Questions for our American friends

[ultrawildcat]

facinating discussion by the way,,thank you for this

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

not arguing, as your statements are correct, but, and I admit it's been years since I read it, but isn't one of the underlying themes of "The Art of War" to make war so exhausting and deplorable amongst the civilian population of the attacking army, the military loses popular support at home,,,,surely that played a role in the continental's victory..monarchy or not, the king must have still heard the grumblings among the civilian population, even among his own nobility, and that gave him pause to think

Wasn't the King, who wasnt behind the policies of the UK, at that point a functioning constitutional monarchy. The There was a substantial element of Parliament that supported the Colonists -- Fox and the Whig Party opposed the policies of Lord North and the Tories.

On guerrilla war, it only gets you so far. Guerrillas fighting against an overwhelming conventional army alone will ultimately lose. Again, I'd point to Vietnam. General Giap gets my vote as one of the twentieth century's great strategic thinkers . . . On a par with George Marshall. If you look at Giap's strategy, it was always a mix of conventional and guerrilla.

Absent the NVA, the Vietnamese would never have been able to defeat France, let alone the US. If you look at battles like Dien Bien Phu, you're seeing conventional army, not guerrillas. Same with battles at An Loc

Absent a solid conventional Army and Navy, the colonists would have lost the Revolution.

[bombermouse]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

not arguing, as your statements are correct, but, and I admit it's been years since I read it, but isn't one of the underlying themes of "The Art of War" to make war so exhausting and deplorable amongst the civilian population of the attacking army, the military loses popular support at home,,,,surely that played a role in the continental's victory..monarchy or not, the king must have still heard the grumblings among the civilian population, even among his own nobility, and that gave him pause to think

Much more than grumbling, the merchants, England's backbone, were taking a beating on lost trade and captured ships, especially after France got involved. There was significant loyal opposition to the war when it started and it grew as the war became more and more costly with no clear end in sight.

[ultrawildcat]

Originally Posted by bombermouse

Much more than grumbling, the merchants, England's backbone, were taking a beating on lost trade and captured ships, especially after France got involved. There was significant loyal opposition to the war when it started and it grew as the war became more and more costly with no clear end in sight.

ok,,here's a thought,,I concur that the war could never have been won in a conventional sense without the colonial regulars.Subtract the colonial regulars from the equation, I wonder if the constant guerrilla harassment would have eventually led to England's withdrawl as a lost cause.

[ultrawildcat]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Again, I'd point to Vietnam. General Giap gets my vote as one of the twentieth century's great strategic thinkers . . . On a par with George Marshall. If you look at Giap's strategy, it was always a mix of conventional and guerrilla.

from what I can remember of my history, he was fighting vietnam as a giant game of Go,,which the U.S didnt recognize, as they insisted on waging the war as a game of chess.

[bombermouse]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

from what I can remember of my history, he was fighting vietnam as a giant game of Go,,which the U.S didnt recognize, as they insisted on waging the war as a game of chess.

The war the American military fought was not the war they prepared for or strategized. For most of the war, political considerations dictated operations and strategic objectives. I'd say it was more a case of the US command wanting to play chess but half the chess pieces had to move diferently than normal.

The General I worked for then had a large, framed portrait of Gen. Giap on the wall facing his desk to ensure he would never forget who he was up against.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

from what I can remember of my history, he was fighting vietnam as a giant game of Go,,which the U.S didnt recognize, as they insisted on waging the war as a game of chess.

The "Go" analogy is interesting.

I think the bottom line is that Giap and Ho Chi Minh understood Vietnam much better than the Americans. The tragedy of it all is that South Vietnam really was worth saving. . . Hanoi wasn't/isn't as bad as Kim Il Sung's North Korea, but you can't say that communism was a blessing for Vietnam. Had the South survived, perhaps it would be like South Korea today (?)

One interesting sidenote about Giap: if you look around the 'Net, you'll find a purported quote from his memoirs that says something like

Originally Posted by purported quote from Vo Nguyen Giap

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!

The claim is made that this is in his memoirs, and is popular among right wing types who like to blame our defeat in vietnam on the left.

Trouble is . . . the quote is spurious, and makes no sense. The Vietnamese would hardly ascribe victory to Jane Fonda . . . they lost more than 1 million people in the war, which they view as a considerable sacrifice, and they think that sacrifice won the war.

[bombermouse]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

The "Go" analogy is interesting.

I think the bottom line is that Giap and Ho Chi Minh understood Vietnam much better than the Americans. The tragedy of it all is that South Vietnam really was worth saving. . . Hanoi wasn't/isn't as bad as Kim Il Sung's North Korea, but you can't say that communism was a blessing for Vietnam. Had the South survived, perhaps it would be like South Korea today (?)

One interesting sidenote about Giap: if you look around the 'Net, you'll find a purported quote from his memoirs that says something like

The claim is made that this is in his memoirs, and is popular among right wing types who like to blame our defeat in vietnam on the left.

Trouble is . . . the quote is spurious, and makes no sense. The Vietnamese would hardly ascribe victory to Jane Fonda . . . they lost more than 1 million people in the war, which they view as a considerable sacrifice, and they think that sacrifice won the war.

An interesting and unknowable "what if." I always thought the domino theory was crap, but what happened after we left followed that model almost exactly. In the end, it didn't matter, Vietnam's overreaching failed and things returned to a stable model.

On the subject of Vietnam, like every subject under the sun, there is a mass of lies and distortion drifting around on the net. Most people pass such things around uncritically, caveat emptor.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

...consider Napoleon in Spain . . . the guerrillas made life hard, but it took Wellington and regular soldiers to actually win military victories.

You don't always need military victories to win a war, Comrade. What you always need is to stop the enemy's will to fight

Vietnam is a good example. But Afghanistan is the best - no invader has ever won there. Not England, not the USSR, not the USA, not The Khan or even Alexander the Great

You can be superior in nearly every way, but if the people are against you, you will lose, especially if that includes your own people

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by palo5

You don't always need military victories to win a war, Comrade. What you always need is to stop the enemy's will to fight

Vietnam is a good example. But Afghanistan is the best - no invader has ever won there. Not England, not the USSR, not the USA, not The Khan or even Alexander the Great

You can be superior in nearly every way, but if the people are against you, you will lose, especially if that includes your own people

True, but holding ground enables you to recruit. In many contested territories, the population is trying to take the temperature of the politics "should I be more afraid of/eager to please the Americans, or the Taliban"

When conventional armies are forced out of a region -- as the British were in New Jersey -- the insurgents can begin recruiting, and can also intimidate those working with the other side.

One of the seldom told stories of the American Revolution was the intimidation of loyalist Americans ("Tories") who, when British forces were absent, were unprotected. Many of the loyalists ultimately ended up in Canada.

Afghanistan is a strange, uniquely awful place. That great nations consider it an important place to send their kids to fight will forever rank as one of the mysteries of the time . . . its the "Gateway to nowhere".

The strange thing about the Taliban and Afghanistan is that US casualties actually don't amount to much at all. The total for coalition forces for Afghanistan for the last 10 years is under 3000 KIA.