>Spend entire life before WWII in boy scouts, military schools, and West Point>Spend WWII as an artillery commander in North Africa/Europe>Spend time between WWII/Korea at the Army War College, do some paratrooper training on the side>Spend the aftermath of Kroea on a business degree, a biographer even referred to him as a "a corporation executive in uniform.">Finally gets the opportunity to be put in charge of his own war in 1964>Has a bunch of ridiculous and bizarre restrictions and allowances placed on him that virtually tie an arm around his back and fuck his brain, which was indoctrinated at West Point and affirmed by his WWII/Korea experience to fight big conventional wars like Korea or Western Europe>Proceeds to laser-focus on fighting large pitched battles, having numerical and materiel superiority, and maintaining force quality as if he were fighting a conventional war anyway despite it making no strategic sense at all>Manages to gain the upper hand despite coping about the strategic picture ridiculously, like near-Shoigu levels>loses war after coming within a hair of victory after the Tet Offensive>Never heard from again and is widely considered the worst general the U.S had post-Civil WarWas he autistic? I feel like if he were in a conventional war he'd be the best general ever; yet instead he was in charge of a complicated unconventional proxy conflict with nonsensical rules of engagement that required far more unconventional methods and strategy.
>>16525509What's Morrissey doing in a U.S uniform?
>Westmoreland recalled his South Carolinian grandfather, who had served in the Confederate army. "He hated Yankees and Republicans. By the time I knew him he was elderly and couldn't do a lot more than sit in his chair whittling and chewing tobacco, which he'd spit around the room and leave big brown splotches everywhere. I remember him asking me 'Well, what do you plan to do with your life?' I told him 'I'm going to West Point, the school Grant and Sherman attended.' He replied 'Lee and Jackson went there too, so I suppose it will be alright.'"[3]
>>16525545>The South will rise againI'm thinking Basedmoreland
>Zestmoreland
>>16525509I don't think he was autistic, just too rigid/hidebound in his thinking. It didn't help either that other than the Airborne, Rangers and a handful of units with gifted captains the ARVN was more or less useless
>>16525509You type all this shit out as if Vietnam was a winnable war.
>>16525528Westmoreland You Are the Quarry
>>16525681>Start offensive northward>Take the communist ports and capital>Let ARVN handle anti-partisan duty, now that the partisans aren't getting nearly as much suppliesThe retarded RoE made it impossible, yes.
>>16525859*teleports behind you*
>>16525859>ARVN>being effective
>>16525681It absolutely was, a combination of awful/misplaced strategy and Boomer seething made it unwinnable. It was literally just the Malay Emergency mixed with the War In Donbas/Ukraine, and we got our ass handed to us.>>16525859The reason this didn't happen was because China would've invaded. It might've even reversed or patched up the Sino-Soviet split given it was the one thing that united both the USSR and China at the time. However, the U.S definitely should've taken Westmoreland's early advice and gone into Cmabodia/Laos in 66/67 to keep Tet from ever happening.>>16526103The ARVN had the bizarre phenomenon of having fantastic elite units(particularly the Rangers and Marines) as well as irregulars(such as Hmong/Montagnard militias and Popular Forces) while everything in the middle was shitty, incompetent, and corrupt. They also just had the worst senior leadership possible.>>16525744William, it was really nothing
>>16526292The Rangers/Marines like all elite units attracted motivated fighters while the Hmong were (relative to their indigenous living standards) generously well paid for operating as the CIA's own private army. In contrast the typical ARVN soldier was a poorly motivated, poorly paid and poorly indoctrinated draftee.
>>16525509>Manages to gain the upper hand despite coping about the strategic picture ridiculously, like near-Shoigu levelsyou have autism>loses war after coming within a hair of victory after the Tet Offensiveha ha ha what>Never heard from again and is widely considered the worst general the U.S had post-Civil Warno
>>16525681It was winnable. It would have been a Pyrrhic victory but it was winnable
>>16526341The main reason was because the Rangers/Marines were the remnant core of the former French Colonial forces who were highly trained and experienced while the Hmong/Montagnards were similar, but with CIA/OSS training instead. The Popular Forces were very unique however, and were basically just normie militiamen who kicked way more ass than anyone expected.
>>16526420>you have autismI don't. Even though Westmoreland was going at the war from the wrong strategy, he was still tactically winning it. However, he became infamous for giving grossly inaccurate reports about the size and strength of the VC and basically being "2 more weeks" about everything instead of being more direct.>ha ha ha whatIt's true. Giap himself stated that if the U.S/ARVN/Allies continued and expanded the tempo of operations during and after Tet the North Vietnamese would've sued for peace in a few months.>noHe had a botched gubernatorial run in his own state and then became seen as the American Luigi Cadorna for decades, which while understandable is inaccurate. He was just the wrong man for the job.
>>16526432I said you had autism because you dropped some kind of ching-chong jerkoff cartoon reference and expected actual human beings to get it, puddingheadI'm not going to bother repeating that everything else you are saying is wrong please go pound a tent stake into your own eyeball
>>16526476>Shoigu is a cartoon referenceThis board
>>16526476Lmfao retard
>>16526476>Sergei Shoigu>ching-chong jerkoff cartoonFucking lmao screencap this one, I can't believe there's actual boomers lurking here
>>16526476Top kek lel.
>>16526476Holy shit I'm dying, thanks boomerfag you made my day
It didn't help that his original plan for a US Navy-assisted coastal defense plan was killed by LBJ because he didn't want to give South Vietnam a navy. If that had happened, North Vietnam would have been successfully contained to the hinterlands while naval artillery wiped them safely from offshore. Russia wouldn't be capable of escalating without getting into a naval engagement with the US, and South Vietnam would be the region's only french-speaking catholic country today.All of this was killed because hurp durp helicopters, aerospace company lobbying, and a refusal to acknowledge the navy's proper role in a national defense plan. This was noted by a cool guy named John Bolton who had the chance to fix it when he worked for President Reagan.
>>16526476KEKThis is why I lurk /his/
>>16526925Indeed. In general the bizarre naval rules of engagement seriously kneecapped the war effort all-around. It's how China snatched the Paracels using minesweepers and yet the U.S couldn't do shit to Haiphong.
>>16525509This thread is amazing
>>16526476Now, I understand how boomers made their way into /pol/, but how did they find /his/?
>>16526944Ultimately, I think it was for the best. The USN and the entire US maritime industry is at a nadir but full auto surface vessels will remedy that by mid-century. The next engagements will be all drone ships launching drone planes and recovering them while working with drone submarines, protected by orbital missile launchers. There isn't any other country even studying this, whereas the US only lacks the actual desire to build such a fleet in the first place.
>>16527126We'll all have to see what the next big war brings us. Ukraine and Yemen have if anything taught us that the era of the big ship is mostly over and that defenders from land using small naval and aerial drones have a big leg up, sort of like how Italy's navy performed really well with frogmen against big British ships during WWII. Either something with Iran or China will really be the ultimate test to see what the next meta will be.>>16527115Anytime Vietnam is mentioned anywhere online in a positive light Boomers have an aneurysm and go into a seething rage about how the U.S were LITERALLY Nazis there who committed the Holocaust with Agent Orange and My Lai. It's sad really.
>>16525509Perhaps he was just old, and mentally incapable of truly adapting to the very alien environment of the Vietnam war. You need young blood for that.
>"a corporation executive in uniform."In retrospect he was a good choice, because they were not only fighting in Vietnam but fighting a political battle at home, they needed someone conscious of casualty statistics and the perspective of journalists and politicians.>as if he were fighting a conventional warThis is debatable, he very quickly recognized the Vietcong were infiltrating and trying to start an insurgency. Again, this was in part political. The problem was the military had no sway over relations with the RVN. A French colonial governor would probably advise strengthening the Diệm regime and Catholics in south Vietnam, because they were the only significantly sized group with the morale to fight, particularly important in counter-insurgency. However this was deemed barbaric by the US government. The US face the same problem decades later with their attempts at "nation building" in Iraq and Afghanistan and their unwillingness to delegate to tribal and religious leaders, it was not merely an institutional flaw, it seems to pervade American culture, so Westmoreland can't really be blamed.
>>16527151The funny thing is the whole reason he was appointed to his position in the first place was his relative youth. He was 55 in 1969. It was just that he was an autist both engineered for and experienced in conventional warfare. He served in Europe(as opposed to the Pacific) in WWII against the Nazis and then fought in Korea, where all his West Point stuff made perfect sense.Contrast it to Lew Walt, a marine who had a far better understanding of how to fight Asian wars due to his service in The Pacific, and you'll see its night and day between the way the two think and operate in that environment.
>>16527157>conscious of casualty statistics The issue was making this top priority. It kneecapped an already limited set of options for him by waging an unvonventional/asymmetric conflict as a conventional industrial one. But again, I understand why he went this way for sure, it's what the dude was trained for and all his prior experience confirmed it.>and the perspective of journalists and politicians.This was another issue. The worst thing Wedtmoreland did for the war effort was paint too rosy a picture for the general public, often just straight-up lying while still demanding more troops, a la "2 more weeks". If he'd been more honest about both the stakes and seriousness of the situation, the public probably would've been far more trusting of him and stuff the Pentagon Papers wouldn't have permanently nuked the war effort. >politiciansThat was a whole other matter. Thr guy had to fight a big war with bizarre and sometimes challenging RoE placed on him, and he had serious trouble thinking outside the box despite that fact.
>>16526292>The reason this didn't happen was because China would've invaded.I doubt anyone was especially scared of their World War I army but LBJ could certainly use it as a boogeyman to not invade the DRV. Even if it did China lost 20k dudes in three weeks invading Vietnam in 1979 so the result would have probably been the same.
>>16527162Every war has that kind of general. It was like in the Civil War where Grant and Sherman could think outside the box while many of their peers couldn't.
>>16527162>The funny thing is the whole reason he was appointed to his position in the first place was his relative youth. He was 55 in 1969.The mandatory retirement age for the Amy was/is 64 so they could guarantee he had a decade of service left while an older guy might end up retiring like three years into the war.
>>16526432>Giap himself stated that if the U.S/ARVN/Allies continued and expanded the tempo of operations during and after Tet the North Vietnamese would've sued for peace in a few months.North Vietnam lost a lot of men in the Tet Offensive and could not have survived further sustained combat. Ho Chi Minh liked to boast that they would win the war with their women's wombs but it takes 18 years to raise a baby to a soldier.
>>16527955>"2 more weeks"The US and RVN were winning in terms of attrition so this mentality is understandable, the problem was the RVN government was a complete mess due to the assassination, subsequent coups and US meddling and by the time Thiệu brought some stability Vietcong fuckery was in full swing. The SRV were not fighting to defeat the combined forces of the US and RVN but to continue the "people's war" and keep the RVN unstable. By contrast the SRV was a highly centralized authoritarian regime wholly invested in managing the war effectively.
>>16528040Very.
>>16528022The reason the U.S didn't want a war with China is because China got a nuke in 1964 and Mao was extremely nonchalant about using them. He wrote the playbook on madman theory and it paid dividends for him. Also, hindsigjt is 20/20 and nobody knew anything about the capability of China's military given 1979 hadn't happened yet. China just went toe to toe with the U.S in Korea and beat India's ass in 1962, so it was obviously considered a dumb move to get them any more involved at the time.
>>16528200Oh, I'm not talking a out the tactical/strategic picture of the militaries when I talk about the "2 more weeks" mentality. I'm talking more about how U.S media and leadership, most infamously Westmoreland, downplayed the difficulty and situation of the war which resulted in huge political and strategic ramifications when Tet and later the Pentagon Papers leak happened. U.S media and the DoD at the time before Tet basically depicted Vietnam as being a small, stubborn insurgency comparable to the Malay Emergency or Huk rebellion confined to Vietnam, when irl it was a complicated and intense regional proxy war that drew in U.S, China, and Warsaw Pact interests. That's why Tet was so significant, it made normie Americans realize the U.S was blatantly lying to them about the war being fought.
>>16528675>The reason the U.S didn't want a war with China is because China got a nuke in 1964 andthey had one nuke with nothing to deliver it but a WWII propeller plane
>>16528835But did the U.S know how many nukes Mao had in 1964, and his willingness to use them? And more importantly, would the U.S risk starting a war with a battle-hardened military that they just fought into a bloody stalemate, who also just curbstomped their peer India? China in 1964 was not China in 1979, and the U.S leadership then knew that wouldn't be a risk worth taking.And that also ignores the fact that nearly every Warsaw Pact member including the USSR and North Korea had thousands of troops and advisors crawling around North Vietnam. Invading them was never an option.
>>16528050Indeed. I'd make the argument that the collapse of the Viet Cong after Tet was comparable to the collapse of the DPR/LPR militias in Ukraine in 2014/15. And much like in Ukraine, the West made the mistake of calling it too early and gave the backer of the proxy time to put their own troops in and replenish/regroup.
>>16528835China had/has Tu-16s which are comparable to B-52s
>>16528853>And more importantly, would the U.S risk starting a war with a battle-hardened military that they just fought into a bloody stalemateIt was over 15 years since the Korean War, completely different generation of soldiers and nobody in PLA had combat experience by then. Also the Vietnamese border area was really hard to maneuver through especially with China's primitive logistics. It's a remote area with a lot of hills and not many roads, and it wasn't strategically important like the Korean border was. Further they would be limited in how many troops could be sent down there as substantial part of PLA had to be watching the Sino-Soviet border as relations with Moscow were quickly deteriorating in the late 60s.
>>16525859That would have caused China to intervene, as they did in Korea.
>>16528876>China had/has Tu-16s which are comparable to B-52slmao
>>16528889>It was over 15 years since the Korean War, completely different generation of soldiers and nobody in PLA had combat experience by thenhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_WarNo, China then definitely had a hardened core of soldiers with combat experience in what is literally the most rugged environment on the planet against a peer they destroyed. Now they'd be going against the U.S with their ally being the N-VA, who were far more large, skilled, equipped, and experienced than the Norks ever were. The Warsaw Pact would also likely give them gibs and there would be a detente in the Sino-Soviet Split given both sides had a very strong shared interest in the region. It's not impossible but they'd be dogshit odds compared to fighting just N-VA proxies and allies.
>>16528898In terms of era, not capability lol.You were acting as if they'd be using liberators or B-29s to drop nukes.
>>16528911That's a nice fanfic you wrote there, Jiang.
>>16528936China was using Tu-4s (Soviet B-29 clone) until the end of the 70s. They were refitted with newer turboprop engines in the 70s but in the 60s still had the original propeller configuration.
>>16528941>thinking it'd be easy to fight the entire PLA during the last time it was a decent and experienced military while ALSO having to fight the N-VA, VC, PL, and KR at the same timeYou don't have to be a Chink to see that this situation favors them far more than it did in Korea
>>16528958But I thought China had been using Tu-16s since the late 50s?https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/Asset/H-6_(Hong-6)_Chinese_Strategic_Bomber
>>16528965>thinking it'd be easy to fight the entire PLA duringexcluding of course all the troops that had to be deployed up north unless they wanted Soviet tanks in downtown Beijing. they almost did go to war in 1969.
>>16528982>excluding of course all the troops that had to be deployed up north unless they wanted Soviet tanks in downtown Beijing. they almost did go to war in 1969.They were still using horse and ox carts to transport supplies and had almost no radios.
>>16528982That likely wouldn't happen in this timeline lol. Soviets would be fucking furious at the Americans for invading North Vietnam, alongside North Korea it was the only issue the two agreed on. I guarantee there would be a detente between the two if the U.S invaded in the mid-60s.
The real reason they didn't invade the DRV was manpower. There were never more than 27k US combat troops in Indochina at the peak and it would require large scale conscription for that which LBJ didn't want to do. China provided a convenient boogeyman to not have to invade but really it was just because of the resources needed.
>>16528889>Also the Vietnamese border area was really hard to maneuver through especially with China's primitive logistics. It's a remote area with a lot of hills and not many roads, and it wasn't strategically important like the Korean border wasIn 1979 Beijing didn't even have any up to date maps of that area; they were using maps from the late 19th century when it was still the Qing Dynasty.
>>16529110You think Beijing wouldn't be getting info and maps from the N-VA if the U.S invaded? And again, the PLA of Mao in 1964 was a far different beast than the hollowed out shell of a force Deng inherited 1979, Korea was only 10 years ago and the Sino-Indian War was fresh.
>>16529096Also this. If you thought the Boomer chimpout was insane for Vietnam, imagine what a full-blown war with China the U.S started would be like.
>>16525681It was, just not conventionally and made infinitely more difficult by the retarded ROE set by Civilian pencil pushers and the American public.Even with the retarded ROE, you focus on things like the Phoenix program (taking out the VC shadow government and tax collectors) plus strategic hamlet program (fortified villages that have what they need to feed and defend themselves). The US was doing both these things by the late war and in conjunction with the Tet offensive the VC had more or less ceased to exist in the South. The Phoenix project in particular was so effective that Giap wrote in his memoirs that the VC would have been completely wiped out of the game if it had continued for another 6 months. Secondly, the US needed to focus less on offensive combat operations and body count and far more on sorting out South Vietnam's abysmal political situation. They should have made it very clear that any political fuckery or corruption would prompt an immediate US pullout regardless of the consequences and told the ARVN to clean up their act.
>>16529560>strategic hamlet programStrategic hamlet failed when Diem was overthrown given his regime held that system together. However, the Popular Forces were a good substitute who became underutilized.>sorting out South Vietnam's abysmal political situationAgreed. Taking out Diem was a fatal mistake in and of itself, but doing the even worse thing of failing to consolidate around Thieu and Ky until it was too late was a massive fuckup.
@16529143@!16528911Don't get why this slant eye living in Vancouver on welfare keeps acting like the 62 Sino-Indian conflict was some great feat of martial prowess when it was a couple of skirmishes with a shitty Indian army that had WWI weapons.
>>16529954It's not a great feat of martial prowess, it's just proof that the PLA in the mid 60s was in far better shape than in the late 70s after the Cultural Revolution gutted it out and they crashed into Vietnam before getting tossed out like a drunk. And again, doing so in the Himalayas with both favorable casualties and political results is pretty good.>shitty Indian armyIndia had the best and most experienced military in the third world at the time from fighting Pakistan and from other interventions.
>>16525528>>16525744>>16526292>The rain falls hard in Saigon town>This war has dragged you down>Oh, the rain falls hard on a Cambodian town>This land has dragged you down>Oh no, and everybody's got to fight their fight>And God knows I've got to fight mine>God knows I've got to fight mine>William, William, it was really nothing>William, William, it was really nothing>It was your fight>How can you stay with a Viet girl who'll say>"Oh, would you like to marry me?>And if you like, I can be your Jook-Sing">She doesn't care about anything>Would you like to marry me?>And if you like, I can suck your thing>I don't dream about anything except this hell>Oh, William, William, it was really nothing>William, William, oh-oh-oh-oh
Picrel related
>>16530160Is this the war that Jeets cope about the most?
>>16530169No, they focus on partition (mental war)
>>16530184Makes sense.Funny thing is the ones who undermined Indian unity the most in the first place were retarded Hindu Nazi larpers
Was Westmoreland the first person to popularize the "two more weeks" meme. His "light at the end of the tunnel" comment sounds like something Putin would say.
>>16530347>Unable to accept McNamara’s conclusion and reluctant to embrace the military’s push for a wider war, LBJ turned his attention to shoring up public support. He ordered U.S. officials in Saigon to highlight evidence showing that the United States was winning the war. The White House created a group to share favorable information with opinion leaders and news outlets. And at the recommendation of the so-called Wise Men, a group of former senior foreign policy officials convened to advise LBJ, Westmoreland was ordered home to reassure the American public that the war was going well.>Westmoreland willingly took up the task. He had already returned to Washington seven months before at Johnson’s request to give an upbeat speech on the state of the war to a joint session of Congress. That had been the first time in U.S. history that a president had asked a wartime commander to return from the field to speak to Congress. >n his November 21, 1967 address to the National Press Club, Westmoreland was even more upbeat than he had been on Capitol Hill back in April. He assured his audience that “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” He cited a list of problems plaguing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, including an inability to recruit. And lest his fundamental optimism be missed, he ended his speech by invoking his goal to reach Phase IV of the war, when the communists would be on the run:>"I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing. We are making progress. We know you want an honorable and early transition to the fourth and last phase. So do your sons and so do I. It lies within our grasp--the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt."
>>16526925>while naval artillery wiped them safely from offshoreWhat would naval artillery achieve that US air superiority couldn't?
>>16530459>Westmoreland knew that he had put the best face on the war. He later wrote, “I permitted myself the most optimistic appraisal of the way the war was going that I had yet made.” Some of his fellow generals worried he had been too optimistic—and too willing to serve LBJ’s political objectives. As Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson put it, “Westys trip has gone extremely well, and I only hope that he has not dug a hole for himself with regard to his prognostications. The platform of false prophets is crowded.”>General Johnson turned out to be prescient. Just ten weeks after Westmoreland’s National Press Club speech, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive. What Americans saw on television and read in the newspapers looked nothing like the rosy picture Westmoreland had painted. While U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately turned the tide and inflicted punishing losses on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, in political terms everything had changed. The end was not in sight, and no one knew when it would be.https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-general-westmoreland-says-end-begins-come-view-vietnamThis whole article convinced me he's autistic. He wasn't a bad general by any stretch of the imagination but holy shit he was abysmal at PR.
>>16530465>What would naval artillery achieve that US air superiority couldn't?Remember that this was in a time when precision guided munitions didn't exist, but interceptor aircraft and early anti-aircraft missiles did and particularly in Vietnam were kneecapping for the Americans.
>>16530482>interceptor aircraft and early anti-aircraft missilesCouldn't shit against the B52 raids. North Vietnam was literally flattened. We dropped more ordnance on North Vietnam than dropped by all countries in WW2 COMBINED and it didn't stop shit. Hanoi at the wars peak was the most heavily defended air space on Earth (even more than Moscow) and it STILL got basically flattened during the war.>Precision bombingWould still not have made a difference. For one thing, every time the US blew up a manufacturing facility the North would simply move production to another facility somewhere deeper in the fucking jungle. Same with military caches. The NVA had more ordnance and vehicles in Laos and Cambodia than in North Vietnam itself at the height of the war. Secondly nothing of vital military importance was manufactured in North Vietnam anyways. Weapons, ammunition, vehicles, artillery, all that shit was coming from China and the Soviets, not North Vietnam itself. The only thing you could hope to achieve with precision strategic bombing would be to take a storage area, and the NVA learned very early on to store everything deep in the jungle where all the intel and precision bomb guidance in the world wouldn't make much of a fucking difference. Strategic bombing of any kind was pointless in regards to the North Vietnamese ability to fight the war. The only thing that would have actually affected that would be to stop Chinese and Russian ships from entering Vietnamese waters and that would have been tantamount to a declaration of War. No one was going to launch a nuclear holocaust over Vietnam.NTA but naval superiority would only marginally have helped the war effort. But it would not have stopped the flow of Communist munitions into Vietnam and it definitely would have had little impact on the supply situation. It ultimately would have just produced even more fucking butthurt among American liberals.
>>16525509The real question here is what if Fracture Jaw happened?
>>16530925the most epic self-own in the hitory of warfare
>>16530849>The only thing that would have actually affected that would be to stop Chinese and Russian ships from entering Vietnamese waters and that would have been tantamount to a declaration of War. No one was going to launch a nuclear holocaust over Vietnam.It worked with the Cuban Missile Crisis, didn't it?
>>16528889>It was over 15 years since the Korean War, completely different generation of soldiers and nobody in PLA had combat experience by then.Also in mid-60s PLA was in very poor condition with many soldiers literally starving.
>>16531984>Also in mid-60s PLA was in very poor condition with many soldiers literally starving.why do Indians continually lie and spread this propaganda?
>>16528022we killed 600k+ of them in Korea, we could have done it again but we just didn't want to
>>16532215Boomers chimped out at the thought of killing brown people in a just defensive war. Imagine how nuclear they would get if the U.S invaded North Vietnam and then fought China.>>16532077I really don't know. It's a fact that the PLA of the mid-1960s was the best third world military, which while not saying much by itself is everything when you have to fight them on top of the N-VA and their proxy forces simultaneously.
>>16532077The Chinese make it themselves.
>>16532539That was in the 50s during the peak of Mao's Great Leap Forward retardation. China by the 60s was a much better military due to soaking up a ton of Soviet gibs right before the Sino-Soviet Split and eventually Cultural Revolution really started to hurt it.
>>16532539>>16532608You guys are retarded. This webm says 1950, which is during the Korean war. It's long before the great leap forward and even longer before the 60s. This is just an issue of logistics in war.
>>16532618Seriously. 1963 was a decade after the Korean War and over a decade and a half from the Sino-Vietnamese War. The Sino-Indian War showed that the PLA was in better shape and had learned some lessons from Korea, and those would be the people leading the charge in a Chinese intervention in Vietnam given it would take place before the Cultural Revolution, and might even delay/reverse it, being replaced by militarism instead.
>>16532077t. Zhang
>>16527100it's a gem
>>16530459>>16530468Westmoreland was also weak-willed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Ridgway#The_"Wise_Men"> Adding to the sense of crisis was a maneuver by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler, to force Johnson to rule out the diplomatic solution and to continue with the military solution. On 23 February 1968 Wheeler told General William Westmoreland to advise Johnson to send another 206,000 troops to Vietnam, even through Westmoreland insisted that he did not need the extra troops.[43] Under Wheeler's prodding, Westmoreland did make the request for another 206,000 soldiers, insisting in his report to Johnson that he could not win the war without them
>>16531984There were times when Mao Zedong liked to bluster about intervening in the war and apparently Washington bought it but in 1965 he told Edgar Snow that China had no intention of fighting the US unless Chinese territory was invaded.
>>16533887Again, Mao was a far better adherent of Madman theory than a lot of people realize when it comes to foreign policy. He did a lot for China's standing and influence internationally despite running the country into the ground domestically.
>>16533887>and apparently Washington bought it but in 1965 he told Edgar Snow that China had no intention of fighting the US unless Chinese territory was invaded.they couldn't afford another large scale war, the Korean War was terribly costly on China's resouces
>>16529143this
>>16531970Only because Kennedy convinced the Soviets that we absolutely would start a nuclear war with them if they tried to get past our blockade. Even then the Soviets only really backed down because the US agreed to remove it's missiles from Turkey and because the US still had more ICBMs and warheads than the Soviets and any nuclear confrontation would have been very lopsided at that stage in the game.Vietnam was not a cornerstone of US national security or an existential threat to the US itself in the same way as Cuba. They were halfway around the world and at best, represented a challenge to the Bretton-Woods US post-war order more than anything else. If the US had seriously tried to blockade Hai Fong harbor and prevent Communist ships from entering the Commies would have called that bluff immediately. They knew the US wasn't going to risk a nuclear confrontation over an ex-colonial shithole on the other side of the world that had very little strategic value.
>>16525509He looks badass
>>16534058There is considerable debate as to whether China would have intervened in the war had the US invaded the DRV. The White House was definitely willing to believe they would have. Some historians however believe it was an empty threat and the Sino-Soviet split would have deterred China from entering the war. General Dave Richard Palmer believed they were bluffing and the Johnson Administration fell for it.
>>16534666>>16534058Ho Chi Minh did not particularly want Chinese troops on Vietnam's soil as he was afraid that they wouldn't leave once they got there. Unlike Korea which had always been a loyal Chinese vassal, Vietnam's historical relations with China were not quite so friendly.
>>16534707>After the first US combat troops arrived in South Vietnam in 1964, Mao Zedong told Ho Chi Minh "We sent one million troops against the American imperialists in Korea, we can send two million against them in Vietnam." Ho declined the offer and said he would only accept support and logistics help from China.[3]
>>16534606Very, he exudes pure testosterone and is built like a G.I Joe. Probably why he had autism lol, too high T.Frankly, he'll be a big aesthetic influence of mine if I ever end up in a similar military position.>>16534707>Ho Chi Minh did not particularly want Chinese troops on Vietnam's soilThe thing was unlike NK, China had huge numbers of troops stationed in NV until the accords who would've functioned as a roadblock/tripwire if the U.S ever went over the border.https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/china-contributed-substantially-to-vietnam-war-victory-claims-scholarThis was the main reason the U.S never invaded. And likewise, while relations between China and the USSR were falling off a cliff during this time, Vietnam was one of the very few issues that brought them together, and the impact of the Sino-Soviet split in the Vietnam War didn't emerge later until the Khmer Rouge started gaining prominence, which was a fascinating phenomenon.
>>16534733they had AA battalions in the DRV, but no combat infantry
>>16534757That's why I refer to it as a tripwire force. It was to signal a strategic commitment by the PLA to the country without crossing any red lines or doing anything super serious. And it was very effective in deterring the Americans from going into North Vietnam.
>>16525681It was winnable but libtards didn’t let the military invade North Vietnam and cut out the commie cancer directly at the heart.
>>16534757The guy you're replying to is a chink CCPbot living in Canada on welfare. He's been spamming this thread for a day now.>>16528675>>16528853>>16528876>>16528911>>16528936>>16528965>>16529004>>16529143>>16530025>>16532077>>16532530>>16532634This is all him.
>>16534781It seems like a few of them are, but I'm not. 3 of these are mine:>>16530025>>16532530>>16532634I'm OP btw
>>16526476In an effort to prove OP the retard, anon proved himself instead to be, the tard.Seems like a reversal out of one of those ching chong jerkoff cartoons.
>>16526476Incredible bait or niggerbrained
>>16534814Given the spacing, linguistics(who the fuck on 4chan calls somebody a puddinghead), him not knowing about either anime or Sergei Shoigu(being generally out of the loop), and the fact that he's seething at anybody to DARE and analyze the Vietnam War empirically as anything other than the American equivalent of Operation Barbarossa, I think he's an actual Boomer who's STILL butthurt over le dead brown people. How he ended up here is the real mystery.
>>16534794Indeed. Sorta reminds me of one of them Studio Giblet movies
>>16525509>Imagine Vietnam if picrel were in charge instead
>>16526476>Shoigu >ching-chong jerkoff cartoon reference
>>16535269>Throw some commie cunts on the barbie!
>>16525509who is This Charming Man?
>>16528889China would not have been an issue.>dig in along the Sino-Vietnamese border>let them attack and wipe another 600k of them
>>16528958.>Delivery of the Tu-16 to China began in 1958, and the Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation license-produced the aircraft under the Chinese designation Xian H-6. At least 120 of these aircraft remain in service. On 14 May 1965, one of the PLAAF Tu-16 bombers carried out the first airborne nuclear weapon test inside China.[5]
>>16536392kek given average chink quality control that thing would probably break in half or explore in mid air. even back in Cold War nobody bought Chinese military gear as it was recognized as junk, everyone bought Soviet gear. in Vietnam War DRV only get light equipment like hand grenades and small arms from China while all their planes, tanks, missiles, radar were Soviet.
>>16536432>DRV only get light equipment like hand grenades and small arms from ChinaNigga what, it was no doubt inferior to Soviet stuff but it's not like the DRV had a choice. They took as many gibs as they could get, and the Type 59 alongside the T-55 were the MBTs most widely used by the N-VA.
>>16536908They actually never used any of their tanks until the final invasion of the South in '75. Didn't want to risk using heavy equipment against the US military and get it destroyed.
>>16535693>Disabled T-55>On a hillside desolate>Will war make a man of me yet?>When in this charming war>This charming man>Why pamper the war's complexity>When the rayon runs smooth>On the Huey's seat?>I would go out tonight>But I haven't got a stitch to wear>This man said, "It's gruesome>That someone so handsome should care">Ah, a jumped-up West Point boy>Who always knew his place>He said, "Return the fire">He knows so much about these things>He knows so much about these things>I would go out tonight>But I haven't got a stitch to wear>This man said, "It's gruesome>That someone so handsome should care">Na, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man>Oh, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man>Ah, a jumped-up West Point boy>Who always knew his place>He said, "Return the fire">He knows so much about these things>He knows so much about these things>He knows so much about these things
>>16536935They also used tanks during the Easter Offensive
>>16536935Indochina is a poor environment for tanks anyway especially because they were Soviet designs intended to fight in Europe in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict.
>>16536959Indeed, this is why the U.S used older tanks and never used or sent the M-60 to South Vietnam during the war.
>>16536959The Middle East as well, the Arab states had Soviet tanks that couldn't handle the environment there.
>>16525509This article is a really fascinating piece about how he was thrown under the bus and became the scapegoat for everything that went wrong after Tet https://web.archive.org/web/20180306171617/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/opinion/westmoreland-vietnam-war-troops.html>When it came to troops, “Westy,” as the general was nicknamed, proved crafty. In his initial request, he avoided speaking of Americans at all; the commander of the “Free World Forces” in South Vietnam asked Johnson to approach South Korea and see if Seoul could be induced to send an additional light infantry division to Vietnam (it did).>But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, had different goals. He was less concerned about Westmoreland’s immediate priorities in Vietnam than with the state of America’s strategic reserves at home. The picture was indeed dire: By the time of Tet, apart from troops held for a Soviet attack in Europe, only the 82nd Airborne Division and parts of Marine divisions in the United States were left in reserve. Units all across the military had also been stripped of many specialists to properly support the Vietnam force.>In response, Wheeler had been trying to get Johnson to approve mobilization of the Reserves for nearly a year, but Johnson had turned him down. Wheeler needed a fresh, big appeal. The Tet offensive gave him an opportunity.>Early in February 1968 the chairman, in back-channel messages to Westmoreland, solicited requests for reinforcements, and told the field commander not to feel bound by previous — that is 1967 — force structure ceilings. Westy took the bait; his replies had initially asked for pretty much all the troops left in the strategic reserve as “emergency” reinforcements. Thus a bigger request, which could not be filled by active-duty forces, met Wheeler’s needs.
>>16537091>Once the high point of the fighting had passed, Wheeler traveled to Vietnam, leaving on Feb. 21. He toured battlefields, met with South Vietnamese and American commanders; attended briefings at the headquarters of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam; and conferred with Westmoreland. Together the two generals talked numbers, and they finally asked Johnson for 206,000 more troops for the American force in South Vietnam. (That request, as it happens, was almost identical to Westmoreland’s troop request called Program 5, in early 1967, which had already caught on the shoals of presidential reluctance.) Wheeler’s report to Washington, compiled as his jet winged eastward across the Pacific on Feb. 27, contained statistics on the recent fighting, covered American efforts to improve the South Vietnamese armed forces and argued in favor of the enlarged troop request.>Though the request was secret, it was politically fraught. With public opposition to the Vietnam War mounting, a reserve mobilization would underline that Congress had never declared war, while other legal pillars, like the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, were increasingly shaky. Mobilization also meant increased military spending, with the American economy already overheated. Foresighted investors, wary of inflation, had now begun trading their dollars for gold. Johnson, who had previously sought a tax surcharge to pay for the war, had in front of him the example of Britain, which in 1967 had tried to meet its problems with a disastrous devaluation of the pound. Johnson had an election coming up in November 1968; he did not want to be seen as weak in the face of crisis, but he realized a big troop deployment coming after what had been represented as military victory would resonate poorly.
>>16537103.Smith needed less than a day to learn the number “206,000” from a Capitol Hill source. The two reporters garnered multiple confirmations, but more important to note is that they had the story quite quickly — Wheeler’s report had thudded onto Washington desks just five days before its secret was out. The reporters spent some days adding to their story and polishing it, and The Times pushed publication back a day to get the bigger play of a Sunday edition, and then there it was, in The New York Times of March 10, 1968.>Simultaneous events were applying other pressures on the president. The reinforcement request immediately led the new secretary of defense, Clark M. Clifford, to demand an “A to Z” reassessment of the American position in Vietnam. While various draft memorandums for the president argued that the request could be met, they also warned of serious consequences, including budget increases in the billions, balance of payments shortfalls, new tax requirements, a Reserve call as steep as 262,000 men, bigger draft calls and monthly American casualties rates as high as 1,400 — nearly as extreme as Tet itself..Meanwhile the secretary of state, Dean Rusk, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the day after revelation of the 206,000 troop request and faced fierce opposition, even from legislators who had been Johnson’s friends. The committee chairman, J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, warned of all-out war and wanted Congress to be consulted before any big push. Senator Richard B. Russell, Democrat of Georgia, one of Johnson’s closest associates and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, spoke of relying on air power and naval forces as opposed to ground forces — implying a pullback in troop commitments, not an increase.
>>16537110>Then on March 12, in the New Hampshire primary, Senator Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic peace candidate from Minnesota, came within a few hundred votes of defeating Johnson. Considering the president had the complete cooperation of the Democratic Party machine, the result was stunning.>These political signs, plus the disheartening Pentagon analysis of the reinforcement requests, left Johnson little choice — on March 13, he denied both the big troop request and an intermediate option, which the Pentagon had presented as a fallback. Instead, he approved just 24,200 Army troops, along with nearly 6,000 servicemen in Air Force and support units, over and above the 10,500 emergency reinforcements already sent to Vietnam.>Several other consequences flowed from these events. They led Johnson into the reflections that persuaded him to drop his campaign to retain the presidency. Then he recalled Westmoreland from Vietnam, kicking him upstairs to become Army chief of staff.>Westy never understood why the troop request came back to bite. As he would put it in a memoir, he was doing what any battlefield commander would do after a hard-fought victory: choosing the optimum time to commit the Reserves, when the enemy losses had opened the door to a powerful counterassault. His naïveté had proved his undoing: He never considered how his role as the optimistic leader throughout 1967 had set him up for a takedown when things went sideways.>Not coincidentally, Wheeler’s nickname was “Bus” — and under a bus is exactly where he threw Westmoreland when he had a chance.
>>16537023How so? I'm not as familiar with the tactics/strategy of the wars there as much so tell me about the soviet v. american tanks working there.
>>16537494There is a lot of flat open terrain which means concealing your tanks difficult, and the sand tends to degrade tanks quicker. The Arabs had a rough time because the Israelis were able to dominate the skies and bomb their tanks while Arab RPGs and Malyutka proved to be quite effective.
>>16537503Makes sense. From what I remember those wars were the ones the U.S took lessons from when planning the Gulf War alongside the bombing campaigns of the Iran-Iraq War.
>>16537503I would add that the Arabs have huge institutional/cultural issues that prevent them from using tanks effectively at the best of times.For one, Arabs tend to view armor as mobile bunkers rather than as a mobile weapons platform. For example in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom they would bury their tanks in static positions rather than deploy them in the field. The US would just fucking blow them up from the air rather than engage them which made them pointless.Arabs militaries also have an institutional thing where authority derives from knowledge/training/information. So you get this situation where the Tank commanders refused to share basic information with the crews and expect the crews to have to ask them how to do basic shit like move the vehicle or operate the arms. It's absurdly inefficient and on the rare occasions when Arabs armor engaged western armor, Western armor drove literal circles around them.
>>16537604>For one, Arabs tend to view armor as mobile bunkers rather than as a mobile weapons platformWhy do they do this? Don't they have a tradition of being semi-nomadic warrior people's with a strong history of cavalry? Wouldn't fast-moving tank tactics gel better with that history?
>>16537678It's partly like the other anon posted, and tanks are difficult to conceal in a desert. The Iraqis/Arabs think that large tank formations in the desert are going to get picked apart by air. Ironically their solution of trying to bury their tanks in static positions still got them blown up. Partly it's the insistence on only having one guy actually knowing what the fuck he's doing, like I posted. Field armor maneuvers require well trained crews that can operate without needing constant approval or instruction from the tank commander.Also Arabs have a weirdly static view of war anyways. They love trenches and emplacements (see, Iraq/Iran war). I suspect it's because they view air power as making mobile/mechanized units vulnerable.
>>16537703Makes sense.Do you think WWI and the legacy of T.E Lawrence among Arabs could have something to do with it as well?
>>16537987Yes
>>16536186The Soviet military developed some pretty deep tactical doctrines but China had no military doctrine at all except throw 1 bazillion riflemen at the enemy and hope they run out of bullets.
>>16528893And? I think the USA was way stronger than China back then.
>>16539018don't b8 the chink 50 cent army posters
>>16539018Overall, yes. But China bordered North Vietnam while the US was an ocean away. China, even during the most chaotic periods of the Cultural Revolution, still could have poured a few million men into Vietnam and bruteforced a total victory.
>>1652647610/10 larp
>>16539029>China, even during the most chaotic periods of the Cultural Revolution, still could have poured a few million men into Vietnam and bruteforced a total victory.Nice fanfic there. +15 social credits have been added to your account. Winnie the Pooh thanks you for your service.
>>16539029>bruteforced a total victoryNo lol, the only way China could've done that is if the Cultural Revolution never happened and Mao instead developed a militaristic national cult was developed, sort of comparable to how Russia is about WWII or Iran is about the Iran-Iraq War.
>>16538986>throw 1 bazillion riflemen at the enemy and hope they run out of bulletsThat's Chinese military history in a nutshell
>>16532539never makes me not laugh
>>16539029Mmmmmmm more meatwaves for the B52 lions and F-5's napalm mmmmmm
>>16534606A trve Sovthern Bvll, ready to deliver several payloads of BWC to hot and horny Viet girls
>>16539507indeed, they shall be thumped
>>16539020They bate all day
>>16539507Stop I can only get so erect
>>16534868lmao, it's perfect
>>16539196this
