Posted on 10/27/2004 4:50:26 AM PDT by thepainster
Help! I need to tap the unlimited knowledge of my fellow freepers. Last night I was in a political discussion with the CEO of a company I represent. We were discussing the Viet Nam war. My premise was that we never lost a major battle in Viet Nam and if not for the collapse of support for the war in the media and subsequently by the populace, we were very close to winning the war, and could have done so had in a short amount of time. I believe that the end of the war was closer than the public was lead to believe. This was based on interviews with former NV officials.
The CEO says we were not even close and that the only way we could have won the war, was with the use of atomic weapons. The majority of his view was based on a book by Robert MacNamara, and word of mouth from his friend who were a Navy pilot in the war.
The CEO is as history buff with a near photographic memory. Who is closer to the truth, him or me?
YEs after the Tet offensive it was a military victory for us because they threw EVERYTHING they had at us. We could have pushed on and won right there but the poplutation in the US wussed out
General Gap (However it is spelled) thougth so. He is quoted as saying that if we had kept up the bombing for a few more weeks the North would have collapsed and given up. (Obiously he could have been yanking the writers chain) Get the 10,000 day War. Its a great read!
You are. Go to amazon .com and buy two copies of this book:
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam
Keep one for yourself and give the other to your friend. The have your discussion again.
Freepers Rule!!!!
Thanks for the info folks, now I am armed and dangerous!
This is something I will never forgive Ollie North for.
In the run-up to the most important election in US history, he's been showing WWII stories on his War Stories TV show.
You know what? WWII stories on TV is about as new a concept as the Milton Berle show.
How about some VIETNAM WAR STORIES ??????????
How about some NICARAGUA WAR STORIES ????????
I'm not saying he should have done even a single story on liar-liar-pants-on-fire-nose-longer-than-a-telephone-wire Kerry, but he should have been questioning the CONVENTIONAL WISDOM that Vietnam was a lost cause and that support for the contras was an immoral act.
But Ollie, for all his tough talk, CHICKENED OUT this season.
And that's sad.
That's very sad.
And I don't know the reason why.
Up to that point the North and Cong had also lost every major engegement on the ground against us.
After the cease fire, when they pulled back, we escalated our own withdrawals.
Then, in 1974, when the North violated their treaty, and blatantly invaded the south, rather than taking the fight back to them and living up to our obligations...we continued to pull out. It was shameful. As they drove south, we simply left.
The memory of that action is long and has impacted our dealings with potential and real enemies ever since. It was not until Reagan with Panama, Grenada and particularly facing down the Soviets that we began to come out of it. With Desert Storm we finally began to put it behind us...up until now with Kerry. He is dredging the entire shameful period back...because he was a principle architect and tool in what happened then.
According to Gen. Giap, the NVA were about to give up after the disatrous Tet offensive.
Then they heard Walter Cronkite on TV proclaiming the success of the Tet offensive. They were completely and totally amazed at hearing that the US Embassy had been overrun. In reality, The NVA had NOT gained access to the Embassy. Some VC had been killed on the lawn, but they hadn't gained access. Further reports indicated the anti-war riots and protesting on the streets of America.
According to Giap, these distorted reports were inspirational to the NVA. They changed their plans from a negotiated surrender and decided instead, they only needed to persevere for one more hour/day/week/month and eventually the protesters in American would help them to achieve a victory they knew they could not win on the battlefield.
This was at a time when the U.S. casualties were fewer than 10,000 (the beginning of 1968).
So yes, America need not have lost the war.
Here is a short synopsis of just what happened during the TET Offensive of 1968:
Myth: The Tet Offensive Was a Communist Victory
The 1968 Tet offensive was a total and complete miltary disaster for the North Vietnamese Communists no matter how you look at it. If you measure victory by territory gained or enemy killed, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong failed dismally in their attacks.
The NVA and VC had counted on a "People's Uprising" to carry them to victory, however there was no such uprising. They did exactly what the American military wanted them to do. They massed in large formations that were incredibly vulnerable to the awesome fire support the U.S. Military was able to bring to bear on them in a coordinated and devastating manner.
The NVA and VC attacked only ARVN installations with the exception of the US Embassy in Saigon. Despite reports to the contrary by all major television news networks and the print media, the VC sapper team of 15 men never entered the chancery building and all 15 VC were dead within 6 hours of the attack. They caused no damage to any property and managed to kill 4 US Army MPs, and one Marine guard. The South Vietnamese Police tasked with guarding the Embassy fled at the first sound of gunfire.
The NVA/VC launched major attacks on Saigon, Hue, Quang Tri City, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon, Kontum City, Ban Me Thout, My Tho, Can Tho, and Ben Tre. With the exception of the old imperial city of Hue, the NVA/VC were forced to retreat within 24 hours of the beginning of the offensive. In the process they suffered devastating losses among the southern VC cadres. Using the southern VC as the spearhead of these attacks was an intentional device on the part of the North Vietnamese politcal leadership. They did not want to share power with the southerners after the war, so they sent them out to what was inevitable slaughter. The NVA mainforce battalions were held in "reserve" according to Vo Nguyen Giap, in order to "exploit any breakthroughs".
In the first week of the attack the NVA/VC lost 32,204 confirmed killed, and 5,803 captured. US losses were 1,015 KHA, while ARVN losses were 2,819 killed. ARVN losses were higher because the NVA/VC, reluctant to enter into a set-piece battle with US forces, attacked targets defended almost exclusively by South Vietnamese troops.
Casualties among the people whom the NVA/VC claimed to be "liberating" were in excess of 7,000, with an additional 5,000 tortured and murdered by the NVA/VC in Hue and elsewhere. In Hue alone, allied forces discovered over 2,800 burial sites containing the mutilated bodies of local Vietnamese teachers, doctors, and political leaders.
http://www.11thcavnam.com/education/myth_the_tet_offensive_was_a_com.htm
General Vo Nguyen Giap, the leader of the North Vietnamese Army during the war, had these comments to make concerning the efforts of anti-war protesters like John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and VVAW, which Jane Fonda was the co-founder with John Kerry; this article is reprinted from NEWSMAX:
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/5/1/110432.shtml
Gen. Giap Thanks Kerry & Co. for Anti-war Protests
Celebrating the 29th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the North Vietnamese general who led his forces to victory said Friday he was grateful to leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, one of whom was presidential candidate John Kerry.
"I would like to thank them," said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, now 93, without mentioning Kerry by name. "Any forces that wish to impose their will on other nations will surely fail," he added.
Reuters, which first reported Giap's comments, suggested that the former enemy general was mindful of Kerry's role in leading some of the highest-profile anti-war protests of the entire Vietnam War.
Before the British wire service quoted Gen. Giap, it noted:
"The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand."
North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin, who served under Gen. Giap on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, Col. Tin explicitly credited leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, saying they were "essential to our strategy."
"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement," Col. Tin told the Journal.
Visits to Hanoi by Kerry anti-war allies Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others, he said, "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," the North Vietnamese military man explained.
Kerry did much the same thing in widely covered speeches such as the one he delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.
"Through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilize a will to win," Col. Tin concluded.
These are not insignificant statements. These North Vietnamese military men are crediting the American Anti-War movement with being the reason they held out in time of war. The obvious conflict in this statement of theirs is, if there was NO ANTI-WAR movement in the US, these North Vietnamese military men would have NOT been optimistic about the outcome of the war. They would have been approaching the US in an attitude of military weakness, not military strength.
This is undeniable. In fact, there are some more direct quotes from General Giap on this very subject.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/10/222651.shtml
Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.
In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North.
That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face."
"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity.
"The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.
"John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.
"Then, in 1974, when the North violated their treaty, and blatantly invaded the south, rather than taking the fight back to them and living up to our obligations...we continued to pull out. It was shameful. As they drove south, we simply left."
Thank the Democrat-controlled congress for that, who simply refused to fund any action in Viet Nam. They betrayed Nixon's Peace with Honour.
After Watergate, they refused Ford the resources to defend SouthVietnam despite our treaty obligations.
I was at Clark Air Base in the Philippines when the POW's came back. The North Vietnamese couldn't get rid of them fast enough.
After playing us for patsies in Paris for almost 4 years they realized that they were headed for the stone age unless they gave us what we wanted. We should never have stopped there.
John Kerry has a lot to be ashamed of.
Yes, we did not lose the war in Vietnam. We gave it up. Check out the books by Col. Bui Tin.
We had no real strategy for fighting this war. Left to their own devices, the Army and Marine Corps fought a large-scale, logistically massive "war" against an enemy that they had a hard time even finding.
The Navy and Air Force conducted air strikes against "strategic targets" in North Vietnam. However, identifying what constituted a "strategic target" that was (a) important enough to the North Vietnamese that they'd notice and (b) could be bombed within the restrictive rules of engagement put in place by President Johnson was, to put it mildly, challenging. It's hard for me to say that the air war against North Vietnam was even relevant.
Throughout the entire war, the Communist ground forces had safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam.
Vietnam was a classic asymmetrical war: we had great power at our disposal, but limited will to use it (and the most effective forms of power were also the least favored elements of the US military--special operations and irregular warfare); the Vietnamese Communists had much lesspower, but absolute will to win.
Oh, I forgot. The NVA/VC were expecting a major uprising of the population during the Tet '68 attacks, which as we know, did not happen. The South Vietnamese knew of the brutality of the VC/NVA, as they amply demonstrated in the late 70's.
Did it occur to you that the FOX network may have a vote in Ollie's subject matter and timing?
They talked of surrendering but the words and testimonies (lies) of North Vietnamese communist agents like John Kerry and the reaction of Americans to those words (lies), convinced them to hold out a bit longer.
You could say we basically won the war, then walked off the field and defaulted to the defeated side.
The North Vietnamese and Chinese Communists learned well from the Soviets about propaganda. Ever read "Masters of Deceit"? It's the scariest book I've ever read and I've read alot..even horror stories.
And the communist propaganda is still going on in most print and news media as well as universities.
The Soviet Union may have passed into history but communism is alive and well and still trying to defeat the free world.
Read Richard Nixon's No more Vietnams. He posits three vietnam wars. The first the frenchversus the Communists (Communist Victory leading to creation of North Vietnam) The second the North v. South w/ United states. U.S. Vicotry by producing peace accords that would have recognized and legitimized South's right to political autonomy. The third invasion of south by massive conventional forces and withdrawal of promised U.S. support from South Vietnam by Democarts in Congress Victory for communists.
The goal of the war was always to keep the North from trying to take over the South. The Paris Peace accords gave us exactly that so by any measure we won. There was an attempt at an offensive by the North within a year or so and it failed due to American air support for the South. The final offensive was a conventional attack by the North, proving that their attempt at guerrilla war had failed. Had it not been for Watergate and the Congress cutting off almost all aid to the South the north would have been driven back once again. We didn't lose the war, we handed the South over to the North.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.