Posted on 12/31/2007 5:34:36 AM PST by RDTF
On the outside chance that he isn’t dead I would hasten to point that he’s so restricted in his activities that he’s practically useless to them.
Hunter's comments needs a small correction.
:)
The comments at the Chronicle remind me of the Paulers and the Dems. “They did - whatever - because we did something in the past.”
History tells us we made mistakes in VN, and one of the biggest was leaving the way we did. I remember the aftermath, to. The news of the atrocities committed in the vacuum we left trickled into our public consciousness over the years - when it became advantageous to the media.
It’s a new world, with a new media and a new means of communicating. And a completely different kind of threat - one which doesn’t merely want to conquer, but to convert.
I don’t believe that the Americans that I know will lose our will to fight, no matter how provoked.
To give up to the current threat means that I lose the benefits of personhood and go into a burka and/or that you and I will probably be the first to die for our activities on boards like these. For some reason, the Paulers and the Left (including the feminists, the gays and the abortionists) think they’ll be spared.
Even if we drew back within our borders as the Paulers and the Dems say they want, the terrorists would continue - since most of the time they blow each other up over how many and which sons-in-law of Muhammed to follow.
And, just as the Chronicle commenter blames what happened in 1968 on what happened in 1956 and the Paulers, Sheehans and Kos’s blame 9/11 on our involvement in Saudi Arabia or Israel, the men who blow themselves up to kill others think they’re doing it for what happened in the past - not the present.
We can’t erase that past. We can only look at it in light of what *is* in the present and pray to Heaven that we have the wisdom to elect the right leaders for the future.
If it is retail, then they are idiots, and they won’t have the desired effect.
If they are going to attack, they should attack the food supply. THAT will shut us down, but good.
Who goes to the mall? You could shut down the malls around here and nothing really bad would happen in the long term, thanks to the internet. Every retail organization worth its salt has a bricks and clicks strategy anyway. Aside from it being a natural response to an emerging technological trend, it’s a fantastic business continuation strategy, not that businesses are developing those strategies with reckless abandon.
Start bombing, or permanently disabling through some poisoning strategy, major grocery distribution and sub-distribution points and you will knock the USA down for the count in under a month.
None of the retail outlets have storage capacity past three business days, and that’s being kind. They rely on JIT distribution (Just In Time) to ensure the shelves get stocked. Non-essentials are stocked by the manufacturers themselves.
If the major grocery retail chains haven’t been dialed into the disaster planning process at this late date, then its evidence prima facia that the Fed/State folks need to fire everyone and start over with Former Marine generals.
I’m already convinced that the single biggest negative economic effect on our economy has been Congress.
1. Ethanol legislation causes corn/wheat prices to double inside of 6 months.
2. Immigration policy - keeps the price of some products artificially low. Cost of infrastructure impact of illegals paid in deficit financing and increased property/sales taxes at city/state level. 20% of prison population currently attributed to illegals. They’re also judgement-proof, which means that making victims whole comes out of premium-payers pockets.
3. Mortgage mess - could have headed that one off at the pass by ensuring that the bonds were properly graded by the quality of loans. Housing prices have doubled, and so have defaults. Discretionary spending in the last four years due partially to the mortgage-backed equity loan spending at the consumer level.
We need a new inflation indicator called the Middle Class Inflation Index.
It’s a simple of staple goods that are tracked for price that shows the actual impact of idiotic legislation at the Fed/State level:
1 gallon of gas
1 gallon of milk
2 loaves of bread
1 jar of peanut butter
1 dozen eggs
1 lbs of butter
1 package of spaghetti
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
1 bunch of bananas
3 lbs of apples
1 oil change
1 year of car insurance
1 month of phone service
1 years worth of electricity
Add them all up and then track it on a graph over time. The damage that Congress has done this session is going to be permanent, since there are so many things mitigated against deflation. Everything in the economy opposes it, and when the price of things get stretched as they have, they fall, to be sure, but there’s hysteresis, and prices won’t naturally fall back in line with ‘actual’ pre-speculation values.
It’s worse this time since consumers have backed the debt with their houses. There is even MORE disincentive for the price of housing to decline, but it has to.
This interview will explain exactly what the purpose of the Tet Offensive was for:
How North Vietnam Won The War The Wall Street Journal, Thursday August 3, 1995
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam’s army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, “We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.”
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers 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 and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam’s generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don’t, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn’t worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland’s strategy and tactics caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh’s struggle philosophy was that “America is wealthy but not resolute,” and “squeeze tight to the American chest and attack.” He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland’s request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.
Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam’s major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids.
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, “he’s the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn’t elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn’t dare to intervene in Vietnam again.” We tested Ford’s resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52’s in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1123293/posts
Also see:
http://www.grunt.com/scuttlebutt/corps-stories/vietnam/north.asp
It is my opinion that our Troops won this war. It is the people who stayed home who lost the war. We lost our resolve and tied the hands of our politicians. If we would have kept our resolve and let the politicians make the decisions necessary to win, it would have been over sooner with less men paying the price.
We must not allow this to happen again. We must stand behind our Troops and their leaders. We must allow our leaders to do what is necessary to win the war. We must not allow the commie traitors to steal our resolve away again. I say we must stand a post for our Troops and this can be done in March in Washington DC.
God bless our Troops and their commanders.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1942839/posts
If the terrorist did attempt a Tet offensive you can be sure the media will misinform us as they did during the Vietnam Tet offensive. You can also be assured there will be weak minded Americans who will love to hear it.
Also see this Netlore site :
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_general_giap.htm
RELEVANT EXCERPT :
Vietnam War historian: Giap made no such statement
According to Clemson University history professor Edwin Moise, General Giap never wrote or stated any such thing. From Moise’s comprehensive Vietnam War Bibliography (emphasis added):
Supposedly, General Giap had written in How We Won the War that in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive of 1968, the Communist leaders in Vietnam had been ready to abandon the war, but that a broadcast by Walter Cronkite, declaring the Tet Offensive a Communist victory, persuaded them to change their minds and fight on. This rumor was entirely false. Giap had not mentioned Cronkite, and had not said the Communists had ever considered giving up on the war.
Several variants of this rumor appeared in 2004. In these, Giap is supposed to have credited either the American anti-war movement in general, or John Kerry’s organization (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) in particular, for persuading the Communist leaders to change their minds and not give up on the war. Giap is sometimes said to have made this statement in How We Won the War, sometimes in an unnamed 1985 memoir. All versions of the rumor are false. Neither in How We Won the War, nor in any other book (the 1985 memoir is entirely imaginary), has Giap mentioned Kerry or Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or said that the Communist leaders had ever considered giving up on the war.
In his own words
The most relevant statement I could find that is actually attributable to General Giap was uttered in a 1989 interview with Morley Safer, as excerpted in The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations by Howard Langer (Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 318):
” We paid a high price [during the Ted offensive] but so did you [Americans]... not only in lives and materiel.... Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Ted offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory.... “
The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion.
I have not had the opportunity to find the title of the book I read so many yrs. ago, but it belonged to one of my sisters and I read it at her beach house in the late ‘80’s.
I will wait to talk to her and let you know. I’ve bookmarked this thread for future reference.
Again, I am very appreciative of your posts.
Thanks, just trying to set the record straight so that we don’t subscribe to ideas we cannot refer to authoritatively.
Having said that, we should remember that in Vietnam, Tet was not a “major” military offensive; it was a series of coordinated attacks throughout the country by hundreds of small groups, for the most part. The only real pitched battle occurred in Hue with the Vietcongs taking the Pearl City.
I think Insurgent groups throughout Iraq could possiblly accomplish the same thing, with small groups infiltrating most of the major cities and conducting attacks on the same day.
The goal, if they learn from Vietnam, will not be to influence the outcome of the war militarily; it will be to influence the anti-war left here in this country and possibly influence the outcome of the elections. For instance, scores of suicide bombers, infiltrating major enclaves throughout the country, can have a devastating effect on American morale. And that is what we have to be concerned with; the military effect may be minimal but the propaganda effect will be enormous.
We should be prepared to plan for such a possible assault.
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