Max Sawicky wrote:
>>
> Has anyone done anything more than anecdotal research into the resistance
> inside the Armed forces? I imagine the Pentagon studied it too. Has anybody
> tried to get ahold of their studies?
> Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
There was a Pentagon study done and it was published. I'm sorry I can't remember any of the bibliographical details (title, author, etc). It's general conclusion (pretty much explicit) was that the U.S. Army in Vietnam had collapsed. The desertion rate, if I remember correctly, was lower than in WW2, so that wasn't key. Fragging was more important, but even so the officer casualties were lower than in WW 2 (particularly at the Colonel level).
All later reports by various former members of the Nixon Administration indicate that the Moratorium (particularly the Moratorium of November 1969) was in many ways decisive. Also the reception Nixon got when he spoke at OSU -- he expected that to be friendly territory. (Justin has posted re the Moratorium & plans to drop The Bomb.) The Moratorium would have been even larger (and it was _very_ large) had not the fucking weather people (Max -- I haven't really mellowed on them: they did too much damage) more or less disintegrated SDS. A healthy SDS would also have made a tremendous difference at the time of the Kent/Jackson State killings the following spring.
We couldn't, of course, stop the aerial slaughter that continued for several years, but after TET in '68 and the Moratorium in '69 the U.S. was no longer seriously trying to "win" the war. And the Army remembers. To this day standard military thinking seems to be not to risk U.S. casualties.
Carrol