The only people that recognize the significance of Tet as a victory for our side and believed that things in Vietnam were working better than people thought it did, are the ones that already recognize what the Democrat Congress did at the time leading up to the Fall of Saigon.

They would not, in my experience, deny that the military situation was better than the political one here at home in those days.

I still confront people who claim that we “lost” the Vietnamese war militarily, which is a meme created by the Democrat/Left but which deliberately distorts history.

They like to bring up an issue and make something of it, in order to confuse the search for the truth. In this vein, it doesn’t matter how Vietnam was lost, to me, so much as the fact that it was lost, by these people, and with the effect of creating problems in Iraq and other future US wars.

I still confront people who claim that we “lost” the Vietnamese war militarily, which is a meme created by the Democrat/Left but which deliberately distorts history. This is an important point, for as you yourself pointed out, it has a very direct bearing on how events in Iraq will unfold in the months and years to come. This time, however, there will be very real and damaging consequences for America.

And what does this have to do with me?

However, we were obligated under a negotiated treaty to support the South Vietnamese and Cambodians with funding and/or air support in the event of a large-scale North Vietnamese attack. However, when South Vietnam was faced with a major North Vietnamese offensive (and the Cambodians with a Khmer Rouge offensive), the Democrat-controlled Congress (led by people like Sen. Kennedy and Dodd) reacted by violating our treaty obligations and cutting off all funding and military support to Vietnam.

I believe to this day that a large part of their rationale was to destroy Nixon’s legacy. You had to live in those times to truly appreciate the visceral, foam-at-the-mouth hatred the Left had for Nixon - far worse, in my view, of the hatred they have for GW today. Had Nixon’s plan been allowed to work, the defeatist Democrats would have lost power for a very long time.

For the record, I also believe that the Democrat Left tried to do the same to Reagan’s legacy by trying to impede every action that ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Even today, they try to credit then-Soviet Premier Gorbachev as the engineer of the Soviet Union’s collapse. The Left really can’t stand Reagan having been right.

Nixon campaigned on the promise of pulling U.S. forces out of Vietnam, a promise called that he had fulfilled through his plan of “Vietnamization”. This is why I predict that the Democrat Left would do the same to the Iraqis today, given a chance, in order to destroy GW’s legacy.

The Left has deliberately and successfully twisted the history of the Vietnam War to suit its own world view. If you ask most young people today (those that are even aware that there was such an event as the Vietnam war, that is), they will likely tell you that it was “Nixon’s” war (rather than “Kennedy’s and Johnson’s War” and that the famous rooftop/helicopter photo was of panicked American military and embassy personnel fleeing Vietnam, rather than Vietnamese refugees trying to escape Vietnam on American helicopters following America’s Democrat-engineered betrayal of our treaty obligations.

A similar lie is that the American military “lost” the war, when in fact, the U.S. military never lost a single battle against the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong and, in fact, inflicted casualties upon the enemy at a 10-20:1 ratio. We only “lost” the War because we had an active Fifth Column in this country that eroded the will of the American people by distorting events on the ground through a Leftwing-controlled media that, at the time, could “set the agenda”, in Walter Cronkite’ immortal words. The fact remains, the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam to the communists happened two years after the U.S. military had left and only through the deliberate actions of the Leftwing Democrat-controlled Congress.

That I remember. But that wasn’t so much unpredictability as it was a liability.

This will plague the military’s attempt in any war or conflict should Vietnam and Iraq both be lost. It will set a tradition and the military understands the power of traditions

Success will motivate more success while failure will motivate more failure. The chattering over failure would be almost trivial in comparison.

Every future member of the armed forces will have to live with the consequences of Vietnam and Iraq affecting their deployment. Because the truism that the victors write the history books cannot be bypassed. Just as Vietnam may be argued as a “could have won” war, does it then change anything or anyone’s views? No. Because those views were locked in by that event. Just as the defeat of Germany and Japan were locked into the psyche of Germans and Japanese.

I hear a lot of people say that Vietnam may have been won if more time was given to them. I don’t really want Iraq to become like that.
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I was still in elementary school when that happened. So, no.

I don’t think we’re anywhere near needing to introduce that kind of wild card.

Reputation can win you half or even all of the battle for you. Attila the Hun, the Mongols, Napoleon, Washington, etc all had reputations whether as a good leader, a terrifying leader, a bunch of barbarians or anything else on the horizon.

Stalin grabbed the H bombs and other secrets from the US but never used it on us, and I cannot help but think that seeing two cities in Japan go up in mushroom clouds by Truman’s orders helped in his decision. People don’t mess with the crazy folks because you never know what the “crazies” will do. However, you do know that whatever the crazies eventually decide to do, it will be very bad for you. Same reason why the International media bowes down to the intimidation of the Islamic Jihad. Reputation.

All of the methods and techniques from humanity’s history of war and destruction is still useful. New technology doesn’t change that although it might require us to adapt certain traditions.

In the end, what I learned from Vietnam was the value of psychological shock and some methods to induce it if you lack military firepower. The US doesn’t lack military firepower, however, so America’s options are a bit more expanded than what the Vietnamese had. However, that is its own problem because the more freedom people have, the less focused and the more confused they get. Give a person two choices, death or freedom, and watch how fast he thinks about it. Give a person 50 million choices and watch how long he thinks about choosing the best choice.

I agree very much with your series of posts! To be predictable is to invite defeat. On the other hand, to hold back in restraint is admirable if you believe that in the long run the benefits will be tremendous… but you’ve got to survive your enemy’s implacable remorselessness, to get to the longer-term fruition.

As far as unpredictability goes, do you remember Reagan mining the Nicaragua harbors, or Clinton bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in error? Unpredictability has its benefits. However, “nuking Iranian supply sites and camps”… now that’s breathtakingly unpredictable! I don’t think we’re anywhere near needing to introduce that kind of wild card.

But I’d like to see much more unpredictability from the Bush administration. Gen. Petraeus’ efforts do appear to have the enemy guessing and uncertain in Iraq, at this time.

Lovely rockets.