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Previous comments...
I believe the reason(s) we got beat is presented in an excellent History Channel documentary about ancient general Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." It was truly fascinating.
Click the link to see a condensation the documentary's Vietnam portion~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR4PZ...
Coupled with that they were treated as second class soldier materials for HAVING to be drafted - and the ER/NG troops as little better than draft dodgers - by the Regular Army soldiers.
Just as you got the good one's up to speed they were gone and another wave of questionable rookies showed up.
Worse the military started the Shake'n'Bake Whip'n'Chill schools for instant Sergeants etc. whiich meant Regulars had to wait evern longer for their promotions no matter how well qualified and seasoned. Really hard to be on your second or third tour with all 'promotion points' in place and find out no...not this time ....we gave xyz slots to the newbies.
The moral outcome was they were on their own in many instances. The good units put them under the experienced people until they were 'really' up to speed. Kept everyone alive and got the missions done.
Some - a few were superb- and a few of them re-enlisted or extended. The rest we transferred to the line company units or to supply if there was room and turned them into pack mules.
Being much of the time in a different type of unit we saw some of that but on the occasions (I did one year with the 101st as part of the mix I was able to experience the fallacy of the draft system up close and too damn personal.
Think of that when you couch potato getting rid of the draft system. It's only purpose is to give people like LBJ a steady supply of cannon fodder. it's that veiled threat hanging in the background.
Oh yes. And some of us had to work and occasinally bleed for our college education funds.. even worse some found out when they retired the system we had earned it under was shutting down and left us with nothing. So Mr. and Mrs. America no thanks to you for another broken promise. And don't thank me for serving my country I served the Constitution and still do.
Dino Advice: Strive to make yourself clearly understood.
I used my GI Bill to buy an education toward a degree in journalism, though I was a reporter/photographer for only 7 years before I took up another career.
Al Ulman (D) of Oregon changed the rules on the housing loan thingamajig. We had put in for the allowoed expansion from two to three bedroom etc. When he clobbered that BUT since we had applied we had ha ha used the benefit and couldn't reapply underr the new rules. .
Two more ways the left screwed military people. Wanna have a war? How about DC as the battleground.
So many lowdown SOBs with a (D) beside their names.
But they always have a giddy parade of voting lemmings dancing along behind them.
My WW2 elders knew things about that war, how things worked, why things worked, things I'd not know if not for them. I wonder if Nam vets have the same knowledge about why things didn't work.
We won the war against Japan without invading the Japanese mainland and, after inflicting fewer than 5% casualties on the Japanese population (the Germans suffered 10% casualties.)
MacArthur was prohibited from invading or bombing China but, we retook South Korea from the North Korean and Chinese troops (who had Russian equipment and support) and established the DMZ between the two.
We won the Cold War without invading or attacking the Soviet Union.
So, I think there's a deeper, more fundamental reason we won other wars but, didn't win the Vietnam War.
My friends and I were in the big city for the state high school basketball tourney. We were staying with someone's older sister, who got us into the bars. We slept on her living room floor and, one morning she woke us up by throwing a newspaper on the floor in the middle of us..
"Read it and weep!"
It was the draft lottery. My buddy Mike's number was...drum role...ONE!
The following week, when we got home, instead of waiting for the Army, he signed up for 6 years in the Air Force because they promised not to send him to Nam.
He spent 6 years on bases in Texas and Mississippi while we went to college. Vietnam didn't ruin his life but, avoiding Vietnam certainly delayed his education.
By 1972 he was so disgusted and fed up with the whole thing. A diehard American patriot sickened to his stomach. Moreover, his only son was both turning 18 and graduating high school in May of 1973. I did the pre-registering, of course got A1 status, and then came the draft lottery of #14. My Dad was actually considering on sending me to college in Nova Scotia. Dalhousie. But they ended the draft that spring and I was off the hook.
The following comments are from a government source and therefore can't be trusted ;^)
Per the selective "service" site at:
https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And...
"Before Congress reformed the draft in 1971, a man could qualify for a student deferment if he could show he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress in virtually any field of study. He could continue to go to school and be deferred from service until he was too old to be drafted."
"Before 1971, state and local boards used a "quota system" under which they assigned a certain number of men to the draft. Because the boards determined who would be drafted, there were instances when personal relationships and favoritism played a part in deciding who would be drafted."
And they claim favoritism doesn't happen today... HA! What a load of looter-pucky.
The left exploited it to the hilt (such as the communist National Lawyers' Guild), providing all kinds of legal information on 'conscientious objection", going to Canada, medical deferments, and otherwise how to navigate the bureaucratic rules and avoid the draft, even though they politically supported national servitude; they wanted the Viet Cong to win.
The political elites like Clinton had additional connections they could exploit.
But escape the draft or not, everyone whose life was targeted was inescapably disrupted, put on hold at a crucial period of development, and threatened, all with permanent affect. There is a lot of history in this worth going back and learning.
My dad got his conscription letter on the day he graduated from college. Apparently there was some test to get into OCS, which would result in a better job in the armed forces. So people were really sweating this test. He said they quested him and checked his references wrt to the strong pro-peace movement in Madison. He passed the test, went to OCS, and was scheduled to head to Vietnam. The Jordanian crisis caused him to be sent with the Navy to the Mediterranean. The crisis never materialized, so he got a relaxing assignment in the Mediterranean while some of his friends went to Vietnam. I think he feels weird about it, although he had no say in the matter.
I heard these stories from him and my aunts and uncles. I read about it recently in They Marched into Sunlight, which covered parts of the war and the demonstrations for peace in Madison. It's weird how things seemed so similar yet so different.
Your point about winning those other conflicts illustrates how little I understand military history. Japan was going to fight to the last person, yet it quickly became a prosperous ally. If that formula had applied to Vietnam, it seems like Vietnam could be Singapore.
Vietnam could not have become another Japan economically because of entirely different levels of civilization and the dominating role of the entrenched ideological communists (who went on to impose mass slaughter). Japan was going to fight to the equivalent of 'the last person' -- and saw what was going to happen to the last ones all at once. Truman's insistence on unconditional surrender enforced by the atomic bomb led to American occupation and demilitarization that allowed the best of the Japanese to grow. The Singapore island had been a British port, was likewise re-occupied from Japan after WWII, and was far enough away to escape the fate of Vietnam.
I believe, although I'm not having much luck with this crowd, no war is worth fighting unless one is willing to fight to annihilation, exhaustion or until the enemy changes his mind. I believe the most wise, economical and humane way to fight wars is by changing the enemy's mind before the fighting starts.
Germans became firm proponents of capitalist democracy very quickly, as did the Japanese. We fought the Germans to exhaustion but, not the Japanese. They changed their minds. South Koreans were already capitalists and have a history of democracy.
The Vietnamese had no history of capitalism. They were subsistence farmers or fishermen or French serfs. They had no history of democracy. Had we tried, starting in 1945 to imbue them with the ideas of democratic capitalism, they might now be Singapore writ large. Instead, due to FDR's intrigues and disdain for Truman, we ended up helping the French and, when the French failed, picked up the burden without stopping to think why.
I've never felt guilty about missing Vietnam but, I am always aware it is an experience that shaped many of the people around me, changed them forever. Most of them lost more than a few years of their lives, they lost faith.
It's the case that some things cannot be transferred from one person to another. Some things must be experienced and, those of us who didn't experience it must refrain from judging those who did or, risk being and doing wrong.