Did we win in Viet Nam?

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.

"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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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...on3/doc253.htm

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...on3/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

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