John R. Carroll wrote:

Unfortunately this isn't the case.
That was how our conversation got started. That and my young friend
mentioned that he'd had his MOS changed.
He's going over as a convoy scout. I thought at first he meant he's been
assigned duty as a Recon Marine but that wasn't it.
His squad will be out in front of transport convoy's in Hummers to check the
roads for IED's and the reason he wanted to look me up and have a word was
the duty I pulled first, at the Forward Observer Infantry Training School,
and then at the Jungle Warfare Training Center as an instructor. One, in
Ahn Khe and the other, Bon Song. Unknown to me, his Officer had recommended
the visit. We'd met at a party when the unit was notified of their change
from reserve status to active duty.

I ended up describing TET, and the results, to him as well as how that
situation mirrored today's dilemma in Afghanistan.
In all of America's history in RVN, we never really lost a battle. America's
armed forces unleashed hell on Earth, year after year on a country the size
of a large postage stamp. We defoliated a third of the country and I've seen
track mounted artillery manned by Marines fire until the barrels of their
guns made the air around them shimmer while filling an area the size of a
football field or more with spent brass. Those units were receiving ammo as
fast as it could be brought up and they just busted open the packing with
iron bars and fired the stuff. I've seen an ARCLIGHT from as near as 2 KM
and that's way too close, even for an observer.

During TET, the North Vietnamese Regular Army was wiped out, very nearly to
the last man. So were the irregular's. We killed thousands of them. Tens of
thousands. I ordered concentrated artillery fire on a wooded area where we
thought, just thought mind you, a short battalion of enemy were laying low.
Three Bn's worth, TOT for fifteen minutes of AP quick. Then we brought in
rockets, napalm, and because they were lingering, Spooky. In the end, an
area about one Km wide to our front and two deep just ceased to exist
except as a brush fire. You couldn't even tell the area had been inhabited -
even by snakes, bugs or roaches. The Navy came in the following morning and
lit the area up all over again.

I'll bet that, or something like it, happened a thousand or more times in
the course of the six month's following TET.
But here is the point. None of that mattered, and that was what we all came
to understand, because in spite of all of that ****, they didn't give up.

We just couldn't "persuade" them to quit.

Will is right. I read his piece this afternoon as well as Bill Kristol's
mewling response to it.

What I'd do if it were my call is put two hundred air conditioned trailers
out on the range at Edwards and have the guys there drive UAV's over
Afghanistan 24/7/365. Everybody would get three squares, dinner and a movie
with the family every day. Everyone, that is, except the enemy, several
thousand miles away.

That is the answer to the question Bill Kristol poses.



And then Walter Chronkite said:

quote:
We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders,
both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings
they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring
offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win
the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in
the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would
improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we
should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations,
not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that
the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost
certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible
escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and
that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere
commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more
American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer
to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the
evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on
the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are
mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On
the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few
months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big
gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the
only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an
honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the
best they could.
:end


and the war was lost... but not over...