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The spineless pieces of crap back then are the spineless pieces of crap making up most of Washington . Nothing has changed. It's just gotting worse.
The spineless pieces of crap back then are the spineless pieces of crap making up most of Washington . Nothing has changed. It's just gotting worse.
Vietnam war was lost because South Vietnamese didn't fight as hard as North Vietnamese. Nothing more, nothing less.
IMO the US lost that war because we didn't understand the nature of it. The US is #1 in the world in force on force conflicts - See 1st and 2nd Iraq wars, WWII, WWI - When it comes to us putting our might against another force we can't be beaten; we excel at 3rd generation warfare.
4th generation warfare such as insurgencies and guerrilla style hit-and-run combat is something we've been slow to adapt to. People act like what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan is something new but it's not; the Vietnamese did it to us in Vietnam. The US was looking for the force on force confrontation and it didn't exist. We also didn't understand that what we saw as winning because of a 20-1 (or whatever it was) kill to death ratio, they also saw as a win for them; culturally they were willing to outlast us in a war of attrition until the political ramifications caught up to us and they could use politics instead of force to win the war.
Col. Hammes wrote an excellent book on 4GW entitled The Sling and The Stone. It's an excellent read on the current state of warfare.
I certainly can't argue with firsthand experience from someone in the field, but perhaps I can clarify my comments.
The soldiers on the ground, or in the air (like my father) adapted quickly to the conditions they were in, and understood far better than the higher ranks what the Vietnam war was going to be. It was the upper echelon of our military that has been slow to adapt. I'm sure you can agree than when a baby faced butterbar or 1st Looey listens to his SGTs in combat, he's probably better off. Their experience on the ground is worth more in many cases than his learning from the classroom. In support of my belief I offer up the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan; the expectation is that we would go in, kick ass, and win. We went in, kicked ass, and almost 10 years later are still fighting an insurgency. Although we've gotten much, much better at fighting 4GW warfare, it isn't something we excel at yet, and we won't for the near future.
4GW is measured in decades not months or years, and our society as a whole has not adapted to this type of warfare. In WWI and WWII we had total war - one country (and its people) against another. Gas and food rationing, victory gardens, women in the workplace, etc were all part of the war effort - the lives of civilians in the US was directly affected by the war. This is no longer the case. Generally speaking, my life is the same today whether we're at war in Iraq or not, outside of higher gas prices I'm really not affected, this leads to stagnation.
I hope you didn't think I was disparaging our troops because that wasn't my intent, I merely want to express that our currently military leadership believes in technology above everything else, unfortunately technology works best in force-on-force battles. When fighting transnational guerrilla and insurgent groups, intelligence (and cultural understanding of the enemy) is what we should be seeking.
I would recommend anyone pickup a copy of The Sling and The Stone (or I'll lend you mine) as Colonel Hammes puts it better into words than I can.
We shouldn't have left!
We should of never got in that war in the 1st place, never mind prop it up after we left.
Oh really? Can you remind me why we sent troops in for the 1st place?
I never knew we had interests in Vietnam.
I was in Kosovo, which is a low risk deployment. On average 1-2 US Servicemen out of about 1,400 are killed each year there, and Its been all by accidents as far as I know for the past decade. I was never in Vietnam. I'm 26.
I dont think the US should be in high risk operations in order to fight wars that have little to no strategic value to America. Way to many people died in Vietnam on both sides.
The North ended up winning in the long run, and Vietnam is a very nice place in relation to some of its neighbors in the modern era. If we propped up South Vietnam there could of been a 2nd major war there with who the hell knows what consequences and a lot more people would of died.
Communism is its own worse enemy. The only hardcore communists country around is North Korea, and they are a joke.
Sky, you got a deal on the book.
My dad flew hueys, but never talked much about it other than a couple of training things.
JEESUS CHRIST!.......I thought you might be a Vietnam Veteran.......and was ready to respect your viewpoint about Vietnam and maybe learn something from your viewpoint!
With all due respect for your service, (and I really mean that)...please stay the hell out of threads you don't know a GODDAMN thing about!