Social Justice Warriors Thread

[Okeefenokee]

Alright, found one,



Always looked like he was stealing the bike to get drugs.

[Okeefenokee]

Finding the other one is gonna be hard because all I remember is that it was two boys sitting on a bench looking stoned as fuck.

[de officiis]

Alright, found one,



Always looked like he was stealing the bike to get drugs.

I don't know if that would have occurred to me. But that's the great thing about art--everyone sees something different.

This one's funny.

[Ex-California]

[TheReal_ND]

Woh. #woke

[TheReal_ND]

[heydaralon]

The same thing is true with age right? There's no such thing as pedophilia because age is on a spectrum. Its more complicated than these bigoted people make it out to be... Age becomes blurrier the closer you look at it.

[TheReal_ND]

The same thing is true with flat earth theory right? There's no such thing as flat or round earth theories because flat or round is on a spectrum. Its more complicated than these bigoted people make it out to be... The roundness of earth becomes blurrier the closer you look at it.

[Speaker to Animals]

We wuz kingz

[heydaralon]

@Daralon

Another thing about the Tet Offensive, was that it was a lesson learned for the North Vietnamese as much as it was a lesson learned for the American public, there was a naivete about the Tet Offensive, they thought that they were closer to being able to achieve their operational aims than they actually were, they believed that the Tet Offensive would incite the South Vietnamese to join them in a general revolt, the plan was actually called the "General Offensive General Uprising", there were factions in the North Vietnamese government, and the so called "Militant Faction" felt that North Vietnam could not continue to hold out in what was actually a stalemate, under heavy bombardment, without decisive action, and so they concieved the Tet Offensive to "break the deadlock" and end the war right away.

So it wasn't the plan that they were going to win the war by winning the PR war with the American public, they were hoping to win the PR war with the South Vietnamese public, inciting them to turn on the Americans, but the South Vietnamese, particularly in the cities, particularly in Saigon, did not respond to the General Offensive with a General Uprising, and instead either sided with the Americans, or simply declined to become involved.

It was only after the fact, when they saw the reaction in the United States, and how that was achieving their strategic aims even as they failed to meet their operational objectives, that the North Vietnamese and NLF realized that this was in fact the way to win the war, essentially let the American public undermine their own governments war effort, including, most importantly in the near term, the cessation of Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of the North.

So there was one critical operational objective achieved by the Tet Offensive, and it turned out to be the most important one, which was inducing the Americans to end the widespread bombing of the North, which the American public had turned against, as being both an attrocity, but also apparently futile, when in fact, it was having devastating effects on the North Vietnamese, and so the cessation of the bombing of the North in the near term, was what really saved the North Vietnamese bacon, that was exaclty what they needed, to hold out long enough, in order to wait the Americans out until they began to withdraw.

Coincindentally, after Tet, the Americans actually ramped up their bombing of South Vietnam, even as they ceased bombing North Vietnam, because after the Tet Offensive the Americans began withdrawing back into the cities, and so the NLF was actually able to run amok in the countryside as a result, and so the Americans shifted to bombing the countryside to try to tamp this down rather than send more troops, and this bombing was what really started to turn the South Vietnamese against the Americans, they weren't bombing the North anymore, but they were now bombing the South with abandon, which simply drove ever people in the countryside into the arms of the NLF, so the Tet Offensive also baited the Americans into doing that, which was another component of the strategic victory.

What also started to happen, as the Americans began to pull back and cede ever more of the countryside to the NLF, is that the American troops who were still out there, began to suffer more and more casualties and ever greater futility in the face of the insurgency, which crippled the morale, and this began to incite the American troops to lash out at the local population, commiting ever more attrocities against them, just out of sheer frustration, and this further exacerbated the situation, throwing even more gasoline on the fire.

So the process was thus; the operationally failed Tet Offensive none the less impels a strategic shift in the United States, but that strategic shift then forces an operational shift in the American military posture in theatre, pretty much right away, LBJ basically gives up the ghost and throws in the towel, not just politically, but also militarily, without further ado, and that operational shift causes the whole ball of yarn to start to unwind, right down to the tactical level, compounding upon itself and picking up steam as it went.

It wasn't just that the American public turned on the war effort, as an entirely political event, but that political shift had immediate effects in the field, cessation of the bombing the North, while shifting to bombing the South to make up the difference, because troops were being pulled back from the forward areas in a general retreat, and the NLF was as a result filling the power vacuum, and without Rolling Thunder, the North is able to start sending ever more forces to assist them, reaching a peak of 20,000 NVA troops going south every month, which all results in the whole American military operational position unraveling, inexorably.

I had a teacher that said that the VC only needed one ten ton truck to make it down the Ho-Chi-Minh trail per week to adequately supply a guerilla force. If that's the case, how do you stop that? Also, I have no doubt the bombing campaign was disrupting the North, but weren't most of their supplies coming in via China? Unless the US started bombing factories in China and the USSR, how could they have really beaten the North longterm? Eventually, they would have gotten tired of bombing and went home, which I guess is exactly what happened.