Could US win in Vietnam?

[Mike Collins]

How would they get past the gigantic US fleet blockading the coast? But more importantly I forgot about the impact of Immigration Law reform as Napoleon pointed out, which is probably more significant anyway.

The fleet wasnt stopping South Vietnamese from getting out. It was there to stop North Vietnames from getting in.

As to immigration laws affecting this, nope! There are lots of other places to flee to legally and otherwise.

 

[Street_Disciple]

Yes, we could. Read A BETTER WAR by Lewis Sorely. The following is part of a book review. (The Army had also developed MATs as the equivalent of the USMC CAPs, and both were highly effective. MATs was not highly publicized and my guess is that 99.90% of the Vietnam Veterans have never heard of them and what they did.)

EXCERPT:
The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971 the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War. That is to say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North if they violated peace agreements. This situation had been brought about by the changes in strategy and tactics which were implemented by Army General Creighton Abrams when he replaced William Westmoreland in 1968, after the military triumph but public relations disaster of the Tet Offensive. Where Westmoreland had treated the War as simply a military exercise, Abrams understood its political dimensions. Abrams, who had worked on developing a new war plan at the Pentagon, ended Westmoreland's emphasis on body counts and destroying the enemy and switched the focus to regaining control of villages. He understood that eventual victory required civilian support for the South Vietnamese government and this support required the government to provide villagers with physical security from the Viet Cong.

Abrams was accompanied in implementing this new approach by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and by William Colby, the new CIA chief in Saigon, who provided greatly improved intelligence reports and oversaw the pacification program. Together they managed to salvage the wreckage that Westmoreland had left behind and they retrieved the situation even as Washington was drawing down troop levels. In 1972, with the Viet Cong essentially eliminated as an effective fighting force, the North Vietnamese mounted a massive Easter offensive, but this too was decisively defeated.


"Despite its unpopularity at the highest levels,the CAP Program was the major and most successful Marine Corps contribution to the Vietnam War.".....Source-The Battle History of the U.S.Marines. A Fellowship of Valor.

http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/829


"The Village is a superb case history of the kind of tactics which, if used on a wider scale, could have made a vast difference in the war"

http://www.twobittraining.com/CAP/text/britannica.htm

 

[Street_Disciple]

Again, I would ask that Sorely's A BETTER WAR be read. The mistakes of Westmorelands "Americanization" of the war were drastically changed after Abrams took over in 1968. His emphasis on Search and Clear vs. Westmorelands Search and Destroy was a drastic change in the right direction. He also emphasized an upgrading of the South Vietnamese forces size, training, and weaponry; with their having a much larger and more direct role in the fighting. That is why I mentioned MATs as an example. They were 2,000 advisors in 5-man teams, all infantry, assigned to the RF/PFs. These advisors were levied out of the US divisions and all had prior combat experience. In addition to being given formal training at area training centers, the Ruff Puffs were also given M-16s, M-60s, M-79s etc. The MAT advisors were given direct access to on-call tac air, gunships, dust-off's, and US artillery.

Over-all, the Ruff Puffs became extremely aggressive. Although they comprised less than 7% of the SVN infantry forces, the accounted for 25-30% of the casualties inflicted on the VC/NVA. For more information on MATs and their effectiveness with the Ruff Puffs you might also want to read the personal MAT experiences of David Donovan (ONCE A WARRIOR KING) and Thomas Hargrove (A DRAGON LIVES FOREVER). Abram's strategy was highly effective. Unfortunately, after Nixon was elected, it was never given a fair chance to work.

And finally, BTW, the entire idea of upgrading the SVN forces was in the planning stages by mid-1967. It was joint planning between MACV and CORDS, a.k.a. MACV/CORDS.

 

[Street_Disciple]

"A far better way to handle the situation in Vietnam would be for the US to supply the Saigon government with equipment, incl.weapons and ammunition en masse, and the rare advisor, and keep the Special Forces fully committed in a british style win-em-over-campaign (ala Malaya, Kenya and what have we). It would be a very different Vietnam war, not a war at all, actually, but then the South Vietnamese might have won the damn thing themselves."

This is very much what should have been done. The key point would be winning over the South Vietnamese thereby depriving the Vietcong of local support. This would be the simple stuff of building/repairing bridges, sanitation works, hospitals, etc. A local police force of US and Vietnamese would be established. The whole deal with the mass army set on fighting a conventional war against an enemy that wouldn't would be avoided.

Because it's working so well in Iraq!

*sigh*

Listen, there are only two ways to win a guerrilla war and both are ugly. One is to follow the hearts and mind strategy, building up an infrastructure of support so that potentialy guerrilla recruits have an incentive not to rebel. This requires years of tedious and consistent investment, with very targeted police counter-measures against guerrilla cells.

The other method is annihilation. Many partisan conflicts have been settled through mass collective punishment. Either rounding up the population in camps, deporting them en masse, or killing them all. This tactic, in order to be successfuly, must be carried to completion.

The problem is that the US is doing a little of each. Collective punishment, without destroying or removing an entire population, only makes the resistance hardier. The whole Fallujah business started over this last May when US troops shot into a crowd. This only infuriated the population and rendered all the soft objectives meaningless. The second problem is that almost everything that should have been does wasn't, and almost everything that shouldn't have been done (allowing looting, disbanding the army, allowing militias, secret trials, using informers whose motives they don't understand, not bringing the Iraqi bureacracy back in immediately, collective punishment along Israeli lines, not having enough boots on the ground) was done. It's an unbelievable clusterfuck that is probably beyond redemption.

Obviously I think the appropriate option is the first one. Plan for decades of involvement but with increasing Iraqi involvement. problem is, we have to do it on their terms, not ours. We can't decide what they're going to accept because every time we reject the proposals of the Shi'ite leaders, even when our intentions are good, we get another mark in the hegemonic column and the guerrillas get one more propaganda piece. Our political leaders are upsettingly adept at pandering to Americans, we need to bring a bit of that political spinelessness over to Iraq. The guerrillas are going to attack, we can't stop that (just ask Israel). We can, however, open a front against those who let them escape or those who blame us for their attacks, we just have to move out of the warhawk mode and realize that the situation is now intractable if we stay in battle, our only hope is to dry up our opponent's support. And the only way to do that is to build a support base of our own.

But the longer it takes for the US to devolve power to Iraqis, the more frustrated potential US allies in Iraq become. There is no easy solution. But mixing up the soft, but admirable, objectives of institution building with rash, collective punishment will be futile. I hope the US doesn't take the Fallujah bait and think that Iraqis elsewhere in the country don't care if the US cracks down too hard.

 

[Street_Disciple]

They could have adapted a hearts and minds approach like the British did in Malaya (I think it was Malaya...Or was it Malaysia, they sound too similar).
Where they make friends with the locals and help them out with token medical treatment so the villages rat out commies to them and all.

I just like to go into detail with this comment. As a result of that aid, the British were able to foster a climate that ran from free primary schooling for children of all ethnicities (Malay, Indian, indigenous Sakai tribes, and Chinese) which enable the development of a steady government capable of taking over after independence. Thus building up an infrastructure of support, so that potential guerrilla recruits have an incentive not to rebel. The combination of these improvements allowed the forces fighting the insurgents to truly win the “hearts and minds†of the people of Malaysia and to remove the fish (the insurgents) from the water (the people). Winning hearts and minds in Malaysia meant that a separated and defensible population was safe from harm by guerrillas.

 

[Chrispi]

Like the British during the American Revolutionary War, the French/US could only win, plausibly, in the very early stages of the war, and then using as little firepower as possible (bombing Vietnam to the Stone Age didn't work; the Aussies and Kiwis were far more successful with their hearts-and-minds approach, and not destroying villages to save them.)

 

[Street_Disciple]

no furter comments, that sucks, cause I though this topic was pretty damn fascinating

 

[Street_Disciple]

no one gives a shit I guess ...............

 

[Street_Disciple]

Had the bombing campaign been persued more effectively and, dare I say, ruthlessly, the US would have had a much easier time of winning that war. This would have to include the removal of any and all targeting restrictions in the late '60s. This means the systematic targeting and destruction of dikes around the country. This means a larger emphasis on strategic rather than tactical bombing. This means the pulverization of the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong.

While it is not nearly the most humane way to conduct a war, war by its very nature is not a humane action. Besides, none of this is any worse than the bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan during WWII. The only way for the US to win in Vietnam was to demoralize the North Vietnamese population to the point where they simply refused to fight any longer. The destruction of the dikes would cause chronic food shortages, and the destruction of the nation's two largest cities (and hopefully their infrastructure and leadership, as well), both of which would go a long way to ending the war with a US victory.

You need to look at our national premise for being there--defending South Vietnam, not wiping out North Vietnam, which is what it would have taken to inflict that many casualties. This most surely would have brought China into the picture, they had hundreds of thousands of troops in the DRV. You also need to know that however much they bombed the North, the war in the South would still go on--that why the whole bombing thing was generally useless--a good deal of the VC/DRV troops fighting in th south were supplied in the south, BY the south. Bombing the North had little effect on the war in the south, thats why they stopped it. This idea was Bandied about but saner heads prvailed.

 

[Street_Disciple]

Here is what initially rompted the VC to use guerilla tactics. Operation Attleboro was in War Zone C, west of the Michelin plantation in III Corps. It started on Sept 14, 1966 and lasted for about 70 days. It was the first time large scale multi-divisional search & destroy tactics were used by the US. It involved troops from the 1st, 4th, and 25th Inf. Divs, 196th Light Inf. Brigade and 173rd Airborne Brigade. They hit the base camp of VC 9th Div then captured documents showing loses in that div and the 101 NVA Reg. The US concluded that in a large-scale head on attack, they would prevail from maneuverability and superior firepower. Operations Cedar Falls and Junction City soon followed and confirmed the theory. The VC learned from this as well and rarely confronted US troops the same way. They then generally turned to guerilla tactics as standard operating procedures from that point on. Maybe if their was a different outcome of the battle, would the Viet-cong still resort to Guerilla tactics.

 

[Mike Collins]

Here is what initially rompted the VC to use guerilla tactics. Operation Attleboro was in War Zone C, west of the Michelin plantation in III Corps. It started on Sept 14, 1966 and lasted for about 70 days. It was the first time large scale multi-divisional search & destroy tactics were used by the US. It involved troops from the 1st, 4th, and 25th Inf. Divs, 196th Light Inf. Brigade and 173rd Airborne Brigade. They hit the base camp of VC 9th Div then captured documents showing loses in that div and the 101 NVA Reg. The US concluded that in a large-scale head on attack, they would prevail from maneuverability and superior firepower. Operations Cedar Falls and Junction City soon followed and confirmed the theory. The VC learned from this as well and rarely confronted US troops the same way. They then generally turned to guerilla tactics as standard operating procedures from that point on. Maybe if their was a different outcome of the battle, would the Viet-cong still resort to Guerilla tactics.

I think they would.

By the mid 60s, Charlie was ramping up ops because he could. The ARVN was on its ass and couldnt stop them. So they started fighting more conventionally. They never did really go on the offensive against the US until 1968 (and that was a tactical disaster). While the docs from Attleboro were most certainly accurate, the US misinterpreted their value. How many Cong were killed was only of secondary importance. The keys were to cut the Communists off from Northern supply lines and the South's population centers. The US went on a attritional war that allowed the communists to replace losses through Northern supply lines, the recruiting/Shanghai-ing of locals, and acquisition of supply from Southern sources.

 

[Melvin Loh]

There was a scenario in 1 recent USMC sniper novel of the VW, written by a 5th Marines IIRC sniper surname Culbertson, who theorised that the worst thing NV feared in terms of losing the war was if the US launced a 2-pronged airborne and seaborne assault on Haiphong from the west, using the 101st Airborne and the 1st Marine Div, thereby cuttin off Ho and Giap from vital Soviet and Red Chinese supplies and drastically reducing their ability to win.

 

[Mike Collins]

There was a scenario in 1 recent USMC sniper novel of the VW, written by a 5th Marines IIRC sniper surname Culbertson, who theorised that the worst thing NV feared in terms of losing the war was if the US launced a 2-pronged airborne and seaborne assault on Haiphong from the west, using the 101st Airborne and the 1st Marine Div, thereby cuttin off Ho and Giap from vital Soviet and Red Chinese supplies and drastically reducing their ability to win.

Dont think that would have worked that well. Supplies could still have been directed through China and railed into North Vietnam. Also, North Vietnam had a defense treaty with China. I think Haiphong is too far from China to get the Chinese worked up, but you never know.......

 

[JimmyJimJam]

1. Not sure how this would significantly change the 20th century.
2. There are plenty of "real" democricies in Asia.

 

[Michael Canaris]

All this boastfull talk of wether North or South Vietnam was more "genuinely nationalist" than the other obscures the question as to wether nationalism is a desirable trait. Throughout the 20'th century, a general dynamic ensued whereby the more nationalist a regime was, the more brutal its behaviour was (c. 1980, I'd have much rather lived in West Germany than Argentina, or by the same token Hungary than Albania.)

As for Vietnam, both sides were fortunate in their high degree of co-ordination with their respective Superpower-backer. Much as I regret the ultimate outcome of that war, at least Vietnam didn't go as bad as Cambodia/Kampuchea did (it might have gone far worse if they hadn't kept in touch with Moscow's advice.)

 

[Mike Collins]

As for Vietnam, both sides were fortunate in their high degree of co-ordination with their respective Superpower-backer. Much as I regret the ultimate outcome of that war, at least Vietnam didn't go as bad as Cambodia/Kampuchea did (it might have gone far worse if they hadn't kept in touch with Moscow's advice.)

While its obvious the post 1975 Vietnamese Anschluss was not as bad as Cambodia's national suicide attempt, it was still pretty bad. Summary executions after the fall of Saigon were in the 10,000+ range. And then there are the Gulags and systematic destruction of the Montagnard cultures. Add to that, North Vietnam developed many of the characteristics that turned the West off to the Republic of Vietnam (graft, bribery, cronyism, etc.).

The Viet communists were able to do this for many reasons. Most important was that their police state was efficient enough to keep media types away from icky stuff, general media saavy and a host of apologists in the West ready to refute claims. I love seeing shit heads like Noam Chomsky saying there were no concentration camps because the Viet Communists said they didnt have any!