Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The French first, then the Americans poured much blood and treasure to keep control of the little country of Vietnam. War raged from 1945 to 1975 in one form or another.
I was in the military from the 1960s to the 2000s and remember the lectures about how to conduct a war.
“Knock the enemy over. Keep him off balance. Overwhelm him with devastating weapons and manpower. Push forward. Don’t give him an opportunity to reorganize. Allow him no rest.”
All lessons learned from the Germans. German Blitzkrieg.
But Germany hasn’t won a war since 1871. What happened?
No sooner would Germans take over a country the people would start resistance against the invaders. Terrible retribution would ensue. Whole towns of men, women, children slaughtered or sent to death camps. Still the resistance grew.
The German model of war failed when the United States used it in Vietnam. It totters on the brink in Iraq. The Pentagon calls for more troops in Afghanistan. NATO looks forward to four more years of war in Afghanistan. (Almost a quote from 1964 and Nixon’s remark that if we didn’t get tough we could look to four more years of war in Vietnam…)
The Taliban has 19,000 fighters in Afghanistan we are told. We’ll have 100,000 soldiers there soon. All the Taliban needs do is harass our troops. We must root out an enemy to engage them. They need a few primitive weapons, we spend billions. They wait while we kill the innocent (sometimes in error) and we oblige them to help their recruitment effort.
Who’s the fool of history?
Probably it is too late now to use a WPA and CCC style administration to transform and enlist the Afghan workforce, so hungry for work and the ability to feed their families, to our cause.
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p>Of course, I would far far prefer a WPA and CCC style approach to the economic pain of today over bailing out the banksters and greedbags who sent American jobs overseas to line their pockets, and used the newest derivatives and other forms of speculation to crash our economy.
Let me thank you for your service to our country. God bless.
…every time I see police use force against peaceful demonstrators and we’ve seen at political party conventions, economic summits. When will they stop the beatings and start the shootings?
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p>I was in Vietnam during the Kent State incident. We soldiers were stunned that students would be shot in protests. I learned two lessons.
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p>Government is terror and force.
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p>News media is the lapdog of government.
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p>I subscribed to the Boston Globe while in Vietnam. It would come a couple weeks after the publish date. The issue with the first report of the shootings told of how the soldiers had no choice but to fire. Obviously, in their haste to get the story out they picked the wrong side of the fence. They couldn’t make a lie big enough to hide the sin. Subsequent issues would print as though the original report never existed. When they couldn’t get a lie through for the government, they must have decided to play the story straight.