Why is Stealth So Important?

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:sD0Nb.112$ce2.3@okepread03...
The Vietnamese fought for their country and terminated the
American hegemony.


The vast majority of South Vietnamese people did not fight for
their country. The average peasant had no concept of Vietnam
being "a country". Most of the people lived in rural areas.
They knew little of and cared less about what happened outside
their own village.

They wanted to work in peace, with minimum interference from
whatever government was in place. These people were bewildered
farmers with no clear idea of what was happening -- except when
shells, bombs and bullets landed on them -- or when Vietcong
agents extorted payments from them, or murdered their family
members who questioned the Vietcong and their protection rackets.

About 80% of South Vietnamese were Buddhists, so some of them
objected when overzealous Catholics like Diem tried to push
the monks around. But then again, the Communists championed
atheism, and that idea was even less popular.

The vast majority of people who supported the Vietcong did so
because they were afraid of punitive action, not because they
were patriotic.

"Evan Brennan" wrote
"Gene Storey" wrote
The Vietnamese fought for their country and terminated the
American hegemony.


The vast majority of South Vietnamese people did not fight for
their country. The average peasant had no concept of Vietnam
being "a country". Most of the people lived in rural areas.
They knew little of and cared less about what happened outside
their own village.

They wanted to work in peace, with minimum interference from
whatever government was in place. These people were bewildered
farmers with no clear idea of what was happening -- except when
shells, bombs and bullets landed on them -- or when Vietcong
agents extorted payments from them, or murdered their family
members who questioned the Vietcong and their protection rackets.

About 80% of South Vietnamese were Buddhists, so some of them
objected when overzealous Catholics like Diem tried to push
the monks around. But then again, the Communists championed
atheism, and that idea was even less popular.

The vast majority of people who supported the Vietcong did so
because they were afraid of punitive action, not because they
were patriotic.

You are generalizing. Peasants never get a say in any country (including
the United States). There were enough intellectuals and educated people
fighting, that the peasants didn't count.

On top of that you seem to be talking about the wrong folks. I'm talking
about the Vietnamese that rejected the countries division into two
regions under the promise of a vote. When the vote didn't take place,
the rebels in the South began their inevitable fall.

South Vietnam was a fake country. It never existed except in the eyes
of the invading/colonizing forces.

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:HGFNb.310$ce2.102@okepread03...
Peasants never get a say in any country (including the United States).


That might make sense, if not for the laundry list of Peasant Wars
of the 20th Century. : )

Eric Wolf wrote the classic study of the same name.


There were enough intellectuals and educated people fighting


Nearly all the South Vietnamese intellectuals and educated people
lived in large cities...where the Communists had the least support.
That is one reason why the 1968 Tet Offensive failed. There was
no general uprising of the people in the cities, as the Commies
had hoped.

The Vietcong's main support base was, in fact, drawn from peasants
in the countryside.


the peasants didn't count.


LOL.


On top of that you seem to be talking about the wrong folks. I'm talking
about the Vietnamese that rejected the countries division into two
regions under the promise of a vote.


If peasants didn't count, very few people would reject such a division.


South Vietnam was a fake country.


No more phony than the Communist regime. Giap himself was a Catholic.
Bottom line is that the South lost funding and support from their
foreign allies at a time when the North did not.

The Vietcong guerrillas nonetheless failed, the North Vietnamese Army
was forced to take over their fight, and the war was decided with
conventional battles, years after American ground troops pulled out
of Vietnam.