It is diatribes just like this which dramatically underscores why America lost the war and continues to struggle in the current low-intensity conflicts for which it finds itself embroiled in today.
Americans live in a bubble; a fact that lends itself to the propensity many Americans have for viewing everything - war in particular, in the context of a sports scoreboard. Whomever accumulates the most points is the victor.
War is a multi-faceted business that incorporates every tangent imaginable; including but not limited to military operations, the media, and subterfuge.
The Northern leadership knew this - Ho Chi Min and General Giap especially. They played every card and exploited every opening the Americans handed them outside the sphere of military operations to their advantage. Their manipulation of western liberal media outlets and the continued characterization of the agendas belonging to the military industrial complex was a masterstroke for which the American public played into.
While General Westmoreland and President Johnston continued to flounder about by measuring the success of the war with intangible goals such as body count and ground gained; the Northern leadership continued to apply gradual pressure on both the diplomatic and military fronts. Negotiations were a mere poise used to gain periods of rest for weary forces and to extract compromises from their American and South Vietnamese opponents.
For each strategic move initiated by the NVA, the American response was predictable, massive firepower on an ever increasing scale and the extension of free fire zones. It would often be civilians who paid the price as a result; something not lost to the media. A string of similar events would ultimately swell the ranks of the Vietcong and further incite anti-war protests.
Despite horrendous troop losses and defeat in every major engagement, the North Vietnamese ultimately triumphed by slowly whittling down the American physique. They didn't need to achieve a smashing victory against US and South Vietnamese forces, they only needed to ensure that coffins of fallen troops were being sent home to a causality adverse society on a weekly basis while still maintaining the cohesion of their own forces.
General Giap once remarked, "You will kill ten of us for every one we kill of you. Yet, it is you in the end who will tire." He was proven right.
An American colonel once told a North Vietnamese commander after the war, "You know, you never beat us militarily." To which his counterpart responded, "This is true. But it is also irrelevant."
Today the problem is much the same. The advantage in military assets is massive against the Taliban and Al-Queda forces. Yet, the leverage afforded by these are being nullified by the long standing systemic problem facing Americans today - the lack of interest in learning other languages and cultures. In other words, you do not know your enemy.
As the seemingly irrelevant political dogma and racist bile which spews from your mouth clearly indicates, America still has a long way to go in that regard.
For the record, Vietnam today is a peaceful tourist destination. Communism as an ideal does not flourish there. Regardless of whatever propaganda is instilled in its people as to how the war was won, the Vietnamese remain a pragmatic society that continues to suffer from the effects of unexploded ordinance and Agent Orange; the latter for which the American government continues to deny as the source of growing birth defects and other maladies which were not present prior to the war
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nickm2
14 years ago
I agree; an Intel Officer once said of Giap that in effect, he doesn't measure success by the numbers of HIS dead but by the number of coffins going back to the US...in addition, the NVA was able to 'control' it's casualties--as light infantry force with a slim logistical tail, it's been said that 90% of all combat (by company sized units or larger) was initiated by the NVA; they could 'control' their level of casualties to 'politically acceptable' levels. IF they didn't want to be engaged, they could evade-into tunnels, further into bunker complexes in the mountains & jungles or across the border into their sanctuaries in Laos & Cambodia;
Personally I always felt Ho & Giap were as bad or worse than The Kims of North Korea, but simply knew how to put a more 'friendly face' on themselves.
NM
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CaliCurmudgeon
13 years ago
Bingo. While the kill ratio was 15:1, Ho and Giap didn't politically mind 3000 dead a week, but enough of the Congress *did* politically mind 200 dead a week.
While the NVA and VC never held any territory from which they were driven off, the USA never stayed around to occupy it either, and so the NVA and VC always came back.
The joke of Laotian "neutrality" also made the Ho Chi Minh trails impossible to cut off.
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Bruiser235
13 years ago
Very well said. You should also factor in the Soviet and Chinese (to a lesser extent) involvement in the war.
Eat this!
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