Simple Truths

[Michael Tee]

<<If your friend who served in WWII had been captured would you have lost all respect for him?>>

Depends on the circumstances.  My late neighbour, who was wounded in France and successfully evacuated at Dunkirk, eventually WAS captured (after his unit was later surrounded in Greece and took 30% casualties.)   I have the greatest possible respect for him. 

As a matter of interest, according to my neighbour, the British army considered surrender to be acceptable for a surrounded unit if it had sustained 10% casualties.  He took a lot of pride in the fact that they surrendered after taking casualties of about 30%.    In other words, they didn't give up without a real fight.

We have a friend whose father was captured at Tobruk.  He's a nice guy (or was, he also passed away) and what happened wasn't his fault personally, but 25,000 British troops captured without a shot being fired?  Come on, who is going to respect THAT?  I don't even say they were wrong.  That was General Wavell's decision alone, and it may well have been the right one to take.  I would respect them the way I respect the other drivers on the road, the other diners in a restaurant, anyone I happen to meet for the first time, but the kind of respect accorded to a real military hero?  No, why, why should I?

[Plane]

I suppose it depends on what you are looking for,...

did General Giap ever say that the US Forces were defeated in battle?

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The most relevant statement I could find that is actually attributable to General Giap was uttered in a 1989 interview with Morley Safer, as excerpted in The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations by Howard Langer (Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 318):
We paid a high price [during the Ted offensive] but so did you [Americans]... not only in lives and materiel.... Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Ted offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory....

The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_general_giap.htm

Giap does not try to conceal that the success of the final North Vietnamese advance to victory depended on the U.S. departure in 1975 and on the politically crippled position of President Richard M. Nixon. ......

There are five principal lessons that come out of Giap's memoirs. The first is the importance of understanding an insurgent adversary's history, geography, and culture. The second is to not underestimate any asymmetric enemy. The third is that the use of military force is but one component of a successful campaign strategy. The fourth is the criticality of ideology and the charismatic energy injected into that ideology. And the fifth is that the people and the governing institutions of North Vietnam were prepared to endure longer than were the people and government of the United States.

The last message comes forth throughout the text. From the outset, as Giap reflects, there was never any thought other than continuing the fight until the United States tired of its involvement in Vietnam. This important lesson--that conflicts couched in the rhetoric of peoples' wars can continue for many years and even decades--is one of the most significant from the Vietnam War and, certainly, an extremely relevant message of this book.

What Giap does not divulge, however, is the enormous strategic leverage of a controlled and astutely manipulated population. He also does not discuss the large-scale military and economic aid the Soviet Union or China provided to the North, or the eventual extinguishing of military aid from the United States to the South.


......................
A final caution: be extremely wary of the data Giap offers as fact. Some of his information is indeed correct, such as the fact that a B-52 was shot down on 22 November 1972 and crashed in Thailand. Other information drifts off the mark, however, and some statements approach the absurd. Giap's claim (citing a communique from the Army High Command) that in one 12-day period North Vietnamese forces shot down 33 B-52s, 5 F-111s, and 24 U.S. Navy and 3 reconnaissance aircraft differs significantly from Western sources that hold losses during that same period to be 17 B-52s and a total of 11 other aircraft.

Giap further contends that eight U.S. warships were set afire at this time. No record of such incidents exists for the period. As a prisoner of war (POW) in Hanoi's prison system, I dispute Giap's contention that American prisoners of war were "al lowed to make wall newspapers, organize singing festivals, welcome Santa Claus at the side of finely decorated Christmas trees, and to pray for peace and repatriation. I can personally report that none of those holiday perks were enjoyed by anyone I know.

........................


Colonel William S. Reeder. Jr. U.S. Army Retired, Ph.D., is Director of the U.S. Army I Corps Stryker Center for Lessons Learned Fort Lewis, Washington.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_2_85/ai_n13822002


http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1129

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1120059/posts

[Michael Tee]

<<did General Giap ever say that the US Forces were defeated in battle?>>

I don't know that he did.

An important point that was settled in this thread was this:  some of our right-wing friends were trying to get great mileage from a fake statment attributed to Gen. Giap, that the Tet Offensive was such a disaster that he was about to resign.

I think it's conclusively established now that that statement was pure bullshit.

[Plane]

<<did General Giap ever say that the US Forces were defeated in battle?>>

I don't know that he did.

An important point that was settled in this thread was this:  some of our right-wing friends were trying to get great mileage from a fake statment attributed to Gen. Giap, that the Tet Offensive was such a disaster that he was about to resign.

I think it's conclusively established now that that statement was pure bullshit.

All right ,but this somewhat less definate statement he really made?

The most relevant statement I could find that is actually attributable to General Giap was uttered in a 1989 interview with Morley Safer, as excerpted in The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations by Howard Langer (Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 318):
We paid a high price [during the Ted offensive] but so did you [Americans]... not only in lives and materiel.... Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Ted offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory....

The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion.

[Michael Tee]

Well, nobody knows without going to the library and checking out the book or going to the network archives and playing the tape of the interview, but depending on the reputability of the publisher and/or of the website you found the quote on, you could probably come to a provisional idea of its authenticity.

It sounds authentic to me, and it's not at odds with any of the history that I know.  The VC must have taken big casualties during Tet but the results were spectacular.  They gambled on a popular uprising in Saigon that never happened, but in all other respects, I think they met all their goals.  I remember the excitement I felt watching the battle unfolding on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy with my wife, I was punching the air and predicting the whole thing would be over before the end of the year.  The only thing that surpassed that day was the fall of Danang, which was the point of no return, and then the fall of Saigon, from a political POV, one of the happiest days of my life.

[Plane]

Well, nobody knows without going to the library and checking out the book or going to the network archives and playing the tape of the interview, but depending on the reputability of the publisher and/or of the website you found the quote on, you could probably come to a provisional idea of its authenticity.

It sounds authentic to me, and it's not at odds with any of the history that I know.  The VC must have taken big casualties during Tet but the results were spectacular.  They gambled on a popular uprising in Saigon that never happened, but in all other respects, I think they met all their goals.  I remember the excitement I felt watching the battle unfolding on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy with my wife, I was punching the air and predicting the whole thing would be over before the end of the year.  The only thing that surpassed that day was the fall of Danang, which was the point of no return, and then the fall of Saigon, from a political POV, one of the happiest days of my life.

I find that mildly disturbing.

The Communist takeover of Vietnam made be heartily sorry for the people of Vietnam , and in the time since I havent seen much reason to feel otherwise.

[Amianthus]

We have a friend whose father was captured at Tobruk.  He's a nice guy (or was, he also passed away) and what happened wasn't his fault personally, but 25,000 British troops captured without a shot being fired?  Come on, who is going to respect THAT?  I don't even say they were wrong.  That was General Wavell's decision alone, and it may well have been the right one to take.  I would respect them the way I respect the other drivers on the road, the other diners in a restaurant, anyone I happen to meet for the first time, but the kind of respect accorded to a real military hero?  No, why, why should I?

When did that happen? The Allies captured 27,000 Italians at Tobruk with nary a shot fired, but then the Australians held it for months under siege by Rommel. Eventually they were relieved by British forces after a tough fight. Only about 1,000 Allied soldiers were captured total.

[richpo64]

>>Rich, plane, others who have made that claim, it is a lie.  There is no evidence for it.  It never happened and it is NOT in his memoirs.<<

If you're looking for truth, Mike shouldn't be your first option folks.

He can include me, but I never made such a claim. I said the war could have been won after Tet had there been the political will to do so. Several factors, including the liberal antiwar movement created the atmosphere in which it was impossible to win the war and led directly to the death of millions.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Again there was absolutely NO REASON for the US to have intervened in Vietnam at all. None.

Everyone would be better off today had they never sent advisers in 1960.

Vietnam. Laos, Cambodia, the US, Everyone.

A "victory" would have been the imposition of a corrupt colonial-style government of those who sucked up to the French for generations.

Not worth any American dying for. Not worth getting a hangnail over.