom and democracy throughout the world, the United States must defend South Vietnam and defeat the communist conspiracy against Vietnam."

This is what President Johnson told the American people about why we were in Vietnam. But in recently released tapes of phone conversations Johnson had with his top advisors in 1965 and 1966, we know that privately Johnson had a very different perspective on the Vietnam war. In a recently released tape, Johnson is heard telling McGeorge Bundy that Vietnam was a mess, that the war couldn't be won, and that the war wasn't worth fighting. In fact, in 1966, David Brinkley recounts Johnson's top aides telling him that the war couldn't be won, and even if we won, it wouldn't be worth anything. After airing these sentiments, on aide then asked Johnson why he just didn't get out of Vietnam if he believed this. President Johnson said: "Because I don't want to be the first American President to lose a war." Just imagine if the American people knew that their own President didn't believe in the war and was only fighting it to save his reputation and save the Democratic party from charges that they were soft on communism. Even now, hearing the truth about Vietnam makes Americans who grew up in that era angry and bitter. Clearly, President Johnson deceived Americans about the war in Vietnam. Pentagon Papers

quote:

I do think that if the US military were allowed to fight the war without political regard, the war would have been different,

quote:

I feel that the troops doing the fighting never did get the kind of appreciation that they deserved and many are still justifiably bitter about the experience.

The points that I have been trying to make.
Thanks.

A thoughtful article which again comes back to the point that it wasn't all about battlefield success. The wider context was important. (Sorry - it's a long cut and paste.)

"The absence of US military defeat did not guarantee political success...

...Could Hanoi's will, capacity to fight, or both, have been broken by US military action short of a morally and politically unacceptable outright obliteration of North Vietnam's population and territory? Could Hanoi's communist leadership have been compelled to cease its attempts to reunify Vietnam by force, and is so, by what means?

The United States, to repeat, was not militarily beaten in Vietnam. Indeed, by 1973 the United States and its South Vietnamese ally had stalemated the North Vietnamese conventional military threat and were decisively defeating the indigenous southern insurgent component of the communist threat.

In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, which politically and militarily was the Continental Divide of the Vietnam War, the communist leadership relied increasingly on conventional military operations, and it did so in part because of a dramatic erosion of the communist political base in South Vietnam. The Viet Cong never recovered from their disastrous Tet losses, and the NLF's political and military viability was further compromised by the US firepower-generated flight of millions of rural Vietnamese into the cities, and by an accelerated pacification program that both killed off many remaining Viet Cong cadre as well as delivered genuine land reform and prosperity to much of rural South Vietnam. By virtually all accounts, the percentage of South Vietnam's population under effective communist control dropped sharply during the period between the Tet Offensive and the Paris peace agreement.[24]

But the significance of this admittedly impressive accomplishment was questionable by 1973. If the original insurgent threat had receded, the conventional military threat posed by an expanding and increasingly well-equipped North Vietnamese army had mushroomed, and the long-term military balance in Vietnam looked bleak for Saigon. How was Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), with its myriad deficiencies, to survive the inevitable showdown with the very enemy that not even a half million US troops with their vastly superior firepower could crush?[25] Indeed, was not "Vietnamization" little more than (in Phillip Davidson's words) a "cut and run" strategy?[26]...

...Was defeat snatched from the jaws of victory by Johnson's refusal to mobilize the reserves; to permit US ground forces to invade Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam; and to authorize the bombing of all targets in North Vietnam that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to bomb and when they wanted to bomb them? Would a full reserve mobilization really have made a decisive difference? Could the Ho Chi Minh Trail really have been effectively interdicted by an occupation of southern Laos and by trans-DMZ forays into North Vietnam's panhandle? Could North Vietnam's determination and ability to fight really have been destroyed from the air?

We will never know the answers to these questions, though logic suggests that a less restrained US use of force in Indochina would have made life considerably more difficult, but not necessarily impossible, for the communist side. We do know what did not work: commitment of over 500,000 US troops; release of over 8,000,000 tons of bombs on suspected enemy targets; and a strategy of punishing North Vietnam from the air while attempting to grind down enemy strength in the South via seeking out and destroying his big units in the Central Highlands and around the DMZ.

In South Vietnam, where the US military operated without significant civilian-imposed restraints, Westmoreland opted for a strategy of attrition. Though others within the military and beyond questioned the wisdom of the strategy,[34] Westmoreland has claimed that attrition was dictated by manpower constraints and by White House prohibition of US ground operations outside South Vietnam.[35] He has also dismissed the alternative of a population protection--or enclave--strategy as a defensive one that would have ceded the initiative to the enemy.[36] Westmoreland thus chose to kill communist regulars rather than protect friendlies, no doubt in part because he mistakenly assumed that by doing the former he was accomplishing the latter.

We now know that the combination of bombardment in the North and attrition in the South failed, and we know why it failed: gross underestimation of North Vietnam's tenacity, overestimation of its vulnerability to strategic bombing, and an inability to kill enemy troops in the field at a rate exceeding the communist side's capacity to replace them (the notorious "cross-over point")...

...The key to US defeat was a profound underestimation of enemy tenacity and fighting power, an underestimation born of a happy ignorance of Vietnamese history, a failure to appreciate the fundamental civil dimensions of the war, and a preoccupation with the measurable indices of military power and attendant disdain for the ultimately decisive intangibles. In 1965, Maxwell Taylor confessed that "the ability of the Viet Cong continuously to rebuild their units and make good their losses is one of the mysteries of this guerrilla war. We still find no plausible explanation of the continued strength of the Viet Cong."[52] Four years later, Vo Nguyen Giap commented that the "United States has a strategy based on arithmetic. They question the computers, add and subtract, extract square roots, and then go into action. But arithmetical strategy doesn't work here. If it did, they'd have already exterminated us."[53]

The United States could not have prevented the forcible reunification of Vietnam under communist auspices at a morally, materially, and strategically acceptable price."

Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won?

That part I bolded could refer also to Iraq. Which brings us back to the original post - should US generals take some of the blame for the unfolding chaos in Iraq? Did they advise or plan as they should have?