the ultimate lesson that should have been learned from Vietnam

After the Second World War Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the United States government seeking their help in helping Vietnam gain its democracy, he was sure that America with its history would help him out since they had common goals, his main fear however was that Vietnam was so small and so far away that the United States might never both with it, how different history in the end turned out to be!

France a year later in 1946 begun the long French war in Indochina, for war torn France it sacrificed a mass amount of man power and resources, helped by the US the war went on until 1954 fighting communist forces until the French were defeated at the fortress of Dien Bien Phu, they surrendered and Vietnam was divided between a communist north and a free south, but there was to be no peace for Vietnam.

During the Eisenhower years Nixon became one of the first hawks and had even suggested three tactical nuclear warheads be dropped against the North Vietnamese to end this, Eisenhower responded by stating;

"The sun is still shining, Dien Bien Phu is not the end of the world."

During his time as president John F. Kennedy he tried to make it their war, he stated they could advise it but they would have to fight it, he sent some 16,000 advisers to Vietnam early in his presidency and shortly before he was killed he vowed to bring 1,000 men home before the end of 1963 and all of them by 1965.

Kennedy never wanted a war stating to put men and machine into the jungles of Southeast Asia with no clear sign of victory would be self destructive since they'd end up fighting an enemy that was everywhere and at the same time nowhere.



However when he was assassinated Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president, he changed Kennedy's policy four days later and after the Second Gulf of Tonkin incident in which case was incorrectly reported as a possible attack now proven to have been a lie saw Johnson signing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than on Western Europe in all of World War II.



This didn't work as Kennedy had said it wouldn't and Johnson begun to commit ground troops into this hopeless struggle, Kennedy was right, it was self destructive and by 1968 the Tet Offensive was launched by the North Vietnamese.



As a military offensive, it failed. As a psychological and political tactic to weaken U.S. support for the Vietnam War, it worked spectacularly well.

That same year was a very bad year for the United States!

* Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.
* Richard M. Nixon was elected president.
* Troop deployments in Vietnam peaked 550,000.

Nixon's contribution to the Vietnam War was the process of Vietnamization, or the replacement of U.S. combat troops by the troops of the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN).

By 1973 US forces were pulling out of the country and by 1975 as the last forces left Saigon with hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians as North Vietnamese troops rolled into Saigon, defeating the Republic of South Vietnam, unifying the country and thus ending the Vietnam War.

The US had lost the war that they had fought for over a decade, 58,000 American soldiers were lost and over 3,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.



After leaving Saigon the US embassy there and several other businesses were looted, more than 200,000 South Vietnamese government officials, military officers, and soldiers were sent to "reeducation camps", where torture, disease and malnutrition were widespread.

Not only had they lost the war but if they had neither listened to Kennedy or responded to Ho Chi Minh in 1945 things would have been different and better for millions of people across the world.

But the lesson that should have been learned, (primarily that it's almost impossible to win a war) is that first look back at history before repeating it and past mistakes, because after quite a bit of repetition it starts to get boring!

a policy of throwing resources at the problem

I the past 60 years since World War II ended America hasn't really prevailed in any war where they had a landslide victory even though they had an abundance of well more advanced arms than any of their adversaries, I will cite Americas wars since the war in Korea in the 1950's:

Korean War (1950-1953)

Victorious early on in the war the American forces managed to defeat the stretched out defending Koreans bringing the war up north until the Chinese (with no air support) with tanks and artillery overrun the American forces forcing them back to the 38th Parallel were Korea is divided with until this day.

Vietnam War (1964-1975)

After more bombs being dropped on North Vietnam than Western Europe in all of World War II, this causing a lot of damage didn't destroy the Vietnamese forces and when the Americans went into the jungle they ended up fighting an enemy that was everywhere and at the same time nowhere!

As the years progressed more died and Nixon bombed the north so hard that the bombs started overflowing into neighboring Cambodia!



The long and dirty war which saw over 58,000 Americans dead;
By 1975 the north were coming down hard on the south, Operation Frequent Wind was launched in Saigon evacuating the last of the Americans and a few hundred Vietnamese in a giant airlift before the communist north took the south of Vietnam, they had failed in their initiative which was originally set out over ten years earlier!

Operation Urgent Fury (1983)

The US invasion of the tiny island state of Grenada in the Caribbean because it was obviously a threat, the invasion consisted of 7,300 soldiers with heavy air support a against 1,500 Grenadian regulars and 722 Cuban military engineers, they achieved a quick victory, however some 19 American soldiers were killed and 116 wounded!

Operation Just Cause (1989)



George HW. Bush obviously had a "just cause" for launching Operation Just Cause the invasion of the third world state of Panama to oust the dictator Noriega, 205 US troops were killed while up to 4,000 Panamanian civilians were estimated to have been killed.

They achieved this with total air superiority of course and by using a land connection to its bases in the Canal zone!

Operation Desert Storm (1991)

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 the US responded with Operation Desert Shield launching a spectacular amount of air and naval power into the Gulf Theater, around 500,000 troops were also sent, below is a clip from the time showing what tactics were used;



Basically fire power over manpower, what this resulted in was the US bombing the Iraqis in Kuwait, hunting them out of their and then bombing them on the highway on their way home, they continued the war into Iraq bombing all of the major cities and destroying the nations military bringing it back economically to the stone age.

Economic sanctions afterwords starved tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians!

Well done America, you achieved a TV war and got to test your military in a fireworks show the size of a limited Vietnam!

War in Afghanistan (2001)



After 9/11 the US having total air superiority over Afghanistan proceeded to look for targets bombing caves and other suspected Taliban strong points, allied with a 19th century like cavalry the Northern Alliance they gave it air support while it took Kabul in late 2001.

The war has been on and off since then with the Taliban like the Viet Cong popping up everywhere and nowhere.

Currently Obama has launched Operation Tip of the Sword, the largest marine operation since Vietnam, I wonder if the same lessons learned from the Viet Cong will apply to the Taliban?

Iraq War (2003-present)



Thankfully the Iraq War seems to be drawing to a close, a 250,000 strong army covered by the air managed to cripple the Saddam regime, Iraq had its back broken in 1991 and wasn't able to recover since then because of the economic sanctions, yet insurgents did kill a costly amount of American soldiers since then.

Some 4,000 American troops were killed since George W. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared 'Mission Accomplished'.


So basically we have established that America likes having the big guns on a battle and can defeat standing armies with it but when it boils down to conventional warfare against insurgents the American beast can get clogged down and dirty wars prove to be Americas fault since Vietnam, but they've seem to have adopted a policy since Vietnam of simply throwing more money and resources at a war, the Iraq War proved this to work eventually but after much cost in valuable dollars and more importantly lives!

P.S. Today marks the death of 93 year old former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, he served under President Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, I would recommend watching the Fog of War documentary about him!

Communism vs Capitalism

After World War II fascism had died, it now seemed that the battle between the ideologies of capitalism and communism was now to start, except that it ended in more of an arms race that ran the Soviet Union into the ground in 1991 and leaving the capitalist power the United States to thrive in a unipolar world.

But I'm going to exam the history of the mid to late 20th century on this one, for instance the socialists in Latin America that were aided in part by the Soviet Union and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis which showed the gap between the two powers.


Totally anti establishment

Socialist rebels like Che Guevara in Latin America attempting to fight for a world wide communist revolution, after the revolution in Cuba in 1959 he even helped Castro acquire nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, Castro whom in 1994 confirmed to former defence sectary at the time Robert McNamara that their intent was to launch as many nuclear missiles at the US and be killed themselves in the process, that's how serious the battle for ideologies had become!

However you'd be a hypocrite and a fool to just criticize the Soviet Union for what they did in the 1960's, the United States exercised its power over the world holding it hostage to it's nuclear weapons and exercising its power and force far beyond its borders.

Apart from being a democracy it took quite a time to give rights to black citizens, a likely World War III had been averted by John F. Kennedy whose logical thinking averted the death of millions and the eventual confrontation between capitalists and communists, he was accused of appeasing communism and often criticized for that;

Many in the US preached that communism wasn't a political ideology, but a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life which spreads like an epidemic and as such should be quarantined, when John F. Kennedy was shot and Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president he changed Kennedy's policy with Vietnam just four days later!

Not wanting the south to fall to communism he had the north bombed for weeks on end, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than of Western Europe in all of World War II!



So the containing of communism, but the Vietnam War was a lot more complex than that, the fact that the Americans didn't help the Vietnamese in the French Indo China war in their struggle to gain independence from a colonial power shows that the Americans really wanted a war, what resulted was over 50,000 US soldiers killed and over 3,000,000 Vietnamese!



Ronald Reagan the B-actor who became president and remained president of the US in the 1980's showed his worth by invading the island midget state of Grenada and making jokes about communism, when relations between the US and the USSR finally opened in the late 1980's the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991.

The new Russia was going to be a capitalistic one!



The Cold War was over and for the next ten years the biggest concern to the free world was Monica Lewinsky!

Today communism around the world wasn't thriving against capitalism like in the 1960's, except in the Peoples Republic of China where all our iPod's and Big Macs come from.

But these days we're face down in a worldwide recession, Wall Street brought the American economy to its knees less then 20 years after the Soviet Union collapsed from economic pressure the west is crippled while China is basically the same as ever.

So at the end of the day pretty much none of the biggest three ideologies that fought it out in the 20th century, communism, capitalism and fascism none are proved to be prefect and all had serious strains pulled on them, but at least in the capitalistic system we're not required to share our possessions.