Pushing the rudder over and sending Americans into harms way are not exactly analogous. But more importantly, do us all a favor and stay on the right side of the Rubicon until you retire.

Btw, all you guys might enjoy reading Eating Soup with a Knife. We didn’t lose Vietnam because of restrictive ROE any more than Burgoyne did at Saratoga. That “ROE caused us to lose” stuff is the old wives tail that Fulda Gap dreaming Generals made up to cover for the fact that just didn’t want to fight the kind of war they were dealt.

Dr. Pournelle puts it at 12 divisions with”more armor than Guderian used to take France” or words to that effect.

A division contains elements of all arms, tailored for the task. Whether or not it has the word “Armored” as part of it’s name is irrelevent, if it uses tanks in direct attack, supported by infantry in armored personnel carriers and artillery or CAS en mass, in platoon, company or battalion strength, as required to achieve breakthrough’s in the enemy’s defense and rapidly exploit them, siezing control of the ooda loop away from the opposition. That’s close enough. Certainly far enough from shooting uncooperative village elders in the night, ambush tactics, and avoiding decisive engagement with conventional forces conducting search or pursuit operations to qualify as blitzkrieg rather than guerrilla tactics.

You are consistently guilty of the mirror error, assuming the enemy has to be using the US Army’s TOE to use conventional warfare tactics when deemed useful. You know, like when the ARVN’s ammo resupply is cut off . Or the opponent’s principal ally’s legislature gives you a gilt edge invitation by screwing him in vital logistic support.

Nice high school debate riposte, though.

What vehicle broke down the gates of the capitol building in Saigon at the end of the war? Come on.. first letter T….

I know quite reasonably exactly what the term blitzkrieg means – for a squid, and it happened in the 72 Offensive and the final offensive. At the tactical level Lightning War is a tactic, or more properly a set of techniques, for the coordination of infantry, armor and supporting arms in the offensive, and at the operational level of war, a set of tactics for the use of armor heavy formations as the lead element in the offensive, to rapidly overcome infantry in the defensive. Sort of (I am not a qualified practitioner).

Poland was the first use, and the technique was refined by the Krauts, then adopted and refined by the Red Army and the US Army, British Army and toward the end of the war by the free french divisions fighting under US high command, each slightly differently for multiple reasons. The North Koreans used it in 1950.

The last two invasions south by the PLAVN were run out of the Red Army textbook with Red Army equipment.
With obvious adaptations for the TOE and etc etc etc of the opponent – the ARVN. As called for in Mao’s little red book. I know that’s not the cronkite the public has been sold for forty years, but go do your homework – see for yourself.

Interestingly, the subsequent Red Vietnamese – Viet Minh if you will – overthrow of the Kymer Rouge, because the Cambodian genocide had turned even their evil stomachs, was closer to a classic airmobile offensive, using captured US equipment, with tactical adjustments made on the basis of insights gained from fighting airmobile units and the Kymer Rouge’s vulnerabilities. Since there was no political opposition to this invasion of Cambodia, it was prosecuted with typical bloodyminded thoroughness to a successful (defeat of the Viet Minh) conclusion. Hardhearted and ruthless beats bloodthirsty and cruel every time. Giap was better at war than Westmoreland (the basic problem, for us.) and much better than Pol Pot.

Now I’ll shut up and let the Leavenworth grads lurking eddicate (yes my good man, I am misspelling deliberately) both of us, because they really know who shot John in the big one.

But to return to my basic point, the US congress won the war decisively, for the enemy.

I must take VIOLENT, VIOLENT factual exception to a couple of your statements. As someone who was personally responsible for dropping my fair share of ordenance on N. Vietnamese territory, I can categorically state that ABSOLUTELY NO “carpet bombing” EVER took place in the sense that that term is identified with Allied area-wide “city-busting” WWII bombing in Germany and Japan. Prior to the Christmas bombing campaign of 1973 ALL bombing was done by fighter aircraft against a highly restricted (i.e., limited) set of selective military and industrial tgts. And while some civilian collateral damage did, obviously occur, it can hardly be said to equate to the wide-area indiscriminate destruction that occurred in WWII. And even when B-52s were used in the 73-74 air campaign their use was equally restricted, although damage was somewhat wider due to nature of ordinance delivery. Almost all neutral observers who surveyed post-war damage in Hanoi, Haiphong, etc., attest to this fact. Every single credible report extant confirms this. I CANNOT LET THIS CANARD PASS. You casually toss around emotionally-charged words far too casually, sir. Your choice of words is just not “over-broad” but totally wrong. Please calibrate your verbiage more accurately, as with the use of a single phrase you have (inadvertently I am sure) managed to smear the integrity of not just the USAF, USN and the USMC, but of America as a whole. What is especially laughable–indeed savagely ironic–is that such a term would be used in the face of a very public record of American Presidents ham-stringing the bombing campaign with highly restrictive ROEs to include documented instances of LBJ kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office on hands & knees with SECDEF
MacNamera pouring over maps of N. Vietnam personally hand-picking individual tgts in N. Vietnam. Please be more careful in your choice of words/descriptive terms.

Next, I would only ask: If Catholics in the north were not persecuted, what were all the Catholic refugees from the north doing in the south? On vacation?

The final days of South Vietnam were simply an invasion of the South by the North, and was for the most part normal warfare. But for the whole time the US was in that country, we were fighting a guerilla war. Just as we are in Afghanistan. CAS is and never has been the key to defeating a guerilla insurgency.

What part of “offensive utilizing BLITZKRIEG as the PRIMARY TACTIC” confused you?

Vietnam was not a “guerilla war” after TET ’68 for the simple reason that the VC had been chewed up, decimated, broken…as in suffered overwhelming casualties which rendered them
incapable of successful military operations at of any significant scale. After that the enemy troops were mostlly main force
NVA units, which were defeated in the 72 offensive by the ARVN and some few advisors
including a Marine named Ripley who blew a bridge to stop A COLUMN OF TANKS. But they had sufficient ammo/demo.

Back to the history book for you, boyo. Get one published in England, they just tell the facts, unlike the cronkite that permeates a lot of the stuff coming out of NY publishers.

While you are at it go to the library and get
“Deliver US From Evil” by Dr Thomas Dooley
USNR. A Catholic and an eyewitness to the persecution of catholic north vietnamese evacuating south to avoid communist rule.

You are consistently misinformed.