Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Westmorland Had the Right Idea On Winning the Vietnam War

From RealClearHistory.com….

Westmoreland was right

If Kennedy was not murdered , the US would never had gone further than advisory roll.

I took liberties to clean up your post a little.

We are talking about LBJ. How right was he on his War on Poverty and his Great Society ?? It appears he got as much wrong as does Joe Biden.

kwg

Kennedy

Nixon

Regan

Trump

Over the past 60 plus years they were the only POTUS that somewhat thought for themselves. I’m not a fan of Nixon but he was more of an outsider than a political puppet. Two of them were shot one killed. The other two were taken down with the FBI working with the media/propaganda wing in ways that never would have happened if it had been a puppet establishment President.

The war was won in 1968.

North Vietnam would never have been able to take over South Vietnam if not for the rollback of American support.

Real Clear History? Not so much. Diem was a crook supported by the CIA (rigged election), who eventually murdered him...a few more crooks ran S. Vietnam for short periods, by the time I got there in '65 it was Ky...according to all the locals...the most hated man in Vietnamese history.
We lost not so much from tactics...we lost because we endlessly propped up crooked leaders hated and despised by their own citizens. The Vietnamese are a tough and resilient people...if they had good leaders, they would have done well with American financial support...but they hated their govt and would not fight for it. They had already been at war for 25 years before we got there...and they kicked Michelin Rubber Corp, (France) out the door. Teaching the ballyhooed French Foreign Legion a thing or two by the way.

LBJ was too busy getting filthy rich- - - -he owned a huge chunk of Sea Land- - - -the shipping container outfit that transported everything to southeast Asia. You might ask some of us who were actually there about how phugged up the war effort was- - - - -launching three B-52s loaded with 30,000 pounds of bombs each every 4 hours 24/7 like I was involved in, or finding targets for us to hit like Rocky did- - - -or being on the tip of the spear like Dan was, along with a lot of other guys who survived that hell hole! With efficient leadership, and a LOT less emphasis on McNamara's "body count", we could have wrapped up the whole mess in less than a year. The whole mess was a money laundry for corrupt politicians- - - -a lot like Afghanistan was, and Ukraine is these days!

What is rarely mentioned about the history of the Vietnam war, the Administration was deathly afraid of China entering the war.

The sight of 3 million Chinese swarming over the border from the north gave them nightmares. Remember, this was only 10-15 years after the Korean War.

It limited some of their war strategy.

The Whizz Kids were Pussy’s ..

What would that be, lying through his teeth?

Phil

Your tiny pecker?

LBJ deserved a public hanging for what he led us into. Millions died and he made money from it. Westmoreland could have brought it to a quick end if given the reins.

That's a bunch of BS... LBJ nor his wife had anything to do with SeaLand Shipping. They didn't even start shipping to Vietnam until his last year in office. As to the Radio station, Lady Bird bought that fair and square with her inheritance, no matter what you all believe... a first-term congressman wouldn't have had any pull at all with the FCC... which is what Johnson was in 1943 when they bought the station. If you want to blame someone for Vietnam, blame Nixon and Eisenhower... if you want to blame someone for the escalation, blame Westmorland... for all his lying as to what was happening.

Phil

Any thoughts on Brown and Root’s presence and who profited from that?

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General Westmoreland then focused on a third strategy: cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail running from North Vietnam south through Laos into South Vietnam.

Good example of "talk is cheap" (and a feeble attempt to re-write history)
Look at a map of Southeast Asia.
How are you going to cut all the infiltration points into South Vietnam ?

Westmoreland was a World War II warrior that did not know how to fight a guerrilla war.
A war that we should never have gotten involved in.

It was only a guerrilla war in limited fashion, mostly in the southern reaches of S. Vietnam. Otherwise it was conventional warfare. Guerrilla warfare doesn’t use vehicles, artillery, or tanks, or aircraft.

A very large part of what was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail was through very mountainous terrain, and thus was confined to a small menu of path alternatives. This made closure an option. Case in point: ~March ‘70: 43 vehicles destroyed by a Specter gunship slightly north of Hamburger Hill. A few days later 3 more were destroyed when the northwestern segment of the A Shau Valley that was burned by a deranged chopper pilot, leaving them no place to conceal vehicles or supplies. There was no significant military action in the valley for at least 2 months.

Maps are useful, but there is no substitute for eyes on the ground.

Ask yourself why did the North sign off on the Paris Peace Accords? Simple fact is that their supply network had been crushed and they had no way to continue waging the war.

I appreciate the perspective of those of you who were actually there, involved in the war.

One thing we never seem to learn, or forget what our parents taught us, is two wrongs don't make a right.

Early example from my own military experience: Chiang Kai-Shek and his Chinese Nationalists. Zalenskyy and Ukraine? Time, and eventually history, will tell.

We weren’t supposed to win. The idea was to drag it out as long as possible and keep the tax dollars flowing throw the military/industrial complex and back into the pockets of the crooked politicians. They kept it up as long as the American people would tolerate it. Same game plan in the Middle East.

I agree.

How did it happen that we kicked Iraq’s ass so quickly in the first round? Simple it was. G. H. Bush ordered his commanders to kick butt. They did so, and the conflict was over within a few months.