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

Amazing how Gheygagger can be so wrong SO OFTEN.

more disinformation from a non credible source. A total lack of will to win was what caused the waste of American lives in Viet Nam.

Those of us who actually worked the Ho Chi Minh Trail can tell you it was an impossible task. The best analogy is not that of a highway but of your blood system. The HCMT may have started out as a major artery, but it constantly branched out into smaller and smaller paths. I never saw a working truck in Cambodia, but I did see fresh tire tracks, and actually spotted a single guy pushing a bicycle loaded with bags of rice - who we were able to capture.

Each of us has our own stories, but those stories are but the last lower-left pixel of the Big Picture of Vietnam. No one guy's experience or opinion can be definitive. Except to say that it was one effed-up war, muddled and confused, often contradictory within days. And all because of inept or even deliberately obstructive civilian politicians.

We ended up winning, but by default. Vietnam today may be nominally Communist at the top, but it is a thriving capitalist country at street level.

Good point, Rocky- - - - -the next time somebody goes to his favorite local fast food fish place, he's probably going to be eating food that was grown somewhere in the Mekong river- - - - -in water that would make your local sewage treatment plant look clean by comparison!

Had we executed Operation Pocket Money in 1966 instead of 1972 there would have been no supplies to move down the HMT.

I believe war to be the ultimate vulgarity. I believe we should never have been involved in Vietnam. But IF you are going to go to war, you go to win, with the fewest losses on your own side.


Had we bombed North Vietnam like we bombed Dresden, the north would have capitulated in days not years.

American’s wouldn’t stomach that.

THIS.

All I needed to read was the first few words:

"Three years ago, the United States gave up its defense of freedom and constitutional democracy for the people of Afghanistan."


The people of Afghanistan don't even know what democracy is. Utter and total bullsh*t.

That is a good description of every war we have been engaged in since World War 2 and probably several prior to that.

The war was won after Tet, General Giap admitted that they had lost and no longer had the manpower or supplies to continue at any level needed to win and were going to push for a cease in hostilities UNTIL an American correspondent said the US had lost, that was Walter Cronkite. His statement created a uptick in demonstrations against the war and the north saw a glimmer of opportunity.

I bse this statement on Giap's book about the war.

No, how are you going to stop tens of thousands of guys with backpacks and bicycles ?
You can't.
They came back to the peace talks because Hanoi was getting pounded by the B-52's and they couldn't do much about it.
Their strategy became, "Let's sign off on the peace accords, get this bombing turned off and when the Americans leave, we'll defeat the ARVN"

Geeze.

And had we won, what would we have won ?

The US hasn't had a war run by generals since WWII. They've all been run by politicians and we've lost them all.

Wars are business ventures and have nothing to do with "winning".

So WWI and WWII were business ventures ?

"Three years ago, the United States gave up its defense of freedom and constitutional democracy for the people of Afghanistan."

His initial sentence is absurd. Sounds like he has been getting advice from Idiot Boy George Bush. Bush thought he could install a constitutional democracy in Afghanistan. George opened schools for girls and let them take off the Burkha.

The problem is, the Afghanis are Muslim savages stuck in the 8th century. Soon after we left, hard core Muslims took back over, closed the girl's schools and reinstated the Burkha. You can't change 1,400 years of history.

George Bush was a fool, and so is the author of this piece.

Get over the packs and bike theory, it wasn’t the way they operated. They came to the accords because their allies had no path to provide supplies. Not land, sea or air.

Earlier times illustrate how they operated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lam_Son_719

During the spring offensive in ‘72 they used tanks and APC’s, heavy artillery etc. it was NOT a bicycle war. Spring ‘70 they flew Giáp into the general area of the A Shau Valley by chopper for a conference with unit commanders.

Good post ^^^

"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."

DigitalDan do you know who that chopper pilot was?