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#81
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Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:48:07 GMT, Guy Alcala wrote: Ed Rasimus wrote: On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush" wrote: You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio doesn't imply a great victory. Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population. " A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). C'mon, Guy, that sort of statement is beneath you. If I had made the statement you seem to be imputing to me, that would be true. I will assert repeatedly, as will literally thousands of USAF participants that we did not employ "counter-value" targeting. We studiously avoided towns, population centers, dams/dikes, hospitals, cultural sites--hell, we even avoided targeting their airfields and the ports for most of the war. Sure, to the extent of our ability to do so, but they still managed to be hit by accident. Employing far more accurate weaponry than was available then, the U.S. and Israelis still manage to kill high percentages of civilians as collateral damage without any intent to do so. And we certainly bombed rail-lines, bridges, etc. that were being repaired by civilian workers, factories (steel mills, power plants, bicycle shops, textiles, etc.) that were being operated by civilians, bridges and roads that were being transited by civilians, etc., not to mention all the ordnance that was jettisoned or dropped by accident over a long period of time, a/c that crashed in populated areas, and so on. Ignoring the ordnance you were trying to drop on targets and which undoubtedly killed civilians during the course of that, can you say that you know for a fact that a drop tank (or an MER, loaded or otherwise) that you jettisoned didn't kill civilians on the ground? Of course not. Can you even state with assurance where they might have landed, within say 10 sq. km? Nope. The likelihood of any one such incident killing someone may be small, but multiply hundreds of thousands of such incidents over a 4.5 year period for North Vietnam, and the total dead/injured will add up to a substantial number. And then there's the old favorite cause of civilian deaths in wartime, even when they're never in the path of ordnance; lack of shelter, poor nutrition and lack of clean water followed by disease, and lack of medical attention. These causes tend to kill millions of civilians in wars; just look at what's been going on in the various civil wars in Africa for the last 20 years or so. Civilians don't have to be targets to die in war in large numbers. As I said, killing (or if you prefer, being the indirect or direct cause of deaths) of large numbers of civilians is easy in wartime. Don't give me that "killing civilians is easy" bull****. See above. They tend to be far softer (and more numerous) targets than military forces. I was refuting your assertion that when America withdraws, we lost. You might want to consider the economy of Vietnam today. You might want to look at their trade and tourism. You might even ask if they are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country. Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia, including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people? Communism was a dreary failure, and nobody needed several million dead to tell them that some form of market economy with a private sector, with all its faults, provides a better quality of life for the average person. Vietnam would be moving the way it is now regardless of the war; perhaps the only thing the war did was delay that movement (after all, people would be getting tired of communist inefficiency, corruption and brutality that much sooner, if it had started earlier). Vietnam probably would have been an Asian version of Tito's Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s, if we had recognized Ho Chi Minh back in 1945 (or even 1954) and the war hadn't been fought. But we blew it, and blew it repeatedly, for what no doubt seemed like compelling reasons (or at least, politically expedient ones) at the time. Yes, Guy. I'm claiming that containment, the Truman Doctrine, the Cold War, etc, etc. resulted in the eventual collapse of world communism. No, you claimed that fighting the Vietnam War caused Vietnam to move towards embracing capitalism. I agree that the containment policy worked, but nowhere is there any evidence that fighting a hot war was necessary to cause the change you ascribe to Vietnam since 1975. Unless, as I asked Kevin, you believe that People's Army losses in the Korean war was the cause of the PRC's move towards a more materialist society? Today, there are only two Marxist-Leninist communist countries remaining--N. Korea and Cuba. One is about to collapse economically and seeks to reunite with the South while the other is awaiting the death of their great leader so that they can convert. We wouldn't have been better off if we recognized Ho and Pol Pot and the others. As opposed to recognizing Stalin, Mao, Tito, and Ceaucescu (not to mention Saddam Hussein), just to name a few? Are you saying Vietnam presented a greater threat to the U.S. than Mao's PRC did?! And who says Cambodia would have wound up with a nut job like Pol Pot if they hadn't already put up with 15 yars of so of instability caused by the war? Guy |
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MLenoch wrote:
From: Guy Alcala wrote: Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? I do not see where this was claimed. Do you have a specific line that asserts this? Ed is claiming that the U.S. killed between one and three million North Vietnamese. Since the DRVN admits losses of 1.1 million dead PAVN/VC combined, then any number North Vietnamese dead over 1 million or so has to be civilians (North or South), unless Ed has very different figures for NVN casualties from the ones I've seen. If he does, I'd love to see his source; I provided the one I was using in my previous post. The US didn't achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit we might get, i.e. we lost. Not an unreasonable conclusion. OK. You might even ask if they are truly the great communist society that Marx envisioned, or if they don't look a bit more like Adam Smith country. Are you claiming that the war is what made that happen? If so, how do you explain the same thing happening in all the former communist states in Europe and Asia, including all the ones where we didn't kill several million of their people? The European former communist states are not at all the "same thing" as Vietnam today. I do not think this is a good conclusion. The economic status of these European states is not solely or mostly based on tourism. Neither is Vietnam's, but I was thinking more of the PRC. Guy |
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Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Ed Rasimus wrote: On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush" wrote: You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio doesn't imply a great victory. Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population. " A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the US only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you want to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war participation as being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths per *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high-- one-point-five My Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures from the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US" responsibility just completely out of whack? see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total of days is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) - 1975. However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia, dating from sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave to you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage. Now consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of ammo but also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were areas nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living in the area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other allies) were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they chose, anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis? Damned right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically classified as VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if the GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare. Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not, but having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC to kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them would be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't rocket science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the majority of the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly. If you disagree, I'll be happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the majority of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems. Guy |
#84
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In article , Dave Holford
wrote: Probably the most succinct statement is a memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton to SecDef McNamara. Key excerpt: 3/24/65 (first draft) ANNEX-PLAN OF ACTION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM 1. US aims: 70% --To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor). 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. ALSO--To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT--To "help a friend," although it would be hard to stay in if asked out. For the full memo and context (from the Pentagon Papers), see http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel...on3/doc253.htm Wow, that has to be the longest "succinct" statement in the history of the English language. Do you have the actual memo, rather than the (first draft)? Dave I suspect that this stayed at the draft level, even though it was a basic policy document. That's not uncommon in government -- people tend to stamp "draft" on all manner of things. You'd have to search through the Pentagon Papers (see link) to see if there was a sequel. MacNamara has described this memo as one of the key policy statements. McNaughton was killed in an airline crash relatively early in his tenure, so he may not have been around to finalize it. |
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"Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at Hue during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that supports your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian deaths? In the immediate aftermath of the battle for Hue, U.S./South Vietnamese forces reported digging up 2,800 bodies that appeared to have been executed, hands tied behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads, or in some cases just buried alive. Douglas Pike, at that time an intell officer in SVN, wrote a report (1970) about the executions because their scope and scale was so unlike anything the VC had practiced prior to Tet (or since), and arrived at a figure possibly as high as 5,700. However, those figures have been called into question, because apparently they were supplied to him by a South Vietnamese intell unit, the 10th Political Warfare Battalion, whose whole charter was to discredit the NLF, and Pike apparently had noi way of checking the totals himself. Then again, its possuible that at least some of the executions were carried out by the South Vietnamese; a U.S. intell officer told a U.S. reporter (who had been at Hue during the battles and who returned twice more to do interviews) that South Vietnamese Intell units had sent in some hit squads themselves to kill collaborators while the battle was still continuing. In any case, let's assume a range of 2,800 - 5,700 were executed by the VC in Hue - no one is ever likely to know the true number. So you are talking a range of between nine and nineteen times the My Lai debacle--but you are confident that the US was somehow responsible for most of the civilian casualties? And while Pike may have been commenting on single-event scale, don't forget that the VC and NVA had (and continued to after Tet) a pretty good reputation for using murder as a tool for "winning hearts and minds"--Hue would not account for the sum total of civilian casualties attributed to them. Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it, either... Oh please, Kevin - you really don't think that I'd base claims on a movie, do you, whether "Platoon" or for that matter, "The Green Berets"? I should have put a ":-)" after that...but it does seem as if you have bought into Mr. Stone's philosophy with that "especially US" bit... And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous "reeducation camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient to slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look nioce and tidy for folks later)? Certainly possible that some of them did, although if they just wanted to kill people wholesale why bother to ship them to a 're-education' camp, when they can just take them into the jungle, dig a trench and mow them down? Worked for the Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD. You must have forgotten that the NKVD also had this not-so-good-for-your-health concept labled as the "Gulag"? So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, That would be quite an assumption in this case. Sure, but we don't have any better ones. Ed is the one claiming the U.S. killed between 1 and 3 million _North_ Vietnamese. the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really swell guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians? Of course not - they were considerably more brutal and ruthless than the GVN governments, who weren't exactly known having much concern for their own citizens themselves. After all, it was the GVN who designated Free-Fire zones for the U.S. military. And it was the DRVN that sent so many "civilians" trekking down the HCM Trail with their bicycle-pack load of ammo...do you count those as civilian kills in the US tally? Just how do you think we managed to kill those *millions* of noncombatants? Simple firepower. See below. I note that the number you are touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the German total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained during WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught in the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of your figures. I'm glad you brought up Germany. Kevin, I can't give you the source because I saw it many years ago, but it was a credible one. I don't remember whether it referred to bombs alone, bombs and artillery shells, all ammunition, and included the casing weights or just the HE equivalent, but the total (of whatever metric) used by ALL the combatants in World War 2 was ca. 3 megatons. By comparison, the U.S., over the 1964 -1973 period dropped/fired 8 Megatons (same metric) on SE Asia. SVN received either the first or second percentage of this tonnage, with Laos holding the other place. The DRVN was in either third or fourth place for tonnage (can't remember if they came in before or after Cambodia). The vast majority of this firepower was quite inaccurate; it's the nature of war that civilians get killed just by being in the way, even when they're not deliberately being targeted. We employed the vast majority of the firepower in the south, so clearly we would have killed the vast majority of the civilians. The VC and NVA certainly killed their share, but they just didn't have the logistics to kill relatively indiscriminately in large numbers, as the U.S. and to a lesser extent our allies could, even if they'd wanted to (and for the VC, that would be counter-productive). Yeah, they fired a few rockets into the cities on occasion, and civilians certainly died during the invasions in 1968/72/75, but the sheer firepower was lacking to kill large numbers of civilians indiscriminately. The VC tended to kill civilians deliberately and discriminately, targeting government representatives, uncooperative village leaders etc. for assassination/execution. They didn't do it by bombing a village. Yeah, and they never did any "indiscriminate" mining or boobytrapping, either, I guess. Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every *day*? I don't think so. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to lable the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a "victory" for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more accurate than not. Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one they were prepared to pay, they definitely won. Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of the last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most of their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great that thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it? What exactly did they "win"? Unless you believe that Germany defeated the Soviet Union in WW2, or Japan defeated China ditto? And as I pointed out to Ed, he has presented no evidence that the subsequent tilt towards a more material society by Vietnam was a result of the war. China has been progressing in that direction at an even faster pace than Vietnam, and I haven't seen anyone claiming that was because of their losses in the Korean (or Vietnam; the PRC employed a lot of workers on the NE and NW railroads) wars. Of course, all of this is really moot, and smacks of McNamara's numbers war. If you wish to claim that the number of dead on each side defines which side won and lost, then you must believe that the Axis powers won World War 2, because they killed far more of the citizens of the allied powers than vice versa. The DRVN achieved their goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit we might get, i.e. we lost. Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed that responsibility off to them, With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in trouble, yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise. Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75 invasion. We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big decisive difference). the VC had been eliminated as a major factor (and had been since the days following Tet 68, vastly different from the situation in the mid 60's), Yup. and the NVA had been for all intents and purposes pushed out of RVN territory. Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the accords, _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN, which he knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion. Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason for their defeat). Two years later things went to hell in a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion of the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US military? Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was defeated; that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by that PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen the anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S. military was equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they didn't have to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price higher than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many weaker powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war. I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate cost, and for what ultimate gain? In the end it was better that the Viets themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us. And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the war. That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the RVN a couple of years prior. I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an RVN still controlled by its own sovereign government. As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against military, it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours. No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than early 73 in-toto). Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not achieve its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a defeat for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book. We must read different books. :-) Brooks Guy |
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"Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Ed Rasimus wrote: On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush" wrote: You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio doesn't imply a great victory. Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population. " A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the US only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you want to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war participation as being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths per *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high-- one-point-five My Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures from the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US" responsibility just completely out of whack? see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total of days is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) - 1975. However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia, dating from sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave to you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage. Nope. The major committment of US forces and their firepower did not begin until 1965, and it most certainly did not extend "through 1973". Application of US firepower ended in January 1973 with the ceasefire that accompanied the final Paris peace talks. Go from mid-1965 (as we did not just snap our fingers and *presto*, massive amounts of US firepower came instantly to bear in 1965--the first major US offensive operation did not take place until June of that year) to 1973 and you get some 2600 total possible days; subtract out the various ceasefire periods, adjust for bombing halts, etc., and I don't think that roughly 2200 number is too bad. Now consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of ammo but also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were areas nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living in the area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other allies) were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they chose, anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis? Damned right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically classified as VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if the GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare. You are still counting beaucoup civilians per day using your math. And what did the DRVN numbers have to say in regards to COSVN/VC casualties--were they just rolled into the "civilian" total (I did not note a distinction for them, and they were pretty high in the 65-68 timeframe, peaking with Tet and then declining)? Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not, but having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC to kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them would be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't rocket science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the majority of the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly. Oddly enough, it appears they did indeed resort to direct targeting of many thousands of South Vietnamese civilians: "From 1957 to 1973 the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted 58,499. Death squads focused on leaders that included schoolteachers and minor officials." www.vietnam-war.info/facts/ That, of course, does not include those civilians merely caught up in the application of firepower by the VC/NVA side of the house--just the ones specifically targeted for elimination of abduction. If you disagree, I'll be happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the majority of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems. My argument is with your blase acceptance of the Vietnamese claims, and your further assignment of the majority of the blame to the US, ignoring the fact that the DRVN was counting casualties from well before any significant, much less major, US application of firepower, overlooking the absence of a category for the actual VC losses, overlooking the fact that the DRVN routinely sent civilians into harm's way (porters on the HCM Trail, repair crews on same, etc.), and accepting that we were slaughtering folks at a truly prodigious, sustained rate that defies any similar US experience before or since. Brooks Guy |
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Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed for some
time. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. Where do you get that from? It would take quite a few collateral damage events to equal the number of RVN civilians executed by the VC/NVA at Hue during Tet 68 alone--what kind of reliable data do you have that supports your assertion that we were responsible for most of the RVN civilian deaths? In the immediate aftermath of the battle for Hue, U.S./South Vietnamese forces reported digging up 2,800 bodies that appeared to have been executed, hands tied behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads, or in some cases just buried alive. Douglas Pike, at that time an intell officer in SVN, wrote a report (1970) about the executions because their scope and scale was so unlike anything the VC had practiced prior to Tet (or since), and arrived at a figure possibly as high as 5,700. However, those figures have been called into question, because apparently they were supplied to him by a South Vietnamese intell unit, the 10th Political Warfare Battalion, whose whole charter was to discredit the NLF, and Pike apparently had noi way of checking the totals himself. Then again, its possuible that at least some of the executions were carried out by the South Vietnamese; a U.S. intell officer told a U.S. reporter (who had been at Hue during the battles and who returned twice more to do interviews) that South Vietnamese Intell units had sent in some hit squads themselves to kill collaborators while the battle was still continuing. In any case, let's assume a range of 2,800 - 5,700 were executed by the VC in Hue - no one is ever likely to know the true number. So you are talking a range of between nine and nineteen times the My Lai debacle--but you are confident that the US was somehow responsible for most of the civilian casualties? And while Pike may have been commenting on single-event scale, don't forget that the VC and NVA had (and continued to after Tet) a pretty good reputation for using murder as a tool for "winning hearts and minds"--Hue would not account for the sum total of civilian casualties attributed to them. Never said it would. FWIW, "The Vietnam War: Day by Day" summary for 1965, after giving the US and ARVN losses for the year, states "Increasing numbers of South Vietnamese civilians are also being killed by air raids and other military actions." The 1966 summary includes the statement "Another study reveals that during one seven month period this year, 3,015 Rural Development personnel were murdered or kidnapped by the Vietcong." The 1967 summary states "The Vietcong reportedly killed 3,820 South Vietnamese civilians and kidnapped 5,318 during the year." The page for 1968 is missing (library book); for 1969 the relevant sentence is "at least 6,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed in 1969 by terrorist actions alone." The 1970 summary states "At least 25,000 South Vietnamese civilians are killed, and another 6,000 are reported by the Vietcong as having been executed for serving in the Saigon government." The 1971 summary doesn't include any numbers for SVN civilian casualties, just the usual US/ARVN and NVA/VC. The 1972 summary only includes US casaulty totals. The note for 27 January 1974 states "Since the January 1973 truce, . . . 2,159 SVN civilians . . .. have died in the fighting." Saying, "I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie" ain't gonna cut it, either... Oh please, Kevin - you really don't think that I'd base claims on a movie, do you, whether "Platoon" or for that matter, "The Green Berets"? I should have put a ":-)" after that...but it does seem as if you have bought into Mr. Stone's philosophy with that "especially US" bit... As I've explained elsewhere, the 'especially US' referred to the preponderance of US firepower and nothing else. And how many of those deaths actually occured in the infamous "reeducation camps" after the actual combat was over (it would be kind of convenient to slip those tallies into the war casualty count, just to make things look nioce and tidy for folks later)? Certainly possible that some of them did, although if they just wanted to kill people wholesale why bother to ship them to a 're-education' camp, when they can just take them into the jungle, dig a trench and mow them down? Worked for the Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD. You must have forgotten that the NKVD also had this not-so-good-for-your-health concept labled as the "Gulag"? Haven't forgotten it, but AFAIR (it's been a long time since I read the Gulag Archipelago), political re-education wasn't an issue there. You were sentenced there and worked off your time, living or dying as the case might be, but they could care less about self-criticism sessions, plitical indoctrination and the like; you were an enemy of the state, and that was that. The Vietnamese re-education camps seem to have had a different philosophy. So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, That would be quite an assumption in this case. Sure, but we don't have any better ones. Ed is the one claiming the U.S. killed between 1 and 3 million _North_ Vietnamese. the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Using that model, you are assuming that the NVA/VC were just really swell guys who never dared to harm RVN civilians? Of course not - they were considerably more brutal and ruthless than the GVN governments, who weren't exactly known having much concern for their own citizens themselves. After all, it was the GVN who designated Free-Fire zones for the U.S. military. And it was the DRVN that sent so many "civilians" trekking down the HCM Trail with their bicycle-pack load of ammo...do you count those as civilian kills in the US tally? If they did, sure, although from what I recall it was PAVN soldiers and maybe civilian truck drivers (can't remember if they were civil or military) who made the journey down south. Otherwise it would be seem to be so many more useless mouths to feed, to send large numbers of civilian porters down. Just how do you think we managed to kill those *millions* of noncombatants? Simple firepower. See below. I note that the number you are touting is on-par (at a minimum--your max figure is about twice the German total) with the number of civilian casualties the Germans sustained during WWII--that with the spectres of the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, etc., ad nauseum, not to mention the effects of the Red Army onslaught in the eastern portion of that nation--which leaves me a bit suspicious of your figures. I'm glad you brought up Germany. Kevin, I can't give you the source because I saw it many years ago, but it was a credible one. I don't remember whether it referred to bombs alone, bombs and artillery shells, all ammunition, and included the casing weights or just the HE equivalent, but the total (of whatever metric) used by ALL the combatants in World War 2 was ca. 3 megatons. By comparison, the U.S., over the 1964 -1973 period dropped/fired 8 Megatons (same metric) on SE Asia. SVN received either the first or second percentage of this tonnage, with Laos holding the other place. The DRVN was in either third or fourth place for tonnage (can't remember if they came in before or after Cambodia). The vast majority of this firepower was quite inaccurate; it's the nature of war that civilians get killed just by being in the way, even when they're not deliberately being targeted. We employed the vast majority of the firepower in the south, so clearly we would have killed the vast majority of the civilians. The VC and NVA certainly killed their share, but they just didn't have the logistics to kill relatively indiscriminately in large numbers, as the U.S. and to a lesser extent our allies could, even if they'd wanted to (and for the VC, that would be counter-productive). Yeah, they fired a few rockets into the cities on occasion, and civilians certainly died during the invasions in 1968/72/75, but the sheer firepower was lacking to kill large numbers of civilians indiscriminately. The VC tended to kill civilians deliberately and discriminately, targeting government representatives, uncooperative village leaders etc. for assassination/execution. They didn't do it by bombing a village. Yeah, and they never did any "indiscriminate" mining or boobytrapping, either, I guess. Of course they did. Here's a few examples, again from "The Vietnam War: Day by Day": "14 February 1966. Fifty-six South Vietnamese civilians re killed by three separate mine blasts along a road near Tuy Hoa, 225 miles NE of Saigon." "21 October 1966. A terrorist mine explodes in the marketplace in Traon, a town in the Mekong delta . . . killing 11 persons and wounding 54." "24 October 1966. A bus detonates a Vietcong mine on a road 18 miles north of Hue', killing 15 Vietnamese civilians and injuring 19." Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every *day*? I don't think so. Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian deaths: "9 August 1966. Two USAF jets mistakenly attack the villages of Truong Trung and Truong Tay . . . 63 people are killed and nearly 100 wounded." "27 September 1966. Two US Marine jets mistakenly bomb the village of Hom Be, five miles from Quang Ngai, killing at least 35 civilians." "28-29 January 1967. During an operation against the Vietcong in the Mekong river delta, US helicopters accidentally kill 31 Vietnamese civilians and wound 38. The civilians, apparently mistaken for Vietcong, were attacked as they crossed the bassac river in 200 sampans at 2345 in violation of a curfew." "1 February 1967. US Marine artillery and planes accidentally hit a South Vietnamese hamlet 12 miles southwest of Danang, killing eight civilians and wounding 18." "2 March 1967. The village of Languei, 15 miles south of the DMZ, is accidentally hit by bombs dropped by two US F-4C Phantom jets, killing at least 83 civilians and wounding 176." Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they happened to be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of civilians, north and south, were killed by US firepower. "2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return[ing] fire against a group of Vietcong in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed 40 South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36." No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells on SVN hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most of the time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was going on throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of admitted civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or not) recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly recorded the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and public wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967 CIA study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties from bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to lable the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a "victory" for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more accurate than not. Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one they were prepared to pay, they definitely won. Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of the last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most of their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great that thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it? What exactly did they "win"? Pretty much exactly what the Soviet Union won in WW2, at a similar cost and with similar results. Again, do you think that Germany defeated the Soviet Union in WW2? Whether you or I think that the resulting country is a garden spot or a dirty armpit is irrelevant; the people calling the shots succeeded in what they were what they were trying to achieve. Granted, it's likely that it won't last another generation, but there's no guaranty of an unchanging result for any country/creed. snip The DRVN achieved their goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit we might get, i.e. we lost. Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed that responsibility off to them, With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in trouble, yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise. Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75 invasion. Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance from tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to recover. We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big decisive difference). While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their own, while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the money we gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force goes, we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even more than in 1972, that's what they were facing. I disagree, though, about how important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in stiffening SVN resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975. whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll never know. snip and the NVA had been for all intents and purposes pushed out of RVN territory. Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the accords, _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN, which he knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion. Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason for their defeat). They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also in MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000 troops in SVN at the time of the accords. Two years later things went to hell in a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion of the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US military? Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was defeated; that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by that PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen the anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S. military was equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they didn't have to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price higher than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many weaker powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war. I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate cost, and for what ultimate gain? In the end it was better that the Viets themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us. Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the game wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that same decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that ensued in the following 30 years. And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the war. That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the RVN a couple of years prior. No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN was certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a few battles of its own. I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an RVN still controlled by its own sovereign government. As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against military, it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours. No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than early 73 in-toto). Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN militarily. Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not achieve its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a defeat for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book. We must read different books. :-) I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war aims, and the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win and a US loss to me. Guy |
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Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Ed Rasimus wrote: On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush" wrote: You cite the 58,000 names on the Wall. The NVN lost (depending upon your source) between one and three million. Since you like to only use one source pick whichever one you want. That sort of loss ratio doesn't imply a great victory. Ed,, from http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html "The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population. " A chart on the same page shows 1.1 million NVA/VC dead versus about 276,000 US/ARVN and allied itroops in combat. So, we've got 3.1 million North Vietnamese killed during the war, vs. 2.24 million south Vietnamese. The majority of SVN civilian deaths would have been due to allied firepower, especially US. So assuming reasonably accurate numbers, the US and its allies killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million civilians, plus the 1.1 million combatants. Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). "Especially US", eh? OK, let's look at that and assume you mean that the US only accounted for 50% of those 2 to 4 million civilian casualties you want to chalk up. If we take a nice round figure of major US war participation as being six years (not unrealistic, given truces, bombing halts, and the like), you get 2190 days. Using that 50% figure, you would have to be racking up between almost five hundred and one thousand civilian deaths per *day*, depending upon whether you use the low or high ranges for your "data". Color me skeptical, but that sounds way too high-- one-point-five My Lai massacres every day at a *minimum*. Did you just grab these figures from the air, or is your analysis that points to "especially US" responsibility just completely out of whack? see my other replies to both you and Ed, but I'd say your calendar total of days is rather low. DRVN figures are for 21 years, i.e. from 1954 (Geneva) - 1975. However, the U.S. provided the majority of the firepower in SE Asia, dating from sometime in the 1962-65 timeframe (exactly where you wish to start I leave to you) up through 1973. 'Especially U.S.' refers to the distribution of firepower; the U.S. dwarfed everyone else in both availability and usage. Nope. The major committment of US forces and their firepower did not begin until 1965, and it most certainly did not extend "through 1973". Application of US firepower ended in January 1973 with the ceasefire that accompanied the final Paris peace talks. Go from mid-1965 (as we did not just snap our fingers and *presto*, massive amounts of US firepower came instantly to bear in 1965--the first major US offensive operation did not take place until June of that year) to 1973 and you get some 2600 total possible days; subtract out the various ceasefire periods, adjust for bombing halts, etc., and I don't think that roughly 2200 number is too bad. I'd agree that mid-65 for large-scale commitment of US conventional ground forces is correct, but as far as airpower goes, we were providing significant amounts and ultimately the majority before 1965. Farm Gate was flying combat missions in T-28s, B-26s and later A-1s from 1962 on, at a time when the SVNAF was at a very early stage; since (officially) we weren't involved in combat, only training or advising, SOP was to grab the first Vietnamese that walked by the flightline, stick him in the back cockpit and tell him "Nguyen, you're now in training" and then go bomb. The US had also introduced helo gunships (UH-1Bs IIRR) by 1962 or 1963, at a time when the ARVN didn't have any, plus we were providing the majority of the helo combat transport. Given the ARVN's hesitancy in closing with the VC and actually engaging in infantry combat in the period prior to the marines and 173rd's arrival, while we may not have made up the majority of the _available_ firepower, I submit that we provided the majority of the _effective_ firepower at some point in the 1962-1964 era (and not forgetting the Tonkin Gulf retaliatory strikes, limited though they were). We were certainly in combat during that time, although it was mainly air crews and snakeaters. We were also _officially_ bombing Laos from 1964 on. Now consider the widespread use of free-fire and free-drop zones in SVN (until largely phased out by Abrams, who considered them not only wasteful of ammo but also highly counterproductive in a counter-insurgency war). These were areas nominated by the GVN as not under government control, with anyone living in the area considered to be VC or at least a supporter, so the US (and other allies) were for instance, free to fire blind H&I artillery fire in any time they chose, anywhere they chose. Were there civilians killed on a regular basis? Damned right there were, but since the universal policy (judging by numerous independent memoirs of those who were there) was that any dead Vietnamese civilians killed by allied forces were pretty much automatically classified as VC or 'suspected VC', such dead didn't count as civilians. It's not as if the GVN showed any great concern for their rural citizens' welfare. You are still counting beaucoup civilians per day using your math. And what did the DRVN numbers have to say in regards to COSVN/VC casualties--were they just rolled into the "civilian" total (I did not note a distinction for them, and they were pretty high in the 65-68 timeframe, peaking with Tet and then declining)? No, they appear to be included in the PAVN/VC overall total of 1.1 million. Now, do I _know_ how many civilians were killed by the US? Of course not, but having some idea how civilians die in wartime, and knowing that for the VC to kill large numbers of the very civilians who were needed to maintain them would be suicidal even if they had the ammunition or wish to do so, it isn't rocket science to figure that the US had to have been responsible for the majority of the civilian dead in SEA, directly or indirectly. Oddly enough, it appears they did indeed resort to direct targeting of many thousands of South Vietnamese civilians: "From 1957 to 1973 the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted 58,499. Death squads focused on leaders that included schoolteachers and minor officials." www.vietnam-war.info/facts/ Sure, targetted killings of governemnt representatives, hostile village chiefs, etc. That, of course, does not include those civilians merely caught up in the application of firepower by the VC/NVA side of the house--just the ones specifically targeted for elimination of abduction. Yup. And I suspect we agree that the majority of civilians killed by firepower died purely as a side effect of firepower. That being the case, do you disagree that the US and its allies had the majority of the firepower assets, and also often employed it profligately? If so, then simple logic would seem to lead you to the same conclusion that I've reached. If you disagree, I'll be happy to read your analysis of how the PAVN/VC were responsible for the majority of the deaths, given their lack of firepower and logistic problems. My argument is with your blase acceptance of the Vietnamese claims, Nothing blase' about it, I was using the figures that _Ed_ quoted, which agree with the ones I've been able to find. I agree that at best these can only be ballpark numbers, subject to numerous caveats. and your further assignment of the majority of the blame to the US, For the reasons stated above, which AFAICT you also subscribe to. ignoring the fact that the DRVN was counting casualties from well before any significant, much less major, US application of firepower, Sure, and they were far less in that period. overlooking the absence of a category for the actual VC losses, Damned hard to come by, I'd think, both because a guerrilla army's records are apt to be a bit spotty, and because of the typical "any dead Vietnamese killed by our side is assumed VC and recorded as such" (unless we get called on it, which is pretty unlikely). After all, those killed at My Lai were so reported initially, with hardly a question, even though it was obvious to the troops who heard about it that the lack of captured weapons combined with the large body count indicated that they were civilians. Which isn't to say that they probably weren't supporters of the VC. overlooking the fact that the DRVN routinely sent civilians into harm's way (porters on the HCM Trail, repair crews on same, etc.), Sure, and they died because bombs don't discriminate. But we were the side with the bombs, and the airplanes dropping them; the VC/PAVN didn't have them. and accepting that we were slaughtering folks at a truly prodigious, sustained rate that defies any similar US experience before or since. Considering that we were employing bombing at a truly prodigious sustained rate that defies any similar US experience before or since, not to mention the effects of malnutrition (in addition to the usual wartime causes we were spraying herbicide on crops to prevent them from feeding the VC, which couldn't have helped the growers who were also depending on that food) increasing susceptibility to disease (in addition to the usual malaria, dysentery, typhus cholera etc., attendant on most wars, did I mention the bubonic plague outbreak in SVN?), I find the numbers reasonably credible. I recognize that they are likely only 'accurate' within a very wide range of uncertainty, but consider the conclusion that the US must have caused the majority of the civilian casualties in the war, certainly those due to firepower, as a reasonable one and indeed the only logical one. Guy |
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"Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed for some time. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. snip Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every *day*? I don't think so. Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian deaths: "9 August 1966. Two USAF jets mistakenly attack the villages of Truong Trung and Truong Tay . . . 63 people are killed and nearly 100 wounded." "27 September 1966. Two US Marine jets mistakenly bomb the village of Hom Be, five miles from Quang Ngai, killing at least 35 civilians." "28-29 January 1967. During an operation against the Vietcong in the Mekong river delta, US helicopters accidentally kill 31 Vietnamese civilians and wound 38. The civilians, apparently mistaken for Vietcong, were attacked as they crossed the bassac river in 200 sampans at 2345 in violation of a curfew." "1 February 1967. US Marine artillery and planes accidentally hit a South Vietnamese hamlet 12 miles southwest of Danang, killing eight civilians and wounding 18." "2 March 1967. The village of Languei, 15 miles south of the DMZ, is accidentally hit by bombs dropped by two US F-4C Phantom jets, killing at least 83 civilians and wounding 176." Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they happened to be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of civilians, north and south, were killed by US firepower. "2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return[ing] fire against a group of Vietcong in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed 40 South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36." Unfortuantely, those examples fall FAR short of the numbers you'd need to have to make your total worl; remember, you need around 1.5 My Lais per DAY, *every* day. Now, are you finally willing to admit that it a pretty darned unrealistic figure you cited and attributed to US responsibility? No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells on SVN hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most of the time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was going on throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of admitted civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or not) recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly recorded the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and public wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967 CIA study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties from bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian. Wow. 24K? How many more MILLIONS do you now need to come up with to make your statement true? Were you claiming the deaths of civilians, those of both our allies and our enemies, represented a great triumph of american arms, Ed? Killing civilians in a war is easy, as was repeatedly demonstrated in the 20th Century (and every other one, for that matter). I believe Ed was pointing to the fact that it would be difficult to lable the final outcome in 1975 (and the years following) as much of a "victory" for the North--and events since then point to his observation being more accurate than not. Since they achieved their aims, at a cost that was grievously high but one they were prepared to pay, they definitely won. Guy, you know what was meant. They won what, a ticket to being one of the last communist failures in the world? A standard of living for the most of their populace that lags that of their neighbors? A country so great that thousands upon thousands were willing to risk dying trying to escape it? What exactly did they "win"? Pretty much exactly what the Soviet Union won in WW2, at a similar cost and with similar results. Again, do you think that Germany defeated the Soviet Union in WW2? Whether you or I think that the resulting country is a garden spot or a dirty armpit is irrelevant; the people calling the shots succeeded in what they were what they were trying to achieve. Granted, it's likely that it won't last another generation, but there's no guaranty of an unchanging result for any country/creed. snip The DRVN achieved their goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit we might get, i.e. we lost. Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed that responsibility off to them, With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in trouble, yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise. Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75 invasion. Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance from tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to recover. After which we left the ball in their hands--but you still chalk that up as a loss for the US? We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big decisive difference). While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their own, while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the money we gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force goes, we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even more than in 1972, that's what they were facing. I don't think the serious SAM threat extended deep into RVN territory, even in 1975. I disagree, though, about how important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in stiffening SVN resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975. whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll never know. snip and the NVA had been for all intents and purposes pushed out of RVN territory. Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the accords, _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN, which he knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion. Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason for their defeat). They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also in MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000 troops in SVN at the time of the accords. Most in Quang Tri, IIRC. Two years later things went to hell in a handbasket rather quickly, courtesy of a massive conventional invasion of the RVN by the DRVN--but you think that constitutes a defeat for the US military? Kevin, at no time have I stated or implied that the U.S. military was defeated; that was the argument of others, which I don't subscribe to. They weren't defeated, and indeed they couldn't be, which was explictly recognized by that PAVN Col. who was talking to Col. Harry G. Summers (that is who I've seen the anecdote that Paul J. Adam quoted, attributed to). OTOH, the U.S. military was equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they didn't have to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price higher than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many weaker powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war. I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate cost, and for what ultimate gain? In the end it was better that the Viets themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us. Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the game wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that same decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that ensued in the following 30 years. I disagree, the "game was worth the candle", as you put it. But that does not mean that *we* had to continue bearing the burden indefinitely. Vietnamization was a rational outcome for our involvement, where we held the tiger at bay until we had equipped and trained the RVN to defend itself. As you noted earlier, it was the RVN's collective will that broke in the end, and that break occurred some two years after we had decamped. And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the war. That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the RVN a couple of years prior. No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN was certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a few battles of its own. So by your lights, the US was bound to have to stay indefinitely; Vietnamization was not an acceptable solution. I disagree. The same can be offered vis a vis Iraq; if we end up with a representative form of government in Iraq by the time we finally pull pitch with our last troops and hie out of there, and that government falls two years down the line to some despot or faction, I don't count that as a loss for the US. At some point we have to turn things back over to the locals and tell them, "Hey, it is now YOUR responsibility to make what you will out of the opportunities before you." I don't think so. It was indeed a blow to the previous US foreign policy objectives, but it was no defeat of US military power, which had withstood the best the DRVN could hurl at them and ended up departing an RVN still controlled by its own sovereign government. As the North Vietnamese realised, It wasn't a war of military against military, it was a war of country against country, and their country defeated ours. No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than early 73 in-toto). Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN militarily. There we disagree to some extent. The US can't garrison each and every hotspot throught the world on an indefinite basis. Expecting it to do so is rather shortsighted IMO. Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not achieve its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a defeat for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book. We must read different books. :-) I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war aims, and the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win and a US loss to me. So you say. The rot was stopped before it spread further. We left there in 1973, having turned things over to the RVN, which then went tango-uniform two years later. I don't really classify either of those conditions as being indicative of a US "defeat". Brooks Guy |
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Well, I told you my replies were likely to be long delayed, and that's likely to
be the case for a while. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Sorry again for the delayed reply. My replies are likely to be delayed for some time. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. Been busy this week, so apologies for the delayed reply. Kevin Brooks wrote: "Guy Alcala" wrote in message . .. snip Your figures indicate we were killing off innocents at a prodigious rate indeed-- one-point-five or more My Lai equivalents every *day*? I don't think so. Now here's a few examples of our mistakes which resulted in civilian deaths: snip examples Now here's an example of civilians getting killed just because they happened to be in the way of the war, which I believe is the way the majority of civilians, north and south, were killed by US firepower. "2 August 1967. Two US helicopters return[ing] fire against a group of Vietcong in a Mekong delta village near Phu Vinh, 60 miles south of Saigon, killed 40 South Vietnamese civilians and wounded 36." Unfortuantely, those examples fall FAR short of the numbers you'd need to have to make your total worl; remember, you need around 1.5 My Lais per DAY, *every* day. Now, are you finally willing to admit that it a pretty darned unrealistic figure you cited and attributed to US responsibility? No, for the reasons I stated -- most civilian war casualties would happen during combat, as a byproduct of that (rather than as pure mistakes such as the first group I snipped above), and in SVN they would be reported as VC. No one was targetting them specifically - they just got hit because they happened to be there, and we and the ARVN used a lot of bombs and shells on SVN hamlets, villages, towns and cities, ignoring the small arms fire. Most of the time they would die in fairly small numbers, but this sort of thing was going on throughout SVN, every day. We can undoubtedly add to these numbers of admitted civilian dead, large numbers who were erroneously (either deliberately or not) recorded as VC or suspected VC; there were undoubtedly some incorrectly recorded the other way, but the numbers would have to be smalle, just by the law of averages. Please note that I've only included South Vietnamese civilian casualties, as numbers for those in the north are much more tenuous, and public wartime claims tend to be highly suspect on both sides. A January 1967 CIA study estimated that up to that time, there had been 24,000 casualties from bombing in North Vietnam, 80% of whom were civilian. Wow. 24K? How many more MILLIONS do you now need to come up with to make your statement true? I was using the CIA _estimate_ for its proportions, which are fairly typical for civil/military losses while bombing cities, not its accuracy for the total numbers. Mea culpa for not making that clear. CIA (and US military and other) estimates are all over the map, and routinely wrong. The only people who _know_ what their losses were are the VC/PAVN and the DRVN government. One of the most objective discussions I've found of the causes of civilian casualties in Vietnam is in "America in Vietnam," by Guenter Lewy. Appendix I, "Civilian Casualties: An Assessment" uses SVN hospital admission records, KIA claims of military units, etc. He comments: "The task of establishing accurate statistics on military casualties is a formidable one in any war, and the difficulties are infinitely greater with regard to civilian losses. there arise problems of classification, such as whether to include casualties attributable to inadequate nourishment or disease caused by war conditions or limit the count to casualties resulting from direct military action [Guy note: I do include such casualties in my reasoning, and I suspect the DRVN numbers released in 1995 do as well. Lewy doesn't] . . . ..[discusses totals of civilian war casualties admitted to US and SVN hospitals during the 1965-74 period, totaling 475,488, mentions possibilities of underreporting in some circumstances, and adds 20% to account for such, making the new estimate approx. 570,600]. "If civilians were injured in large numbers, there must also have been many who were killed outright. MACV required so-called backlash reports on the number of civilians killed and wounded in a battle, but these reports were filed mostly for special incidents such as when civilians were hit by short rounds or when a military unit shot up an obviously friendly hamlet [Guy note: these would be the type of 'accidents' that I snipped above]. In most cases villagers killed in VC-dominated or contested areas were counted as enemy dead (see Chapter 3), while others died without being counted. As the U.S. embassy put it in a message to the State Department in March 1966: ' How can you determine whether black-clad corpses found on a battelfield were VC or innocent civilians? (they are inevitably counted as VC) . . . How do you learn whether anyone was inside structures and sampans destroyed by the hundreds every day by air strikes, artillery fire, and naval gunfire?' He then goes on to show various number estimates and methodologies, showing how widely they can and did vary. He debunks many of the wilder claims made by anti-war activists as being almost wholly without proof, while providing both his own estimate of civilian dead as a direct result of military action (247,600) as well as that of the Kennedy Committee (430,000), which he believes to be too high owing to an assumption in their methodology (i.e., that the evacuation of SVN civilian casualties to hospitals was markedly poorer than military evacuations). Skipping ahead a bit, he writes: "Who caused these civilian casualties? Critics of American military tactics in Vietnam [Guy note: Which included General Abrams as well as myself] argued that because of the allied superiority in heavy weapons, especially artillery and planes, and becsause of the lavish use of this firepower the great majority of CWC were caused by the allied side . . . Until 1971 the official U.S. position was that there existed no reliable statistics on the causes of CWC. In December 1970 USAID learned that the Vietnamese Ministry of Health had been maintaining such statistics since1967, and since a Newsweek reporter was on the verge of discovering them, AID in January 1971 reported them to Senator Kennedy even though they viewed them with reserve. According to MOH officials, they were based on the appearance of the injury and the questioning of the patient and/or his family. 'Both of these procedures . . . may be carried out by hospital personnel below the physician level. This factor plus the obvious inability of the wounded person to know exactly how he was wounded in many cases, casts real doubt as to the validity of the figures. At most they might be used to show broad trends.' "CORDS chief Colby used these statistics in his appearance before the Kennedy Committee in April 1971 (see table A-3). Injuries caused by mine and mortar were attributed to the enemy, those by guns and grenades to either side, and those by shelling and bombing to U.S. forces and RVNAF. "Hence the broad trend appeared to indicate an increase in enemy-inflicted CWC (from 35 to 58%) and a decrease in CWC caused by friendly forces (from 43 to 22%)."* Here's the table, as follows: Year, Mine/Mortar number of casualties and %, Gun/Grenade number and %, Shelling/bombing number and %, total casualties: 1967, 15,253, 35%. 9,785, 22%. 18,811, 43%. 43,849. 1968, 31,244, 42%. 15,107, 20%. 28,052, 38%. 74,403. 1969, 24,648, 47%. 11,814, 22%. 16,183, 31%. 52,645. 1970, 22,049, 58%, 7,650, 20%. 8,607, 22%. 38,306. *There's a problem with his conclusion here, as it ignores the effect of Abrams limiting the use of artillery and airpower from the time he took charge, because he considered it caused too many civilian casualties. By itself this change would imply a greater percentage of friendly CWC in the second category versus the 3rd. There's much more, but you can see it's a complex subject, and anything other than broad stroke accuracy is impossible to achieve. snip much back and forth on the same theme as below The DRVN achieved their goals at a cost they were both willing and able to pay, i.e. they won. The US didn't achieve its goals because we ultimately decided the cost was too high for any benefit we might get, i.e. we lost. Only if you assume that the US had some sort of irrevocable requirment to stay in the thick of the fight in perpetuity. When we decamped in 72-73, the RVN had the tools to perform their own security mission and we had handed that responsibility off to them, With the promise that our airpower would bail them out if they got in trouble, yes, but we _as a country_ weren't prepared to keep that promise. Come on, now--airpower alone would not have stemmed the tide of the 75 invasion. Never said it would, but in 1972, it was airpower that kept the balance from tipping irreparably towards the PAVN, and gave the GVN/ARVN the time to recover. After which we left the ball in their hands--but you still chalk that up as a loss for the US? One of the prime objectives of our effort in Vietnam was to ensure the survival of a viable, stable, independent, preferably democratic but at least non-communist SVN which was able to defend _itself_ from internal and external threats. Since we failed to accomplish that or any other of the major goals we set for ourselves going in, while the DRVN did accomplish all its goals (a unified Vietnam governed by the Lao Dong party, with no foreign countries involved in governance), then damned right we lost. We had handed off to the RVN and let them carry their own ball--an d they fumbled. By 1973 the RVN's air assets were none too shabby; lots of F-5's, A-37's, A-1's, helo gunships, AC-47's, etc. That they did not effectively use that force advantage in 1975 is their own responsibility (though I admit I have always blamed Ford and the congress then in-power for not having the gumption to launch an air campaign against the NVA--but as I said, hindsight indicates that it would probably have not made a big decisive difference). While I have serious doubts that SVN could have pulled through on their own, while we'd given them lots of stuff we had been steadily reducing the money we gave them for ammo, spares, etc. In addition, as far as their air force goes, we hadn't equipped them to operate in a SAM environment, and in 1975 even more than in 1972, that's what they were facing. I don't think the serious SAM threat extended deep into RVN territory, even in 1975. There were SA-2s at Khe Sanh and in the Dong Ha region from 1973 or so, but I was mainly referring to the SA-7s. IIRR the A-1s had been retired, but the SA-7s plus the huge increase in AAA (the PAVN had brought down an AA _Division_ into SVN) seriously impacted the VNAF's effectiveness. Only the F-5 could be described as a fast mover, while the A-37s, Puffs and helo gunships were forced up to much higher altitudes above SA-7 and effective AAA range, as were the FACs. We had equipped them to operate in a permissive environment, but SVN no longer was one. This increase in AD also seriously affected the ARVN's mobility, as the use of airmobility was much curtailed -- they had far fewer helos than we did to start with, with poorer maintenance and logistics, and they also lacked the other firepower. In 1972, the US had the ability to deal with AD weapons by using standoff capability, Fast Facs, SEAD etc. In the 1972-1975 period the VNAF didn't. For further detail on the VNAF's deficiencies in the 1972-75 period I refer you to Volume III of the USAF Southeast Asia Monograph series, "The Vietnamese Air Force, 1951-1975, An Analysis of its Role in Combat." I disagree, though, about how important a bombing capmaign might have been; it was decisive in stiffening SVN resistance in 1972, and certainly would have boosted their morale in 1975. whether that would have been enough given their other problems, we'll never know. snip and the NVA had been for all intents and purposes pushed out of RVN territory. Nope, indeed that's why Thieu dragged his feet so much at signing the accords, _because_ large NVA forces were allowed to remain on the ground in SVN, which he knew would just serve as the launching pad for another invasion. Yeah, they did have a chunk of Quang Tri province IIRC. Which is not saying much--they had jumped off from those same general areas during the 72 Easter offensive IIRC and got schlocked (and US airpower was not the sole reason for their defeat). They had a lot more than just part of Quang Tri province. They were also in MR's II and IIRR III in force - one source estimates they had 160,000 troops in SVN at the time of the accords. Most in Quang Tri, IIRC. They still held Loc Ninh in MR III, 75 miles or so from Saigon, and by 1974 had extended the fuel pipeline that had previously terminated in the A Shau valley (in MR I) down that far. And they launched their initial assault in 1975 towards Ban Me Thuot in MR II from their positions there, to cut the country in half across Route 19 (something that they'd planned to do in 1965, only to be stopped by the First Cav in the Ia Drang). Once Ban Me Thuot fell, they swung towards Pleiku and Kontum. Just to give an idea of the effect the lack of US air interdiction post 1972 had on the quantities of supplies the PAVN could move south, here's a quote from a PAVN history: "The quantity of supplies transported along the strategic transportation corridor [The Ho Chi Minh Trail et al] from the beginning of 1974 until the end of April 1975 was 823,146 tons, _1.6 times as much as the total transported during the previous thirteen years_" (emphasis added). Further: "Compared with 1972, the quantity of supplies was nine times as high, including six times as high in weapons and ammunition, three times the quantity of rice, and twenty-seven times the quantity of fuel and petroleum products." Which gives an idea of just how overwhelmed the SVNAF was when on their own in 1975 compared to 1972, when the US had been responsible for interdicting this. snip OTOH, the U.S. military was equally unable to win. But, as the DRVN leadership recognized, they didn't have to defeat the U.S. military, they just had to not lose and make the price higher than the U.S.A. was willing to pay, which has been the strategy of many weaker powers -- it worked for us in the Revolutionary war. I disagree. The US military could have won decisively, but at what ultimate cost, and for what ultimate gain? In the end it was better that the Viets themselves determined the final outcome--and their northern brethren instead reaped the whirlwind they had sown. Better them than us. Which was exactly the conclusion that the US as a whole had reached -- the game wasn't worth the candle. The point is that we could have reached that same decision at any point from 1945 on, without the massive loss of life that ensued in the following 30 years. I disagree, the "game was worth the candle", as you put it. Not to the US people or government by 1973, it wasn't, which is why we got out and then proceeded to make it impossible to resume bombing or any other US combat activity in sEA effective August 15th, 1973, and why the Congress refused to provide the requested levels of ammo and other types of support in the 1973-75 period. The attitude among many Americans (myself included) at the time SVN was collapsing and the executive branch was trying to get Congress to provide emergency funding, was either "good riddance to bad rubbish,' or the somewhat less harsh but effectively equivalent "let's not throw more good money down the toilet." Even among the majority like myself who had little patience for the antics of the anti-war activists, when Saigon fell there was almost a sense of relief, of the "at least it's over and done with" variety. But that does not mean that *we* had to continue bearing the burden indefinitely. Vietnamization was a rational outcome for our involvement, where we held the tiger at bay until we had equipped and trained the RVN to defend itself. As you noted earlier, it was the RVN's collective will that broke in the end, and that break occurred some two years after we had decamped. Among our primary strategic objectives was to see the GVN established as a viable state which could defend itself, in short another Korea; we clearly failed in that endeavor (or any other of the major objectives we'd set for ourselves when we entered the war or while we were actively engaged in fighting it). That's a loss in my book. And they did. They lost every battle except the last one, and won the war. That would be the one that occured after we had turned over affairs to the RVN a couple of years prior. No, I was referring to the political battle they won against the US. They repeatedly won battles against the ARVN over the years, although the ARVN was certainly far better in 1972 than it had been in say 1966, and had won a few battles of its own. So by your lights, the US was bound to have to stay indefinitely; Vietnamization was not an acceptable solution. I disagree. So do I, since I don't hold that view. Vietnamization was an entirely acceptable solution, indeed it was the only solution throughout the war, and our diversion into trying to win the war ourselves during the Westmoreland "war of the big battalions" was a big mistake. Indeed, Vietnamization is something of a misnomer, and pretty insulting to the South Vietnamese who'd been fighting from 1956 on, and took far more casaulties than we did. There's no question, though, that we needed to turn the war back over to them, having done everything we could to assure ourselves first that they could survive on their own. We knew that we failed to do that from the esperience of 1972, but Nixon figured thathe'd be able to restart bombing if the DRVN violated the accords. But that would have been a political impossibility, even without Watergate. The same can be offered vis a vis Iraq; if we end up with a representative form of government in Iraq by the time we finally pull pitch with our last troops and hie out of there, and that government falls two years down the line to some despot or faction, I don't count that as a loss for the US. It's certainly a failure of US policy, if one of the primary reasons you entered the war was to help establish a government so that such a thing can't happen. At some point we have to turn things back over to the locals and tell them, "Hey, it is now YOUR responsibility to make what you will out of the opportunities before you." Sure, but we also bear the responsibility, having broken the dish in the first place, to take reasonable steps to put it back in working order until a new, better version can evolve. We didn't do that in 1973. If we were going to do that, and it was specifically stated as our ultimate goal in Vietnam from 1954 on. then we should have devoted far more attention to it than we did, or else decide that we couldn't achieve it, and stay out. snip No, they defeated the RVN. We had embarked upon Vietnamization in 1969, and pulled pitch with our own forces in 72 for the most part (and no later than early 73 in-toto). Kevin, the DRVN defeated the US politically, before they defeated the GVN militarily. There we disagree to some extent. The US can't garrison each and every hotspot throught the world on an indefinite basis. Expecting it to do so is rather shortsighted IMO. Since I've never said that we should, we have no disagreement. If I were to employ hindsight to Vietnam, assuming we had gone in in 1965 as we historically did, then to give SVNthe best possible chance to become viable and defend itself we should have devoted far more attention to pacification, training, leadership development, law reform etc. from 1966 (things were too chaotic in 1965, we had to go in then just to prevent the whole house of cards from collapsing), instead of waiting until 1969 and then trying to do it at a rate that was impossible. Whether we were defeated by default is irrelevant; that the U.S. did not achieve its aims in SVN, is while the DRVN government did, is obvious. That's a defeat for the U.S., and a win for the DRVN in my book. We must read different books. :-) I guess so. The DRVN leadership achieved all their initial major war aims, and the US achieved essentially none of theirs. Sure sounds like a DRVN win and a US loss to me. So you say. The rot was stopped before it spread further. We left there in 1973, having turned things over to the RVN, which then went tango-uniform two years later. I don't really classify either of those conditions as being indicative of a US "defeat". Kevin, what U.S. major policy objectives which we set out to achieve in Vietnam did we achieve? I believe the answer is 'none'. One of our primary objectives was to prevent the DRVN from achieving _their_ primary objective, the unification of Vietnam under DRVN control. Their primary objective was in direct conflict with ours, they succeeded, and we failed. You don't consider that a defeat for U.S. policy? Brooks Guy |
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