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

To: BlueCrab who wrote (20584)	4/6/1999 1:35:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Johnson was a victim of his military staff; Nixon, the leader of his. Nixon spent three years realizing our limitations, one year acting on them. Sorry, but that's the only explanation for 1969-75. This couldn't be further from the truth. Johnson and MacNamara overruled their military staff at almost every point, beginning with Chief of Staff Harold Johnson, a survivor of Corregidor, who insisted that sending combat troops into SE Asia would be a disaster for us. He knew a lot about jungle warfare, and wanted no part of it. And Admiral US Grant Sharpe, who I believe was CINCPAC, who wrote Strategy for Defeat as soon as he was retired and able to speak out. Sorry, but my father was a military officer in the Pentagon at the time all this was going on; I well remember the discussions I heard with him and his friends, most of whom had been in Vietnam before anyone here had ever heard of the place. You are very mistaken in your understanding of the military's recommendations. We have civilian control of the military in this country, and they have the final say in what will be done. If a civilian leader like Johnson wants to implement an incremental response, wants to leave the aggressor's homebase off limits, wants to employ the same number of riflemen that the enemy has in the field, then that's what the military will have to try to work with. It was a recipe for getting troops killed, and the military knew this better than anyone. As for Nixon, he wanted to "Vietnamize" the war, to train and supply the ARVN to the point that they could handle the fighting on their own. Nixon had the majority of American combat troops out by 1972. The "Easter Offensive" of 1972 was mostly repelled by ARVN with American advisors. All US ground combat troops were out by 1973, not 1975. The ARVN held their own until the 1974 "Watergate" Congress cut off all their ammunition and gasoline supplies, removed American air cover, and left them open to the massive armored attack that Hanoi launched in 1975 once they realized that the US had abandoned South Vietnam.

To: BlueCrab who wrote (20584)	4/6/1999 1:53:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

MacArthur cut an impressive figure and gave a good speech, but it looks like it was his personal failure that doomed the American base in the Phillipines after Pearl Harbor. He had plenty of time to disperse the planes at Clark Field and failed to do so. And he sent the troops into Corregidor where they were trapped. The few who instead fled into the hills were able to fight the Japanese occupation force for years. General MacArthur was problem enough. President MacArthur... it's a good thing it was President Eisenhower I don't know if Truman should have threatened to use atomic bombs in Korea. The threat of doing so seems to be what allowed Eisenhower to end the fighting. The US was in a terrible position in Korea. So badly outnumbered that we had to attack and attack, because if we gave the enemy time to regroup they could well have destroyed the whole army. It looks like the sort of strategy that Lee had to use in the Civil War.