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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131797)	5/6/2004 3:25:47 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

In both cases marxist insurgencies were suppressed and defeated. And both of them have jungle environments that would definitely compare to Vietnam and Laos. You may be getting close to an understanding. I'm certain that the problem was solved INTERNALLY and that the majority of the people eventually opposed the insurgents. One of the Mao truisms is that terrorists cannot survive without the support of the population any more than a fish can survive without an ocean. An insugency against an entrenched government cannot long exist unless a significant minority of the population supports the insurgents. If the insurgency is attacking and resisting a foreign occupying force, the probability that the population will support it is great and the ability of the "foreigners" to operate effective intelligence is greatly reduced. So what you're telling me is that we'll never be able to properly defend against an enemy that is willing and able to be more brutal than we are? No, what I'm telling you is that we'll never be able to properly cow and intimidate sovereign peoples into the "ways of light and honey" no matter how brutal we are. We're actually quite good at "defending." How many attacks have occurred on our own soil? We can get a lot smarter about protecting ourselves overseas as well. Of course if we keep inflaming the rage and passion of those who MIGHT oppose us, we'll never get ahead of the curve. My POV was that the tactics we used in Vietnam failed miserably.. I keep trying to convince you that our tactics failed miserable because there WERE NO TACTICS THAT COULD HAVE SUCCEEDEDED. You don't want to hear that, but the reality is that only a true scorched earth tactic could have killed the ideas that wouldn't die and which fueled the resistance of the S. Vietnamese VC and the N. Vietnamese Army. In Vietnam we lost the war of ideas. At that point the war of bullets could only be won by killing and killing until the spirit died in those that were Vietnamese nationalists. We actually tried that too, but we ran out of families that could stomach the thought of their sons and daughters dying for a cause that seemed too slippery to grasp then, and still does today. Why would you "regret" the outcome in Vietnam more than you'd regret the initial decision to get involved or the decision to continue and escalate the conflict?