Posted on 01/18/2013 6:23:35 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
For a student of military history, the most astonishing fact about the current international scene is that there isn't a single conflict in which two uniformed militaries are pitted against each other. The last one was a brief clash in 2008 between Russia and Georgia. In our day, the specter of conventional conflict, which has dominated the imagination of the West since the days of the Greek hoplites, has almost been lifted.
But the world is hardly at peace. Algeria fights hostage-takers at a gas plant. France fights Islamist extremists in Mali. Israel fights Hamas. The U.S. and its allies fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Syria's Bashar al-Assad fights rebels seeking to overthrow him. Colombia fights and negotiates with the FARC. Mexico fights drug gangs. And various African countries fight the Lord's Resistance Army.
These are wars without front lines, without neatly defined starting and end points. They are messy, bloody affairs, in which attackers, typically without uniforms, engage in hit-and-run raids and often target civilians. They are, in short, guerrilla wars, and they are deadly. In Syria alone, more than 60,000 people have died since 2011, according to the United Nations. In Mexico, nearly 50,000 have died in drug violence since 2006. Hundreds of thousands more have perished in Africa's civil wars. The past decade has also seen unprecedented terrorist attacks, ranging from 9/11 to suicide bombings in Iraq. To understand today's world, you have to understand guerrillas and the terrorist movements that are their close cousins.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Actually the Militia in the South caused the British to divide their forces and waste resources dealing with them. The Militia played a much larger part than you are giving them credit for.
France naval power decided the conventional war; the British could have held the coast indefinitely were it not for their interference. The smart colonists shooting from behind rocks and trees made places with rocks and trees ungovernable to the British
I think the ones that die out do so because there is some rapprochement possible. Some honey along with the vinegar. That takes a willingness on both sides, and some times that is not possible, or even advisable. An ugly business.
There's a damn good word. Mind if I take and keep it for my very own?
/johnny
Aye; you’re welcome to it!
>>The NVA took Saigon with light armored forces.
They weren’t particularly “light”. Maybe they were “medium” by the standards of what might have been in the Fulda Gap had the Cold War turned hot, but they were more than capable of taking on the heavy tank forces of WWII (which hadn’t been all *that* long ago, at the time).
“By 1975, the NVA had an estimated 600 T54s in or on the border of South Vietnam supplied by large, well-concealed fuel lines with sophisticated pumping and fueling stations that ran through Laos and Cambodia hundreds of kilometers from Haiphong in the north.”
T-54s were very capable tanks, more than able to compete with the M-48s the ARVN had.
By comparison, Rommel had only 500 tanks at El Alamein, and a good number of those were Italian. The Germans only had about 600 tanks at the Battle of the Bulge - and a T-54 was superior to all but perhaps a handful of them.
There would be whiskey in the jar. Help yourself.
/johnny
Bingo. The final push in 1975 was an armored blitzkrieg that Guderian and Zukov would have recognized.
100% correct. What is also true is that there was really no such thing as the Viet Cong. It was simply irregular arm of the North Vietnamese army, staffed by North Vietnamise officers who used both regular NVA trrops out of uniform, ideological volunteers from the South and many many unwilling conscripts pressed into service as mules and cannon fodder.
I still bristle when I recall the 60s Hippies and idiots on campuses shouting
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh... The Viet Cong are going to win.
This at the same time Ho Chi Minh's government denied having any troops in South Vietnam.
Somehow, Walter Cronkite never quite detected that disconnect. ;~((
it's real easy to tell... it's an ideological war. either the guerilla side wins or you kill ALL the guerillas, their supporters, their safe havens and any means of reorganizing.
It's not a question of winning ...it's a question of WILL.
At the time of its publication, circa 1971, there were some 70 active insurgencies through out the world, including Vietnam. Of those conflicts over half are still active today, 40 years later.
While the book examined the world wide conventional hot spots only the Middle East has repeatedly erupted into open conflict.
The observations of this 1971 publication closely parallel this author's observation. But, unfortunately, our political and military leadership haven't learned anything in the intervening decades (much to the horror and suffering of the line grunts)!
That is what we all should aspire to be.
It’s also important to note that the NVA took practically EVERYTHING they had and sent it south in 1975, counting (correctly, as it turned out) on there being no military response from by then Democrat-dominated Washington.
Sources published since the end of the Cold War indicate that both Moscow and Beijing basically reacted to Hanoi’s all-or-nothing move with a “WTF ARE YOU DOING????” message, fearing that they had left themselves wide open to an American military response against North Vietnam. As I recall, General Giap (or another high-ranking NVA leader) subsequently indicated that their concerns had been very justified.
It’s worth noting they had a major armor-led assault in 1972, when our ground forces were down to very little. We crushed it with carrier and land based air power, including strategic air power - Operation Linebacker.
It took them 3 years to rebuild for 1975.
Yes, I believe you are correct. I was overly influenced by the role of light PT-76s in the combat of the final days of Saigon.
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