Viet Cong Victory

[SoDesuKa]

Back in the 1960's, there was no reason to negotiate with the Viet Cong. After all, they were Communists! Besides, there was no way they were going to win. They were just a ragtag bunch of skinny guys in black pajamas.

We didn't take them seriously, but they won. Thirty years later, many Americans still deny it. Right wingers say the Communists didn't beat us; we beat ourselves. But even accepting this implausible argument, we still have to acknowledge that the Viet Cong went from having no chance of victory to achieving it.

Today we're refusing to negotiate with Islamic militants. After all, they're fanatics! Besides, there's no way they are going to win. They're just a ragtag bunch of zealots.

Hmmm ... is there a pattern here?

[candy331]

1. Yep! afraid so, those who refuse to learn from the past are

hell bound to repeat it and at much greater peril.

[markses]

2. Well, not really

First, "Viet Cong" was a propaganda term developed by the false government of the Republic of Vietnam. No Viet Cong may have called Mohammed Ali a n*gger, as he was fond of saying, but it is certain that no "Viet Cong" called him or herself a "Viet Cong." But that is just preliminaries. For the sake of clarity, let's just go by the bad propaganda name Viet Cong.

The Viet Cong was made up of a variety of loosely organized groups that eventually became more centralized under the direction of the more conventional PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam, often falsely called the NVA by propagandists) hierarchy. The Viet Cong - though they would have surely defeated the unpopular government of the RVN, did not defeat the American forces themselves. They had a great deal of help from the PAVN, a conventional force. It is popularly thought that the Viet Cong were depleted and ineffective as a fighting force after Tet 1968, during which they saw huge losses (nobody who holds this theory has ever managed to explain the continuing and intensifying war in the Mekong Delta and War Zone C 1968-1972, but that's for another post!). The shift to more conventional forces after 1968 could also be interpreted through the stages of Giap's strategy of People's War, which always moved from small-scale guerilla operations to large-scale conventional operations when the people had been sufficiently prepared, as it had against the French. And the point is, we did negotiate with the government of Vietnam (what the propagandists call North Vietnam) for a substantial period, starting even fairly early, and these negotiations did include elements of the NLF (the Viet Cong's political wing). It's also not clear that the Viet Cong were underestimated. The significant danger of the collapse of the Saigon puppet government was always the spur for more troops, more troops, more troops. You don't send a half-million man mechanized force against an opponent you underestimate. The fear of a Viet Cong victory was always there, and always quite real.

So, the analogy fails. It is also clear that to negotiate with the Viet Cong was not so severe as to negotiate with the Islamic extremists.

[H2O Man]

6. Very good, markses.

I would only add that to get a better idea on the idea of negotiating with the "opposition" in that war, one needs to go back to FDR and WW2. The tide turned when Truman took office; for all of his good points, he did not believe that "yellow people" were capable of democracy. There are books on the history of US involvement in Vietnam in documents, that are well worth reading.

[SoDesuKa]

10. Mechanized Force

There might have been some mechanized units in Vietnam, but the whole 500,000 force was certainly not mechanized. Armor had no role in the Vietnam war.

Whether Viet Cong is the correct term or not, I'm referring to the military force that opposed us. We underestimated them in our belief that we could pound them into submission. When the war was over, they had won.

There had to have been back channel communications with the-force-that-opposed-us, whatever you call them. These communications don't seem to have changed the course of the war. By 1968 we should have realized that the war was unwinnable. When Nixon took over in 1969, he should have ordered the troops home. Instead he hung on at a cost of 26,000 troops.

We are still acting as though we can defeat Islamic militants without negotiating with them. We've been through this before.

[H2O Man]

12. Yes, you are right.

In fact, by 1968, there were numerous military advisors and administration officials who knew we could not "win" that war. An interesting thought is that in many ways, there was never any real intention to "win" the war in Vietnam. If you start from that point, (and I don't mean LBJ or the Congress, but those in power behind the scenes) -- that the war was fought with no intention of "winning" -- only then can you understand why we were there.

There are some similarities in the Middle East. However, there are many more significant differences. Your point is well thought out, and well taken. Thanks.

[mitchum]

3. The Viet Minh were a formidable fighting force...

who learned very well from Francis Marion's guerrilla warfare techniques. Although Marion never had the opportunity to bring down sophisticated aircraft with $30 worth of aluminum foil...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. In war, if you achieve your political aims, and your opponent does not,

then you have won, and body counts and who won most of the battles is immaterial to this.

It was more important for the N. Vietnamese to achieve autonomy from the west than it was for the U.S. to prevent another SE Asian "domino" from becoming Communist.

A LOT more important. To the tune of millions dead on their side versus 50K dead (1 year's highway death) for us, and we pulled out.

Important enough that probably a whole generation of bright promising young men in Vietnam were wiped out, whereas people like shrub and Cheney either didn't find it important enough to fight in the actual war, or had "other priorities."

As ignorant as many Americans are, I doubt if most see the war in Iraq as critical to national survival. It strains any credibility to think that Islamic terrorists represent a serious threat to the survival of America, all the Bushco propaganda and RW media blather from Rush/Hannity/Savage/O'Reilly nonwithstanding.

If the cost keeps going like this, Americans will want our troops the hell out of there. shrubco know this, knows that the commitment of the average dumb happy flagwaving/suv driving American to undergo any kind of personal anguish for this "cause" is minimal. That's why they don't ask for any direct sacrifice.

Vote for us now, they tell you. The bill comes later.

[ShaneGR]

5. My father says it best....

Even in the worst days of Vietnam, Americans and westerners could travel freely throughout most of Saigon (Now Ho Chi Min City). There was an awareness amongst the Vietnamese (Vietcong) that there mission was to kill Americans so they would leave. But the Vietcong didn't have an appetite to kill via suicide bombings or other such methods. There was no "martyrdom" movement there.

My point being, it's kind of hard to negotiate with a force who might bring a grenade to the negotiations.

[Gordon25]

9. Viet Cong suicide bombers

"But the Vietcong didn't have an appetite to kill via suicide bombings or other such methods. There was no "martyrdom" movement there."

If that is the case perhaps you can explain to me how I lost three good friends when a Vietnamese woman selling chilled coke from an ice filled basket to Marines just outside our compound north of Danang reached under her clothes and pulled the pin on a belt of grenades. Or how it is that six more Marines were wounded a month later at another compound when a teenager pushed a moped up to the entrance to the compound, as though it were out of gas, and then did the same thing.

Gordon25

[Cleita]

7. Yep.

My husband always said, "A poorly equipped army of peasants, the Viet Cong, beat the greatest war machine in the world back then, because they resented outsiders invading their country."

He said this right before this last invasion of Iraq. Didn't some wise sage say something to the effect that those who don't learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat the mistakes?

[MisterP]

18. Gen. Giap says the U.S.'s facing a situation in Iraq

just like it did in Vietnam

[Fovea]

8. The Viet Minh won

because they were fighting in their own country, and were willing to support heavy losses. They also fought with a vert horizontally organized
force, against a heirarchical command that stretched halfway around the world...

They had beaten the French, who fought a lot more savagely than *'s cronies would ever give them credit for.

[anchorsaweigh7903]

11. The Fact is

We have been trying to negotiate w/ them, but our efforts have been futile. It is up to the Clerics to keep the peace, which is a laughible idea.Remember when we cut the cease fire w/ al qadr's (sp) forces in Fallujah, and then what happens 2 weeks later, another uprising.I agree there is a pattern here, and it is a much greater and sneakier enemy.

[SoDesuKa]

15. Sneaky Enemies

The word sneaky as applied to our enemies is disrespectful. The presumption of moral superiority encourages self-delusion, which is how we lose wars. We offered the Vietnamese the opportunity to live the way we do, and we were astounded that they turned it down.

We're doing the same thing in other cultures, and achieving the same negative results. Let's stop doing that.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[SoDesuKa]

16. A Bigger Ante

Maybe you can explain what you mean by a bigger ante. An "ante" is money you put in the pot at the start of a poker game. What is the analogy here?

At the end of the war, the Americans were chased out. Saigon was re-named "Ho Chi Minh City" and it's still called that today. If you call that a victory, I don't.

[Lone_Voice]

17. Without the profanity...

...you would have made an excellent point. The Viet Cong were essentially destroyed after Tet '68 and it took the full might of the NVA to topple the South in '75...two years after the US withdrew.