Ignorance of Vietnam
Is Iraq Another Vietnam?
By Daniel Muniz

Anti-war activists love to toss around the word “Vietnam” when discussing the current military operations in Iraq. Many of these individuals and activist groups somehow have the notion that just saying “Vietnam” automatically means that they have won an argument.

Back in the Middle Ages, before the age of enlightenment, that is how debating was done. It didn’t matter if you were right or wrong, the moment you brought up the heavyweights of the ancient world such as Socrates or Aristotle into your argument, you were going to win that debate. And it was irrelevant if you were totally wrong because the authoritative figures of the ancient world still carried a definitive influence. As a result, much scientific progress in medicine and other disciplines were stifled for centuries because of this form of thinking.

And today is not much different with politics.

The activists seem to think that they know so much about Vietnam that by uttering the name of that country they feel that they have obtained the moral high ground about our presence in Iraq. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

Admittedly, popular culture, the media, and spoiled Hollywood celebrities have helped shaped an enormous ignorance about Vietnam. One of my favorite movie directors, George Lucas, has often boasted that Vietnam had inspired portions of his Star Wars saga. Lucas admired how rebels of a Third World country such as Vietnam could defeat the mightiest nation on earth. In Episode XI, Return of the Jedi, the Battle of Endor was, in many ways, his tribute to the Viet Cong.

George Lucas is ignorant of military history. I love his movies but as with most of Hollywood and popular culture, they have an unbalanced and unhealthy view of history and of the facts.

In March 2, 1962, the air war known as Rolling Thunder against North Vietnam began. This campaign was probably the best opportunity for the United States to give the decisive blow to the communists of the Hanoi regime. But it failed. This air campaign lasted for three years but it did not accomplish any strategic results. North Vietnam continued the war and it continued sending troops and equipment to the South.
 

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Overall, Rolling Thunder failed because of the enormous restrictions placed on it. President Lyndon Johnson had famously boasted:

“I won’t let those Air Force generals bomb the smallest outhouse without checking with me.”

LBJ also said:

“I spent ten hours a day worrying about all of this, picking the targets one by one, making sure we didn’t go over the limits.”

So exactly what were the limits that LBJ was referring to?

In fact, many people are simply unaware of the massive micro-management involved in Rolling Thunder in particular and during the entire Vietnam War in general. LBJ had an extremely narrow view of how the war was to be conducted and won. And it would only be won on his terms; that is the Hanoi regime would sue for peace. In fact, LBJ would often suspend bombing to see if the North Vietnamese were ready to negotiate. They never were.

As a result, three years of Rolling Thunder embodied everything that is bad about micro-management.

The air campaign was designed to do a lot of bombing but not necessarily do a lot of damage to any critical military targets. Unfortunately, much of this effort was never intended to bring a collapse to North Vietnam as it was to bring them to the bargaining table. The Johnson administration naively expected that bombing would get fast results on a diplomatic level instead of on a military one.

Below are some good examples of this mentality:

Government buildings in downtown Hanoi were never designated as targets.

Bill Clinton didn’t mind bombing government buildings in Baghdad during his administration although he specifically wanted them done at night. Apparently, killing the cleaning crew was more desirable than hurting any governmental officials.

In the beginning of the air campaign, North Vietnam’s air defense was dismal at best although they were being supplied and upgraded by China and the Soviet Union on a regular basis. The entire air defense network could have easily been destroyed if a comprehensive plan was put into place within the framework of Rolling Thunder.

However, American fighter jets could not strike a surface-to-air missile (SAM) site unless they were attacked first. It was irrelevant that such sites were military targets and that they would eventually menace our own fighters. All in all, almost 5000 SAMs were used during Rolling Thunder that brought down 101 of our own aircraft. Even the absurdity of the “rules of engagement” reached tragic proportions when Navy pilots found 111 SAMs sitting on rail cars outside of Hanoi. The pilots were not allowed to destroy them.

Our fighters were not even allowed to destroy enemy aircraft sitting on runways or in hangars. In fact, at one time or another, many enemy airfields were off limits. Our military had plenty of reconnaissance photos of such aircraft and they knew their exact locations but they could only be engaged when they were actually in the air.

By the end of Rolling Thunder, North Vietnam had 1,158 AAA gun emplacements with a staggering 5,795 guns. By that time, the Hanoi regime upgraded its SAM sites, deployed modern radar facilities, and had plenty of Russian MiG fighters at its disposal. What were practically non-existent defenses were now quite formidable.

The naval side of the war was just as bad. Again, all pilots could do was just look at the shipping going into Haiphong Harbor instead of sinking the supply ships. North Vietnam doesn’t have any significant industrial base so almost all of its equipment and supplies to mount a war in the South had to be imported. Many strategists simply felt that most if not all of the materiel could be prevented from infiltrating into South Vietnam, then the war could be won. How else could the enemy fight a war without supplies and equipment?

But this was never done.

Equipment and supplies could only be destroyed if and only if they posed an immediate threat to our forces. It was irrelevant if they were being transported or just sitting on the ground or on a ship. Instead of targeting the supply centers and ports, LBJ forced our military to wait until the enemy materiel's were distributed through tens of thousands of bicycles, sampans, and trucks. Instead of disrupting an entire supply chain at its source, we were restricted to concentrate our tremendous firepower at thousands of entry points.

And here is another interesting insight. Oil is the life blood of any conflict.

Again, during Rolling Thunder, the North Vietnamese had little to worry about. The Hanoi regime had absolutely no oil fields or even refineries to process imported oil. So how could the communists maintain an enormous fuel supply for such a massive military machine to fight us year after year (jet fighters, tanks, trucks, etc.)?

Its fuel and other petroleum products had to be imported and most of it came from the Soviet Union.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that if you cut off the oil, then you would bring just about any military machine to its knees much like Germany and Japan during World War II. But unlike WW II, petroleum products could freely travel by water, rail, and road to their large tank farms. And very few of the tank farms were ever bombed. Even when storage facilities were finally targeted, by then North Vietnam had plenty of time to safely disperse their fuel supplies.

Although this micro-management from Lyndon Johnson is ridiculous, it is worthy to note that the press mostly ignored such developments although they continued to focus on our losses and anything that had blood or suffering attached to it. The press of today is not much different from their predecessors in Vietnam.

I have illustrated only a handful of the restrictions that were placed by the White House and by our own Congress during the Vietnam conflict. But equipment, supplies, and fuel are the basic requirements to engage in any type of war. Without them, an enemy is not able to wage any kind of war. Unfortunately, the United States was never permitted to destroy them or at least close down how they entered North Vietnam.

The actual list of restrictions is much too long to go into detail here but they were significant and mind boggling.

Our forces in Iraq do not have anywhere close to the kind of self-defeating constraints that our troops had in Vietnam. Our military have already achieved tremendous successes over the terrorists yet their triumphs are hardly ever reported except to account for casualties. This convenient lack of reporting is what creates an enormous amount of ignorance about what we have really done in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the same thing happened in Vietnam.

Hollywood and many activists still subscribe to the viewpoint that America was defeated in Vietnam by a rag tag Third World army wearing pajamas. And in many ways, they feel that the same thing is happening in Iraq especially since the media doesn’t comprehensively report the numerous accomplishments and successes achieved by our military.

During Vietnam, we had an awesome arsenal at our disposal but we were never permitted to fully utilize it. As a result, comparing Iraq to Vietnam is absurd because our military today has the capability and most importantly, the permission to actually pursue victory. The United States is using all of its substantial assets to the fullest extent possible to defeat terrorists and those who seek to usurp the fledgling Iraqi democracy.

There is no micro-management in Iraq. Instead we have leadership from our commanders leading our troops. And ultimately, this time is different because we are allowed to win. And win we will.

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COMMENTS FROM READERS

The answer is not yet! But if the liberals get a chance it will probably be worse. I served in Vietnam and am sick to death of hearing how we lost the war. Absolute BS is what I say. The war was lost by the stupid politicians and they could possibly cost us this one. -Phillip