[Ask the Gulch] Nam vets, thanks for your answers. Let me pose an answer and see what you have to say. Please read my comment, then give me yours.
Posted by Wanderer 7 years, 9 months ago to Ask the Gulch
I'm not a tactician and, even though tactics can certainly lose a battle, I think wars are usually lost because of strategies and conditions having little or nothing to do with individual battles.
At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.
I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.
In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.
Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.
I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.
As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.
My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.
Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.
I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.
And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.
At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.
I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.
In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.
Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.
I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.
As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.
My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.
Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.
I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.
And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.
I would note that if I could choose who would be in my foxhole it would be a South Korean soldier. They were dedicated, loyal and well trained/disciplined. I got real close with a Korean MP and policeman who saved my bacon many times. Just my 2 cents.
Our government remained ignorant of Vietnam's history, thinking China was their ally, when the Vietnamese had struggled to throw off Chinese conquest for a thousand years. It wasn't until the Chinese tried to invade Vietnam after we left that we took the time to learn why.
The war was deliberately conducted to create a Korean style stalemate, rather than to win a victory. Invasion of North Vietnam was off the table, even though the forces we deployed could have readily swept through the land to at least take pressure off the South.
Mining Haiphong harbor was also not allowed, for fear a Soviet vessel might be damaged. The conduct of the war was a case study in how to engineer defeat, even with overwhelming military power.
Left wing journalism played its part as well. Looking at the numbers, the Tet offensive was an absolute military disaster, with the VC essentially wiped out, and horrific casualties in the NVA, with no ground gained, but the journalists, both foreign and American, played it as a defeat of U.S. forces. NVA General Giap was in favor of a declared truce until he realized the effects on American support for the war had been seriously undermined by the distorted coverage of the press.
Finally, even after U.S. forces left, a Democrat led American Congress refused to honor a pledge to keep the South Vietnamese supplied with arms and ammunition. As a result, the outgunned South Vietnamese had no chance against a well-supplied NVA.
That's a direct result of following the rules of the United Nations. It declared all existing nations and their boundaries to be sacred, regardless of the processes that created them or their degree of relevance to the people on the ground. Pretty much all the world's poor countries have boundaries that were drawn by colonial powers and make no sense to leave in place, but let someone try to fix any of them and the UN steps in to try to prevent it. What a useless bunch of idiots.
As an aside, I've read the first American killed in Vietnam was a liaison assigned to Ho's partisans at the end of WW2, who was killed by the French after the Brits, who had nominal control of the area after the Japanese surrender, acceded to the French
If you would, read my opinion below and give me your opinion:
I'm not a tactician and, even though tactics can certainly lose a battle, I think wars are usually lost because of strategies and conditions having little or nothing to do with individual battles.
At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.
I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.
In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.
Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.
I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.
As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.
My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.
Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.
I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.
And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.
Any thoughts?
The South Vietmanese (with some exceptions I'm sure) were the polar opposites of South Koreans, who hated the Communists to the point of helping the USA in Vietnam..
Still recall a smirking Parris Island drill institutor who claimed to have witnessed a South Korean interrogation technique in Vietnam.
They would interrogate captives by pushing them one by one out of a helicopter.
Now that's hate.
General Lewis B. Hershey, Selective Service System Director, on June 24, 1966: 'I am not concerned with the uncertainty involved in keeping our citizenry believing that they owe something to their country. There are too many, too many people that think individualism has to be completely recognized, even if the group rights go to the devil.'" -- quoted by Ayn Rand https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Hershey, who was reviled by millions, lobbied for universal induction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature... He was appointed by FDR in1936 to run the draft.
The best history I've read was called "Vietnam, a Thousand Year History" but, 12 or 13 years ago I lent it to a friend whom I never saw again so, I never saw the book again either. It made apparent how easy it would have been to avoid the war and how a handful of coincidences led us into it.
I believe the Chinese felt the Koreans fighting for the Japanese in WW2 were much tougher and more vicious than were the Japanese themselves. The Koreans I knew were physically larger than most Japanese and seemed more aggressive although - judging the Japanese of WW2 by the ones I knew in the late '70s is probably misleading.
Just think of it. Capitalist South Koreans are thriving and exporting movies to the world while just across the border North Koreans starve while worshiping a fatboy dictator who lives in the lap of luxury.
Maybe that includes my getting drafted but still getting to dodge that stupid war with an honorable discharge.
I even fell into the rapids below that famous Yosemite waterfall but snagged an arm around a large rock just like I did when I stepped into quicksand beside the Cahaba River five years later in Alabama.
I could bla bla much further about all the times I almost got killed. So if fatboy wants to launch a nuke at old dino way past my prime, I have a big fat middle finger waiting.
I saw "Snowpiercer" which, I started out thinking was so much rubbish: a bunch of unproductive stowaways throwing a mutiny that they knew would ultimately cause the destruction of the only thing keeping them alive, just because they were jealous of the paying passengers? It would never happen!
Then, I thought about it, that's exactly what happens every damn time! The moochers know it'll end badly but, they can't help themselves, they must take what the producers have, even if it will collapse everything around them!
And, all the while being lectured by a parody of Ayn Rand!
The danger before us in dealing with extremist Islamists is falling into the trap of a religious war, with Islam as the enemy of Judaeo-Christian Western society. While there are more than a billion Muslims, less than 1% are willing to engage in serious acts of violence at present. That still represents a sizable force of over 10 million possible jihadis, but it's nothing like the danger of 100 million or more committed to war with the West if there's a distinct perception we intend to destroy Islam and its believers.
Muslims are much like adherents to other religions, when things are hard, they fail, when things are less hard, they stay close to the line, when the easiest thing is to is to obey one's religion, they obey.
Consider how many Jihadis are said by their friends to have been radicalized overnight. It happens because martyrdom while murdering infidels is their path to paradise so, when their lives go wrong or, they're angered or insulted or simply lonely, the accepted way out is to die by killing us.
We've kept a lid on them for most of the last 300 years but, we've let the lid off and history shows, they're going to go on killing infidels until they're crushed. Then, the weaker ones will slink back into their caves and wait for another chance.
Don't be so cynical -- it is much worse!
Winning in Vietnam wouldn't have shut off the money faucet, they would have used it to excuse more. In fact the spending escalated anyway.
They didn't deliberately lose to keep money flowing, they were incompetents who got themselves in a quagmire. They would have gladly done better if they could have if only because they were under so much political pressure from a populace up in arms against them.
I note the Gulch has attracted its share of childish types. I put them on "ignore" as they show themselves and, I've suggested to the admin that the software be rewritten so I no longer get notices about anything they post.
I should also suggest Admin disable their ability to downvote anything I post since, after clashing with a few of them I noticed, if I post something as innocuous as "the sky is usually blue" I get downvoted.
I don't downvote anybody. What right do I have to anonymously decry what they write without stating my case? None. What an unproductive, anti-intellectual act. This entire downvote concept is anti-intellectual and should be eliminated.
What I've learned (and, maybe you have to but, you continue jousting with them for sport) is these people are emotional, not rational so, they're a waste of time.
You, however, are not. Thanks for your post.
Rand's stand on the draft was probably an emotional reaction to her times. Were it not for the draft, the North would not have won the American Civil War and, slavery would have continued in the South and likely expanded. Was ending slavery not worthwhile? Yet, not enough came forward of their own free will to win that war.
Should we find ourselves unable or unwilling to fulfill our social obligations, we have the right and many opportunities to leave. For awhile an active military draft was part of our social pact but, if one couldn't bring oneself to fulfill the pact, he or she was free to go somewhere else and partake of a different social pact.
Some aren't so lucky, they can't leave: Cubans, North Koreans and, until recent decades Russians and Eastern Europeans. Their governments do and did hold them in servitude.
Social pacts are a very reasonable reality in a world containing more than one sentient being. As long as there are two or more of us, the most effective way to retain our individual options is a system of voluntary agreements.
We are part of a 330 million member social pact. If at some time we can no longer uphold our part of that pact, we are free to leave and seek a different pact.
I've been over much of the world and, the US still has the best social pact I've found. However, it's gradually changing and, the time may come I won't be able to say that.
I find newly freed serfs are wildly supportive of freedom and capitalism. My Russian friends would (Prior to Putin) break down and weep over their newly gained freedom. Imagine what North Korea will be like when it finally flips.
I'm not attracted to Korea's geography but, Cuba's a wonderful place. If ever it flips, I'll be on the first boat.
Your ignorant speculation that "Rand's stand on the draft was probably an emotional reaction to her times" is worse than stupid. Ayn Rand based her political positions on a philosophy of reason and individualism. She explained it in detail. Her position on Vietnam and the conscription explained in a Ford Hall Forum lecture in Boston have already been cited as a reference. It includes the refutation of your false history. It was not an "emotional reaction" to the "times". You do not comprehend it and don't read it, arrogantly speculating with ignorance off the top of your head as a substitute.
The flippantly crude effrontery is not serious discussion. Your reckless anti-Ayn Rand Statism does not belong on this forum. It is not rational discussion. It is the obnoxious, stuffy, authoritarian arrogance of deep-rooted old-European conservative faith that has nothing in common with the sense of life and the principles illustrated in Atlas Shrugged.
Having the draft allowed a war that insufficient numbers were willing to voluntarily support to continue.
Had the war not happened, economics or diplomacy would have eventually ended the scourge of slavery.
It is even possible that had the South successfully succeed, there might have eventually been reunification and a less centralized political system.
Conscription in the 1860s could be avoided, such as in remote rural areas or with officially sanctioned methods of paying to get out. It was the first widespread, systematic use of conscription in the country -- contrary to Wanderer's false narrative that the nation was founded on a Prussian-like militarist duty to the State -- but it wasn't the inescapable totalitarian conscription that came later. Yet most passively went along with the government demands whether they liked it or not, just as so many did in the Vietnam era who lacked the personal commitment and mental ambition for their own lives.
Whether or not the Civil War could have been prosecuted by either side without the draft, which didn't start in the north until 1863, there was no excuse for involuntary servitude in the contradictory name of freeing slaves or preventing secession. Perhaps the lack of conscription could have stopped the war from being as gruesome as it was, but it would have at least saved the lives of those who chose not to be part of it.
We can only speculate what else would have been required to free the slaves without the Civil War as it was. There still would have been violence over it in the south by the nature of the statist institution of slavery, as the persecution of the abolitionist movement showed. It's doubtful that economics or diplomacy alone would have been enough.
Then, of course, you have to take steps to achieve those conditions.
Killing as many jihadist, in addition to those who support their actions in any form must be part of the formula to be able to support those that would like to reform Islam and separate the political/Sharia portion of Islam from the spiritual. As long as the Koran and Hadith have verses of violence in it, jihadist will be around and many muslims that want Islam to really be a "religion of peace" will have difficulty removing fear from reprisal for their reform minded muslims. Throughout the 1400 year war of Islam against the world has existed, brute and unapologetic force seems to have been the only successful strategy against jihad minded islamist. The problem with western leaders is they can't wrap their minds around that concept and they get in the way, thereby letting history repeat itself as we saw in Vietnam and we saw in Iraq and we're seeing in Syria.
So, kill as many jihadist as we can and support those that want to reform Islam and separate the political/sharia portion of it. That's my unapologetically two cents about this matter.
I've had a different experience with Muslims. In my experience, they are all capable of becoming Jihadis overnight. All it takes is a professional or personal setback, an insult, or depression or loneliness and they're suddenly ready to strap on a vest and go out killing infidels. It's their way out of life's disappointments. That's why so many people say the Jihadis they knew didn't seem like Jihadis, they seemed like normal people, right up until the time they weren't.
Convince the enemy he is wrong in the face of Islam and Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism, and mysticism? Perhaps less expensive and less time consuming than today's "conventional" warfare.
For those who may not have read it, Mr. Craig Biddle published Ten Steps to End Jihad:
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/...
I think most of his 10 steps will result in losing, We used most of them in Vietnam and it didn't work.
The step we didn't use in Vietnam is number 9, exposing the enemy's philosophy for what it was and convincing him it was a mistake.
We're currently using or, have used almost all of his methods and, look where we're at.
It is interesting to me that if capitalism is actually allowed to exist people will be driven to get to it from any other circumstance and use it. Once they are in the position of benefiting from it they began to change it toward socialism and slavery demanding money through the force of government.
Most people when involved in interpersonal relations and direct contact will not steal, those who do usually in small quantities. The larger the crime the fewer who are willing to commit it against another. Give these same people the power to use violence through sanctioned regulatory bodies (the government) and almost all will demand and partake in the loot. What this means for your question of how to defeat religious or political tyranny is that it is impossible given the odds you are facing.
I always thought it would be simple to convince people of the morality of liberty and objectivism, it just needed explaining. I don't think there are enough people who are willing to live free in America to populate a small city. If you haven't read 'The Will to Bondage' you should. I am 67 and haven't yet learned how to teach someone that liberty is moral. There have been a few but I think they were of the same mindset already and just needed a way to express their desires or understand them better.
The great question here is; how do you change ideology?
At the end of the war, the Vietcong and NVA had more soldiers in the field than they'd had at any other time during the entire 20+ year conflict.
I'm not saying this is the reason they won, I'm thinking this is a symptom of the reason they won. At the end of the war they remained convinced they were right.
In '92, when I got there, Vietnam had barely opened up to the world. It was very much as it had been 17 years earlier, when the war ended. The roads were terrible. The countryside was dotted with rusting burned out military vehicles. Ho Chi Minh City still had quite a few crumbling buildings. Everything was in short supply, particularly anything that had to be imported. People rode bicycles. Fishermen tended boats. Farmers tended rice paddies and pigs.
Victims of the reeducation camps sold gum and pencils on the corners, unable to work, their perpetual punishment for having sided with the capitalists.
I asked some of them why they'd lost to the North. They said it was in the nature of their ideologies. People in the South lived off of, and got what they could from the French then, when the Americans came they lived off of, and got what they could from the Americans. They profited when able but, weren't invested in the conflict. Those from the North, on the other hand, had an ideology. They were invested.
As I spoke to those who'd taken over, low level government officials and businessmen (remember, they were communists so, every business was a government enterprise) it became clear, 17 years after the war ended they hadn't wavered. They remained dedicated to their ideology, communism.
My WW2 elders told me by the end of the war the Germans were embarrassed by the things they'd done. They told me the Japanese people would express regrets, even if their government wouldn't then and still never has.
Korean vets told me the South Koreans fought hard and eventually showed as much dedication as did the North Koreans.
I wonder if Vietnam was lost because we never convinced the enemy he was wrong and, it wasn't feasible to kill all 16 million of him.
And, I wonder if our war against Jihad will be lost for the same reason, because we're concerned with tactics and battles and killing Jihadis, even though this time there are 1.4 billion of them, a never ending supply of homicide bombers and pilots and truck drivers and snipers, instead of convincing the enemy he is wrong.
Any comments will be welcomed.
Good summation of events though. But like the US people I'm sure the Vietnamese never thought to ask what's the definition of victory As I recall they considered it a long term war against the Chinese, French, and USA in turn.
Culture and levels of or a lack of Consciousness.
Language plays a vital role in the ability to self inspect one's beliefs and behaviors. See Julian Jaynes.