"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"David Looser" wrote in


Or: the US allowed it's cold-war paranoia about
"communism" to determine it's foreign policy.

Some of that, too. History says that we overestimated the Russians. True,
there was massive paranoia in the US about both the overestimated military
threat from the Soviet Union and also a palbable fear of communism as
such.

Note that we handled Egypt differently.

When did the US "handle" Egypt?

The Suez crisis. We chose not to support the UK.

Ah, "handling" by doing nothing, I see. But nobody supported the UK action
in Suez, not even the British, as Eden was to find out to his cost.

I'm sure this is an error of omission on your part, but
we had both chemical and biological weapons on hand that
we never used in Vietnam.

Well OK, but these weapons had never been used anywhere
by the US, and rarely by any other nation as much because
of real doubts about their utility and safety (to one's
own troops) as because of ethical concerns.

Agreed.

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot like chemical
and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The defoliants were
mostly 2, 4D which is a household chemical in the US.

Simply using defoliants amounts to biological warfare. The destruction of
crops, not to mention the environmental damage, is an act of war in it's own
right.
Any many household chemicals are dangerous when misused (and I can't think
of a worse misuse than the way it was used in Vietnam).

Not so many as what? There are many well documented
examples of atrocities committed by both sides during the
Vietnam war.

They were exceptional cases.

Too common to be "exceptional"

Everybody makes mistakes.

The US tried
it's damndest to win that war, and failed.

Not our damndist. Not even near.

I find that a bizarre claim.

You seem to prefer to underestimate the US.

How do you work that one out? Or are you saying that *the only way* that the
US could have lost is if it didn't try? Arrogance or what?

The Vietnam war cost the US dear.

Not really all that bad.

All the deaths, the injuries and broken lives.

Vietnam 58,209 deaths
Korea 53,686 deaths
WW2 405,399 deaths
WW1 116,516 deaths

Oh, only a mere 58 thousand deaths, hardly worth worrying about was it? I
suspect that the 58 thousand bereaved families thought otherwise.

The social disruption, the alienation of a generation, the
loss of international repetition not to mention the huge
financial cost.

The Vietnam war had hardly any actual impact on day-to-day life in the US
other than TV news. And, the current wars may actually be causing more
perceived loss.

That, I guess, would depend on where you were and who you associated with.
Certainly protests against the Vietnam war were a running theme throughout
the 1960s, and indeed helped to define that decade.


And you are telling me that the US paid
that price, and then lost the war simply *because it
didn't try*? Unbelievable!

AFAIK, Britiain lost the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812
for exactly that reason. Together, they cost Britain one of the most
valuable colonies in the history of man.

Trying to change the subject now? I am not going to get sidetracked into
introducing yet another war into this thread!

Returning to the subject, I don't believe that the US spent 20 years and
near enough 60 thousand deaths *not trying*. It's not a sane argument to
make.

It didn't lose because it wasn't trying, it lost
because it had the wrong troops and the wrong strategy.

The troops were at least adequate.

Most historians seem to agree that poor moral amongst US
conscripts was a major factor in the US defeat.

No, history says that the poor morale was in Washington DC and among
civilians.

Does it? But just now you said that, apart from the TV news, the Vietnam war
had "hardly any effect" on day-to-day life in the US, so which is it?
Anyway, particularly with a conscript army, you can't separate civilian and
troop morale like that. Poor morale amongst the conscripts is well
documented.

It was the wrong strategy that ruined our effort,

And underestimating the enemy (always a mistake).

If you want to talk about paying a price, count their costs!


Immeasurably higher than yours of course, but then the war was being fought
on their patch, they had massive civilian casualties as well as military
ones. But from a military POV they had the advantage of the moral
high ground that comes from fighting for national survival, not merely for
some long-discredited political theory or to save the face of military
commanders and out-of-touch politicians back home, which is all the American
troops were fighting for.

Not having rules of
engagement would not have made a difference to the final
outcome.

That makes me believe that you don't understand how
limiting rules of engagement can be and in this case,
were.

So what were these limiting rules of engagement?

That's a long story:

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~tpilsch/AirOps/cas-roe.html


Be careful what links you post. Following up your link lead me to this:-

quote
According to an article by Maj. Mark S. Martens of the U.S. Army's Judge
Advocate-General's Corps and a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military
Academy, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School, all these rules were
"radically ineffective." Often they were simply ignored. In some cases,
illiterate peasants couldn't understand leaflets dropped to warn them that
their villages would soon become a free fire zone. In other cases, hurried,
forcible evacuations left large numbers of defenseless civilians behind, to
be killed by bombing, shelling, small arms assaults, or burning. "The only
good village," went one bit of cynical GI wisdom, "is a burned village."

Ineffective efforts to rein in the GIs' propensity to create free fire zones
in Vietnam resulted in a sense among many Vietnamese as well as Americans
that U.S. forces were undisciplined. More important, perhaps, the widely
touted grand plan to capture the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese was
immeasurably diminished by the perception-let alone the outbreaks of
reality-that Americans did not value Vietnamese lives.
unquote

Hardly supports your argument does it?.



There has been an unfortunate tendency in the west to
understate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of
Hitler.

I don't know about that.

Apparently not.


You seem to forget that Stalin killed or jailed virtually every senior
officer before the war started.

Yes, *before* the war. Once the war started, though, he largely left his
generals to form strategy without interference from him.


I'm not sure what you mean by "We tried hard to keep WW2
from happening".


You get to have whatever opinon you want. ;-)

Yes I do.

I don't think that anybody else tried harder to do the right thing than
Wilson and the US.

I'm not decrying Wilson's desire to do "the right thing". But claiming that
it can be interpreted as "trying hard to keep WW2 from happening" is simply
historical revisionism.

Certainly France and Britain were all to eager to do
the wrong things.


Don't forget that those nations had lost *millions* of lives to WW1.
Furthermore much of the war had been fought on French soil with the
consequent loss of civilian lives and the devastation that caused. France
had lost over 4% of it's population. Hence there was a strong mood,
particularly in France, that the Germans should pay for the damage they had
caused. I agree that the level of reparations imposed at Versailles turned
out to be both futile and counter-productive, but the mood is
understandable. Little different from the mood in America after 9/11.

David.

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"David Looser" wrote in


Or: the US allowed it's cold-war paranoia about
"communism" to determine it's foreign policy.

Some of that, too. History says that we overestimated the Russians. True,
there was massive paranoia in the US about both the overestimated
military
threat from the Soviet Union and also a palbable fear of communism as
such.

Note that we handled Egypt differently.

When did the US "handle" Egypt?

The Suez crisis. We chose not to support the UK.

Ah, "handling" by doing nothing, I see. But nobody supported the UK action
in Suez, not even the British, as Eden was to find out to his cost.

I'm sure this is an error of omission on your part, but
we had both chemical and biological weapons on hand that
we never used in Vietnam.

Well OK, but these weapons had never been used anywhere
by the US, and rarely by any other nation as much because
of real doubts about their utility and safety (to one's
own troops) as because of ethical concerns.

Agreed.

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot like chemical
and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The defoliants were
mostly 2, 4D which is a household chemical in the US.

Simply using defoliants amounts to biological warfare. The destruction of
crops, not to mention the environmental damage, is an act of war in it's
own
right.
Any many household chemicals are dangerous when misused (and I can't think
of a worse misuse than the way it was used in Vietnam).

Not so many as what? There are many well documented
examples of atrocities committed by both sides during the
Vietnam war.

They were exceptional cases.

Too common to be "exceptional"

Everybody makes mistakes.

The US tried
it's damndest to win that war, and failed.

Not our damndist. Not even near.

I find that a bizarre claim.

You seem to prefer to underestimate the US.

How do you work that one out? Or are you saying that *the only way* that
the
US could have lost is if it didn't try? Arrogance or what?

The Vietnam war cost the US dear.

Not really all that bad.

All the deaths, the injuries and broken lives.

Vietnam 58,209 deaths
Korea 53,686 deaths
WW2 405,399 deaths
WW1 116,516 deaths

Oh, only a mere 58 thousand deaths, hardly worth worrying about was it? I
suspect that the 58 thousand bereaved families thought otherwise.

The social disruption, the alienation of a generation, the
loss of international repetition not to mention the huge
financial cost.

The Vietnam war had hardly any actual impact on day-to-day life in the US
other than TV news. And, the current wars may actually be causing more
perceived loss.

That, I guess, would depend on where you were and who you associated with.
Certainly protests against the Vietnam war were a running theme throughout
the 1960s, and indeed helped to define that decade.


And you are telling me that the US paid
that price, and then lost the war simply *because it
didn't try*? Unbelievable!

AFAIK, Britiain lost the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812
for exactly that reason. Together, they cost Britain one of the most
valuable colonies in the history of man.

Trying to change the subject now? I am not going to get sidetracked into
introducing yet another war into this thread!

Returning to the subject, I don't believe that the US spent 20 years and
near enough 60 thousand deaths *not trying*. It's not a sane argument to
make.

It didn't lose because it wasn't trying, it lost
because it had the wrong troops and the wrong strategy.

The troops were at least adequate.

Most historians seem to agree that poor moral amongst US
conscripts was a major factor in the US defeat.

No, history says that the poor morale was in Washington DC and among
civilians.

Does it? But just now you said that, apart from the TV news, the Vietnam
war
had "hardly any effect" on day-to-day life in the US, so which is it?
Anyway, particularly with a conscript army, you can't separate civilian
and
troop morale like that. Poor morale amongst the conscripts is well
documented.

It was the wrong strategy that ruined our effort,

And underestimating the enemy (always a mistake).

If you want to talk about paying a price, count their costs!


Immeasurably higher than yours of course, but then the war was being
fought
on their patch, they had massive civilian casualties as well as military
ones. But from a military POV they had the advantage of the moral
high ground that comes from fighting for national survival, not merely for
some long-discredited political theory or to save the face of military
commanders and out-of-touch politicians back home, which is all the
American
troops were fighting for.

Not having rules of
engagement would not have made a difference to the final
outcome.

That makes me believe that you don't understand how
limiting rules of engagement can be and in this case,
were.

So what were these limiting rules of engagement?

That's a long story:

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~tpilsch/AirOps/cas-roe.html


Be careful what links you post. Following up your link lead me to this:-

quote
According to an article by Maj. Mark S. Martens of the U.S. Army's Judge
Advocate-General's Corps and a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military
Academy, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School, all these rules were
"radically ineffective." Often they were simply ignored. In some cases,
illiterate peasants couldn't understand leaflets dropped to warn them that
their villages would soon become a free fire zone. In other cases,
hurried,
forcible evacuations left large numbers of defenseless civilians behind,
to
be killed by bombing, shelling, small arms assaults, or burning. "The only
good village," went one bit of cynical GI wisdom, "is a burned village."

Ineffective efforts to rein in the GIs' propensity to create free fire
zones
in Vietnam resulted in a sense among many Vietnamese as well as Americans
that U.S. forces were undisciplined. More important, perhaps, the widely
touted grand plan to capture the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese was
immeasurably diminished by the perception-let alone the outbreaks of
reality-that Americans did not value Vietnamese lives.
unquote

Hardly supports your argument does it?.



There has been an unfortunate tendency in the west to
understate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of
Hitler.

I don't know about that.

Apparently not.


You seem to forget that Stalin killed or jailed virtually every senior
officer before the war started.

Yes, *before* the war. Once the war started, though, he largely left his
generals to form strategy without interference from him.


I'm not sure what you mean by "We tried hard to keep WW2
from happening".


You get to have whatever opinon you want. ;-)

Yes I do.

I don't think that anybody else tried harder to do the right thing than
Wilson and the US.

I'm not decrying Wilson's desire to do "the right thing". But claiming
that
it can be interpreted as "trying hard to keep WW2 from happening" is
simply
historical revisionism.

Certainly France and Britain were all to eager to do
the wrong things.


Don't forget that those nations had lost *millions* of lives to WW1.
Furthermore much of the war had been fought on French soil with the
consequent loss of civilian lives and the devastation that caused. France
had lost over 4% of it's population. Hence there was a strong mood,
particularly in France, that the Germans should pay for the damage they
had
caused. I agree that the level of reparations imposed at Versailles
turned
out to be both futile and counter-productive, but the mood is
understandable. Little different from the mood in America after 9/11.


Interesting that the 'Netcops' here don't rush up whining about 'OT' threads
these days! ;-)

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article
, Arny
Krueger wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot
like chemical and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The
defoliants were mostly 2, 4D which is a household
chemical in the US.

That seems a very odd comment.

Bleach is a common household product. But is also
sometimes used by bank robbers to squirt into the eyes of
people and make their robbery easier.



Many simple 'everyday' chemicals can also be used for
other purposes. e.g. the use of such to make large
car-bombs for terrorist activity. As I think has been
seen in the USA as well as elsewhere.

So I'm not sure why one chemical being "houshold" for
some purpose somehow means its use in a conflict for
other reasons can be dismissed.

The problem I think David was referring to was the
deliberate use of 'chemical agents' for (declared)
purposes of defoliating lare areas of land. Said
chemicals then had all kinds of side-effects and damaging
consequences.

It would equally seem odd to me to dismiss dropping
napalm on civilians because "people use similar gels like
vaseline at home".

The Vietnam war cost the US dear.

Not really all that bad.

All the deaths, the injuries and broken lives.

Vietnam 58,209 deaths
Korea 53,686 deaths
WW2 405,399 deaths
WW1 116,516 deaths

It would be interesting to now compare those figures with
the totals for the two WWs. And perhaps with the total
deaths in the earlier two.

Google is your friend!

The executive summary - American losses in every major war we were involved
in after the Civil War have been minimal. In the past 150 years we have been
highly successful at cutting our losses and our enemies lost big time, in
every war we participated in, even the ones that we didn't win.

"David Looser" wrote in
message
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"David Looser" wrote in

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot
like chemical and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The
defoliants were mostly 2, 4D which is a household
chemical in the US.

Simply using defoliants amounts to biological warfare.

OK we killed some plants (biological entities) using chemicals.

In every war some people and animals (biological entities) are killed.

The British, French and Germans defoliated a large chunk of France. OK, they
used explosives (chemicals). They saved their poisonous chemicals for
killing people.

The destruction of crops, not to mention the
environmental damage, is an act of war in it's own right.

You seem to be conflating killing plants and killing people.

I see a big difference!

"Keith G" wrote in message


Interesting that the 'Netcops' here don't rush up whining
about 'OT' threads these days! ;-)

The big difference being that its not the 1001st wasted argument about tubes
and LPs.

In article , Arny
Krueger
wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article , Arny
Krueger wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot like chemical
and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The defoliants
were mostly 2, 4D which is a household chemical in the US.

That seems a very odd comment.

Bleach is a common household product. But is also sometimes used by
bank robbers to squirt into the eyes of people and make their robbery
easier.



Many simple 'everyday' chemicals can also be used for other purposes.
e.g. the use of such to make large car-bombs for terrorist activity.
As I think has been seen in the USA as well as elsewhere.

So I'm not sure why one chemical being "houshold" for some purpose
somehow means its use in a conflict for other reasons can be dismissed.

The problem I think David was referring to was the deliberate use of
'chemical agents' for (declared) purposes of defoliating lare areas of
land. Said chemicals then had all kinds of side-effects and damaging
consequences.

It would equally seem odd to me to dismiss dropping napalm on
civilians because "people use similar gels like vaseline at home".

The Vietnam war cost the US dear.

Not really all that bad.

All the deaths, the injuries and broken lives.

Vietnam 58,209 deaths Korea 53,686 deaths WW2 405,399 deaths WW1
116,516 deaths

It would be interesting to now compare those figures with the totals
for the two WWs. And perhaps with the total deaths in the earlier two.

Google is your friend!

For the last point I made, yes. But I doubt google could explain the
oddness of you other assertions about "household chemical" etc as if that
dealt with the use in conflict.

The executive summary - American losses in every major war we were
involved in after the Civil War have been minimal.

Your executive summary seemed to make no mention of the losses of your
allies. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article , Arny
Krueger
wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"David Looser" wrote in

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot like chemical
and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The defoliants
were mostly 2, 4D which is a household chemical in the US.

Simply using defoliants amounts to biological warfare.

OK we killed some plants (biological entities) using chemicals.

Did "you" (in the sense you use "we") not also kill others with those
chemicals? Partly due to factors like starvation and loss of livelyhood.
Partly due to the effects those chemicals on the population. Have you
perhaps forgotten Agent Orange and the other 'agents' used, and for example
long term cancer-causing 'side effects' some turned out to have?

Or are things like these now "non history" in the USA and have been blanked
from textbooks and memories? if so, a curious parallel with the way history
was revised in the USSR as suited the current beloved leader(s). Shades of
1984...


You seem to be conflating killing plants and killing people.

I see a big difference!

You may see a difference. But you don't seem to have seen that the
chemicals may have also directly or indirectly killed or harmed people. So
perhaps reality doesn't always provide the clean division your reponses
assert or presume. Maybe your scope of vision is too narrow.

I'm not trying to argue who is/was better or worse (morally) than others
when it comes to conflict. Just pointing out that the reality was that
those 'household chemicals' may well have caused deaths and injuries -
sometimes years after the US forces abandoned the place and helcoptered
away. Sometimes even to those unborn when the chemicals were sprayed. Not
quite as neat and tidy as you "see" perhaps. Perhaps you could take time to
reflect on this and not simply rush to dismiss what I've said. The truth is
rarely pure or simple.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:34:11 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

I'm not trying to argue who is/was better or worse (morally) than others
when it comes to conflict. Just pointing out that the reality was that
those 'household chemicals' may well have caused deaths and injuries -
sometimes years after the US forces abandoned the place and helcoptered
away. Sometimes even to those unborn when the chemicals were sprayed. Not
quite as neat and tidy as you "see" perhaps. Perhaps you could take time to
reflect on this and not simply rush to dismiss what I've said. The truth is
rarely pure or simple.


I recall that it was an initiation rite for US pilots to take a drink
of Agent Orange at the start of a tour of duty; they believed that it
was harmless to humans. It was only later back home that the birth
defects in babies became a matter of public scandal.

d

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"David Looser" wrote in


Not so many as what? There are many well documented
examples of atrocities committed by both sides during the
Vietnam war.

They were exceptional cases. Everybody makes mistakes.

Anyone, who has visited Vietnam, has spent a day or
two in the Saigon (HCMC) War Museum.

They cannot have missed the exhibition of explicit
black and white press photographs taken by GPD
(The Dutch Press Agency) and Reuters showing an
American "intelligence gathering" session, with Vietnamese
children being dragged by their heels across bumpy ground
by US armoured personnel carriers. The pictures too of
Vietnamese women tied to tree trunks with their throats cut,
because they would not divulge the whereabouts of their
menfolk, are sickening.

These pictures were taken before the Americans had time to
remove the corpses. Many people left the exhibition in a hurry
with handkerchieves pressed to their mouths.

I readily bought the t-shirt, the proceeds from sales of which
go to Vietnamese widows and orphans, which said in
Vietnamese "I am NOT an American"

Iain

"Keith G" wrote in message
...


Interesting that the 'Netcops' here don't rush up whining about 'OT'
threads these days! ;-)


Only when it suits them:-)

Judging by the number of posts, this has been one of the
most interesting threads on UKRA for a very long time.
Good to see some traffic.

Iain