Friday, October 4, 2013

The most crucial stage of war

As we discussed in class on Thursday, the Vietnam war can be divided into three stages -- 1) US involvement in Indochina (without US troops actively fighting); 2) Escalation; and 3) Vietnamization.  The majority of your readings over the weekend take place during the Escalation period.

What were some of the goals set forth in the escalation plans?  What knowledge do you think was driving the military actions?  How would you evaluate them (feel free to use the last document if you need help with your criticism)?


13 comments:

  1. Part of escalation included bringing in as much US troops as possible, however the problem with this, as stated in McNamara's piece, is that the enemy will only respond with much more troops. This can lead to a stalemate and gruelingly long war along with the loss of excessive amounts of money. I very much agree with him that our goals during escalation to fight the war for the Vietnamese were very wrong. Like McNamara said, "In essence, we find ourselves...no better, if anything, worse off. This important war must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves." However, the first soldier's letter struck me because it gave some insight a to why a soldier may want to fight. I guess the last cartoon describes the situation best. Those that support and those that repent escalation are both "blind" in their arguments. Neither were acting out of awareness in the world, they are just acting to act.

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  2. One goal was to commit 600,000 US troops. This would allow for a large barrier to be created. However, this would make it more difficult for the war to end. One country is always going to do what ever it takes to defeat the other. At one point or another, too many troops on both sides would be drafted. Also, the pressure for bombing the North increased. I think the knowledge was who held the most power, the spread of Communism, and the US witnessing the Vietcong treat women and children harshly. I still see the US as wanting to have as much power as possible and making sure Communism does not spread.

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  3. Like stated by Ashley and Nicki, The US had plans to commit about 600,000 troops and quite contradictingly the US also wanted to 'give' the war back to the vietnamese. But as hindsight has shown us, this plan failed spectacularly. As US troops became retreat instead of backing off as well the Viet Cong only came with more troops than ever, and depending on the point of view, the Viet Cong relative to their losses slaughtered the US troops. Not only was this a military defeat but a financial one as well, with the US wasting Millions upon hundreds of Millions on the exodus from Vietnam.

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  4. The main plan was to bring in more troops. They wanted to threaten North Vietnam which would seem like a great plan, it turned out to be a mistake because i turned out that the Viet Cong had way more troops then expected. This caused a lot of American deaths. Many say the US troops took the biggest hit in this war (statistically).

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  5. The goal of escalation was to well, escalate the war. They wanted to bring in more troops, as i think every person has stated before me in their own blogs. But there were issues with this because the Viet Cong had the ability to bring in even more. I think the American Military underestimated the Viet Cong and their abilities because they were the big kids on the block with more nukes, but, as the others have also said before me, more Americans died instead because of this.

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  6. The main goal of escalation was to increase war. This goal was out into action by placing 600,000 troops in the action. One would think that this would be more than enough power but we were completly wrong. We underestimated the shear numbers that the Vietcong brought to the table. Which resulted in the death of many United States troops. Like trent said, not only were we defeated militarily but also financially. We wasted way too much money on this war given the outcome.

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  7. The escalation plan is to put more troops in Vietnam as us intelligence estimated reaching 600,000 soldiers.Tonight's reading is not much about how the escalation plan is, instead it is mainly about how Macnamara oppose the further escalation plan and his 5-pronged to achieve this goal. Basically Macnamra thinks us should maintain military pressure in Vietnam given the fact than Communists are waiting US to give up and pull out. Macnamara suggests that US shall cautiously limit the increase in troops, build a barrier on 17th parallel, prognosis the situation and stabilizing the rolling thunder program. In my opinion, america is somehow in a dilemma at this point, play soft will facilitate the morel of communists and play tough would be just like the reading says "Vietnam was beginning to look like a bottomless pit which US dumping precious money and precious man "

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    Replies
    1. Plus, the soldier's letter is an interesting window to open to see the mentality of the front line. It make me sad when he says: "It's horrible to read a paper and see our own people aren't backing you up " given that facts that he mentioned earlier women and kids were slaughtered and one second u r talking to a dude and one second after he is dead.

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  8. I think it was a really nice idea to kind of have the Vietnamese ultimately win their country back in a way that they didn't need help from outside. But obviously they did. The problem was that the more troops the US send in to help the Vietnamese, the more troops were mobilized by the Viet Vong. That was the predicament: both sides putting in always more effort than the other made the fighting even worse, but didn't give the US any advantage at first.

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  9. Escalation was a plan to attempt to overwhelm the Viet Cong with sheer numbers. This didn't really work, however, as they were prepared and strong enough to combat this US aggression. The Viet Cong used guerilla style fighting techniques, which the US were not prepared for. The more troops the US sent in, the more were killed. This was the story of the war.

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  10. Secretary McNamara summons that the only possible way to shut down Viet Cong would be to send a "substantial number of additional troops"- over 600,000. There was knowledge that the Chinese would intervene, but the way they would do so was questionable: would they prevent the war in DRV or cause the war to expand? McNamara later evaluates that pacification has gone backwords; the US has less control of the population and there are more enemies, so he creates new goals which include: 1. stabilizing forces in Vietnam and 2. Installing a barrier. I'm not really sure how to evaluate these goals. All I can see is a lot of (arguably unnecessary) war and uncertainty is in the picture.

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  11. Escalation is without a America's way of laying down the law in Vietnam. as the war started it was obvious that the Vietnamese were not going to back down, so the US had one option and that was to go all out. but that would mean sending over 600,000 troops as McNamara stated which would be seen as threat to other countries in that general area. Many of the people who were a part of the war (i.e. the troops), didn't fully understand why they were fighting and many of the people who wanted to end the war knew that the war was not in the best interest of the american public.

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  12. Escalation was to raise the number of troops involved to 600,000. I think that the US had thought that the Viet Cong could have been outnumbered easily with a raise in US involvement, but they were mistaken as the more troops that were sent into Vietnam, the more they were slaughtered. The Viet Cong had more to fight for than the US, and I think that is a huge indicator of how a conflict will develop.

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