BF2S Forums The Vietnam and Iraq war...

Comrade Ogilvy wrote:

Any similarities?....

NO!

There are no similarities whatsoever. . . .

My dad fought in Vietnam, and my friends fought in OPIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

BOTH have talked amongst themselves and have said that neither war resembles comparable "war senarios" in detail . . . .

Different time, different place, . . . .

Last edited by fadedsteve (2007-07-29 05:14:15)

rub wrote:

yeah, America gets its ass kicked in a war, they never should have started. cause there were no reasons! I feel sry 4 ur soldiers, stupid politicians make them die 4 nothing...........

Idiot.

m3thod wrote:

rub wrote:

yeah, America gets its ass kicked in a war, they never should have started. cause there were no reasons! I feel sry 4 ur soldiers, stupid politicians make them die 4 nothing...........

+1

Iraqi Army surrendered 4 years ago smart one. An occupation is not exactly a war.

This is funny for me, because I like to study military history, which tends to have a very good political insight to people's ability to wage wars, and how politics very much revolve around the military.

At any rate, Vietnam was a failure because first off, LBJ was a dope. He literally sat in his office and ordered off bomb targets to the best of his own ability--he'd never even been a general. So first off, he wasn't letting one of the primary air assault branches do their job properly--the Air Force.
Then, he restrained the Army, requiring that the Army would have to kill X amount of people to get Y amount of supplies--this brilliant idea/philosophy was advocated by the genius known as Macnamara and the "whiz Kids".
LBJ was trying to micromanage the war--he wasn't a general, yet he thought he knew better than professionals who knew their job.
"Restraining your generals in war is like tying up the Hound of Han and commanding him to catch elusive hares."
-Sun Tzu

LBJ also required that if any attack on a fire/airbase ocurred, he'd have to be radioed, thousands of miles anyway, before the Americans could respond.
The result of this was that the VC would zero in an Airbase with mortars, and then vanish before the American troops could get clearance to search and destroy the mortar teams. This frustrating political reality--that troops were not allowed to do their jobs before getting clearance from  a politician who was botching the job helped to aggravate the problem.

Because the generals were thus restrained, LBJ devised a strategy on the go--this meant that helicopters would play a crucial war, commanders all agreed, but LBJ didn't fully exploit these advantages, believing that his carefully chosen bomb targets would win the war. There was no central strategy, it was just "Make it up as you go!"
It didn't help that LBJ issued a draft either, which really put the kabosh on the war effort. Most accounts agreed that had the draft not existed (and other things), the Vietnam war would have been far more winnable.

In 1968, when the NVA unleashed a massive TET offensive, LBJ shit his pants pretty much, he hadn't expected the enemy to be so powerful and have the audacity to challenge his troops head on.  The TET offensive was a massive failure for the NVA and VC, from which they never fully recovered, but it was enough that all the wimpy politicians in the white house started whining and were surprised their war 'strategy' wasn't doing the trick.

When Nixon was elected, Vietnam was such a mess, it'd be pretty difficult to win. He opted to let the generals try and do their job, the Air Force began a huge bombing campaign, the Marines introduced the Cobra gunship, and M16s had full chrome plating introduced--McNamara and his whiz kids believed that the M16 was perfect, blithely stuck their heads in the sand, and let the M16s in 'Nam jam. A secret upgrade in the factory had to be incorporated, because these brilliants would not authorize a real upgrade. Ingenious.

Now on the flipside, the British were fighting a similar, guerrilla war, only they didn't issue a draft, they had a strategy--they started isolating guerrilla work stations, bit by bit, it took them 20 years or so, but the British were successful against the Malaysian communist guerrillas because they utilized a carefully thought out strategy, didn't initiate a draft--hell they didn't even call it a war, they called it an emergency, it was still a war, but they didn't pump in thousands of troops instead of trying to contain it by sending more operatives and eliminating the VC opposition, like what Eisenhower planned to do, in Vietnam--unfortunately his terms were up. 


So now, Iraq, another guerilla/insurgent conflict where technologically superior civilization is fighting an inferior group of peoples, desperate, and motivated by one of the most powerful motivators in history--religion.
I'll say right now, the war is going, well, we have suffered minimal casualties compared to Vietnam in this stage, the populace is with us, and the Insurgents are slowly getting shut down. It is because we have a strategy, our president knows he is only a politician (not much of one anyway) and that the generals should do the job--they've actually had schooling.  To label Iraq as the Vietnam of the 21st century is a statement of folly, and only enemies of the United States, and ignorants on the subject, would try to pass that off.

Last edited by The_Mac (2007-07-29 08:17:01)

fadedsteve wrote:

Different time, different place, . . . .

Which is, of course, the entirety of a conflict's characteristics.  The only difference between the World Wars, for example, was that they were a couple of decades apart.

Spark wrote:

Bubbalo wrote:

Smitty5613 wrote:

no because there are nowhere near as many casualties as in Vietnam and we are not fighting local guerrillas, they are foreign taliban.......

A huge portion of the forces in South Vietnam were actually North Vietnamese.

That's better.

the Vietcong were south vietnamese "freedom fighters".... they werent from the north...

Turquoise wrote:

I would agree that this war is going better than the Vietnam War, but that's not exactly high standards to be using for comparison.

The thing that concerns me most about this war is the cost.  Yes, casualties are relatively low, and yes, some progress has been made.

Yeah, because restoring power (electricity) to the whole of Baghdad (even when originally naught was to be found in some areas) in a week is only 'some' progress.


I think the war costs more because we actually have a management that doesn't believe in the retarded LBJ "Y kills for X supplies" which means more funds are being appropriated to get the job done. Which is a good thing.

The_Mac wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

I would agree that this war is going better than the Vietnam War, but that's not exactly high standards to be using for comparison.

The thing that concerns me most about this war is the cost.  Yes, casualties are relatively low, and yes, some progress has been made.

Yeah, because restoring power (electricity) to the whole of Baghdad (even when originally naught was to be found in some areas) in a week is only 'some' progress.


I think the war costs more because we actually have a management that doesn't believe in the retarded LBJ "Y kills for X supplies" which means more funds are being appropriated to get the job done. Which is a good thing.

Wow... I was never a fan of LBJ, but you put WAY more faith in "the management" than I do.

I would think the cost is mostly due to contractors overcharging us and how we have to rebuild things so much.  Look up the Halliburton overcharging scandal for just the tip of the iceberg.

Vietnam...
Iraq...

Similar?



Nah!

m3thod wrote:

Comrade Ogilvy wrote:

Any similarities?....

No invitations?

The French invited us to Vietnam.

Commie Killer wrote:

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

Vietnam...
Iraq...

Similar?



Nah!

Do you want to contribute to the conversation or are you just going to be a tool?

Au contraire. Check it out...

Vietnam
Iraq

{dramatic music--- DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN}

Bubbalo wrote:

No, it doesn't.  The only thing close to resembling an ANZAC formation in Vietnam were the two NZ battalions who used ANZAC as a suffix.  But it wasn't an ANZAC formation: it was two NZ units working under the Australian command.  The Corps hasn't exist since WWII at the latest (and I'm not even sure about that).

*sigh*
ANZAC - Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. A term used to describe the combination of the Aussie Army and Kiwi Army Corps during wartime. Yes ANZACs DO exist today. If East Timor broke into fighting tomorrow and Aussie and Kiwi troops were sent as 1 force then they would be known as ANZACs.

usmarine2005 wrote:

m3thod wrote:

Comrade Ogilvy wrote:

Any similarities?....

No invitations?

INC anyone?