Blame Clinton For 9-11

[daniel]

Synon:

Never mind about Read. I read his postings just for a chuckle. (or an upchuck)

Hugo:

The political will was there. Every human that Westmoreland had asked for was granted and in doing so President Johnson would announce to the public a figure about half that amount. The people in his inner circle recognized this as an outright lie to the public but played along with it.

When Nixon campaigned for the Presidency, he pledged for an all-out bombing of Hanoi to bring the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. When questioned about this tactic because the previous President's pledged the same, Nixon replied "Because this time we will do it." not acknowledging that it had already been done without public knowledge.

So there you have it: manpower and all-out bombing. The only thing missing was a full groundforce invasion of North Vietnam which the Presidents didn't want to do because that would bring China and the Soviet Union into the war too. The US only wanted to stop the domino effect and to a full blown nuclear war with the USSR.

[Hugo]

When Nixon campaigned for the Presidency, he pledged for an all-out bombing of Hanoi to bring the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table... Every human that Westmoreland had asked for was granted.

This is an example of a lack of political will. Westmoreland either did not have the political will to win or the governmental authority to do what was necessary to win.

In WWII, the bombing campaign against Germany was nothing more than a precept to invasion, and the only acceptable outcome of that war to the Allies was the complete destruction of Nazi Germany.

The political will was not to win the Vietnam war, it was to somehow preserve South Vietnam without confronting the fact that should have seemed obvious: the only way to ensure the continued existence of South Vietnam was the destruction of North Vietnam. The war aims specified that a certain strategy was essential, and that certain strategy was never followed.

If the successive Vietnam-era administrations were not going to do this, they should have pulled out, and sooner. Clausewitz was wrong. War is not the continuation of politics by other means, war is the cessation of politics.