DIYbanter - View Single Post - "Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam"

Max Boot

On 2/8/2012 3:54 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:29 -0800, Max
wrote:

On 2/7/2012 6:19 PM, Richard wrote:
On 2/7/2012 3:26 PM, Max Boot wrote:
On 2/7/2012 9:20 AM, Richard wrote:
On 2/7/2012 12:43 AM, Max Boot wrote:
On 2/6/2012 8:25 PM, Richard wrote:
On 2/4/2012 9:39 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:

The problem in Vietnam was not politicians getting in the way of the
military. It was letting the military loose to fight in a place where
the politicians should not have sent them.

And then getting in the way...

Nope. The incompetent Westmoreland waged pretty much the war he wanted
to wage.

Civilians always set the political goals. Military men who say they
can't obtain victory within those political goals are just making
excuses. This notion that the politicians prevent the military from
achieving victory is crap.

But I have no problem with your thesis.

Max, you don't know what you are saying.

I do know what I'm saying and what I'm talking about.

I'm curious about where you got your opinon.
Because it's 180 out from what happened.

Baloney. You're the one who doesn't know what happened. What happened
was, the US got involved in an unwinnable civil war. It was never about
communism. We didn't lose the war because of civilian meddling in the
war effort.

It wasn't a civil war. What really happened was that:

It was a civil war. You had a communist faction and an anti-communist
faction. The communist faction were better organized, had more
committed adherents, and for a variety of reasons were able to don the
mantle of anti-colonialism better than the anti-communist faction. Like
it or not, they had legitimacy; the anti-communist faction never had it.

At the cost of over $800 billion in 1975 dollars - close to $5
*trillion* in 2008 dollars - and some 58,000 lost American lives, all
the US did was delay the inevitable. The domino theory was wrong -
astonishing that it ever had any believers - and Vietnam "going red" had
no impact whatever on US security.

It was a waste. 58,000 American military men and women died in vain.
Just say it, and let go of the anger: they died in vain.