Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: bxr307@csc.anu.oz Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Low tech warfare Message-ID: <12539@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 22 Dec 89 06:03:54 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Computer Services, Australian National University Lines: 157 Approved: military@att.att.com From: bxr307@csc.anu.oz From: schloss@marlin.nosc.mil (Tom Schlosser) >> However I have realised that this discussion has started to >>digress from what my original posting was about. That was a question as to >>whether the US military had learnt any lessons from Vietnam (like the need >>for joint political-military action)? And if so what where they and were >>they applying them in other places like El Salvador? From my reading and >>viewing of the nightly TV news the answer was no. However I could be >>wrong. Is anyone willing tell me so? >Let me first say that although I work for the Navy, I'm no expert on >these matters. Having issued that caveat, I'll take the bait. I think >the US learned *alot* from Vietnam. I think this whole discussion is >in the wrong orbit entirely. The war wasn't won or lost in Vietnam, it >was lost the day Johnson took office. With him in office, the goal of >our involvement in Vietnam seemed to be 1) don't lose and 2) don't get >hurt. There wasn't the Al Davis attitude we needed (Just win, baby.). >The war was extraordinarily minor as wars go, but the politics of it >were huge. That's where I think we learned. We haven't sent in troops >to help El Salvador, and that's a good thing for two reasons. Granted that it was a major failure of political will at home to accomplish the task that prevented the US from winning. However it was not as is so often portrayed in the American cinema and media a case of "betrayal" by the people and politicians at home. Rather it was a failure of the military-politico policies of the US system has a whole which was to blame. Attempting to pin the blame on one group as so often been done since Vietnam (particularly by the iconographers of Hollywood) is a futile effort and achieves only resentment. To also say that the only major political lesson was, "not to send in the troops" seems rather silly to me. What I would hope to see as political lessons learnt from Vietnam are that there is no such thing as monolithic Communism, that reform is better than oppression and decay, and perhaps finally, other countries in the world do have a right to determine their own direction without US interefence. Unfortunatly those political lessons don't seem to have been learnt by the US government. :-( >The first is that we really don't care what happens to these little >pipsqueak countries. Certainly not enough to go and get killed for it. >We'll supply them with weapons and train them, but it's up to them to >do the dirty work. The second lesson was that as long as American >troops aren't being killed, the government can really support whomever >it chooses. Certainly the Kennedy wing of the Democratic party will >have conniptions over the moral aspects of what we're doing, but they >always do that no matter who we support. The American people just want >to be left alone to earn their money and pursue their hobbies. Just >look at the results of this latest rebel offensive. They shot up alot >of expensive ammunition, took some casualties and now have to go off >and try to regroup. The government forces get resupplied by the US and >have their casualties tended in better hospitals. There were a few >protests in the US, but certainly nothing politically significant. The >Super Bowl is coming up and Nortre Dame finally lost a game, so who >cares what happened in (where was that place, honey? Hondurica? El >Nicador? Pass the peas.) El Salvador. If this is true. Then why is the US government interested in these countries? Is it because they are more interested in protecting US commercial interests than in encouraging the concept of freedom for these small countries? I see a dicotomy of interest here. Ah! Well just another example of real politic. As to the idea that as long as US troops are not getting killed the US government can support whom it likes. We've seen the result of that sort of policy many times and none more fully than in the last few days in Pananma. Rather faustian I think. Noriega was a creation of Bush's policies in the late seventies when he was head of the CIA, now he has to destroy him at the cost of US (and lets not forget Panamanians') lives. >As a final note, I read recently that it takes about 20 (40?) acres of >arable land in El Salvador to make a go of a family-owned farm. There >is only 1/4 as much arable land in the country as they would need to >successfully carry out a land-grant-based reform package. Their >problem is too many people and too few resources. A 'reform' solution >will be hard to come by. However if they made the *effort* and were seen to be making the effort to reform things (and land ownership is just one aspect of this) then the insurgents would have less appeal to the peasants. In addition if instead of oppressing the peasants (by such marvelous tactics as free-fire zones, death squads, rape, burning and pillaging) they made some attempt to help them, then once more the insurgents would have one less leg to stand on. If would appear that the El Salvadorian government is following the same tactic employed by the US in Vietnam. A belief that, "if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow!" Unfortunatly just as in Vietnam it is failing in El Salvador. If the only real serious alternative to what the government is doing to you is a guerrilla movement, whom would you support? >By the way, how come there has been no mention of the bombing of Hanoi? >Seems like the NVA came to the negotiating table pretty quick after >their capitol started getting hit. Maybe that was the problem. If I >were president, I think I would have told the North Vietnamese that the >VC were *their* problem and if they wanted to have two bricks sticking >together in their cities, they'd best keep the VC on a short leash. That is because the bombing of Hanoi was a patently useless strategy. The Vietnamese had been given several years to get used to the idea of war from the air. The US government's idea of "slowing turning the screws" by a "progressive" bombing campiagn was patently a failure of the military dictum that you must escalate to the maximum use of force immediately in war time. Failure to do so decreases the value of that maximum force when it is finally applied. This is why the US bombing of the north failed to achieve its objective of inhibiting the North's ability to wage war. In addition the US Air Force's belief in the all empowering nature of strategic airpower failed to recognise that while you can bomb someone's factories, their fuel stocks and ports. It is the insurgent on the ground who must really be destroyed and the only way to do that is to go in and find him with ground forces which are willing to fight it out on the ground in the same manner that he is: surriptiousely. However, even in saying that, you betray that you still fail to grasp that Vietnam was not an invasion of one country by another. The VC was not controlled from the North (at least not until after 1968 when they had lost most of their local forces during the Tet offensive and were forced to bring down NVA troops to reinforce the war). The VC was by and large an embodiment of the South's dissatisfaction with its government and the US intervention in their country. It was basically a civil war. US intervention simply prolonged a revolutionary process begun in 1945 and finally completed in 1975. This does again once more digresses into the region of politics more than military affairs which is what we are meant to be discussing (apologies Bill). I was not so much interested in what the US learnt politically as what it had learnt militarily. We have been seeing for the last 15 years that the US government failed to learn any real lessons from it Vietnam experience. What I was trying to find out was whether the US Army in particular, and the rest of the US military in general, had learnt any *tactical* lessons from Vietnam. If the US becomes involved in another war in the third world. Will it train their troops to fight jungle warfare with its unconventional nature, or will it once more attempt to deploy large numbers of US troops still which have been taught to fight on the plains of Europe? Has the US army learnt that in jungle warfare you do have to sneak around and attempt to find the enemy and kill him quietly or do they instead continue to believe that by making their troops "bait" they can destroy the enemy through "superior firepower"? Can an insurgent hiding in the jungle can be destroyed by some type of high-tech wizardry or that you have to go out and find him personally? Do your troops have to walk over the ground they are traversing, not fly by helicopter if you're going to find the enemy? Those are the sort of questions I'd like answered or is it rather a case that the US military would just much rather forget about Vietnam as an unfortunate episode of its history? _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- | Brian Ross |Snail Mail:- "Bill Bracket the self-made man who came| in a packet" | Brian Ross ----------------------------------------| Sociology Dept.R.S.S.S. E-Mail Addresses:- bxr307@coombs.anu.oz | Australian National University | CANBERRA,A.C.T.,2601, bxr307@csc.anu.oz | AUSTRALIA | _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-