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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (12266)	9/1/1998 1:51:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<<the ARVN defeated the NVA without American combat troops.>> A battle is not a war, as others have noticed. It is also important to define "defeat". Many of the illusions about the war stem from from the habit of declaring victory after forcing the enemy to vacate strategically meaningless pieces of land. I have not read any impartial account that did not conclude that by 1974 the rot in South Vietnam was irreversible. Generals carried thousands of nonexistant troops on payrolls, diverting the salaries to their own accounts. Aid efforts were robbed of tens of millions of dollars. Huge quantities of supplies vanished into thin air. I have talked extensively with USAID officials who participated in this effort, and every one of them was convinced that the corruption was terminal, and further aid under the existing circumstances would have been throwing good money after bad. You can only prop up a nation for so long before expecting its leaders to make an attempt to save themselves. A few individuals and military units tried, but without systemic change the edifice was doomed. <<They were sitting ducks for the airpower that you believe wouldn't have worked> Please credit them with a little intelligence. I seriously doubt that they would have lined tanks up on the road unless they knew that they would not be facing significant air power. Yes, they changed the terms of engagement after the US withdrawal. They could have continued along the previous terms as long as needed to wear us down. Again, the critical point is that the war did not serve any vital American interest, and the communists knew it. <<attacking their port and one major city would have eliminated their capacity to invade the south.>> It would not have affected their capacity to tie our forces up for an indefinite period of time, which at the time in question was their objective. <<Moreover there was no need to occupy the north, merely the need to destroy their major assets and deprive them of the ability to project power into the south.>> What assets did they have that could not have been quickly rebuilt? They infiltrated men, material, and supplies under the most intense bombing the world had seen at the time. If we had invaded, what could we have done? Blow up the Haiphong docks, burn Hanoi, then what? Withdraw? Six months later you're right back to where you were before. Remember we are talking about two wars. A guerilla war to force US withdrawal, and a conventional war against the south. The second began when the first was accomplished. The tactics you suggest would have been effective against the second, but the communists would never have given us the chance to use them against it. They did not concentrate those assets until we were removed from the picture. Again, they were not stupid. <<Taking the war to the enemy, forcing them to use their assets to defend themselves>> The whole point of a guerilla war is that when you take the war to the enemy, you find that the enemy is no longer there. Land mines and booby traps are there in plenty, but no enemy. <<choosing the ground upon which to fight>> If they choose to fight you there. <<depriving them of sanctuary, cutting their supply lines, destroying their infrastructure>> How? By bombing the country into oblivion, soaking it with napalm and herbicides? We tried all of those, and what did they accomplish? What more would have been accomplished by sending a bunch of boys into the jungle? <<all of this we used in WWII>> Against a conventional enemy. Guerilla warfare was used to excellent effect against both the Nazis and the Japanese; the resistance against the Japanese was in fact the training ground for all later guerilla wars in Asia. An equation which might interest you: Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972, vowing to stamp out a communist insurgency which at that time numbered under 200 armed members operating in 4 provinces. After 25 years of the mailed fist, despite massive aid and the assistance of numerous American advisers, the insurgents had 25,000 men under arms and another 40,000 in training, waiting only for weapons. They were on the verge of mounting a serious attempt to take the country. When Cory Aquino came to power in '86, we worried that she was "soft on communism"; among her first official acts was a unilateral ceasefire and general amnesty. Six years later the insurgents were down to 8000 men, operating defensively in marginal areas. A small dose of hope for locally generated reform, and a little democracy, accomplished what guns and bombs could not. Two weapons that we never chose to use in Vietnam. Steve PS. I concede the last word to you. We go in circles, and I have work to do. Interesting interchange, though taxing on the memory - it's been years since I tried to discuss it in any organized fashion.