After 16 years and millions of deaths the true believers still think we could have "won" in Vietnam

[NNN0LHI]

That is what we are up against here.

:scared:

Don

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DA103DF931A25752C1A96F948260

WE COULD HAVE WON VIETNAM

LEAD: LOST VICTORY A Firsthand Account of America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam. By William Colby with James McCargar. Illustrated. 438 pp. Chicago: Contemporary Books. $22.95.

LOST VICTORY A Firsthand Account of America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam. By William Colby with James McCargar. Illustrated. 438 pp. Chicago: Contemporary Books. $22.95.

William Colby, a career intelligence agent and administrator, became the Director of Central Intelligence in 1973, just as the C.I.A., that murky, semi-autonomous duchy, was being wrenched reluctantly into the daylight. For several years before that, to the exclusion of almost everything else, he had been caught up in America's Vietnam adventure. He was something of a rarity among Americans so involved, in that he had at least some familiarity with Asian history and customs and at least a primitive acquaintance with the Vietnamese language. In contrast to most Americans, who served the customary one- or two-year tours of duty, he was intimately involved in the drama in various influential ways for the full 16 years of its run. That surely entitles him to tell his version of a sad story. And he does so in ''Lost Victory,'' written with James McCargar, a former intelligence officer.

In essence, here is the book's theme. Victory could have been won by the Americans and South Vietnamese if we had fought the C.I.A.'s kind of war, countering the so-called people's war being fought by the Communists. Instead, American leaders, civilian and military, drowned our chances in a torrent of blunders, among them the rather basic mistakes of fighting the wrong war with the wrong strategy, the wrong tactics and the wrong soldiers. Even late in the game there was a chance for victory, but instead we abandoned our South Vietnamese allies to the surprised but grateful invaders from the Communist North.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. having been a soldier for the CIA

I can tell you the reason we lost was because we tried to fight their kind of war.

Utter BS.

[Monkeyman]

2. Dinky Dau-------Bullshit

[lazer47]

14. Haven't heard that in awhile, but you are absolutely "right on"

Uncle HO said we would grow tired of it all and go home, all they had to do was just kill a couple of Americans everyday, and he was right and you are too.

[Toots]

3. Well we could have blown North Vietnam off the map and sent the fight to them

There were funny rules of engagement over there. We were not allowed to go after the enemy if they went into North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia. As long as they had those completely safe havens to dart in and out of we could not have won. It was a real war though unlike Iraq. We were engaged with the third largest army in the world at the time and we could have actually had a situation where a real government could have signed a peace treaty and we could have declared victory and yes "won" the war there. Iraq is a completely different matter. We are not engaged against a state. They can't sign a declaration of peace. People want to confuse Iraq and vietnam and there really is no comparrison other than US soldiers are dying. It isn't the same at all.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Funny rules based on MAD.

Expanding the ground war into North Vietnam would have been a 'land war in asia' disaster of the worst sort, either we would have had our asses handed to us or we would have ended up in a nuclear war. Nobody was remotely interested in that option, nobody sane that is.

Oh and we went into Cambodia and Laos.

[Toots]

18. I was not aware of any American camps in Laos or Cambodia

Maybe you could fill me in on their names and locations. I am aware that there was an incursion into Cambodia in early seventies but it was short lived and accomplished very little. I also know there were Special Forces that operated within the borders of all three countries but they were small teams that were basically on spy missions, information gathering mission would be a more accurate description I guess. I am not convinced an assault on North Vietnam would have turned out like you suggest. There is no real evidence that it would have. We bombed the north almost continually, We had the New Jersey sitting offshore in the South China Sea blasting with it's sixteen inch guns into the heart of North Vietnam. They shot a two thousand pound projectile that went quite a distance...No, Vietnam was entirely political with the military only used as pawns. Why would the US Marines stay underground for 73 days at Khe Sahn before calling for assistance. Within two days after calling on the US Army Khe Sahn was secured and then immediately abandoned. War should be the absolute last resort for a country but once the committment is made then you have to go all out to win as quickly as possible to save as many lives as possible. Khe Sahn should never have gone on more than two or three days, NEVER......Politics cost the lives of many a brave Marine during those 73 days.......Politics is costing the lives of many a brave Marine today.....

[Warren Stupidity]

19. We invaded the crap out of Cambodia officially in 1970

It was not exactly short lived, although as that is not a precise term, I suppose you could call it short lived compared to our 'incursion into vietnam' or our 'incursion into iraq'. It accomplished a whole lot, most of it probably unintentional. We backed a coup against the Shianouk government, put Lon Nol into power, backed his regime for the next five years with advisors air support etc. and grew a domestic insurgency as a consequence that became the hideous Khmer Rouge. Blowback in the extreme.

We bombed the crap out of Laos from 65-73 and intervened on the ground 71-73.

For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dewey_Canyon#The_Raid_into_Laos

We ran unofficial operations in both countries for the entire war.

[TahitiNut]

15. I understand ... but we need to take it a step further.

As a VNVet, I well understand the perspective that the military was prevented, by the strategic rules of engagement, from defeating the nation with whom we were at war: North Vietnam. Conventional thinking is that one conquers the country through invasion and toppling its government - taking over that country.

What it ignores is the fact that it wouldn't have ended the conflict. Not at all. At that point, all the conventional forces would become guerrilla forces and insurgents and the occupation would've become a greater hell. Throughout the Viet Nam War, the US military was predominantly deployed to counter the NVA ... along the western border and in the DMZ and I-Corps, and in the various incursions like Tet 1969. The US military never lost any of these engagements. Additionally, the US military assisted the South Vietnamese conventional military, the ARVN, in countering the insurgents: the (so-called) Viet Cong. Again, by any conventional measure, none of these engagements were lost. So, from a purely military perspective, the US 'won' every engagement.

But the macro strategy was totally flawed and based on combination of conventional European thinking and a flawed "domino theory" - assuming that force of arms would prevail. Neither 'side' every did what they agreed to do in terms of self-determination by the PEOPLE of SE Asia: hold elections. NOBODY has permitted this ... not the French, not the US, and not the PRVN. One might presume that the degree of tolerance (such as it is) of the people for the current form of governance is a form of consent - and that's self-determination. While I might agree, it's not much of a comfort to me.

[sandnsea]

16. We did blow them off the map

North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. More tons of bombs than WWII. We did go into their countries and go after them. Heard of the Laos 7? The Hmong?

We did everything we could and they would not stop fighting. The mistake was political, just like it is in Iraq. They were fighting occupation and didn't particularly care what political entity helped them drive out the colonial power. We do not take responsibility for what capitalism does to the poor and that's the exact same thing that's going to cause this country to fall, if the power elites don't learn the lesson from both Vietnam and the ME.

It's amazing to me how many Vietnam Vets say this, but it just isn't true. Once you get the local population fighting you, you've got a political war that gun power, short of all out nukes, will not win.

[Toots]

25. Well we were safe in every major city in South Vietnam

In fact we were not even allowed to carry weapons in most cities. The local people did not feel like we were occupying their country. They were very friendly to Americans and they liked Western culture quite a bit. It was not the local population we were fighting. It was NVA regulars. I spent a lot of time near the DMZ and I knew of no US military that openly operated within the borders of North Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia. There was a major invasion into Cambodia that lasted for a few weeks but other than that it just was not so....I never heard of the Laos 7, maybe you could educate me. I heard rumors of Hmong soldiers but never actually encountered any although there was a lot af material with Chinese writing on it and most weapons were Chicom..You obviously were never there...It was different than you think..

[wtmusic]

4. Colby has created a handbook of excuses for Iraq

any significant difference? :shrug:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

20. Bingo! We HAVE A WINNER>

that is what this is about.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Well of course Bill Coby thinks that.

That unrepentant war criminal has blood all over his hands from vietnam and was delighted to see the revisionist neoclowns back in power. He is his generation's opposite of Bob McNamara, who in old age at least had the grace to apologize for crimes committed. Both, in a just world, would be writing their last efforts from prison cells.

[mainer]

6. Didn't we actually win? Look where we are now.

Vietnam is a friendly country, a trading partner, and trending more and more capitalistic. If this is defeat, what would victory have looked like?

[sandnsea]

17. Clinton won Vietnam

Clinton and Kerry and normalization. Ha. That'll really get their panties in a bunch.

[Warpy]

8. Rumsfeld based a lifelong career on changing the military

into one that could win a Vietnam style war, a light, fast force that could go in and out quickly and destroy an enemy wherever intelligence said it could be found.

We see by the catastrophe in Iraq that he learned the wrong lesson from Vietnam. The true lesson of Vietnam is that the only way to win a war of occupation during a civil war is to avoid getting into one in the first place.

The Pentagon intelligence offices have now lied us into two totally unwinnable wars. Once is a mistake. Twice is the beginning of a bad habit.

I hope there is rebellion against these freaks before we see a third one.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Read "A Bright and Shining Lie"

"one that could win a Vietnam style war, a light, fast force that could go in and out quickly and destroy an enemy wherever intelligence said it could be found"

They did not understand what that war was about even 30 years later. Like Iraq, our refusal to accept the reality: that we were the colonial occupying power, guaranteed defeat. Instead we had the bullshit that vietnam was some sort of civil war and we have the bullshit that Iraq is about terrorists and insurgents. The only possible way to win a war of occupation is to set out at the start with a plan to occupy, to conquer, to rule, and then to proceed to do so with all of the ruthlessness and criminality that such a plan would entail. A light fast force is exactly what one doesn't need. You need a Reinhard Heydrich.

[Warpy]

13. There was civil war in Vietnam

but it wasn't the capitalist vs. communist war that the Pentagon claimed. It was more a war of the majority of the Vietnamese against the wealthy, Francophile Catholics and the puppet government installed by the French.

The only war of occupation that seems to have worked on a permanent basis was the one the Normans won over the Britons. I doubt the US public would stand for a repeat of "The Harrying of the North" because that sort of brutality can't be kept secret and we haven't had the centuries of hatred of the target people to justify it.

Remember, even Rome's domination lasted only a few centuries in most places, and a few generations in others, all with intermittent rebellion that had to be put down.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake".- Jeannette Rankin

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jacobin]

12. McCain is one of them

Anything to feed the military industrial complex

[1932]

21. Wes Clark has said the same thing.

And he cited as evidence a book about Mao, but he didn't explicitly connect the dots.

The book was about what a tyrant Mao was, so, I'm not sure whether Clark's argument is that the US could have done a better job of demonizing Mao, which would have made Americans more willing to continue the fight. (But what then, is the shame of not winning? Does he think China's power today is a threat to the US that winning the war in Vietnam would have prevented?)

[Djinn]

22. As always the obssession

is around what happened to the US in Vietnam. Almost every article and/or discussion completely ignores the Vietnamese.

US lost 50,000 soldiers. Vietnam lost over 1 million

US lost no civilians. Vietnam lost a few million

10,000 number os US citizens suffer from the effects of Agent Orange and other dioxins

1 million Vietnamese still do.

During the Paris Peace Accords the US promised the Vietnamese an aid package to help rebuild the country they had so grievously abused. There was to be US$3.25 billion in grants and loans over five years, plus an additional $1 to 1.5 billion in food and commodities. Using the issue of "MIAs" as a pretext, the United States chose instead to impose a crippling diplomatic and economic blockade. The blockade has now ended. The US has opened diplomatic relations and has signed a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam. However, in return for a paltry three million dollars in aid, Vietnam had to agree to take on the $145 million debts of the former Saigon regime.

Vietnam was about VIETNAM not the US. Who really gives a shit whether it could have been "won". It should never have been fought. The US has NO BUSINESS determining the affairs of other nations. When they do and they get their arses handed to them on a plate they shouldn't bleat and moan about what a terrible cost they endured and that if things were different they could have "won"

[JI7]

23. only if Vietnamese lives are of no value in this war

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. On a similar note - The Axis "could have" defeated the Allies. aka - sour grapes.

History is jam-packed with "if only"s.