Memo To Anti-War Protestor's

[Toad]

"Ispar, you confused young puppy..."

Negative. Just an "evolutionary stub" (thx, Vulcan) on the thornbush of mankind.

[Cabby44]

Mrfish:

I reckon your cynicism would take on a whole new "look" if someone was lobbing mortar shells in the direction of your ennui.  If the shooters were intent on killing you or enslaving you, you had damn well better "do what a man's gotta do".........

Thanks for the SF State vignette.  I'm a SF native and i remember when SF was a Military and "blue-collar" workingman's town as much as it was a Financial center.

I dunno wtf it is now.  It's still a great city, even if it IS full of granola-crunching idiots.......

[mrfish]

Originally posted by Cabby44:
Mrfish:

I reckon your cynicism would take on a whole new "look" if someone was lobbing mortar shells in the direction of your ennui.  If the shooters were intent on killing you or enslaving you, you had damn well better "do what a man's gotta do"...

since it looks like my point zipped by your ear like the ak47 round of an evil moslem, i'll expand....

i have no qualms going to war with whoever it is we're going to war with. it seemed obvious but i guess i should have used bold type for those with short attention spans.

i don't, however, think life's problems are reduclible to catchy one-liner slogans and soundbites. unfortunately that's about all it takes for some - well that and colorful tee-shirts and coffee mugs. they're as mindless as the liberals.

red faced spouting morons on one end and willowy sheltered brats on the other. you can have each other for all i care.

[10Bears]

"The blood of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and tens of thousands of Americans, is on the hands of the anti-war activists who prolonged the struggle and gave victory to the Communists.
The second effect of the war was to surrender South Vietnam to the forces of Communism. This resulted in the imposition of a monstrous police state, the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent South Vietnamese, the incarceration in "re-education camps" of hundreds of thousands more, and a quarter of a century of abject poverty imposed by crackpot Marxist economic plans, which continue to this day. This, too, is the responsibility of the so-called anti-war movement of the 1960s

Toad, there was no war protesters in 1965 when the Marines landed. Tell me, why didn’t we just stove into Hanoi  that first week and secure the countryside?

China couldn’t be part of the equation could it?

In 68/72 when the war protests started in earnest, why was there 52 legal ways for rich white boys to evade the draft?

What was the military strategy for winning the war besides feeding working class kids to a meat grinder week after  week?
10Bears--

[Toad]

Originally posted by 10Bears:
Toad, there was no war protesters in 1965 when the Marines landed. Tell me, why didn’t we just stove into Hanoi  that first week and secure the countryside?

I'd guess you'd have to find Lyndon Baines Johnson and ask him just why he decided to fight the war the way he did.

China couldn’t be part of the equation could it?

If it was, it probably didn't need to be. I was flying an RC-135 off the coast during the period that China invaded Viet Nam in 1979... the very scenario that scared everyone witless. The Chinese certainly weren't supermen. In fact, their ineptitude in combat was pretty funny.

In 68/72 when the war protests started in earnest, why was there 52 legal ways for rich white boys to evade the draft?

Because Congress didn't want any of their sons to go? Can you name a Congressman/Senator that lost a son in VietNam? So your point is?

What was the military strategy for winning the war besides feeding working class kids to a meat grinder week after  week?

I've often wondered that myself. I actually wrote the "whiz kid" Bobby McNamara to find out why he did it that way but he never replied.

I do know that the junior officers that suffered through the war under the idiotic plan initially formulated by McNamara and carried to its ultimate failure later became the planners and leaders of the Gulf War. Seems they didn't use McNamara's logic in that one. Go figure.

Anyway, McNamara's book didn't provide an answer either; well, at least one that made common sense. I thought he was pretty self-serving. Maybe you'd have better luck. Let me know if he answers you.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Toad:

[QB]I do know that the junior officers that suffered through the war under the idiotic plan initially formulated by McNamara and carried to its ultimate failure later became the planners and leaders of the Gulf War. Seems they didn't use McNamara's logic in that one. Go figure.
QB]

I just started reading "Into the Storm", by Tom Clancy and General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.)  Fantastic book on the subject.

[dtango]

Toad:

Wow, didn't know you were a "raven"   (is that the right term?).  Love to have a discussion with you sometime about life in RC-135's - I have always been curious.  A non-classified discussion of course!

Thrawn:

I agree on Into the Storm.  Does go into the jr. officers that changed the military after Vietnam and ultimately lead the Gulf War.

LOL, I'm hijacking my own thread!  Stop it Tango, stop it!


Tango, Sargeant
-------------------------------------------
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412 Braunco Mustang Fighter Squadron
 

Of all the things in the world, ask not that events should happen as you will,
but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you will have peace.
-------Epictetus, Roman Stoic Philosopher-------

[Toad]

Tango,

I wasn't a "crow". I was a pilot.  


Initially I joined the 343 SRS and the patch had that sleepy raven on it. The "front end" crew.. pilots and navs... were in the same squadron as the "back end" crews, the Electronic Warfare Officers. The Security Service personnel, were, of course, in a completely different squadron. Those guys were extremely sharp.

As the mission and number of crews expanded, a decision was made to split the squadron into two different squadrons, the 343 SRS and the 38th SRS. The "crows" or Ravens as they more formally called themselves remained in the 343rd. (They hated being called "crows".. so of course, that's all we ever called them.   ) The pilots and navs went to the new squadron, the 38th.

Interestingly, one of the primary reasons for the switch was to create more command opportunities for non-pilot officers (ie: Navs and EWO's). There was a big brouhaha that these guys were not getting a fair shake in the promotion game due to the fact that flying squadrons/wings were always commanded by pilots. So, their opportunities to show their stuff and shine their resume were limited. I believe that they had a case.

In any event, the 343SRS became the dream assignment for EWO's with command aspirations.

As to the period I mentioned (without divulging classifed info) my crew flew a large number of those sorties. We volunteered for them; they were longer (built flying time faster so you timed out for the month earlier and got more days off) and they had receiver refuelings (the pilots always enjoyed that).

Nearly all the news "combat reports" that made the mainstream media concerning the Chinese incursion into North Viet Nam were generated from information collected by the RC-135's. We were "bylined" as "sources close to the battle zone". I often read summaries of intel my crew picked up in the newspapers about a week after the mission.

As I said, the Chinese were poorly led, poorly equipped and tactically deficient. It was funny listening to them (through our translators) scream at each other for their screwups.

[easymo]

President Johnson was a wealer dealer. A used car salesman in the oval office.  He believed that anyone could be forced to make a deal. He knew that Ho Chi Min liked Americans, and had been brow beat into the war by the South Vietnamese communist. And thought it would be easy to force him to the negotiating table.

  This I how we got started on the "war of attrition". And what caused a lot of the problems with the protesters.  War of attrition is just a fancy way of saying that we were there to kill people, period.  We were not there to capture anything, there was nothing there to capture. We were not there to conquer North Vietnam. That was not what Johnson was after.  He believed if we killed enough people, uncle Ho would be forced to make a deal.  Basically the same deal we wond up with in Korea.

  Two things went wrong. Ho Chi min was not a game show host.  He was a man of principal.  He was prepared to let his county die rather then give up.  President Johnson had no idea of how to contend with a man like that.

  And the war babies, as they used to call us, had been raised on a constant stream of WW2 movies.  In these, success was measured by ground captured, and advances made. Americans were always depicted as the good guys. In Vietnam we measured success by body counts.  And Hollywood always depicts us as mentally deranged to some degree. And usually as baby killers.  This practice continues to this day, for that matter.

  If Hollywood had shown the intentional targeting of women and children in Tokyo, Homberg, and Dresden, for fire bombing.  And, in the case of Dresden, the strafing of the servivors by P-51,s. The war babies might have had a real understanding of what war was about.  They might have been better prepared to wage war.  As it was, they could not understand a war waged just for the purpose of killing people.  To force the other side to the negotiating table.

 As fare a the Chinese thing goes.  Remember in the sixties our intel had us convinced that the Russians had even more Nukes then we had.  The sheer number of Chinese would sooner or later force us into using our nukes, then the Russians would use theirs.  An all out war with China would have meant literally the end of the world, as far as we knew.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: easymo ]

[newguy2]

Toad, there was no war protesters in 1965 when the Marines landed. Tell me, why
didn’t we just stove into Hanoi that first week and secure the countryside?
China couldn’t be part of the equation could it?In 68/72 when the war protests started in earnest, why was there 52 legal ways for rich white boys to evade the draft?What was the military strategy for winning the war besides feeding working class kids to a meat grinder week after week?  

 Remember a little battle fought in the fifties called the Korean War? What happened  after the UN troops occupied the northern part of that country? What was the outcome of that?

 With this still fresh in the minds of the politicians what did they do in Nam? Maybe like declaring North Vietnam off limits to US ground offensive operations? Which of course
meant that the war was unwinable as long as North Vietnam didn't care how many of their people died.

The draft that was in place during this time was a absolute disgrace. If you need a draft to fill out the militaries personnel needs, everyone goes. Rich, poor and middle class. No excemptions. If we ever walk this path again, the results will be the same again.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: newguy2 ]

[easymo]

"If you need a draft to fill out the militaries personnel needs, everyone goes. Rich, poor and middle class."

  LOL. You really are a new guy.  During the Civil War it was legal to pay someone to tke your place in the Army/draft.  Rich folks dont fight Americas wars, unless the intire nation is at risk.

[AKDejaVu]

"If you need a draft to fill out the militaries personnel needs, everyone goes. Rich, poor and middle class."

LOL. You really are a new guy. During the Civil War it was legal to pay someone to tke your place in the Army/draft. Rich folks dont fight Americas wars, unless the intire nation is at risk.

Wow easymoe... I'm amazed you only had to go back 120 years to support your statement.

Did you ever wonder why people had to use influence just to get their kids in the guard as opposed to active duty?  I don't suppose it was because they were able to buy them right out of the draft.

 

AKDejaVu

[newguy2]

LOL. You really are a new guy. During the Civil War it was legal to pay someone to tke
your place in the Army/draft. Rich folks dont fight Americas wars, unless the intire nation is at risk.

What the hell, does the civil war have to do with it? My father-in-law was in country for two tours 69-71 with the First Air Cav. He wasn't home for two days before one of those's who had bought their way out of the fight (as you called it) had the gall to call him a baby killer. I stand by what I said about the draft at that time. It was a disgrace.

[easymo]

He he.  Don't get to bent out of shape.  The Constitution is much more important to those of us on the lower end of the economic ladder, than it is to them.

BTW. During Vietnam, if your daddy was rich enough to send you to collage, thats all it took to stay out of the draft.

  PPS. The first cav almost got me killed.  Thats not a good example to wave at me    


PPPS.  One of my D.I.,s favorite sayings was. " I would rather have a sister in a potato house.  Than a brother in the national guard."

 He said it I didn't  

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: easymo ]

[newguy2]

BTW. During Vietnam, if your daddy was rich enough to send you to collage, thats all it took to stay out of the draft.

That's my whole point. If the rich folks kids
died at the same rate as the poor and lower middle class did. The war would have been won or settled long before it did. I'm worried about the same damn thing happening again.

   

  PPS. The first cav almost got me killed. Thats not a good example to wave at me  

Small world   He was in Second of the Fifth, Charlie Company. I'm sure he'd say, you almost got him killed trying to save ya  

Funny thing, about 5 years ago he was in a military theme type bar near Disney Land. He got talking to another guy who turned out to be a phantom pilot that he remembered from calling in air strikes. He was an RT.

Should point out that I was 18 in 1972. He's two years older that I. No college for me, had 300+ draft number.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: newguy2 ]