US Marines defeat Insurgent attack

Originally posted by rich23
Excuse me, the US fought Vietnam with its hands tied behind its back?

The US dropped as much ordnance on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as was dropped in the whole of World War II. It made no formal declaration of war on the last two countries, which made military action against them illegal. After a protracted guerilla war - much like it's facing now - in which most of the population wanted the thuggish US soldiers out of their country - just like now - the US eventually realised defeat and helicoptered itself out of there.

Most of the world cheered when the swaggering US got its clock cleaned by a bunch of dedicated amateurs.

Uh-huh, okay man, believe what you want. The Soviet Union, now they got their butts kicked by Afghanistan, and it bankrupted them. And that was without fighting via political correctness. The French, too, got their butts handed to them in Vietnam.

Dropping ordinance doesn't matter; the Soviets dropped it too in Afghanistan, but unless you bomb the supply lines and source of government, as long as the enemy has protection (as did the Vietnamese with their tunnel systems and the fact that much wasn't bombed of where they were), you won't win.
Not unless you have more advanced bombs which didn't exist back then.

The U.S. didn't get its "cock cleaned," in Vietnam, as many like to say. Johnson himself chose many of the major targets to be bombed, and would not allow the military to bomb where it wanted.

many of the Vietnamese supply lines ran along the Demilitarized Zone and came from the Chinese and the Soviets. One of the main centers of this was the Northern Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. When the Joint Chiefs drew up a list of targets to be hit of Northern Vietnam, Johnson would not allow it.

When Nixon shut down Hanoi later on, the supply lines also shut down. And that was only one area of where bombing was allowed. There were other infrastructure targets that Johnson had ignored.

That is why the President is no longer allowed to have such a power. Because they can mess things up so badly.

Vietnam had plenty of justification, because no one knew if communism would have the Domino Effect at the time. And Vietnam would've been a quick, easy victory, had Johnson not done what he did.

There is a reason he had a mental breakdown. Because so many people had died and he knew it was his fault.

Hitler actually did the same stuff to Germany in WWII. The German generals weren't stupid. All that "fight the whole planet" philsophy was Hitler's and he personally selected which targets to bomb and attack a lot of the time, which, just like with the U.S. in Vietnam, resulted in disastrous results for the Germans in the end.

As for Iraq, yes those pictures of dead children and people are done by the insurgents and/or Saddam's people, you really, really think the U.S. could get away with that much mass murder?

Embedded journalists are secretly embedded in units; soldiers are not aware that they're even there. If that much murder was going on, you'd be seeing videos of it. And until we see a video of a U.S. soldier actually shooting children, I am very doubtful of such pictures.

Saddam did starve half his people and the insurgents did torture that C.A.R.E. worker.

You say the "Patriots" are fighting the U.S.?? Maybe the patriots of hatred, not the patriots of Iraq. The Patriots of Iraq are thanking the U.S. troops for doing what they're doing, even wondering how they manage to do it.

And that's from multiple infantryman who have been there, just having talks with the other Privates when I was in the Army. Hardened veterens of the Iran-Iraq War and so forth that they had talked with and met.

The insurgents come from the surrounding countries, where hatred is generated.

As for generals, man there are all sorts of generals stuck in cubucles in the Pentagon who are open-territory for the press, generals who would love to get their name in the press. I am not much inclined to believe what they say. A lot of them are out for money. Look at General Swarzchkoff (spelling?), that guy is always out for fame.

BTW, since when were the Vietnamese "amateurs?" Last I checked, but the U.S. was just next on a long list of other countries they'd been fighting, the one before the U.S. being the French. But they were no match for modern weapons that are properly applied (which the U.S. didn't do). When they were applied, the NVA lost big-time.

The amount of Vietnamese deaths and American deaths could have been greatly lessened if the media hadn't changed the view of the American public, which would've made the Northern Vietnamese gov't surrender. And even then, all Johnson needed to do was open up bombing of the Northern Vietnamese capital and the supply lines and it would've been a quick victory.

[edit on 22-4-2006 by WheelsRCool]

Quote by Everlasting England/Member: "I think we need more troops & equipment deffinatly the ammount we have sationed in Iraq is pitifully esspecilly for the F.I.B.U.A warfare that they are in the only way to maintian order is to have alot of troops on the ground & 4000 in a city like basra were every citizen has an AK47 is abit weak even if our lads are trained as good as they are. The constant cuts are taking effect as well my mates in the paras tell pretty bad storys. Aparently them guys who were killed at the start of the war in the police station because they ran out of ammo? well My mate say he was in a unit not a half a mile away from them but when the call for EVAQ came over the radio they couldnt go into get them out because there vehicals they had been using (the warriors) had been taken away for sombody else to use that day & all they had left was a couple of land rovers that wernt armoured enough to get to the site so they had to leave them.

Same guy also said that when they first arrived there wernt enough food rations for our Units so most of them had to go to the americans and buy food from them at the yanks portable burger kings and pizza places which he also claims they have (which made me laugh just the idea of america armed forces needing there own burger king) " its on the Britains aremd forces too small Thread.

P.S Did you ever encounter this problem when you were serving? Left behind, out of ammo and poor evaq? 5ickboy


[edit on 22-4-2006 by Gembelindo]

I like these people who still think that Vietnam was winable..if US occupied N.Vietnam then they would have gotten bogged down there in guerrilla warfare just like they were bogged down in the South and then the supply lines would have just moved up into China, you can't stop the enemies supply lines in guerilla warfare when the population cooperates with the freedom fighters, just like canibus or anything else, an underground syndicate can always get the goods smuggled in..case in point another 5 Americans were just killed in Iraq and another 4 Canadians were just killed in Afghanistan in the last 24 hours..

Supply lines are supply lines, the supply lines of N. Vietnam were largely the railroad and road systems. Bridges, warehouses, etc...were not bombed. Hanoi was the hub for the railroad and road systems, and the capital of N. Vietnam. When it was shut down, and other targets were bombed, the supply lines were destroyed and paralyzed. The supply lines did come from China, but China (and Russia) could no longer get any supplies into N.Vietnam.

Shutting down Hanoi did not shut down the supply lines from Northern Vietnam to South Vietnam, it cut off the supplies from China and Russia to N. Vietnam.

As ever, WheelsRCool's grasp of history is about as firm as a baby's on a buttered anvil.

Johnson himself chose many of the major targets to be bombed

Nixon was the one who authorised bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Look it up. You'll also find that he kept it a secret, even ordering the falsification of the B-52s' pilots logs. Why? Because he knew it was illegal.

Oh, and I hope I didn't say that the US got its

"cock cleaned," in Vietnam

Normally I ignore typos and misspellings and concentrate on the argument - if there's one offered - but that was quite funny. As for

Vietnam would've been a quick, easy victory, had Johnson not done what he did.

Well, I don't think it's possible for you to say that. I think it's far more likely that the population would have kicked you out in the end. And

Vietnam had plenty of justification

so much, in fact, that the Government had to invent the Tonkin Gulf incident to bring people into the war. Right.

Admittedly, Vietnam didn't conform to the usual pattern of US intervention, which is explained rather well in Steven Kinzer's new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq:

STEPHEN KINZER: A lot of these coups have been studied individually, but what I'm trying to do in my book is see them not as a series of isolated incidents, but rather as one long continuum. And by looking at them that way, I am able to tease out certain patterns that recur over and over again. They don't all fit the same pattern, but it's amazing how many of them do.

You ask about the motivations, and that is one of the patterns that comes through when you look at these things all together. There’s really a three-stage motivation that I can see when I watch so many of the developments of these coups. The first thing that happens is that the regime in question starts bothering some American company. They start demanding that the company pay taxes or that it observe labor laws or environmental laws. Sometimes that company is nationalized or is somehow required to sell some of its land or its assets. So the first thing that happens is that an American or a foreign corporation is active in another country, and the government of that country starts to restrict it in some way or give it some trouble, restrict its ability to operate freely.

Then, the leaders of that company come to the political leadership of the United States to complain about the regime in that country. In the political process, in the White House, the motivation morphs a little bit. The U.S. government does not intervene directly to defend the rights of a company, but they transform the motivation from an economic one into a political or geo-strategic one. They make the assumption that any regime that would bother an American company or harass an American company must be anti-American, repressive, dictatorial, and probably the tool of some foreign power or interest that wants to undermine the United States. So the motivation transforms from an economic to a political one, although the actual basis for it never changes.

Then, it morphs one more time when the U.S. leaders have to explain the motivation for this operation to the American people. Then they do not use either the economic or the political motivation usually, but they portray these interventions as liberation operations, just a chance to free a poor oppressed nation from the brutality of a regime that we assume is a dictatorship, because what other kind of a regime would be bothering an American company?

Interested parties can find the rest of the interview with Steven Kinzer here.

EDIT: there's so much stuff that's utterly wrong-headed in your post I simply don't have time to deal with it all, but...

Embedded journalists are secretly embedded in units; soldiers are not aware that they're even there

That is, on the face of it, nonsense. Can you give me ANY link that demonstrates this ludicrous assertion? What happens when the journos whip out a video recorder? What are they doing there if they're not carrying a rifle? Does no-one ever think, who is this guy, and why isn't he doing anything? Rubbish. Besides which, most journalists rarely venture beyond the safety of the Green Zone. I've never heard a more ridiculous, ill-informed statement. But more importanlty, can you tell me the ratio of embedded journalists to soldiers in Iraq? Don't you think that they have enough sense not to do anything untoward in front of journalists? Unless they REALLY don't know they're there?

And you might find it interesting to do some research into how many journalists the US have killed in Iraq. It's not just Al-Jazeera, who were deliberately bombed. The guy who was investigating US-backed death squads was shot by a US sniper. A British reporter was bombed during the invasion phase... and there are many more. I'd post a link, but I don't think it's worth it. Just once in a while, you should do your own research.

[edit on 23-4-2006 by rich23]

The soldiers in units are not always informed that journalists are among them. It is often left up to them to learn on their own. If they do, great. But if they are completely unaware of it, they're unaware of it until they find out. You are more right on that one, though, as not all soldiers are unaware of journalists either.

As for the Gulf of Tonkin, no one knows what the full history of that is. It is either true or false. The main reason for Vietnam was for containment of communism. Vietnam was not supposed to be the all-out war that it was, had it been fought properly.

And yes, Vietnam would've been a fairly quick victory. The initial battle in Vietnam was successful; that is fact. Ho Chi Mihn was ready to negotiate----that is fact. If Johnson had gone ahead and cut off the Soviet/Chinese supply lines to Northern Vietnam from the start, thus shutting down the capital as well, as Nixon did, the N. Vietnamese would have had no choice to negotiate (which they did when this occurred, years later). They would have not been able to put up a fight against the American forces.

Also, of the fight that they would have put up, had they tried to, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective as N. Vietnam would've been open to bombing. Warehouses, roads, bridges, railroads, etc....all would have been destroyed, effectively destroying the NVA's ability to fight.

The war would've involved casualties, every war does, but they would have been far, far fewer.

Regarding Nixon, you need to get a better grasp of why he opened up Cambodia to attacks. You will find it was actually Vietnam that was doing the illegal thing; whether what Nixon did was technically illegal or not (which is debatable), it was morally right as it saved the lives of a lot of soldiers in the end.

Johnson had opened up Laos to bombing, not Nixon. Nixon resumed the bombing of Laos. Cambodia had tried to remain NEUTRAL with regards to the war in Vietnam, however, this was violated by NORTH VIETNAM because Northern Vietnamese forces occupied Cambodia. They used Cambodia as a source for hit-and-run tactics on American soldiers (American soldiers couldn't go and attack them, as the U.S. was respecting the neutrality of Cambodia).

Cambodia and Laos were both used as supply routes for Northern Vietnamese forces, and many food and weapons stockpiles were kept in Cambodia.

You can look at it this way: Nixon opened up a neutral country like Cambodia to bombing which is (possibly) illegal.

OR

You can view it this way:

The United States respected the neutrality of Cambodia by not bombing it. But North Vietnam did NOT respect it, and invaded and utilized it for storage and supply routes, as well as bases to attack American soldiers from.

Nixon realized the only possible way to stop such tragedy was to bomb Cambodia and thus destroy these North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia and the supply routes, which he did.

He thus saved the lives of many American soldiers. The same applied for Laos.

You, Rich23, by your thinking, would have allowed countless soldiers to die and ignore the fact that Northern Vietnam was violating the neutrality of Cambodia, just because you thought it was "illegal" to go into the country.

Now if Cambodia had been left alone by the NVA and untouched, then it would have been murder for the U.S. to bomb there. But that was not the case.

As for journalists getting killed, it happens, soldiers get killed over there too. You say a journalist was bombed during the invasion? During the invasion, a U.S. aircraft came over U.S. troops and opened fire in a strafing run against them, not realizing it was U.S. soldiers and not the enemy. It stopped when a signal flare was fired. You can read that right out of General Tommy Franks book.

There were a lot of initial mess-ups during the invasion. No war plan is ever cut-and-dried. One of the main rules any soldier will tell you is that if your plan is going well, something's drastically wrong.

By the way, the "cock cleaned" statement wasn't a typo. It was a rude statement you made, nothing more, implying that the U.S. had its butt kicked by the North Vietnamese while trying every possible method to stop them, which isn't true at all. Most of the methods were not tried until later on.

The fact of the Vietnam War is that the initial battle had Ho Chi Mihn ready to negotiate. The media messed up that one by lying outright and changing the opinion of the American public. Had the war been fought the way Nixon fought it from that point on, the NVAs would have had no choice but to negotiate, as their ability to fight would have been wiped out.

Far, FAR less American and Southern Vietnamese and even NORTHERN Vietnamese lives would have been shredded.

Yes, the initial bombing of Northern Vietnam would've killed a lot of people, but it would have been a lot less than what was killed in the long run.

US Marines defeat Insurgent attack.

Liken it to Man united beating a sunday pub team.

Clutching at straws comes to mind.

Rich23 and WheelsRCcool plzzz stop! I don't see why we should discuss about Vietnam in a thread where it clearly said that the title was "US Marines Defeat insurgent attack" Vietnam may pertain to this subject due to America's Lack of expirience in Guerilla warfare but please, get with the times! The US Armed foces are fighting a whole new enemy and on a different front! They maybe supplied with Russian Designed Weapons and they're also fighting in a same fashion but the thing is VIETNAM is over!

Why? Gulf war 2 has a different purpose than Vietnam, In Veitnam they were just to defend Support the South against the North. In Operation Iraqi Oildom was to remove Sodumb Hussien from Office nd seize the WMDs

New President ok: Vietnam=Lindon,Dick Iraq= BUsh!

Do you really need to get shot in the head by an iraqi insurgent just to wake you up and make you realize that the Vietnam war is over?

Use Vietnam only to compare the two wars!

( I will try MY best to speak with Bad English to give you guys a hard time) I is no understanding you The links (pronounced tuuuhh lings) what is meaning of you post please clarifiy! ( its fun to talk in bad english i meant type!)

In deference to other posters, I'll leave the Vietnam stuff. But Wheels -

Journalists are being targeted in Iraq. A US officer came to visit the Al-Jazeera station in Baghdad the day before it was targeted, supposedly so it WOULDN'T be targeted. Coincidence? Yeah, right. Plus the journalist who was investigating the US-backed death squads was shot by a US sniper. There are other examples.

Oh, and the US' trigger-happy propensity for 'friendly fire' is well known to its 'allies'. Trust me on this. It's something of a joke in the UK and in Australia.

Rich, Journalists are total IDIOTS (no Offense) but its is very true because of the lack of Comon Sense and the fact they have no eyes! I saw pictures of a disabled Abrams Tank and they claimed it was destroyed despite its classification: Mobiity Kill.
Journalists also claimed that an Iraqi AT 14 penetrated the Reactive armor of the Abrams M1a1 even when the ABRAmS M1A1 doesnt even use reactive armor. Everytime Helicopter crashed, they claimed it was a US helicopter when they found peices of it manufacture by MIL, Russia. Journalists tend to get realy dumb because they keep ASSUMING when it actually makes an ASS out of U and ME

This fact distubrs me the most, journalists always get captured or killed by some Iraqis because they never stay within the Safe zones, if you want ood footage, mount a small camera to the helmet of MArines or Soldiers and use Drones ( they have cameras obviously, use them)

If i was a soldier i would never rescue any journalists because they always keep coming with biased and prejudiced information and the fact they wont stay put in the APC!