***** Vietnam War Historians/Vets please chime in *****

I was just listening to David Gregory/Jeffrey Goldberg and heard them mention that McPOW's dad was in charge of something in Vietnam. Unfortunately, as I often do when Gregory is on, I zoned him out.

This is a two pronged question really:
1) Was McPOW's father considered a better soldier than McPOW (I've heard all the stories about what a screw-up POW was)
2) If his father didn't do well in Vietnam, an unwinnable war, why do people think McPOW would be better?

Thanks for any insight.

aka regional commander

His dad also was a four star admiral

I was born at the tail end of the war and honestly don't know much about it.

Which almost always means that they were in charge of a HUGE military force. In contrast, McCain was only in charge of a peace-time flight squadron, as General Wesley Clark pointed out. McCain isn't revered as a great soldier per say, but more as a soldier who had to sacrifice a lot for his country. Some people have theorized that McCain never had a chance to become a general partially because of his affair with Cindy.

:)

Secondly, yes McPOW's father and grandfather did much better than he becoming admirals. He was still better than Dubya however.

Vietnam was an unwinnable war short of using nuclear weapons and obliterating the entire country which was not a practical solution. It did not matter what the generals and admirals did, you can't control someone else's country indefinitely at gunpoint. The fault was the politicians, not the military's.

Five Presidents had a hand in Vietnam: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Johnson and Nixon bear the greatest responsibility - especially Nixon who took office AFTER Tet and Khe Sahn when it was clear that Vietnam was unwinnable and under whom 2/3's of Americans who died in the war died. Nixon took 4+ years to end the war when he could have ended it in a few months had he wanted to.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

for my gaffe. You'd think living in Norfolk, VA would have taught me a thing or two. I do know the difference between a ship and a boat. :)

for the War in Vietnam. When he assumed the Presidencey there were about 16,000 men in Vietnam. Within three years the number was up to 500,000. He was responsible for the deaths of 38,000 Americans, the wounding of another 200,000 and the deaths of probably 4,000,000 Vietnames. Nixon was not responsible for 2/3 of American deaths in Vietnam, Johnson was. All totaled, 58,000 Americans were killed from start to finish. Of these 38,000 of them died while Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President of the United States. You are correct that Nixon could have ended the war a lot sooner than he did.

2/3's died under Nixon - 38,000+. Only 11,000 had died under Johnson up to Tet and 19,000 by the time Johnson left office.

That said, most of the troop count escalation occurred under Johnson and it started ramping down under Nixon's "Vietnamesation" plan to turn the war over to the ARVN.

On the other hand, most of the bombing and civillian deaths occurred under Nixon who used wholesale bombing of Hanoi and the north in a way that Johnson was afraid to do for fear of causing the Russians to escalate the war into a world wide war.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

the policy of " Vietnamization":

Ar Nixon drew down US ground forces, he massively ramped up the air war . . . on South Vietnam (as has occurred during the so-called "Surge").

Far more tonnage dropped on S Vietnam than on N Vietnam during Nixon's tenure.

Nixon used airpower to get out of the war when he could have just gotten out. He didn't want to lose face so he bombed the crap out of North Vietnam to get out.

"bombed the crap out of North Vietnam to get out." (For example, the Christmas bombing of 1972 comes to mind.)

I only wanted to point out that more bombs were dropped on the South 1968-73 than were dropped on the North.

Peace!

we always did a lot more bombing in the South than the North under both Johnson AND Nixon.

Doug

seen the movie "The Quiet American" (with Michael Caine and Brandon Frasier)? It should have been required viewing by all Americans before Iraq-nam began, imho.

Apocalypse Now is surrealistic but the line the guy says about building the bridges everyday so that Charlie could blow them up every night is right on point. There are a lot of others such as the bit about the darker angels of our nature and the part about the war being run by a bunch of four star clowns, never getting out of the boat, etc. etc.

Path to War was an HBO made for TV movie about the Johnson buildup into Vietnam and I really think it tells the story in a highly accurate way.

Finally there is "Fog of War" with scary-assed older than dirt un-dead looking Bob McNamara being interviewed like some ex-Nazi 20 years after WWII in Argentina or something explaining his war-crimes to the world. It's just un-f'ing believeable to watch this thing. It turns out that Don Rumsfeld is the Republican answer to Bob McNamara. Look for his post-war apologetic video in about the year 2023.

2 more:

Kubrick's "Full Metal Jackdt", esp. the 2nd half. Very spooky shit with a female Viet Minh sniper\patriot defending Hue during Tet 68.

and

De Palma's "Casualties of War". Cheesy plot but there's one point where the viewer sees the war thru Vietnamese eyes. Not sure how De Palma did it, but it's the only American film to show the war from the "enemy" p of view. Like "Flags of Our Fathers."

Before there was Rumsfool, there was GE whiz kid MaNamara. At least he cracked up, unlike that sociopath RummyDummy who still inhabits my nightmares like some specter from FW Murnau.

Platoon of course and Hamburger Hill.

Books I just finished Lt. Gen Hal Moore and journalist Joe Galloway's follow up to "We Were Soldiers" "We are Soldiers Still".

They journey back to Vietnam and the Ia Drang with the Vietnamese Generals they fought against. Moore and Galloway eloquently relate the resolve of the Vietnamese they faced and why America like the French was doomed to lose.

They also take the Bush Administration to task for Iraq. Moore even had the courage to tell the cadets at West Point that the Iraq War shouldn't have been fought and that Rummy was a poor leader.

After reading it IMHO this book should be required reading in the WH, Pentagon, West Point and among all soldiers.

"A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan. Chronicles the life and military career in Vietnam of John Paul Vann and, in the process, exposes the folly behind the enterprise.

and

"Secrets" by Daniel Ellsburg. Lays out the odyssey Ellsburg embarked on, from gung-ho Marine to RAND analyst to disillusioned war supporter to outright war critic.

Don't like Platoon or Hamburger Hill.

We Were Soldiers is far less soap opera than these but still somewhat formulaic.

Doug D.

Winner of three Academy Awards and based on the true story of three journalists: Dith Pran, a Cambodian, Sydney Schanberg, an American, and Jon Swain, a journalist from the UK. But it's really Dith Pran's story.

"The story of war and friendship, the anguish of a country and of one man's will to live."

Full metal jacket is better to me in the first part. I don't like second part

Casualties of war is just terrible.

To each his own...

Deaths in Vietnam by year (all causes)
Johnson 1964 206 Johnson total: 35,963 killed
1965 1,863
1967 6,143
1967 11,158
1968 16,592

Nixon 1969 11,153 Nixon total: 20,232 killed
1970 6,081
1971 2,357
1972 641

Source: www.archives/gov/research/vietnam war-casualty/statistics.

that Nixon and future war criminal Kissinger may have committed TREASON by using the "Chenault channel" to scuttle peace prospects post-Tet (by convincing Thieu he would get a better deal with a Nixon admin if Thieu obstructed 1968 peace negotiations then under way).

Nixon - Chenault
Ford - Pardons Nixon
Reagan - IranContra
HWBush - IranContra
W - Plamegate\Iraq-nam

Is it just me or are all Repukes since Eisenhower a pack of friggin' TRAITORS???

"...you can't control someone else's country indefinitely at gunpoint..."

about the American Revolution...

This wasn't an idea invented in Vietnam... it started right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. back around 1775. The British were then the world's most powerful military force and they never could control their own colonies, even though the "culture" gap was miniscule compared to that between the US and Vietnam, Russia and Afghanistan or the US and Iraq.

Doug D.

their Hessian mercs, so too the US with its Blackwater "contractors."

Plus ca change . . .

The good ole days when Ho Chi Minh was an OSS asset. Where did Ho Chi Minh get the idea to throw off the bonds of his colonial oppressor? He got it from US.

liberated from the Japanese (and before the French reoccupied Vietnam), Ho's liberation speech actually directly quoted from . . . the US "Declaration of Independance."

Foolish Ho - he didn't realize that the document only applied to white males of privilege!

President Truman after WWII. He asked for freedom for the Vietnamese. He wanted

to be liberated from France. He had fought on the side of the Allies in both wars.

He was ignored. If more attention had been paid, the US might have had an ally in

SE Asia and not an enemy. We got caught up on political philosophies.

today's "Blue Dogs") caved to the French to get them on board the anti-Commie Crusade in Western Europe.

Too bad 4 million Asians had to die to save Europe from godless Communism. I'm sure Zbig Brezhinski would approve. After all, what's a few (million) brown-skinned people when it comes to defeating your adversary on the Grand Chessboard?

...that this history is not widely known. John Sydney McCain (actually, J.S. McCain III) is the the scion of the most important, and perhaps the only, Junker (military aristocratic) family in America. His son, John Sydney McCain IV, continues the tradition at the U.S. Naval Academy.

McCain's father was John Sydney McCain II (or "Junior"), who was a submarine commander in WW2 and rose to be a four star Admiral and the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. As such, he was in charge of the Vietnam War, though many of the decisions came directly from the Pentagon. Throughout his tenure, McCain was under continuous criticism, some of it claiming that he owed his status to his father.

McCain II's father was John Sydney McCain I who commanded the Fast Carrier forces under Halsey in WW2. He was the first to rise to be a four star Admiral.

John Sydney McCain's father was John Sydney McCain (presumably J.S. McCain 0 or "minus one") who was a plantation owner in Carroll County, Mississippi and had been the County Sheriff.

McCain -1 was the son of William Alexander McCain who had built the plantation, "Waverly", to a size of 2000 acres with 52 slaves (yep, John McCain is the direct descendant of slave owners - how do you think the footnotes of this election will read two hundred years from now?). He died as a Confederate Cavalryman during the Civil War.

William Alexander McCain's oldest son was... William Alexander McCain II, who went to West Point and became a General, as did Henry Pickney McCain. The farther you move from this direct lineage, the more scrambled eggs you find.

All of this dates back to a direct descendant, John Young, who served on General George Washington's staff, and others who go all the way back to Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland.

Of course, the founders would have been absolutely horrified at the possibility of a military dynasty in America but, these days, it would probably help McCain win American Idol.

Oh yeah, there is an Army "Camp McCain" in Mississippi, a Naval Air Station ("McCain Field") and the thing below, all named for various McCains.



and this one...

As a Navy veteran I only have one thing to say:

God bless those who serve.

The one above is "pretty". The "slab-sider" stands in the same relation to it as Modern Cruise Ships do to the Queen Mary. Who ever heard of a "ship" without geared turbines?

Next you are going to say that sail is obsolete...

When did that happen...?

he's talked long and hard bout them cannons on deck

:-)

and how much they are targets...

most informative...

...but it is stunning how they write everything there is to tell about McCain, from lipstick to Percodin, but manage to leave out something as basic as his family history (which couldn't be more different from the "average Joe"). The funny part is that it is a crucial cog in their story - How McCain managed to have a "meteoric rise" despite being a terrible student at the academy and an indifferent officer (by his own admission). How about: he was "protected" at every stage in his career? Most of the time, they love pop psychology and here is their opportunity to talk about how he wanted to redeem his father's "reputation" (shades of Bush), and so on... But, nada. Makes you wonder about "the press"...

The McCains are the only family in American history to have two 4-stars.

Young Johnny was a ne'er do well.

Grownup Johnny is a sorry excuse for a man.

Arthur McArthur was a Lietnant General (no 4 star officers in the service at the time) his son Douglas was a five star general. Both were winners of the Medal of Honor.

First you need to define what would constitute a win.

US policy at the time supported a North and South objective, much the same as the two Koreas.

Quite correctly, two strategies needed to unfold, first, win the 'hearts and minds' of the people, second, force North Viet Nam to stop the flow of regular North Vietnamese army troops and material into the south, through the Asau valley in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia.

US policy ultimately failed at both missions.

By allying with the wealthy in South Viet Nam, the peasants were disenchanted with their own government due to the lack of any agrarian reform and the US for supporting the status quo. I have personally seen areas where the NVA drove out wealthy landowners and instituted agrarian reform, only to have those landlords return with a convoy of US tanks. Not the way to win the hearts and minds and this enabled a protracted struggle which always favors those fighting for their homeland. the US was the only one fighting for the South Vietnamese government.

Still, the US could have achieved the objective of stopping the flow of NVA troops and material in to South VietNam. My own unit was tasked with patrolling the Asau Valley, one of the main infiltration routes. We were successful enough that through patrolling and bombing (to include B52 strikes) that the NVA moved into neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

Fear of Russia and China entering and creating a wider war limited our ability to enter these sanctuaries with sufficient force to halt the flow of men and material. No one wanted another Korea.

Nixon and Kissinger, realizing the resources needed to pursue a wider war would never be approved by the American people (remember Kissinger was a disciple of Real Politik) decided the only way to get out with a shred of dignity was to drive the North to the bargaining table.

Thus we had Linebacker I, which succeded to the degree that Ho came to the bargaining table. But when the bombing let up, he became as intransigent as ever. Thus, Linebacker II.

Ho backed off, the US pulled out, but the North couldn't resist temptation and before the US presence was totally gone he invaded the South, knowing the US would not reverse course. Thus the embarrasing pictures of the last helicopters leaving from Saigon.

What lessons were learned and not learned?

Overwhelming force must be applied early and decisively to cripple the enemies ability to wage war. Shock and awe, if you will.

Puppet governments must implement economic policies that demonstrate a better life for the citizenry is possible. In this way you win the hearts and minds of the people.

No sanctuaries for the enemy. They must not be allowed to set up shop in areas where they cannot be attacked. Bush today authorized special forces attacks in Pakistan. A bit late, no?

The US population must be kept out of the war effort to the greatest extent possible. No draft can be allowed to involve the middle class on an involuntary basis. Borrow and spend rather than tax and spend. War is good for the economy until the bills come due. No war footage showing the death of American soldiers. Limit the media's access to the war. Keep the images of war off the evening news.

Its much too simplistic to say the Viet Nam war was 'unwinnable'. The US failures in VietNam were political and not military. The 'domino theory' just didn't resonate with enough Americans to justify the cost in lives and treasure.

we would have set fire to SE Asia and still be there with troops tied up.

That is not winning.You learned nothing from Korea. Do you think China would have stood by if

we had a strategy that would have allowed us to gain control over that area? They were content

to watch us stupidly get bogged down while warning us occasionally as a reminder they were there.

What exactly does it mean that 'we would have set fire to SE Asia'?

Sorry, that comment says nothing.

Didn't China fight a war with Viet Nam not long after we left? So you think Ho would have allowed Chinese troops to traipse across his country? He would sooner have asked Nixon for help.

You don't seem to offer much in the way of concrete, well thought through comments.

It was a few border type skirmishes if I remember correctly, seemed like it was in the late 70s or early 80s. The VA handed the PLA their ass.

all, welcome to DU and "thank you" for your service.

That said, it's hard to know whether you are joking (as the dark cynicism of your next-to-last paragraph suggests), or serious (as other paragraphs suggest).

So before I respond at length, do you think the war was "winnable" in any meaningful sense of the term?

All wars are 'winnable' if you are willing to committ enough resources.

I expect that on December 8, 1941 there were many who thought a war against Germany and Japan at the same time was 'unwinnable'.

To think the Viet Nam war was not 'winnable' is to ignore what happened in Korea.

Was the Korean war 'winnable'?

I must infer that you think Vietnam was indeed "winnable" and "winnable" in a meaningful sense (meaning the US did not leave SE Asia an irradiated husk, in effect destroying the country in order to save it ).

Ho Chi Minh said at one point in 1946 that "You can kill 10 of my men for every 1 I kill of yours . . . but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win."(Cited in Karnow, "Vietnam: A History," p. 20.) So much for Westmoreland's strategy of "attrition."

Karnow asked Giap in 1990 how long the Vietnamese were prepared to fight against the US and Giap replied, "Another 20 years, maybe a hundred years, as long as it took to win, regardless of cost." (Ibid.)

So I must ask again -- do you believe the war was "winnable" at an acceptable cost???

On edit: MacArthur certainly thought Korea was "winnable" . . . until he got shit-canned for insubordination. And there was that little matter of the Yalu:)

Why do you believe propaganda as fact? Does it matter what Ho or Giap said for public consumption? Here's a fact for you. In our rear areas (Camp Eagle, Phu Bai Combat Base) rocket attacks regularly targeted the helicopters, never the troop barracks. Troops in the rear came out of the field and slept in tents. A single rocket would kill an entire platoon. I never saw it happen and never heard about it. Lots of mama sans walking off the distane to the air cobras, though.

Why not rocket the barracks?

US troops had very little interest in working hard to seek out the enemy after about 1969. The north had very little interest in pissing off US troops.

Clearly you've never seen a mini gun work over an area up close and personal. I called in an air strike on a neigboring hill and watched 2 F4's light it up with 500 lbs of napalm each. I genuinely felt sorry for anyone there, but AFAIK there was no one near.

If you don't think we could have rolled up through Laos and Cambodia into North Viet Nam you are sadly mistaken. No nuclear weapons needed.

The miscalculation on the part of Johnson and Nixon was that a Korean type solution was possible by maintaining the puppet government in the south that had zero popular support.

We did win in Korea, just ask the South Koreans.

Of course the Viet Nam war was 'winnable'. As I have previously stated, the 'hearts and minds' campaign was designed to win the wrong hearts and minds. The wealthy landowners couldn't keep the NVA out or reduce the ranks of the viet cong. ONly through true agrarian reform could the peasants be won over. And this the US refused to do. How would it look for capitalist country to support communist ideals?

And I'll let you in on another secret the anti war groups didn't know, after Tet, the North was deathly afraid of direct confrontation between NVA and US troops. The results were always devastating to the NVA.

Again, you have no idea the amount of firepower that US troops could bring to bear on the enemy. Its foolish to sit back in your easy chair and think of the NVA soldier bravely standing up to the might of the US military.

Not so. They avoided contact and eluded US forces as much as humanly possible.

Going back to the basic concept of winning the hearts and minds. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, the largest democracy in the world usually chooses to support the least democratic elements in foreign affairs.

But don't think for a minute that's a military failure. Its a political failure as much of Johnson and the Democrats of the day as of Nixon and the Republicans.

destroying the enemy's will to fight, yes? The two quotes from Karnow go to that question.

I agree with you that the primary failure(s) were political and not military.

You seem to bear me and othes like me some personal animus (with your drive-by snark about "easy chair"). Please understand that that animus is not returned.

For the record, I have been protesting against the current imperial folly twice- and thrice-weekly for the past 7+ years and have spent 1000s of hours and 1000s of $s to "support the troops" in the only way that makes sense to me, i.e., trying to turn public opimion against the neo-imperialists' agenda. Would you have me do a Norman Morrison (or a Mordechai Richter) outside Gates' office to demonstrate further my bona fides?

IMO, there was no "winner" in Korea, only a stalemate status quo ante with losers on all sides (not the least of which my father, who took a bullet through the chest with the USMC at Inchon).

I am on my mobile right now with no access to references. I will respond at more length when next at my desktop.

Peace!

But easy chair critics really have little understanding of what's 'winnable' or not.

The level of violence the US military is capable of is quite extraordinary so to in any way suggest any war is not 'winnable' is quite wrong.

I can certainly appreciate your anti-war feelings but when you say the Viet Nam war was not winnable you are either being disingenuous or simply wrong-headed.

In fact, the winner in Korea was the South Koreans. I'm sorry for your father's injury but to say there was no winner in the Korean conflict is wrong.

The real issue I have with pacifists, (and you may or may not be one, I don't know), is that sometimes military action is necessary and if fault lies anywhere, it is in not using military and political resources effectively.

I respect your right to disagree with any or all wars but in order to be taken seriously you must provide more in depth analysis than to quote Ho and Giap speaking in hopes of demoralizing the US political leadership and encouraging those opposed to the war.

Frankly, I consider them both lucky that Johnson didn't invade North Viet Nam and dare the Chinese to intervene. I'm not at all sure the North Vietnamese would have welcomed their help, in fact, it might have brought a quicker end to the war as Ho had no desire to be caught between a clash of both his enemies. Very different from North Korea, which had been a Chinese vassal state prior to the Korean War. But Johnson feared a wider war and his generals spoke in terms of mobilization on a WWII scale if China intervened. The moneyed interests in the US wanted no part of that. While there were resources in SE Asia and some actually believed in the domino theory, none thought it would out weigh the disruption to the US economny that was on a 15 year roll.

As far as the Russians, they always seem amenable to a quid pro quo.

The US has almost always shown remarkable restraint in war.

dialogues I've had on DU ever. Unfortunately I'm away from my desk today with only my mobile which makes responding at length difficult. I will do so tomorrow.

Question: have you read Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History"? It is a good and balanced assessment, altho sketchy on individual battles and campaigns.

I do not oppose all wars. The USSR had to fight Hitler. More on this tomorrow.

this seems way more important to me.

My Dad was not "injured" at Inchon like some traffic accident. He was "wounded," a giant sucking chest wound.

Most historians of the Korean conflict (including, most recently, David Halberstam in "The Coldest Winter") consider the war to have ended in a stalemate with both parties back at the 38th parallel, exactly where they were before the war began. Since you are a proponent of "in depth analysis," perhaps you can explain in what sense you think the South "won."

You can call Ho's and Giap's pronouncements "propaganda" if you like. But you should know that their assessments of the Vietnamese will to fight until "victory" are shared by many American officers and enlisted personnel. General Bruce Palmer, Jr. said the NVA's "will to persist was inextinguishable." (Cited in Karnow, p. 21) Is Palmer also a victim of Ho's and Giap's propaganda? Or is it just possible that your assessment (that the war was "winnable") neglects to consider enemy morale?

Ho spoke in 1946 about the French. Giap spoke in 1990, long after the last US chopper left the roof of the US embassy. Whatever their motivations for their statements, I highly doubt that either statement was intended to "demoralize the US political leadership" or "encourage those opposed to the war." I'm sure that not even you believe that, as Ho would have had to have the gift of prophecy. And Giap, one of the 20th Century's greatest military strategists, would still be fighting a war 16 years after he won a decisive victory in that same war.

It met their objectives and that is a win.

No, not like a traffic accident, he was shot. Soldiers get shot, sometimes. That is the sacrifice they make. Its part of the job.

Don't doubt that propaganda was a huge part of North Viet Nam's strategy. It certainly was.

The ability to fight depends on the availability of resources to fight. A soldier without food, water and ammunition poses little threat.

Talk all they want about fighting to the last man, who has actually done that? Not the Japanese, not the Germans, and it wouldn't be the North Vietnamese.

Again, propaganda designed to elicit an emotional response (which clearly it does with you and many others) but having little or no meaning in terms of tactics and strategy.

Truman not run for re-election in 1952? And why did Eisenhower run for election in 1952 on a "making peace in Korea" platform, rather than a McBush-esqe "Victory in Korea" platform?

You used the word "injured." You of all people should know that there is a major difference between being "injured" and being "wounded" in combat. (This really annoys me about our local TV media in LA, when they say "1 US soldier was killed in Iraq and 3 were 'injured,'" like it was some kind of routine LA traffic accident.) If "wounded" and "injured" mean the same thing, then why have the 2 words?

Propaganda\cheerleading ocurred on both sides in Vietnam. Westmoreland's "light at the end of the tunnel" comment comes to mind, as do his inflated reports of enemy KIA\WIA. It's no accident that journalists like Halberstam and Neil Sheehan came to refer to their Saigon press briefings as the "5 O'Clock Follies" when the US military's rosy assessments directly contradicted reporters' own eye-witness experiences.

The French might take issue with your notion that a soldier without ammo poses "little threat." We have seen what a simple boxcutter can do in the hands of a determined and motivated enemy. Sheehan (in "A Bright Shining Lie") observes that much of NLF armaments 1956-65 came from ARVN supplies, courtesy of US taxpayers. This goes to your point about failure to win "hearts and minds" but also suggests that we were arming, however inadvertently, both sides in a civil war. Shades of Iraq-nam, eh?

Ho and Giap were not talking about fighting "to the last man"(at least as far as I'm aware). Their strategy was predicated on eventual US war weariness sapping the US will to continue. Whatever its failures -- Tet '68, for example, was premised on mass uprisings in the South -- Ho's and Giap's strategic premise was correct.

You seem to be going off on tangents.

A man with a box cutter is a serious threat to unarmed civilians. To a rifle platoon, he's body count.

I don't remember Ike running on 'peace at any cost in Korea' platform as much as a promise to end the war by meeting the objective of a free and democratic South Korea.

My honest opinions was that the weight of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weighed heavily on Truman. He was unwilling to use the threat of nuclear weapons to move China back over the Yalu. Another example of politicians committing the military then not having the forethought to have planned the end game.

Soldiers use lots of words for getting hurt. It might be simply getting hurt, as in, when that claymore went off, lots of guys got hurt. Getting shot might also be getting popped, capped, zapped, wasted. Civilians often place emotional content on the words. For the trooper, its all the same. So why have 10 different words? Who knows?

Rosie accounts were contradicted by soldiers coming back and describing what they saw. I never saw a reporter in the field. Saw lots of them in the rear. Everyone laughed at body count figures. Nevertheless, after Tet the North Vietnamese never wanted to go head to head with US forces.

Frankly, we always heard stories of NVA using US weapons but no one ever saw it. The M16 and AK47 have very distinctive sounds. When firing in the jungle, where you can't see the enemy most of the time, its dangerous to use your opponents weapons as your own guys will shoot at the sound of the other guys gun. They always talked about NVA using captured US 81 mm mortar rounds in their 82 mm mortars but that makes little sense as they would be grossly inaccurate.

There is so much bad information in print about Viet Nam its laughable. Lots of people wanting to make money pandering to people with preconceived notions.

The US lacked the will to win in Viet Nam after 1968. College students and their families exposed to the draft created a ready audience for anti-war sentiment. Reportage of casualties shocked a generation not emotionally hardened by world war. Political weakness on the part of Johnson and the democrats, fearing a voter backlash which did occur, all contributed to the loss of faith in the countries ability to achieve its objectives: create a government in Viet Nam that could defend itself.

As I've previously stated, a capitalist nations arrogance in believing capitalism to be the best economic system for everyone was the primary undoing of Johnson and the first Nixon years.

Was the war winnable? From a military perspective - absolutely.

From a political perspective - not a chance.

American weapons either captured from ARVN or purchased on black market from 1956-65. NVA forces,to the best of my knowledge, were armed with Soviet or Chinese Communist weapons.

But where I was we didn't see many. once in a while a Viet Cong would sneak up close to the wire and blow off a few rounds at the bunker line at night but they'd be out of there in a hurry as two minutes later they'd get an air burst of Wilson Pickett overhead followed by a few rounds of HE.

Non-Fiction:

"Vietnam: A History" by Stanley Karnow
"The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam
"A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" by Neil Sheehan
"We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young" by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway
"American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War" by Daivd Kaiser
"A Grand Delusion: America's Descent into Vietnam" by Robert Mann
"They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace\Vietnam and America\October 1967" by David Maraniss
"Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" by Daniel Ellsburg
"A Rumor of War" by Philip Caputo

Fiction:

"Going After Cacciato" by Tim O'Brien
"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"If I Die in a Combat Zone" by Tim O'Brien

I hope to someday read (or maybe 'hear'?) your memoirs. My wife said that your anecdote about the elephant is something you could write a short story or essay about, if you so chose. I do not believe I had ever read of elephants being used in such a way as you described above.

Finally, your posts have prompted me to re-examine some of my long-held assumptions, although I do not think you have changed my mind much. (I do not believe I have changed your mind much either, for that matter.) I realized as I was writing these posts that my knowledge comes ex post facto from books, as I was knee-high to a grasshopper in 1965 and barely a teenager when the last chopper flew off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon in 1974. Your knowledge comes from personal experience and seems of a completely different type than my "book learning." That's not to say that one type of knowledge is better than the other. I am glad you returned and wanted to say again "thank you" and "welcome home."

I'll tell you a little story about when I knew we weren't going to 'win' in Viet Nam.

I entered the country in Saigon and flew from there to Hue where I was assigned to the 101st Abn (Ambl) operating out of Phu Bai Combat Base.

As we were being trucked from Hue to the base camp we travelled through farm land. We stopped at a corner where a water buffalo was crossing and there was a little kid, perhaps 5 or so leaning against a tree by the side of the road.

Decently dressed, he was wearing shorts a shirt and a little cap. He looked at me in the truck and I reached in my pocket and found a quarter.

I nodded to the kid and flipped the quarter to him.

He let the quarter hit the ground, spit on it, then turned and walked towards the house.

At that moment I knew it was pointless to take any unnecessary risks as this experience wasn't going to end well.

you can safely skip the non-fiction (or save it until later) and go directly to fiction, specifically Tim O'Brien's "Going After Cacciatto."

I consider GAC to be one of the great American war novels, right up there with Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" (American Civil War) or Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" (WWII).

Sorry about the tangents you mentioned above. At the risk of embarking on yet another, what is your opinion on Iraq? I have tended to take my lead from Vets For Peace and Iraq Vets Against the War, both of which have a strong presence in LA.

Finally, do you favor a return of military conscription, as a way to keep the system a little more honest? I find myself going back and forth on this, but I find myself lately leaning towards yes (heresy in some quarters of DU).

Looking forward to your next post . . .

The 'perfect storm' of arrogance, incompetence and pure stupidity.

Nothing wrong with getting rid of Sadaam and his family of murderers, rapists and thieves, but the mistakes that were made were really stupid mistakes showing a callous disregard for the lives of those who paid for those mistakes.

Frankly, because of the way Iraq was cobbled together, the west bore some responsibility for his actions.

The peace movement forgets the US has something like 4% of the worlds population, uses 25% of its resources and has 99% of the responsibility for seeing that genocides don't happen and some minimum standard of behavior is required of nation states. We don't always choose to act in every situation and the rationales for our choices are often tainted by avaricious self interest, but who can argue with Clinton's balkan war and Afghanistan? Even Granada and Panama aren't too great a stretch where justification is concerned.

Our energy policies and lack thereof have created a lot of the problems we now must deal with in the middle east, to include the Shah, Saudi Arabia and Israel/Palestine.

Much of the peace movement strikes me as isolationist and, while I'm no neo-con in any way shape or form, I do think we are our brothers keeper to an extent.

There was a lot to what Heinlein said about only those who have served in some capacity should be allowed to vote. There was an old Star Trek episode in which Gene Roddenberry described a society in which computer gaming substituted for actual nuclear weapons. The computer decided how many died in the attack and they presented themselves for disintegration.

When the middle class no longer needs to provide cannon fodder, it becomes isolated from the cost of war and so becomes too easily swayed. I'm not the first to say that by not having a draft and the attendant sacrifices it entails, foreign adventure becomes too palatable.

I'm sure DU has its share of hypocrites who mind it a lot less if some inner city black or poor white kid from Georgia does the country's dirty work while little Johnny goes to community college.

And no one should make the mistake of thinking dirty work doesn't need to be done. The world is still a dangerous place. And while no one actually hates us 'for our freedom', there are still lots of other reason, some valid, most not.

nvasion\occupation of Iraq in 2003, I busied myself reading and re-reading many of the works on the bibliography above, as these seemed to offer some sort of indication of what could plausibly be expected. Events played out even worse than I expected (and I did not expect smooth sailing). The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, while not exact, are startling, beginning with the lies that started it (Tonkin Gulf for Vietnam, WMD for Iraq), the officials who devised it (McNamara\Rusk\Bundy for Vietnam, Rumsfeld\Wolfowitz\Feith for Iraq), the burgeoning anti-war movement led by vets (VVAW for Vietnam, IVAW for Iraq) and the threat to expand the war to stave off defeat (Cambodia\Laos for Vietnam, Iran for Iraq). It's enough to make one despair of Santayana's dictum that those "who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it."

You ask "who can argue against . . . Afghanistan?" Well, I for one argued strenuously at the time that we were getting in bed with some really nasty characters in the Northern Alliance (like Dostum) and corporate stooges (like Karzai) who would lack legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of Afghans. As with Iraq, events in Afghanistan have borne out my serious misgivings in ways even I could not have predicted. The US and NATO now stand at the precipice of being defeated ignominiously there. And, once again, we circle back to the question of 'winnability' :)

I am not sure I agree with your assertion that the US bears 99% responsibility to make sure that genocide does not occur. (This is essentially a restatement of the so-called 'Wilsonian' rationale for using the military.) I think it is more a global responsibility and that the UN Security Council\General Assembly mechanism needs serious reform, so that major powers (like China re Sudan and Darfur) no longer enjoy veto power over the will of the global community.

As for the question of military conscription, most people on DU are well aware of the current 'poverty draft' and how unfair it is. (A little noted fact of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is that Lyndie England said she enlisted because there were no jobs within 50 miles of where she grew up in West Virgina, except for Wal Mart.) But opinions seem sharply divided at DU on whether to bring back universal military conscription. As I wrote above, I go back and forth on the issue but find myself tending towards favoring its return in the interests of fairness and shared sacrifice. It seems fundamentally unfair and unjust to me that those born into a life of privilege should be able to avoid serving the very democratic republic (emphasis on lower-case 'd' and 'r') that makes their privilege possible and that the poor and disenfranchised should bear a disproportionate burden to maintain that system.

Looking forward to your response.

The US made mistakes in Afghanistan, real political mistakes. The biggest military mistake was allowing the Afghans to go after Bin Laden. If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd be having a field day with that one.

Puppet governments usually don't consist of real leader, hence the term "puppet" govt.

We've already 'won' all we're going to win in Afghanistan. Time to pull out, let the Taliban back in then go after them again. They are easier to kill in Afghanistan than in Pakistan.

I wouldn't want my life dependent upon UN action. I'm old enough to remember when they got caught stealing the UNICEF money we kids collected. People who would do that, and its the same type of person there now, will seldom do the right thing.

I agree, lots of people decry the current poverty draft, but how many are out in the streets? Has anyone taken over Columbia, lately? Didn't think so.

Its one thing to tsk, tsk on Du, its another to hit the streets. Keeping a draft going is expensive and its 'low tech'. If you spend the money on 'boots' you don't get to lavish the dough on 'star wars' type programs. Reagan showed the way there. Pay off those campaign debts with defence spending. People love it and the defence contractors get rich. Its a win win except when you actually have to fight and then, unless you're going to nuke them from orbit or kill them all with Predators you end up with expensive toys and not enough infantrymen. Bush I and Cheney closed a lot of bases and then spent the money on toys and political paybacks. Clinton kept shrinking the army but didn't introduce a lot of toy programs, that's why he gets the bad rap for weakening our defence.

All the generals love the Reagan policies too, though. You have no one to go to work for after you retire if you hire a lot of soldiers but if you testify in Congress in favor of some esoteric weapons program, you'll never want for a high paying job.

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not sure why yet, as they sent me no email and I don't believe I violated any of the rules. I will try to reply to this again later today.

Cheers~

Actually those regiments and supplies came down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Truong Son). Laterals of the HCM Trail ran from the area near Tchepone, Laos, eastward into then-South Viet Nam and the A Shau Valley. It was the HCM Trail that served as the life-line of the PAVN (NVA) in the south (read The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War, 1998, by John Prados). The A Shau Valley was more-or-less a terminus on northern branches of the HCM Trail.

Parts of Cambodia were supplied, too, by the HCM Trail. However, the oft-forgotten Sihanouk Trail through Cambodia was an important supply line for the PAVN and NLF (VC). The ends of the Sihanouk Trail and the HCM Trail joined in myriad labyrinths from the Steel Tiger area of Laos down the entire border between Cambodia and the Republic of Viet Nam (South Viet Nam).

I flew over 250 missions over the trails .. mostly the HCM trail in the "Barrel Roll" and "Steel Tiger" areas of Laos .. mostly at night. But I did fly a few memorable missions over the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia.

we didn't get much of the 'big picture'. We combat assaulted out of the birds on a hill top with a map and a vector to the pz about 6 days steady hump away, looking for signs of infiltration. Of course, we didn't look too closely because if you missed the time at the pz they'd kick out more food and give you a new pz another week away. Paid to keep moving and show up on time.

I'll bet during those day time missions you saw a few of those 'flying phone poles'.

I do remember a hard surface road that looked (at that time) like a superhighway. You could see where it was bombed and repaired, easy to do with dirt.

I remember hearing an elephant trumpet and going the other way because in that part of the country they were often used to carry heavy caliber anti-aircraft guns that would cut down trees.

I remember 'rolling thunder' and feeling the ground shake and we were 10 klicks away.

Amazing how little you care about the 'big picture' when its just you and 22 other guys all under 25 yrs old and they've told you to keep an eye out for the 5th NVA Tiger division while strolling through the jungle.

Haven't had much interest in keeping up with the writing on the subject, either.

writing. You should write about it yourself . . . or at least record your memoirs as oral history. Iraq-nam proves this nation must never forget or else pay a horrible price.

I took this during operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971. The 5th NVA Tiger Division most likely came right down this "trail."

BTW: Welcome home and welcome to DU!