If the Vietnam War was fought today
- Thread starter UCFhonors
- Start date
Only if there is a plan to win vs being handcuffed by politicians in Washington, DC that basically had a piece meal politically correct plan in the 60s that did not have winning at it's #1 goal.
While Vietnam was mission creep (first with advisors, then a few thousand troops, then a few more and so on), and all the tie one hand behind your back rules (can't chase Viet Cong into neighboring countries, can't attack certain cities in North Vietnam, etc...) lessons learned from Vietnam were clearly evident in the first Gulf War where the USA did not fire or drop it's first bomb till basically 500,000 troops were in position to attack and dominate in a quick land war to get Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
That plan was 100% opposite of what happened in Vietnam.
Of course Nam was a difficult situation to begin win (a civil war fought with guerilla tactics in a terrain that made it easy to conceal, including in major cities) vs the clear desert terrain in many areas of Southern Iraq and Kuwait.
Totally.
As I always say, our biggest mistake was thinking our soldiers could say, "Hey, we're not French imperialists," and it would mean anything.
To the overwhelming number of Vietnamese, American soldiers were no different than the preceding, French imperialists.
![[roll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/classic/roll.r191677.gif "roll [roll]")
We actually didn't "lose" ... it was a negotiated withdrawal. Be that as it may, the end result would have been the same for 2 reasons.
1.) The American public are a bunch of bleeding heart wusses that want to sing kumbaya with the enemy rather than have the U.S. military put their foot on the enemy's neck and pound them into submission.
2.) Left-leaning reporters and media will always make sure that the U.S. military can accomplish only so much and once the flag waving phase is over [media] will cater to the aforementioned public to portray military efforts as "stagnant" or "unwinnable" -- the latter phrase used by Walter Cronkite himself to sway public opinion after the Tet Offensive rather than present the facts (Vietcong virtually decimated; U.S. forces capturing key strategic command and control infrastructure) in an objective manner.
No, the opposite.
American armchair generals are gung-ho to get into a war, but expect it to be over quickly. I remember 2002-2003, especially Democratic voters.
We Libertarians were shaking our heads, let alone by late 2001 before that.
Now this I do 100% agree with you.
When President Obama announced both the surge and draw-down, I cringed. The only thing more illogical and self-defeating out of his mount during his Presidency was the 'particulate matter due to global warming is causing my daughter's allergies.'
I still cannot believe people can be that illogical, and support something so illogical.
If you don't want to commit yourself to war ... don't go to war. We Libertarians have been arguing this over everything ... from conflicts to drugs to everything.
Too many Americans are media sheep.
Well UCFBS, I'll take a half agreement any day. Still can't say if I won or lost our spirited little debate, but for now I'll just consider it a "negotiated agreement" and chalk it up as 'peace with honor.' [ba-dum-bum]
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