Me, being righteous, just reported Braintree to the MODERATORS for being rude.
I didn’t think it fair to for him innuendoate 
that ** Mr. Moto** was involved
in gasing the Kurds.
Now.
Don’t you all think well of me?
[Moderator Hat: ON]
braintree said:
Direct insults will not be tolerated in Great Debates. Got it? Good.
And Milum, when you report a message, just leave it at that. Do not post in the thread that you have done so.
All in all, everybody here needs to cool off.
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: OFF]
Well, actually Milum I was suggesting that Mr. Moto’s COMPANY might have been involved in supplying Saddam Hussein with armaments. I mentioned the Kurds only because that’s the act by Saddam that the right keeps citing when they boo-hoo how awful Saddam was to his own people without bothering to note that he was our ally at the time. Look, the military industrial complex has only a few large companies and we WERE supplying Saddam with all kinds of goodies with which to kill people. Therefore, the chances that Mr. Moto’s company was involved are excellent.
In any case, I’m pretty much done with the thread anyhow. I appreciate the moderator’s desire to keep things civil but I’ve gotten hot-headed because I see the very sort of intellectual underpinning here that so often leads to atrocity and which has lead us to the catastrophe now in progress. I really and truly fear for my country. More to the point, I fear for our democracy. I think I’ve pretty well established where Mr. Moto is coming from and, if his style of thinking is truly representative of the folks in the defense industry, we are truly in a heap of trouble. And if things keep going on their present course this is mere pipsqueak stuff compared to what’s headed down the road — and I don’t mean here. I mean everywhere. I’m talking Great Depression-level trouble.
If any, my future contribution to this thread will consist of keeping track of the ever-rising body count in Iraq. I really think I’ve made my case that this keeps the Kerry-threw-his-ribbons-and-kept-his medals controversy in its proper perspective.
I don’t want to belabor this point too much.
I work for a small company. It has only been incorporated since 1995. It employs less than 300 people.
I certainly, under these conditions, wasn’t giving braintree any information about the firm, since it would violate my privacy. It also should be obvious that there’s no way we could have had any dealings with Saddam Hussein.
The assertion of only a few big defense contractors is a false one. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of small companies that also hold defense contracts as well. I work for one of them.
And, since Russia has been the largest weapons supplier to Iraq over the last twenty years, unless Mr. Moto works in Russia( or perhaps Germany), the chances are remote that braintree is doing anything other than pulling random accusations out his ass.
But then we already knew that.
Regards,
Shodan
A third Americ soldier died yesterday in Iraq. This brings the total of soldiers killed in Mr. Moto’s war to only 541.
He continues to be upset over Mr. Kerry’s ribbons.
There was a similar situation that reminds me of all this medal throwing stuff back in WW2. I forget what battle it was, but it happened towards the end of WW2 when the Germans were in retreat.
The 1st SS Panzer Division called “Leibstandarte Adoilf Hitler” pissed off “der Fuehrer” so bad by losing a decisive battle, that Hitler demanded that every member of the division remove the distinctive title cuff from the sleeves of their uniforms, as it bore his name, the name of the division.
The story goes that the men of the 1st SS by that time in 1945 were so fed up with Adolf that they not only sent back their cuff titles to Hitler as requested, but also a little extra. The extras included a bucketfull of all their iron crosses and their other combat awards covered in excretia.
Did such an act nullify their right to be considered holders of those awards or the right to display those awards in the future? Not by one iota, IMO, as most awardees have backup medals and ribbons – as well as the original award certificate framed and in safekeeping – in most cases that is.)
While today’s precision guided munitions and advanced air combat technology would’ve greatly reduced pilot/aviator losses during Vietnam and Korea, such technology would not have made a dent in terms of winning the ground war. Korea and Vietnam were wars whose decisive engagements were fought and won on the ground – not in the air. The only things that makes a difference in such conflicts is superior ground tactics and a willingness to fight to the last man. In Korea and Vietnam, theU.S… failed on both counts.
I disagree. While that may have been somewhat true in Korea, in Vietnam the American ground-pounding soldier had access to technology the enemy couldn’t have dreamed of using - everything from advanced communications, coordinated artillery and air support, medical evacuation by air, advanced field hosiptals and first-rate medical care stateside, and a host of other things besides.
The American military never lost a battle in Vietnam. The reason for the loss of the war was a decision to restrict the military from fighting the enemy in certain areas, like the Ho Chi Minh Trail or North Vietnam itself.
The Army and Marine Corps today benefit from technology vastly more advanced than anything any potential enemy can field, from tanks and weaponry to night vision and GPS. This has had a massive impact on the ground operation, and has kept American casualties low in recent wars while maximizing their effectiveness.
Sure, but the net effect of such technologies was that the U.S. was able to limit its own losses and make a lot of big-ass explosions, which had little or no effect against an invisible enemy, most of whom were well-entrenched in underground tunnels and fortifications.
[QUOTE}The American military never lost a battle in Vietnam. The reason for the loss of the war was a decision to restrict the military from fighting the enemy in certain areas, like the Ho Chi Minh Trail or North Vietnam itself.[/QUOTE]
This is part of the Vietnam mythology that has been parroted by the same deluded razzle brains who still think there are U.S. POWS being held against their will in Vietnam.
Usually, the type of people I hear this type of crap coming out of are Vietnam-era vets who never saw a day of combat, or those weirdo hippy types who seem to be caught in a time-warp, with their dirty fatigue jackets covered in MIA patches.
I’ve learned that such types who spout such drivel are best to be avoided, as they’re usually found drunk or high on crack, sitting on their asses in downtown city parks or men’s shelters in the middle of the day, reeking of urine and yesterday’s vomit. Not wishing to get into it with such people, the best rebuttal I’ve heard in response to such absurdity and nonsensical drivel that “the American military never lost a battle in Vietnam” was made by the inimitable General Vo Nguyen Giap who said in response to that statement: “That’s irrelevant, because you lost the war politically.”
Just b/c you have advanced technology and a lot of gee-whiz weaponry, does not automatically mean you have the upper hand, nor does it mean that you will automatically win against the enemy or that you’ll even win the war in the end. Both Korea and Vietnam have demonstrated that a vastly inferior foe in terms of technology, can be our worst nightmare if they are resolute, organized, well-trained and have the support of the populace.
Furthermore, while such technologies were able to inflict heavy casualties against the enemy in Vietnam and even in Korea, it could not change the fact that the U.S. had lost these wars long before they had started simply due to its massive ignorance, presumption and miscalculation about the nature of the conflict and the determination of the Vietnamese and Korean people.
For example, the U.S.'s failure in Vietnam began because it failed to understand the history and nature of the Vietnamese centuries-long struggle for independence. Then it was furthered by supporting a corrupt and inept puppet government that had a snowball’s chance in hell of gaining the popular support of the people. Then you had a U.S. military in the field who was trying to win a fourth-generation conflict with a second-generation warfare mentatlity and tactics. Then, there was the spectacular and well-documented failure of the U.S. military failing to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, which was based on its failure to understand the nature of a counterinsurgency on a broader scale. And finally, there was the U.S. military’s gross underestimation of the enemy and the North’s resolve to fight to the last man.
Even if the U.S. military in Vietnam had widespread public support back at home or had been authorized to expand the war into Laos or Cambodia, it wouldn’t have mattered, and wouldn’t have changed a thing, since the whole conduct of the war and the whole logic behind it was out of whack.
kmg365, when you quote Giap about losing the war politically, you’re not exactly disproving my point about superior American technology.
I think we can both agree that Vietnam was lost due to poor tactics and boneheaded political decisions.
I don’t think you can deny, though, that the American military, on sea, air and land, has benefited from technology that enables it to fight effectively and minimize losses. Just as important, the military has developed tactics to take advantage of these technologies. The Gulf War and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been very different conflicts than Vietnam was.
Not to mention that it’s hard to win a ground war in a foreign country when most of the people you claim to be “saving” actually prefer the guys you’re trying to save them from.
What preference did the Montagnards have? The boat people? The thousands of South Vietnamese who fled to refugee camps in Thailand?
Did the Laotians prefer a Communist government when it came their way, or was it imposed on them?
Did Cambodia prefer having Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge around, or are they happier now that they’re gone?
Let’s not look at the Vietnam War in such simplistic terms. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap weren’t such nice people, and it wasn’t a strict civil war, to have such a big regional impact.
And let’s also not look at it in such disingenuous, self-serving, hypocritical terms.
Never said they were. The fact that most of the Vietnamese people still preferred them to being “saved” by America says less about Ho Chi Minh and General Giap than it does about the United States and its Veitnam strategy.
You really are incredible in your distortion. The only reason this became such a “big regional” conflict was because the United States came in stomping on everyone in sight, bombing the crap out of Vietnam, bombing other countries like Cambodia, and using those countries also as bases and staging posts for its regional campaign of destruction.
You are certainly correct that it wasn’t a “strict civil war.” It was an invasion of Vietnam by the United States and its allies, and the fact that this action was “sanctioned” by a puppet government in Saigon doesn’t change that.
When I quote Giap, I’m simply pointing out the speciousness of your statement that “the American military never lost a battle in Vietnam”. This has nothing to with proving or disproving the dominance of American technology, which actually was never in dispute.
And that small mistake of failing to win the support of the Vietnamese people, for whom they allegedly fought this war for.
Sure. However, a multi-billion dollar missile system or a new air superiority fighter/bomber for the Navy or the USAF does not correlate to increased effectiveness for the guys slugging it out on the ground. The average grunt would rather rely on his own organic mortars for fire support than some flyboy in the sky who is bound to inflict friendly casualties.
That’s a foregone conclusion. However, I’m not so sure the U.S. military is keeping pace in terms of adapting to assymetries on today’s battlefields, which is more important than all the technology training in the world. This could be the U.S. military’s achille heel that IMO, is spawned from an over reliance on technology.
Yet many of the lessons learned by SF units in Vietnam in the conduct of unconventional warfare, and the importance of gaining the indigenous population’s support – and not just from a bunch of hired guns – has been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. To wit, their’s the infamous story of an embed asking a G.I. in Iraq what “hearts and minds” meant to him. The answer? "Hearts and minds means shoot the enemy center of mass between his “heart” and his “mind/brain”.
These people, in toto, did not represent the majority of Vietnamese. For starters, the Montagnards were an obscure and illiterate ethnic minority holed up in the hills of Vietnam who were politically naive and oblivious to what was happening in the lowlands. That the U.S. manipulated a tribe of hunter gatherers into supporting SF units in the Highlands of Vietnam to create the convenient fiction of “wide public support among the indigenous population” is yet another example of the numerous deception campaigns employed by the U.S. military to dupe a naive public back at home.
The writing was on the wall before such things happened, but the U.S. was too blind and too caught up in its own self-righteousness to see it.
The issue isn’t whether Ho or Giap were nice people. The issue is who was worser – the Americans, who were perpetrating mass murders, rapes and pillaging of villages at places like My Lai, or the Communists who was forcing peasants to become VC and fight for a common cause.
Well, to tell you the truth, if my family was murdered by a foreign military force, hell, I’d being chomping at the bit to get a chance to don my black pajamas and help open up a can of whup ass against those who did it.
And one more thing about General Giap, it says a lot about the nature of true combat veterans when people like Colonel David H. Hackworth, a Vietnam vet who met Giap and interviewed him, speaks of him only in glowing terms while expressing nothing but pure disdain and reserving the most hateful words for people like Westmoreland, Macnamara, et al.
Not in this day and age. The average grunt would rather illuminate the target so that smart bombs dropped from above can take them out.
These air systems do correlate to effectiveness on the ground, especially for systems like the AC-130, designed just for this purpose.
Well, I think the key here is the appropriate use of technology. And the military is learning key lessons here. There are stories out of the Afghanistan campaign of SF units calling in highly accurate GPS fixes of targets over portable encrypted satellite communications gear, after getting to the target location on horseback, led by Afghan guides.
Best of both worlds, and this is how we’ll win wars in the future.
Even the fiercest critics of America in Vietnam agree that My Lai was an aberration, not a manifestation of American policy there. Let’s agree not to use that as an example.
Giap was a good military leader for a bad regime. Westmoreland and Macnamara were disastrous leaders for a good country. That’s the basic difference.
One of the worst types of intellectual dishonesty is trying to convince the person you’re arguing with that an issue is not even up for debate, that so many people agree about its interpretation that to even discuss it is beyond reason.
There are plenty of critics of American policy in Vietnam who believe that My Lai was not “an aberration.” Christ, a Google search that could be done by a five year-old turned up this website on the first page. It’s a review of a very well-known and quite well-regarded book by Michal Belknap, The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Leuitenant Calley. The review says, in direct contradiction to your assertation, that:
Emphasis added.
And this very recent (and ongoing) story traces the attempts of people who were in Vietnam, including a medic and an Army journalist, to tell investigators the story of the atrocities they witnessed there. The campaign has the support of Dennis Kucinich and of Amnesty International. The last paragraph of the story quotes a professor who studies such incidents:
Emphasis added.
And this report, originally from the New York Times, discusses the same case, and says:
Emphasis added.
So much for your assertion that “Even the fiercest critics of America in Vietnam agree…”
Of course, you’ll probably try to weasel out by saying that even other cases do not prove that such behaviour was “a manifestation of American policy” in Vietnam. I guess the only that would convince you is a piece of paper, signed by Johnson, Nixon, or McNamara saying “Kill civilians at will.”
Note: I’m not trying to argue that My Lai and other such incidents were common or typical. I’m just trying to point out your attempt to stifle debate and obfuscate the issue by pretending that the qustion is dead and that there is nothing to debate.
Just curious mhendo, does your pen quiver when you re-write history?
Maybe the Viet Cong murderers were “sanctioned” by those whom they murdered. You think?
Viet-Cong Repression: Control and Polarization of the Populace
Courtesy: Le, Thanh Nam
Source: Soc.Culture.VietNamese
Repression also serves as a means of establishing control in areas which the Viet Cong seek to “pacify,” and as a major instrument in the consolidation of Communist control over already “liberated” areas. Captured documents often refer to this process as the “purifying” or “cleaning up” of an area (removing all “spies,” “tyrants,” and other GVN remnants), and “purging” the local hostile to the Revolution or whose loyalties are suspect). Consider, for example, the following captured plans and directives, all issued in 1968:
"Active plan prepared by the Dai Loc District Party Committee of Quang Da Province on May 25, 1968, directed subordinate units to “liberate all hamlets and villages in the vicinity of the District seat, seize political power, establish a revolutionary government, overthrow the enemy’s village or hamlet administrations, eliminate hamlet spies and local administrative personnel, weed out undesirable elements among the people, and continuously pursue village and district local administrative personnel to liberate the masses from their grip and pressure.” (14)
etc…
Nice non-sequitur.
Rather typically, you assume that my criticism of US actions in Vietnam, and my contention that US involvement constituted an invasion, also constitutes endorsement of and support for the policies and actions of the Viet Cong, and an assertion that these actions were supported by all Vietnamese. I never expressed any such endorsement or support, and never made any such assertion.
I guess that my opposition to the recent war in Iraq also makes me a supporter of Saddam Hussein.
“(CBS) Newly released documents show that U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, played a leading role in building up Iraq’s military in the 1980s when Iraq was using chemical weapons, a newspaper reports.
“It was Rumsfeld, now defense secretary and then a special presidential envoy, whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein led to the normalization of ties between Washington and Baghdad, according to the Washington Post.”
Snip
“The newspaper says a review of a large tranche of government documents reveals that the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush both authorized providing Iraq with intelligence and logistical support, and okayed the sale of dual use items — those with military and civilian applications — that included chemicals and germs, even anthrax and bubonic plague.”
The link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml
Mr. Moto continues to be upset about Senator Kerry’s ribbons.