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| 4/3 |
| 2005/1/31 [Reference/Military, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Others] UID:35992 Activity:very high |
1/31 Can anyone recommend a good book on the Vietnam war? I'm realizing
I don't actually know much about it.
\_ "On Strategy", by Harry G. Summers Jr. for a purely military
analysis of why we "lost". -John
\_ "In Retrospect : The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam"
by the architect of it all, former Ford exec, Cal grad,w/zero combat
exp. , and so-called "Whiz Kid" Robert Strange (REAL MN)McNamara
\_ <deleted> - chicom troll pretender
\_ deleted by real chicom troll
\_ WTF? -the REAL chicom troll
\_ Will the real chicom troll please stand up....
\_ You are ALL lying! -ilyas
\_ [ sign my name for me at your peril, bitch. -- ilyas ]
\_ Or what? You're going to nuke the motd....*again*?
\_ Well I can learn John's baseball bat method, if
you prefer. -- ilyas
\_ Smith and Wesson beats baseball bat more often
than not.
\_ I have a 1945 issue Remington-Rand M1911
too. -John
\_ Yeah, and I've got a baseball bat also.
So what?
\_ 1942 issue Remington-Rand M1911 beats
baseball bat more often than not.
\_ No, goddamnit, no! No recursion
is allowed! Eat my exit-condition,
beyotch!
\_ I d never buy Smith and Wesson, those
wusses bowed down to the anti-gun lobby
pressure.
P.S. My fans are starting to scare me.
-- ilyas
\_ Uhm, I don't think Smith and Wesson
makes baseball bats, so that might be
moot.
\_ Speaking of baseball bats and BULLDOZERS,
is browning any good when it comes to
pistols? Hipower?
\_ Don't make my hero bust out with the
BULLDOZER!!! Yeah, that's right. You're
all quiet now. -- ilyas #1 fan
\_ RPG beats BULLDOZER!!! more often than
not.
\_ Assault rifle beats RPG.
http://www.christophor.com/vids/iraqi.mpeg
\_ OMGLOL
\_ Simple, the US got more than what it bargained for. Got
its ass kicked by the PRC army in Vietnam. Nixon had to
\_ PRC army in Vietnam? -John
\_ Yes, one of my uncle actually fought in Vietnam.
It wasn't like the Korean war where the PRC dumped
millions of soldiers in it, but it's also more than
just weapon supplies. -someone from mainland
\_ are you sure your uncle wasn't fighting in
the sino-vietnamese war which happened after
the americans got kicked out of vietnam?
\_ Oh, come on. Read a fucking history book.
Yes, there were PRC soldiers fighting
Americans in Vietnam.
\_ Maybe a couple, but considering that the PRVN
was primarily Soviet-aligned, and the USSR and
ChiComs weren't getting along to well (not to
mention long-festering border incidents which
ended up as a full-on war in the late 1970s)
the whole thing about "PRC KICK YANKEE GI OUT
VIETNAM!" is pretty silly, especially given
that the US didn't lose a single decently
sized conventional engagement. -John
abandon Taiwan and go to China to establish diplomatic
relationship with the PRC precisely because of the
Vietnam War, because they come to realize during later
stages of the war that one of their main base has been
completely surrounded by the PRC army, despite their day
and night of non stop bombing in the surrounding area
(which you can find references to in the history channel
but they stop short of telling you what happens
afterwards), they've come to realize they cannot prevent
the inevitable and will be overrun. The loss of life
will be unacceptable to the US public. So Nixon sends
you know who secretly to the PRC to negotiate. In the
end the PRC withdraw its forces and the US pulled out,
leaving everything behind including their beloved K9
dogs. To those who think the US pulled out because of
public pressure, its all bullshit, but surely sounds
better than telling the public, look, if we sacrifice
Taiwan, we will have XXX less body bags to bring home.
\_ Your history is hilarious. You should write a book. -John
\_ you got your history all backwards and confused.
we chicom didn't fight in vietnam. if we did, you
wouldn't have lasted that long. it's only our little
sister the vietcong fighting there. stop imagining
things. - real chicom troll
\_ e.g. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam.htm
In short: both trollers and John are wrong. China did
send a sizable number of soldiers (>~ one army division)
and though it wasn't convered extensively by the media, it
was never even a secret. It didn't kicked US ass nor was
it ever intended to. It's role is somewhat similar to US'
role in SK today: to convincine US not to attack with
ground force as it did in Korea. Also worth noting: US
built SV into the world's 4th largest AF and army, and 5th
largest navy. It is rather moot to say you never lost a
single conventional engagement. That Austrian dude had the
world finest killing machines and still lost in the end.
\_ Thank you, good reading.
\_ Watch "Fog of War" on DVD. It's a very interesting one-on-one
interview with the guy who was SecDef at the time.
\- you might want to specify what you are looking for ... there
are books by military people, journalists, photographers,
political scientists/historians, intelligence people, and
famous fictional works like The Ugly American or The Quiet
American. --psb
\_ Is _The Quiet American_ as good as _The Ugly American_ ?
\_ The book is nice, the movie's pretty but sort of
Graham Green Lite.
\_ We Were Soldiers Once...And Young |
| 4/3 |
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| www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam.htm Cold War Era >> Vietnam War Although the Cold War was the dominant feature of the post-1945 world, an other momentous change in the international system took place concurrent ly: the end of Europe's five-century-long domination of the non-European world. Some one hundred new sovereign states emerged from the wreckage of European colonialism, and Cold War competition was promptly extended to many of these newstates. The Vietnam War was the legacy of France's failure to suppress nationalis t forces in Indochina as it struggled to restore its colonial dominion a fter World War II. Led by Ho Chi Minh, a Communist-dominated revolutiona ry movement-the Viet Minh-waged a political and military struggle for Vi etnamese independence that frustrated the efforts of the French and resu lted ultimately in their ouster from the region. Vietnam had gained its independence from France in 1954. The North had a communist government led by Ho Chi Minh. The Sou th had an anti-communist government led by Ngo Dinh Diem. The Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and Chinese interv ention against the United Nations in Korea made US-China policy a capt ive of Cold War politics. Those events also helped to transform American anti-colonialism into support for the French protectorates in Indochina , and later for their non-Communist successors. American political and m ilitary leaders viewed the Vietnam War as the Chinese doctrine of revolu tionary warfare in action (using Chinese and Soviet arms, to boot). The overarching geopolitical aim behind the United States' involvement in Vietnam was to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. To ac complish this aim, the United States supported an anti-communist regime known as the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in its fight against a communist take-over. South Vietnam faced a serious, dual-tracked threat: a communist-led revolutionary insurgency within its own borders and the military power of its communist neighbor and rival, the Democratic Repu blic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Preventing South Vietnam from falling t o the communists ultimately led the United States to fight a major regio nal war in Southeast Asia. The North Vietnamese regime, which received o utside assistance from the communist great powers, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, proved a formidable adversary. Whether t he United States should have heavily committed itself militarily to cont ain communism in South Vietnam remains a hotly debated topic. The debate is closely related to the controversy over whether the problems in Sout heast Asia were primarily political and economic rather than military. T he United States strategy generally proceeded from the premise that the essence of the problem in Vietnam was military, with efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese populace taking second place. To frustrate North Vietnamese and Viet Cong efforts, and in part to "cont ain" China, the United States eventually fielded an army of over 500,000 men and engaged in extensive air and naval warfare against North Vietna m The American military effort provoked stiff domestic and internationa l opposition, led to strained civil-military relations at home, and call ed into question many of the assumptions that had dominated US foreign a nd military policy since 1945, but failed to compel the enemy to do its will. In short America's strategic culture was fundamentally altered in the jungles of Indochina. Allied forces in South Vietnam were never organized into a single combine d command, but at lower levels many combined operations were conducted, with varying degrees of success. The war also demonstrated the advantage s (and especially disadvantages) of tight operational control by the Pre sident, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense in W ashington. US involvement in Vietnam began during the administration of Dwight D Ei senhower (1953-1961), which sent US military to South Vietnam. Their num bers increased as the military position the Saigon government became wea ker. In 1957 Communist rebels -- Viet Cong -- began a campaign of terror ism in South Vietnam. They were supported by the government of North Vie tnam and later by North Vietnamese troops. Their goal was to overthrow t he anti-communist government in the South. John F Kennedy (1961-1963) decided to commit American support troops to South Vietnam. There has been an endless debate about what he would have done in Vietnam. He of course, did escalate American involvement by expanding the number of advisors th ere from 15,000 to 16,000. But there is evidence is there that he would not have Americanized the war to the extent that Lyndon Johnson did. He feared that the US could get bogged do wn in Vietnam. He had Secretary of Defense McNamara in 1962 to lay out p lans for American withdrawal by 1965. On the day he left for Dallas Texa s in 1963, he asked his policy advisor Mike Forrestall to lay plans for a full discussion of Vietnam including a full discussion on getting the United States out of there. In the fall of 1963, American efforts to bui ld a democratic bulwark against communism in South Vietnam were failing. President Kennedy struggled to get the Diem government and a communist insurgency--under control. On November 3, 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem died at the hands of his generals. Less than two weeks after President Diem's death , President Kennedy was assassinated. After John Kennedy was murdered, Vice President Lyndon Johnson served the last fourteen months of Kennedy's term. Much of his time and energy would b e taken up by the war in Vietnam. By early nineteen-sixty-four, America had about seventeen-thousand troops in Vietnam. The troops were there to advise and train the South Vietnamese military. Under President Lyndon B Johnson (1963-1968), US intervention mushroomed both militarily and politically. Johnson asked for a resolution express ing US determination to support freedom and protect peace in Southeast Asia. Congress responded with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, expressing su pport for "all necessary measures" the President might take to repel arm ed attacks against US forces and prevent further aggression. Under the strategy developed by General William C Westmoreland, Commande r, US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, American divisions would s eek out and destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (South Vietnamese Com munist) formations, while air power carried the war to the North, attack ing both the will of Hanoi's leaders to continue the fight and, to an in creasing extent, their ability to do so. The list of targets expanded to include transportation, oil storage, and the nation's few industries. I n theory, Westmoreland's strategy of search and destroy would force the Communists to expend supplies and thus make the logistics establishment in North Vietnam all the more vulnerable to bombing. In 1966, more than 200,000 troops were committed to Vietnam. The United S tates escalated its participation in the war to a peak of 543,000 troops in April 1969. American forces in Southeast Asia operated under some st ringent restrictions, including being forbidden to invade enemy territor y in North Vietnam and, for many years, likewise being barred from groun d operations against enemy sanctuaries in bordering Laos and Cambodia. T he "body count" of Vietcong killed was the centerpiece of the American a pproach to waging the war, conducted through search-and-destroy operatio ns in remote jungle regions. By 1966 it became increasingly clear that t his strategy of attrition was not working and could not work because of the enemy's capacity to replace losses far higher than those the allies were able to inflict. It was at once an insurrection by i ndigenous guerrilla forces and an invasion by the regular army of a neig hboring regime. It was a war of snipers and ambushes, booby traps and pi tched battles. The location of the fighting ranged from the densely inha bited rice basket of the Mekong Delta to the remote, jungled mountains o f the Central Highlands, It included both platoon-level pacification eff orts aimed a... |