To: tejek who wrote (234579 ) 6/3/2005 5:48:35 PM From: TimF Read Replies (2) | Respond to There is nothing inevitable about guerilla warfare defeating conventional forces, if there was most countries would junk their conventional forces and train bands of guerillas. During Tet we devastated the Vietcong and hit the NVA currently in the south fairly hard. But we didn't do anything about the North, and the communists could always pull back, slow things down for a bit, and then come back for more when they were ready. We would never be directly defeated by anything they could throw at us, but we couldn't defeat them either. If the enemy has a substantial safe haven where they can easily escape to, and where they can be re-supplied its pretty hard to defeat them. When you are strategically on the defense like we were in Vietnam, you can hurt the enemy, and you can keep them from defeating you, and we did both, but you can't eliminate the threat. If the enemy is determined, and you never seek to take out the enemies base, than you don't actually win. We eventually left. The south might have held against the conventional invasion that followed (like they did against the Eastertide offensive after most, but not all of our forces had left) but we stopped sending them more weapons and supplies.
