🚀 go-pugleaf

Thus Spake mshinn@osf1.gmu.edu (Michael T Shinn):

%Nevertheless, it was lack of resolve, lack of a clearly defined objective
%that lost that war, brought on by partisian warfare and PC bombings.  But
%then again, there was so much more to that complicated conflict - still to
%say that the Vietnam war was lost because the PAVN had tanks is laughable.
%IF you recall, the PAVN gots its forces soundly defeated all over Vietname
%turn Tet.  They lost the battles - the conventional battles, but they won
%the war because they broke our will to fight.

To suggest that the ARVN would have rolled over and died due to further partisan
activities is laughable at best.  The partisan war was largely won by 1973, and
only the regular PAVN infantry divisions, with armored brigades in support, were
able to finish off the ARVN.

%You should know, as a soldier, that even the smallest effort of force if
%it draws away a larger force is effective in winning the battle.  Thats
%the entire premise behind resisting when captured, it takes far more
%people to keep you captive if your not cooperating than if you were just
%passive and playing by the rules.  All those folks keeping you from
%getting out *aren't* fighting the war - and might as well not even be in
%the war.
%
%Wars are not won with simple firepower or force of arms.B

No.  But the final decision is one of simple firepower.  All else is irrelevant
except as a factor of how much firepower it can distract from the main effort.


%: You have to kill someone to have an insurgency.  Otherwise it's simply
political
%: action.  
%
%Uh... if you recall they *did* kill people - Police officers during a few 
%protests that got way out of hand. And Ghandi went on a hunger strike to
%stop it, got the strike ended as a result, got arrested, went to jail -
%got out... and so on.  

Ghandi was engaging in a peaceful political movement.  The fact that the British
overreacted to it is irrelevant as far as that definition is concerned.


John M. Atkinson
jatkinso@gmu.edu
"A nation which despises its soldiers will all too soon 
have a despicable army
                 --Jerry Pournelle