Yet another reason that, in war, it is important to win and to win decisively
If you don’t, anyone with a pen will have a sociological, political, religious, economic or ideological explanation for the loss. As it happened, we came within a hair’s breadth of winning in Vietnam. If the blogosphere had existed thirty five years ago, America would not have chosen defeat. The always valuable Jack Kelly:
To say we won the Vietnam war before we lost it sounds like something John Kerry might say, but it’s the truth. The Vietnam war was won in the 11 days between Dec. 18 and Dec. 30, 1972. That was the time of the “Christmas bombing” of Hanoi and Haiphong, the only time in the war that we used strategic air power against strategic targets in North Vietnam.
“After those 11 days you had won the war, it was all over!” said Sir Robert Thompson, the British counterinsurgency expert. “They had fired 1,242 SAMs [surface to air missiles], they had none left, and what would have come in over land from China would have been a mere trickle. They and their whole rear base at that point would be at your mercy. They would have taken any terms. And that is why, of course, you actually got a peace agreement in January, which you had not been able to get in October.”
Even before the Christmas bombing, the ground war was well in hand, despite (or perhaps because of) a draw down in U.S. forces from 550,000 in 1968 to 69,000 by the end of 1972.
The catalyst was the replacement of Gen. William Westmoreland with Gen. Creighton Abrams after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Westmoreland — perhaps the stupidest American ever to wear four stars — thought he could win a war of attrition against North Vietnam. His strategy of “search and destroy” resulted in thousands of unnecessary American deaths, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians as “collateral damage.”
Not going after Hanoi, the source of the arms, money and men for the war in South Vietnam, seems as silly as not going after who? Damascus? Teheran? Riyadh?
Oh dear.