Did we win in Viet Nam?

My puter hiccupped before I had finished making my comments in response to Ed
and sent it off for posting as if I had intended it that way. This was what I
intended to be my total response to his posting.

George Z.

George Z. Bush wrote:
Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:28:34 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:07:19 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

At any rate, agreement was reached in January '73 and
by the end of March, all US combat troops were out of there.

The negotiation in Paris ran from '68 to '72. You are right that
bombing the N. ended in January '73, but way off on "by the end of
March, all US combat troops were out of there."

I flew combat until the end of my one year tour in July of '73 with
missions in SVN, Laos and Cambodia. US Marines were still in ground
combat as well as US Army. Small numbers, yes. But definitely not "all
US combat troops." The sieges of An Loc, Hue and Khe Sanh were still
ongoing.

Your memory is little better than mine, apparently. I took the trouble to
read up a little bit about the siege of An Loc and learned that the NV
launched an all-out attack on An Loc in mid-April 1972. Take a look at this
and please try to refrain from quibbling about what constitutes "all US
combat troops":

While the siege of An Loc started in April of '72 as did Linebacker,
"all US combat troops" weren't out. I was flying "An Loc trip turns"
in March and April of '73. One sortie out of Korat, drop at An Loc,
recover to Bien Hoa. Reload and drop on An Loc, return to Bien Hoa.
Reload, drop on An Loc and RTB to Korat. One Marine A-4 squadron still
at Bien Hoa, lots of USAF ground personnel and a brigade of US Army
still on station. Deployed A-1 Sandy unit from Nakhon Phanom for
possible SAR use.

Up at Khe Sanh, Marines were still on the ground and we were still
pounding the surrounding hillsides. At Danang, we had move the AF
flying units out, but were still turning fighter sorties for CAS
missions in MR I and II. Did your reading mention that?

Yep. It seems to boil down to a difference of opinion as to what constitutes
"US combat troops". The sources I used referred to the remaining US ground
components as advisors to the S. Vietnamese forces, not as forces involved in
combat as units with unique assigned missions. If you don't want to accept
that definition, and it looks like you don't, go argue with them. I merely
reported what they said. Neither of us were there on the ground, so we're
each entitled to our own opinions.


I didn't bother doing any further research since I'd satisfied myself that
the information I was able to find was at least as reliable as yours, if not
better.

I'm glad you didn't read any further. I've found that history is a lot
like a man with two watches. If you've got one watch, you know what
time it is. If you've got two, you're never sure.

Stop reading while you're ahead.

Quick with a quip, as always, even when it doesn't prove anything.



Personally, withdrawal is withdrawal, whether as a result of enemy fire or
negotiations.....it still signifies defeat.

Withdrawal of US troops started almost immediately after Nixon took
office in Jan of '69. His Vietnamization policy was designed to be an
orderly transition of defensive responsibilities to the Vietnamese. By
April of '72, the drawdown was very close to complete with in-country
numbers down from more than 500,000 at the peak in '68 to around
100,000.

From what I've been able to learn, the withdrawal by mid-1972 was so
complete that what we had left there constituted only advisors to the SVA
and little else. That leads me to wonder why you took issue with my
previous statement to that effect.

Three squadrons of F-4s from Seymour Johnson returned to SEA in August
of '72. A squadron of F-111s arrived at Takhli in Sept or Oct. A full
wing of A-7Ds from Myrtle Beach arrived at Korat in October of '72.
Additional F-105Gs from the States arrived in September as well as the
F-4C Weasels from Kadena and the 35th TFS from Korea. And, that's just
some of the additional forces arriving while you contend there was no
one left.

Please don't change my words. What I said was that the sources I used
identified the remaining US ground forces as advisors. Unless the squadrons
you reported on were committed to ground combat at the siege location, they
weren't part of the conversation and there was no reason to add them to the
mix. I have no reason to question but that they arrived as you reported and
that they may have provided the combat air support you alluded to. I had
never even mentioned the aerial component of the siege and don't understand
why you even brought it up, since it was never questioned or mentioned. I
was talking about grunts.

Key to the failure of the policy was the lack of cultural
understanding of the Vietnamese. We never quite "got it." A good book
on the cultural issues is "Fire in the Lake" by Frances Fitzgerald.

By your definition of "withdrawal, whether a result of enemy fire or
negotiations = defeat", we must have lost WW I, WW II as well. We did
withdraw our forces both times after negotiations.

You can't be serious!!! On both occasions, we withdrew our troops AFTER
our enemy had been vanquished, AFTER they had surrendered, and AFTER they
had ceased fighting. There is NO parallel between our withdrawal from VN
and either WWI or WWII.

Your statement (still intact above) was "withdrawal whether as a
result of enemy fire or negotiation"--it's ridiculous statement on its
face. America always withdraws after conflicts end--we aren't a very
imperialist country. By your definition, we always lose.

Arguing with that kind of stupid logic is beyond me. If you're bound and
determined to twist my words into something I can't even recognize as my own,
I can't prevent it. All I can do is shake my head in bewildered wonderment
as I gain a little more understanding of how we could manage to screw up our
own effort by relying on people with your thought processes for its success.

I still don't understand why you are so eager to be defeated. You also
apparently seek to grasp defeat from modifications to policy as time
passes. If losing is so important to you, I'll be happy to declare you
a loser and credit NVN as well as Saddam Hussein with victory.

I hate to differ with you, but 40 years after cessation of the war with NVN,
only an idiot who has become totally delusional or is seriously committed to
rewriting the history of that particular war to satisfy his own need to
avoid acknowledging reality would claim that we won that war.

I didn't claim victory at the end of hostilities. I said I didn't
lose.

I, for one, say that if you didn't win what you started out after, you lost.
You can call it whatever it takes to make you feel better about your part in
it, but I'm satisfied that "loser" is a reasonably accurate label all of us
who had any part in it earned. I'm neither proud nor happy about that, but
there's little point in trying to kid ourselves much less the general public
that it ended up amounting to much else. Denial may be your thing, but it's
not mine.

You can call me whatever you like, but it won't change the reality that we
left with the names of 58,000+ of our dead troops on a black wall in
Washington, DC, and to this day, there is not a single cemetary in VN that
contains any of their remains, while such cemetaries abound in various parts
of Europe.

When we are winners, we inter many of our fallen where they fell, and we
weren't able to do that in VN as we had in Europe for the simple reason that
we didn't have anything to say about what went on in VN after we pulled out.
Winners can make such arrangements......losers never can. We didn't.

It has long been the preference of America to bring as many of our
fallen home as possible. Interring where they fell is not the desired
option. It was only done when the losses were so great that handling
of the casualties was not otherwise practical.

When I said that we inter many of our fallen where they fell, I may have
inadvertently added to the confusion. I meant by that sttement that we interred
them in the nation where they fell, rather than the individual place of death.
Sorry about that.

Interring large numbers of casualties occurred routinely in temporary US
military cemeteries in various European locations. After the war was concluded,
bodies were either sent home if the families requested it, or they were
re-interred in one of the permanent US military cemeteries in Europe where, if I
am informed correctly, they are maintained in perpetuity by the host nation.
That practice can't be followed obviously if the host nation, by virtue of it
seeing itself as victors in a conflict with us, is disinclined to cooperate. I
believe that would explain the reason for the lack of US military cemeteries
anywhere in the RVN.

Losing isn't important to me any more than it is to you, but it's what
happened. Your crediting NVN with a victory is really redundent, since the
world has known for years that they achieved precisely that and they hardly
needed your declaration in order to make it so.

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.

As for your throwing Saddam Hussein into the pot, that was a cheap
shot.....neither his name nor his country had entered into any part of this
discussion and I can only conclude that you did so only to try to change the
subject to one that you might do better at. Just take a look at the subject
title if you've forgotten what we were talking about.

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.

I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite of
our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually collapsed
under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism remain
today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there in
the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified spending
all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
even have been fought?

George Z.

I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite
of
our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually
collapsed
under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism
remain
today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there
in
the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified
spending
all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
even have been fought?

George Z.


I think this is where several of us "Cold Warriors" who fought in that war
depart company with many who weren't there but are instead students of one
particular interpretation or another of events of the past. Like many other
wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in practically
any area you care to mention. you haven't figured out by now that was a
conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that happened by
chance. Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of resources and
their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the allies.

If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated. My
contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and clearly
we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am not
sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.

You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick you
are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a lay
down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We simply
stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes in
Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to them
while the Soviets met theirs.

Steve

SteveM8597 wrote:
I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite
of
our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually
collapsed
under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism
remain
today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there
in
the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified
spending
all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
even have been fought?

George Z.


I think this is where several of us "Cold Warriors" who fought in that war
depart company with many who weren't there but are instead students of one
particular interpretation or another of events of the past. Like many other
wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in
practically any area you care to mention. you haven't figured out by now
that was a conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that
happened by chance. Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of
resources and their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the allies.

If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated. My
contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and clearly
we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am
not sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.

You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick you
are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a
lay down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We simply
stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes in
Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to them
while the Soviets met theirs.

Steve

SteveM8597 wrote:
I believe that you just made my point for me. All of that happened in spite
of
our best and unsuccessful efforts to vanquish the communist government of the
Republic of (North) Viet Nam. It, like the Soviet Union, eventually
collapsed
under its own weight so that only the superficial trappings of communism
remain
today, and all of that would have happened anyway without our loss of 58,000+
young Americans. That being the case, what were we fighting for over there
in
the first place? What were we supposed to get out of it that justified
spending
all those young lives for? Wasn't it, then, a war that probably should never
even have been fought?

George Z.


I think this is where several of us "Cold Warriors" who fought in that war
depart company with many who weren't there but are instead students of one
particular interpretation or another of events of the past. Like many other
wars we have fought, we prevailed over the Soviet Union
because we had the resources and resolve to do so. If it collapsed under its
own weight, it is because it was unable to compete with the West in
practically any area you care to mention.

How about these two less than insignificant areas? Inadequately secured nuclear
weapons sufficient in size and numbers to render the largest part of our planet
a glowing tribute to man's folly if they were all discharged. And how about
their puny space efforts, which results in our astronauts going to and from the
space station aboard Soyuz rockets while our shuttles are grounded?

......you haven't figured out by now
that was a conscious strategy on the part of the West, not something that
happened by chance.

You can think whatever you want, but it's my opinion that we beat them down by
outspending them and, once we adopted that as a policy, they couldn't win
because they couldn't match our resources and/or spendable assets. That being
the case, we didn't need to fight them in any portion of the world in order to
hasten their political collapse.....it was going to happen eventually regardless
of whether or not armed conflict was resorted to. Having said that, why did we
feel obliged to resort to armed conflict with one of their surrogates? Why did
we spend 58,000+ lives to achieve what was going to happen anyway? Doesn't that
make it a war that should not have been fought?

.....Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of
resources and their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the allies.

I was aware of that, but I thought we were talking about the Viet Nam War.

If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated. My
contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and clearly
we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am
not sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.

You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick you
are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a
lay down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We simply
stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes in
Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to them
while the Soviets met theirs.

You can define victory or defeat however you wish. IMHO, a nation that engages
in armed conflict and ultimately fails to gain the objectives it had adopted in
going to war is a nation that has been defeated. It doesn't matter if your
troops raised their hands and surrendered or if your diplomats negotiate a
peaceful withdrawal, if you haven't achieved your objective, you've lost it.
Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
elsewhere in SEA. The South Viet Namese government ultimately failed in 1975
and the nation was unified, and communism as a form of government did not spread
in the area in spite of it. Taking credit for that failure because of the
punishment we inflicted before we withdrew is akin to the old Israeli gag about
the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that
he's an orphan.

IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of fact,
won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately, because
of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.

George Z.

You can think whatever you want, but it's my opinion that we beat them down
by
outspending them and, once we adopted that as a policy, they couldn't win
because they couldn't match our resources and/or spendable assets. That
being
the case, we didn't need to fight them in any portion of the world in order
to
hasten their political collapse.....it was going to happen eventually
regardless
of whether or not armed conflict was resorted to. Having said that, why did
we
feel obliged to resort to armed conflict with one of their surrogates? Why
did
we spend 58,000+ lives to achieve what was going to happen anyway? Doesn't
that
make it a war that should not have been fought?

In all honesty, I am not sure. At that time we were committed to stopping
Soviet expansion wherever it was happening. This was during the era of the
Cuban Missile Crisis and other smaller standoffs around the world. I believe
that our government honestly felt that the USSR had to be stopped in SEA before
it could gain a toehold but unfortunately Soviet expansionism and the VN civil
war were tightly intertwined. Did we have to engage in SEA - I think yes.
Could it have been done with less loss of life - again I think yes because our
political strategies were flawed in the sixties.






.....Japan and Germany lost WWII because they ran out of
resources and their logistics streams were effectively blocked by the
allies.

I was aware of that, but I thought we were talking about the Viet Nam War.

If we "lost the war" in Vietnam it was not because the US was defeated.
My
contention is that our goal was to stop Soviet expansionism in SEA and
clearly
we did that by making the price for that expansionism too high. There were
wars on two levels, the VN civil war and the war against the Soviets. I am
not sure the former mattered to us nearly as much as the latter.

You can't measure victory or defeat unless you first define the yardstick
you
are measuring with. Our departure from Vietnam was in Jan 73 and was not a
lay down your arms, put your arms in the air, and surrender event. We
simply
stopped dropping bombs there and moved our operations to the supply routes
in
Cambodia and Laos. We turned the war over to the South Vietnamese who were
then defeated by the north because we failed to keep our commitments to
them
while the Soviets met theirs.

You can define victory or defeat however you wish. IMHO, a nation that
engages
in armed conflict and ultimately fails to gain the objectives it had adopted
in
going to war is a nation that has been defeated. It doesn't matter if your
troops raised their hands and surrendered or if your diplomats negotiate a
peaceful withdrawal, if you haven't achieved your objective, you've lost it.
Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the
ongoing
vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam
which
would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of
government
elsewhere in SEA. The South Viet Namese government ultimately failed in 1975
and the nation was unified, and communism as a form of government did not
spread
in the area in spite of it. Taking credit for that failure because of the
punishment we inflicted before we withdrew is akin to the old Israeli gag
about
the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that
he's an orphan.

Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that. NVN was never
able to fully bring SVN into its mold of government. As was the strategy for
NVN, we made the cost of future incursions by the USSR too high. I am not sure
what the alternate history would have been had we not intervened and all any of
us can do is speculate. SVN lost their civil war in spite of our support or
maybe lack of it, but we accomplished the larger objective. The USSR never had
much of a presence after the war and later abandoned VN. Therefore I cannot
agree we "lost" the war. It was a conflict in which there were no clear
winners though no one will ever convnce me that our 58,000 KIAs died in vain
any more than our casualties in Irag.


IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of
fact,
won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately,
because
of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.

George Z.


We can most certainbly agree on that

Steve

"SteveM8597" wrote in message
...

(Snip)

Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.

I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its inception.
We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up with
how we spent ours.

.....NVN was never able to fully bring SVN into its mold of government. As
was the strategy for NVN, we made the cost of future incursions by the USSR
too high. I am not sure
what the alternate history would have been had we not intervened and all any
of
us can do is speculate. SVN lost their civil war in spite of our support or
maybe lack of it, but we accomplished the larger objective. The USSR never
had
much of a presence after the war and later abandoned VN. Therefore I cannot
agree we "lost" the war. It was a conflict in which there were no clear
winners though no one will ever convnce me that our 58,000 KIAs died in vain
any more than our casualties in Irag.


IAC, I think we can agree on one thing. Cost and difficulty notwithstanding,
our armed forces in largest part performed magnificently and, in point of
fact,
won just about every battle in which they were engaged. Unfortunately,
because
of political constraints, they were not permitted to win the war.

George Z.


We can most certainbly agree on that

Steve

"George Z. Bush" wrote
"SteveM8597" wrote in message

(Snip)

Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The
Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.

I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
inception.
We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely
to
force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
with
how we spent ours.

Unchecked expansion and access to more natural resources might have had a
beneficial effect on their economy. Dragging out the (probably) inevitable
collapse for a few more years/decades.

I say *might*. We can't know what the outcome would have been had different
choices been made.

Pete

Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.

I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
inception.
We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
with
how we spent ours.


Not sure I see the connecton quite as you do. Soviet expansionism was going
full speed in the 60s with all the stops pulled out. I don't believe the
spending wars in the rush to build more and more weapons really got on-speed
until the late 70s. So the Domino Theory had validity in the 60s.

"SteveM8597" wrote in message
...
Our objective was to prevent the spread of communism in SEA. The Domino
theory is evidence of that. I believe we accomplished that.

I agree, but we did it by spending them into national bankruptcy. That in
itself ought to tell us that the Domino Theory was invalid from its
inception.
We didn't have to enter armed conflict to contain communism, we had merely to
force them to expend their limited resources in a futile effort to keep up
with
how we spent ours.


Not sure I see the connecton quite as you do. Soviet expansionism was going
full speed in the 60s with all the stops pulled out. I don't believe the
spending wars in the rush to build more and more weapons really got on-speed
until the late 70s. So the Domino Theory had validity in the 60s.

I was on active duty during WWII and the Korean War and into the end of the 60s,
and am trying to rely on my failing memory. Although I don't recall that we
were anything but fearful and defensive about Soviet expansionism during the
60s.....in that context, you might very well be right about the Domino Theory's
validity in those days. However, we also did not consider that the Soviet
Union, an artificial conglomeration of ethnic groups and areas, was largely
eviscerated during WWII and probably possessed far less resources in the decade
following the end of the war than we gave them credit for. After applying what
they did have to rebuilding their war ravaged nation and its armed forces, I
doubt that they had very much left that might have been available for fomenting
expansionist adventures around the world. In that sense, it's just possible
that the Domino Theory had a fatal leak in it. I don't guess we'll ever know.

George Z.

Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought that our objective was to insure the ongoing
vitality of an anti-communist government in the southern part of Viet Nam which
would, by its existence, prevent the spread of the communist form of government
elsewhere in SEA.

George Z.


Interesting, sounds like a political statement, but I don't remember
seeing it anywhere before - could you provide a name, or document where
that statement originated as a U.S. objective - I would be interested in
some background on its creation.

Dave