When US Troops Left Too Soon

Townhall.com ^ | May 10, 2015 | Jeff Jacoby

[TomasUSMC]

We fought WW2 with total mobilization, we fought with every weapon we had and we fought with the objective of Unconditional Surrender. We did not fight LIKE that in Vietnam. We carpet bombed the enemy cities in WW2.We did not fight LIKE that in Vietnam. There were no sanctuaries for the enemy in WW2. We did not fight LIKE that in Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were sanctuaries for the enemy.

Do you understand now? Of course Marines fought hard. Marines always have and always will. Who says differently?

If we continue to fight wars like we did in Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Afganistan, handcuffing our troops with restrictive rules of engagement we will end up with the same result....the loss of the bravest Americans without winning. If we fight like we did in WW2.... WE WILL WIN.

FIGHT LIKE WW2, WIN LIKE WW2.
FIGHT LIKE NAM, FINISH LIKE NAM.

[Chgogal]

BTTT

A voice of sanity and reason on FR. Who knew?

[Chainmail]

Like any slogan, it sounds good. The difference between WWII and Korea and Vietnam was that the intent was to not annihilate the folks we were rescuing while not involving the Soviet Union and China in a direct nuclear war. As it was in Korea, the Chinese intervened and it was a much bigger, deadlier war when they did.

Rules of Engagement exist to provide a dividing line between what we kill and what we don't: one of the hardest things for a leader to do is get his young people to actually kill people. The next hardest thing is to get them to stop.

The part I would agree with is that our White House under both Johnson and Nixon tried to micromanage targets in the North and that just played into the enemy's hands. The other unmentioned part is that both presidents allowed the traitors who were communicating with the enemy and directing demonstrations and other activities against our prosecution of the war to just continue with what they were doing. Our government was hapless against these activities and never bothered to correct the view the American People were getting from the "news" agencies and the "antiwar" leaders.

Your slogan says "fight like Nam". You'd better hope that we always "fight like Nam"! We fought under conditions you can't imagine and for sustained periods the WWII folks didn't have to deal with and we kicked butt. The very last thing on earth a VC or NVA unit wanted to do was get stuck in a corner with a Marine company on its tail.

Your slogan goes right along with the Leftist propaganda that somehow the enemy defeated us. They didn't.

It's not as catchy, but your slogan should be "Support like WWII, win like WWII - Support like Nam, finish like Nam".

[ThanhPhero]

Ha Noi and Nha Trang get more American tourists. Sai Gon looks like it is full of Americans but they are mostly Australians and Europeans. Nha Trang gets a lot of Americans but these days is absolutely full of Russians. The stores there all have signs in Viet and Russian and most have also English and some Korean. I am not a tourist and don't do tours but when I travel in the country I see the tour buses full of foreign faces.

If you walk around Sai Gon you can sometimes pick out the Americans. If you see a round-eyed fellow stop to help someone who has slid down on a scooter or who is struggling under a top heavy load, that person is surely an American. I have learned in Viet Nam that only Americans do that. That is one reason the Vietnamese love Americans. The older ones remember American soldiers like that. Even Some who were villagers back then remember Americans helping them out in inconsequential ways even though they were in an "unfriendly" village. I hear that all the time.

If you have any tie to VN, if you are a VN vet or have a VN wife or VN friends or just want to go somewhere really interesting and cheap (other than the plane fare), you should use that as an excuse to take your next vacation in Viet Nam. It is truly good for an American ego, especially for an older man. Get away from the big city, though. Big cities are big cities the world over.

Just by the way Tippi and the Manicure

[ThanhPhero]

In the case of Vietnam, whose freedom are you referring to?-The answer to that would be, "our own freedom!" with the exclamation mark.

[ThanhPhero]

Don’t transfer your rightful anger at the Democrats to the Vietnamese. They are the most pro American people of any large population- 80+ million. Whatever his reasons, nefarious or not, Clinton did one good thing on his own during his administration- he opened up to Viet Nam and began the steady pressure for freedom in that country that continued through the end of the GW Bush administration. Viet Nam strives to be America’s best friend in Asia and has for 25 years.

[ThanhPhero]

I have a friend here who was 14 when she left in ‘75. Her last memory of Viet Nam was climbing a cargo net to board a freighter in the Sai Gon River with her 3 month old cousin on her back after seeing a 15 year old cousin crushed between the wharf and the side of the ship.

[ThanhPhero]

We set ourselves up for a loss in VN because the war was from the beginning micromanaged from Washington as all our wars are now. WWII was fought with broad directives from Washington but the conduct of the war was left to the commanders on the ground. Korea started out that way but ended up stifled as the first of our micromanaged wars. We never had a chance to win in Vn because we had bureaucrats in DC trying to hold the soldiers’ rifles from ten thousand miles away.

[ThanhPhero]

In Korea at the time we set the battlefront approximately where the DMZ is today, the Chinese were exhausted. Our generals knew that and asked for a final push to clear the peninsula. The Chinese were finished as an effective force on the field but their strength in DC had become formidable. The government was still full of Communists, in the State Department especially.

[Chainmail]

Agreed. I also believe that Washington never bothered to really explain the strategic and tactical reasons that Vietnam was important to all of us and when the pro-communist Left started pushing lies about us and our war, Washington did nothing but let it happen.

Some of the posters are selling this "we should have carpet-bombed the whole country" garbage which is another idiotic idea. Vietnam needed our help against the combined efforts of the Viet Cong terrorists, the North Vietnamese Army, and all the supplies, weaponry and advisors the Soviets, Chinese and the Warsaw Pact could provide. We fought hard and well for those many years and I am proud of my fellow Marines who fought there with me. Vietnam is a good country and I cherish their people and particularly the Vietnamese who came here to be citizens.

[ThanhPhero]

There are two relatively recent immigrant groups that have been very beneficial to America in spite of the welfare overload, the Cubans and the Vietnamese. I have long believed that we should have taken all the Viet refugees who made it to anywhere else on the boats. I have always thought the wet-foot,dry-foot policy with the Cuban refugees has deprived the country of some potential entrepreneurial ability and wealth by sending back so many. Both groups have largely shunned the welfare blanket and built businesses and added to the culture and the economy. An earlier era group we shunned for far too long was the Jews escaping from Europe in the thirties.American efforts in Viet Nam are respected even by old Communists there. I have talked to some and they say things like they know the Americans were not there to rule the country as were the Chinese and the French and the Japanese. They never expected the Americans to stay. Vietnamese are practical people, even the Communists.

[Chainmail]

When I was a lieutenant in 1975, I was sent back to Vietnam to take part in the defense of Saigon but didn't land because the NVA were firing on Tan Son Nhut air base. We were rerouted to Guam and from there to Okinawa and the aboard ship as part of BLT 1/5.

Our plans were to evacuate every single Vietnamese who ever helped us, approximately 2 million people and as I heard, ships were being sent from the States to make this happen.

Very shortly, those plans were abandoned by the Ford administration and only something like 20,000 were rescued and many brought to the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton to begin resettlement.

I was deeply ashamed that we abandoned our allies and it was something I never forgot. It told me that the government I had believed in so deeply was a whole lot less honorable than I thought.

The Vietnamese-Americans have been a real success story for our country.

[ThanhPhero]

I didn't know that we even took a shot at that. Việt Nam would have been a poorer place 15 years later if we had succeeded and America would have been richer thereby. Of those who stayed, especially the soldiers who survived the camps, many became the businessmen and traders of the 90s and beyond. The Catholics led the way in that they were forbidden until 2005 to work for the government or foreign companies so they built trading networks within the country and had fairly extensive sub rosa import/export businesses. In country before about 2004 they operated on mostly barter to avoid the constant baksheesh. Cash all got drained off by the petty officials because the activity was still only quasi legal. EX-im was done with money stashed in Austrailian and French banks and never brought home so paper wealthy men could not buy lunch in a restaurant because their money was all offshore. When the decided the Catholics represented a Vietnamese religion due to the religion having been in VN since the 1600s and because the dearth of available labor in the area (Catholic area) where resorts were being built to suck in foreign tourists and money the Catholics were obviously already the business class. The Buddhists, being Buddhist and Vietnamese saw how it is that Christians could do business with each other on trust even with people who are clan related, and adopted that practice- in continental Asia a novel idea- of trusting each other in business even when not related. Việt Nam had entered the highway to prosperity and, while slowing down for occasional potholes, has been accelerating since.

[Chainmail]

My last trip to Vietnam in 2000 showed me that the South is really still the South. Everybody seemed to be prospering and entrepreneurial activity was hopping. I went to a Dong Ha open-air market and bought every bit of candy one lady had for sale because all the stuff I brought for the kids was gone already. She was delighted to sell all of it and even more delighted when I gave some of it back for her grandkids.

It was interesting going back there. The only evidence I could find that anything had changed were the more deserted roads (and less dust) now that American military vehicles were gone, no gunfire at all, and a few guys running around with red stars on their pith helmets. (Funny story: a bit earlier, I was an arms control inspector in the Soviet Union and during one of my arrivals in the late 80s at Sheryemetovo Airport in Moscow, I ran head on into a Vietnamese officer in full uniform, hard hat and all. I froze solid and just stared at him and he gave a look like "what the heck is wrong with you?". He was way too young to have been at the opposite end during the fighting..)

It was a little bit like coming home to me, to go back to a country that was such a big part of my younger life.

[ThanhPhero]

I have been back there several times. I have a "vacation home" in Cam Đức south of Nha Trang. It is actually the front room of the fellow whose daughter I began to support to keep her in school when he was a truly poor man in 2003 and a sharecropper as we would call it. I helped him finance his house "renovation" in which he went from about 200 square feet to closer to 1800. which is a lot bigger than mine. Now he is a security guard like me and makes a decent living. He and his wife have bought nice furniture and he has bought what appears to be an acre and a half of mango trees as a sideline. Everybody who works has at least one sideline. The whole town is much more prosperous than it was 10 years ago. The daughter, Nguyệt, by the way, got her MBA last year at the TPHCM College of Economics and she is doing very well working for a large ex-im company. She tells me when I can't work any more to come to Việt Nam and she will take care of me.

I would go there and stay there if I could talk my wife into it. I know two Americans there who are permanent. Both are interesting stories. One has been there since '84.

[ThanhPhero]

It was a little bit like coming home to me, to go back to a country that was such a big part of my younger life.

I had that "coming home" feeling big time - it was a physical visceral feeling in my gut when I saw the lights of Sài Gòn from the 747 window the first time back. Tân Sơn Nhất has changed. It is a modern airport now with no-nonsense clerks and officials who just want to get you the hell through there.

[ThanhPhero]

If you are inerested- After the war

[TomasUSMC]

What ....where the rules of engagement for Hiroshima. Nagasaki?

[Chainmail]

You'd have to ask Harry Truman about that.

So, what unit were you with in the Marine Corps? What MOS, what rank?

I'm starting to doubt you, buddy.

[TomasUSMC]

I’ll help you.....You don’t have to ask Truman... I’ll give you the answer....you drop a nuke and there are no rules of engagement.

Oh what did I do in the Marines.....Puzzle Palace.