Interview with WWII reconaissance pilot

[Splitter]

Not "you", Swiss. "You" meaning anyone who rattles the big dog's cage . I was using the "royal you" just as I use the "royal we"...after all, I do not speak for all Americans (insert a "thank goodness" here lol).

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a major supply artery, no doubt. The thing is, the supplies had to GET to the trail before they could be delivered on the backs of civilians, water buffalo, bicycles, and trucks. The air interdictions into the North hit railways, roads, and bridges and prevented about half the supplies from ever reaching the North Vietnamese army in the south.

Make no mistake, the problem for the North was getting supplies to their forces in the South. Civilian casualties to them were just unfortunate byproducts of war. Sometimes, civilian casualties were a boon to their cause due to the "bad publicity" it caused in the US.

I am not sure people outside the US understand just how divided the US was at the time (I can only imagine because I was an infant myself lol). The hippy, free love, peace movement was in full swing. The war had been going on for many years and people were weary of it. Families divided over opinions on the war.

The North played on this division in the US. They fed the American left the anti-war meat it craved. Protests were rampant and people were frothing at the mouth.

This was Johnson's problem. He was a leftist and was handed a little war which he did not want to fight. However, he could not get out of it either. So he chose the middle ground, neither fighting to win nor willing to pull out. He had great dreams (in his mind) for his presidency but the war always got in the way.

Nixon came in with the plan and will to win but he found himself handcuffed by the left as to what he could do to win. He was a politician above all and never took his eye off of re-election. It ended up that he didn't have the stomach to win either as a result. Then the country got distracted with a bungled burglary job committed by Nixon's people and they just wanted to GTFO of Vietnam.

Very sad. 50K Americans died over there and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. All because we didn't have the stomach to do what was needed to win. As a nation, we never fully committed which is usually a recipe for disaster.

Splitter

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Splitter

Very sad. 50K Americans died over there and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. All because we didn't have the stomach to do what was needed to win. As a nation, we never fully committed which is usually a recipe for disaster.

Splitter

Generally agreed figures are about 800K NVA, about 250K VC another 250k or so ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) and all up anywhere between 2 and 3 million civilians.

Despite a massive kill ratio in their favor all the US could achieve is a stalemate where the North finally agreed to "peace talks" allowing the US save face and abandon South Vietnam without being totally embarrassed. It was well understood at that the time that after an appropriate period of a year or two the North would occupy the South. hence the panic to get US associates, employees and collaborators out of the country at the time.

As far as the 60's protesters go their main point seem to be that encouraging people on the other side of the planet to embrace "freedom democracy and western values" by bombing hell out of them didn't seem to be particularly working that well.