| From: | Paul J. Adam Paul@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [OT] Vietnam lesson (kinda long) (Was Re: Values and so on...) |
| Date: | Sun, 18 Jul 1999 18:27:02 +0100 |
writes
>Paul J. Adam wrote:
>> Bear in mind that the victorious North Vietnamese were _not_ civilians
>> with personal weapons: the North was extensively equipped with modern
>> Soviet air defences, aircraft, artillery, and armour.
>>
> OK. One of my courses in College last semester was on guerilla warfare. We
>discovered the secret to the "loss" in Viet Nam was, generally, because of 1
main
>factor. It was NOT the "atrocities" perpetrated upon the South Vietnamese
people.
>It was the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That little route allowed the North Vietnamese to
>just walk on down into the South, bringing reinforcements and supplies. One of my
>teacher's contentions was that if the US had, instead of bombing, just started at
>the border and MARCHED across Laos and Cambodia and HELD THE LINE, the Viet
>Cong
>would have been exterminated and South Vietnam would be on the road to true
>democracy.
"True democracy" would have seen Ho Chi Minh elected in 1956.
As for invading Laos and Cambodia - that would have given the USSR
precedent to move into Pakistan in 1984 or thereabouts. Good idea?
Probably not, on balance...
Not to mention the fact that such would be an invasion, pure and simple,
and what happens when the sovereign heads of those nations invite PRC or
USSR troops in to defend their borders from US imperialism? Do you start
shooting, or back down?
You're still stuck with the problem of a well-supported insurgency in the
South, backed by the NVA (who were the main force from 1968 anyway)
and the fact that the South Vietnamese government was at worst a
military dictatorship and at best, elected in a miasma of ballot-box
stuffing.
It's an attractively simplistic answer, but it assumes the conflict occurs in a
vacuum.
> I put loss in quotes because the US military DIDN'T lost the Vietnam
>conflict. They did what they were supposed to do: keep the South Vietnamese
>afloat and "free and democratic".
Only if bouncing from coup to coup is "democracy".
>At the signing of the Peace Accords (whatever
>they were) the US said that if the North attacked the South, it would attack the
>North again. The North started the fighting again, the politicians did nothing.
>The South fought valiantly, but was overwhelmed.
In large measure because a large chunk of South Vietnam didn't really care
for the Saigon regime.
About the only practical "win" result in Vietnam would have been for the
US to throw its weight behind Ho Chi Minh from the start: back him
against the French and have him be an ally. That would have needed too
much of a change in US anticommunist paranoia of the time, though...
--
Paul J. Adam
