Vietnam was not at all an "extraordinary case". Humans are vicious. The various parties managed to kill something like 4% of the population, (about 2 million out of a total of about 50 million, counting North and South together) and that's fairly mainstream as far as the adequacy of violence.
Not extraordinary in terms of the % of the population killed in the conflict but rather in that the North took such high and disproportionate level of casualties in an effort to conquer the south and then kept going and won. If they took that level of casualties and then lost it wouldn't be extraordinary, if they took that level of casualties directly defending the north from invasion it wouldn't have been unusual and if two relatively equal sides bashed each other until they had Vietnam level casualties it would not have been unusual.
Fighting in cities is every bit as bad as jungle, as is well known in military circles.
In Vietnam we had both jungles and cities to fight in.
"As for "so far", I don't think its likely to happen in the future. I would just say "We don't have that in Iraq.""
What you do have is a rebellion in the southern part of the country that is generally believed to be funded by Iran.
Yes Iran is sticking their fingers in to the pot but we don't have a situation like in Vietnam where they are sending in regular army units that can attack when they want or flee across the border and be almost immune to ground attack when they don't want to fight, only to come back later. Iran is a complicating factor but it doesn't play a role similar to what North Vietnam played in the South.
"One statement was along the line of the NVA caused most of the combat casualties, the other was a statement about how the Vietcong would normally melt away at the first sign of a serious attack or decently supported defense but that the NVA would at times slug it out and fight very hard."
Yes, if you're in your own neighborhood, it's a lot easier to run away and live to fight another day. If you're "just visiting", you don't want to get separated from your buddies. Let me take your commentary and reverse it. From the Communist side, the ARVN would normally melt away at the first sign of a serious attack, but the US military would not. Look at it from the point of view of a US soldier. Where would you go if you deserted? You stick out like a sore thumb. Everyone who saw you would know that you were a deserter.
I think that was true, even if I don't think it was the only reason (NVA forces where better equipped and supported, had better training, and tended to operate in larger units then the Viet Cong), but whatever the reason my point is that forces that continue to fight in a tough spot dish out more casualties then forces that melt away when faced with opposition. The only way "melting away" can cause you to dish out more damage in the long run is if not "melting away" causes you to get wiped out. But the NVA was never in danger of being wiped out because North Vietnam (and for part of the war Laos and Cambodia) was basically immune from invasion. In short while I have no specific statistics everything I know about Vietnam leads me to believe the NVA caused more damage to the Americans then the guerilla forces in the south, but if anyone can find hard specific data I will defer to the new information.
Look at the Palestinians. They've been taking it for decades and still serve it up.
I think a strong majority of Palestinians consider Israel to be their enemy in an active war. While the US is not exactly popular in Arab countries I don't think the situation is similar even for Iraqis let alone for the Arab population as a whole.
Examples of this that are familiar in the US include the American revolution, which pitted a rural American against an urban England, and the Civil war, where a rural South held off the far more numerous urban North for some years.
I think the Civil War is the better example. The Revolutionary war is complicated by the fact that we had help from France and to a lesser extent other European countries.
Re: "Guerilla warfare is low (at least lower) intensity warfare. And guerillas facing a powerful conventional force usually can only hope to achieve the combination of being a major annoyance and continuing to survive as an intact force."
This "usual" only applies to guerillas that are fighting against a government of their own people. When guerillas are fighting against western "oppressors", their track record is quite good.
In many of those cases the "usual" was all that the enemy of the western forces did. The problem is sometimes that is enough (like in the situation of the US vs. the Vietnamese communists), but Vietnam wasn't exclusively a guerilla war. North Vietnam caused a lot of American casualties with conventional units, they took over the South with a conventional invasion, and before the US got involved they managed to wipe out the French in regular battles at places like Dien Bein Phu and in the battle that destroyed Groupement Mobile 100 during its retreat.
Tim |
