Shouldn't of the soldier fought the vietnam war instead of the politians? Well, one things for sure we were whooping butt til we were pulled out.
Disadvantages: about 60% of soldiers on dope. M16 Assult Rifles jammed up. Testing of new strategies and equipment.
Advantages: The advanced of the gatling gun, claymore mines, and the m16.
I brought this up in chatters and kind of want to continue it.
Bring up your opinion.
ID:190777
 Dec 9 2002, 6:56 am
|
|
Zlegend2 wrote:
Shouldn't of the soldier fought the vietnam war instead of the politians? Well, one things for sure we were whooping butt til we were pulled out. My understanding of the conflict--and this is incomplete, but a little educated--is that we only whooped butt occasionally when the political will was there to actually win. Disadvantages: about 60% of soldiers on dope. Is this a hard statistic? It doesn't sound right to me. It sounds a lot more like Oliver Stone's impression of the war than reality. I'd be surprised if it was less than 6%, but 15% or more would be a shock. M16 Assult Rifles jammed up. Testing of new strategies and equipment. I haven't heard of M16's jamming up all that much, but I have no doubt it would have happened occasionally, as with any gun (particularly in a jungle environment). New strategies and equipment, though, are tested all the time in any war, and that's not a disadvantage. It should be noted that our conflict beginning last year in Afghanistan used some very new strategies and much new equipment (particularly the JDAM), and was a wild success. Advantages: The advanced of the gatling gun, claymore mines, and the m16. Confusion: You listed the M16 as a disadvantage. A claymore mine I wouldn't list too much as an advantage over other tactics or arms. This is strictly anti-personnel, and while you do win a war by fighting men, not equipment, it's still a bloody mess and can be dangerous. My own thought on the advantages and disadvantages is that the primary disadvantage was the nature of the conflict as a proxy for the Cold War. The political realities of this tied our hands a little, and mismanagement in Washington did the rest. (My father, who's studied this a lot more than I have, believes Robert McNamara, SecDef under LBJ, should have been tried for treason because he threw away so many lives through sheer stupidity. He puts it that McNamara was very good at managing industry, but those qualities had nothing to do with managing a war and his bonehead decisions killed thousands.) Militarily, we probably had superiority in most ways, and could've won had we had the political backbone to do so. But, in a mode of thinking carried over from Korea, we spent so much time at the peace tables that we didn't actually think about pursuing the war aggressively, not realizing that putting the enemy in a bad position on the war front makes him much more amenable to peace. Negotiations are a fine thing, and peace is finer, but such things should wait till the war is won. History teaches that a bad peace is worse than none at all. Lummox JR | |
My understanding of the conflict--and this is incomplete, but a little educated--is that we only whooped butt occasionally when the political will was there to actually win. Guess it all depends on how "whooping butt" is defined. In terms of sheer numbers, America killed over 20 Vietnamese for every American death. On the other hand, the Vietnamese won, and presumably now luxuriate in the sweet, sweet fruits of victory. | |
No. The M16 Model A1 Jammed up a lot during the war. Soldiers died within 10ft of the enemy with jammed rifles.
Oh yes, one more thing that was founded during that fateful war was the United States Navy SEALs | |
exactly my point, we were killing at a higher ratio than the vietnamese were so why did we pull out?
| |
RainZero wrote:
exactly my point, we were killing at a higher ratio than the vietnamese were so why did we pull out? The war went on for a long, long time with no clear victory for America. In World War II, Americans tolerated a long war because we had to get back at everyone involved in Pearl Harbor. In Vietnam, though, the motive for the war wasn't as clear. Instead of dealing out retribution for an attack, or attempting to defuse an imminent danger, the action in Vietnam was intended to prevent a "Domino Effect" -- the idea being that the more nations fell to Communism, the more nations would follow suit. Americans weren't too eager to be drafted, nor to see their sons killed, to achieve vague goals in an interminable conflict for the benefit of non-Western peoples. So the war ended and Vietnam finally got a humane, progressive government, or something. | |
Actually they were already there, study your history more closely.
EDIT: Pardon me, they were instated during that time period but not becuase of the vietnam war. | |
Shouldn't of the soldier fought the vietnam war instead of the politians? Well, one things for sure we were whooping butt til we were pulled out. I dislike the vietnam war. I really didn't see the point of us going in there and fighting. | |
We were fighting cuz the commies were gonna take saigon in south vietnam. The entire war was really between communist russia and democratic usa. If you didn't know that then you have no hope of understanding the war. And the reason we sucked is because after wwii the armed forces lost a lot of people cuz they quit or retired, so we had to rely mostly on newbies in Nam, who couldn't fight well.
| |
The question is, why did we have to stop the spread of communism? We capitalists were doing fine, Russia was slowly going broke.
| |
It was an american policy called "containment". the reason we tried to stop russia is because they were trying to spread communism to satelite countries, like romania, and their ultimate goal was one communist world.
| |
OneFishDown wrote:
The question is, why did we have to stop the spread of communism? We capitalists were doing fine, Russia was slowly going broke. But one key reason they slowly went broke is that they basically ran out of places to exploit. The Communist economy was basically fueled by expansion alone; it lacked some of the inherent qualities necessary for true growth. However, wherever it spread it also spread vicious totalitarian rule, and it was by and large making the world a worse place and a threat to us. (Keep in mind, this is the same USSR that financed a lot of terrorism in those decades.) What finally broke the deadlock were basically Afghanistan and Central America. We fought hard to bring some semblance of democracy to Central America instead of Communism, and today that's what they have. The result wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but basically it was one less place that could be used as a staging area for World War III. And Afghanistan, for the Soviets, was an extremely costly occupation that highlighted the weaknesses of their army (in particular, the recruitment system had serious flaws that led to almost no unit solidarity, and training was poor) and the economy that fed it. My understanding is that the men and equipment practically raced each other to fall apart first, and as a result they got nowhere. To elaborate on the army issue: I read about this a while back, and basically the problem was that the USSR would conscript men every 6 months, for 2-year stints, and this led to a kind of class system in which the "upperclassmen" used the newbies as fodder, and they in turn had something to gain once they were the more seasoned troops and could do the same to others. It became a cycle, and in some cases would even outweigh rank in an informal but very serious way. Coupled with that were their living conditions, and almost nothing spent on training. Then there's the equipment, which was basically designed to be quick and mass-producable regardless of its flaws (for example, apparently one of the tank loading mechanisms was infamously adept at taking people's arms off) and often broke down as a result. Sadly this same army persists today in Russia. They'd come close to reexamining it and overhauling the whole thing after Afghanistan, but by that time the collapse of the Soviet Union was imminent. This was just a symptom of the larger economic problems the USSR had, and as a result of those problems and staunch opposition by the US, they just ran out of room to keep going. The economy they'd set up could really only function on raiding better economies they hadn't fully ruined yet. Perhaps the USSR would have run out of steam even without our full opposition (it's certainly plausible), but it would have taken longer and in the process they'd have spread a lot more poverty and lawlessness to places that had no dearth of them before. I think we did the right thing by stepping in, but we went about it the wrong way. BTW, one of the ways I think we went about Vietnam wrong is that the government of South Vietnam was not well regarded; it was pretty darn corrupt. The US would probably have faced a lot more support had we made a commitment to having neither the North or South dominate, but instead promising to clean both houses. The South would have had little choice but to comply if not faced with outright removal, but with a gradual process of reform in which there was a chance of retaining some power. Lummox JR | |
Im quite sure I know more about them then you do. SEALs stands for Sea Air Land, the E is there just for the hell of it. The first Navy SEALs transfered over from a UDT or Underwater Demolition Team. The training course a navy SEAL goes through is called BUD/S, standing for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs. Even though there are SEAL teams numbered up to 8, there aren't 8 SEAL teams. The first commander of SEAL team 6 was Richard Marcinko, now a convicted fellon. I could go on but I need to go to bed, I'm quite sick(developing Bronchitis(sp?).
| |
I already knew that for the past 4 years, what I meant was was it really that important that we didn't let communism spread that we started wars in other places?
| |
Geo wrote:
I already knew that for the past 4 years, what I meant was was it really that important that we didn't let communism spread that we started wars in other places? We intervened in the Vietnam war, but we didn't start it. It was basically a civil war in which the superpowers took sides. Lummox JR | |
I am not sure what that is supposed to mean. A huge disadvantage that you forgot to list was that little presidential order to keep out of the other countries that where home to the Vietnam supply route (Ho Chi Minh Trail I believe it was called.) It made it a very difficult war when your enemies can just bring in reinforcments and supplies whenever they needed them.