Afghaninam, Vietnamistan

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Saturday, August 7, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Afghaninam, Vietnamistan

by Larry Beinhart

There are a lot of people in the military, and in politics too, that think we coulda, shoulda, woulda won in Vietnam.

That wouldn't matter much. The past is a foreign country immune from invasion. But here we are in Afghanistan. See, US forces won every battle in Vietnam. Every damn battle. Even Tet.

For those of you who don't remember, in 1967, South Vietnam seemed to be under control. Then, in January of '68, approximately 80,000 Communist troops launched 100 separate attacks at once, including assaults on thirty-six of the forty-four provincial capitals. US and South Vietnamese forces were taken by total surprise. But they responded well and quickly beat the offensive back, except in the city of Hue, where the fighting, depicted in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, went on for a month. But there too, the Communists fell back.

"You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," said the American colonel.

The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. "That may be so," he replied, "but it is also irrelevant."
-- On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War,
by Colonel Harry G. Summers (Summers was on the US negotiating team in Hanoi and was the unnamed American officer in that conversation)

If it weren't for the damn media. The damn politicians. The Goddamn hippies. Or, to put it a different way, we didn't have the will to win. That's true. But, you have to discuss what that would have entailed. And, even more important, why there was a limit on the price we would pay. As compared to the Vietnamese, who would, and did, pay any price.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/07-3