Tag: Vietnam War

Why The US Lost The Vietnam War

When one gets into a conversation about the Vietnam War there is always an armchair general that knows all there is as to why the US lost that war.

Ken Burns new documentary on the Vietnam War has given rise to more analysis of this conflict.

This is a good opportunity to discuss the War….a discussion that should have been had 40 years ago.

The U.S was not simply outfought. It was out-thought. .. For all of the self-satisfied voyeurism surrounding the Vietnam War, it’s hard to find a concrete idea about why the U.S. lost.  For more than a decade, the U.S. had declared that it would not let Vietnam fall to the communists.  Yet, Vietnam fell to the communists.  Why?The absence of a clear explanation is not an accident.  None of the institutions that led the U.S. into the War or prosecuted the War want to be tarred with having lost the War.   They would rather its loss be left ambiguous, murky.  Or worse, blamed on others.

Source: Why the US Lost the Vietnam War | By | Common Dreams

Oops! Got That One Wrong!

The Pentagon has a wealth of data at their finger tips and they use it in many ways….one is to predict the outcome of any military action that the US may engage in.

These days analyst play a role as they did back in the day….but today they rely on computers for their extended predictions.  All the algorithms and such give the leaders a look at what to expect and they can plan thus.

Even as far back as 50 years ago a computer was used to predict the outcome if the Vietnam War…….

At just about the halfway point of Lynn Novick and Ken Burns’s monumental documentary on the Vietnam War, an army advisor tells an anecdote that seems to sum up the relationship between the military and computers during the mid-1960s.

“There’s the old apocryphal story that in 1967, they went to the basement of the Pentagon, when the mainframe computers took up the whole basement, and they put on the old punch cards everything you could quantify. Numbers of ships, numbers of tanks, numbers of helicopters, artillery, machine gun, ammo—everything you could quantify,” says James Willbanks, the chair of military history at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. “They put it in the hopper and said, ‘When will we win in Vietnam?’ They went away on Friday and the thing ground away all weekend. [They] came back on Monday and there was one card in the output tray. And it said, ‘You won in 1965.’”

Source: The Computer That Predicted U.S. Would Win the Vietnam War – The Atlantic

This illustrates that no matter the amount of info that one has at their disposal…..certainty of a victory in war is a guess….at best.

Just Say Your Are Sorry!

Since Ken Burns released his newest documentary about the Vietnam War I have been following it up with some historic perspectives on the war.

I fought my way through 21/2 years in Vietnam and when I returned back to the US I became a staunch anti-war protester.

Over the years I have had many discussions with others about that war….some served others did not…..at one time some older gentleman told me that I need to apologize to the country for my activism.

I was taken aback and asked why should I apologize?

He told me that it was people like me that tore the country apart with all the protests to the point that the country was weakened by all the division.

My first reaction was…..BITE ME!

I said that I had nothing to apologize for and that he, a supporter of the war, should do it more than I.  Support sending in children to fight a bloody war that was NEVER meant to be won.

This event from my past came to m                                                                                                        ind after I read a piece on Common Dreams…..

How many times have you heard, or even said yourself, something like this:

It was beyond cruel what was done to Viet Nam vets. I protested the war but not the soldiers who’d been thru hell.

That’s a comment made on my Facebook page when I posted Jerry Lembcke’s very insightful review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s series, The Vietnam War. Lembcke points out that the series promotes the established narrative that for Vietnam vets, the experience of coming home to a “hostile” public was “more traumatic than the war itself.” As I will discuss here, Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and Associate Professor Emeritus at Holy Cross College, has dedicated much of his life to countering and disproving that narrative.

Now take a close look at the above statement. I protested the war but not the soldiers who’d been thru hell. The implication is, of course, that while this person didn’t do it, others must have “protested the soldiers,” referring to the ubiquitous stories of soldiers and veterans being harassed, hounded, called baby killers and spat on by a variety of protesters and, as the stories usually go, “long haired hippies.” Actually, this particular comment was part of a string of responses to someone who claimed he was “urinated on while in uniform.”

Source: Vietnam War Protesters have NOTHING to Apologize For | By | Common Dreams

In hindsight I still see NO reason for me to apologize…I did what I felt is morally right.

The Killing of History

The new documentary made by Ken Burns has cause a bit of an uproar……the Vietnam War has brought up so many memories for some and some “who cares” attitudes in others…..but these people are the ones that spent the war stateside pick their nose and getting paper cuts infected so they could use the VA for the medical.

I have been posting on the war in various ways….I like both pros and cons…..and this piece in Consortium falls into the “con” column…..it is a critique of the doc and the director……

PBS’ “The Vietnam War” may show some of the conflict’s horrors but still soft-pedals the horrific war crimes that America inflicted on Vietnam, fitting with a corporate-dependent documentary project.

One of the most hyped “events” of American television, “The Vietnam War,” has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam War in an entirely new way.”

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism,” Burns’s “entirely new” Vietnam War is presented as an “epic, historic work.” Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Source: The Killing of History – Consortiumnews

I believe that having only one side of the conflict is disingenuous…..to understand the situation we need both sides….some have never left the paddies.

No Rehab For Vietnam

Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War has me posting several articles explaining various aspects of the war…..there will be both pro an con articles…to understand completely then all sides need to be discussed.

1975 and the fall of Saigon brought an end to the involvement of the US in the small Southeastern nation of Vietnam.

Since that day there has been an on-going effort to rehabilitate America’s role in the war.  An attempt to change something ugly into something noble, honorable….or at least acceptable.

There is enormous pressure and a lot of money working to rehabilitate Vietnam, to put the guilt and the shame of it behind us. But it was precisely the guilt of the people, their shame at what was being done in their name, and their courage to denounce it that made it impossible for their government to carry out the savagery any longer.

Since the day it ended, in 1975, there have been efforts to rehabilitate the Vietnam War, to make it acceptable, even honorable. After all, there were so many sides to the story, weren’t there? It was so complex, so nuancical. There was real heroism among the troops.

Of course, all of this is true, but it’s true of every war so it doesn’t redeem any war. The Vietnam War is beyond redemption and must be remembered and condemned for the calamity that it was. The Vietnam War was “one of the greatest American foreign policy disasters of the twentieth century.”

Those are not the words of a leftist pundit or a scribbling anti-American. They are the words of H.R. McMaster, the sitting National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.

Source: There Is No Rehabilitating the Vietnam War | By Robert Freeman | Common Dreams

The war cannot be rehabilitated for those that fought…..the images of the war are burnt into their minds to remain with them through life.

As a veteran of that war I have had many conversations with people wanting to know….then when they are told they dispute whatever was said….

This war cannot be rehabilitated with the truth…..only by manipulating the facts can it be made to appear otherwise.

Lessons Of Vietnam

After I served my tours in Vietnam and returned to college I studied international relations and conflict management….while studying I came across a list of lessons that were learned from that war (some lessons are never learned)…..

After we left the country in shambles there were many analysts that took a good look at the war and how it was fought……by doing this these people hoped that a good hard look at our failings would prevent the US from making the same mistakes again (anybody that knows anything about the Vietnam War may begin their laughter now and avoid the rush)…….

In 1980 a group of several hundred analysts got together to prepare a report for the Pentagon to avoid any further missteps that are involved in fight a war.

The first thing that came out was….”Don’t Get Involved In Civil Wars”…..after WW2 Vietnam became a civil war and we chose sides.  (What would you call the Balkans in the 90’s, Syria, Libya and Yemen of today?)

Second, “Don’t Micromanage The Troops”….Vietnam was fought by the president and carried out by those around him.  (Keep in mind the Trump has said that he knows more than his generals)

Third, “Let The Military Run The Military”…..Congress has taken upon itself to dictate to the military….Congress calls the shots on recruitment, training and disciple.

Fourth, “Do not get into a war you do not intend on winning”…..sound familiar?  Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

Fifth, “Incrementalism does no work”…..Really?  You mean like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan?

Sixth, “Telling The Truth”…….in Vietnam the government would never admit just what were the goals intended…..oncve again, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.

And finally number seven, “Ignoring History”……..just like a grasp of history would have kept the US out of Vietnam…then same can be said for Afghanistan and a small part Iraq….

After a special study was done to see what went wrong…..we flushed down the crapper and kept doing the same stupid crap war after war.

Lessons were not learned or better said…ignored.

So because of that we keep making the same mistakes over and over…..

In Kabul, Afghanistan, American Embassy personnel who want to meet with their counterparts at the nearby U.S. military base have to travel a mere 100 yards. But they don’t make a practice of walking or driving. They go by military helicopter, reports The New York Times. The space between is too dangerous to cross on the ground.

It’s the sort of bizarre fact that might have emerged in Ken Burns’ new PBS series on the Vietnam War, illustrating our inability to turn South Vietnam into a safe, stable place. But it’s not the past; it’s the present.

The Vietnam War was the greatest U.S. military catastrophe of the 20th century. A conflict begun under false pretenses, based on ignorance and hubris, it killed 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese. It ended in utter failure. Never in our history have so many lives been wasted on such monumental futility.

Source: The Vietnam Syndrome: How We Lost It and Why We Need It Back – Reason.com

But wait!  The Pentagon has a new analytic tool that will improve the way we fight wars our future wars…..

An emerging analytics tool may assist military leaders in making better decisions on the battlefield by predicting the motives of adversaries.

Known as abductive reasoning, the concept takes advantage of advancements in machine learning, said Rick Pavlik, director of analytics and machine intelligence at Polaris Alpha, a defense and intelligence agency contractor.

“Abduction is all about having a set of observations or evidence and trying to come up with the … root cause or an explanation that would describe the observations that we’re seeing,” he said.

Humans have used abductive reasoning since the beginning of mankind, but there is now a large demand to automate it, Pavlik said. “There appears to be a lot of momentum.”

Source: New Analytics Tool Could Help Military Leaders

Seriously, who do they think they are kidding?

The Pentagon will spend the money for the study and then do what they always does….the same stupid shit they always do.

Vietnam War: Who Was Right And Why It Matters

Ken Burns, a documentary film maker, is airing his 13 part series on the Vietnam War on PBS….so I thought that I would post a few articles about that war and how it pertains to today.

There are many these days that compare Afghanistan to Vietnam….that there are many similarities and lessons not learned……

The ghosts of the Vietnam War no doubt hovered over a recently assembled conclave of President Donald Trump’s advisers as they deliberated over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

In the Vietnam era, as today, the United States found itself engulfed in a seemingly never-ending war with mounting costs, unclear goals and few signs of success, writes this Drake University professor.

Source: Vietnam War: Who was right about what went wrong – and why it matters in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has become a stalemate, a quagmire, just as Vietnam….and no one wants to admit it and they, the Pentagon, keeps throwing resources at a conflict that is going no where.

Some lessons are harder to learn than others…..I guess.

Vietnam: Being There (A Review)

As a young man I volunteered for the Army and got two tours in Vietnam…..it was, as they say, a defining moment of my life…because of the time I became interesting in the study of war or as it is known in university Conflict Management…..and as they say the rest is history.

There have been many movies about the war….most of which I did not see…..I just think the Hollywood could not get it right.  There was a TV series, Tour Of Duty, that was pretty accurate…well worth a streaminfg attack if you ever get those.

The many history channels have filed many docs on the war….most of them are great propaganda pieces and not very accurate….although some of the footage is amazing.

Documentary film maker, Ken Burns, has a new project about nthe Vietnam War and all the reviews are great…..

A decade in the making, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series, The Vietnam War, premieres on PBS Sunday, but it’s already gaining quite the reputation among critics. The 18-hour documentary, told in 10 episodes, digs deep into the conflict, meshing first-person interviews with historical footage. Then it goes beyond since, for many, 1973 didn’t mean the end of suffering. Here’s what the critics are saying:

  • James Poniewozik at the New York Times says it “will break your heart and win your mind.” Given the subject matter, it’s no surprise he found it “wearying.” It’s “probably Mr. Burns’ saddest film,” he writes. But it presents a “staggering” amount of material and powerful oral histories.
  • Some 80 interviewees “offer a glimpse into the psyches of people on all sides of the conflict,” writes Sonia Saraiya at Variety. It can be disorienting, but “disorientation in the midst of multiple national histories and conflicting personal agendas is, in a nutshell, the experience of the Vietnam War.”
  • At CNN, Brian Lowry calls The Vietnam War “a masterpiece” that “humanizes what was often a faceless enemy.” Another strength: its ability to show “the ripples from the war still being felt today.”
  • It may be long, but it’s “worth every single minute of your time,” writes Hank Stuever at the Washington Post, calling it “required viewing.” Not only will you experience “terror, horror, disbelief, discovery, disgust, marvel, pride, ambivalence and tears,” but “you’ll lose count of how many times you’ll have to pick your jaw up off the floor.”
  • Though “very little that’s said feels dangerous, controversial or exposed from our perspective,” The Vietnam War is remarkable, beautiful, repetitive, frustrating, assaulting, and “nightmarish”—and “it’s impossible to look away,” writes Daniel Fienberg at the Hollywood Reporter.
  • Adds Ed Siegel at the ARTery, “It’s not easy and it’s certainly not fun, but Ken Burns and Lynn Novick know how to make history dramatic, how to make television riveting, and how to tell the country’s story in a way that really defines what American exceptionalism is all about.”

I will watch it but will wait until I can buy the series for I can only take small portions before a memory gets kicked up.

I apologize for two days of not so interesting posts….it has been a bad couple of days….as compensation I offer up some great tunes from the Vietnam Era….

Time to back out gracefully and enjoy some down time….see guys Monday….chuq

Closing Thought–01Aug17

The Definition Of “Hero”!

Our society uses the word “hero” as some sort of throw away description used to feign patriotism….

Then there are true heroes…..

Saving a life may be a common bucket-list entry, but it’s one that’s rarely checked off. James McCloughan could’ve done so 10 times over two days in 1969. Ignoring his lieutenant’s orders to evacuate Nui Yon Hill in Vietnam after shrapnel cut into his head and back and a bullet pierced his arm, the 23-year-old Army medic ran through “hell on earth” and “gave it his all and then … just kept giving,” President Trump said Monday, bestowing McCloughan with the Medal of Honor almost 50 years after that intense battle. Five of the 10 men McCloughan pulled to safety while surrounded by 2,000 enemies looked on as the 71-year-old took his “place among legends,” Trump said in his first time awarding the medal, per the New York Times.

Trump told how McCloughan had run into an open field to retrieve a wounded soldier as bullets rained. Over the next 48 hours, he went without food, water, or sleep as he saved nine more men and helped load medevac helicopters. He finally collapsed from dehydration as one of 32 men left on the ground. After returning from Vietnam in 1970, the Michigan native received two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars, per Heavy.com. A meeting with Rep. Fred Upton years later, however, led to the recommendation that he also receive the nation’s highest military honor, bestowed with special permission by Congress. “Jim’s dad taught him a simple but powerful lesson: Never do anything halfway,” Trump said. “Jim took that lesson very much to heart.”

And that is a true HERO!  Anything else is a poser!

Congrats…..no one deserves it more.

Time to be off like a dirty shirt…..I shall return with a fresh bag of stuff….chuq

Pentagon Papers Turns 46

Where we you on 13 June 1971?

There was a publication that blew the top off the story of the year…….

46 years ago today the first part of the Pentagon papers was published…..

Pentagon Papers, papers that contain a history of the U.S. role in Indochina from World War II until May 1968 and that were commissioned in 1967 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. They were turned over (without authorization) to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies.

The 47-volume history, consisting of approximately 3,000 pages of narrative and 4,000 pages of appended documents, took 18 months to complete. Ellsberg, who worked on the project, had been an ardent early supporter of the U.S. role in Indochina but, by the project’s end, had become seriously opposed to U.S. involvement. He felt compelled to reveal the nature of U.S. participation and leaked major portions of the papers to the press.

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing a series of articles based on the study, which was classified as “top secret” by the federal government. After the third daily installment appeared in the Times, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained in U.S. District Court a temporary restraining order against further publication of the classified material, contending that further public dissemination of the material would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to U.S. national defense interests.

Source: Pentagon Papers | United States history | Britannica.com

On 13 June 2011 the papers were declassified and the question was asked…..do the Pentagon Papers still matter?

The declassification and online release Monday of the full original version of the Pentagon Papers – the 7,000-page top secret Pentagon study of US decision-making in Vietnam 1945-67 – comes 40 years after I gave it to 19 newspapers and to Senator Mike Gravel (minus volumes on negotiations, which I had given only to the Senate foreign relations committee). Gravel entered what I had given him in the congressional record and later published nearly all of it with Beacon Press. Together with the newspaper coverage and a government printing office (GPO) edition that was heavily redacted but overlapped the Senator Gravel edition, most of the material has been available to the public and scholars since 1971. (The negotiation volumes were declassified some years ago; the Senate, if not the Pentagon, should have released them no later than the end of the war in 1975.)

In other words, today’s declassification of the whole study comes 36 to 40 years overdue. Yet, unfortunately, it happens to be peculiarly timely that this study gets attention and goes online just now. That’s because we’re mired again in wars – especially in Afghanistan – remarkably similar to the 30-year conflict in Vietnam, and we don’t have comparable documentation and insider analysis to enlighten us on how we got here and where it’s likely to go.

Source: Why the Pentagon Papers matter now | Daniel Ellsberg | Opinion | The Guardian

The Papers still matter because it shows at what lengths the government will go and the death of Americans matter not.

The “Paper” matter to me because I learned why I was fighting in Vietnam and the disastrous decisions that got me there.

History lesson is over…you may return to your normal day…..