Originally posted by thermopolis
Perspective for one. Had you visited a village after "charlie" your persective would have a different angle........as far as iraq.........everyone
forgets all the real saddam horrors......or the UN sanctions.........etc, etc...
By 'Charlie' I take it that you mean the VC? Who lived in the villages, right? (Sigh) Ok, let's get one or two things straight here.
The VC only obtained the power that it had in the South by exploiting grievances that the South Vietnamese government was very unwilling to meet, like
greedy absentee landowners and the fact that the peasants wanted their own land. If this had been addressed, if the policy of winning hearts and minds
on the ground had been properly applied, then this would have undermined much of the support that the VC enjoyed. The South Vietnamese government
itself could be stupidly cruel - elections rigged (The '71 Presidential election had one candidate!), opponents imprisoned and tortured, and
corruption rampant. I am not saying that the Communists were any better. The Hue massacre in '68 was a fairly accurate sign that they would kill
without compunction and certainly without reason.
As it was Westmoreland's tactics were not well thought out. Body counts were not a meaningful expression of progress. Sweeps through villages for VC
often ended in a burning village and clouds of resentment. Adams had a better plan, but by then it was too late. The VC might have been broken by Tet,
but the US public was sick of the draft and didn't believe that there was a way out of the morass. Plus there was a massive drugs problem by the
start of the '70s, as morale in the US armed forces sank.
As for Iraq, words fail me. Yes, Saddamm was a small-minded pyschopathic thug. He combined low cunning with appalling cruelty. He was willing to
destroy anything in his path. And he had lied so much that when he finally told the truth about WMDs, no-one could believe him.
The plan for the invasion was good but the force used was far, far too small and did not take into account options like what would happen if the Turks
said no to invading Northern Iraq. And worse still was that so much goodwill was squandered. Too few men meant that the looting was widespread and
terrible. The main museum in Baghdad was smashed to pieces. Iraqis are very proud of their history. Inadvertantly allowing it to be looted was just
one example of where we went wrong. And a vast amount of military supplies was taken away by looters when it should have been secured. Most of the
IEDs are shells! How much else is out there?
And above all, the plan to occupy and rebuild was sketchy at best. Here in Britain commanders and civil servants were appalled by the lack of detail.
Churchill told a committee to start looking at the best was to run postwar Germany in 1941 for heavens sake!
Iraq seems to me to be a classic example of an administration looking at all the options and proceeding on the assumption that all the best-case
scenarios would apply. Real life is not like that.
