US Military Operations In Vietnam & Afghanistan
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Hey guys, the US is such a damn super military nations.
Why can't they defeat the Viet Cong during the Viet wars after so much effort?
And they now seems to defeat the Taleban with such ease even though all analyst predicted a long and dreadful war because of the British and Russian failures in the past.... -
The technology is so sophisticated,that long GBU delivers punches that goes right through the taleban cave.Heeheeh they even got their robot in the cave and KABO!!goes the cave.Vietnam is a different circumstances and environment , US is the master of the desert,idiots of the jungle.Originally posted by [G]oggles:Hey guys, the US is such a damn super military nations.
Why can't they defeat the Viet Cong during the Viet wars after so much effort?
And they now seems to defeat the Taleban with such ease even though all analyst predicted a long and dreadful war because of the British and Russian failures in the past.... -
peace peace....
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The Americans do use bomb during Viet wars which can clear & flaten large areas of forest area into clear land. And it's said tt the bombs have impact on the tunnels....Originally posted by Mech^O^GATor:The technology is so sophisticated,that long GBU delivers punches that goes right through the taleban cave.Heeheeh they even got their robot in the cave and KABO!!goes the cave.Vietnam is a different circumstances and environment , US is the master of the desert,idiots of the jungle.
The environment do play a big part though... -
i think that the bottom line is they have the political will to want to win in afghanistan. that makes all the difference.
in vietnam, the entire course of their involvement was characterisd by "mission creep"... they just kept increasing their commitments without knowing exactly what they were trying to achieve.
it was sick... the entire involvement spanned 4 presidencies and ruined 2 of them
eisenhower, kennedy, johnson, nixon. and kennedy was only spared cos he got wasted before the shit hit the fan
there was never any effort to coordinate military advances with political and diplomatic advances and soldiers were often left high and dry because of this.
most importantly, they gave the initiative to end the war to the enemy. they just kept trying to make it too damn painful for the enemy to stop without realising that the NVA and VC had a far higher treshold of pain and needed a far lower level of supplies to keep fighting. the ho chin minh trail was able to supply the vietnamese to keep them fighting and the US did not have the political will to stop it.
u compare the air war over afghanistan to the air war over vietnam, u would find that "rolling thunder" was a horrible failure and they learnt from it and used the experience to fight in iraq and more recently, afghanistan.
so bottom line, they went into vietnam to try to get the other guy to stop fighting but they went to afghanistan with every intention to kick the shit out of osama, al Q and taliban so they can't fight anymore!
BIG difference... both in intentions and in its eventual results. -
In Vietnam, the Politicians determined and dictated the pace and conduct of war on the ground.
The Commanders in the Field and actually on the Ground had little power to dictate which target holds priority.
Many strategic military targets that should have been destroyed or neutralized were made OFF-LIMITS by the Politicians - for fear that the war will be enlarged by hammering the Vietnamese so badly that it will draw the direct support of the Communist Chinese (as had happened during the Korean War).
With the Field and Ground Commanders fighting the war with "one hand tied behind their back", the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Regular Soldiers had a field day.
Surprisingly enough, after the war, it was found that had the Americans persevered they would have knocked the teeth out of the Vietnamese, and got them to sign a peace treaty with more favorable terms that ensured the independence of South Vietnam.
The Vietnamese had played poker with the Americans and won - much like General Yamashita during WW2, who bluffed the UK General Perceival into thinking that the Japanese had unlimited logistics when actually their ammo was low, and their manpower was less than the UK forces put together defending Singapore.
Surprisingly enough, through casual conversations with common people living in the north, many were simple rural folks who are largely apolitical and were mostly sick of the communist concept of nationhood; and were waiting in anticipation for the US led forces to sweep upwards across the North-South DeMilitarised Zone (DMZ).
Unfortunately, the Communist International Movement manipulated the anti-war public opinion that was gaining fashion in the USA; and helped speed up the antagonistic feelings of the US citizens against their own government.
Hence, forcing the US Government to negotiate a shameful withdrawal of their military presence in South Vietnam, that finally led to a debacle on a grand scale, that was never seen in military history during this modern 20TH Century.
The rest is history.
In Afghanistan, and during Dessert Storm too, the Field Commanders (who experienced the 'hands tied behind the back' interfering policies of Smart Ass Politicians) are now in command, and sitting in the chairs of those 'Smart Ass Politicians'.
Having learnt the Vietnam Lessons of "How Not to Fight a War", they allowed a great degree of command independence, after setting the General Goals.
In Afghanistan, the world opinion was largely in favor of the US, except from the Islamic Countries - who demanded for hard evidence of the 9-11 works being the work of Osama Bin Laden with the help of the Talibans.
Now that the evidence have been found, and more evidence are being produced, the Islamic World seems to have gone dumb, and still disbelieving.
Besides the differences in terrain, the major factors that have made these distinct differences in the two scenarios that produced two different results are well accepted and espoused by quite a few military analysts.
Visit the National Library, and you can research more on how the conduct of these two wars have been made.