On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:02:39 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> 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.
That is true, but nevertheless, the Tet Offensive seems to have been responsible for turning public opinion in the US against staying in Vietnam. Nixon of course attempted to prolong the war by first running for president with his "secret plan to end the war", then once in office, he attempted to prolong the war with various scams including Vietnamization but in the end, he could only fool the public for so long. After he had been ousted from office following Watergate, there was no stomach among both the general public and Congress for continuing the war, even when the NVA invaded South Vietnam and overran Saigon. The fact that the Tet Offensive had resulted in the decimation and even annihilation of the Vietcong was in that sense irrelevant, since by turning US public opinion against the war, it made the defeat of the US inevitable sooner or later, a fact that people like General Westmoreland, and a lot of the conventional military historians had a hard time comprehending. In conventional terms, the Tet Offensive was a disastrous defeat for the NLF but was also a great political victory for them which changed the outcome of the war.
> 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 after US forces had largely withdrawn in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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