NAMNESIA ... (Tet 40 Years Later & Iraq Today)

[BLUSH]

[Warpy]

1. The problem is that they failed to learn the real lesson

We've been cursed with arrogant men like Rumsfeld and Cheney who think the lesson of Vietnam was that they needed to redesign the military from a large, heavy land force dedicated to conquering and keeping territory to a light force that could get in and out quickly wherever indigenous guerrilla activity had been reported. They expensively did just this to the US military over a number of years and Iraq is now their laboratory to find out how well it worked.

Well, we here at DU know the true lesson of Vietnam would be to avoid such entanglements in the first place, that hanging on in a country where the population doesn't want us is just not a good idea. It squanders country's children and wealth over nothing and can never be permanently won if we still want to call ourselves human.

They haven't forgotten Vietnam, that's their main problem. They're still fighting it, trying to win. The name of the country just changed.

[BLUSH]

2. The Tet Offensive of 1968: A 40-year-old lesson America has not learned in Iraq

By Bruce E. Jones

What happened to cause us to be blindly inserted into a region of the most complex religious and social relationships? The apparent answer is simply that Iraqi’s history and culture were purposely ignored and minimized by the Cheney-Bush administration so that it could advance its power agenda of oil-based imperialism. As a result, America will suffer adverse consequences for decades.

Not only did America go to war in Iraq with a Congressional resolution that was as hurried and flawed as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August 1964, but again, following 9/11, elected leaders, appointees, and generals amazingly caused the intelligence process to be manipulated to meet political demands. Intelligence professionals, the very people we depend on to know the truth, were once again forced to issue compromised reports.

So now, as some of us think about this 40th anniversary, comes two big questions: Could a Tet-styled offensive occur in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and again catch us off-guard? And are we continuing to ignore intelligence and common sense by insisting, as does candidate John McCain and neo-cons like William Kristol, that “the surge is working” and that by implication the war can still be controlled to our military advantage?

In sum, we cannot continue to ignore the motivation, the culture, and the tenacity of nations we confront. We must not let our traditional hubris, enhanced by that “American Can-Do Spirit” – which is both an asset and liability – drive decisions about how we engage other nations.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30707

[BLUSH]

3. Iraq of ‘08 Eerily Like Vietnam of ‘68

Iraq of ‘08 Eerily Like Vietnam of ‘68

by Thomas A. Bass and Maurice Isserman

The last time the United States lulled itself into thinking that a military surge was working was January 1968, just before the Tet lunar New Year ushered in the Year of the Monkey. Gen. William Westmoreland, commanding America’s half million troops in Vietnam, assured President Johnson that 65 percent of the South Vietnamese population was living in secure areas, with “victory in sight.”

Claims that victory is at hand in the Iraq war are as fatuous and unsubstantiated as Westmoreland’s belief in 1968 that he was seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel.” In spite of the optimistic talk coming from Baghdad that “civilian deaths have decreased by 62 percent,” the metrics measuring progress in Iraq are no more believable than they were 40 years ago in Vietnam. In fact, America’s military adventure in Iraq is even less sustainable than it was in Vietnam.

In 1968, the United States had a military draft and a surplus of 18-year-olds, and it had yet to commit any of its Reserve or National Guard units to the war. Today, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq, many of them reservist and national guard forces (not counting Blackwater and other hired guns). Regardless of the situation on the ground, these troops will soon be coming to the end of their 15-month tours of duty. There is no draft and no possibility of instituting one, and there are not enough fresh units to replace those in the field. The military is finding it hard to keep up enlistments, even with lowered standards, and junior officers are refusing to re-up.

U.S. military commanders are aware that maintaining, never mind increasing, U.S. forces in Iraq is a logistical impossibility. And so are the Iraqis. Iraqi forces opposed to the U.S. occupation have not been eliminated, but are merely lying low. The media focus on al-Qaida is misleading, since it is a minor component in this war compared to the various Sunni and Shiite militias, who for their own reasons have temporarily suspended attacks on U.S. forces and each other’s civilians.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/31/6767/

[caffefwee]

4. 40 years ago. Tet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2880844

Walter Cronkite on the Tet Offensive
"Report from Vietnam," Walter Cronkite Broadcast, February 27, 1968.

[Bandit]

5. I am so sick of people trying to compare Vietnam with Iraq

During the Vietnam Conflict the USA was engaged against the third largest army on earth. We fought against uniformed convential army regulars with modern weaponry. We controlled the air which made it pretty one-sided but they had a seemingly unending supply of man power. Vietnam was not considered a War but a Conflict. Iraq is an occupation where we are trying to subdue a civilian population. In no way does it resemble Vietnam other than we are doing a lot of bombing and killing.

[BLUSH]

6. What about these similarities?

Two presidents who fabricated a case for going to war: Johnson's Gulf Of Tonkin and Bush's Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Two administrations that failed to understand the enemy.

Two administrations that lied about how their wars were going.

Two administrations that blamed the media for the growing opposition to their wars.

[Bandit]

9. Well for one thing the Gulf on Tonkin affair just escalated the conflict

We already had thousands of troops in Vietnam. Some went in initially under Ike. Vietnam was split into two countries shortly after the second world war. South Vietnam had it's own government with which the USA had signed an agreement with saying we would help defend their country. Just like the agreement we have with most South American countries. .the USSR and the Chinese had major interests in Vietnam and provided arms and equipment to the North. At that time the US still lived under the fear of spreading communism. The USA gave it's word it would help defend South Vietnam, it didn't just invade some country. We broke our promise when we pulled out. We were begged to stay there but did not. In Iraq we invaded a country and destroyed it's infrastructure as well as it's government and now we occupy that country while we try to establish some form of government there that will allow us to stay. There really are no similarities at all. Every city in Vietnam was safe and American troops were not even allowed to carry guns into them. The people actually liked the Americans. People who say there are so many things alike just don't know history.

[BLUSH]

11. Different accounts of history?

"People who say there are so many things alike just don't know history."

Does that include people who experienced it firsthand? And if most people are wrong about the parallels, isn't just one similarity enough, for example, the mindset that took us into each war?


February 19, 2008

H.D.S. GREENWAY

When Iraq became the quagmire it is, I used to wonder how we could make the same mistake again so soon. But then I realized that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were in the Oval office with President Ford when Saigon fell. Perhaps they, and the worshipers of American power, felt that, this time, we would get it right.

Tet showed there was no light at the end of the tunnel, and that to fight on in an endless war was not something the American public was going to stand for. Vietnam showed that we could win every battle and still lose the war. And if I am not mistaken, we have never lost a battle in Iraq or Afghanistan.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/351856_vietnamonline20.html

[Winterblues]

14. Just out of curiosity what battles did we fight?

It seems to me that what is happening is nothing more than sniper attacks and boobytraps and IEDs. We are not engaged against any army or uniformed soldiers as we were in Vietnam. I don't really see any similarities either. Show me a battle of Hue or Khe Sahn or Ashaw Valley. Granted American forces have destroyed several cities but I wouldn't catagorize those destructions as major battles..But that is just me I guess.

[BLUSH]

17. Battle of Fallujah?

nt

[BLUSH]

7. Senator Kennedy: “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam”

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/09/senator-kennedy-%e2%80%9ciraq-is-george-bushs-vietnam%e2%80%9d/

[ThomWV]

10. Thank You Bandit, you seem to be the only one with their eyes open here

There were other great difference too. We actually had a very strong and generally accurate intelligence apparatus in force in Viet Nam too, and we certainly have no such thing in Iraq. Also, both the NVA and locals had extensive and extremely well coordinated communications and supply systems - they moved tanks around the country for god sake.

If the people of Iraq had anywhere near the resources or the plain and simple love of country that the people of Viet Nam did we would have been handed our asses right from day one in Iraq. As it is we will die the death of 10,000 cuts before we leave.

[tuckessee]

13. When was the first time US or puppet troops ran into NVA tanks?

It was very late into the war, IIRC.

Oh, your intel wasn't that good or you would've been able to pull off at least one rescue of a captured American combatant. Bright Lights = endless futility.

[Winterblues]

15. I remember seeing burnt out hulks of enemy tanks at Khe Sahn

Not far in front of the main Perimeter in fact. There were two destroyed enemy tanks and at least one truck and Khe Sahn was fairly early on.

[tuckessee]

16. Seems to me I recall a SF camp/outpost being overrun by a couple tanks.

May have been in 1969. Khe Sanh was spring of '68, a good three years after the US landed Marines and went for full scale intervention.

NVA tanks were never used numbers (as was US armor) until after Vietnamization.

When tacticians study the Vietnam Wars (French/American) they consider them guerilla or counter-insurgency wars, not "convential" as some here claim.

[zanne]

12. In Vietnam, our forces battled guerilla fighters...

Just like we're doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of fighting in the jungle it's in the desert.

[BLUSH]

18. Two Texans, Two Wars

[BLUSH]

8. Bush Sleepwalking