Tag: South Vietnam

MACV-SOG Anniversary

Closing Thought–25Jan19

Most of my readers know that I served 2 and half years in Vietnam and that I am always throwing some history of my war into my posts….

Thursday, January 24th was the 55th anniversary of the activation of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) in the Republic of Vietnam. Formed in 1964, MACV-SOG functioned as a joint special operations task force (JSOTF) in Southeast Asia.

Means very little to anyone that was not part of the conflict in Southeast Asia….but since this is my history lesson for the day….

The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was a highly classified, multi-service United States Special Operations Forces unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during the Second Indochina War, aka Vietnam War. Established on 24 January 1964, the unit conducted strategic reconnaissance missions in Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia; carried out the capture of enemy prisoners, rescued downed pilots, and conducted rescue operations to retrieve allied prisoners of war throughout Southeast Asia; and conducted clandestine agent team activities and psychological operations against that country.

The unit participated in most of the significant campaigns of the Vietnam War, including the Tonkin Gulf Incident which precipitated American involvement, Operation Steel Tiger, Operation Tiger Hound, the Tet Offensive, Operation Commando Hunt, the Cambodian Campaign, Operation Lam Son 719, and the Easter Offensive. The unit was formally disbanded and replaced by the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team 158 on 1 May 1972. fuse trackers.

http://www.modernforces.com/macv_sog.htm

There were three “studies”….Water, air and land…..I was a grunt so I was part of the “Land Studies”……

Most people know little to nothing about SOG but they are probably familiar with the patch…..

Your history lesson is complete.

Learn Stuff!

Class Missed!

Vietnam Is A Prime Example

Our wars should be examples to our leadership so that we do not make the same mistakes time after time…..the France had a long war and then the US came by and thought it would be a good idea to make same mistakes France did in Vietnam….oh sorry….Indo-China.

The First Indochina War…….

Ho’s efforts during this period were directed primarily at conciliating both the French themselves and the militantly antiFrench members of the ICP leadership. The growing frequency of clashes between French and Vietnamese forces in Haiphong led to a French naval bombardment of that port city in November 1946. Estimates of Vietnamese casualties from the action range from 6,000 to 20,000. This incident and the arrival of 1,000 troops of the French Foreign Legion in central and northern Vietnam in early December convinced the communists, including Ho, that they should prepare for war. On December 19, the French demanded that the Vietnamese forces in the Hanoi area disarm and transfer responsibility for law and order to French authority. That evening, the Viet Minh responded by attacking the city’s electric plant and other French installations around the area. Forewarned, the French seized Gia Lam airfield and took control of the central part of Hanoi, as full-scale war broke out. By late January, the French had retaken most of the provincial capitals in northern and central Vietnam. Hue fell in early February, after a six-week siege. The Viet Minh, which avoided using its main force units against the French at that time, continued to control most of the countryside, where it concentrated on building up its military strength and setting up guerrilla training programs in liberated areas. Seizing the initiative, however, the French marched north to the Chinese border in the autumn of 1947, inflicting heavy casualties on the Viet Minh and retaking much of the Viet Bac region.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/vietnam1.htm

The Vietnamese dealt a final blow with the battle of Dien Bien Phu…..a short video to explain what happened during this battle…..

After the France gave up the region the US thought it would be a good idea to get involved…..keep in mind the old “Domino Theory” fear mongering…..and then an incident gave the US its excuse for an all out invasion (not called that but a rose by another name thing)…..thinking Gulf of Tonkin incident….

Here in the US we have a selective memory and what they show on the tube as history of that war is not much that I saw during my 2 and half years in country….that is the key…selective memory……

The Vietnam War was obviously one of the most disastrous of this country’s past mistakes – and the Pentagon’s “50th Vietnam War commemoration” is a near-perfect example of how both national and military leaders and a willing public have avoided facing important truths about Vietnam and American wars ever since. That’s not just a matter of inaccurate storytelling. It’s dangerous because refusing to recognize past mistakes makes it easier to commit future ones. For that reason, the selective history the Pentagon has been putting out on Vietnam for more than six years, and what that story tells us about the military leadership’s institutional memory, is worth a critical look.

https://original.antiwar.com/Arnold_Isaacs/2018/11/08/misremembering-vietnam/

MY point is (I finally got there, huh?) we have made the same mistake in Afghanistan and Iraq that the French and then the US made in Vietnam….they, the leaders, did not learn from the history and we have repeated it…..

Ken Burns’ Vietnam War

By now most Americans interested have watched Ken Burns’ documentary of the Vietnam War…..I have read many critiques both pro and con….me?  I was there and do not need to be reminded of the stupidity or the insanity…..

But I read a peace in the New Statesman about the film……..

In his own remarks, Mac Owens mentioned an essay by Jim Webb, the decorated Vietnam combat veteran, writer, and former US senator. That essay, “Heroes of the Vietnam Generation,” pairs well with an earlier essay, “Peace? Defeat? What Did the Vietnam War Protesters Want?,” which was also published by the American Enterprise Institute, in 1997. Both are very useful, especially for those who didn’t live through the Vietnam era, for understanding some of that generation’s dynamics.

Webb discusses how it was really the first time in US history when a lot of people argued not going into the military was actually a good thing, and this sentiment has guided how a lot of people look at the Vietnam War. In order to justify not serving in the military at that time, many described the war as unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable. While I can’t read Ken Burns’ mind, if you look at his documentary The Vietnam War, it certainly seems to support this mentality.

https://providencemag.com/2018/05/ken-burns-omits-vietnam-war/

Of course when Vietnam is mentioned or debated there is always the subject of who won that war…..

To bring with that would nice to know what those asking and answering the question what their definition of winning and losing in war really means.

In order to know whether the U.S. lost the Vietnam war or not, it’s wise to go back and see why the Vietnam war started in the first place. Domino theory or containment was usually used as a  justification for the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The fact is the U.S. failed to stop the spread of Communism throughout Vietnam which led to its spread to Laos and Cambodia in 1975. However, it is arguable that the effects of the war in Korea and Vietnam that the U.S. had involved in did help the rest of South-East Asian countries such as Thailand and Singapore stay free of communism.

Military-wise, the U.S. arguably never lost any major battles. However, it could not stand the constantly increasing loss of American lives and the economic burden the war carried on its people and was eventually forced to leave Vietnam before the war ended. Without its direct support, South Vietnam surrendered to the North Communists and disappeared from the world map not long later.

In short, in the picture of Vietnam, the U.S. failed to defend South Vietnam against the North Communists and probably lost the war politically rather than militarily as Vietnam was far from the war of major battles. In the bigger picture of containment, the U.S. did achieve their initial goals to a certain extent.

https://thevietnamwar.info/who-won-the-vietnam-war/

This is a good piece for those interested in a by-gone war that most Americans had sooner forget

Hill 397

Hill 397?…..maybe if I give a movie reference (movies that I will not watch….. I was there I do not need to remember the insanity) Hamburger Hill……..an exercise in futility.

Sorry children time for your history lesson so that maybe you will not make the same mistakes as your elders….

The battle was the result of a renewed effort in early 1969 to neutralize the North Vietnamese forces in the A Shau, a 45-kilometer-long valley in southwestern Thua Thien Province along the border with Laos. The A Shau sheltered enemy Base Area 611 and had long provided a major infiltration corridor for Communist forces from the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos to the coastal cities of northern I Corps Tactical Zone.

The valley’s formidable terrain was dominated at its northern end by what local Montagnard tribesmen called the “mountain of the crouching beast,” Dong Ap Bia. On military maps it was simply Hill 937, so labeled for its height in meters. Several large ridges and fingers ran out from its summit, one of the largest extending southeast to a height of 900 meters and another reaching south to a 916-meter peak. The steep slopes of Dong Ap Bia were cloaked by a heavy undergrowth of sawtooth elephant grass, thick stands of bamboo, and double-and-triple canopy jungle. It was an area long occupied by the NVA and it was fortified with bunkers, spider holes, deep tunnels and trenches.

http://www.historynet.com/hell-on-hamburger-hill.htm

Made for a good movie for Hollywood but war is anything but a source for entertainment.

I want my readers to remember the men and women that fought and died in Vietnam do not let them be removed to the dust bins of history.

The Loss Of Saigon

As a Viet Vet I am always having to have the conversation about that war….mostly with people that are too young to know what it was like or from older people that did not go and serve in the country.

Usually I shut down the conversation when I ask if they were in country……if they say no then I point out that how can they have any idea of what happened if they were not there?  That normally makes some upset and they storm off.

Some stay to show their savvy of that war…they read a book or saw a movie so they have a good grasp on the policies of the time…..

Of course the conversation turns to why the war was lost….there is a wide array of reason….but the one that got my attention was the one that believes that it was Congress fault for cutting off funding to South Vietnam……

This article points out the fiscal policy of the day to include the war in Vietnam.

Since partisans have turned the April 30, 1975, Communist takeover of South Vietnam into a political weapon, I’m going to spend the anniversary doing a little myth-busting.

Mel Laird, Richard Nixon’s defense secretary, started the modern myth that “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975” in a 2005 article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

Laird repeated it two years later in a Washington Post op-ed column in which he wrote “of 1975, when Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War three years after our combat troops had left.”

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/126150

My Lai–50 Years On

Closing Thought–16Mar18

Your Daily History Lesson…….

When I was teaching class at university I asked my class to find Vietnam on a map….15 students…..14 wrong answers….the only correct was a vet of that war…..in their defense they did not know the name Arafat or Begin…..I would bet that it is not much better these days of the information revolution.

How many people remember a Lt. named Calley?  How many remember a town named My Lai?

When I ask a class of college students how many have heard of My Lai, only a few if any raise their hands, tentatively. Even they are unsure what it was, or where, or when, or who was involved. Why have we forgotten the nadir of the Vietnam War? Is our collective amnesia accidental or willful?

March 16 marks the 50th anniversary of the date that does not live in infamy. Does it for any Americans? In 1968, American soldiers slaughtered animals, raped villagers, and murdered 109 “Oriental human beings” in My Lai. That was the number cited in a court-martial 18 months later.

https://original.antiwar.com/Russell_Vandenbroucke/2018/03/15/my-lai-amnesia-fifty-years-on/

Today is the 50th year anniversary of the massacre……

Americans, including GIs, were losing their once reflexive faith that the U.S. military, with all its skill and firepower, would prevail in Vietnam as it had so often throughout history. Also shattered was the faith that America’s fighting forces were inherently more virtuous than their enemies. The unraveling of that conviction began in earnest in 1969 with the revelation that American soldiers had murdered hundreds of unarmed and unresisting women, children, babies, and old men in the village of My Lai.

For many people, the shocking news came first in the form of several horrifying photographs. One shows almost two dozen dead Vietnamese bodies on a dirt road. Many have fallen in a twisted pile; some are partially naked. Another photograph shows a woman lying in a field with her legs drawn up under her body. Her conical straw hat has flipped off her head. If you look closely you can notice that a large portion of her brain lies exposed beneath the hat.

https://original.antiwar.com/Christian_Appy/2018/03/15/our-boys-50-years-after-the-my-lai-massacre/

To be fair……we must hear from the people that were there….the survivors…..

It was the sweet potato harvest season, so Ha Thi Quy woke up early to find a good spot in the village to dry slices of the delicately flavored tuber to sell.

She noticed some American soldiers in the village, but that didn’t alarm her.

“There are no Vietnamese troops here, so why should they start shooting?” Quy recalled her self-assurance in a bitter question that she still has not found the answer to……

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnamese-survivors-remember-my-lai-massacre-with-horror-and-confusion-3723079.html

Scars of war are the worse to bear…..

I begin my weekend…..lost in memories to times long ago…..chuq

The Vietnam War: After Forty Years by Lawrence Wittner — Antiwar.com

This month is the 40th year since the fall of Saigon and the end of American involvement in Vietnam……

To marl the anniversary I have been posting different views of that war with the hope that Americans will pay attention…..if they do not….it will happen all over again……and again.

 

The Vietnam War: After Forty Years by Lawrence Wittner — Antiwar.com.

Did Reagan Win the Vietnam War? | The American Conservative

Sit down and brace yourself!

Yes, Irene I read the American Conservative…..believe it or not there are some thoughtful articles being written by true conservatives as opposed to the whack jobs in the Tea Party……

This is the 40th year since the fall of Saigon…….and so far the US has not been able to reckon with that war……we have tried to put it all behind us but it still creeps out…..basically because there are many vets still living when their time comes and the last vet passes on the country will do all possible to remove this war from a collective memory….all it will be is a historical footnote on some dissertation……

I will try to keep interest in the Vietnam War up and relative……it should never be forgotten….no matter what you think of it……

 

Did Reagan Win the Vietnam War? | The American Conservative.

The “Obvious” Lessons of the Vietnam War | The American Conservative

40 years ago this year the capital city of the Republic of South Vietnam, Saigon,  fell to the advancing communist forces from the North……

Most American could care less…..but there are still a few of us grunts left to remember……and we want the US to learn a lesson from the misadventures of interventionism…..but did we really learn anything from that war?

We did not learn the proper respect for veterans.  We did not learn the dangers of intervention.  Really….we learned exactly….NOTHING!

 

The “Obvious” Lessons of the Vietnam War | The American Conservative.