The Importance Of Will
An excerpt from this paper:
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...It was the notion of gradualism and retaliation, one more turn of the screw. I personally thought it would be a token of U.S. resolve, and a sample of what we could do. I really thought it would impress them. I now think it just infuriated them. And we just kept doing it. We did more and more and more and more, up until the Cambodia invasion and the mining of the harbors and the B-52s over Hanoi, and it was never enough. We never quite grasped the fact that the North Vietnamese intended to win. Regardless.
I figured out recently that if the North Vietnamese put up a memorial like the one we have on the Mall, and it was adjusted for the relative populations of our country and theirs, the one in Hanoi would have 7 million names on it. Just soldiers. Interesting, isn't it? The North Vietnamese lost about 500,000 dead, and the VC 300,000. That's 800,000. And we lost 58,000.
Of course, the ARVN lost a lot, too. But the North Vietnamese main forces lost up to 40 percent of their troops every year. That's enormous. It's unbelievable. I didn't think they'd be able to keep their soldiers fighting, given the casualties we were inflicting. I should have known better. In World War II I fought in a unit with casualties like that. The 90th Division had 25,000 casualties in just eleven months, so I should have known.
When you step back-and I didn't have these thoughts while I was there - you see the difference between a country that's fighting on its own terrain for its survival, and a country that's sending its forces halfway around the world to "contain" Communism. We asked a lot of sophistication from our public and our troops-maybe more than the country was able to give. I don't think Americans can be expected to support a long, inconclusive war...
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Read it all.
The converse applies, as well.
posted by Concerned American | 3:44 AM
21 Comments:
My readings have the NVA/VC at two million which seems closer when you consider the fact that the ARVN lost so many. At any rate, I remember an interview with Giap years ago when the interviewer bought him a bottle of Cognac as a present, and Giap was extremely pleased, since even this hero to North Vietnam was not able to afford such.
That's 2 mil actual KIA for NVA/VC?
Wow....even more proof of the point:
It's the size of the fight in the dog that matters.
Its always been about the size of the fight in the dog that matters.
Also, it takes the "home team" doing anything possible to win as well. There are no rules in war. They fight dirty, we have to fight dirty. Whatever your imagination can come up with.
And they think that they can win against Americans how?
Do they think that somehow there will be an economic up-side to fighting us? Perhaps shipments of food will continue from our ports? Let me help: Not one ship full of food will leave US waters bound for the shores of a foreign power working against the USA inside the USA. That may mean a new set of reefs offshore made of steel and puffed grains, followed by investigation/prosecution.
The best way is to trade with free peoples. C.O.D.
By any means necessary.
The power formula: (population + assets X will)
My boss used to eat dinner with Giap- around 1960. Giap told him he was surprised to win at Dien Bian Phu!
EJR914,
Really? God doesn't uphold morality during wartime? Can anyone do anything during wartime, because during wartime, the immutable, universal laws of human nature are somehow suspended? Everyone who dies in war goes to heaven? Nobody can do wrong during wartime? Terrestrial survival is the highest good?
No. Death before dishonor. And dishonor includes doing evil.
Thanks for the post. The difference here, of course, is that the NVA and VC had an unlimited supply column from the ChiComs and who knows where else, depsite the US's efforts to interdict supply. That is a HUGE issue. The Free For, of course, has 'The People's Quartermaster', as Mao suggested, but that is a fer piece away from a steady influx rear-area supply line. The FreeFor will have no rear area and it's a guarantee there will be no Ho Chi Minh Trail analogue, either, from anywhere... those facts notwithstanding, there is still plenty in this article to salt away.
Vietnam was a civil war no different than the civil war known in the USA as the Korean War.
I'm 57 years old and a retired US Army NCO. All I've known my entire life is the USA at war somewhere.
Why ?
DAN
III
Vietnam was a mistake. I always say the president who got us into Vietnam should have been shot!
Remember, we Americans are not the French!
Oh.... Never mind.
Obama emissaries to the UN say "U.S. bad," Khmer Rouge genocidalist Pol Pot "showed restraint."
Setting the stage...
http://floydreports.com/anti-american-globalists-defend-u-s-at-the-un/
That's a great link. Thank you, sir.
Brass,
Please teach us how to "honorably" engage the enemy and to fight ... fair with your vast amount of combat experience.
Curtis,
As soon as you tell me what fighting "unfairly" is.
Defending yourself from a ruthless invader, or an unlawful, rogue government, is done only one way.
You kill them until they leave. You kill them in ways that makes them sick. You kill their families and children if you can.
Until they leave or stop their criminality.
Simple.
Blogger Curtis said...
Brass,
Please teach us how to "honorably" engage the enemy and to fight ... fair with your vast amount of combat experience.
November 10, 2010 6:27 AM
Anonymous Brass said...
Curtis,
As soon as you tell me what fighting "unfairly" is.
November 10, 2010 8:47 PM
The first thing we do, in order to have a chance of winning, is...
to stop fighting amongst ourselves!!!!!!!!
Even in war, each of us must reconcile himself to whatever he is called upon to do to achieve victory, whether by duty or mere circumstance.
Do you really think that there will be time for the luxury of philosophical debate? Do you think that the opfor indulge in moral qualms and dilemmas remotely parallel to your own?
Hold yourself to the highest standards possible... for your family, friends and countrymen. All others pay the price, by whatever means possible, for their treason, complicity, treachery, duplicity, apathy and ignorance.
Gen'l Forrest, sir:
Good words, and a fighter such as yourself knows the importance of action as well.
War to the knife, knife to the hilt.
Your ob'dnt servant,
Johnny Reb
Pat H.,
Children are innocent. Deliberately killing the innocent is murder.
Seems to me I read that the truth is that we won the war in Vietnam - until the politicians gave it away at the "Peace Talks". The North agreed to end hostilities, then waited until we had de-mobed, cut and removed most of our troops and equipment . At which time they kicked the ass of the South - which had never been prepared to fight, to invest with the willing intensity/intensity of will shown by the North.
The will of the North was strong, but it wouldn't have been enough if the politicians hadn't screwed our military time and time again, finally punking it in '73. Correct me if I am wrong.
Knife to the hilt!
Honor to the Highest.
Jon
III
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