Did we win in Viet Nam? [Archive]

Chris Mark

June 12th 04, 08:26 PM

Excerpted essay by John O'Sullivan (editor, National Interest):

Vietnam on the Mind

HANOI, SAIGON, NHA TRANG â€” ... [I]f Vietnam is to be the comparison of first
resort in whatever conflict the U.S. finds itself, we need a better
understanding of its general significance.

Vietnam was really two wars â€” a war between the Communist North and the
anti-Communist South, and a local skirmish in the Cold War that pitted the U.S.
and its allies against the Soviet Union and its allies. North Vietnam won the
first of those wars in 1975 â€” or so it seemed at the time. But the ruthless
imposition of a Stalinist straitjacket on the whole of Vietnam led not only to
the forced departure of hundreds of thousands of "boat people" but also to
hopeless economic stagnation. Victory brought not prosperity but poverty and
isolation.

Eventually the North Vietnamese political leadership realized that reform was
necessary and in 1988 embarked on a program of liberalization on the Chinese
model â€” that is, a gradualist program of free-market economic reforms under a
continuing one-party "socialist" government.

Market reforms were slow, reluctant and inadequate at first, but they have
accelerated sharply in the last three years. While Vietnam is still a very poor
country â€” its annual per capita income is only $477 compared to South
KoreaÂ¹s $18,000 â€” it is growing rapidly. A visitor to the cities like Hanoi
and Saigon is overwhelmed by signs of economic vitality, of small business
growth, of a building boom, and above all of a youthful, Westernized, energetic
population.

About 70 percent of the Vietnamese were born in the aftermath of the war of
which they have little memory and apparently less resentment. ...

[A] Martian landing in Saigon or Hanoi today with no knowledge of history since
1970 would assume that the South must have won the war. These cities have all
the boutiques and designer labels of London or Venice â€” and more homegrown
entrepreneurial vitality than both. (He would probably dismiss the occasional
hammer-and-sickle in neon lights or Red Star poster as the kind of kitsch
nostalgia for Marxism-Leninism found also in Manhattan night-clubs or on
ParisÂ¹s left Bank.)

A few years ago, the more far-sighted Vietnamese had a saying: "Our past is
French; our present is Russian; our future is American." That future is almost
here â€” with foreign investment beginning to feel secure, with Vietnamese
exiles in France and the U.S. returning to establish businesses, ...

Whether this progress continues will depend, of course, on whether the Hanoi
government continues to liberalize. Western investors need the security of the
rule of law, especially contract and property law, if they are to remain for
the long haul.
But the signs are promising. And if that happens, then the North's victory in
1975 will have achieved little more than postpone the rise of another
capitalist "Asian Tiger" by about 25 years.

What of the significance of Vietnam as a local skirmish in the Cold War? Here
we have the testimony of Asia's principal elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, First
minister of Singapore. He has pointed out that the American intervention in the
war halted the onward march of Communism southwards for 15 years â€” roughly
from 1960 to 1975. In that crucial period, the new ex-colonial states of
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, maybe India itself, took advantage of this
incidental American protection to develop their economies from poor
agricultural and trading post economies into modern industrial and information
societies. By the time the war was over and North Vietnamese tanks were surging
into Saigon, these countries were prosperous NICs (i.e. newly industrializing
countries), more or less immune to the Communist virus and capable of resisting
external attack.

Nor does the story end with the safety of Singapore. In the late 1980s, when
the Soviet politburo was debating perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev cited its
success â€” tiny Singapore, exported more in value than the vast Soviet Union
â€” as demonstrating the need to dismantle the socialist command economy. (At
the exact same moment, Hanoi was embarking on its own hesitant liberalization.
Coincidence?)

If Lee Kuan Yew is to be believed, then, the U.S. intervention in Vietnam was a
major factor is achieving the West's overall victory in the Cold War. It held
the line while freedom and prosperity were established in non-Communist Asia
â€” and that provided the rest of the world, including the evil empire itself,
with a "demonstration effect" of how freedom led to prosperity. ...

Chris Mark

QDurham

June 12th 04, 08:28 PM

>Kennedy inherited the failed foreign policy and Johnson ran with it.

The first president to support that war was Harry Truman. He provided a US
airlift to move French troops back into "French Indo China" when the Japanese
lost the war and moved out. Every subsequent president escalated that
miserable goddam war -- some lots, some less. The biggest escalator was Nixon
-- but who conversely and eventually got our ass out of there.

(Apparently the French blackmailed HST to get the support. "If the USA won't
help us retake our colony, we won't join NATO.")

Quent

Ed Rasimus

June 12th 04, 09:27 PM

On 12 Jun 2004 19:28:28 GMT, (QDurham) wrote:

>>Kennedy inherited the failed foreign policy and Johnson ran with it.
>
>The first president to support that war was Harry Truman. He provided a US
>airlift to move French troops back into "French Indo China" when the Japanese
>lost the war and moved out. Every subsequent president escalated that
>miserable goddam war -- some lots, some less. The biggest escalator was Nixon
>-- but who conversely and eventually got our ass out of there.
>
>(Apparently the French blackmailed HST to get the support. "If the USA won't
>help us retake our colony, we won't join NATO.")
>
>Quent

Some fact so far, and some chronological inaccuracies.

First, while John F. Dulles, SecState to Eisenhower, ennunciated the
"Domino Theory", it was simply a continuation of the policy of
containment. Containment originated with George F. Kennan's "Mister X"
dispatches back to Harry Truman after the end of WW II. He postulated
(correctly) that communism was an inherently faulty system and would
eventually collapse of its own problems. All we needed to do was
contain it rather than confront it. This idea led to the Truman
Doctrine which was that the US would oppose the expansion of communist
regimes anywhere in the world.

To achieve containment, the US established alliances around the world
to oppose communism. Among them were SEATO, CENTO and the longest
lasting, NATO. The problem, of course, was that in resisting communism
we inevitably wound up supporting dictators, corrupt democracies,
monarchs, etc.

As for France "blackmailing" HST. Let's note that NATO was formed in
1949 and the French didn't withdraw until after Dien Bien Phu in
1954!!! Truman left the White House in '52. France had already been in
NATO for a lot of years before they withdrew let alone harbored
aspirations to retake Indochina. The Geneva Accord that led to the
breakup of Indochina into Laos, Cambodia, N & S Vietnam was 1954.

As for Nixon being the "biggest escalator"--He was elected in 1968,
taking office in Jan '69. The highest troop numbers came in '68 and
bombing of the N. was halted in the fall of '68 by Johnson. Nixon's
initial policy upon taking office was to commence Vietnamization--the
drawdown of US troops. By his election to a second term in '72, we
were down to about 150,000 troops remaining in-country.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8

QDurham

June 12th 04, 09:57 PM

>As for France "blackmailing" HST. Let's note that NATO was formed in
>1949 and the French didn't withdraw until after Dien Bien Phu in
>1954!!!

Exactly. Truman provided transport for the French to re-enter "French Indo
China" in about '45 -- before NATO was firmed up.

I have no idea how the French got OUT after Dien Bien Phu but any form of
transport (no matter how humble) was, I'm sure, highly welcome.

Quent

SteveM8597

June 13th 04, 02:39 AM

>If Lee Kuan Yew is to be believed, then, the U.S. intervention in Vietnam was
>a
>major factor is achieving the West's overall victory in the Cold War. It held
>the line while freedom and prosperity were established in non-Communist Asia
>â€” and that provided the rest of the world, including the evil empire itself,
>with a "demonstration effect" of how freedom led to prosperity. ...
>
>
>Chris Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>

I would agree. Viet Nam was but one battle in the Cold War.

ArVa

June 13th 04, 02:48 PM

"QDurham" > a écrit dans le message de
...
> >As for France "blackmailing" HST. Let's note that NATO was formed in
> >1949 and the French didn't withdraw until after Dien Bien Phu in
> >1954!!!
>
> Exactly. Truman provided transport for the French to re-enter "French
Indo
> China" in about '45 -- before NATO was firmed up.

And he did much more than that afterwards. The US help to the French war
effort in Indochina was *tremendous*. Delivering vehicles, planes,
ammunitions, etc, along with direct financing, the US supported around 80%
of the cost of the war in 1953-54.

>
> I have no idea how the French got OUT after Dien Bien Phu but any form of
> transport (no matter how humble) was, I'm sure, highly welcome.
>

Many of the poor guys entrenched in DBP didn't get out.... The US provided a
ship-hospital to take care of the wounded and of those who survived the
Vietminh camps, along with a few medevac flights to Travis AFB via Japan,
Hawai and San Francisco. As for the rest of the troops, don't forget that
the evacuation of Indochina was part of an agreement signed in Geneva and
that the French troops were not pushed back to the sea. They left in order
using the same ships, French and others, they used to get there; it was
nothing like Saigon in '75.

ArVa

BUFDRVR

June 13th 04, 04:54 PM

John Kunkel wrote:

>The "domino theory" that fomented the U.S.'s involvement originated in the
>Eisenhower/Nixon administration. In fact, the first public use of the
>"dominos falling" terminology to defend involvement in SEA was in a
>presidential news conference in April 1954. Troops and the CIA were there in
>'53.
>Kennedy inherited the failed foreign policy and Johnson ran with it.

While Ike's administration may have "invented" the Domino Theory, their
involvement in SE Asia would likely not have gotten much further than monetary
and clandestine support had Nixon won in '60. Kennedy upped the ante
considerably with Laos and then South Vietnam and while its arguable had he not
been killed in Nov. '63 that Kennedy would have reversed earlier policies,
there is no direct proof of that.

BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

BUFDRVR

June 13th 04, 05:00 PM

John O'Sullivan wrote:

>A visitor to the cities like Hanoi
>and Saigon

Hmm...I believe the city of Saigon has been called Ho Chi Mihn City since 1976.

Twice Sullivan calls it Saigon....

BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

Steve Hix

June 13th 04, 05:47 PM

In article >,
(BUFDRVR) wrote:

> John O'Sullivan wrote:
>
> >A visitor to the cities like Hanoi and Saigon
>
> Hmm...I believe the city of Saigon has been called Ho Chi Mihn City since
> 1976.
>
> Twice Sullivan calls it Saigon....

There are official names, and there are names being used.

According to a couple of people who recently visited VN, in Ho Chi Minh
City, nobody there that they heard called it anything but Saigon.

Steven P. McNicoll

June 13th 04, 06:21 PM

"ArVa" <no.arva.spam_at_no_os.fr> wrote in message
...
>
> And he did much more than that afterwards. The US help to the French war
> effort in Indochina was *tremendous*. Delivering vehicles, planes,
> ammunitions, etc, along with direct financing, the US supported around 80%
> of the cost of the war in 1953-54.
>

Truman left the presidency on January 20, 1953.

ArVa

June 13th 04, 07:05 PM

"Steven P. McNicoll" > a écrit dans le
message de nk.net...
>
> "ArVa" <no.arva.spam_at_no_os.fr> wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > And he did much more than that afterwards. The US help to the French war
> > effort in Indochina was *tremendous*. Delivering vehicles, planes,
> > ammunitions, etc, along with direct financing, the US supported around
80%
> > of the cost of the war in 1953-54.
> >
>
> Truman left the presidency on January 20, 1953.

Yes, I know, the information has eventually reached this side of the
Atlantic.

Truman initiated the military aid in 1950 and it lasted and grew in
importance till the end in '54, long after he left the White House, because
both his foreign policy and his successor's one had the same goals
concerning SE Asia. Is that really so hard to understand?

ArVa

John Mullen

June 13th 04, 08:33 PM

"Brett" > wrote in message
...
> "John Mullen" > wrote:
> > "John?]
"
> > > wrote in message
> > . net...
> > > In article >, John Mullen
> > > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > "John?]
> > "
> > > > > wrote in message
> > > > . net...
> > > > > In article >,
> WalterM140
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > >We won in Viet Nam and lost in Washington and Paris. Your
> > bitterness is
> > > > > > >misdirected.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that we
"won"
> > > > anything in
> > > > > > Viet Nam.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > NVA army units siezed the capital of the south, ran up their
> flag --
> > > > they even
> > > > > > changed the name. We and our allies had to flee. That's
defeat.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Walt
> > > > >
> > > > > You should try reading a history book sometime so perhaps you
won't
> > > > > look like such an idiot.
> > > > >
> > > > > The last combat units left Vietnam on March 29 1973. The only
> > American
> > > > > forces remaining in Vietnam after that date were the Marine guards
> at
> > > > > the embassy and the Defense Attache Office. When the NVA units
> seized
> > > > > the capitol, US forces had been gone more than two years. It's
hard
> > to
> > > > > flee or suffer a defeat when you are not even there.
> > > >
> > > > So overall then you would say the US intervention in Vetnam was a
> > success?
> > > > The lives lost worthwhile?
> > > >
> > > > Just interested in how far you would go with this...
> > > >
> > > > John
> > >
> > > Of course it was not a success; the country fell to communist rule,
but
> > > it is wrong to call it a "defeat". Words mean things, and the U.S.
> > > military was not "defeated" in Vietnam, we withdrew for political
> > > reasons. On March 29, 1973 we had a nice parade, retired the colors of
> > > the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, boarded chartered and
> > > military aircraft, and left in an orderly fashion. We were not
> > > "defeated" and we did not "flee". Those are the facts, plain and
> > > simple.
> >
> > Ok, so you say it was not a success, but it was not a defeat either.
What
> > *would* you call it?
>
> A decision by a bunch of democratic politicians in Washington to ignore
the
> guarantees made to the South Vietnamese by North Vietnam, the Nixon
> Administration and Congress. The democratic political hacks appeared to
have
> had a problem with the idea that the Nixon Administration could be seen as
> having succeeded, where the policies implemented by the democratic
> administrations of Johnson and Kennedy were viewed as failures, especially
> after the minor incident that occurred in the Watergate hotel.

I see. So you see it in party political terms. How, pray tell, would you
have seen it done differently? Military rule? Close down the democratic
process for the duration?

In what sense would you say the Nixon govt had succeeded?

Obviously they would not number the Watergate incident aas a great success!

> > How would you say it compared with say the USSR withdrawal from
> Afghanistan?
>
> It was a decision by Gorbachev to withdraw without any guarantees from the
> forces opposing the Soviets to respect the Afgan administration the
Soviets
> had entered the country to support.

So, comparable with Nam then?

I.e. they were both defeats!

John

Brett

June 13th 04, 09:55 PM

"John Mullen" > wrote:
> "Brett" > wrote in message
> ...
> > "John Mullen" > wrote:
> > > "John?]

> > > > Of course it was not a success; the country fell to communist rule,
> but
> > > > it is wrong to call it a "defeat". Words mean things, and the U.S.
> > > > military was not "defeated" in Vietnam, we withdrew for political
> > > > reasons. On March 29, 1973 we had a nice parade, retired the colors
of
> > > > the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, boarded chartered and
> > > > military aircraft, and left in an orderly fashion. We were not
> > > > "defeated" and we did not "flee". Those are the facts, plain and
> > > > simple.
> > >
> > > Ok, so you say it was not a success, but it was not a defeat either.
> What
> > > *would* you call it?
> >
> > A decision by a bunch of democratic politicians in Washington to ignore
> the
> > guarantees made to the South Vietnamese by North Vietnam, the Nixon
> > Administration and Congress. The democratic political hacks appeared to
> have
> > had a problem with the idea that the Nixon Administration could be seen
as
> > having succeeded, where the policies implemented by the democratic
> > administrations of Johnson and Kennedy were viewed as failures,
especially
> > after the minor incident that occurred in the Watergate hotel.
>
> I see. So you see it in party political terms.

No I reported the actions by the Democrats in Congress after the last US
troops had been withdrawn from the region in March 1973. The Ford
Administration couldn't spend money on agreements that Democrats in Congress
refused to fund.

> How, pray tell, would you
> have seen it done differently? Military rule? Close down the democratic
> process for the duration?

Well North Vietnam came South with tanks and what was left of their army. US
Air Force strikes against those forces in South Vietnam would have totally
destroyed it - that was afterall the type of force we expected to find
coming West out of East Germany.

> In what sense would you say the Nixon govt had succeeded?

How many US troops were in Vietnam by the end of 1973, the same number would
have been in Vietnam at the end of 1975 if Congress had allowed the Ford
Administration to honor the agreements that resulted in all US Forces being
removed in 1973.

> Obviously they would not number the Watergate incident aas a great
success!
>
> > > How would you say it compared with say the USSR withdrawal from
> > Afghanistan?
> >
> > It was a decision by Gorbachev to withdraw without any guarantees from
the
> > forces opposing the Soviets to respect the Afgan administration the
> Soviets
> > had entered the country to support.
>
> So, comparable with Nam then?

No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an orderly
withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam was
bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't under
fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew they
had.

> I.e. they were both defeats!

How many US troops were in Vietnam and how many US planes were flying
overhead when the NVA moved South in 1975 and how many had been there since
March of 1973?

John Mullen

June 14th 04, 01:39 PM

"Brett" > wrote in message
...

(big snip)

> > So, comparable with Nam then?
>
> No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an orderly
> withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam was
> bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't under
> fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew they
> had.

If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
stands I cannot.

> > I.e. they were both defeats!
>
> How many US troops were in Vietnam and how many US planes were flying
> overhead when the NVA moved South in 1975 and how many had been there
since
> March of 1973?

None, bar a few guards at the US embassy. All the others had fled. And then
even they left. And then there were none.

Defeat I still say.

John

George Z. Bush

June 14th 04, 04:07 PM

"John Mullen" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Brett" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> (big snip)
>
> > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> >
> > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an orderly
> > withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam was
> > bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't under
> > fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew they
> > had.
>
> If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
> stands I cannot.

He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire and he
seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was negotiating with the
NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of their guys and
vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and by the end of
March, all US combat troops were out of there.

Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.

George Z.

Kevin Brooks

June 14th 04, 04:58 PM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote in message
...
>
> "John Mullen" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > "Brett" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >
> > (big snip)
> >
> > > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> > >
> > > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> > > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an
orderly
> > > withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam
was
> > > bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't
under
> > > fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew
they
> > > had.
> >
> > If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
> > stands I cannot.
>
> He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire
and he
> seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was negotiating with
the
> NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of their guys
and
> vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and by the
end of
> March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>
> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.

Really? Your timeline must be vastly different from the rest of the world's
in this regard. Last I checked we pulled our ground combat units out in1972,
after Nixon began Vietnamization in 1969. In early 73 all that remained were
some advisors and installation security units, who left by the end of March.
From that time until the fall of the RVN in April 75, it was the ARVN's
battle to win or lose. There apparently is a significant distinction between
how we left Vietnam and how the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.

Brooks

>
> George Z.
>
>

Ed Rasimus

June 14th 04, 05:05 PM

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> wrote:

>He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire and he
>seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was negotiating with the
>NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of their guys and
>vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and by the end of
>March, all US combat troops were out of there.

The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
March, all US combat troops were out of there."

I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
ongoing.
>
>Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.

Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
100,000.

Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.

By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.

I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8

BUFDRVR

June 14th 04, 07:12 PM

Steve Hix wrote:

>There are official names, and there are names being used.
>
>According to a couple of people who recently visited VN, in Ho Chi Minh
>City, nobody there that they heard called it anything but Saigon.

Interesting. Thanks.

BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

B2431

June 14th 04, 08:42 PM

>From: "George Z. Bush"

<snip>

>
>Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>
>George Z.

Really? When the U.S. pulled the military out of East Germany and
Czhekoslovakia in 1945 it was a defeat? How about when the U.S. pulled out of
the Philipines a few years ago?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Paul J. Adam

June 14th 04, 10:19 PM

In message >, Kevin Brooks
> writes
>There apparently is a significant distinction between
>how we left Vietnam and how the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.

The US tried to support South Vietnam, eventually withdrew, and it
collapsed and was taken over by North Vietnam within a few years.

The USSR tried to support Najibullah in Afghanistan, eventually
withdrew, and Najibullah was murdered and the country riven by civil war
between the _jombesh_ until the Taliban took over.

There are serious differences, but there are still some similarities.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

George Z. Bush

June 14th 04, 10:28 PM

Ed Rasimus wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > wrote:
>
>> He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire and
>> he seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was negotiating
>> with the NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of their
>> guys and vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
>> by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>
> The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
> bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
> March, all US combat troops were out of there."
>
> I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
> missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
> combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
> US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
> ongoing.

Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to read
up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV launched an
all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this and please try
to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US combat troops":

"The North Vietnamese could not have picked a better time to attack in MR III.
Since the drawdown of American troops began in 1969, the region had seen U.S.
combat units dwindle to almost nothing. Between February and April 1972 alone,
58,000 troops and advisors returned to the U.S. This was the single largest
troop reduction of the war and it came precisely when the NVA was building up
for the Easter Offensive.

Those advisors that did remain in III Corps operated within the Third Regional
Assistance Command (TRAC), headquartered at Long Binh outside of Saigon."

Further on, the narrative added:

"By 1972, the advisory system in MR III, and in the rest of South Vietnam, was
primarily a skeleton team sprinkled throughout the top of the ARVN officer
corps. In combat units, advisors now interacted with their ARVN counterparts
only at corps, division, and regimental levels. In elite units, such as
airborne, rangers, and marines, advisors were still used down to the battalion
level."

If you want to read the entire account of the siege, here's the link, and if you
have nits to pick, pick them with the Army Historical Foundation, it being their
accounting:

http://www.armyhistoryfnd.org/armyhist/research/detail2.cfm?webpage_id=403&page_type_id=3

I didn't bother doing any further research since I'd satisfied myself that the
information I was able to find was at least as reliable as yours, if not better.

>>
>> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>
> Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
> office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
> orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
> April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
> numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
> 100,000.

From what I've been able to learn, the withdrawal by mid-1972 was so complete
that what we had left there constituted only advisors to the SVA and little
else. That leads me to wonder why you took issue with my previous statement to
that effect.
>
> Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
> understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
> on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.
>
> By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
> negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
> withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.

You can't be serious!!! On both occasions, we withdrew our troops AFTER our
enemy had been vanquished, AFTER they had surrendered, and AFTER they had
ceased fighting. There is NO parallel between our withdrawal from VN and either
WWI or WWII.
>
> I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
> apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
> passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
> a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.

I hate to differ with you, but 40 years after cessation of the war with NVN,
only an idiot who has become totally delusional or is seriously committed to
rewriting the history of that particular war to satisfy his own need to avoid
acknowledging reality would claim that we won that war.
You can call me whatever you like, but it won't change the reality that we left
with the names of 58,000+ of our dead troops on a black wall in Washington, DC,
and to this day, there is not a single cemetary in VN that contains any of their
remains, while such cemetaries abound in various parts of Europe.

When we are winners, we inter many of our fallen where they fell, and we weren't
able to do that in VN as we had in Europe for the simple reason that we didn't
have anything to say about what went on in VN after we pulled out. Winners can
make such arrangements......losers never can. We didn't.

Losing isn't important to me any more than it is to you, but it's what happened.
Your crediting NVN with a victory is really redundent, since the world has known
for years that they achieved precisely that and they hardly needed your
declaration in order to make it so.

As for your throwing Saddam Hussein into the pot, that was a cheap
shot.....neither his name nor his country had entered into any part of this
discussion and I can only conclude that you did so only to try to change the
subject to one that you might do better at. Just take a look at the subject
title if you've forgotten what we were talking about.

George Z.

>
>
>
> Ed Rasimus
> Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
> "When Thunder Rolled"
> Smithsonian Institution Press
> ISBN #1-58834-103-8

Mike Marron

June 14th 04, 11:31 PM

>Ed Rasimus > wrote:

[snipped for brevity]

>I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
>missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
>combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
>US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
>ongoing.

Speaking of Hue, Khe Sanh, etc. just watched a special re: 'Nam on
the History channel and you were one of the vets being interviewed
(you described being attacked by a MiG-17). Most interesting and since
my Dad flew A-1's over there I especially enjoyed the grunt who they
interviewed describing the whooping and cheering going on when Spads
napalmed getting the beleagured grunts on the ground out of immediate
peril.

BTW, I sent my copy of "When Thunder Rolled" to my ailing mother
(Alzheimer's) with detailed instructions referring her to Chapter 16
but she says she can't read the whole book due to the "lingo." Her
naivety WRT all-things-aviation always did drive the ol' man bonkers.
Sheesh, wimmenfolk. ;))

In any event, good job as always on the TV, the book(s), and here on
RAM keeping 'em honest about the war in SEA and I'm looking forward
to your Phantom book. In the meantime, I'd like to replace my copy of
"When Thunder Rolled" with an autographed copy, if you don't mind.
How does one go about that? Send ya a check?

Respectfully,
Mike Marron
pegasus912 at tampabay dot rr dot com

Brett

June 15th 04, 12:00 AM

"John Mullen" > wrote:
> "Brett" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> (big snip)
>
> > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> >
> > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an orderly
> > withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam was
> > bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't
under
> > fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew
they
> > had.
>
> If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
> stands I cannot.

Several other people appear to have understood the idea I attempted to pass
along so it must be you.
To put it in terms you might understand, "Mad Mitch" eliminated the problem
with insurgents at Crater, but he didn't eliminate the insurgents in the
rest of Aden. Harold Wilson without coming to any peace agreement with any
of the opposition forces withdrew British Forces from Aden, that is
basically the way the Russians left Afghanistan - the opposing forces doing
the fighting never signed up for peace.
In 1973 the North Vietnamese signed up for peace and only moved South in
1975 after Democrats in Congress refused to provide financial support to
South Vietnam's military, and passed laws preventing the use of US Military
forces in SE Asia.

> > > I.e. they were both defeats!
> >
> > How many US troops were in Vietnam and how many US planes were flying
> > overhead when the NVA moved South in 1975 and how many had been there
> since
> > March of 1973?
>
> None, bar a few guards at the US embassy. All the others had fled.

What definition are you applying here to the word "fled". The North
Vietnamese had been forced back to peace table by the US Military and had
signed up for the ceasefire agreement outlined in this link:

http://www.aiipowmia.com/sea/ppa1973.html

Brett

June 15th 04, 12:29 AM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote:
> "John Mullen" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > "Brett" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >
> > (big snip)
> >
> > > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> > >
> > > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> > > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an
orderly
> > > withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North Vietnam
was
> > > bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US withdrawal wasn't
under
> > > fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's they admitted or we knew
they
> > > had.
> >
> > If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
> > stands I cannot.
>
> He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire
and he
> seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was negotiating with
the
> NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of their guys

Where do you get the idea that I believe "none of our guys were shooting at
any of their guys" when my comment was "North Vietnam bombed into accepting"

> and
> vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and by the
end of
> March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>
> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.

Based upon that comment the US must have lost the War of 1812 - negotiations
between the parties concerned did afterall end that War.

Brett

June 15th 04, 12:35 AM

"Paul J. Adam" > wrote:
> In message >, Kevin Brooks
> > writes
> >There apparently is a significant distinction between
> >how we left Vietnam and how the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
>
> The US tried to support South Vietnam, eventually withdrew, and it
> collapsed and was taken over by North Vietnam within a few years.
>
> The USSR tried to support Najibullah in Afghanistan, eventually
> withdrew, and Najibullah was murdered and the country riven by civil war
> between the _jombesh_ until the Taliban took over.

Wasn't Najibullah executed by the Taliban in 1996.

> There are serious differences, but there are still some similarities.
>
> --
> He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
> Julius Caesar I:2
>
> Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Brett

June 15th 04, 03:46 AM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote:
> Ed Rasimus wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > > wrote:
> >
> >> He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under
fire and
> >> he seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was
negotiating
> >> with the NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting at any of
their
> >> guys and vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73
and
> >> by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
> >
> > The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
> > bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
> > March, all US combat troops were out of there."
> >
> > I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
> > missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
> > combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
> > US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
> > ongoing.
>
> Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to
read
> up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV launched
an
> all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this and please
try
> to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US combat troops":
>
> "The North Vietnamese could not have picked a better time to attack in MR
III.
> Since the drawdown of American troops began in 1969, the region had seen
U.S.
> combat units dwindle to almost nothing. Between February and April 1972
alone,
> 58,000 troops and advisors returned to the U.S. This was the single
largest
> troop reduction of the war and it came precisely when the NVA was building
up
> for the Easter Offensive.
>
> Those advisors that did remain in III Corps operated within the Third
Regional
> Assistance Command (TRAC), headquartered at Long Binh outside of Saigon."
>
> Further on, the narrative added:
>
> "By 1972, the advisory system in MR III, and in the rest of South Vietnam,
was
> primarily a skeleton team sprinkled throughout the top of the ARVN officer
> corps. In combat units, advisors now interacted with their ARVN
counterparts
> only at corps, division, and regimental levels. In elite units, such as
> airborne, rangers, and marines, advisors were still used down to the
battalion
> level."

From 'Strategy for Defeat', U.S.G. Sharp__"The Hanoi/Haiphong area was the
obvious focus of the bombing effort. In the fields of logistics,
communications, electric power and air bases, most of the lucrative targets
were centered within ten or fifteen miles of those two cities.
Transportation related targets and military supplies had high priority. A
brief assessment showed the following results:
a.. the entire railroad complex of North Vietnam was severely
crippled-to include damage to 383 rail cars, fourteen steam locomotives, 191
storage warehouse buildings, and two railroad bridges.
b.. the important railroad yard in downtown Hanoi was struck and badly
damaged by laser-guided bombs. (This yard had been used by the North
Vietnamese for years as a sanctuary, since they were able to bring railroad
cars into the "off limits" middle of Hanoi. USAF had only been allowed to
attack it once or twice during the whole war, and then it was quickly
repaired.) The railroad shops and the warehouse area were also hit with
laser-guided bombs, all of which went directly into the target area.
c.. the railroad yard at Gia Lam, two miles across the river from Hanoi
and jammed at the time with loaded rail cars, was hit hard and extensively
damaged.
d.. the Haiphong railroad siding was fairly well broken up and
interdicted almost completely.
e.. the Kinh No complex, where the railroad from Thai Nguyen, and the
northwest railroad come together to serve as the largest logistics grouping
in North Vietnam, was well cleaned out. It was being used to assemble and
redistribute cargo and contained many large warehouses packed with military
supplies.
f.. the Yen Vien military complex and the Kep railroad yard were also
hit heavily, and the Hanoi railroad highway bridge over the Rapides Canal
interdicted.
"In addition, nine major supply storage areas - seven in the Hanoi area
and two near Haiphong - were struck with excellent results. Vehicle repair
facilities (the North Vietnamese used trucks by the thousands) received
considerable damage, as did the nine port and waterway targets on the strike
list. Furthermore, the electric power grid of North Vietnam was sharply
compromised by the combined effect of the Hanoi power plant being hit by
smart bombs . . . the Hanoi transformer station being rendered inoperative,
and the Viet Tri thermal power plant and two other big power plants (one at
Uong Bi and one just northwest of Hanoi) all being successfully struck. The
main control buildings of the Hanoi radio communications center (where the
transmitters were located) were also damaged. Finally, ten airfields, mostly
around the Hanoi area, were struck in order to ensure that aircraft
operations from these fields would be interdicted, and a number of surface
to air missile sites were put out of commission. Most importantly, all of
this damage was done in eleven days of concentrated attacks. There was no
respite for the North Vietnamese the shock effect was tremendous. Aerial
bombardment had worked."__

Marc Reeve

June 15th 04, 07:16 AM

Brett > wrote:
> "George Z. Bush" > wrote:
> > "John Mullen" > wrote in message
> > ...
> > >
> > > "Brett" > wrote in message
> > > ...
> > >
> > > (big snip)
> > >
> > > > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> > > >
> > > > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual "troops"
> > > > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an
> > > > orderly withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire. North
> > > > Vietnam was bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US
> > > > withdrawal wasn't under fire and North Vietnam returned the US POW's
> > > > they admitted or we knew they had.
> > >
> > > If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As it
> > > stands I cannot.
> >
> > He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under fire
> > and he seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was
> > negotiating with the NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were shooting
> > at any of their guys
>
> Where do you get the idea that I believe "none of our guys were shooting
> at any of their guys" when my comment was "North Vietnam bombed into
> accepting"
>
> > and vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
> > by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
> > Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire
> > or negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>
> Based upon that comment the US must have lost the War of 1812 -
> negotiations between the parties concerned did afterall end that War.

There's definitely a case for arguing that we did lose the War of 1812.

We failed to conquer Canada (yes, we invaded Canada, thinking that the
Brits wouldn't notice, being pre-occupied with Napoleon.). Had a few
victories at sea and on the Great Lakes, nothing decisive. Land battles
were distinctly mixed with only the Battle of New Orleans (fought after
the Treaty of Ghent ended the war) being a decisive American victory.
And the Brits only stopped impressing seamen from our ships because they
defeated the French and drew down the Royal Navy.

Oh, and of course, the Brits burned Washington (but that may have been
retaliation for us burning the capital of colonial Canada, York
(Ontario), in 1813.
--
Marc Reeve
actual email address after removal of 4s & spaces is
c4m4r4a4m4a4n a4t c4r4u4z4i4o d4o4t c4o4m

Paul J. Adam

June 15th 04, 07:50 AM

In message >, Brett
> writes
>"Paul J. Adam" > wrote:
>> The US tried to support South Vietnam, eventually withdrew, and it
>> collapsed and was taken over by North Vietnam within a few years.
>>
>> The USSR tried to support Najibullah in Afghanistan, eventually
>> withdrew, and Najibullah was murdered and the country riven by civil war
>> between the _jombesh_ until the Taliban took over.
>
>Wasn't Najibullah executed by the Taliban in 1996.

Thereabouts; so he hung on for, oh, eight years after the Soviets left?

So, obviously, the Soviets won in Afghanistan...

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBox<at>jrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Brett

June 15th 04, 10:24 AM

"Marc Reeve" > wrote:
> Brett > wrote:
> > "George Z. Bush" > wrote:
> > > "John Mullen" > wrote in message
> > > ...
> > > >
> > > > "Brett" > wrote in message
> > > > ...
> > > >
> > > > (big snip)
> > > >
> > > > > > So, comparable with Nam then?
> > > > >
> > > > > No, the Soviets never came to any agreement with the actual
"troops"
> > > > > fighting them in Afghanistan. So while it might be considered an
> > > > > orderly withdrawal it was a withdrawal made under enemy fire.
North
> > > > > Vietnam was bombed into accepting a peace agreement and the US
> > > > > withdrawal wasn't under fire and North Vietnam returned the US
POW's
> > > > > they admitted or we knew they had.
> > > >
> > > > If you cared to reword this I might be able to make sense of it. As
it
> > > > stands I cannot.
> > >
> > > He's trying to make something out of the Russians pulling out under
fire
> > > and he seems to be under the impression that while Kissinger was
> > > negotiating with the NVs in Paris in '73, none of our guys were
shooting
> > > at any of their guys
> >
> > Where do you get the idea that I believe "none of our guys were shooting
> > at any of their guys" when my comment was "North Vietnam bombed into
> > accepting"
> >
> > > and vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
> > > by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
> > > Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy
fire
> > > or negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
> >
> > Based upon that comment the US must have lost the War of 1812 -
> > negotiations between the parties concerned did afterall end that War.
>
> There's definitely a case for arguing that we did lose the War of 1812.

Perhaps, but the argument is stronger for the position that nobody won the
War, and the only real losers were the Indian tribes who had allied
themselves with the British.

> We failed to conquer Canada (yes, we invaded Canada, thinking that the
> Brits wouldn't notice, being pre-occupied with Napoleon.). Had a few
> victories at sea and on the Great Lakes, nothing decisive. Land battles
> were distinctly mixed with only the Battle of New Orleans (fought after
> the Treaty of Ghent ended the war) being a decisive American victory.
> And the Brits only stopped impressing seamen from our ships because they
> defeated the French and drew down the Royal Navy.
>
> Oh, and of course, the Brits burned Washington (but that may have been
> retaliation for us burning the capital of colonial Canada, York
> (Ontario), in 1813.

Marc Reeve

June 15th 04, 06:42 PM

Brett > wrote:
> "Marc Reeve" > wrote:
> > Brett > wrote:
> > > "George Z. Bush" > wrote:
> > >
> > > Where do you get the idea that I believe "none of our guys were
> > > shooting at any of their guys" when my comment was "North Vietnam
> > > bombed into accepting"
> > >
> > > > and vice versa. At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73
> > > >and by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
> > > >Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy
> > > >fire or negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
> > >
> > > Based upon that comment the US must have lost the War of 1812 -
> > > negotiations between the parties concerned did afterall end that War.
> >
> > There's definitely a case for arguing that we did lose the War of 1812.
>
> Perhaps, but the argument is stronger for the position that nobody won the
> War, and the only real losers were the Indian tribes who had allied
> themselves with the British.
>
True enough. The natives had a knack for picking the wrong side - siding
with the French during the French and Indian War, and then with the
Brits during the Revolution and the War of 1812.
--
Marc Reeve
actual email address after removal of 4s & spaces is
c4m4r4a4m4a4n a4t c4r4u4z4i4o d4o4t c4o4m

Brett

June 15th 04, 10:20 PM

"Paul J. Adam" > wrote:
> In message >, Brett
> > writes
> >"Paul J. Adam" > wrote:
> >> The US tried to support South Vietnam, eventually withdrew, and it
> >> collapsed and was taken over by North Vietnam within a few years.
> >>
> >> The USSR tried to support Najibullah in Afghanistan, eventually
> >> withdrew, and Najibullah was murdered and the country riven by civil
war
> >> between the _jombesh_ until the Taliban took over.
> >
> >Wasn't Najibullah executed by the Taliban in 1996.
>
> Thereabouts; so he hung on for, oh, eight years after the Soviets left?

No, the majority of that time he spent hiding in a UN compound in Kabul
hoping that Sevan's (of the later oil for food scandal) guarantees for his
safety were worth something. He found out in 1996 that a UN
promise/guarantee was worthless when the Taliban dragged him from the UN
compound tortured and then hanged him.

> So, obviously, the Soviets won in Afghanistan...

If Najibullah's survival as a hunted man for 8 years before his violent
death at the hands of the Taliban in 1996 demonstrates winning, Thieu's
death of natural causes (a stroke) in September 2001 after living in comfort
for many years in London and Boston must have some meaning.

Ed Rasimus

June 16th 04, 12:55 AM

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> wrote:

>Ed Rasimus wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
>>> by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>>
>> The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
>> bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
>> March, all US combat troops were out of there."
>>
>> I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
>> missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
>> combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
>> US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
>> ongoing.
>
>Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to read
>up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV launched an
>all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this and please try
>to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US combat troops":

While the siege of An Loc started in April of '72 as did Linebacker,
"all US combat troops" weren't out. I was flying "An Loc trip turns"
in March and April of '73. One sortie out of Korat, drop at An Loc,
recover to Bien Hoa. Reload and drop on An Loc, return to Bien Hoa.
Reload, drop on An Loc and RTB to Korat. One Marine A-4 squadron still
at Bien Hoa, lots of USAF ground personnel and a brigade of US Army
still on station. Deployed A-1 Sandy unit from Nakhon Phanom for
possible SAR use.

Up at Khe Sanh, Marines were still on the ground and we were still
pounding the surrounding hillsides. At Danang, we had move the AF
flying units out, but were still turning fighter sorties for CAS
missions in MR I and II. Did your reading mention that?
>

>I didn't bother doing any further research since I'd satisfied myself that the
>information I was able to find was at least as reliable as yours, if not better.

I'm glad you didn't read any further. I've found that history is a lot
like a man with two watches. If you've got one watch, you know what
time it is. If you've got two, you're never sure.

Stop reading while you're ahead.
>
>
>>>
>>> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>>> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>>
>> Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
>> office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
>> orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
>> April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
>> numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
>> 100,000.
>
>From what I've been able to learn, the withdrawal by mid-1972 was so complete
>that what we had left there constituted only advisors to the SVA and little
>else. That leads me to wonder why you took issue with my previous statement to
>that effect.

Three squadrons of F-4s from Seymour Johnson returned to SEA in August
of '72. A squadron of F-111s arrived at Takhli in Sept or Oct. A full
wing of A-7Ds from Myrtle Beach arrived at Korat in October of '72.
Additional F-105Gs from the States arrived in September as well as the
F-4C Weasels from Kadena and the 35th TFS from Korea. And, that's just
some of the additional forces arriving while you contend there was no
one left.
>>
>> Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
>> understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
>> on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.
>>
>> By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
>> negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
>> withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.
>
>You can't be serious!!! On both occasions, we withdrew our troops AFTER our
>enemy had been vanquished, AFTER they had surrendered, and AFTER they had
>ceased fighting. There is NO parallel between our withdrawal from VN and either
>WWI or WWII.

Your statement (still intact above) was "withdrawal whether as a
result of enemy fire or negotiation"--it's ridiculous statement on its
face. America always withdraws after conflicts end--we aren't a very
imperialist country. By your definition, we always lose.
>>
>> I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
>> apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
>> passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
>> a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.
>
>I hate to differ with you, but 40 years after cessation of the war with NVN,
>only an idiot who has become totally delusional or is seriously committed to
>rewriting the history of that particular war to satisfy his own need to avoid
>acknowledging reality would claim that we won that war.

I didn't claim victory at the end of hostilities. I said I didn't
lose.

>You can call me whatever you like, but it won't change the reality that we left
>with the names of 58,000+ of our dead troops on a black wall in Washington, DC,
>and to this day, there is not a single cemetary in VN that contains any of their
>remains, while such cemetaries abound in various parts of Europe.
>
>When we are winners, we inter many of our fallen where they fell, and we weren't
>able to do that in VN as we had in Europe for the simple reason that we didn't
>have anything to say about what went on in VN after we pulled out. Winners can
>make such arrangements......losers never can. We didn't.

It has long been the preference of America to bring as many of our
fallen home as possible. Interring where they fell is not the desired
option. It was only done when the losses were so great that handling
of the casualties was not otherwise practical.
>
>Losing isn't important to me any more than it is to you, but it's what happened.
>Your crediting NVN with a victory is really redundent, since the world has known
>for years that they achieved precisely that and they hardly needed your
>declaration in order to make it so.

You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
doesn't imply a great victory.
>
>As for your throwing Saddam Hussein into the pot, that was a cheap
>shot.....neither his name nor his country had entered into any part of this
>discussion and I can only conclude that you did so only to try to change the
>subject to one that you might do better at. Just take a look at the subject
>title if you've forgotten what we were talking about.

I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.

You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.
>

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 03:04 AM

Ed Rasimus wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > wrote:
>
>> Ed Rasimus wrote:
>>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
>>>> by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>>>
>>> The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
>>> bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
>>> March, all US combat troops were out of there."
>>>
>>> I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
>>> missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
>>> combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
>>> US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
>>> ongoing.
>>
>> Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to
>> read up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV
>> launched an all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this
>> and please try to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US
>> combat troops":
>
> While the siege of An Loc started in April of '72 as did Linebacker,
> "all US combat troops" weren't out. I was flying "An Loc trip turns"
> in March and April of '73. One sortie out of Korat, drop at An Loc,
> recover to Bien Hoa. Reload and drop on An Loc, return to Bien Hoa.
> Reload, drop on An Loc and RTB to Korat. One Marine A-4 squadron still
> at Bien Hoa, lots of USAF ground personnel and a brigade of US Army
> still on station. Deployed A-1 Sandy unit from Nakhon Phanom for
> possible SAR use.
>
> Up at Khe Sanh, Marines were still on the ground and we were still
> pounding the surrounding hillsides. At Danang, we had move the AF
> flying units out, but were still turning fighter sorties for CAS
> missions in MR I and II. Did your reading mention that?

Yep. It seems to boil down to a difference of opinion as to what constitutes
"US combat troops". The sources I used referred to the remaining US ground
components as advisors to the S. Vietnamese forces, not as forces involved in
combat as units with unique assigned missions. If you don't want to accept that
definition, and it looks like you don't, go argue with them. I merely reported
what they said. Neither of us were there on the ground, so we're each entitled
to our own opinions.
>>
>
>> I didn't bother doing any further research since I'd satisfied myself that
>> the information I was able to find was at least as reliable as yours, if not
>> better.
>
> I'm glad you didn't read any further. I've found that history is a lot
> like a man with two watches. If you've got one watch, you know what
> time it is. If you've got two, you're never sure.
>
> Stop reading while you're ahead.

Quick with a quip, as always, even when it doesn't prove anything.
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>>>> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>>>
>>> Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
>>> office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
>>> orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
>>> April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
>>> numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
>>> 100,000.
>>
>> From what I've been able to learn, the withdrawal by mid-1972 was so complete
>> that what we had left there constituted only advisors to the SVA and little
>> else. That leads me to wonder why you took issue with my previous statement
>> to that effect.
>
> Three squadrons of F-4s from Seymour Johnson returned to SEA in August
> of '72. A squadron of F-111s arrived at Takhli in Sept or Oct. A full
> wing of A-7Ds from Myrtle Beach arrived at Korat in October of '72.
> Additional F-105Gs from the States arrived in September as well as the
> F-4C Weasels from Kadena and the 35th TFS from Korea. And, that's just
> some of the additional forces arriving while you contend there was no
> one left.

Please don't change my words. What I said was that the sources I used
identified the remaining US ground forces as advisors. Unless the squadrons you
reported on were committed to ground combat at the siege location, they weren't
part of the conversation and there was no reason to add them to the mix. I have
no reason to question but that they arrived as you reported and that they may
have provided the combat air support you alluded to. I had never even mentioned
the aerial component of the siege and don't understand why you even brought it
up, since it was never questioned or mentioned. I was talking about grunts.
>>>
>>> Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
>>> understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
>>> on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.
>>>
>>> By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
>>> negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
>>> withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.
>>
>> You can't be serious!!! On both occasions, we withdrew our troops AFTER our
>> enemy had been vanquished, AFTER they had surrendered, and AFTER they had
>> ceased fighting. There is NO parallel between our withdrawal from VN and
>> either WWI or WWII.
>
> Your statement (still intact above) was "withdrawal whether as a
> result of enemy fire or negotiation"--it's ridiculous statement on its
> face. America always withdraws after conflicts end--we aren't a very
> imperialist country. By your definition, we always lose.

Arguing with that kind of stupid logic is beyond me. If you're bound and
determined to twist my words into something I can't even recognize as my own, I
can't prevent it. All I can do is shake my head in bewildered wonderment as I
gain a little more understanding of how we could manage to screw up our own
effort by relying on people with your thought processes for its success.
>>>
>>> I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
>>> apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
>>> passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
>>> a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.
>>
>> I hate to differ with you, but 40 years after cessation of the war with NVN,
>> only an idiot who has become totally delusional or is seriously committed to
>> rewriting the history of that particular war to satisfy his own need to avoid
>> acknowledging reality would claim that we won that war.
>
> I didn't claim victory at the end of hostilities. I said I didn't
> lose.

I, for one, say that if you didn't win what you started out after, you lost.
You can call it whatever it takes to make you feel better about your part in it,
but I'm satisfied that "loser" is a reasonably accurate label all of us who had
any part in it earned. I'm neither proud nor happy about that, but there's
little point in trying to kid ourselves much less the general public that it
ended up amounting to much else. Denial may be your thing, but it's not mine.
>
>> You can call me whatever you like, but it won't change the reality that we
>> left with the names of 58,000+ of our dead troops on a black wall in
>> Washington, DC, and to this day, there is not a single cemetary in VN that
>> contains any of their remains, while such cemetaries abound in various parts
>> of Europe.
>>
>> When we are winners, we inter many of our fallen where they fell, and we
>> weren't able to do that in VN as we had in Europe for the simple reason that
>> we didn't have anything to say about what went on in VN after we pulled out.
>> Winners can make such arrangements......losers never can. We didn't.
>
> It has long been the preference of America to bring as many of our
> fallen home as possible. Interring where they fell is not the desired
> option. It was only done when the losses were so great that handling
> of the casualties was not otherwise practical.

>> Losing isn't important to me any more than it is to you, but it's what
>> happened. Your crediting NVN with a victory is really redundent, since the
>> world has known for years that they achieved precisely that and they hardly
>> needed your declaration in order to make it so.
>
> You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> doesn't imply a great victory.
>>
>> As for your throwing Saddam Hussein into the pot, that was a cheap
>> shot.....neither his name nor his country had entered into any part of this
>> discussion and I can only conclude that you did so only to try to change the
>> subject to one that you might do better at. Just take a look at the subject
>> title if you've forgotten what we were talking about.
>
> I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
>
> You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
> want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
> are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.

Guy Alcala

June 16th 04, 05:48 AM

Ed Rasimus wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > wrote:

> You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> doesn't imply a great victory.

Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

"The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of
the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military
casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These
figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists
to avoid demoralizing the population. "

A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN
and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed
during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian
deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming
reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of
civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of
american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).

Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's numbers war. If you
wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side won and lost,
then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because they killed far
more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN achieved their
goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't
achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit
we might get, i.e. we lost.

<snip>

> I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
>
> You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
> want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
> are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.

Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain
the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia,
including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people?
Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to tell them
that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its faults, provides
a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving the way it
is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay that
movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist inefficiency,
corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier). Vietnam
probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s,
if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war hadn't been
fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed like
compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time.

Guy

MLenoch

June 16th 04, 06:09 AM

>From: Guy Alcala

wrote:> Were you claiming the deaths of
>civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
>triumph of
>american arms, Ed?

I do not see where this was claimed. Do you have a specific line that asserts
this?

>The US didn't
>achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any
>benefit
>we might get, i.e. we lost.
>

Not an unreasonable conclusion. OK.

>>You might even ask if they
>> are truly the great communist society >>that Marx envisioned, or if they
>> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith >>country.
>Are you claiming that the war is what >made that happen?
> If so, how do you explain
>the same thing happening in all the >former communist states in Europe and
>Asia,
>including all the ones where we didn't kill >several million of their people?

The European former communist states are not at all the "same thing" as Vietnam
today. I do not think this is a good conclusion. The economic status of these
European states is not solely or mostly based on tourism.

VL

Kevin Brooks

June 16th 04, 07:10 AM

"Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
. ..

>
> A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
276,000 US/ARVN
> and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese
killed
> during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN
civilian
> deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US.

Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage
events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at Hue
during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that supports
your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian deaths?
Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it, either...
And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous "reeducation
camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient to
slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look
nioce and tidy for folks later)?

So assuming
> reasonably accurate numbers,

That would be quite an assumption in this case.

the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
> million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants.

Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really swell
guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians? Just how do you think we managed
to kill those *millions* of noncombatants? I note that the number you are
touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the German
total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained during
WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin,
etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught in
the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of your
figures.

Were you claiming the deaths of
> civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
triumph of
> american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
> demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).

I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to lable
the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a "victory"
for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more
accurate than not.

>
> Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's numbers
war. If you
> wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side won
and lost,
> then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because they
killed far
> more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN
achieved their
> goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won.
The US didn't
> achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for
any benefit
> we might get, i.e. we lost.

Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to
stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the
RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed
that responsibility off to them, the VC had been eliminated as a major
factor (and had been since the days following Tet 68, vastly different from
the situation in the mid 60's), and the NVA had been for all intents and
purposes pushed out of RVN territory. Two years later things went to hell in
a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion of
the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US
military? I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign
policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had
withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an RVN
still controlled by its own sovereign government.

Brooks

>
> <snip>
>
> > I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
> >
> > You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
> > want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
> > are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
> > don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.
>
> Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you
explain
> the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and
Asia,
> including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their
people?
> Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to
tell them
> that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its
faults, provides
> a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving
the way it
> is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay
that
> movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist
inefficiency,
> corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier).
Vietnam
> probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s
and '70s,
> if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war
hadn't been
> fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed
like
> compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time.
>
> Guy
>
>
>
>

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 01:34 PM

My puter hiccupped before I had finished making my comments in response to Ed
and sent it off for posting as if I had intended it that way. This was what I
intended to be my total response to his posting.

George Z.

George Z. Bush wrote:
> Ed Rasimus wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Ed Rasimus wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
>>>>> by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.
>>>>
>>>> The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
>>>> bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
>>>> March, all US combat troops were out of there."
>>>>
>>>> I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
>>>> missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
>>>> combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
>>>> US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
>>>> ongoing.
>>>
>>> Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to
>>> read up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV
>>> launched an all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this
>>> and please try to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US
>>> combat troops":
>>
>> While the siege of An Loc started in April of '72 as did Linebacker,
>> "all US combat troops" weren't out. I was flying "An Loc trip turns"
>> in March and April of '73. One sortie out of Korat, drop at An Loc,
>> recover to Bien Hoa. Reload and drop on An Loc, return to Bien Hoa.
>> Reload, drop on An Loc and RTB to Korat. One Marine A-4 squadron still
>> at Bien Hoa, lots of USAF ground personnel and a brigade of US Army
>> still on station. Deployed A-1 Sandy unit from Nakhon Phanom for
>> possible SAR use.
>>
>> Up at Khe Sanh, Marines were still on the ground and we were still
>> pounding the surrounding hillsides. At Danang, we had move the AF
>> flying units out, but were still turning fighter sorties for CAS
>> missions in MR I and II. Did your reading mention that?
>
> Yep. It seems to boil down to a difference of opinion as to what constitutes
> "US combat troops". The sources I used referred to the remaining US ground
> components as advisors to the S. Vietnamese forces, not as forces involved in
> combat as units with unique assigned missions. If you don't want to accept
> that definition, and it looks like you don't, go argue with them. I merely
> reported what they said. Neither of us were there on the ground, so we're
> each entitled to our own opinions.
>>>
>>
>>> I didn't bother doing any further research since I'd satisfied myself that
>>> the information I was able to find was at least as reliable as yours, if not
>>> better.
>>
>> I'm glad you didn't read any further. I've found that history is a lot
>> like a man with two watches. If you've got one watch, you know what
>> time it is. If you've got two, you're never sure.
>>
>> Stop reading while you're ahead.
>
> Quick with a quip, as always, even when it doesn't prove anything.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
>>>>> negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.
>>>>
>>>> Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
>>>> office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
>>>> orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
>>>> April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
>>>> numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
>>>> 100,000.
>>>
>>> From what I've been able to learn, the withdrawal by mid-1972 was so
>>> complete that what we had left there constituted only advisors to the SVA
>>> and little else. That leads me to wonder why you took issue with my
>>> previous statement to that effect.
>>
>> Three squadrons of F-4s from Seymour Johnson returned to SEA in August
>> of '72. A squadron of F-111s arrived at Takhli in Sept or Oct. A full
>> wing of A-7Ds from Myrtle Beach arrived at Korat in October of '72.
>> Additional F-105Gs from the States arrived in September as well as the
>> F-4C Weasels from Kadena and the 35th TFS from Korea. And, that's just
>> some of the additional forces arriving while you contend there was no
>> one left.
>
> Please don't change my words. What I said was that the sources I used
> identified the remaining US ground forces as advisors. Unless the squadrons
> you reported on were committed to ground combat at the siege location, they
> weren't part of the conversation and there was no reason to add them to the
> mix. I have no reason to question but that they arrived as you reported and
> that they may have provided the combat air support you alluded to. I had
> never even mentioned the aerial component of the siege and don't understand
> why you even brought it up, since it was never questioned or mentioned. I
> was talking about grunts.
>>>>
>>>> Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
>>>> understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
>>>> on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.
>>>>
>>>> By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
>>>> negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
>>>> withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.
>>>
>>> You can't be serious!!! On both occasions, we withdrew our troops AFTER
>>> our enemy had been vanquished, AFTER they had surrendered, and AFTER they
>>> had ceased fighting. There is NO parallel between our withdrawal from VN
>>> and either WWI or WWII.
>>
>> Your statement (still intact above) was "withdrawal whether as a
>> result of enemy fire or negotiation"--it's ridiculous statement on its
>> face. America always withdraws after conflicts end--we aren't a very
>> imperialist country. By your definition, we always lose.
>
> Arguing with that kind of stupid logic is beyond me. If you're bound and
> determined to twist my words into something I can't even recognize as my own,
> I can't prevent it. All I can do is shake my head in bewildered wonderment
> as I gain a little more understanding of how we could manage to screw up our
> own effort by relying on people with your thought processes for its success.
>>>>
>>>> I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
>>>> apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
>>>> passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
>>>> a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.
>>>
>>> I hate to differ with you, but 40 years after cessation of the war with NVN,
>>> only an idiot who has become totally delusional or is seriously committed to
>>> rewriting the history of that particular war to satisfy his own need to
>>> avoid acknowledging reality would claim that we won that war.
>>
>> I didn't claim victory at the end of hostilities. I said I didn't
>> lose.
>
> I, for one, say that if you didn't win what you started out after, you lost.
> You can call it whatever it takes to make you feel better about your part in
> it, but I'm satisfied that "loser" is a reasonably accurate label all of us
> who had any part in it earned. I'm neither proud nor happy about that, but
> there's little point in trying to kid ourselves much less the general public
> that it ended up amounting to much else. Denial may be your thing, but it's
> not mine.
>>
>>> You can call me whatever you like, but it won't change the reality that we
>>> left with the names of 58,000+ of our dead troops on a black wall in
>>> Washington, DC, and to this day, there is not a single cemetary in VN that
>>> contains any of their remains, while such cemetaries abound in various parts
>>> of Europe.
>>>
>>> When we are winners, we inter many of our fallen where they fell, and we
>>> weren't able to do that in VN as we had in Europe for the simple reason that
>>> we didn't have anything to say about what went on in VN after we pulled out.
>>> Winners can make such arrangements......losers never can. We didn't.
>>
>> It has long been the preference of America to bring as many of our
>> fallen home as possible. Interring where they fell is not the desired
>> option. It was only done when the losses were so great that handling
>> of the casualties was not otherwise practical.

When I said that we inter many of our fallen where they fell, I may have
inadvertently added to the confusion. I meant by that sttement that we interred
them in the nation where they fell, rather than the individual place of death.
Sorry about that.

Interring large numbers of casualties occurred routinely in temporary US
military cemeteries in various European locations. After the war was concluded,
bodies were either sent home if the families requested it, or they were
re-interred in one of the permanent US military cemeteries in Europe where, if I
am informed correctly, they are maintained in perpetuity by the host nation.
That practice can't be followed obviously if the host nation, by virtue of it
seeing itself as victors in a conflict with us, is disinclined to cooperate. I
believe that would explain the reason for the lack of US military cemeteries
anywhere in the RVN.
>
>>> Losing isn't important to me any more than it is to you, but it's what
>>> happened. Your crediting NVN with a victory is really redundent, since the
>>> world has known for years that they achieved precisely that and they hardly
>>> needed your declaration in order to make it so.
>>
>> You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
>> your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
>> use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
>> doesn't imply a great victory.
>>>
>>> As for your throwing Saddam Hussein into the pot, that was a cheap
>>> shot.....neither his name nor his country had entered into any part of this
>>> discussion and I can only conclude that you did so only to try to change the
>>> subject to one that you might do better at. Just take a look at the subject
>>> title if you've forgotten what we were talking about.
>>
>> I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
>>
>> You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
>> want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
>> are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
>> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.

I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite of
our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually collapsed
under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism remain
today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there in
the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified spending
all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
even have been fought?

George Z.

SteveM8597

June 16th 04, 02:17 PM

>I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite
>of
>our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
>Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually
>collapsed
>under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism
>remain
>today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
>young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there
>in
>the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified
>spending
>all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
>even have been fought?
>
>George Z.
>

I think this is where several of us "Cold Warriors" who fought in that war
depart company with many who weren't there but are instead students of one
particular interpretation or another of events of the past. Like many other
wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in practically
any area you care to mention. you haven't figured out by now that was a
conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that happened by
chance. Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of resources and
their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the allies.

If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated. My
contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and clearly
we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am not
sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.

You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick you
are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a lay
down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We simply
stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes in
Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to them
while the Soviets met theirs.

Steve

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 02:39 PM

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 03:09 PM

SteveM8597 wrote:
>> I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite
>> of
>> our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
>> Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually
>> collapsed
>> under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism
>> remain
>> today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
>> young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there
>> in
>> the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified
>> spending
>> all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
>> even have been fought?
>>
>> George Z.
>>
>
> I think this is where several of us "Cold Warriors" who fought in that war
> depart company with many who weren't there but are instead students of one
> particular interpretation or another of events of the past. Like many other
> wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
> because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
> own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in
> practically any area you care to mention.

How about these two less than insignificant areas? Inadequately secured nuclear
weapons sufficient in size and numbers to render the largest part of our planet
a glowing tribute to man's folly if they were all discharged. And how about
their puny space efforts, which results in our astronauts going to and from the
space station aboard Soyuz rockets while our shuttles are grounded?

> ......you haven't figured out by now
> that was a conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that
> happened by chance.

You can think whatever you want, but it's my opinion that we beat them down by
outspending them and, once we adopted that as a policy, they couldn't win
because they couldn't match our resources and/or spendable assets. That being
the case, we didn't need to fight them in any portion of the world in order to
hasten their political collapse.....it was going to happen eventually regardless
of whether or not armed conflict was resorted to. Having said that, why did we
feel obliged to resort to armed conflict with one of their surrogates? Why did
we spend 58,000+ lives to achieve what was going to happen anyway? Doesn't that
make it a war that should not have been fought?

> .....Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of
> resources and their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the allies.

I was aware of that, but I thought we were talking about the Viet Nam War.
>
> If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated. My
> contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and clearly
> we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
> wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am
> not sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.
>
> You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick you
> are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a
> lay down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We simply
> stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes in
> Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
> then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to them
> while the Soviets met theirs.

You can define victory or defeat however you wish. IMHO, a nation that engages
in armed conflict and ultimately fails to gain the objectives it had adopted in
going to war is a nation that has been defeated. It doesn't matter if your
troops raised their hands and surrendered or if your diplomats negotiate a
peaceful withdrawal, if you haven't achieved your objective, you've lost it.
Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
elsewhere in SEA. The South Viet Namese government ultimately failed in 1975
and the nation was unified, and communism as a form of government did not spread
in the area in spite of it. Taking credit for that failure because of the
punishment we inflicted before we withdrew is akin to the old Israeli gag about
the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that
he's an orphan.

IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of fact,
won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately, because
of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.

George Z.

SteveM8597

June 16th 04, 03:52 PM

>You can think whatever you want, but it's my opinion that we beat them down
>by
>outspending them and, once we adopted that as a policy, they couldn't win
>because they couldn't match our resources and/or spendable assets. That
>being
>the case, we didn't need to fight them in any portion of the world in order
>to
>hasten their political collapse.....it was going to happen eventually
>regardless
>of whether or not armed conflict was resorted to. Having said that, why did
>we
>feel obliged to resort to armed conflict with one of their surrogates? Why
>did
>we spend 58,000+ lives to achieve what was going to happen anyway? Doesn't
>that
>make it a war that should not have been fought?

In all honesty, I am not sure. At that time we were committed to stopping
Soviet expansion wherever it was happening. This was during the era of the
Cuban Missile Crisis and other smaller standoffs around the world. I believe
that our government honestly felt that the USSR had to be stopped in SEA before
it could gain a toehold but unfortunately Soviet expansionism and the VN civil
war were tightly intertwined. Did we have to engage in SEA - I think yes.
Could it have been done with less loss of life - again I think yes because our
political strategies were flawed in the sixties.

>
>> .....Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of
>> resources and their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the
>allies.
>
>I was aware of that, but I thought we were talking about the Viet Nam War.
>>
>> If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated.
>My
>> contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and
>clearly
>> we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
>> wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am
>> not sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.
>>
>> You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick
>you
>> are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a
>> lay down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We
>simply
>> stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes
>in
>> Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
>> then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to
>them
>> while the Soviets met theirs.
>
>You can define victory or defeat however you wish. IMHO, a nation that
>engages
>in armed conflict and ultimately fails to gain the objectives it had adopted
>in
>going to war is a nation that has been defeated. It doesn't matter if your
>troops raised their hands and surrendered or if your diplomats negotiate a
>peaceful withdrawal, if you haven't achieved your objective, you've lost it.
>Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the
>ongoing
>vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam
>which
>would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of
>government
>elsewhere in SEA. The South Viet Namese government ultimately failed in 1975
>and the nation was unified, and communism as a form of government did not
>spread
>in the area in spite of it. Taking credit for that failure because of the
>punishment we inflicted before we withdrew is akin to the old Israeli gag
>about
>the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that
>he's an orphan.

Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that. NVN was never
able to fully bring SVN into its mold of government. As was the strategy for
NVN, we made the cost of future incursions by the USSR too high. I am not sure
what the alternate history would have been had we not intervened and all any of
us can do is speculate. SVN lost their civil war in spite of our support or
maybe lack of it, but we accomplished the larger objective. The USSR never had
much of a presence after the war and later abandoned VN. Therefore I cannot
agree we "lost" the war. It was a conflict in which there were no clear
winners though no one will ever convnce me that our 58,000 KIAs died in vain
any more than our casualties in Irag.

>
>IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
>our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of
>fact,
>won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately,
>because
>of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.
>
>George Z.
>

We can most certainbly agree on that

Steve

John Mullen

June 16th 04, 04:21 PM

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
...

(snip)

>Two years later things went to hell in
> a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion
of
> the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US
> military? I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US
foreign
> policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had
> withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an
RVN
> still controlled by its own sovereign government.

Pretty much like the Sovs in Afghanistan, then?

John

Ed Rasimus

June 16th 04, 04:26 PM

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:04:18 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> wrote:

>Yep. It seems to boil down to a difference of opinion as to what constitutes
>"US combat troops". The sources I used referred to the remaining US ground
>components as advisors to the S. Vietnamese forces, not as forces involved in
>combat as units with unique assigned missions. If you don't want to accept that
>definition, and it looks like you don't, go argue with them. I merely reported
>what they said. Neither of us were there on the ground, so we're each entitled
>to our own opinions.

George, I WAS on the ground at Bien Hoa in April of '73 for a week as
Supervisor of Flying for our F-4 COMBAT units that were refueling and
rearming there. I was surrounded by a couple of hundred AF mainainers,
AF Security Police, Marine aviation company, US Army Brigade of
defenders of the base.

I was rocketed while there and our runway was closed and an A-37,
fully loaded with CBU and Mk-82s cooked off in one of the shelters. I
was most definitely a "US combat troop". I was most definitely in
"ground combat" and I was most definitely "in-country.

Don't tell me where I was. Just take responsibility for where you
were.

Ed Rasimus

June 16th 04, 04:32 PM

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:48:07 GMT, Guy Alcala
> wrote:

>Ed Rasimus wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
>> > wrote:
>
>> You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
>> your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
>> use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
>> doesn't imply a great victory.
>
>Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
>
>"The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of
>the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military
>casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These
>figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists
>to avoid demoralizing the population. "
>
>A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN
>and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed
>during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian
>deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming
>reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
>million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of
>civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of
>american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
>demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).

C'mon, Guy, that sort of statement is beneath you. I will assert
repeatedly, as will literally thousands of USAF participants that we
did not employ "counter-value" targeting. We studiously avoided towns,
population centers, dams/dikes, hospitals, cultural sites--hell, we
even avoided targeting their airfields and the ports for most of the
war.

Don't give me that "killing civilians is easy" bull****.
>
>> I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
>>
>> You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
>> want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
>> are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
>> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.
>
>Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain
>the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia,
>including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people?
>Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to tell them
>that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its faults, provides
>a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving the way it
>is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay that
>movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist inefficiency,
>corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier). Vietnam
>probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s,
>if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war hadn't been
>fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed like
>compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time.

Yes, Guy. I'm claiming that containment, the Truman Doctrine, the Cold
War, etc, etc. resulted in the eventual collapse of world communism.
Today, there are only two Marxist-Leninist communist countries
remaining--N. Korea and Cuba. One is about to collapse economically
and seeks to reunite with the South while the other is awaiting the
death of their great leader so that they can convert.

We wouldn't have been better off if we recognized Ho and Pol Pot and
the others.

John Mullen

June 16th 04, 04:45 PM

"Ed Rasimus" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:48:07 GMT, Guy Alcala
> > wrote:

(snip)

> We wouldn't have been better off if we recognized Ho and Pol Pot and
> the others.

Er, Ed, you *did* recognise Pol Pot.

Not only did US intervention in neighbouring Vietnam set up the situation
for him to seize power, and not only did the US drop 539,129 tons secretly
on his country between 1969 and 1973, giving him a steady supply of
recruits, but I believe the US channelled substantial military and food aid
to his awful regime after the Vietnam withdrawal.

Not the best example to choose!

John

SteveM8597

June 16th 04, 05:02 PM

This dialog has gotten so obtuse that I have lost lock but your statements
really grabbed me as one responsible for more than a few of that bom tonnage in
72-73. For one thing it was no secret and there was no attempt to keep it all
a secret in the 70s. At one point a BUFF inadvertantly dropped a load of bombs
on the village of Neak Long after the radar navigator screwed up that was all
over the press.

Relative to us supporting Pol Pot, I'd really like to see a reference on that.
After the VN ceasefire In Jan 73 IIRC, we concentrated on containing the Khmer
Rouge. One main mission was killing trucks and boats and the other was
protecting riverboat convoys up the Mekong the Phnom Penh that was under seige
by the Khmer Rouge.

There seem to be a lot of "facts" and speculation floating around here that are
simply not true. But given the tendency of this group not to give credibility
to witness of actual events, I guess that is to be expected. I probably just
imagined all those missions to Cambodia.

>Not only did US intervention in neighbouring Vietnam set up the situation
>for him to seize power, and not only did the US drop 539,129 tons secretly
>on his country between 1969 and 1973, giving him a steady supply of
>recruits, but I believe the US channelled substantial military and food aid
>to his awful regime after the Vietnam withdrawal.
>
>Not the best example to choose!
>
>John
>

Chris Mark

June 16th 04, 05:10 PM

>From: stevem859

> Like many other
>wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
>because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
>own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in
>practically
>any area you care to mention. you haven't figured out by now that was a
>conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that happened by
>chance.

Interesting to read the comments in the thread about how communism in general
and the USSR in particular were going to collapse of their own weight anyway,
so the US didn't need to bother.

It's worth recalling though, that during that era, only the right wing loonies
believed communism was a failure; it was capitalism that was morally wrong and
doomed to fail. And the arms race was considered absolutely wrongheaded,
extremely dangerous, and entirely the fault of the US of A.
Remember, for example, Paul Warnke, President Carter's arm's negotiator with
the USSR, who said that Americans were naturally "chauvinistic," and in his
famous 1975 essay, "Apes on a Treadmill," in "Foreign Policy," called for
global downsizing of American power and an end to efforts to match Soviet
armaments (formalized in the original version of SALT I). His thesis was that
moderation breeds moderation and that voluntary actions by the US to limit arms
spending would produced similar voluntary reductions by the Soviets. It's
worth recalling that the American nuclear stockpile peaked in 1965 and steadily
declined thereafter, while the Soviet nuclear stockpile continued to climb,
surpassing America's in 1976 and peaking in 1986.
During his senate confirmation hearings, when grilled by Scoop Jackson, Warnke
stated he was against the B-1, against the Trident submarine and Trident II
missle, against the submarine launched cruise missle, against AWACs programs,
against MIRV, against developing the XM-1 tank and for reductions in
procurement of the M-60, for reductions of US tactical nukes in Europe from
7,000 to 1,000, for unilateral withdrawal of 30,000 US troops from NATO, and on
and on. He was still confirmed by the Senate 58-40.
Remember Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state, who avered it was "futile
[to] oppose Soviet or Cuban involvement in Africa," and made it clear that
America should accept a reduced role in the world in the face of communism's
growing influence. "The fact is," he said, "that we can no more stop [the
advance of communism] than Canute could still the waters."
Recall Pres. Jimmy Carter's Notre Dame speech in 1977 in which he stated the US
was "now free of that inordinate fear of communism....we fought fire with fire,
never thinking that fire is better fought with water. This approach failed,
with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty...."
Even George Kennan advocated unilateral disarmament by the US and a return to
isolationism, stating that, "I can see very little merit in orgainizing
ourselves to defend from the Russians."
Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University, said in 1982, "The Soviet Union is not
now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true system
crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social
stability that suffice to endure the deepest difficulties, while John Kenneth
Galbraith intoned, "The Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the
Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."
It was capitalism and in particular the USA, that was corrupt, incompetent and
war-mongering.
Andrei Gromyko (remember him?) said "Socialism is the most dynamic and
influential force in the world. On three continents, from the Republic of Cuba
to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the new society of the peoples of
Socialist states thrives and is being successfully constructed. The
inexhaustible resources of these countries, imposing in their economic
achievements, the power of their offensive might is placed at the service of
peace and only peace."
This "peace" was implemented via the Breshnev Doctrine, which saw
Soviet-supported armed interventions everywhere from Angola to Afghanistan.
Remember how Alexander Solzhenitsyn was treated as a pariah after his Harvard
commencement address in 1978, when he spoke of "communism's well-planned world
strategy." He excoriated US failure of nerve in Vietnam. "Members of the US
antiwar movement became accomoplices in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in
the genocide and the suffering today imposed on 30 million people. Do these
convinced pacifists now hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand
their responsibility today? The American intelligentsia lost its nerve and as
a consequence the danger has come much closer to the United States."
The New York Times, reporting the speech, described Solzhenitsyn as a "zealot"
and James Reston called his speech "the wanderings of a mind split apart."
We came very, very close to losing the Cold War through sheer lack of nerve.
We were wimping out big time--with the exception of a handful of resistors,
chief among them Scoop Jackson and George Meany, two men largely forgotten
today, but truly Horatios at the gate.
Then came Ronald Reagan, in cogent provocateur Ann Coulter's phrase a "March
hare right-winger," and the rest, as they say, is history.

Chris Mark

Kevin Brooks

June 16th 04, 06:16 PM

"Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
. ..
> Ed Rasimus wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > > wrote:
>
> > You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> > your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> > use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> > doesn't imply a great victory.
>
> Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
>
> "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian
casualties of
> the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south.
Military
> casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war.
These
> figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese
Communists
> to avoid demoralizing the population. "
>
> A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
276,000 US/ARVN
> and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese
killed
> during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN
civilian
> deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So
assuming
> reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere
between 2 and 4
> million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the
deaths of
> civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
triumph of
> american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
> demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).

"Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the US
only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you want
to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war participation as
being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the
like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be
racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths per
*day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your
"data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high-- one-point-five My
Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures from
the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US" responsibility
just completely out of whack?

Brooks

<snip>

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 09:48 PM

"SteveM8597" > wrote in message
...

(Snip)

> Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
> theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.

I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its inception.
We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up with
how we spent ours.

> .....NVN was never able to fully bring SVN into its mold of government. As
was the strategy > for NVN, we made the cost of future incursions by the USSR
too high. I am not sure
> what the alternate history would have been had we not intervened and all any
of
> us can do is speculate. SVN lost their civil war in spite of our support or
> maybe lack of it, but we accomplished the larger objective. The USSR never
had
> much of a presence after the war and later abandoned VN. Therefore I cannot
> agree we "lost" the war. It was a conflict in which there were no clear
> winners though no one will ever convnce me that our 58,000 KIAs died in vain
> any more than our casualties in Irag.
>
> >
> >IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
> >our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of
> >fact,
> >won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately,
> >because
> >of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.
> >
> >George Z.
> >
>
> We can most certainbly agree on that
>
> Steve

George Z. Bush

June 16th 04, 09:55 PM

"Ed Rasimus" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:04:18 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > wrote:
>
> >Yep. It seems to boil down to a difference of opinion as to what constitutes
> >"US combat troops". The sources I used referred to the remaining US ground
> >components as advisors to the S. Vietnamese forces, not as forces involved in
> >combat as units with unique assigned missions. If you don't want to accept
that
> >definition, and it looks like you don't, go argue with them. I merely
reported
> >what they said. Neither of us were there on the ground, so we're each
entitled
> >to our own opinions.
>
> George, I WAS on the ground at Bien Hoa in April of '73 for a week as
> Supervisor of Flying for our F-4 COMBAT units that were refueling and
> rearming there. I was surrounded by a couple of hundred AF mainainers,
> AF Security Police, Marine aviation company, US Army Brigade of
> defenders of the base.
>
> I was rocketed while there and our runway was closed and an A-37,
> fully loaded with CBU and Mk-82s cooked off in one of the shelters. I
> was most definitely a "US combat troop". I was most definitely in
> "ground combat" and I was most definitely "in-country.

I swear, Ed, you go out of your way to twist the meaning of what I say. OK,
then, you were a grunt out there in the paddies looking for the VC every day as
well as night, or trying to find the entrances to their tunnels, or trying to
set up booby traps and ambushes for their troops to encounter, or doing all of
the other things I think of when I think of what Army and Marine grunts doing
their things. Have it your way. I'm tired of you trying to get me to define
what is is.

George Z.

Pete

June 16th 04, 10:48 PM

"George Z. Bush" > wrote
> "SteveM8597" > wrote in message
>
> (Snip)
>
> > Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The
Domino
> > theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.
>
> I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
> itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
inception.
> We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely
to
> force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
with
> how we spent ours.

Unchecked expansion and access to more natural resources might have had a
beneficial effect on their economy. Dragging out the (probably) inevitable
collapse for a few more years/decades.

I say *might*. We can't know what the outcome would have been had different
choices been made.

Pete

Dave Holford

June 16th 04, 11:16 PM

>
>
> Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
> vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
> would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
> elsewhere in SEA.
>
> George Z.

Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
some background on its creation.

Dave

phil hunt

June 16th 04, 11:49 PM

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 18:16:08 -0400, Dave Holford > wrote:
>> Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
>> vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
>> would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
>> elsewhere in SEA.
>
>Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
>seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
>that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
>some background on its creation.

How about: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory>

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)

Dave Holford

June 17th 04, 12:18 AM

phil hunt wrote:
>
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 18:16:08 -0400, Dave Holford
>
>> Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
> >> vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
> >> would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
> >> elsewhere in SEA.
> >
> >Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
> >seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
> >that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
> >some background on its creation.
>
> How about: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory>
>
> --
> "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
> people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
> (Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)

OK, this is what I found at wikipedia:

Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia being written collaboratively
by contributors from around the world. The site is a wiki, which means
that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit link that
appears at the top of each page.

Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary
association of individuals and groups who are developing a common
resource of human knowledge. Its structure allows any individual with an
Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to alter the content
found here. Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has
necessarily been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the
particular areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete,
accurate or reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia.

------------------------------------------

In other words 'a collection of opinions by individuals which may or may
not be accurate or reliable and may be freely edited by any other
individual who holds a differing opinion'. Not exactly what I had in
mind a a source of information.

Dave

SteveM8597

June 17th 04, 01:10 AM

>> Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
>> theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.
>
>I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
>itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
>inception.
>We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
>force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
>with
>how we spent ours.
>

Not sure I see the connecton quite as you do. Soviet expansionism was going
full speed in the 60s with all the stops pulled out. I don't believe the
spending wars in the rush to build more and more weapons really got on-speed
until the late 70s. So the Domino Theory had validity in the 60s.

George Z. Bush

June 17th 04, 02:29 AM

"SteveM8597" > wrote in message
...
> >> Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
> >> theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.
> >
> >I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
> >itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
> >inception.
> >We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
> >force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
> >with
> >how we spent ours.
> >
>
> Not sure I see the connecton quite as you do. Soviet expansionism was going
> full speed in the 60s with all the stops pulled out. I don't believe the
> spending wars in the rush to build more and more weapons really got on-speed
> until the late 70s. So the Domino Theory had validity in the 60s.

I was on active duty during WWII and the Korean War and into the end of the 60s,
and am trying to rely on my failing memory. Although I don't recall that we
were anything but fearful and defensive about Soviet expansionism during the
60s.....in that context, you might very well be right about the Domino Theory's
validity in those days. However, we also did not consider that the Soviet
Union, an artificial conglomeration of ethnic groups and areas, was largely
eviscerated during WWII and probably possessed far less resources in the decade
following the end of the war than we gave them credit for. After applying what
they did have to rebuilding their war ravaged nation and its armed forces, I
doubt that they had very much left that might have been available for fomenting
expansionist adventures around the world. In that sense, it's just possible
that the Domino Theory had a fatal leak in it. I don't guess we'll ever know.

George Z.

Chris Mark

June 17th 04, 06:06 PM

>From: "George Z. Bush"

>I was on active duty during WWII and the Korean War and into the end of the
>60s,
>and am trying to rely on my failing memory. Although I don't recall that we
>were anything but fearful and defensive about Soviet expansionism during the
>60s.....in that context, you might very well be right about the Domino
>Theory's
>validity in those days. However, we also did not consider that the Soviet
>Union, an artificial conglomeration of ethnic groups and areas, was largely
>eviscerated during WWII and probably possessed far less resources in the
>decade
>following the end of the war than we gave them credit for. After applying
>what
>they did have to rebuilding their war ravaged nation and its armed forces, I
>doubt that they had very much left that might have been available for
>fomenting
>expansionist adventures around the world. In that sense, it's just possible
>that the Domino Theory had a fatal leak in it. I don't guess we'll ever
>know.

As General of the Army Douglas MacArthur said in 1957, "Our government has kept
us in a perpetual state of fear--kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic
fervor--with the cry of grave national emergency.... Always there has been some
terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by
furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters
seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
In those days it was the Democrats who were among the fiercest anti-communist
warriors and MacArthur was only echoing the broad views of Eisenhower, who
shortly would be warning the nation of the dangers of the "military-industrial
complex," while the 1960 Democratic presidential candidate would attack the
Republicans as being soft on defense, claiming their laxness in the face of the
Communist threat had lead to a "missle gap."
Once in power again and having suffered repeated blows by reality, the
Democrats began to sound like Republicans of yore, with, for example, Ivan
Selin, Head of Strategic Forces Division in the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration telling a visitor in 1966,
"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that
don't work to meet threats that don't exist."

Chris Mark

Chris Mark

June 17th 04, 06:48 PM

It's worth recalling how very little we knew about Soviet intentions and
capabilities, even in the 1980s, after a decade or so of Nixon-Kissinger
detente and make-nice Carterism.
An example illustrating this is the following exchange from March, 1982, during
a Congressional hearing before the House Armed Services Committee between
Samuel S. Stratton (D-NY) and Army Maj. Gen. James P. Maloney, regarding the
Soviet T-80 tank:

Stratton: Is this tank a real tank or is this a notional tank?
Maloney: The T-80, sir?
Stratton: I thought that was what you were telling us about.
Maloney: The T-80 at this time is more than notional. We believe it is
beginning to come off their production lines.
Stratton: But you haven't seen it and you don't have a picture of it?
Maloney: That is correct, sir.
Stratton: You don't know how it is configured?
Maloney: We have indications generally of how it is configured, but we don't
have any detail on it.
Stratton: It is kind of hard to figure on that basis.
Maloney: May I explain how we estimate what the tank is capable of doing? We
get the best tank experts in four of the NATO countries, including our own, to
independently come up with their estimate of what the T-80 is going to be like
based on extrapolations of what we have seen the Soviets do in the past. We
then merge these four studies to come up with our composite estimate of what
the T-80 will be. So, you know, it is not just based on whimsey."
Stratton: In other words, a scientific wild-ass guess. That's what you are
telling this committee?
Maloney: You could put it that way, yes, sir.

And so it was, along with just about everything else we knew about the USSR
when it came not only to capabilities but intentions.
Stratton who was quite skeptical and harsh with Maloney and other witnesses,
was not, as some might want to believe, a pacifist leftie. During WW2 he was a
Naval Combat Intelligence officer on Gen. MacArthur's staff in the SWPA and was
awarded two Bronze Stars with Combat V. He was chief interrogator of Japanese
Gen. Tomoyuki Yama****a and gathered the information that led to his hanging as
a war criminal. During the Korean War he was recalled to duty and served as an
instructor at the Naval Intelligence School in Washington, D.C. He was
certainly a patriot, but he had a very effective BS detector.
The discussion of the T-80 tank was part of a debate on whether the M-1 Abrams
tank should be deployed by the US, and if so, in what numbers. Many believed
the Soviet tank threat was overstated, if not largely bogus, and therefore
there was no need for the Abrams.
The Soviet tank threat may have been overstated. But if it was, and we
acknowleded it and did not deploy the Abrams, sticking with upgraded versions
of the M-60, would we be better off today, would we have been as successful as
we were in various stand-offs and fights over the last two decades?

Chris Mark

SteveM8597

June 17th 04, 07:41 PM

>>From: "George Z. Bush"
>
>>I was on active duty during WWII and the Korean War and into the end of the
>>60s,
>>and am trying to rely on my failing memory. Although I don't recall that we
>>were anything but fearful and defensive about Soviet expansionism during the
>>60s.....in that context, you might very well be right about the Domino
>>Theory's
>>validity in those days. However, we also did not consider that the Soviet
>>Union, an artificial conglomeration of ethnic groups and areas, was largely
>>eviscerated during WWII and probably possessed far less resources in the
>>decade
>>following the end of the war than we gave them credit for. After applying
>>what
>>they did have to rebuilding their war ravaged nation and its armed forces, I
>>doubt that they had very much left that might have been available for
>>fomenting
>>expansionist adventures around the world. In that sense, it's just possible
>>that the Domino Theory had a fatal leak in it. I don't guess we'll ever
>>know.
>
>As General of the Army Douglas MacArthur said in 1957, "Our government has
>kept
>us in a perpetual state of fear--kept us in a continuous stampede of
>patriotic
>fervor--with the cry of grave national emergency.... Always there has been
>some
>terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by
>furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters
>seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
>In those days it was the Democrats who were among the fiercest anti-communist
>warriors and MacArthur was only echoing the broad views of Eisenhower, who
>shortly would be warning the nation of the dangers of the
>"military-industrial
>complex," while the 1960 Democratic presidential candidate would attack the
>Republicans as being soft on defense, claiming their laxness in the face of
>the
>Communist threat had lead to a "missle gap."
>Once in power again and having suffered repeated blows by reality, the
>Democrats began to sound like Republicans of yore, with, for example, Ivan
>Selin, Head of Strategic Forces Division in the Office of the Assistant
>Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration telling a visitor in 1966,
>"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that
>don't work to meet threats that don't exist."
>
>
>Chris Mark
>

There is truth in that logic but how do you account for threats that were
stopped? What if our internal security was robust enough to prevent 9/11 from
even being initiated? Would you say that that level of security measures were
unnecessary? You wouldn't know because in that scenario the attack never
happened. How do you determine the real threat to defend against with 100%
accuracy every time?

Unfortunately national security effectiveness is as easy to quantify as lives
saved or cost avoided because of threat warnings. Much easier to count lives
lost and dollars spent because of possibly flawed strategy or doctrine then
ctiticize in hindsight

Steve.

SteveM8597

June 17th 04, 07:46 PM

>But if it was, and we
>acknowleded it and did not deploy the Abrams, sticking with upgraded versions
>of the M-60, would we be better off today, would we have been as successful
>as
>we were in various stand-offs and fights over the last two decades?
>
>
>Chris Mark
>

Not unlike the B-2. It was hailed as one of the biggest waste of taxpayer
dollars evr, at $44.4B for a 20 aircraft program. That is until its
capabilities were apparent. Now we want more. Granted it was intended
strictly as a nuclear platform but, like the BUFF is has proved very useful in
other roles.

George Z. Bush

June 17th 04, 09:46 PM

Chris Mark wrote:
>> From: "George Z. Bush"

(Snip)

> Once in power again and having suffered repeated blows by reality, the
> Democrats began to sound like Republicans of yore, with, for example, Ivan
> Selin, Head of Strategic Forces Division in the Office of the Assistant
> Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration telling a visitor in 1966,
> "Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that
> don't work to meet threats that don't exist."

Damn if it doesn't sound like we're living in the 60s all over again! That's a
wonderful quote that could apply to the reasons we went to war with Iraq last
year with only a minor adjustment or two. (^-^)))

George Z.

Howard Berkowitz

June 18th 04, 04:30 AM

In article >, Dave Holford
> wrote:

> >
> >
> > Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure
> > the ongoing
> > vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet
> > Nam which
> > would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of
> > government
> > elsewhere in SEA.
> >
> > George Z.
>
>
> Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
> seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
> that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
> some background on its creation.
>

Probably the most succinct statement is a memo from Assistant Secretary
of Defense John McNaughton to SecDef McNamara. Key excerpt:

>
> 3/24/65 (first draft)
>
> ANNEX-PLAN OF ACTION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM
>
> 1. US aims:
>
>
> 70% --To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a
> guarantor).
> 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
> 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
>
> ALSO--To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
> NOT--To "help a friend," although it would be hard to stay in if asked
> out.
>

For the full memo and context (from the Pentagon Papers), see
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/doc253.htm

Dave Holford

June 18th 04, 03:41 PM

Howard Berkowitz wrote:
>
> In article >, Dave Holford
> > wrote:
>
> > >
> > >
> > > Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure
> > > the ongoing
> > > vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet
> > > Nam which
> > > would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of
> > > government
> > > elsewhere in SEA.
> > >
> > > George Z.
> >
> >
> > Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
> > seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
> > that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
> > some background on its creation.
> >
>
> Probably the most succinct statement is a memo from Assistant Secretary
> of Defense John McNaughton to SecDef McNamara. Key excerpt:
>
> >
> > 3/24/65 (first draft)
> >
> > ANNEX-PLAN OF ACTION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM
> >
> > 1. US aims:
> >
> >
> > 70% --To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a
> > guarantor).
> > 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
> > 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
> >
> > ALSO--To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
> > NOT--To "help a friend," although it would be hard to stay in if asked
> > out.
> >
>
> For the full memo and context (from the Pentagon Papers), see
> http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/doc253.htm

Wow, that has to be the longest "succinct" statement in the history of
the English language.

Do you have the actual memo, rather than the (first draft)?

Dave

Guy Alcala

June 20th 04, 08:14 AM

Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply.

Kevin Brooks wrote:

> "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> . ..
>
> >
> > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> 276,000 US/ARVN
> > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese
> killed
> > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN
> civilian
> > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US.
>
> Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage
> events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at Hue
> during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that supports
> your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian deaths?

In the immediate aftermath of the battle for Hue, U.S./South Vietnamese forces
reported digging up 2,800 bodies that appeared to have been executed, hands tied
behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads, or in some
cases just buried alive. Douglas Pike, at that time an intell officer in SVN,
wrote a report (1970) about the executions because their scope and scale was so
unlike anything the VC had practiced prior to Tet (or since), and arrived at a
figure possibly as high as 5,700. However, those figures have been called into
question, because apparently they were supplied to him by a South Vietnamese
intell unit, the 10th Political Warfare Battalion, whose whole charter was to
discredit the NLF, and Pike apparently had noi way of checking the totals
himself. Then again, its possuible that at least some of the executions were
carried out by the South Vietnamese; a U.S. intell officer told a U.S. reporter
(who had been at Hue during the battles and who returned twice more to do
interviews) that South Vietnamese Intell units had sent in some hit squads
themselves to kill collaborators while the battle was still continuing. In any
case, let's assume a range of 2,800 - 5,700 were executed by the VC in Hue - no
one is ever likely to know the true number.

> Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it, either...

Oh please, Kevin - you really don't think that I'd base claims on a movie, do
you, whether "Platoon" or for that matter, "The Green Berets"?

> And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous "reeducation
> camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient to
> slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look
> nioce and tidy for folks later)?

Certainly possible that some of them did, although if they just wanted to kill
people wholesale why bother to ship them to a 're-education' camp, when they can
just take them into the jungle, dig a trench and mow them down? Worked for the
Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD.

> So assuming
> > reasonably accurate numbers,
>
> That would be quite an assumption in this case.

Sure, but we don't have any better ones. Ed is the one claiming the U.S. killed
between 1 and 3 million _North_ Vietnamese.

> the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
> > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants.
>
> Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really swell
> guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians?

Of course not - they were considerably more brutal and ruthless than the GVN
governments, who weren't exactly known having much concern for their own
citizens themselves. After all, it was the GVN who designated Free-Fire zones
for the U.S. military.

> Just how do you think we managed
> to kill those *millions* of noncombatants?

Simple firepower. See below.

> I note that the number you are
> touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the German
> total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained during
> WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin,
> etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught in
> the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of your
> figures.

I'm glad you brought up Germany. Kevin, I can't give you the source because I
saw it many years ago, but it was a credible one. I don't remember whether it
referred to bombs alone, bombs and artillery shells, all ammunition, and
included the casing weights or just the HE equivalent, but the total (of
whatever metric) used by ALL the combatants in World War 2 was ca. 3 megatons.
By comparison, the U.S., over the 1964 -1973 period dropped/fired 8 Megatons
(same metric) on SE Asia. SVN received either the first or second percentage of
this tonnage, with Laos holding the other place. The DRVN was in either third
or fourth place for tonnage (can't remember if they came in before or after
Cambodia).

The vast majority of this firepower was quite inaccurate; it's the nature of war
that civilians get killed just by being in the way, even when they're not
deliberately being targeted. We employed the vast majority of the firepower in
the south, so clearly we would have killed the vast majority of the civilians.
The VC and NVA certainly killed their share, but they just didn't have the
logistics to kill relatively indiscriminately in large numbers, as the U.S. and
to a lesser extent our allies could, even if they'd wanted to (and for the VC,
that would be counter-productive). Yeah, they fired a few rockets into the
cities on occasion, and civilians certainly died during the invasions in
1968/72/75, but the sheer firepower was lacking to kill large numbers of
civilians indiscriminately. The VC tended to kill civilians deliberately and
discriminately, targeting government representatives, uncooperative village
leaders etc. for assassination/execution. They didn't do it by bombing a
village.

> Were you claiming the deaths of
> > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
> triumph of
> > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
> > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).
>
> I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to lable
> the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a "victory"
> for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more
> accurate than not.

Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one they
were prepared to pay, they definitely won. Unless you believe that Germany
defeated the Soviet Union in WW2, or Japan defeated China ditto? And as I
pointed out to Ed, he has presented no evidence that the subsequent tilt towards
a more material society by Vietnam was a result of the war. China has been
progressing in that direction at an even faster pace than Vietnam, and I haven't
seen anyone claiming that was because of their losses in the Korean (or Vietnam;
the PRC employed a lot of workers on the NE and NW railroads) wars.

> > Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's numbers
> war. If you
> > wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side won
> and lost,
> > then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because they
> killed far
> > more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN
> achieved their
> > goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won.
> The US didn't
> > achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for
> any benefit
> > we might get, i.e. we lost.
>
> Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to
> stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the
> RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed
> that responsibility off to them,

With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in trouble,
yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise.

> the VC had been eliminated as a major
> factor (and had been since the days following Tet 68, vastly different from
> the situation in the mid 60's),

Yup.

> and the NVA had been for all intents and
> purposes pushed out of RVN territory.

Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the accords,
_because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN, which he
knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion.

> Two years later things went to hell in
> a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion of
> the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US
> military?

Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was defeated;
that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't
defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by that
PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen the
anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S. military was
equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they didn't have
to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price higher
than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many weaker
powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war.

And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the war.

> I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign
> policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had
> withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an RVN
> still controlled by its own sovereign government.

As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against military,
it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours.
Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not achieve
its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a defeat
for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book.

Guy

Guy Alcala

June 20th 04, 08:47 AM

Ed Rasimus wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:48:07 GMT, Guy Alcala
> > wrote:
>
> >Ed Rasimus wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> >> > wrote:
> >
> >> You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> >> your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> >> use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> >> doesn't imply a great victory.
> >
> >Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
> >
> >"The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of
> >the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military
> >casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These
> >figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists
> >to avoid demoralizing the population. "
> >
> >A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN
> >and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed
> >during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian
> >deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming
> >reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
> >million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of
> >civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of
> >american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
> >demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).
>
> C'mon, Guy, that sort of statement is beneath you.

If I had made the statement you seem to be imputing to me, that would be true.

> I will assert
> repeatedly, as will literally thousands of USAF participants that we
> did not employ "counter-value" targeting. We studiously avoided towns,
> population centers, dams/dikes, hospitals, cultural sites--hell, we
> even avoided targeting their airfields and the ports for most of the
> war.

Sure, to the extent of our ability to do so, but they still managed to be hit by
accident. Employing far more accurate weaponry than was available then, the U.S. and
Israelis still manage to kill high percentages of civilians as collateral damage without
any intent to do so. And we certainly bombed rail-lines, bridges, etc. that were being
repaired by civilian workers, factories (steel mills, power plants, bicycle shops,
textiles, etc.) that were being operated by civilians, bridges and roads that were being
transited by civilians, etc., not to mention all the ordnance that was jettisoned or
dropped by accident over a long period of time, a/c that crashed in populated areas, and
so on.

Ignoring the ordnance you were trying to drop on targets and which undoubtedly killed
civilians during the course of that, can you say that you know for a fact that a drop tank
(or an MER, loaded or otherwise) that you jettisoned didn't kill civilians on the ground?
Of course not. Can you even state with assurance where they might have landed, within say
10 sq. km? Nope. The likelihood of any one such incident killing someone may be small,
but multiply hundreds of thousands of such incidents over a 4.5 year period for North
Vietnam, and the total dead/injured will add up to a substantial number.

And then there's the old favorite cause of civilian deaths in wartime, even when they're
never in the path of ordnance; lack of shelter, poor nutrition and lack of clean water
followed by disease, and lack of medical attention. These causes tend to kill millions of
civilians in wars; just look at what's been going on in the various civil wars in Africa
for the last 20 years or so.

Civilians don't have to be targets to die in war in large numbers. As I said, killing (or
if you prefer, being the indirect or direct cause of deaths) of large numbers of civilians
is easy in wartime.

> Don't give me that "killing civilians is easy" bull****.

See above. They tend to be far softer (and more numerous) targets than military forces.

> >> I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost.
> >>
> >> You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might
> >> want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they
> >> are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they
> >> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country.
> >
> >Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain
> >the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia,
> >including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people?
> >Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to tell them
> >that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its faults, provides
> >a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving the way it
> >is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay that
> >movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist inefficiency,
> >corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier). Vietnam
> >probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s,
> >if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war hadn't been
> >fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed like
> >compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time.
>
> Yes, Guy. I'm claiming that containment, the Truman Doctrine, the Cold
> War, etc, etc. resulted in the eventual collapse of world communism.

No, you claimed that fighting the Vietnam War caused Vietnam to move towards embracing
capitalism. I agree that the containment policy worked, but nowhere is there any evidence
that fighting a hot war was necessary to cause the change you ascribe to Vietnam since
1975. Unless, as I asked Kevin, you believe that People's Army losses in the Korean war
was the cause of the PRC's move towards a more materialist society?

> Today, there are only two Marxist-Leninist communist countries
> remaining--N. Korea and Cuba. One is about to collapse economically
> and seeks to reunite with the South while the other is awaiting the
> death of their great leader so that they can convert.

> We wouldn't have been better off if we recognized Ho and Pol Pot and
> the others.

As opposed to recognizing Stalin, Mao, Tito, and Ceaucescu (not to mention Saddam
Hussein), just to name a few? Are you saying Vietnam presented a greater threat to the
U.S. than Mao's PRC did?! And who says Cambodia would have wound up with a nut job like
Pol Pot if they hadn't already put up with 15 yars of so of instability caused by the war?

Guy

Guy Alcala

June 20th 04, 08:53 AM

MLenoch wrote:

> >From: Guy Alcala
>
> wrote:> Were you claiming the deaths of
> >civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
> >triumph of
> >american arms, Ed?
>
> I do not see where this was claimed. Do you have a specific line that asserts
> this?

Ed is claiming that the U.S. killed between one and three million North
Vietnamese. Since the DRVN admits losses of 1.1 million dead PAVN/VC combined,
then any number North Vietnamese dead over 1 million or so has to be civilians
(North or South), unless Ed has very different figures for NVN casualties from the
ones I've seen. If he does, I'd love to see his source; I provided the one I was
using in my previous post.

> >The US didn't
> >achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any
> >benefit
> >we might get, i.e. we lost.
> >
>
> Not an unreasonable conclusion. OK.
>
> >>You might even ask if they
> >> are truly the great communist society >>that Marx envisioned, or if they
> >> don't look a bit more like Adam Smith >>country.
> >Are you claiming that the war is what >made that happen?
> > If so, how do you explain
> >the same thing happening in all the >former communist states in Europe and
> >Asia,
> >including all the ones where we didn't kill >several million of their people?
>
> The European former communist states are not at all the "same thing" as Vietnam
> today. I do not think this is a good conclusion. The economic status of these
> European states is not solely or mostly based on tourism.

Neither is Vietnam's, but I was thinking more of the PRC.

Guy

Guy Alcala

June 20th 04, 09:17 AM

Kevin Brooks wrote:

> "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> . ..
> > Ed Rasimus wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > > > wrote:
> >
> > > You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> > > your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> > > use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> > > doesn't imply a great victory.
> >
> > Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
> >
> > "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian
> casualties of
> > the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south.
> Military
> > casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war.
> These
> > figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese
> Communists
> > to avoid demoralizing the population. "
> >
> > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> 276,000 US/ARVN
> > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese
> killed
> > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN
> civilian
> > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So
> assuming
> > reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere
> between 2 and 4
> > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the
> deaths of
> > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great
> triumph of
> > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly
> > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter).
>
> "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the US
> only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you want
> to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war participation as
> being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the
> like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be
> racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths per
> *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your
> "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high-- one-point-five My
> Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures from
> the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US" responsibility
> just completely out of whack?

see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total of days
is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) - 1975.
However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia, dating from
sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave to
you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of
firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage. Now
consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until
largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of ammo but
also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were areas
nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living in the
area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other allies)
were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they chose,
anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis? Damned
right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous
independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese
civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically classified as
VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if the
GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare.

Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not, but
having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC to
kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them would
be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't rocket
science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the majority of
the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly. If you disagree, I'll be
happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the majority
of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems.

Guy

Howard Berkowitz

June 20th 04, 11:06 PM

In article >, Dave Holford
> wrote:

> >
> > Probably the most succinct statement is a memo from Assistant Secretary
> > of Defense John McNaughton to SecDef McNamara. Key excerpt:
> >
> > >
> > > 3/24/65 (first draft)
> > >
> > > ANNEX-PLAN OF ACTION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM
> > >
> > > 1. US aims:
> > >
> > >
> > > 70% --To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a
> > > guarantor).
> > > 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
> > > 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of
> > > life.
> > >
> > > ALSO--To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods
> > > used.
> > > NOT--To "help a friend," although it would be hard to stay in if
> > > asked
> > > out.
> > >
> >
> > For the full memo and context (from the Pentagon Papers), see
> > http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/doc253.htm
>
>
> Wow, that has to be the longest "succinct" statement in the history of
> the English language.
>
> Do you have the actual memo, rather than the (first draft)?
>
> Dave

I suspect that this stayed at the draft level, even though it was a
basic policy document. That's not uncommon in government -- people tend
to stamp "draft" on all manner of things.

You'd have to search through the Pentagon Papers (see link) to see if
there was a sequel. MacNamara has described this memo as one of the key
policy statements. McNaughton was killed in an airline crash relatively
early in his tenure, so he may not have been around to finalize it.

Kevin Brooks

June 21st 04, 04:21 AM

"Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
. ..
> Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply.
>
> Kevin Brooks wrote:
>
> > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > . ..
> >
> > >
> > > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> > 276,000 US/ARVN
> > > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North
Vietnamese
> > killed
> > > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of
SVN
> > civilian
> > > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US.
> >
> > Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage
> > events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at
Hue
> > during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that
supports
> > your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian
deaths?
>
> In the immediate aftermath of the battle for Hue, U.S./South Vietnamese
forces
> reported digging up 2,800 bodies that appeared to have been executed,
hands tied
> behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads, or in
some
> cases just buried alive. Douglas Pike, at that time an intell officer in
SVN,
> wrote a report (1970) about the executions because their scope and scale
was so
> unlike anything the VC had practiced prior to Tet (or since), and arrived
at a
> figure possibly as high as 5,700. However, those figures have been called
into
> question, because apparently they were supplied to him by a South
Vietnamese
> intell unit, the 10th Political Warfare Battalion, whose whole charter was
to
> discredit the NLF, and Pike apparently had noi way of checking the totals
> himself. Then again, its possuible that at least some of the executions
were
> carried out by the South Vietnamese; a U.S. intell officer told a U.S.
reporter
> (who had been at Hue during the battles and who returned twice more to do
> interviews) that South Vietnamese Intell units had sent in some hit squads
> themselves to kill collaborators while the battle was still continuing.
In any
> case, let's assume a range of 2,800 - 5,700 were executed by the VC in
Hue - no
> one is ever likely to know the true number.

So you are talking a range of between nine and nineteen times the My Lai
debacle--but you are confident that the US was somehow responsible for most
of the civilian casualties? And while Pike may have been commenting on
single-event scale, don't forget that the VC and NVA had (and continued to
after Tet) a pretty good reputation for using murder as a tool for "winning
hearts and minds"--Hue would not account for the sum total of civilian
casualties attributed to them.

>
> > Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it,
either...
>
> Oh please, Kevin - you really don't think that I'd base claims on a movie,
do
> you, whether "Platoon" or for that matter, "The Green Berets"?

I should have put a ":-)" after that...but it does seem as if you have
bought into Mr. Stone's philosophy with that "especially US" bit...

>
> > And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous
"reeducation
> > camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient
to
> > slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look
> > nioce and tidy for folks later)?
>
> Certainly possible that some of them did, although if they just wanted to
kill
> people wholesale why bother to ship them to a 're-education' camp, when
they can
> just take them into the jungle, dig a trench and mow them down? Worked
for the
> Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD.

You must have forgotten that the NKVD also had this
not-so-good-for-your-health concept labled as the "Gulag"?

>
> > So assuming
> > > reasonably accurate numbers,
> >
> > That would be quite an assumption in this case.
>
> Sure, but we don't have any better ones. Ed is the one claiming the U.S.
killed
> between 1 and 3 million _North_ Vietnamese.
>
> > the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
> > > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants.
> >
> > Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really
swell
> > guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians?
>
> Of course not - they were considerably more brutal and ruthless than the
GVN
> governments, who weren't exactly known having much concern for their own
> citizens themselves. After all, it was the GVN who designated Free-Fire
zones
> for the U.S. military.

And it was the DRVN that sent so many "civilians" trekking down the HCM
Trail with their bicycle-pack load of ammo...do you count those as civilian
kills in the US tally?

>
> > Just how do you think we managed
> > to kill those *millions* of noncombatants?
>
> Simple firepower. See below.
>
> > I note that the number you are
> > touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the
German
> > total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained
during
> > WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin,
> > etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught
in
> > the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of
your
> > figures.
>
> I'm glad you brought up Germany. Kevin, I can't give you the source
because I
> saw it many years ago, but it was a credible one. I don't remember
whether it
> referred to bombs alone, bombs and artillery shells, all ammunition, and
> included the casing weights or just the HE equivalent, but the total (of
> whatever metric) used by ALL the combatants in World War 2 was ca. 3
megatons.
> By comparison, the U.S., over the 1964 -1973 period dropped/fired 8
Megatons
> (same metric) on SE Asia. SVN received either the first or second
percentage of
> this tonnage, with Laos holding the other place. The DRVN was in either
third
> or fourth place for tonnage (can't remember if they came in before or
after
> Cambodia).
>
> The vast majority of this firepower was quite inaccurate; it's the nature
of war
> that civilians get killed just by being in the way, even when they're not
> deliberately being targeted. We employed the vast majority of the
firepower in
> the south, so clearly we would have killed the vast majority of the
civilians.
> The VC and NVA certainly killed their share, but they just didn't have the
> logistics to kill relatively indiscriminately in large numbers, as the
U.S. and
> to a lesser extent our allies could, even if they'd wanted to (and for the
VC,
> that would be counter-productive). Yeah, they fired a few rockets into
the
> cities on occasion, and civilians certainly died during the invasions in
> 1968/72/75, but the sheer firepower was lacking to kill large numbers of
> civilians indiscriminately. The VC tended to kill civilians deliberately
and
> discriminately, targeting government representatives, uncooperative
village
> leaders etc. for assassination/execution. They didn't do it by bombing a
> village.

Yeah, and they never did any "indiscriminate" mining or boobytrapping,
either, I guess. Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a
prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every
*day*? I don't think so.

>
> > Were you claiming the deaths of
> > > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a
great
> > triumph of
> > > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was
repeatedly
> > > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that
matter).
> >
> > I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to
lable
> > the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a
"victory"
> > for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more
> > accurate than not.
>
> Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one
they
> were prepared to pay, they definitely won.

Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of the
last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most of
their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great that
thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it?
What exactly did they "win"?

Unless you believe that Germany
> defeated the Soviet Union in WW2, or Japan defeated China ditto? And as I
> pointed out to Ed, he has presented no evidence that the subsequent tilt
towards
> a more material society by Vietnam was a result of the war. China has
been
> progressing in that direction at an even faster pace than Vietnam, and I
haven't
> seen anyone claiming that was because of their losses in the Korean (or
Vietnam;
> the PRC employed a lot of workers on the NE and NW railroads) wars.
>
> > > Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's
numbers
> > war. If you
> > > wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side
won
> > and lost,
> > > then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because
they
> > killed far
> > > more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN
> > achieved their
> > > goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won.
> > The US didn't
> > > achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high
for
> > any benefit
> > > we might get, i.e. we lost.
> >
> > Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment
to
> > stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73,
the
> > RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had
handed
> > that responsibility off to them,
>
> With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in
trouble,
> yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise.

Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75
invasion. We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an
d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of
F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not
effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility
(though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for
not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I
said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big
decisive difference).

>
> > the VC had been eliminated as a major
> > factor (and had been since the days following Tet 68, vastly different
from
> > the situation in the mid 60's),
>
> Yup.
>
> > and the NVA had been for all intents and
> > purposes pushed out of RVN territory.
>
> Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the
accords,
> _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN,
which he
> knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion.

Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying
much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter
offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason
for their defeat).

>
> > Two years later things went to hell in
> > a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion
of
> > the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US
> > military?
>
> Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was
defeated;
> that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't
> defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by
that
> PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen
the
> anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S.
military was
> equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they
didn't have
> to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price
higher
> than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many
weaker
> powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war.

I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate
cost, and for what ultimate gain? In the end it was better that the Viets
themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead
reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us.

>
> And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the
war.

That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the
RVN a couple of years prior.

>
> > I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign
> > policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had
> > withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an
RVN
> > still controlled by its own sovereign government.
>
> As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against
military,
> it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours.

No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and
pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than
early 73 in-toto).

> Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not
achieve
> its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a
defeat
> for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book.

We must read different books. :-)

Brooks

>
> Guy
>

Kevin Brooks

June 21st 04, 04:47 AM

"Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
. ..
> Kevin Brooks wrote:
>
> > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > . ..
> > > Ed Rasimus wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > > > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> > > > your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> > > > use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> > > > doesn't imply a great victory.
> > >
> > > Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
> > >
> > > "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true
civilian
> > casualties of
> > > the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the
south.
> > Military
> > > casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of
war.
> > These
> > > figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North
Vietnamese
> > Communists
> > > to avoid demoralizing the population. "
> > >
> > > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> > 276,000 US/ARVN
> > > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North
Vietnamese
> > killed
> > > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of
SVN
> > civilian
> > > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So
> > assuming
> > > reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere
> > between 2 and 4
> > > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming
the
> > deaths of
> > > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a
great
> > triumph of
> > > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was
repeatedly
> > > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that
matter).
> >
> > "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the
US
> > only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you
want
> > to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war
participation as
> > being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the
> > like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be
> > racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths
per
> > *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your
> > "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high--
one-point-five My
> > Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures
from
> > the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US"
responsibility
> > just completely out of whack?
>
> see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total
of days
> is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) -
1975.
> However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia,
dating from
> sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave
to
> you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of
> firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage.

Nope. The major committment of US forces and their firepower did not begin
until 1965, and it most certainly did not extend "through 1973". Application
of US firepower ended in January 1973 with the ceasefire that accompanied
the final Paris peace talks. Go from mid-1965 (as we did not just snap our
fingers and *presto*, massive amounts of US firepower came instantly to bear
in 1965--the first major US offensive operation did not take place until
June of that year) to 1973 and you get some 2600 total possible days;
subtract out the various ceasefire periods, adjust for bombing halts, etc.,
and I don't think that roughly 2200 number is too bad.

Now
> consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until
> largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of
ammo but
> also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were
areas
> nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living
in the
> area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other
allies)
> were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they
chose,
> anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis?
Damned
> right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous
> independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese
> civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically
classified as
> VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if
the
> GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare.

You are still counting beaucoup civilians per day using your math. And what
did the DRVN numbers have to say in regards to COSVN/VC casualties--were
they just rolled into the "civilian" total (I did not note a distinction for
them, and they were pretty high in the 65-68 timeframe, peaking with Tet and
then declining)?

>
> Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not,
but
> having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC
to
> kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them
would
> be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't
rocket
> science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the
majority of
> the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly.

Oddly enough, it appears they did indeed resort to direct targeting of many
thousands of South Vietnamese civilians: "From 1957 to 1973 the National
Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted 58,499.
Death squads focused on leaders that included schoolteachers and minor
officials."

www.vietnam-war.info/facts/

That, of course, does not include those civilians merely caught up in the
application of firepower by the VC/NVA side of the house--just the ones
specifically targeted for elimination of abduction.

If you disagree, I'll be
> happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the
majority
> of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems.

My argument is with your blase acceptance of the Vietnamese claims, and your
further assignment of the majority of the blame to the US, ignoring the fact
that the DRVN was counting casualties from well before any significant, much
less major, US application of firepower, overlooking the absence of a
category for the actual VC losses, overlooking the fact that the DRVN
routinely sent civilians into harm's way (porters on the HCM Trail, repair
crews on same, etc.), and accepting that we were slaughtering folks at a
truly prodigious, sustained rate that defies any similar US experience
before or since.

Brooks

>
> Guy
>

Guy Alcala

June 27th 04, 08:43 AM

Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed for some
time.

Kevin Brooks wrote:

> "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> . ..
> > Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply.
> >
> > Kevin Brooks wrote:
> >
> > > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > > . ..
> > >
> > > >
> > > > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> > > 276,000 US/ARVN
> > > > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North
> Vietnamese
> > > killed
> > > > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of
> SVN
> > > civilian
> > > > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US.
> > >
> > > Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage
> > > events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at
> Hue
> > > during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that
> supports
> > > your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian
> deaths?
> >
> > In the immediate aftermath of the battle for Hue, U.S./South Vietnamese
> forces
> > reported digging up 2,800 bodies that appeared to have been executed,
> hands tied
> > behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads, or in
> some
> > cases just buried alive. Douglas Pike, at that time an intell officer in
> SVN,
> > wrote a report (1970) about the executions because their scope and scale
> was so
> > unlike anything the VC had practiced prior to Tet (or since), and arrived
> at a
> > figure possibly as high as 5,700. However, those figures have been called
> into
> > question, because apparently they were supplied to him by a South
> Vietnamese
> > intell unit, the 10th Political Warfare Battalion, whose whole charter was
> to
> > discredit the NLF, and Pike apparently had noi way of checking the totals
> > himself. Then again, its possuible that at least some of the executions
> were
> > carried out by the South Vietnamese; a U.S. intell officer told a U.S.
> reporter
> > (who had been at Hue during the battles and who returned twice more to do
> > interviews) that South Vietnamese Intell units had sent in some hit squads
> > themselves to kill collaborators while the battle was still continuing.
> In any
> > case, let's assume a range of 2,800 - 5,700 were executed by the VC in
> Hue - no
> > one is ever likely to know the true number.
>
> So you are talking a range of between nine and nineteen times the My Lai
> debacle--but you are confident that the US was somehow responsible for most
> of the civilian casualties? And while Pike may have been commenting on
> single-event scale, don't forget that the VC and NVA had (and continued to
> after Tet) a pretty good reputation for using murder as a tool for "winning
> hearts and minds"--Hue would not account for the sum total of civilian
> casualties attributed to them.

Never said it would. FWIW, "The Vietnam War: Day by Day" summary for 1965,
after giving the US and ARVN losses for the year, states "Increasing numbers of
South Vietnamese civilians are also being killed by air raids and other military
actions." The 1966 summary includes the statement "Another study reveals that
during one seven month period this year, 3,015 Rural Development personnel were
murdered or kidnapped by the Vietcong." The 1967 summary states "The Vietcong
reportedly killed 3,820 South Vietnamese civilians and kidnapped 5,318 during
the year." The page for 1968 is missing (library book); for 1969 the relevant
sentence is "at least 6,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed in 1969 by
terrorist actions alone." The 1970 summary states "At least 25,000 South
Vietnamese civilians are killed, and another 6,000 are reported by the Vietcong
as having been executed for serving in the Saigon government." The 1971 summary
doesn't include any numbers for SVN civilian casualties, just the usual US/ARVN
and NVA/VC. The 1972 summary only includes US casaulty totals. The note for 27
January 1974 states "Since the January 1973 truce, . . . 2,159 SVN civilians . .
.. have died in the fighting."

> > > Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it,
> either...
> >
> > Oh please, Kevin - you really don't think that I'd base claims on a movie,
> do
> > you, whether "Platoon" or for that matter, "The Green Berets"?
>
> I should have put a ":-)" after that...but it does seem as if you have
> bought into Mr. Stone's philosophy with that "especially US" bit...

As I've explained elsewhere, the 'especially US' referred to the preponderance
of US firepower and nothing else.

> > > And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous
> "reeducation
> > > camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient
> to
> > > slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look
> > > nioce and tidy for folks later)?
> >
> > Certainly possible that some of them did, although if they just wanted to
> kill
> > people wholesale why bother to ship them to a 're-education' camp, when
> they can
> > just take them into the jungle, dig a trench and mow them down? Worked
> for the
> > Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD.
>
> You must have forgotten that the NKVD also had this
> not-so-good-for-your-health concept labled as the "Gulag"?

Haven't forgotten it, but AFAIR (it's been a long time since I read the Gulag
Archipelago), political re-education wasn't an issue there. You were sentenced
there and worked off your time, living or dying as the case might be, but they
could care less about self-criticism sessions, plitical indoctrination and the
like; you were an enemy of the state, and that was that. The Vietnamese
re-education camps seem to have had a different philosophy.

> > > So assuming
> > > > reasonably accurate numbers,
> > >
> > > That would be quite an assumption in this case.
> >
> > Sure, but we don't have any better ones. Ed is the one claiming the U.S.
> killed
> > between 1 and 3 million _North_ Vietnamese.
> >
> > > the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4
> > > > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants.
> > >
> > > Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really
> swell
> > > guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians?
> >
> > Of course not - they were considerably more brutal and ruthless than the
> GVN
> > governments, who weren't exactly known having much concern for their own
> > citizens themselves. After all, it was the GVN who designated Free-Fire
> zones
> > for the U.S. military.
>
> And it was the DRVN that sent so many "civilians" trekking down the HCM
> Trail with their bicycle-pack load of ammo...do you count those as civilian
> kills in the US tally?

If they did, sure, although from what I recall it was PAVN soldiers and maybe
civilian truck drivers (can't remember if they were civil or military) who made
the journey down south. Otherwise it would be seem to be so many more useless
mouths to feed, to send large numbers of civilian porters down.

> > > Just how do you think we managed
> > > to kill those *millions* of noncombatants?
> >
> > Simple firepower. See below.
> >
> > > I note that the number you are
> > > touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the
> German
> > > total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained
> during
> > > WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin,
> > > etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught
> in
> > > the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of
> your
> > > figures.
> >
> > I'm glad you brought up Germany. Kevin, I can't give you the source
> because I
> > saw it many years ago, but it was a credible one. I don't remember
> whether it
> > referred to bombs alone, bombs and artillery shells, all ammunition, and
> > included the casing weights or just the HE equivalent, but the total (of
> > whatever metric) used by ALL the combatants in World War 2 was ca. 3
> megatons.
> > By comparison, the U.S., over the 1964 -1973 period dropped/fired 8
> Megatons
> > (same metric) on SE Asia. SVN received either the first or second
> percentage of
> > this tonnage, with Laos holding the other place. The DRVN was in either
> third
> > or fourth place for tonnage (can't remember if they came in before or
> after
> > Cambodia).
> >
> > The vast majority of this firepower was quite inaccurate; it's the nature
> of war
> > that civilians get killed just by being in the way, even when they're not
> > deliberately being targeted. We employed the vast majority of the
> firepower in
> > the south, so clearly we would have killed the vast majority of the
> civilians.
> > The VC and NVA certainly killed their share, but they just didn't have the
> > logistics to kill relatively indiscriminately in large numbers, as the
> U.S. and
> > to a lesser extent our allies could, even if they'd wanted to (and for the
> VC,
> > that would be counter-productive). Yeah, they fired a few rockets into
> the
> > cities on occasion, and civilians certainly died during the invasions in
> > 1968/72/75, but the sheer firepower was lacking to kill large numbers of
> > civilians indiscriminately. The VC tended to kill civilians deliberately
> and
> > discriminately, targeting government representatives, uncooperative
> village
> > leaders etc. for assassination/execution. They didn't do it by bombing a
> > village.
>
> Yeah, and they never did any "indiscriminate" mining or boobytrapping,
> either, I guess.

Of course they did. Here's a few examples, again from "The Vietnam War: Day by
Day":

"14 February 1966. Fifty-six South Vietnamese civilians re killed by three
separate mine blasts along a road near Tuy Hoa, 225 miles NE of Saigon."

"21 October 1966. A terrorist mine explodes in the marketplace in Traon, a town
in the Mekong delta . . . killing 11 persons and wounding 54."

"24 October 1966. A bus detonates a Vietcong mine on a road 18 miles north of
Hue', killing 15 Vietnamese civilians and injuring 19."

> Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a
> prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every
> *day*? I don't think so.

Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian deaths:

"9 August 1966. Two USAF jets mistakenly attack the villages of Truong Trung
and Truong Tay . . . 63 people are killed and nearly 100 wounded."

"27 September 1966. Two US Marine jets mistakenly bomb the village of Hom Be,
five miles from Quang Ngai, killing at least 35 civilians."

"28-29 January 1967. During an operation against the Vietcong in the Mekong
river delta, US helicopters accidentally kill 31 Vietnamese civilians and wound
38. The civilians, apparently mistaken for Vietcong, were attacked as they
crossed the bassac river in 200 sampans at 2345 in violation of a curfew."

"1 February 1967. US Marine artillery and planes accidentally hit a South
Vietnamese hamlet 12 miles southwest of Danang, killing eight civilians and
wounding 18."

"2 March 1967. The village of Languei, 15 miles south of the DMZ, is
accidentally hit by bombs dropped by two US F-4C Phantom jets, killing at least
83 civilians and wounding 176."

Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they happened to
be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of civilians,
north and south, were killed by US firepower.

"2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return fire against a group of Vietcong
in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed 40
South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36."

No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they
happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells on SVN
hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most of the
time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was going on
throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of admitted
civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or not)
recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly recorded
the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of
averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian
casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and public
wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967 CIA
study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties from
bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian.
[i]
> > > Were you claiming the deaths of
> > > > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a
> great
> > > triumph of
> > > > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was
> repeatedly
> > > > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that
> matter).
> > >
> > > I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to
> lable
> > > the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a
> "victory"
> > > for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more
> > > accurate than not.
> >
> > Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one
> they
> > were prepared to pay, they definitely won.
>
> Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of the
> last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most of
> their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great that
> thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it?
> What exactly did they "win"?

Pretty much exactly what the Soviet Union won in WW2, at a similar cost and with
similar results. Again, do you think that Germany defeated the Soviet Union in
WW2? Whether you or I think that the resulting country is a garden spot or a
dirty armpit is irrelevant; the people calling the shots succeeded in what they
were what they were trying to achieve. Granted, it's likely that it won't last
another generation, but there's no guaranty of an unchanging result for any
country/creed.

<snip>

>>The DRVN

> > > achieved their
> > > > goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won.
> > > The US didn't
> > > > achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high
> for
> > > any benefit
> > > > we might get, i.e. we lost.
> > >
> > > Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment
> to
> > > stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73,
> the
> > > RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had
> handed
> > > that responsibility off to them,
> >
> > With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in
> trouble,
> > yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise.
>
> Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75
> invasion.

Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance from
tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to recover.

> We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an
> d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of
> F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not
> effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility
> (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for
> not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I
> said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big
> decisive difference).

While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their own,
while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the money we
gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force goes,
we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even more
than in 1972, that's what they were facing. I disagree, though, about how
important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in stiffening SVN
resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975.
whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll never
know.

<snip>

> > > and the NVA had been for all intents and
> > > purposes pushed out of RVN territory.
> >
> > Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the
> accords,
> > _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN,
> which he
> > knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion.
>
> Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying
> much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter
> offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason
> for their defeat).

They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also in
MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000 troops in
SVN at the time of the accords.

> > > Two years later things went to hell in
> > > a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion
> of
> > > the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US
> > > military?
> >
> > Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was
> defeated;
> > that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't
> > defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by
> that
> > PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen
> the
> > anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S.
> military was
> > equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they
> didn't have
> > to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price
> higher
> > than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many
> weaker
> > powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war.
>
> I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate
> cost, and for what ultimate gain?

> In the end it was better that the Viets
> themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead
> reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us.

Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the game
wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that same
decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that ensued
in the following 30 years.

>
> >
> > And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the
> war.
>
> That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the
> RVN a couple of years prior.

No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They
repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN was
certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a few
battles of its own.

>
> > > I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign
> > > policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had
> > > withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an
> RVN
> > > still controlled by its own sovereign government.
> >
> > As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against
> military,
> > it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours.
>
> No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and
> pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than
> early 73 in-toto).

Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN
militarily.

> > Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not
> achieve
> > its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a
> defeat
> > for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book.
>
> We must read different books. :-)

I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war aims, and
the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win and a
US loss to me.

Guy

Guy Alcala

June 27th 04, 09:37 AM

Kevin Brooks wrote:

> "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> . ..
> > Kevin Brooks wrote:
> >
> > > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > > . ..
> > > > Ed Rasimus wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon
> > > > > your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only
> > > > > use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio
> > > > > doesn't imply a great victory.
> > > >
> > > > Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
> > > >
> > > > "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true
> civilian
> > > casualties of
> > > > the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the
> south.
> > > Military
> > > > casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of
> war.
> > > These
> > > > figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North
> Vietnamese
> > > Communists
> > > > to avoid demoralizing the population. "
> > > >
> > > > A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about
> > > 276,000 US/ARVN
> > > > and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North
> Vietnamese
> > > killed
> > > > during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of
> SVN
> > > civilian
> > > > deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So
> > > assuming
> > > > reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere
> > > between 2 and 4
> > > > million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming
> the
> > > deaths of
> > > > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a
> great
> > > triumph of
> > > > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was
> repeatedly
> > > > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that
> matter).
> > >
> > > "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the
> US
> > > only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you
> want
> > > to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war
> participation as
> > > being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the
> > > like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be
> > > racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths
> per
> > > *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your
> > > "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high--
> one-point-five My
> > > Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures
> from
> > > the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US"
> responsibility
> > > just completely out of whack?
> >
> > see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total
> of days
> > is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) -
> 1975.
> > However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia,
> dating from
> > sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave
> to
> > you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of
> > firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage.
>
> Nope. The major committment of US forces and their firepower did not begin
> until 1965, and it most certainly did not extend "through 1973". Application
> of US firepower ended in January 1973 with the ceasefire that accompanied
> the final Paris peace talks. Go from mid-1965 (as we did not just snap our
> fingers and *presto*, massive amounts of US firepower came instantly to bear
> in 1965--the first major US offensive operation did not take place until
> June of that year) to 1973 and you get some 2600 total possible days;
> subtract out the various ceasefire periods, adjust for bombing halts, etc.,
> and I don't think that roughly 2200 number is too bad.

I'd agree that mid-65 for large-scale commitment of US conventional ground
forces is correct, but as far as airpower goes, we were providing significant
amounts and ultimately the majority before 1965. Farm Gate was flying combat
missions in T-28s, B-26s and later A-1s from 1962 on, at a time when the SVNAF
was at a very early stage; since (officially) we weren't involved in combat,
only training or advising, SOP was to grab the first Vietnamese that walked by
the flightline, stick him in the back cockpit and tell him "Nguyen, you're now
in training" and then go bomb. The US had also introduced helo gunships (UH-1Bs
IIRR) by 1962 or 1963, at a time when the ARVN didn't have any, plus we were
providing the majority of the helo combat transport. Given the ARVN's hesitancy
in closing with the VC and actually engaging in infantry combat in the period
prior to the marines and 173rd's arrival, while we may not have made up the
majority of the _available_ firepower, I submit that we provided the majority of
the _effective_ firepower at some point in the 1962-1964 era (and not forgetting
the Tonkin Gulf retaliatory strikes, limited though they were). We were
certainly in combat during that time, although it was mainly air crews and
snakeaters. We were also _officially_ bombing Laos from 1964 on.

> Now
> > consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until
> > largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of
> ammo but
> > also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were
> areas
> > nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living
> in the
> > area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other
> allies)
> > were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they
> chose,
> > anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis?
> Damned
> > right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous
> > independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese
> > civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically
> classified as
> > VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if
> the
> > GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare.
>
> You are still counting beaucoup civilians per day using your math. And what
> did the DRVN numbers have to say in regards to COSVN/VC casualties--were
> they just rolled into the "civilian" total (I did not note a distinction for
> them, and they were pretty high in the 65-68 timeframe, peaking with Tet and
> then declining)?

No, they appear to be included in the PAVN/VC overall total of 1.1 million.

> > Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not,
> but
> > having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC
> to
> > kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them
> would
> > be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't
> rocket
> > science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the
> majority of
> > the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly.
>
> Oddly enough, it appears they did indeed resort to direct targeting of many
> thousands of South Vietnamese civilians: "From 1957 to 1973 the National
> Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted 58,499.
> Death squads focused on leaders that included schoolteachers and minor
> officials."
>
> www.vietnam-war.info/facts/

Sure, targetted killings of governemnt representatives, hostile village chiefs,
etc.

> That, of course, does not include those civilians merely caught up in the
> application of firepower by the VC/NVA side of the house--just the ones
> specifically targeted for elimination of abduction.

Yup. And I suspect we agree that the majority of civilians killed by firepower
died purely as a side effect of firepower. That being the case, do you disagree
that the US and its allies had the majority of the firepower assets, and also
often employed it profligately? If so, then simple logic would seem to lead you
to the same conclusion that I've reached.

> If you disagree, I'll be
> > happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the
> majority
> > of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems.
>
> My argument is with your blase acceptance of the Vietnamese claims,

Nothing blase' about it, I was using the figures that _Ed_ quoted, which agree
with the ones I've been able to find. I agree that at best these can only be
ballpark numbers, subject to numerous caveats.

> and your
> further assignment of the majority of the blame to the US,

For the reasons stated above, which AFAICT you also subscribe to.

> ignoring the fact
> that the DRVN was counting casualties from well before any significant, much
> less major, US application of firepower,

Sure, and they were far less in that period.

> overlooking the absence of a
> category for the actual VC losses,

Damned hard to come by, I'd think, both because a guerrilla army's records are
apt to be a bit spotty, and because of the typical "any dead Vietnamese killed
by our side is assumed VC and recorded as such" (unless we get called on it,
which is pretty unlikely). After all, those killed at My Lai were so reported
initially, with hardly a question, even though it was obvious to the troops who
heard about it that the lack of captured weapons combined with the large body
count indicated that they were civilians. Which isn't to say that they probably
weren't supporters of the VC.

> overlooking the fact that the DRVN
> routinely sent civilians into harm's way (porters on the HCM Trail, repair
> crews on same, etc.),

Sure, and they died because bombs don't discriminate. But we were the side with
the bombs, and the airplanes dropping them; the VC/PAVN didn't have them.

> and accepting that we were slaughtering folks at a
> truly prodigious, sustained rate that defies any similar US experience
> before or since.

Considering that we were employing bombing at a truly prodigious sustained rate
that defies any similar US experience before or since, not to mention the
effects of malnutrition (in addition to the usual wartime causes we were
spraying herbicide on crops to prevent them from feeding the VC, which couldn't
have helped the growers who were also depending on that food) increasing
susceptibility to disease (in addition to the usual malaria, dysentery, typhus
cholera etc., attendant on most wars, did I mention the bubonic plague outbreak
in SVN?), I find the numbers reasonably credible. I recognize that they are
likely only 'accurate' within a very wide range of uncertainty, but consider the
conclusion that the US must have caused the majority of the civilian casualties
in the war, certainly those due to firepower, as a reasonable one and indeed the
only logical one.

Guy

Kevin Brooks

June 28th 04, 04:46 AM

"Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
. ..
> Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed
for some
> time.
>
> Kevin Brooks wrote:
>
> > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > . ..
> > > Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply.
> > >
> > > Kevin Brooks wrote:
> > >
> > > > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > > > . ..

<snip>

> > Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a
> > prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every
> > *day*? I don't think so.
>
> Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian
deaths:
>
> "9 August 1966. Two USAF jets mistakenly attack the villages of Truong
Trung
> and Truong Tay . . . 63 people are killed and nearly 100 wounded."
>
> "27 September 1966. Two US Marine jets mistakenly bomb the village of Hom
Be,
> five miles from Quang Ngai, killing at least 35 civilians."
>
> "28-29 January 1967. During an operation against the Vietcong in the
Mekong
> river delta, US helicopters accidentally kill 31 Vietnamese civilians and
wound
> 38. The civilians, apparently mistaken for Vietcong, were attacked as
they
> crossed the bassac river in 200 sampans at 2345 in violation of a curfew."
>
> "1 February 1967. US Marine artillery and planes accidentally hit a South
> Vietnamese hamlet 12 miles southwest of Danang, killing eight civilians
and
> wounding 18."
>
> "2 March 1967. The village of Languei, 15 miles south of the DMZ, is
> accidentally hit by bombs dropped by two US F-4C Phantom jets, killing at
least
> 83 civilians and wounding 176."
>
> Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they
happened to
> be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of
civilians,
> north and south, were killed by US firepower.
>
> "2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return fire against a group of
Vietcong
> in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed
40
> South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36."

Unfortuantely, those examples fall FAR short of the numbers you'd need to
have to make your total worl; remember, you need around 1.5 My Lais per DAY,
*every* day. Now, are you finally willing to admit that it a pretty darned
unrealistic figure you cited and attributed to US responsibility?

>
> No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they
> happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells
on SVN
> hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most
of the
> time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was
going on
> throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of
admitted
> civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or
not)
> recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly
recorded
> the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of
> averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian
> casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and
public
> wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967
CIA
> study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties
from
> bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian.

Wow. 24K? How many more MILLIONS do you now need to come up with to make
your statement true?

>[i]
> > > > Were you claiming the deaths of
> > > > > civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a
> > great
> > > > triumph of
> > > > > american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was
> > repeatedly
> > > > > demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that
> > matter).
> > > >
> > > > I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to
> > lable
> > > > the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a
> > "victory"
> > > > for the North--and events since then point to his observation being
more
> > > > accurate than not.
> > >
> > > Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but
one
> > they
> > > were prepared to pay, they definitely won.
> >
> > Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of
the
> > last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most
of
> > their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great
that
> > thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it?
> > What exactly did they "win"?
>
> Pretty much exactly what the Soviet Union won in WW2, at a similar cost
and with
> similar results. Again, do you think that Germany defeated the Soviet
Union in
> WW2? Whether you or I think that the resulting country is a garden spot
or a
> dirty armpit is irrelevant; the people calling the shots succeeded in what
they
> were what they were trying to achieve. Granted, it's likely that it
won't last
> another generation, but there's no guaranty of an unchanging result for
any
> country/creed.
>
> <snip>
>
> >>The DRVN
>
> > > > achieved their
> > > > > goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they
won.
> > > > The US didn't
> > > > > achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too
high
> > for
> > > > any benefit
> > > > > we might get, i.e. we lost.
> > > >
> > > > Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable
requirment
> > to
> > > > stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in
72-73,
> > the
> > > > RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had
> > handed
> > > > that responsibility off to them,
> > >
> > > With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in
> > trouble,
> > > yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise.
> >
> > Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75
> > invasion.
>
> Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance
from
> tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to
recover.

After which we left the ball in their hands--but you still chalk that up as
a loss for the US?

>
> > We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an
> > d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots
of
> > F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not
> > effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility
> > (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power
for
> > not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but
as I
> > said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big
> > decisive difference).
>
> While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their
own,
> while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the
money we
> gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force
goes,
> we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even
more
> than in 1972, that's what they were facing.

I don't think the serious SAM threat extended deep into RVN territory, even
in 1975.

I disagree, though, about how
> important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in
stiffening SVN
> resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975.
> whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll
never
> know.
>
> <snip>
>
> > > > and the NVA had been for all intents and
> > > > purposes pushed out of RVN territory.
> > >
> > > Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the
> > accords,
> > > _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in
SVN,
> > which he
> > > knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion.
> >
> > Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not
saying
> > much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72
Easter
> > offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole
reason
> > for their defeat).
>
> They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also
in
> MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000
troops in
> SVN at the time of the accords.

Most in Quang Tri, IIRC.

>
> > > > Two years later things went to hell in
> > > > a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional
invasion
> > of
> > > > the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the
US
> > > > military?
> > >
> > > Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was
> > defeated;
> > > that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They
weren't
> > > defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized
by
> > that
> > > PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've
seen
> > the
> > > anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S.
> > military was
> > > equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they
> > didn't have
> > > to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the
price
> > higher
> > > than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of
many
> > weaker
> > > powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war.
> >
> > I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what
ultimate
> > cost, and for what ultimate gain?
>
> > In the end it was better that the Viets
> > themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren
instead
> > reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us.
>
> Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the
game
> wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that
same
> decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that
ensued
> in the following 30 years.

I disagree, the "game was worth the candle", as you put it. But that does
not mean that *we* had to continue bearing the burden indefinitely.
Vietnamization was a rational outcome for our involvement, where we held the
tiger at bay until we had equipped and trained the RVN to defend itself. As
you noted earlier, it was the RVN's collective will that broke in the end,
and that break occurred some two years after we had decamped.

>
>
> >
> > >
> > > And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the
> > war.
> >
> > That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to
the
> > RVN a couple of years prior.
>
> No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They
> repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN
was
> certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a
few
> battles of its own.

So by your lights, the US was bound to have to stay indefinitely;
Vietnamization was not an acceptable solution. I disagree. The same can be
offered vis a vis Iraq; if we end up with a representative form of
government in Iraq by the time we finally pull pitch with our last troops
and hie out of there, and that government falls two years down the line to
some despot or faction, I don't count that as a loss for the US. At some
point we have to turn things back over to the locals and tell them, "Hey, it
is now YOUR responsibility to make what you will out of the opportunities
before you."

>
> >
> > > > I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign
> > > > policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which
had
> > > > withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up
departing an
> > RVN
> > > > still controlled by its own sovereign government.
> > >
> > > As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against
> > military,
> > > it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated
ours.
> >
> > No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969,
and
> > pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later
than
> > early 73 in-toto).
>
> Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN
> militarily.

There we disagree to some extent. The US can't garrison each and every
hotspot throught the world on an indefinite basis. Expecting it to do so is
rather shortsighted IMO.

>
> > > Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did
not
> > achieve
> > > its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's
a
> > defeat
> > > for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book.
> >
> > We must read different books. :-)
>
> I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war
aims, and
> the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win
and a
> US loss to me.

So you say. The rot was stopped before it spread further. We left there in
1973, having turned things over to the RVN, which then went tango-uniform
two years later. I don't really classify either of those conditions as being
indicative of a US "defeat".

Brooks

>
> Guy
>

Guy Alcala

July 12th 04, 06:03 AM

Well, I told you my replies were likely to be long delayed, and that's likely to
be the case for a while.

Kevin Brooks wrote:

> "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> . ..
> > Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed
> for some
> > time.
> >
> > Kevin Brooks wrote:
> >
> > > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > > . ..
> > > > Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply.
> > > >
> > > > Kevin Brooks wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "Guy Alcala" > wrote in message
> > > > > . ..
>
> <snip>
>
> > > Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a
> > > prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every
> > > *day*? I don't think so.
> >
> > Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian
> deaths:

<snip examples>

> > Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they
> happened to
> > be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of
> civilians,
> > north and south, were killed by US firepower.
> >
> > "2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return fire against a group of
> Vietcong
> > in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed
> 40
> > South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36."
>
> Unfortuantely, those examples fall FAR short of the numbers you'd need to
> have to make your total worl; remember, you need around 1.5 My Lais per DAY,
> *every* day. Now, are you finally willing to admit that it a pretty darned
> unrealistic figure you cited and attributed to US responsibility?

No, for the reasons I stated -- most civilian war casualties would happen during
combat, as a byproduct of that (rather than as pure mistakes such as the first
group I snipped above), and in SVN they would be reported as VC.

> > No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they
> > happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells
> on SVN
> > hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most
> of the
> > time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was
> going on
> > throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of
> admitted
> > civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or
> not)
> > recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly
> recorded
> > the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of
> > averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian
> > casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and
> public
> > wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967
> CIA
> > study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties
> from
> > bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian.
>
> Wow. 24K? How many more MILLIONS do you now need to come up with to make
> your statement true?

I was using the CIA _estimate_ for its proportions, which are fairly typical for
civil/military losses while bombing cities, not its accuracy for the total
numbers. Mea culpa for not making that clear. CIA (and US military and other)
estimates are all over the map, and routinely wrong. The only people who _know_
what their losses were are the VC/PAVN and the DRVN government. One of the most
objective discussions I've found of the causes of civilian casualties in Vietnam
is in "America in Vietnam," by Guenter Lewy. Appendix I, "Civilian Casualties:
An Assessment" uses SVN hospital admission records, KIA claims of military
units, etc. He comments:

"The task of establishing accurate statistics on military casualties is a
formidable one in any war, and the difficulties are infinitely greater with
regard to civilian losses. there arise problems of classification, such as
whether to include casualties attributable to inadequate nourishment or disease
caused by war conditions or limit the count to casualties resulting from direct
military action [Guy note: I do include such casualties in my reasoning, and I
suspect the DRVN numbers released in 1995 do as well. Lewy doesn't] . . .
..[discusses totals of civilian war casualties admitted to US and SVN hospitals
during the 1965-74 period, totaling 475,488, mentions possibilities of
underreporting in some circumstances, and adds 20% to account for such, making
the new estimate approx. 570,600].

"If civilians were injured in large numbers, there must also have been many who
were killed outright. MACV required so-called backlash reports on the number of
civilians killed and wounded in a battle, but these reports were filed mostly
for special incidents such as when civilians were hit by short rounds or when a
military unit shot up an obviously friendly hamlet [Guy note: these would be the
type of 'accidents' that I snipped above]. In most cases villagers killed in
VC-dominated or contested areas were counted as enemy dead (see Chapter 3),
while others died without being counted. As the U.S. embassy put it in a
message to the State Department in March 1966: ' How can you determine whether
black-clad corpses found on a battelfield were VC or innocent civilians? (they
are inevitably counted as VC) . . . How do you learn whether anyone was inside
structures and sampans destroyed by the hundreds every day by air strikes,
artillery fire, and naval gunfire?'

He then goes on to show various number estimates and methodologies, showing how
widely they can and did vary. He debunks many of the wilder claims made by
anti-war activists as being almost wholly without proof, while providing both
his own estimate of civilian dead as a direct result of military action
(247,600) as well as that of the Kennedy Committee (430,000), which he believes
to be too high owing to an assumption in their methodology (i.e., that the
evacuation of SVN civilian casualties to hospitals was markedly poorer than
military evacuations).

Skipping ahead a bit, he writes:

"Who caused these civilian casualties? Critics of American military tactics in
Vietnam [Guy note: Which included General Abrams as well as myself] argued that
because of the allied superiority in heavy weapons, especially artillery and
planes, and becsause of the lavish use of this firepower the great majority of
CWC were caused by the allied side . . . Until 1971 the official U.S. position
was that there existed no reliable statistics on the causes of CWC. In December
1970 USAID learned that the Vietnamese Ministry of Health had been maintaining
such statistics since1967, and since a Newsweek reporter was on the verge of
discovering them, AID in January 1971 reported them to Senator Kennedy even
though they viewed them with reserve. According to MOH officials, they were
based on the appearance of the injury and the questioning of the patient and/or
his family. 'Both of these procedures . . . may be carried out by hospital
personnel below the physician level. This factor plus the obvious inability of
the wounded person to know exactly how he was wounded in many cases, casts real
doubt as to the validity of the figures. At most they might be used to show
broad trends.'

"CORDS chief Colby used these statistics in his appearance before the Kennedy
Committee in April 1971 (see table A-3). Injuries caused by mine and mortar
were attributed to the enemy, those by guns and grenades to either side, and
those by shelling and bombing to U.S. forces and RVNAF.

"Hence the broad trend appeared to indicate an increase in enemy-inflicted CWC
(from 35 to 58%) and a decrease in CWC caused by friendly forces (from 43 to
22%)."*

Here's the table, as follows: Year, Mine/Mortar number of casualties and %,
Gun/Grenade number and %, Shelling/bombing number and %, total casualties:

1967, 15,253, 35%. 9,785, 22%. 18,811, 43%. 43,849.

1968, 31,244, 42%. 15,107, 20%. 28,052, 38%. 74,403.

1969, 24,648, 47%. 11,814, 22%. 16,183, 31%. 52,645.

1970, 22,049, 58%, 7,650, 20%. 8,607, 22%. 38,306.

*There's a problem with his conclusion here, as it ignores the effect of Abrams
limiting the use of artillery and airpower from the time he took charge, because
he considered it caused too many civilian casualties. By itself this change
would imply a greater percentage of friendly CWC in the second category versus
the 3rd.

There's much more, but you can see it's a complex subject, and anything other
than broad stroke accuracy is impossible to achieve.

<snip much back and forth on the same theme as below>
[i]
> > >>The DRVN
> >
> > > > > achieved their
> > > > > > goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they
> won.
> > > > > The US didn't
> > > > > > achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too
> high
> > > for
> > > > > any benefit
> > > > > > we might get, i.e. we lost.
> > > > >
> > > > > Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable
> requirment
> > > to
> > > > > stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in
> 72-73,
> > > the
> > > > > RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had
> > > handed
> > > > > that responsibility off to them,
> > > >
> > > > With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in
> > > trouble,
> > > > yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise.
> > >
> > > Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75
> > > invasion.
> >
> > Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance
> from
> > tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to
> recover.
>
> After which we left the ball in their hands--but you still chalk that up as
> a loss for the US?

One of the prime objectives of our effort in Vietnam was to ensure the survival
of a viable, stable, independent, preferably democratic but at least
non-communist SVN which was able to defend _itself_ from internal and external
threats. Since we failed to accomplish that or any other of the major goals we
set for ourselves going in, while the DRVN did accomplish all its goals (a
unified Vietnam governed by the Lao Dong party, with no foreign countries
involved in governance), then damned right we lost.

> > > We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an
> > > d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots
> of
> > > F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not
> > > effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility
> > > (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power
> for
> > > not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but
> as I
> > > said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big
> > > decisive difference).
> >
> > While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their
> own,
> > while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the
> money we
> > gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force
> goes,
> > we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even
> more
> > than in 1972, that's what they were facing.
>
> I don't think the serious SAM threat extended deep into RVN territory, even
> in 1975.

There were SA-2s at Khe Sanh and in the Dong Ha region from 1973 or so, but I
was mainly referring to the SA-7s. IIRR the A-1s had been retired, but the
SA-7s plus the huge increase in AAA (the PAVN had brought down an AA _Division_
into SVN) seriously impacted the VNAF's effectiveness. Only the F-5 could be
described as a fast mover, while the A-37s, Puffs and helo gunships were forced
up to much higher altitudes above SA-7 and effective AAA range, as were the
FACs. We had equipped them to operate in a permissive environment, but SVN no
longer was one. This increase in AD also seriously affected the ARVN's
mobility, as the use of airmobility was much curtailed -- they had far fewer
helos than we did to start with, with poorer maintenance and logistics, and they
also lacked the other firepower. In 1972, the US had the ability to deal with
AD weapons by using standoff capability, Fast Facs, SEAD etc. In the 1972-1975
period the VNAF didn't. For further detail on the VNAF's deficiencies in the
1972-75 period I refer you to Volume III of the USAF Southeast Asia Monograph
series, "The Vietnamese Air Force, 1951-1975, An Analysis of its Role in
Combat."

> I disagree, though, about how

> > important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in
> stiffening SVN
> > resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975.
> > whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll
> never
> > know.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > > > and the NVA had been for all intents and
> > > > > purposes pushed out of RVN territory.
> > > >
> > > > Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the
> > > accords,
> > > > _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in
> SVN,
> > > which he
> > > > knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion.
> > >
> > > Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not
> saying
> > > much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72
> Easter
> > > offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole
> reason
> > > for their defeat).
> >
> > They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also
> in
> > MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000
> troops in
> > SVN at the time of the accords.
>
> Most in Quang Tri, IIRC.

They still held Loc Ninh in MR III, 75 miles or so from Saigon, and by 1974 had
extended the fuel pipeline that had previously terminated in the A Shau valley
(in MR I) down that far. And they launched their initial assault in 1975
towards Ban Me Thuot in MR II from their positions there, to cut the country in
half across Route 19 (something that they'd planned to do in 1965, only to be
stopped by the First Cav in the Ia Drang). Once Ban Me Thuot fell, they swung
towards Pleiku and Kontum.
Just to give an idea of the effect the lack of US air interdiction post 1972 had
on the quantities of supplies the PAVN could move south, here's a quote from a
PAVN history:

"The quantity of supplies transported along the strategic transportation
corridor [The Ho Chi Minh Trail et al] from the beginning of 1974 until the end
of April 1975 was 823,146 tons, _1.6 times as much as the total transported
during the previous thirteen years_" (emphasis added). Further:

"Compared with 1972, the quantity of supplies was nine times as high, including
six times as high in weapons and ammunition, three times the quantity of rice,
and twenty-seven times the quantity of fuel and petroleum products." Which
gives an idea of just how overwhelmed the SVNAF was when on their own in 1975
compared to 1972, when the US had been responsible for interdicting this.

<snip>

> OTOH, the U.S.
> > > military was
> > > > equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they
> > > didn't have
> > > > to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the
> price
> > > higher
> > > > than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of
> many
> > > weaker
> > > > powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war.
> > >
> > > I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what
> ultimate
> > > cost, and for what ultimate gain?
> >
> > > In the end it was better that the Viets
> > > themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren
> instead
> > > reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us.
> >
> > Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the
> game
> > wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that
> same
> > decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that
> ensued
> > in the following 30 years.
>
> I disagree, the "game was worth the candle", as you put it.

Not to the US people or government by 1973, it wasn't, which is why we got out
and then proceeded to make it impossible to resume bombing or any other US
combat activity in sEA effective August 15th, 1973, and why the Congress refused
to provide the requested levels of ammo and other types of support in the
1973-75 period. The attitude among many Americans (myself included) at the time
SVN was collapsing and the executive branch was trying to get Congress to
provide emergency funding, was either "good riddance to bad rubbish,' or the
somewhat less harsh but effectively equivalent "let's not throw more good money
down the toilet." Even among the majority like myself who had little patience
for the antics of the anti-war activists, when Saigon fell there was almost a
sense of relief, of the "at least it's over and done with" variety.

> But that does
> not mean that *we* had to continue bearing the burden indefinitely.
> Vietnamization was a rational outcome for our involvement, where we held the
> tiger at bay until we had equipped and trained the RVN to defend itself. As
> you noted earlier, it was the RVN's collective will that broke in the end,
> and that break occurred some two years after we had decamped.

Among our primary strategic objectives was to see the GVN established as a
viable state which could defend itself, in short another Korea; we clearly
failed in that endeavor (or any other of the major objectives we'd set for
ourselves when we entered the war or while we were actively engaged in fighting
it). That's a loss in my book.

> > > > And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the
> > > war.
> > >
> > > That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to
> the
> > > RVN a couple of years prior.
> >
> > No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They
> > repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN
> was
> > certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a
> few
> > battles of its own.
>
> So by your lights, the US was bound to have to stay indefinitely;
> Vietnamization was not an acceptable solution. I disagree.

So do I, since I don't hold that view. Vietnamization was an entirely
acceptable solution, indeed it was the only solution throughout the war, and our
diversion into trying to win the war ourselves during the Westmoreland "war of
the big battalions" was a big mistake. Indeed, Vietnamization is something of a
misnomer, and pretty insulting to the South Vietnamese who'd been fighting from
1956 on, and took far more casaulties than we did. There's no question, though,
that we needed to turn the war back over to them, having done everything we
could to assure ourselves first that they could survive on their own. We knew
that we failed to do that from the esperience of 1972, but Nixon figured
thathe'd be able to restart bombing if the DRVN violated the accords. But that
would have been a political impossibility, even without Watergate.

> The same can be
> offered vis a vis Iraq; if we end up with a representative form of
> government in Iraq by the time we finally pull pitch with our last troops
> and hie out of there, and that government falls two years down the line to
> some despot or faction, I don't count that as a loss for the US.

It's certainly a failure of US policy, if one of the primary reasons you entered
the war was to help establish a government so that such a thing can't happen.

> At some
> point we have to turn things back over to the locals and tell them, "Hey, it
> is now YOUR responsibility to make what you will out of the opportunities
> before you."

Sure, but we also bear the responsibility, having broken the dish in the first
place, to take reasonable steps to put it back in working order until a new,
better version can evolve. We didn't do that in 1973. If we were going to do
that, and it was specifically stated as our ultimate goal in Vietnam from 1954
on. then we should have devoted far more attention to it than we did, or else
decide that we couldn't achieve it, and stay out.

<snip>

> > > No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969,
> and
> > > pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later
> than
> > > early 73 in-toto).
> >
> > Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN
> > militarily.
>
> There we disagree to some extent. The US can't garrison each and every
> hotspot throught the world on an indefinite basis. Expecting it to do so is
> rather shortsighted IMO.

Since I've never said that we should, we have no disagreement. If I were to
employ hindsight to Vietnam, assuming we had gone in in 1965 as we historically
did, then to give SVNthe best possible chance to become viable and defend itself
we should have devoted far more attention to pacification, training, leadership
development, law reform etc. from 1966 (things were too chaotic in 1965, we had
to go in then just to prevent the whole house of cards from collapsing), instead
of waiting until 1969 and then trying to do it at a rate that was impossible.

> > > > Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did
> not
> > > achieve
> > > > its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's
> a
> > > defeat
> > > > for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book.
> > >
> > > We must read different books. :-)
> >
> > I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war
> aims, and
> > the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win
> and a
> > US loss to me.
>
> So you say. The rot was stopped before it spread further. We left there in
> 1973, having turned things over to the RVN, which then went tango-uniform
> two years later. I don't really classify either of those conditions as being
> indicative of a US "defeat".

Kevin, what U.S. major policy objectives which we set out to achieve in Vietnam
did we achieve? I believe the answer is 'none'. One of our primary objectives
was to prevent the DRVN from achieving _their_ primary objective, the
unification of Vietnam under DRVN control. Their primary objective was in
direct conflict with ours, they succeeded, and we failed. You don't consider
that a defeat for U.S. policy?

>
> Brooks
>
> >
> > Guy
> >