Vietnam Part MCXLVIII

[Gunny]

A number of the older people I met were definitely from the French regime. I remember speaking with one old gentleman, this would have been about 1978/9 and he would have been in his seventies then and he was speaking French with our translator (my schoolboy French failed me beyond a simple greeting). Our translator spoke Vietnamese (the southern version), French and English thankfully (actually her father was a bigwig in the French colonial government). The old gentlemen told me about the French regime and explained the genesis of the resistance, he even referred to the "Viet Minh". Really interesting man to talk to and very well educated to boot.

Ah ... you mean the Viet Minh who were Vietnamese nationalists fighting to throw off centuries of colonial rule? The ones we chose to not support, instead siding with our age-old "ally" France?

IMO, when you remove the superficial ideological struggle and Cold War fearmongering and political allies, seems to me Ho represented American idealism FAR more than Diem did.

 

[onedomino]

You mean like we obliterated Beijing when a million chicom troops poured across the Yalu River into N Korea because we got too close to their border?

History disagrees with you.

Gunny, I was referring to the possibility raised by someone else that China might start a nuclear war if we invaded North Viet Nam. I believe that opinion to be false. That's why I said there was no way that China would exchange the protection of Hanoi for the obliteration of Beijing. If the Chinese had crossed over the border with a conventional attack into North Viet Nam in response to a US invasion from the South, then we would have defeated them. Do you disagree?

 

[Gunny]

Gunny, I was referring to the possibility raised by someone else that China might start a nuclear war if we invaded North Viet Nam. I believe that opinion to be false. That's why I said there was no way that China would exchange the protection of Hanoi for the obliteration of Beijing. If the Chinese had crossed over the border with a conventional attack into North Viet Nam in response to a US invasion from the South, then we would have defeated them. Do you disagree?

I don't know that China would have started a nuclear, and that certainly was not part of my statement. IMO, the nuclear war part would only come when one of the Superpowers actually started losing to another.

I disagree that we would have defeated China in a conventional war, but it would depended on how it played out. I can see China invading from the north the minute we invaded from the south, and the "new border" being established at a respectable distance once the forces came in sight of one another. The result of that scenario is I see China trying to enlist Ho into moving into the US-controlled areas and continuing his guerilla war with their support. I can see Ho doing this simply because he could not fight two enemies at once.

In a conventional war with China circa 1960s, China would have the logistical and manpower advantages. We would have air superiority. This goes back to my first statement. IF we got the upper hand, THEN China might be willing to use nuclear weapons.

And think bigger picture. This scenario isn't about Hanoi. It's about the US beign a power in China's sphere of influence.

Be all that as it may ... there are a few inaccuracies here. N Vietnam was supported mainly by the Soviet Union, with the Chinese providing token support out of ideological obligation. China and the Soviet Union for the most part were barely on speaking terms.

 

[Diuretic]

Ah ... you mean the Viet Minh who were Vietnamese nationalists fighting to throw off centuries of colonial rule? The ones we chose to not support, instead siding with our age-old "ally" France?

IMO, when you remove the superficial ideological struggle and Cold War fearmongering and political allies, seems to me Ho represented American idealism FAR more than Diem did.

Very interesting point, especially about Ho, he was first and foremost an anti-colonialist and I suppose in that way yes, very much - at least in motivation, if not politics - similar to the Founding Fathers of the US.

 

[Diuretic]

I think I might have chucked in the potential of nuclear war with China - blame me if it was really stupid

 

[RetiredGySgt]

The reality is that if we began beating the Chinese they would have gone to the Soviets. Thats where the threat lie. Also the Chinese allowed the Soviets to ship material through China to North Vietnam. hardly the action of an enemy. Though Mao had ulterior motives. he had his youth supporters loot material and weapons from those trains.

 

[onedomino]

I criticize your statement because you don't have a true appreciation for Cold War politics, and the games that were played. This of course would lead me to ask how old you are. Not to criticize, but to point out that the Gunny and I are rougly the same age and grew up watching Cold War politics and Vietnam on the evening news. CSM was THERE. My father was military and he was there. It behooved me to know what was going on.

I was born in the year that the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. I will never call it Ho Chi Minh City. If age had anything to do with the ability to derive lessons from history, then Rumsfeld would have been a great Defense Secretary. Did I need to be at Cold Harbor to know that Grant was incompetent? Does the fact that my father flew from a Thai airbase give me any more credibility? I am not going to discuss my military, education, and work background, because this is hardly the venue for that. The point is, I have listened to my father about the Cold War, I have studied it, and I know military officers that lived through it. The opinion that I have expressed about winning in Viet Nam in the mid 60s by invading the North is not one that I hold alone.

 

[onedomino]

Very interesting point, especially about Ho, he was first and foremost an anti-colonialist and I suppose in that way yes, very much - at least in motivation, if not politics - similar to the Founding Fathers of the US.

Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.

 

[onedomino]

The reality is that if we began beating the Chinese they would have gone to the Soviets. Thats where the threat lie. Also the Chinese allowed the Soviets to ship material through China to North Vietnam. hardly the action of an enemy. Though Mao had ulterior motives. he had his youth supporters loot material and weapons from those trains.

What if the Chinese did go to the CCCP? The Soviets were not going to risk nuclear war over Hanoi. What other options did the Russians have? None. They certainly were in no position to contest an American invasion of North Viet Nam by conventional means. I disagree about China. Allowing material used to kill Americans, Australians, South Koreans, and South Vietnamese, to tranship the country was indeed the action of an enemy. Those supply lines should have been attacked. And the port of Haiphong should have been reduced. If you tie your hands behind your back, and do not attack enemy supply lines, how can you ever hope to win? Which, in the long run, we did not. Sometime during the period 1965-7, we should have used air power to directly attack North Vietnamese supplies and “civilian” support for the VC and NVA. After a strong air campaign, we should have launched our ground forces in an invasion of the North. The moment the Chinese came across the border, if they did, they would have been repelled with B52s, naval air power, and short-range surface to surface conventional missiles. Then the remaining Chinese and NVA could have been engaged with ground forces. The Chinese would not have introduced nuclear weapons (or any other WMD) because it would have meant the end of Beijing, Shanghai, etc. No amount of Vietnamese ground would have been worth that. The military cards were in Johnson's favor, but he did not have the nerve to play them. Instead he chose to confine American military activity to the South, thereby guaranteeing a slow blood and treasure draining defeat. You say we won Tet '68, but the North Vietnamese base was still intact, NVA civilian supporters still untouched, and the supply trains were still running. If Johnson had invaded the North before Tet, there would have been many unforeseen consequences. But how could SE Asia have turned out any worse that it did? If the US had invaded the North and prevailed, then Pol Pot could have never gotten away with genocide. Not with strong US forces on the Cambodian border.

 

[Gunny]

I was born in the year that the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. I will never call it Ho Chi Minh City. If age had anything to do with the ability to derive lessons from history, then Rumsfeld would have been a great Defense Secretary. Did I need to be at Cold Harbor to know that Grant was incompetent? Does the fact that my father flew from a Thai airbase give me any more credibility? I am not going to discuss my military, education, and work background, because this is hardly the venue for that. The point is, I have listened to my father about the Cold War, I have studied it, and I know military officers that lived through it. The opinion that I have expressed about winning in Viet Nam in the mid 60s by invading the North is not one that I hold alone.

My point was not to attack your age itself, and I stated as much. It is to question what you have been taught.

Invading N Vietnam would have accomplished nothing but shuffling the DMZ around a bit for awhile.

 

[Gunny]

Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.

And again, history disagrees with you. Ho was first and foremost a Vietnamese nationalist, and his stated goal was ALWAYS an independent Vietnam without foreign interference.

 

[Diuretic]

Yes he was a nationalist. But he also spent the 20s in Paris. Why was he not in Viet Nam fighting for independence? After Paris, he spent years in Moscow. He might have been a Vietnamese nationalist during those years he spent in Paris coffee houses, but not much of one. In my opinion he was first and foremost a Soviet proxy.

I don't know if he was a Soviet proxy. I don't know much about him but I wonder if when he was in Paris - student? - he may have read Marx and Engels and perhaps other radical writers, he may have developed a consciousness to recover his country from its colonial masters. I don't know.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Incorrect. Absolute military power can bring a civil war to a halt, and keep i that way so long as the force remains to enforce its will.

It can, but the Bush administration failed to commit either the troops or resources at the outset of the invasion of Iraq to contain the ensuing violence of the occupation. There was never enough force on the ground to "enforce its will".

 

[onedomino]

My point was not to attack your age itself, and I stated as much. It is to question what you have been taught.

Invading N Vietnam would have accomplished nothing but shuffling the DMZ around a bit for awhile.

After extensive preparation, if the US had invaded the North in '65, the DMZ would have moved to the border of China and a geographically unified Viet Nam. Unlike Korea, we would have been prepared for any Chinese incursion, and the vast majority of their forces would have been destroyed at or near the border. There is no way that Chinese ground forces could have held up under a massive B52 and naval air campaign. How could they get their supply lines out from underneath a continuos rain of 2000lb bombs? Where would the Chinese troops hide? In holes in the ground? How could they stop advancing US troops by doing that? Obviously the US ground invasion would not have started at the old North-South border. But much further up the coast near Hai Phong, so that the port could be captured early and used for support. Ho would have fled to China, or back to his pals in Moscow. After some period, elections would have been held. The North had no culture of communism, it was after all under the influence of the French until 1954. It is far from clear that communists would have won in a countrywide general election, in fact it is more likely that they would have been defeated. Not just communists would have sported the nationalist banner. Anyway, the mass of US forces would have left after the election, except for those forces necessary to keep the Chinese from crossing the border, and prevent supplies from reaching any potential insurgents. Most of our forces might have been withdrawn by '68-9. Moreover, we might have been able to accomplish the reunification of Viet Nam with fewer than the 50,000+ killed that we suffered in a useless police action confined to the South that lasted until ‘72.

 

[Gunny]

After extensive preparation, if the US had invaded the North in '65, the DMZ would have moved to the border of China and a geographically unified Viet Nam. Unlike Korea, we would have been prepared for any Chinese incursion, and the vast majority of their forces would have been destroyed at or near the border. There is no way that Chinese ground forces could have held up under a massive B52 and naval air campaign. How could they get their supply lines out from underneath a continuos rain of 2000lb bombs? Where would the Chinese troops hide? In holes in the ground? How could they stop advancing US troops by doing that? Obviously the US ground invasion would not have started at the old North-South border. But much further up the coast near Hai Phong, so that the port could be captured early and used for support. Ho would have fled to China, or back to his pals in Moscow. After some period, elections would have been held. The North had no culture of communism, it was after all under the influence of the French until 1954. It is far from clear that communists would have won in a countrywide general election, in fact it is more likely that they would have been defeated. Not just communists would have sported the nationalist banner. Anyway, the mass of US forces would have left after the election, except for those forces necessary to keep the Chinese from crossing the border, and prevent supplies from reaching any potential insurgents. Most of our forces might have been withdrawn by '68-9. Moreover, we might have been able to accomplish the reunification of Viet Nam with fewer than the 50,000+ killed that we suffered in a useless police action confined to the South that lasted until ‘72.

Dude, no offense, but that plan is long on optimism and "American the invinvible" idealism, and short on strategy.

First and foremost, after The Cuban Missile Crisis, the superpowers not very willing to tempt precipitating a global thermonuclear war again. They plaed their Cold War games by proxy.

Mao called our bluff in Korea and won. He had no reason to believe that under the same circumstances the same tactic would not work again.

Then there is the result of your "invasion" should by some miracle you pull it off. "Uniting Vietnam under one government. Let's rewind back to the 50s. France had Vietnam united under one government (theirs) and the Viet Minh ran their asses out of town. South Vietnam's government couldn't control South Vietnam, but you want to give them a WHOLE country?

Then there's your completely underestimating your enemy. China's army outnumbered ours anywhere from 3-5. That a BIG difference; especially, when you as the smaller force are on the offense attempting to invade a numerically superior army on defense.

Bomb them you say? The Chinese army was on the CHINESE side of the border. You are going to commit a unilateral act of aggression against a sovereign nation with an unprecipitated attack on its armed forces? In the world's eyes, WHATEVER China chose to do in retaliation would be justified.

So you don't bomb then UNTIL you invade. That alone violates the partition of Vietnam by the UN. It also takes away almost ALL your strategic air superiority insofar as wholesale carpet bombing is concerned. You can't just cut loose on an enemy engaged with your own troops.

You'd need at least 500K frontline combat troops to invade just to cut China's superiority to 2-to-1. Where are you going to get them? And even IF you could scrounge them up, you think you're going to move a Naval fleet the size required to support 500K men into the GUlf of Tonkin and NOBODY would notice and think something was amiss?

At the very worst for yourself, you could have your military force annihilated. At the worst for the world, you could precipitate a thermonuclear war. And you really don't stand to gain much. North Vietnam? There'd be a North Vietnamese insurgent behind every tree.

So, even if you managed to prevail, what exactly would you have gained? Rarely did US troops engage NVA regular troops during the war. They fought an insurgency for the most part. The VC backed by North Vietnam. You don't think the N Vietnamese would not have just moved into China and continued to do the same thing?

So, what you would have gained is an insurgency twice the size as the one you started out with.