Posted on 04/30/2005 1:48:32 AM PDT by smoothsailing
Well, George Bush (41) did, despite a generally good environment for employment, which has always been seen as competition for Armed Forces recruiting. I'm not sure you're right about that at all.
As for the Vietnamese being so bad, a) they didn't own the jungle, as the Australians and the LRRP's proved -- in fact, it was the Australians who owned the jungle; they just let the NVA play in it, and b) the enemy had human limitations of their own, which led them to hate coming into contact with the ROK's. The ROK's were very tough in hand-to-hand combat (every man a black belt in tae kwon do), and the Viets really disliked having to go up against them -- and would have equally disliked going up against similarly well-trained U.S. troops, such as those we deploy now to Iraq regularly. Then, c) a change in warfighting tactics from Westmoreland's "search-and-destroy" operations that didn't work to something that did, such as fully-backed LRRP's might have paid big dividends. American use of LRRP tactics would have been much more successful if we had had the hosses to counter the NVA anti-LRRP tactics of observers everywhere and 10-man rapid-reaction HUK squads to counter and follow up. If we had made a real study of it, we could have made the NVA pay a very high price for chasing our Ranger and Marine LRRP's around.
Serious, purposeful application of our resources in Vietnam would have made that war another study in "screw with the best, die like the rest." We didn't try -- we didn't try at the top, we didn't try in the middle, and no wonder people didn't try at street level, either.
But then, that's the kind of leadership we had back then, with Lyndon Johnson in the White House supported by roomfuls of Harvard "warriors" who looked down their noses at him -- and us.
Quite right reply...
But basically we were working our way PAST the "lessons" of Korea... and we succeeded. We brought Korea on ourselves by one of our less considered speeches.. and then brought the Chicom on our own heads by ignoring their backstairs communications and MacArthur's mistake...
I can really relate to the pussyfooting confusion over VN policy in that environment. But we put the big stall in... and it worked... and then we slipped into the Afghan war against the Russians (I was involved in that) and even then we made a mistake of turning ISI from a quonset hut into a huge operation by trying to use them as a cutout.
Even so THAT worked as well.
One loses a lot of embarrassing battles in a war... the key is not to lose the war and to hold the principle strategic points... and not lose sight of what they are.
Leftist media/academic thinking tends to obscure it. And Lipscomb reminds us WHY we went into the swamp.
Thanks for your great postings.
Lyndon Johnson and his people said his bugbear was the possibility that someone on the other side would go nuclear if a "tripwire" were passed.
I wonder if that is so, even if we did receive a back-channel communication from someone.
It is never far from my mind, that Lyndon Johnson was an enormous ego with an agenda, and that Vietnam was an inconvenience to his efforts to build a "legacy" worthy of his ego needs -- IMHO, I think he sought parity with Franklin Roosevelt (he was surpassingly vindictive, and always sought to "even the score" in some way with every mentor he ever had) and was hoping for a shot at Mt. Rushmore.
Johnson basically didn't want to fight a war in Vietnam, and he absolutely refused to compromise his domestic legacy-building agenda. His ego tied his hands more than the Russians did, IMHO.
LBJ did even more damage to this country than Clinton could even dream of, and that's saying something.
Excellent and informative post. Thanks.
------------------------------------
Still moot, the military Bush 41 had he inherited, he didn't build. And, most importantly there was no senseless war costing thousands of lives a year during the 80s that would have scared 18 year olds away.
I don't think it's accurate to compare saddam's forces with the VC and NVA on a toughness level. The Iraqis gave up faster than the French (who had been whipped by Ho's peasant army). The VC went underground (literally) for years and the NVA kept the Ho Chi Minh Trail moving in spite of daily B-52 poundings.
I am not arguing that we could not have won, of coure we could have with different leadership. I am arguing that the VN War was unique in far too many ways, including the home front, to be analagous to any other conflict in our history.
Spectacular post. Thanks...
True, he inherited it from Ronald Reagan -- and immediately set about dismantling it. Forces in Germany and all four Navy battleships, plus iirc a carrier group or two, were scheduled for demobe when, 18 months into 41's administration, Saddam moved on Kuwait. That's because people on Park Avenue don't like paying for a big military -- in the 30's, they had the Army exercising with wooden rifles and sacks of flour, even as Hitler was building up his Luftwaffe air flotillas. Conservatives and especially neoconservatives want a serious defense establishment; a lot of paleocons don't trust standing military forces (Murray Rothbard denounced Bill Buckley over just this point), and economic royalists are all about their tax bills and corporate welfare.
Nevertheless, Reagan may have been helped in his initial recruitments by a soft economy, but the economy was quite strong during his second administration, and so I think my point is made, that the recruits are there, for good leadership.
And, most importantly there was no senseless war costing thousands of lives a year during the 80s that would have scared 18 year olds away.
If Vietnam had been prosecuted the way we know how to do things, it wouldn't have been "senseless", would it? True, the 80's were a period of peace, but they were also a period of menacing confrontation with the USSR, and began during the end of the "window of opportunity" that offered the Soviets their best chance to take Europe by military coup de main. Remember, that was when Hackett et al. were writing and popularizing their Third World War books based on wargamed scenarios. The 80's weren't the late 50's, no enemies in sight and easy tours of duty.
I don't think it's accurate to compare saddam's forces with the VC and NVA on a toughness level.
If you are talking about his ill-used and ill-equipped draftee "regulars", who were really more like militia, then I agree, but the Republican Guards and the Special Republican Guards were a different proposition. They stood and fought, and like the NVA and the Viet Cong when they stood and fought the United States Army, they died like flies. Underground, they have been every bit as tough and elusive as the Viet Cong, and I think for the same reasons -- Chinese advisors who taught them the rudiments of "asymmetrical warfare" based on Chinese experience during their 20-year civil war.
The Iraqis gave up faster than the French (who had been whipped by Ho's peasant army).
Well, that's really saying something, but that's just the line units. As I said, the Republican Guards have behaved much more like the VC and NVA.
The VC went underground (literally) for years and the NVA kept the Ho Chi Minh Trail moving in spite of daily B-52 poundings.
So have the Ba'athist holdouts, and it's just a matter of cutting off their supply routes and holding their heads under water until they expire. That was tough to do with other countries' neutrality and jungle canopy in the mix, but Iraq is a desert and you can see forever. Tough to hide out there unless you dig holes in the ground, and even those can be found -- and people in them have zero mobility and not much ability to communicate that NSA can't ferret out. There are probably 50 guys at NSA this afternoon just praying that Zarqawi or Ayman Zawahiri or OBL will accidentally key his cell phone.
Vietnam proved you can't stop canopy-covered supply line without boots on the ground; in Iraq, the boots are on the ground, they're backed by AFV's and damn-near-invisible eyes in the sky, and they can see. Huge difference.
I am arguing that the VN War was unique in far too many ways, including the home front, to be analagous to any other conflict in our history.
I'm not sure you intended it to be one, but that is a tautology -- "it was different, so it was different". They're all different, and the thing that makes them the same is people's willingness to help, to sacrifice if need be, and to win. JFK told everyone what the stakes were and what we proposed to do, but LBJ muddied the message because he didn't want Vietnam to interfere with his legacy-building personal agenda.
Moral of the story: Identify all giant, corrupt and corrupting egos and filter them every time from the leadership pool. Nobody can remember the names of the consuls and senators who built the Roman Empire -- just those of the prima donnas who nearly destroyed it, and eventually overthrew it, for the sake of their egotism.
I'd be inclined to agree with you, except that we don't know the full weight of Clinton's bill yet -- and we never will, if 43 doesn't unleash the hounds very, very soon.
Concurring bump, yes, thanks for the excellent post.
Keep after them, don't let them forget, or let them help other people forget. Jane Fonda is twisting in the wind now, and so many of her fellow malefactors need to do the same. Bush could make a good start by releasing John Kerry's Navy file.
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.