Losing
Fred Reed:
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...The relentless affirmation of [the US military's] lethality leads to underestimation of the enemy. Before you stick your hand into a hornets’ nest, it is well to examine the hornets. We don’t. The Taliban are primitive mountain-crawlers with AKs. “No problem, sir! We can take them. We’re the best equipped etc.” In an ancient war of classical antiquity, the Vietnamese were held in contempt as rice-propelled paddy maggots. No problem, sir. We’ve got fighter planes and tanks and endless zip-wowees. Everything but understanding and curiosity.
Of course, Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City. In like fashion, the French also got run out of Viet Nam, and from Algeria, the Russians from Afghanistan, the Israelis from Lebanon, in each case a trained modern military losing to angry and inventive amateurs...
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Read it all.
posted by Concerned American | 4:02 AM
11 Comments:
As usual, Fred is spot on. He tells it like it is. From one who has been and seen the elephant.
If you don't like it, go to Youtube for some more Lee. Most of the masses do.
Semper Fi, 0321
Hackworth, Cooper, and now Reed. Thankfully they've all left something for us.
See your duty and then do it.
Again, it's not about winning a war. It's about keeping the war machine running for as long as possible, to get the most mileage and bang for your buck. When the .gov comes out in the first month of the war and tells you this could last 30 years or more, some warning lights have to be going off, or you're a complete idiot. They just told you how they want to play the game, 'invest in Helliburton', we're here for the long haul. Send your kids, and your grandkids too, we'll use 'em all! We can drive in circles and lob shells forever, as long as we can keep selling new gadgets and uniforms. Never hurts if your buddy owns a few contracting firms either. Vietnam showed us we can get a decade or so out of a little war, think of the profits if we can create several at a time. False flag ops are us!
Just remember what Smedley said; "War is a Racket"!
0321
Viet Nam was lost, and Korea before it, not because our military was defeated by a determined enemy, but instead because it was defeated by our National Leadership with no desire to win setting Rules of Engagement that ensured defeat. Much as National Leadership ensured 50 years of slavery for Eastern Europe by ignoring Patton's counsel at the end of WWII. And we once again headed down that same path in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until this country's leadership is willing to recognize the enemy and WANT to defeat them, the farce will continue at immense cost to the members of the military. The stench is overwhelming. Religion of Peace indeed!
Spineless politicians and the micromanagement of the Viet Nam War by that drunken buffoon LBJ is what did it. We won in the field. Tet '68 was a huge defeat for the NVA and the VC. The Parlor Pink Walter Cronkite and the fifth column here at home did in our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. I'm sure the French Army could make a similar case about Algeria.
Mark-
"Rules of Engagement" = clinging to the moral high ground...
Defeatism.
Win the fight. That is the moral course in a war worth fighting.
AP
No sir, Vietnam and Korea were lost because they were never winnable under any known circumstances.
That applies more so in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither was winnable, ever.
Oh, and just so everyone knows, the War Against Iraq was lost on the day it began, is lost now, will be lost in the future. The War to find the 9/11 perps hiding in Afghanistan was lost the moment it became the nation building War Against Afghanistan. Only fools think otherwise.
This was and is all about creating a bogeyman to replace the all powerful Communist monolith that expired in 1989 due to self implosion. The US government had virtually nothing to do with that, the Reagan mythology does not withstand even cursory examination with regard to that collapse. It's exactly the same thing that happened in the Enviro-religion. Since most pesticides were fixed, the so-called ozone depletion chemicals were fixed, these enviro-warriors needed a pollutant that could not only not be fixed, it was required for all life on earth. That's the how and why of carbon dioxide being chosen as the enviro-bogeyman.
Will we see men who ought to be smart enough to see how the US government is playing and using them wise up and say bye-bye to that government?
Pardon me for being a cynic, but I have my doubts. Even Fred Reed doesn't seem to be able to penetrate their ox's hide.
I suppose we are all, being only human, both right and wrong most of the time.
Pat H. never fails to provide an example, post after post.
Jon III
Anon @ 6:50, yeah: if the American people hadn't caved, we'd still be winning in Viet Nam!
To BRASS ---
Funniest, yet most truthful post of this thread!
How right you are!!! HA HA
Reed hasn't just left stuff for us. He's still writing a lot on his own dime. He's a pretty thoughtful old troubles journalist and even was a member of the Green MoSheen in Vietnam until the shrapnel took him out. Interesting guy. After he got out of the Corps he went looking for trouble, as much as anything, as a journalist.
His book on VietNam is probably one of the better reads about it ever on some levels, even if it isn't factual, because it describes the politics better than it could have if it WAS factual.
Great part about "I'm not gonna let Charlie kill us" and "Charlie" wasn't the VC, Charlie was a bad officer. "Au Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go", I recommend it highly.
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