Thats like saying Small arms can’t win wars, as all the Viet Cong bombing, air superiority, and naval missions prove. The VC did pretty good against us
Yet despite massive state aid and a highly incompetent enemy (the US and ARVN) the Viet Cong lost and were almost exterminated by the end of the war. In the event it was an attacking force of PAVN T-54s and 100,000 infantry that took Saigon, not the Viet Cong.
You being British you better than anyone should understand it was the incompetent politicians and not the troops.
So what? Whoever was at fault - politicians or troops - the net result was that the war fought against the VC/PAVN was fought incompetently.
Quote: “So long as everyone is sane and (importantly) sober, that’s largely true. Sadly, it is actually quite rare for both conditions to be fulfilled in human society.”
Well, remember, the U.S. is peopled by Scots, Irish, and Germans.So, it may be difficult to find both qualities present in a single moment… 
Maybe so, but the weather is a great deal better so they don’t drink nearly as much. What would be normal drinking in say the UK would be regarded as being a borderline alcoholic in the States.
In this day, and age it surely would be, I have been walking the streets of Edinburgh Saturday night at closing time, reminds me of the movie doomsday a bit. But I live in Milwaukee, where drinking is a destination, we have a department of Beer and power. Although we have the great huge freshwater Lake Michigan right here, most locals still prefer their water to be surrounded by beer. The better weather just makes them thirstier. (In all fairness, the beer here is only 3.2 to 4.1 % alcohol, with just a few being perhaps 6, or 8 % from local microbrewers) so even our local brigands are somewhat tea-totalers by U.K. standards.
All funning aside, the U.S. consumption day to day, has dropped, and the police are using new laws to ensure no drunks on the roads, the legal limit here, and many other states is .08, (about one sip, and a sniff of a Guinness)to qualify for driving under the influence, and for those who really cant hold their liquor, there is a lesser offense, driving while impaired, which will superceed the .08 limit if one appears to be unable to drive properly, but does not blow an .08 or greater. I dont drink, gave it up years ago, but beer is a part of our local culture, and history. Milwaukee was at one time the brewing capitol of America.In the early days (for America anyway) the 1840’s the residents were pretty much German, or Polish, so nary a drop ever hit the ground.
As a matter of interest, who among those for or against guns has ever shot; shot at; or confronted another person while armed with a loaded firearm and been willing to shoot to kill?
I have.
Twice.
I could, and certainly in one case should, have handled things differently. But I was young and full of the unthinking and self-righteous piss and vinegar which is common among people who think that using guns to protect their loved ones and homes is a good idea.
If either case had turned out differently I would have been in gaol, and two people could have been dead who didn’t need to be.
Those two instances are among the strong reasons why I think that it’s not a bad idea to keep firearms away from citizens who might be a bit inclined to use a gun to overcome their self-perceived weakness in situations where a life could be taken unnecessarily.
EDIT: Actually, it should be three times. I forgot one.
O, how we poor citizens of lesser nations yearn to live in a country of the utmost power which, rightly, puts beer before power. 
America, despite its various faults, always manages in the end to hold up the highest standards of civilisation and culture. 
Well, one out of two ain’t bad.
No offense, but doesn’t the UK have a much longer, more stable tradition of democracy than Argentina?
The Main Force Regulars were armed with a lot more than a few scattered guns. And those that didn’t fillet themselves during Tet were wiped out by the “Operation Phoenix” program…
Um, no, you’re wrong. It just took a while, and there is a good deal of confusion of what the VC/National Liberation Front were. But they were separated into “Main Force Regulars” which were highly competent, experienced men (and women) that were probably trained to an even better standard than the average NVA soldier, while the rest were “militia” types that filled out at night…
The NLF were destroyed not through purely military means, as you grunts are largely useless for such tasks, ;), but through a targeted program called Operation Phoenix, which grew from what was to be an interrogation and data collection program into an outright assassination pogrom. But at least it was a targeted one.
BTW, rumor has it that something similar, and more modern and slightly less bloody version, has been used in Iraq by US special operations forces…
Oh dear!
Facts intrude into delusions of freedom by gun. :shock:
An aspect which is largely ignored by NVN and Western writers nowadays is that the VC cadres imposed a reign of terror on the hamlets and forced people into VC service in various capacities, from carriers to riflemen. The VC was not universally populated by committed volunteers.
The VC oppression should have been a total failure, but the antipathy towards the SVN and US generated by militarily logical (by US doctrine) but ultimately unthinking search and destroy exercises etc made the VC the lesser of two evils, and reinforced the VC in ways at the local level which the US couldn’t begin to hope for as an occupying force despite its well-intentioned ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaign.
The growth of the VC during the war was perhaps more a condemnation of American failure to understand the war it was fighting and the nation in which it was fighting than it was of any outpouring of patriotism by peasants who largely probably had little conception of a national identity, apart from that forced upon them by the SVN / American / Allies assaults upon their homes, crops, families, and livelihoods.
The NLF/VC gained power because the Saigon gov’t was institutional corrupt and unable to mount a serious counterattack organizationally. The VC’s success was as much a “secret war” or intelligence war as it was a guerrilla or sometimes conventional battle…
The Phoenix program actually did to the secret NLF shadow gov’t what it had been doing to the Saigon one, assassinating or capturing (the original intent was the latter actually, but the former became far more prevalent) key, effective NLF leaders.
It worked, very well!
I’m well aware that the US (eventually) virtually destroyed the opposition on the field of battle. The point being that they did so at a cost they couldn’t afford, and doing so lost them the war. I regard that as incompetence.
In fairness to the Yanks, they were guests in SVN unlike the Brits in Malaya who were the colonial power able to exercise all the powers which might have allowed the Yanks in Vietnam to win if they weren’t subject to the control of SVN corrupt zombies.
But it wasn’t the “field of battle,” it was the field of a secret/dirty war…The Vietnam War was fundamentally two wars, both largely involving a Vietnamese civil war…A conventional battle against the NVA, and a counterinsurgency war against the NLF…I think you’re drastically oversimplifying things…
And we can argue all day why the US “lost” the War in which everyone “lost and won” (from the title of a great book on the subject). But I would challenge anyone to “win” in those circumstances where politcal considerations overwhelm the purely military ones. And most militaries have their institutional incompetencies, including the one you serve in…
PDF know what he’s talking about. I agree with PDF. Everybody else is wrong. Don’t take no lip from these guys PDF. Your the man!