After my first deployment to Iraq, I observed to my First Sergeant that it wasn’t a matter of the army that only screwed up ten per cent of the time beating the army that screwed up fifteen per cent of the time, but of the army that only screwed up sixty per cent of the time beating the army that screwed up eighty per cent of the time. Operating on that scale, the miracle is that anything gets accomplished at all.
I note that in order to provide context for this part: yes, the Vietnam conflict was one in which essentially every agency and organization involved found a way to screw up something. There was so much inefficiency, waste, mismanagement, contradictory imperatives and irreconcilable goals, it could serve as a textbook example of how to do every part of a war wrong. And yet, we won. Richard Nixon resisted merciless pressure to simply withdraw, and pursued a program that, at long last, brought about the treaty he desired (in a war he hadn’t started, didn’t want, and hated as a distraction from his own domestic goals). That treaty included provisions for the military action that would be taken against the North if they ever violated the agreement (which Nixon well knew they were fully capable of doing). He tirelessly pursued the only end that would satisfy him, an honorable conclusion to America’s undesired Vietnam involvement; he fought and sacrificed to achieve this, DID achieve it …
… and, once he was forced from office (through a combination of his own flaws/wrongdoings and an insatiable determination on the part of his enemies to bring him down by any possible means), saw a Democrat congress throw it all away.
They passed laws forbidding any further aid to the South, in direct violation of explicit treaty obligations. They deserted a people who had been our allies for a full generation, because they could profit from doing so. When the North invaded in 1975 — a smaller, weaker, and less coordinated invasion than one that had been previously repelled — the South fought them to a standstill, and then collapsed because it ran out of ammunition. Its ‘ally’ had shrugged and turned its back, while the Russian and Chinese allies of the North had continued to provide them with arms and supplies.
Among my own veteran’s group, I’ve heard that described as the only war we ever lost. Except we didn’t lose. The American military didn’t lose. The American nation didn’t lose. South Vietnam lost — because it was betrayed — but in order for us to lose, we’d have had to still be there in the fight. We weren’t, because we withdrew under an agreement, and were then forbidden by our own government to return and fulfill our part of that agreement.
We were not defeated. Even if we had been, there can still be honor in defeat. Here, there was nothing that could even be mislabeled as honor.
Yes, the war was mismanaged. The end of the war, however, was not mismanagement. What was done there was done deliberately, and its architects have a place waiting for them in Hell.
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I note that in order to provide context for this part: yes, the Vietnam conflict was one in which essentially every agency and organization involved found a way to screw up something. There was so much inefficiency, waste, mismanagement, contradictory imperatives and irreconcilable goals, it could serve as a textbook example of how to do every part of a war wrong. And yet, we won. Richard Nixon resisted merciless pressure to simply withdraw, and pursued a program that, at long last, brought about the treaty he desired (in a war he hadn’t started, didn’t want, and hated as a distraction from his own domestic goals). That treaty included provisions for the military action that would be taken against the North if they ever violated the agreement (which Nixon well knew they were fully capable of doing). He tirelessly pursued the only end that would satisfy him, an honorable conclusion to America’s undesired Vietnam involvement; he fought and sacrificed to achieve this, DID achieve it …
… and, once he was forced from office (through a combination of his own flaws/wrongdoings and an insatiable determination on the part of his enemies to bring him down by any possible means), saw a Democrat congress throw it all away.
They passed laws forbidding any further aid to the South, in direct violation of explicit treaty obligations. They deserted a people who had been our allies for a full generation, because they could profit from doing so. When the North invaded in 1975 — a smaller, weaker, and less coordinated invasion than one that had been previously repelled — the South fought them to a standstill, and then collapsed because it ran out of ammunition. Its ‘ally’ had shrugged and turned its back, while the Russian and Chinese allies of the North had continued to provide them with arms and supplies.
Among my own veteran’s group, I’ve heard that described as the only war we ever lost. Except we didn’t lose. The American military didn’t lose. The American nation didn’t lose. South Vietnam lost — because it was betrayed — but in order for us to lose, we’d have had to still be there in the fight. We weren’t, because we withdrew under an agreement, and were then forbidden by our own government to return and fulfill our part of that agreement.
We were not defeated. Even if we had been, there can still be honor in defeat. Here, there was nothing that could even be mislabeled as honor.
Yes, the war was mismanaged. The end of the war, however, was not mismanagement. What was done there was done deliberately, and its architects have a place waiting for them in Hell.