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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (85311)	8/12/2000 8:39:38 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Define "winning" by other side capitulating. Here you fall victim to Pentagoon thinking. Wars are not fought to force the other side to capitulate. They are fought to achieve political objectives, ideally objectives that serve some vital national interest. Capitulation of the enemy is a means to these ends, not an end in itself. The objectives of Desert Storm were clear and achievable: remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait, restore the previously existing government, and destroy Iraq's capability to retake the area after our departure. It helped a great deal that Saddam was fighting in a desert, an environment where air power reigns supreme and geurilla war is not very practical. Vietnam was a totally different case. The status quo ante could not be restored. The goal was to install a government capable of governing without a continued American occupation force behind it. That cannot be accomplished by finding someone superficially friendly and sticking that person in a palace. If the North Vietnamese had pulled out of South Vietnam, what was there to stop them from coming back as soon as we pulled out? The ARVN wasn't even capable of fighting the Viet Cong. If we had invaded North Vietnam and forced the NVA to retreat to the hills, what would that have accomplished? Could we have installed a government capable of surviving our departure? When colonial powers are driven out, the political/military force that drove out the colonists takes over. That's just the way it works: nobody else has the local organization needed for governance. Why fight history, especially when no vital national interest is at stake?