Actually North Vietnam had a large, well-supported, effectively led modern army with Soviet backing (the NVA). The NLF as guerilla movement was pretty much destroyed by Operation Phoenix, a CIA assassination program, and the Tet Offensive. It was hors de combat by 1969 Both conventional military historians and leftists like Gabriel Kolko agree that in the end the NVA won the war by defeating the South Vietnamese ARmy after US forces had largely withdrawn in "Vietnamization." Recal the image of NVA _tanks_ smashing through the US Embassy compound gates as the last helicopters lifted off the roof in April 1975, collaborators clinging to the struts. (I'm old enough to remember seeing it on TV.) The idea that the US was defeated by black-clad guerillas is false. So when else did unconventional forces defeat a sustained US offensive? I don't count Lebanon or Sudan, because the US cut and ran when it faced casualties in those cases. In Iraq it seems willing to bear those casualties.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> amadeus amadeus wrote:
>
> >I think the last 40 or so years of US military
> history
> >have shown us that you don't need these kind of
> things
> >to fend off and defeat the largest, most powerful,
> >armed-to-the-hilt military force in the world.
>
> Yeah, but that military can leave your country a
> wreck. Vietnam has
> suffered from its victory for 30 years - unexploded
> bombs,
> herbicides, sanctions - and Iraq is looking like
> hell's waiting room.
> One would hope for a better outcome for a political
> experiment.
>
> Doug
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