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2004-03-06 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by tipper 2004-03-06 12:22:27 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 This is so much cow-pie that I cannot let it pass.

First and foremost...Viet Nam was lost by an unimaginative, unresponsive Military...it was lost in the Pentagon, not in "Washington."

The correct military war model should have been the successful British experience in the Malaysian Emergency...to wit, low intensity, long term counter-insurgency warfare. President Kennedy may have been able to think his way to this conclusion, President Johnson could not. Instead the South Vietnamese Army was forced into an American Mold, large units, heavy with equipment, even heavy with personal equipment. As were the American troops, eventually.

Not to toot my own horn, but I considered and wrote for the Stars and Strips in late 1967, (though the S&S never published this), âThe war is lost when one of the finest Units in the United States Military, the fabled 101st Airborne, is satisfied to be flown out from a fixed base, engage the enemy from morning till noon then expect to have beer and pizza helicoptered in for lunch, then fly back to base at nightfall. This is shameful to our proud heritage demonstrated in the actions taken by the !01st in 1966, ect, ect.â (BTW, the 101st was my Unit, 2/502 Strike Force and later LRRP, which is maybe why the war looks so different to me and why I am still so furious over the way it was fought).

And what is this crap about not worrying about possible Chinese intervention from this so call Historian (?). Is this guy crazy or what? Even I as a grunt on the ground in 1966 was terrified of hundred of thousands of Chinese conscripts entering the war from China, turning Viet Nam into a new Korean War.

Recently released secret cables between Mao and Uncle Ho clearly state that were the US to invade the North, (as was absolutely necessary), China would enter the war with both feet and support the North with its million man army. I still do not know if Washington was aware of these mutual promises between Mao and Ho from 1965 onward, but China was the major constraint in how the Viet Nam war was fought.

Viet Nam was a necessary & vital war in the overall Cold War, but it was peripheral, and it was only lost when it no longer mattered.

Nuf' said. I really want to write and post something on Stratedy in the Afghan War tonight. Oh well, the Nam gets me blood boilin'....lol

Posted by Traveller 2004-3-6 1:54:47 AM|| 2004-3-6 1:54:47 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Traveller: The correct military war model should have been the successful British experience in the Malaysian Emergency...to wit, low intensity, long term counter-insurgency warfare.

This is so much cow-pie I had to repost some comments I had posted earlier on some other website, pricking the impression of some kind of British military omnipotence. (If the British military were so brilliant, why did Dunkirk have to occur?):

The British haven't had any real experience with seriously-financed and -supplied guerrilla wars. Whether in Ireland or Malaya, the British experience has always been with lightly-armed guerrillas perennially strapped for recruits and equipment. (Just read any account of the kind of equipment and funding the oppo fielded, and compare that to what the US faced in Vietnam and now Iraq). The British like to brag about their past experiences, but these experiences are completely irrelevant to the US experience in Iraq. Note that the US taught them a few lessons by taking Baghdad while the Brits were pussyfooting around in Basra. Only after Baghdad was secured did the Brits get off their rear ends and finish the job - and it still took them several days to deliver the coup de grace.

I don't have any problem with anglophilia, but 20th century military operations are one area in which the Brits do not have anything to brag about compared to the US. The guerrilla wars in which they've been successful have always been far less strategically and tactically complicated than what US forces have encountered.

The IRA was well funded (mainly by Boston / NY Americans) given the size of the territory in question.

One of the things that you need to understand is that support from Irish Americans for the IRA gets attenuated within a generation. At most, a few tens of thousands contribute sporadically at Irish pubs to the IRA.

North Vietnam was supported by the industrial bases of the Soviet Union and China with billions of dollars of weapons and supplies. Vietnam was repaying the debts from its weapons procurement binge well into the 1990's. Take it from me - the Migs, tanks and howitzers North Vietnam used to conquer the South do not grow in rice paddies, and don't come cheap.

Compared to Vietnam, Northern Ireland is a completely different animal. To my knowledge, Ireland is not actively sending Irish troops into Northern Ireland to fight the British army. The entire Irish government budget isn't devoted to expelling British troops from Northern Irish soil. The Irish government is not smuggling anti-aircraft missiles, mortars, howitzers and light tanks into Northern Ireland. The Irish government is not recruiting Catholics in Northern Ireland to fight the British. And the Irish government isn't sending its agents into Northern Ireland to assassinate a dozen British civil service officials and Loyalist collaborators on a daily basis. But the equivalent of all of these things happened in Vietnam.

Saddam's men have the looted resources of an entire nation in their grasp. The dollar amounts are in the billions - perhaps tens of billions. They have the remnants of an overlapping and redundant (because of Saddam's fear of collusion against him) security apparatus whose sole purpose was to keep Saddam in power - an apparatus that killed 300,000 Iraqis. They have hidden weapons and ammunition caches in place that are the result of tens of billions of dollars in weapons purchases spent over decades.

Significant chunks of the 15% of the population that was Sunni did not have to work for a living - Saddam paid them off with no-show jobs to keep everyone else down. Under American occupation, they now have to. And there's no way around it - if the US starts paying them off too, everyone else will want to get on the dole. That's no way to run a country, especially when they'll have to start governing themselves in six months. But it also means that Saddam's henchmen can recruit from a pool of 3 million Sunnis recently taken off the dole.

Al Qaeda fanatics in Iraq have a potential resource and recruitment base numbering 1 billion people. The ideological underpinnings of jihad are reinforced in Saudi-funded institutes throughout the world, providing both fresh recruits and (probably more importantly) fanatically-committed fund raisers for the cause of jihad. Tithing at Muslim mosques accounts for some portion of al Qaeda funding. (And 10% does seem to be the number for Muslim tithing - what they call the zakat). And what is the important aspect of this tithing? It's that this is almost akin to governmental funding - every Friday, the payments come in, like clockwork, meaning that the cause of jihad is never short of cash. A little better than collecting a few dollars here and there in Irish pubs, eh?

As for pussyfooting around, yeah, we know on this side of the pond that the Yanks don't do that. Which is why every time we take your side in a war our guys get killed by your pilots.

Friendly fire occurs in every war. Speed and decisiveness in war is necessary because it gives your opponent less time to regroup and reorganize his forces, which improves his ability to inflict casualties on you*. The side effect is friendly casualties, which have to weighed against a slower prosecution of the offensive, which gives the enemy a better shot at friendly forces and an opportunity to inflict more casualties than would be lost through friendly fire.

But the larger truth is that US forces inflicted casualties on British troops because most of combat forces in-theater were American. Note that despite the snail's pace of the British advance, the British also suffered intramural casualties, when one Challenger tank fired on another. This was despite the fact that visual identification should have been possible - unlike American warplanes, the tanks weren't going at hundreds of miles an hour several miles up in the sky.

* who are then in a position to inflict even more casualties on your side

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-3-6 8:33:21 AM|| 2004-3-6 8:33:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 I don't have any problem with anglophilia, but 20th century military operations are one area in which the Brits do not have anything to brag about compared to the US.

Here's an example of the kind of support the Vietnamese received, from Chinese sources:

Between 1956 and 1963, China provided the DRV
with 270,000 guns, over 10,000 pieces of artillery, nearly 200 million bullets, 2.02 million artillery shells, 15,000 wire transmitters, 5,000 radio transmitters, over 1,000 trucks, 15 aircraft, 28 war ships, and 1.18 million sets of uniforms. The total value of Chinaâs assistance to Hanoi during this period amounted to 320 million yuan.

Note that this was during the period that the French were fighting the Viet Minh. After Dien Bien Phu, the French withdrew from the North, where the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (i.e. Communist North Vietnam) was established.

This is from Chinese sources. Reading between the lines, did Chinese aid continue right after the establishment of the DRV? The Chinese deny it, saying that this occurred only after the American insertion of large numbers of troops into Vietnam. But the fact is that China sponsored Communist terrorists in Southeast Asia right through the late 1970's, where at best a few hundred foreign advisers were present.* The Chinese contention that US intervention was a provocation that triggered Chinese aid to the North Vietnamese is clearly a lie - China's intent, as communicated through its actions, was that it was set on fomenting communist revolution throughout Southeast Asia, with significant Chinese resources devoted to that end. Let's take a look at Chinese resources were directed at fighting off American intervention in South Vietnam:

Beginning in June 1965, China sent ground-to-air missile, anti-aircraft artillery, railroad, engineering, mine-sweeping, and logistical units into North Vietnam to help Hanoi. The total number of Chinese troops in North Vietnam between June 1965 and March 1973 amounted to over 320,000.42 To facilitate supplies into South Vietnam, China created a secret coastal transportation line to ship goods to several islands off Central Vietnam for transit to the South. A secret harbor on Chinaâs Hainan Island was constructed to serve this transportation route. Beijing also operated a costly transportation line through Cambodia to send weapons, munitions, food, and medical supplies into South Vietnam.43 When the last Chinese troops withdrew from Vietnam in August 1973, 1,100 soldiers had lost their lives and 4,200 had been wounded.44

The new materials from China indicate that Beijing provided extensive support (short of volunteer pilots) for Hanoi during the Vietnam War and risked war with the United States in helping the Vietnamese. As Allen S. Whiting has perceptively observed, the deployment of Chinese troops in Vietnam was not carried out under maximum security against detection by Washington. The Chinese troops wore regular uniforms and did not disguise themselves as civilians. The Chinese presence was intentionally communicated to U.S. intelligence through aerial photography and electronic intercepts. This evidence, along with the large base complex that China built at Yen Bai in northwest Vietnam, provided credible and successful deterrence against an American invasion of North Vietnam.45

The fact is that comparing Vietnam with Malaya is like comparing WWII with Spanish American Wars. Vietnam involved a guerrilla army in the millions that was supplied by billions of dollars of Chinese and Soviet aid via South Vietnam's porous border with Cambodia, and used tanks, mortars and artillery pieces. Malaya involved a guerrilla force that numbered in the hundreds, that had real difficulty getting the Chinese aid that was being smuggled to them. Malayan guerrillas were a minority group (ethnic Chinese), whereas Vietcong and NVA irregulars were all Vietnamese. The bottom line is that comparing Malaya to Vietnam is like comparing a platoon-sized engagement to a battle involving entire field armies.

* In his memoirs, Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, recalls bringing up this topic with China's Deng Xiaoping, during a discussion about establishing a common front over the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Deng, who seemed to have viewed the sponsorship of Communist guerrillas as a Chinese prerogative, initially rebuffed Lee's overture, but in the end stopped the aid. This aid, which was dwarfed by Chinese aid to Vietnam, amounted to tens of billions of dollars over decades, according to a Chinese official who was imprisoned (for 10 years) last year for publishing this information. (He may have thought that it occurred far enough in the past for it to be safe to publish. He was wrong - the Chinese brook no disclosure of any information that reflects badly on them - which raises the question of whether this sanitizing has occurred through China's history. You can bet on it.)

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-3-6 9:17:28 AM|| 2004-3-6 9:17:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Be seated and smoke 'em if you got 'em boys and girls. Rantburg U. is once again in session.

Excellent discussion!

Posted by Doc8404 2004-3-6 10:11:45 AM|| 2004-3-6 10:11:45 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Zhang Fei, while I largely agree with your two posts. I would dispute one thing. The communists in peninsula malaya were never a real threat as you correctly state, but the Indonesian (Javanese) incursions into Sarawak and Sabah were the real threat and they were effectively defeated by a combination of covert forces and hearts and minds.

Unfortunately the people were then sold out and handed over to the malays.

Posted by phil_b 2004-3-6 10:13:19 AM|| 2004-3-6 10:13:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 "If the British military were so brilliant, why did Dunkirk have to occur?"

OK, ZF. You nearly convinced me. You almost had me thinking that a creditable military isn't allowed any retreats, setbacks, mistakes or defeats. The I remebered the early American disappointments in WW1, Pearl Harbour, Bastogne, Vietnam and Somalia. And realised that naming one disappointing result in history doesn't mean you can dismiss the team's entire performance...

"The British haven't had any real experience with seriously-financed and -supplied guerrilla wars."

And the planet you've been living on is... Ever boned up on the American War of Independence? Boer War? Afghan War? Countless colonial uprisings? And if you don't think the IRA were "seriously-financed and -supplied" for a guerilla organisation, I think your definition of guerilla needs redressing. The Zulus didn't have RPGs, admittedly, but then we didn't have Challenger 2 back then, either!

"...the Brits were pussyfooting around in Basra."

Maybe you should have made it clearer the war was in fact a race. That Basra was an imminent objective that needed subduing with extreme prejudice. British armour didn't race in to Basra at the first opportunity because it wasn't necessary. As things turned out the city fell relatively peacefully, without major battles in urban areas and without needless civilian deaths. American strategy in Baghdad was different, but so what? The nature of the objective was different, too. Basra was potentially friendly, and where there was little to be gained with a display of immediate, overwhelming force.

"...20th century military operations are one area in which the Brits do not have anything to brag about compared to the US."

Who's bragging? Sounds like you're trying to. Brits have nothing to brag about?! Compared to the US? It's that simple for you - all or nothing? In a hundred years the Brits could teach the Yanks nothing in the way of warfare? I'm not even going to bother beginning to argue with such a preposterous assertion.

"Compared to Vietnam, Northern Ireland is a completely different animal."

True, so why labour the point?

"...the Irish government isn't sending its agents into Northern Ireland to assassinate a dozen British civil service officials and Loyalist collaborators on a daily basis."

No, but with or without "government support", the IRA waged a low-intensity campaign for decades against not only the Protestant majority of Northern Ireland, but on the British mainland, and elsewhere, too. The North Vietnamese never tried to assassinate POTUS, to my knowledge, whereas the IRA tried to annihilate the British government. Does that make them worse? Another pointless comparison of apples and oranges.

I agree that the hoo-ha regarding blue-on-blues has been overhyped (and the much greater numbers of US elements in the combat area is reflected in the ratio of British casulaties caused by US and British units), but this is another ridiculous set of arguments:

"Note that despite the snail's pace of the British advance, the British also suffered intramural casualties, when one Challenger tank fired on another. This was despite the fact that visual identification should have been possible - unlike American warplanes, the tanks weren't going at hundreds of miles an hour several miles up in the sky."

Ever been in a tank battle? The don't often happen at "snail's pace". The vehicles happened to be approaching each other, and there were enemy units known to be in the area. It happened in a few, confused seconds. The "American warplanes" involved in blue-on-blues affecting British armoured vehicles are typically A-10s. Not "several miles up". In the incident that took place near Basra last year, a soldier died when the A-10 took its second attack pass on a group of British AFVs.

I don't have a problem with acknowledging the present peerlessness of the American military, and you won't find me "bragging" about British military prowess, historical or current, but your determination to slate the British military whilst ignoring any of its achievements suggests to me that you do indeed have a problem with "anglophilia".

Posted by Anonymous 2004-3-6 10:59:19 AM|| 2004-3-6 10:59:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Oh, that was me above, BTW

Posted by Bulldog 2004-3-6 11:05:19 AM|| 2004-3-6 11:05:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Who else could it be? ;>

Posted by Shipman 2004-3-6 1:20:44 PM|| 2004-3-6 1:20:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Awful lot of cowpie being distributed in this thread. Let me add my $.02 worth to the battle.

First, the biggest problem with the Vietnam War is that it was fought from the top down, with the leadership (President, SecDef, senior military commanders) putting political restraints on military operations. It was these political decisions that cost us victory in Vietnam, not the on-site military commanders and men that fought. The pattern was established under Johnson/MacNamara, and continued, more or less, under Nixon.

Second, as the old saying goes, "Generals always fight the last war over - at least at first". With Vietnam, it continued far longer than it should, and never really ended completely. Unfortunately, it was the EUROPEAN portion of World War II that provided the basis for military operations in Vietnam, right up until the United States pulled out. If we'd fought more the kind of war fought in the Pacific, I think we'd have had a much greater success.

Third, we never really got the Vietnamese involved in their own war. That, in the end, is what caused the fall of the Saigon government. The average Vietnamese never had a real stake in the war. They were either pawns for our government, or for theirs. We built their army, taught it how to fight a mainland European war, and wondered why it never seemed to be able to accomplish anything. The few attemps to win "hearts and minds" were undermined by both the US and Vietnamese governments, guaranteeing failure.

Finally, we lost in Vietnam because the American people were never convinced we could win. That's because no one ever declared "We will continue this until the North surrenders and the war ends". It was designed as a stalemate ("containment"), with no end in sight. That vision proved far too costly, in terms of both human life and financial commitment. In the end, the American electorate quit supporting it, and the elected officials were afraid to stand up and say "we have a treaty commitment, and we'll see it through". The Congress tucked its legs between its legs, we had a truly unelected president with little popular support, and the entire house of cards collapsed.

The Left thinks it won a 'victory', and hopes to gain greater control of our political process by using the same tactics WRT Iraq. Unfortunately, they are the ones this time "fighting the last war". The situation - militarily, politically, economically - is vastly different. Even the very basis for fighting the two wars is different. Vietnam was fought to contain Communism. While we lost the battle, we won the war. Iraq is about fighting terrorism, and preventing people whose ideas are even more fundamentally different from ours than the communists were from destroying our civilization. If the Left cannot understand that (and they seem to have some real difficulties), they will never be able to understand the realities of foreign policy in the 21st century. The American people are having less of a problem. This means serious trouble for the Left, and the politics they support.

All the rest of the above discussion is chaff.

Posted by Old Patriot 2004-3-6 2:33:47 PM|| [http://users.codenet.net/mweather/default.htm] 2004-3-6 2:33:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 After my little rant I thought that I maybe should have amended it to point out the reality that we all see only through our own eyes, and largely through our own experience, (for me, small unit, long range sniping, night ambushes, and almost Pheonix Program like activity...it is what I know).

Bulldog obiviously knows something about tanks, about which I would be clueless...even as to their value in combat. I just don't know. His insight on the Blue on Blue incident involving the Challanger Tanks is compelling...My view is that Blue on Blue, especially considering the speed of modern warfare is just inevitable.

A counter view would be that it is not the speed of current warfare, but rather that Blue on Blue has always been with us...see the devestation of British troops trying to follow a walking barrage in WWI to hopefully open up the trenches in front, but in reality hitting our own troops as often as the Boche. (There's a word you don't see ofter...lol). Blue on Blue should be always be attempted to be minimized, but also...just get over it...Blue on Blue will aways be with us.

Mr. Zang Fei makes many good points regarding China...but this just reinforces my point that Viet Nam was only a Proxy war, first between the USSR and the US, but also increasing between the US and China.

How often did everyone wish that we just couldn't go up to Hanoi and just kill Giap and Ho? We didn't have to take the city, just decapitate the leadership...but with China in the wings, it was simply not possible. Hence, at some level the war was lost when it began.

Lastly, it should most especially be noted that China was just Freeking Nuts (!) during most of this period, caught in the throws of their Cultural Revolution. Mao's behavior on anything could not be safely predicted...and we, (by this I mean the suffering troops also), damn sure didn't want China to intervene.

It was nasty for everybody...and I suppose, in the end, just a damned shame, though I still firmly believe that Viet Nam bought the United States and the West sufficent time to eventually win the real war, The Cold War.

Be Good,

Posted by Traveller 2004-3-6 7:48:34 PM|| 2004-3-6 7:48:34 PM|| Front Page Top

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