A couple things

[Ziggurat]

If we won in Vietnam, I would hate to see what losing looks like.

We won against the insurgents. We never really fought against the regular North Vietnamese army, and that's the force that won against the South Vietnamese. We also won against the Japanese and the Germans in WWII, and at far greater cost than we paid in Vietnam. And against the Confederacy in the civil war, also at far greater cost. It is not merely the size of your losses which dictates victory or defeat.

 

[pipelineaudio]

As for so-called "political cowardice"; stuff that for a joke. What a laugh. What the hell was the USA doing in Vietnam, directly fighting in support of a corrupt regime, against the wishes of a significant fraction of the Vietnamese populace who had managed to shake off French colonialism only to see the USA replace France as puppetmaster?

WHOA!!!

Now were getting a little off

LITTLE of the general SVN population wanted rule by the NVN. NONE wanted the rules of the VC

VC were stupid hippy kids with pie in the sky ideals. Not any different from angry lesbians at college screaming at you to eat tofu instead of meat

People ignored them, or better, told them to get a job and contribute

Then since noone would listen to them they got violent and FORCED them to play along

I hate when revisionists act like people welcomed the VC with open arms, they sure as HELL didnt

All the VC did was pave a path for the NVA

 

[Kerberos]

We won against the insurgents. We never really fought against the regular North Vietnamese army, and that's the force that won against the South Vietnamese. We also won against the Japanese and the Germans in WWII, and at far greater cost than we paid in Vietnam. And against the Confederacy in the civil war, also at far greater cost. It is not merely the size of your losses which dictates victory or defeat.

No it's also a question of such things as whether you inf the end achieve your war aims. Remind me again, did SK end up as a "bastion of democracy" (US objective) or as a part of a unified Communist Vietnam (VC objective)?

 

[steverino]

Personally, it was clear to me that the case to invade Iraq was never proven.

We invaded Iraq because Iraq invaded Kuwait. We, and the coalition, made a damn good case, as I recall.

 

[Kerberos]

Won against whom?

The insurgents in general, has insurgent violence in Iraq nbeen eliminated? Significantly reduced?

We've essentially defeated the Ba'athists - Sunni violence is now dominated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates at this point.

Congratulation, The Sunni Insurgency has morphed (and grows) let's celebrate.

This is a multi-party war, and if all you do is track the occurence of how many times violence pops up in the headlines, you won't have a clue about what the actual dynamics are.

It might not give me a clue about the "dynamics", but it will give me a good idea about what direction the war is going.

Nor (as in Vietnam) is victory over only one party sufficient.

Nor (as with Vietnam) have you provided any basis for your claims.

 

[Crossbow]

We invaded Iraq because Iraq invaded Kuwait. We, and the coalition, made a damn good case, as I recall.

Ummm,

I think that 'kittenindublin' is referring to the current Iraq War as opposed to the Iraq War of some 17 years ago.

 

[Crossbow]

How did "we" lose the Vietnam war? Because the government of South Vietnam fell? Well, yes, it fell. But we had stopped fighting well before that, and they fell to a conventional army invasion that our own forces could quite easily have repelled, if they had been involved. In fact, one of the supposed lessons of Vietnam is that the American military is poorly equiped to fight insurgencies rather than conventional wars, but we defeated the insurgency and didn't take part in defending against the conventional invasion. Yes, in a sense "we" lost, but "we" lost because we quit, even though nothing other than domestic politics forced us to make that decision. Is that acknowleging that the war is lost, as you claimed? No, it's deciding to lose the war.

Well if you want to say that we lost the Vietnam War because we gave up, or we lost the Vietnam War because we did not properly engage the North Vietnamese military, or some such other thing, than that is fine by me.

However, the issue and the fact of the matter, is that we lost the Vietnam War. We left, our ally was defeated, the enemy we were fighting then proceeded to take over the nation that we tried so hard to protect.

The real lesson in both the Vietnam War and the current Iraq War is that military success does not always lead to political success.

 

[Ziggurat]

The insurgents in general, has insurgent violence in Iraq nbeen eliminated? Significantly reduced?

It's been significantly reduced in places, yes. There's not a lot of insurgent violence outside of Baghdad and Anbar. Insurgencies take time to defeat. But contrary to the Vietnam-era conventional wisdom, insurgencies usually fail, and there's no reason to think this one can't be defeated too, provided we don't just give up.

It might not give me a clue about the "dynamics", but it will give me a good idea about what direction the war is going.

No, actually, it won't. News stories in the mainstream press NEVER give you any idea about the problems that the insurgency faces. They won't tell you if the insurgency is running out of cash, running low on volunteers, having moral problems, etc. They'll only tell you about the number of attacks. But that's not a good metric for measuring progress. American casualties against Germany in WWII skyrocketed during and after Normandy, but we were closer than ever before to victory. If all you tracked were the number of American deaths, you'd think we were losing because of D-Day. And that's the level of press coverage we're getting right now from the mainstream press.

 

[Hutch]

Zig is right in saying that the Tet Offensive pretty well destroyed the Viet Cong insurgency when they tried to take over the cities and were forced into stand-up, straight ahead fighting aganst the US and South Vietnam forces.

Where he errs a bit is that the war then continued with the US and S. Vietnam forces fighting a more conventional conflict against a trained and disciplined North Vietnam Regular Army (see Khe Sahn and other actions). The use by North Vietnam of Laos and Cambodia as supply routes/flanking positions led to our involvement there and the spreading of the chaos in that region (which might have been unavoidable in any circumstance).

So it wasn't just beating the insurgency in Vietnam; it was our inability to impose our will on the North Vietnamese government, who were committed to total war to achieve their goal of a unified Vietnam under their rule. We (the US) could not or would not commit the resources needed to defeat an enemy committed to total war (the only way to do so is to completely destroy their will/ability to fight, which usually involves invasion/conquest (see Germany in WWII).

Vietnam was a gamble that in fighting a limited war the other side would also limit their fighting and that something like Korea would result. However, the other side didn't play by our rules and unlike Korea, had control of land on the border of South Vietnam that allowed for manuever. It cost us 50,000 dead before we figured out that we were not going to go unlimited and that the best we could do was make the best deal we could.

And in regards to Iraq, it is noted that despite nearly 20 years of training and equipping by the United States, the S. Vietnamese Army was unable to offer substantial resistance to the N. Vietnamese without US support. Hopefully, the lessons learned in training foreign troops are being applied to the New Iraqi forces...but time will tell. My own feeling is that the South was fighting for the somewhat fuzzy (for them) concept of democracy and freedom (neither in great supply under Theui, Ky, Mihn, et.al.), while the North fought for the unity of all Vietnamese and the expulsion of all foreigners who sought to dominate the Vietnamese people--and that apparently was worth dying for more than concepts for sometime in the future...a potential lesson for US involvement in Iraq...

In a way, Iraq and Vietnam are polar opposites; we defeated the insurgency but were unable to defeat a regular military force in the North Vietnamese Army. In Iraq we comprehensively defeated the regular forces, but to date have been unable to gain control of the multiple and varied insurgent and militia groups.

It is, as the King of Siam says, a puzzlement. With blood added.

IMHO as always...

 

[steverino]

It is, as the King of Siam says, a puzzlement. With blood added.

IMHO as always...

But with a lot less blood this time around...and fewer whores.