We're Under Attack

[DBTrek]

Don't know what you're smoking, Hoss, you clearly live in your own little ahistorical world, as the NVA's capacity to go toe-to-toe was more than renowned, your troops were in awe of them.

But hey, don't take my word for it, ask Rambo;

"I would give anything to have two hundred of them under my command, they're the finest soldiers I've ever seen, that's right, they're dedicated... they are the best I've ever seen" - Charles A. Beckwith.

I get my info straight from the people who fought the war, not from a bunch of latte-sipping turtleneck pinkos up north who just discovered their first Vietnam War book and fancy themselves experts on the matter.

You might say what I'm smoking is "direct experience from first hand accounts", instead of "Canadian revised anti-American claptrap".

[Smitty-48]

Don't know what you're smoking, Hoss, you clearly live in your own little ahistorical world, as the NVA's capacity to go toe-to-toe was more than renowned, your troops were in awe of them.

But hey, don't take my word for it, ask Rambo;

"I would give anything to have two hundred of them under my command, they're the finest soldiers I've ever seen, that's right, they're dedicated... they are the best I've ever seen" - Charles A. Beckwith.

I get my info straight from the people who fought the war, not from a bunch of latte-sipping turtleneck pinkos up north who just discovered their first Vietnam War book and fancy themselves experts on the matter.

You might say what I'm smoking is "direct experience from first hand accounts", instead of "Canadian revised anti-American claptrap".

Oh, I've talked to many an American vet about the NVA, we even had an NCO in our unit who served in Vietnam with the Marines, I Corps, right on route 9, and what he said about the NVA was, "terrifying, absolutely terrifying, we were terrified of them, every single day you'd get up in the morning, and know you could be fighting the NVA that day, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it, except live in fear..."

[DBTrek]

In December 1965, Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese leadership ordered a change in a way the war in the South was to be fought. From now on, the Vietcong would avoid pitched battles with the Americans unless the odds were clearly in their favor. There would be more hit and run attacks and ambushes. To counter the American build-up, Vietcong recruitment would be stepped up and more North Vietnamese Army troops would be infiltrated into South Vietnam.
The Vietcong, following the example of Chinese guerillas before them, had always given the highest priority to creating safe base areas. They were training grounds, logistics centers and headquarters. They also offered secure sanctuaries for times when the war might go badly.

Hiding the base areas had always been a high priority for the Vietcong. Now, with American spotter planes everywhere, it was more vital than ever to protect them. In remote swamps or forests, there were few problems, but nearer the capital, it was much more difficult. The answer was to build enormous systems of underground tunnels.

http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/guerrilla/

Your friend likely lived in fear of punji stick traps, mines, snipers, and turncoat whores than running into a uniformed division of fighters.
Repeat after me - The 'classic' three-phase Maoist model of guerilla warfare.

That's what won it for them - not pitting their divisions against ours on the open battlefield.

[Smitty-48]

Nah, see that's the thing, you're confusing the NLF with the PAVN. Viet Cong, NVA, two totally different ball games, maybe down in the Iron Triangle near Saigon, OK, then you're fighting a lot of punji sticks, but up in I Corps, on the DMZ, that's where the Marines fought the main force NVA, and the Marines called it the "Dead Marine Zone", check the losses of the Marines in I Corps going head to head with the NVA, they're light by NVA standards, but by American standards, they were staggering.

[DBTrek]

Why cherry pick, let's just look at body counts in general.

http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

Boom.

The truth is in the numbers, and the numbers say commie soldiers die at considerably higher rates.
Successful commie actions are built off guerilla warfare, or Stalin-level body counts.
But toe to toe, they pretty much suck.

[Smitty-48]

Like, Tet Offensive? Khe Sanh? They're hanging on by their fingernails, they're calling in wave after wave of B-52's, close air support, because the NVA is digging trenches towards them, they'd bomb one battalion of NVA into oblivion, and the next battalion would just jump up and start digging in their wake, one arclight strike after the next, and the NVA didn't break? Kept on coming? Against B-52s?


You can't get any better than that, and you can't get anymore toe to toe, for the NVA, it was worse than World War One, but they just kept coming, could not be broken. Best damn army in the history of the world, no doubt in my mind.

Truth is in the victory, for the Americans, body count was everything, for the NVA, there was no body count, they were going for broke, no matter how many had to die, no matter how long it took, mission over men, and that's why they won.

[Smitty-48]

You know it ticks me off when they call Afghanistan the "Graveyard of Empires", I mean, ca'mon, obviously Vietnam.

The fuckin' Taliban? It was like three runs with the B-52's and they quit the field, literally one week of arclight and they were done.

The NVA? They soaked up arclight strike after arclight strike, hundreds and hundreds of them, one after the next, for ten years straight, and it didn't even slow them down never mind break them.

[DBTrek]

Right.

Because when you have shitty soldiers, no regard for human life (especially your own humans), and a population advantage then zerg tactics and guerrilla warfare are the way to go.
Like I said.
/shrug

Can't really be impressed with folks marching their conscripts into meatgrinders until the meat grinders jam.
But hey - you can keep half of Korea that way, if you're willing to throw enough meat.
Woohoo!

[Smitty-48]

Well, it's war for national survival for them, theoretically, in that circumstance, the US military would be expected to do or die in the face of what the NVA faced, but in reality, I don't believe the US military could do it, if you think about American forces as they are, the first battalion goes forward, the B-52's come in and anihilate them, then the General turns to the next battalion and says "OK, you're up, remember the Alamo?" Yeah, ah, I don't think the US military lasts a month before there is a mutiny.

[DBTrek]

Well, it's war for national survival for them, theoretically, in that circumstance, the US military would be expected to do or die in the face of what the NVA faced, but in reality, I don't believe the US military could do it, if you think about American forces as they are, the first battalion goes forward, the B-52's come in and anihilate them, then the General turns to the next battalion and says "OK, you're up, remember the Alamo?" Yeah, ah, I don't think the US military lasts a month before there is a mutiny.

Which brings up another factor in the North Vietnamese victory - We're not monsters.

It was a war of survival.
And we certainly had (and have) the means to make sure nothing in that country survives for the next 10,000 years.
But we're not monsters.
So we didn't kill every last one of them with nukes.
And we decided not to kill every last one of them with our conventional weaponry either, though the numeric trends and body counts make it fairly clear that they would run out of Vietnamese before we ran out of Americans.

So we left.
And they won.

. . . but not because their soldiers were worth much.