Vince wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
: Ed Rasimus wrote:
:
: :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.
:
: The real problem was a new military strategy called 'gradualism',
: which was intended to show that we were willing to stay in the fight
: as long as required.
:
: It amounted to only putting in enough troops and force to make a
: little headway and then giving the other guy time to adjust before we
: did anything more.
:
: Along about 1964 we should have sunk everything in Haiphong Harbor,
: leveled Hanoi and put a million men in the country marching north.
:
:Except that the Russians quite clearly let us know that we risked
:nuclear war if we did that.

They weren't in a position to want to start such a war. Just follow
standard procedure under international law and declare North Vietnam
as blockaded and sink anything going in or out.

:Not to mention That we didn't have the
:million men in 1964 to spare from confronting the Warsaw Pact.

If we'd been serious about winning we could have gotten them.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson