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Message: [QUOTE="itsasport, post: 2348965, member: 306"] You cannot defeat an enemy unless you invade and conquer their homeland, which our leadership refused to do. Germany would not have been defeated in WWII if we and the Russians had stayed in France and Eastern Europe. The Battle of the Bulge gutted the German Army in Europe. The same thing haoppened in the TET Offensive. The Viet Cong forces were destroyed (which was what the North wanted) and the NVA lost many of their best units. Westmoreland wanted more troops, but only to fight in the South. When the North Vietnamese stalled in negotiating , Nixon instituted a No-holds-barred air attack that included Hanoi, Hiphong harbor, and anti-aircraft rockets and artliiery (all previously off-limits.) Within several weeks, all resistance to air attacks ceased and the bombers attacked at will. If that had been done after TET, followed by a aground assault (augmented with armored divisions as in the Iraq wars, is there any question that we would not have been able over-run the North? We would have suffered a lot of casualties, but at the end of TET we had about 17,000 KIA. Boy the end we had lost an additional 40,000 and many WIA. I think that we would have lost many fewer in a converntional ground invasion of North Vietnam (and warning the Chinese of serious consequences if they intervened- including NUCS) I joined an infantry battalion of the 101st Airboren Division in September, 1970. We had the rare good fortune of having as our company commander a professional soldier. He was a very experienced and thoughtful man. I was one of many replacements necessitated by two months of jungle fighting outside of HUE that pushed the NVA deeper into the jungle. The unit (with a lot of artillery and air support) had wiped out two NVA infantry battalions. and had suffered 60% casualties in the process. Our company commander addressed his newly rebuilt unit at a firebase before we were to load up in choppers. He told us that our leadership had [B]decided[/B] not to win the war. His goal was to get as many of us as possible out of Vietnam in one piece. But to do that, we had to be very good soldiers and fight like hell. I am curious as to when Burns concludes the narative because the Vietnam War did not end for the Vietnamese until after their invasion of Cambodia (in which they had 25,000 KIA.) and the terrible tradegy of the "Boat People." The Vietnamese people are still paying for the consequences of the successful North Vietnamese invasion. Since the war, former Ameerican officers have met with retired NVA Colonels. It was not uncommon for the later to whisper in an Americans ear that they wished we had won because what happened in Vietnam was bad for all Vietnamese (Read "The Vietnam Gulag.") Thanks for letting me vent. [/QUOTE]

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