On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:47:36 -0400, Vince wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:11:33 -0700, "Leadfoot"
wrote:

We were prepared to fight as long as it took, IF--repeat IF--the
give-up rather than fight crowd in the US would have stopped
distracting the politicians so that we could have won.
So we could still be there today, eh?

No, we would have been out by 1968. Review the effect on
"negotiations" of the period 18-29 December 1972 for a concrete
example.

Ed, with all due respect the "dolchstoss" theory didn't wash then and it
doesn't wash now.

No "dolchstoss" involved here. There was certainly no knife in the
back in '64-'68. We had the military power to impose our will if we
had the political will to do so.

For whatever reason our proxies , the south Vietnamese
, would not fight with the same intensity as the Russian and Chinese
proxies, the north Vietnamese.

And, we were woefully ignorant of culture other than our own. The
agrarian south was not quite as easily mobilized as the industrialized
(and hence Marxist prone) north. Yet we could have "contained" the
communist threat readily had we not gradually fell victim to political
posturing and pacifism at home.

Throw in a draft, a Spock-raised generation with expectations of a
life of privilege, a rising expectation of equality for our
minorities, and a propensity increasingly for politicians to pander
for votes rather than doing what is arguably painful but better for
the nation in the long run.

Since both sides had nuclear weapons we
were constrained to fight a limited war. As a result "we" could not
win. Only the south Vietnamese could win and they did not want to fight.

Exactly the issue. We were still woefully uncertain of how to keep
wars "limited" and how to stem escalation.

This was obvious to the world in the late 60s.

Up until that line we had significant agreement. Not much of all of
this was obvious to the world in the late '60s. And, I would forecast
that in 2040, not much of what will be then obvious about jihadists
and dealing with them will have been known now.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com