Article

2018-02-03 -Short Attention Span Theater-

US Combat Advisers in Vietnam Knew the Score and Got Ignored

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Posted by Besoeker 2018-02-03 08:19|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11127 views ] Top

#1 Strange isn't it, how some things never change ?

Posted by Besoeker 2018-02-03 08:23|| 2018-02-03 08:23|| Front Page Top

#2 fellow advisers learned about the political and social forces that fueled the civil war in South

Corruption and power mongering - seems to be very present much mush closer to home these days. That and one side believing there can be only one political agency in their world.

Posted by Procopius2k 2018-02-03 08:35|| 2018-02-03 08:35|| Front Page Top

#3 Read Bernard B. Fall's Street Without Joy sometime. One of the anecdotes was the author watching two French officers too busy with their tennis game to pause for the colors being lowered at the same time a senior Cambodian NCO nearby was standing at rigid attention. How to lose a war in imperceptible steps...

Posted by magpie 2018-02-03 10:08|| 2018-02-03 10:08|| Front Page Top

#4 Under no circumstances could they imagine how a largely guerrilla army with no air force or tanks could possibly defeat the ARVN, let alone the most technologically advanced army on the face of the planet.

Except, it wasn't. When South Vietnam was finally conquered, it was by a tank invasion from the North.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-02-03 10:51|| 2018-02-03 10:51|| Front Page Top

#5 Heard through the grapevine a story about the Tet offensive, probably relevant here. A USA officer told me his intelligence unit got a pile of documents from a dead NVA officer. They were translated & seemed to have a detailed outline of a massive coordinated NVA operation coming up for the next Tet holiday in a week or so. He personally was concerned enough that he called senior commanders & got an appointment to bring this to Gen. Westmoreland's face to face, personal attention. Shortly after this, he presented his documents along with a short summary. Westermoreland glanced at the top, waved the back of his hand towards it, and dismissed the officer with, "They can't do this!"
He went back to near front lines with the sure knowledge of the exact hour the attack would start, and he learned they could do it.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-03 12:13|| 2018-02-03 12:13|| Front Page Top

#6 I'm not saying there weren't fuckups then.

If we discussed every fuckup we did in Ww2 in the same context at the time I guarantee you the outcome would have been a lot worse.

The US and the UK combined lost about 800,000 people in WW2. I guarantee you a lot of those deaths were due to stupidity and corruption.

The Soviets didn't lose ~ 12 million military dead and ~ 17 million civilian dead because Stalin was an Angelic Genius.

We can point this out without reaching the context that Naziism Was Right because we eventually won WW2. But we eventually gave up South Vietnam and every discussion, every history book has to justify that sale.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain with his beloved B-Wing "Brad" in the basement of the castle 2018-02-03 13:25|| 2018-02-03 13:25|| Front Page Top

#7 British knew how to win, they fought a very similar war in Malaya not long before. Their experience was ignored as well because it required massive political control. They were ignored.

Marines knew how to win, they wrote the SMALL WARS manual about how to win these things using experience of their many combats in Latin America. They were ignored and an artillery expert was put in command.

The whole thing is sad.

Posted by rjschwarz 2018-02-03 18:39|| 2018-02-03 18:39|| Front Page Top

#8 Brits figured out that most of the problem was from the Chinese community. They could tell the difference between someone who looked Chinese and one who looked Malaysian. Didn't work as well in Northern Ireland where the 'natives' looked the same.

Posted by Procopius2k 2018-02-03 18:54|| 2018-02-03 18:54|| Front Page Top

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