[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 8 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.
