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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! July 26, 2005 Warrior to WarriorBy GreyhawkVietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the latest installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq. Why take so much pride in shame? Dear Warrior in Iraq . . . Who was Gen. Westmoreland anyhow? Okay, that was a trick question, I admit it. Anytime you use the words, "Vietnam War" and "history" in the same breath you'll just have to go with F. It depends. Vietnam, you see, is a remarkable exception to all the rules of history. Since ancient times, philosophers have remarked that the history of war is written by the victors. An expression that refers the ability of the winning nation to justify both the war and the victory, to define the nature of war crimes of the losers and to punish the named criminals. The exception to this rule being Vietnam. For the history of our experience in Vietnam was written in the press and by antiwar protesters who took their sanctuary--and their history degrees--on American college campuses. The writers of Vietnam history then, have declared that America lost the war and that Gen. Westmoreland was the general who commanded American troops in that loss. Then they wrote the history that proves it. That history is so tattooed on the collective American mind that an American presidential candidate in 2004 could blurt, largely without being challenged, that he made forays into Cambodia at Christmas 1968 when he served in "Nixon's war." The popular history has Vietnam as Nixon's war, and no amount of fact can change a collective mind as stubborn as the mind is on this point. Nixon himself is responsible. He was a dark and awkward man who promised in his campaign for president to end the war in Vietnam. I remember this campaign because I was in Vietnam and voted by absentee ballot for Nixon's opponent. Yes, I'm embarrassed to say I voted for Hubert Humphrey, President Johnson's vice president, who said he would win the war. Nixon won the presidency and pounded on the enemy to bring him to the bargaining table. Nixon's aim was to get a peace with honor. You could argue the honor part, but five years after he won the presidency, in 1973, America withdrew its last combat soldiers from South Vietnam, where no significant fighting had gone on for a two years or so. We withdrew those troops on our own, without military pressure. So what? you ask. Well, a couple points worth mentioning. It wasn't Nixon's war, technically, until January 1969, when he was inaugurated. The candidate was wrong on that point. And, as to losing in Vietnam, you'd have to ask the French about that. They marched out of Vietnam as losers. After the battle of Dien Bien Phu, in which thousands of their troops were surrounded and pummeled by artillery and human wave attacks for weeks. The French surrendered 10,000 men in May of 1954 and gave up a colonial empire. In an eerily similar battle at Khe San, Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who defeated the French, tried the same tactics of surround and pummel against the Marines. The Vietnamese lost that battle, at a huge cost in lives to both sides. Later, during the Tet offensive, another huge gamble and the last significant offensive action by the Vietnamese, was another loss for the enemy. But the writers of history said the cost was too dear. They said the enemy was too stubborn. They said we couldn't win. Antiwar protesters demanded peace. Nixon promised peace. They demanded withdrawal. Nixon gave them withdrawal. As I say, you can argue the honor in it, if you like, but we left without the Communist military escort that showed the French the way home. Then, two years later, the North Vietnamese attacked the South, a country no longer defended by American soldiers. South Vietnam crumbled. The writers of history began writing that America lost the war. Then having declared the loss, the losers began writing the history of Vietnam in shame and automatic phrases like "Nixon's war" and "Vietnam, America's first lost war." Last week the death of Westmoreland brought out the phrases again. I couldn't help but notice the perverse sense of pride in calling it to our attention: America's first lost war. That superior air of: We knew that was a bad war; we were against it all along; and we were right, huh? That note of: It could happen again. In Iraq. Bush's war. I can't honestly say that we won in Vietnam; all I can do is insist that we did not lose. We left on our own terms. I can't predict whether we'll win in Iraq; all I can do is ask the people who say they support the troops to stop taking so much pride in shame, to stop cheering for the other side. Is that too much to ask? Till next week . . . God bless you and Godspeed. ____________
Posted by Greyhawk / July 26, 2005 7:05 PM | Permalink 8 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
"Is that too much to ask?"
The answer is yes. It is too much to ask. It is too much to ask that particular crowd to not be narcisisstic. It is too much to ask that they put country before ideology.
Way too much to ask.
In fact the US did not lose the strategic war in southeast asia. Through Korea and Vietnam, the US stopped the spread of communism. While the communist genocide in South Vietnam and Cambodia were tragic, and probably avoidable, both Westmoreland and Nixon deserve credit for the larger longer-term strategic victory over world-wide communism. An article by Thomas Lipscom on this very point derserves a full read:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7375
I haven't finished the article yet (I will, and in general you can consider me a John Harriman fan) but there's a point of fact I feel needs to be corrected. Harriman states: "[I]n 1973, America withdrew its last combat soldiers from South Vietnam, where no significant fighting had gone on for a two years or so." My tour of duty in 'Nam was extended by 90 days due to the north's 1972 spring offensive. Only blind luck kept me from dying on a C-130 that was shot down at the Kontum airbase in May of that year -- I'd left on an earlier flight almost 10 minutes earlier. Not long after that, my good friend William Page, who I mention now and then on my blog, was airlifted out of a nearby firebase just before it was overrun by NVA troops. The South Vietnamese, with a lot of help from the U.S., were finally able to repel the '72 offensive and things were under control enough by August that my tour wasn't extended a second time, which looked quite possible for a while. If I could find some good articles to link to (Ok, so call me lazy for not looking them up) I'd also remind you that our B-52 crews were bombing the hell out of Hanoi and Haiphong as late as December of '72. Again, consider me a John Harriman fan, and I do appreciate the series of essays he's sent you -- I just wish he wouldn't make it sound like anyone who missed Ia Drang and the '68 Tet offensive missed the whole war.
As Bill states so well above, "Also consider me a John Harriman fan", I agree with his sentiments. As with Bill, there IS a point of fact that needs to be corrected.
As with a lot early Vietnam Vets, for the most part they think the war was pretty much over after TET 68 and the Cambodian incursion of 1970. I chalk up their lack of knowlege to just being glad to be home to get on with their lives. The troops before me pretty much totally eliminated the Viet Cong (VC)within S. Vietnam. They also fought valiantly the large NVA regiments and divisions. However, there were several other very large battles left to fight. And those battles involved direct action of American troops. Just look at the Wall for those years 1971 - '73. For that matter, look all the way to the end of the WALL and beyond. One battle was 'Lom Son 719' in 1971 in Laos. Many American Air Cav fought and died alongside our allies.
The largest battle of the Vietnam War occured in the spring and summer of 1972. It has been compared in military studies to the WW II Battle of Bastogne. A little research into the 1972 Easter Offensive is in order. North Vietnam struck South Vietnam with their entire active Regular ( 17) NVA divisions (less one) or about 30,000 NVA infantry troops supported by an estimated 600-700 tanks, heavy artillery, AAA weapons, etc. The attack hit the whole country. Fierce battles raged for weeks and months in Military Regions I, II, & III. American troop strength was down to about 70,000, and few of those were of combat arms groups. Many of us fought right along side our allies during those battles. I would be remiss to not mention that the USAF, Navy & Marines activated as many aviation squadrons as possible to support us. In fact, the outcome of the battles largely depended upon their massive support. There were seven (7) aircraft carriers and numerous destroyers offshore N & S Vietnam providing direct fire support. One of the largest massing of war support since WW II. And it took all of it to win, and win we did. The NVA were decimated and it took teo (2) years to refit for their 1975 Offensive. It was only because our congress cut off aid to Vietnam that the country fell. I blame that on the MSM and communist antiwar groups. Hell no, we didn't lose the war in Vietnam. The U.S. Press and TV lost it for us, spurred on by the antiwar communist sympatizing groups. I invite anyone who would like to research these 71-72 battles of Vietnam to read, 'America's Last Vietnam Battle, Halting Hanoi's 1972 Easter Offensive, by Dale Andrade'. Another well known reference is the 1988 bestseller & Pulitizer Prize winning book; 'A Bright Shining Lie, John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam' by Neil Sheehan.
I participated in the Central Highlands battle in 1972. Bill Faith and I only recently met online and are still wondering how we are still here. That particular battle is documented here: Part of the group I was with were the first to fire the then new secret TOW missiles at T-54 tanks. As a result of the success of the TOW missile, the whole concept of battle against the Soviet union changed. The Soviets had put all their eggs into massive amounts of tanks to over run Europe. The TOW proved them almost obsolete. After the U.S. deployed the new TOW Missiles on helicopters and vehicles Russia essentially crumbled due to lare defense expenditures, among other things. The gratification I received watching our troops kill Sadam's sons with TOW missiles in 2003 can only be summed up as elation. There are men who fought with me in Vietnam, still in the U.S. Army, and now fighting in Iraq.
John Harriman and I very much agree on the big picture, but I just wanted to set the record straight.
William B. Page
1st Cav Div (Airmobile)RVN
3rd Bde (Separate)
B Co. 2/5th Cav 1971-'72
D Co. 1/12th Cav 1972 MR II Easter Offensive
In my above post the website did not print. Here it is: www.thebattleofkontum.com
or www [dot] thebattleofkontum [dot] com
In the operational sense, we did lose in Vietnam, no matter how we prettify it that we left, not on a rail, but on our own, snarling over our shoulders. We left behind people we could not recover for political reasons, and had not the ability to go back when the treaty was broken. And the reason we left was intimately connected with the reason we did not go back in in 1975.
That being acknowledged, while sufferig an operational defeat, we won a crucial strategic victory. Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, or Travis & Bowie at the Alamo, we bought essential time for all of Southeast Asia. After JFK's mistakes, including the undermining of Diem in 1963, had our advisors been withdrawn, and had American troops not entered in March 1965, the RVN almost certainly would have fallen by late 1965, at minimal cost to the North Vietnamese.
Remember that Laos was already under semi-control, and in Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk was playing footsie with the DRVN. Both of these countries certainly would have fallen in 1966 instead fo 1975, again at little cost. And also in the early 1960s there were still viable communist guerrila organizations in Malaya and Thailand. Had the US departed Vietnam without a fight, pro-communist forces in those countries would have been encouraged and anti-communists discoruaged. Remember that in SEA, the traditional attitude was to "bend with the wind like the bamboo". And while Tahiland had seemilngly reliable armed forces, the armed forces of Malaya were only in their first years of organizng and training, and then probably less capable of independent action than the South Vietnamese. So Malaya and Singapore would have been in extreme peril, and Thailand in only slightly less risk. Next consider that in 1966, Indonesia was still ruled by Sukarno,who was a pro-Soviet dictator, his armed forces including Tupolev Badger bombers with stand-off missiles, MiG-21s and at least one ex-Soviet cruiser in his navy. It was in 1966 that after an attempted Communist coup, the Army staged a counter-coup which destroyed the Indonesian communists. If the USA had withdrawn from Vieitnam in 1963/64, does anyone believe the army would have challenged the victorious wave of communism, and not alligned with them? So add Indonesia to the countries which would have slid to the communist camp. Followed by the rest of that archipelago. The Philippines would have held out better, due to their isolation, but their communists would have been encouraged.
And of course, had the North Vietnamese not had to pay such a heavy price in seizing the South, they would have been able to devote those resources to supporting those revolutions in neighboring states. As for the myth that Ho Chi Minh (earlier known as Nguyen Ai Quoc) was "just a nationalist" and wouldn't have done that, during the 1930s he studied in Tashkent at the "University of the Toilers of the East" (a school for training communist agitators), and was a Stalinist member of the Comintern.
The reason only three dominoes fell in Southeast Asia was because we supported them long enough for the other "dominoes" to stabilize themselves and prepare to stand alone. We bought them time. Former Prime minister Lee of Singapore has spoken directly to this issue.
Further, had South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia fallen ten years earlier, in the mid-1960s, the guerrilla tactics would have been imported into Africa and Central America ten years sooner, and with more elan, from having proven that subversion brought victory without a price. Now try moving forward by ten years other timetables in Iran and the Middle East, Khomeini in 1969?
And everywhere nobody willing to resist becasue the USA had demonstrated that it would not even try. The rape of Vietnam bought time and made the case for resisting elsewhere.
Thermopylae made possible Salamis.
The Alamo made possible San Jacinto.
South Vietnam made possible the fall of the wall.
Greyhawk, I guess I should have warned you in that I was putting out a call for reinforcements. My readers may recognize Rurik’s name from my post at http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/posts/2004/11/decisions.html -- He’s the guy who didn’t shoot that little girl with the grenade in her hand and lived to tell about it. Rurik, William Page and I are three of the founding members of an organization, still in it’s infancy but with big plans, officially called “Veterans Support Our Troops”; the long-form name is “Veterans Support Our Troops – And Their Mission.” There’s a little bit of information about the group at http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/posts/veterans_support_our_troops/index.html but you’ll have to wait a little longer before we’re ready to say too much. So, what does it take to get a handful of tired old vets to lace up their boots, saddle up one more time, and starting looking for ways to make some noise? It takes getting damned sick and tired of hearing people claim they can support our troops without supporting their efforts in the Mideast. Yeah, right.... Bullshit! “Have a nice war but we hope you lose.” We can’t turn back the clock and change what happened to us, but we are NOT going to sit back in our rocking chairs and watch it happen to another generation of the finest warriors the world had ever produced. As soon as GoDaddy has time to implement some setting changes I asked for last night and I have time to figure out some new blogging software our new blog will be showing up regularly in your Open Posts, and with writers like William and Rurik on the team maybe we can even hope for some Dawn Patrol support. And yes, we’ll be applying for a MilBlogs spot. See you soon.
THANK YOU........William Page, Bill Faith & Rurick --- for helping to set the record straight.
It's time the TRUTH is told for the sake of the next generation and for the Honor of our VN & VN Era Vets.
Wife of a USASA Vet - 66-70