I served in the Army. Desert Storm as well. And it was a lot of things. Not just a few songs or whatever.
Korea. It wasn’t Vietnam that caused the problems, it was Korea. Korea was a war. Nobody understood. Why we were there was never explained well enough. What threat to us did it represent. To make it worse, the predictions and promises of the leadership was never right.
First, the collected wisdom of the various Intelligence Agencies. Military, CIA, State Department, everyone. All of them said Nothing would happen in Korea. Then the arrogant Leaders sent Task Force Smith in. That group was wiped out.
As stories came back of Bugle Charges and Chinese Human Wave attacks, we couldn’t figure out how the hell so many people were wrong so often. Korea will never be a problem. The war starts. The Chinese will never come in. The Chinese swarm the area like Cockroaches in a New York Tenement.
Partly it was people like McArthur believing their own press clippings. Partly it was ignorance of the Enemy. Partly it was just wishful thinking. Partly it was a standard of proof that was unreachable. For example. When the First Chinese started to get captured by the ROK and US Forces, they were explained away as just stray units that had wondered across the Yalu river.
The way the war ended was also uncomfortable for people who had expected a victory like World War II. Worse, it was five years since the end of the last war, and the Military was woefully undermanned, under trained, and inexperienced.
Then we find ourselves in Vietnam. Almost immediately we see ourselves deploying advisors, and after watching the French Foreign Legion defeated, one of the best military units in the world, we decide arrogantly that we can smash Vietnam like an egg.
A decade after Korea, we are still arrogant despite the knowledge of how many we lost in Korea, the costs of that draw were unbearably high.
Vietnam was the straw. Lies and obfuscation ruled the days. The Politicians modified the language to try and fool the people. From Search and Destroy to Seek and Subdue. The problem wasn’t the terms used, the problem was that we kept hearing about how our boys were over there fighting for hills that they immediately gave back to the enemy. Our men were dying to take terrain that was surrendered as soon as they won, if they won.
As time goes by and the lies are exposed, support for the war that was problematic in it’s beginning, and managed in what appeared to be the dumbest way possible, was reduced.
Vietnam wasn’t lost because of the Liberals, or the Communists, nor even the people singing songs against the war. It was lost because we never had any clue how to win. If we had that clue, we were not doing it. It wasn’t a situation where killing all the enemies would somehow win the day.
Look, there have been a thousand books written on Vietnam and why we lost. The lessons we didn’t learn, or were applied wrong. There were a lot of them. We lost for the same reason we are getting our asses kicked in Afghanistan. The people didn’t want us there. Not all of them, but more than enough. The Draft insured the military had the troops, but they were unwilling troops. Troops who wanted to get laid, not go to Vietnam and die without even seeing who was shooting.
We didn’t have the moral, we didn’t have the plan, and we didn’t even have a clue. We had our arrogance handed to us with a large plate of crow. We learned. Jimmy Carter instituted drug testing, and that started to weed out the problems. The draft was suspended. That meant that the troops were volunteers, if less than enthusiastic.
Before that happened, things were so bad that Officers would not go into some of the barracks without sidearms. We no longer made it a join the army or go to jail option. The more we raised the standards, the better the soldiers were.
It was about ten years from the end of Vietnam, to Grenada, and other conflicts, small and short they may have been. The difference was night and day. Reagan’s military could not have existed without the changes begun under Carter. Including study of and development of the B-1 Bomber.
It wasn’t Liberals, because after their height of the 1960’s and first half of the 1070’s, the military was improving. Weapons, training, tactics, and all of that were improving. It got a big boost when Reagan took office, and sent more money for training, but the point remains. The foundation had already been laid out.
We lost Vietnam not because of the Liberals, but because of the fools who had no idea what they were doing in the first place.
