phuketrichard wrote:America was great UNTIL around 1963
Kennedy was assassinated
we got involved in Vietnam ( which we never would have if he hadn't been and one of the reason whey he was)
been heading downhill since than

Kennedy sent more and more "military advisors" and special forces troops to Vietnam (a policy started in 1955). You don't know if he would have pulled them all out and walked away or doubled down again and again like Johnson did. LBJ and Nixon wanted nothing to do with that war either, but were terrified of looking weak. Kennedy might have fallen for that Gulf of Tonkin bullshit story too. He had already stared down the Soviets over Cuba. He was not one to simply back down. We'll never know how he would have continued in Vietnam. Maybe Bobby Kennedy would have ended it in 1969 had he lived and gotten elected, having witnessed the horror of the previous 5 years of increasingly futile war under Johnson.

U.S. advisers had been serving in Vietnam since 1955 as part of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group. There would be only 900 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam at the end of 1961, but in accordance with President Kennedy’s pledge to provide American military assistance to South Vietnam, the number of U.S. personnel rose to 3,200 by the end of 1962. The number would climb until it reached 16,000 by the time of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... ain-troops

But I totally agree, things went to shit from the early 60s on. The CIA and the entire military-industrial complex figured out they could simply buy US Congressmen with hefty donations and character assassinations and do as they pleased with no one to stop them.

Rutiger wrote:

phuketrichard wrote:America was great UNTIL around 1963
Kennedy was assassinated
we got involved in Vietnam ( which we never would have if he hadn't been and one of the reason whey he was)
been heading downhill since than

Kennedy sent more "military advisors" and special forces troops to Vietnam (a policy started in 1955). You don't know if he would have pulled them all out and walked away or doubled down like Johnson did. LBJ and Nixon wanted nothing to do with that war either, but were terrified of looking weak. Kennedy might have fallen for that Gulf of Tonkin bullshit story too. He had already stared down the Soviets over Cuba. He was not one to simply back down. We'll never know how he would have continued in Vietnam. Maybe Bobby Kennedy would have ended it in 1969 had he lived and gotten elected, having witnessed the horror of the previous 5 years of increasingly futile war under Johnson.

But I totally agree, things went to shit from the early 60s on. The CIA and the entire military-industrial complex figured out they could simply buy US Congressmen with hefty donations and character assassinations and do as they pleased with no one to stop them.

And they figured out that they could adapt the CCCP model of social control for a capitalist market. Nowadays the corporations and government enforce a heavy handed "political correctness" to stifle nationalism and promote open borders that cause conflict but enrich the global cosmopolitan elite. It's all about low labor costs (like communism was) and protecting the elite by making nations too diverse to occupy themselves with anything more than infighting (Black Lives Matter violence being one).

The Democrats will go the way of the UK Labour party, a party focused on solely the minority vote with divisive pandering (antisemitism in the case of the UK) and vague promises of socialism that are never fulfilled because they drink from the same tit as the corrupt, corporate Republicans, who will pander to the evangelical vote.

Vietnam was run from the White House, big tactical mistake. While we should have learned from the French and not have gone in there, if you start a war, you cannot win unless you bomb the hell out of the enemies capitol and infrastructure from day one. Kennedy was an idiot and the mafia/CIA got him. With Hillary or Sanders we are headed down the tubes which was started in the last 8 years. Time for the "America Spring."

Sailorman wrote:Vietnam was run from the White House, big tactical mistake. While we should have learned from the French and not have gone in there, if you start a war, you cannot win unless you bomb the hell out of the enemies capitol and infrastructure from day one. Kennedy was an idiot and the mafia/CIA got him. With Hillary or Sanders we are headed down the tubes which was started in the last 8 years. Time for the "America Spring."

Vietnam was a calculated risk, though. They expected a brief Korean style war where the North and South would reach a stalemate. And the Chinese weren't expected to intervene like in Korea. The idea was that the very active communist parties in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand would take over if unchallenged and effectively block the USA out of SE Asia like the Warsaw Pact had shut them out of Eastern Europe.

The Viets changed the paradigm by fighting the best guerilla war ever. The communists had realized their failure in Korea and transitioned to insurgent tactics, as seen in Cuba and Algeria. They simply pushed the USA into a position where their attacks became so unpopular to the population that the VC became preferable. Nationalism/self-determination is also a very powerful cause.

This is where ISIS and the Muslims have made a catastrophic error. They aren't the only alternative and Muslims are a tiny minority in the West. The foot can go down on them with little to no effect on anyone else, and there's no small number of people who wouldn't mind it now.

One of the big failures of America's Vietnam approach was to ignore the British victories in Malaya. The British waged a successful guerilla war in the jungles of Malaya in the 50s, against the commies. America refused to learn their tactics and failed to contain Vietnam as a result.

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Satiated Parrot wrote:One of the big failures of America's Vietnam approach was to ignore the British victories in Malaya. The British waged a successful guerilla war in the jungles of Malaya in the 50s, against the commies. America refused to learn their tactics and failed to contain Vietnam as a result.

Malaya had no neighboring countries that gave refuge and safe supply lines giving free reign for enemy troops and materials. The British weren't forced to widen the war into neighboring countires as a result, and therefore didn't receive the same international and domestic backlash, which is what actually ended the war.

Rutiger wrote:

Satiated Parrot wrote:One of the big failures of America's Vietnam approach was to ignore the British victories in Malaya. The British waged a successful guerilla war in the jungles of Malaya in the 50s, against the commies. America refused to learn their tactics and failed to contain Vietnam as a result.

Malaya had no neighboring countries that gave refuge and safe supply lines giving free reign for enemy troops and materials. The British weren't forced to widen the war into neighboring countires as a result, and therefore didn't receive the same international and domestic backlash, which is what actually ended the war.

So you're saying the US lost because Ho Chi Minh was allowed to wander into cambodia from time to time?

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Satiated Parrot wrote:[
So you're saying the US lost because Ho Chi Minh was allowed to wander into cambodia from time to time?

I'm saying the war was ended because the war effort was defunded by Congress due to the overwhelming unpopularity of the war at home, primarily caused by the spreading of the war into Cambodia and Laos. The killing of US college students at Kent State ws at a rally to protest to announced incursions into Cambodia. And Ho Chi Minh wasn't just "allowed to wander into Cambodia from time to time". Cambodia was the main supply route from several directions throughout the entire war. Impossible to win a war if the enemy soldiers can simply step across a border, find safe refuge and call "time-out".

I thought the big problem with the way Nam was fought was using a point system for dead VC. Everyone was rated on how many kills they had so just shot the shit out of the villagers and claimed them all as VC. In Malaya winning of hearts and minds was a workable policy, the commies were brought to the table and their grievances addressed. Plus we'd already spent the last ten years with the Japanese army mopping up commies in SEA so we had a pretty good idea of what worked, unlike the French Foreign legion with zee German accents and piano wire.