AHC:PRevent the AMerican "Doltchstosslegende" After the Vietnam war

[SergeantHeretic]

This one is simple, how do we prevent the arising of the "Stabbed in the back" myth after the end of the war in Vietnam.

The so called "Doltchstosslegende" that created the myth that the U.S. in Vietnam was defeated because of the peace movement and acedemics and those who opposed the war.

How do you make sure the the blame falls where it belongs, with the Washington leaders and strategists who mismaneged and then lost the war due to micromanegment mishandling and straight out incompatence.

(Not to mention the over the top comical incompatence and stupidity of the fechless kleptocracy in Saigon.)

How early do you have to go to prevent the misdriection of blame for American defeat in Vietnam?

[MerryPrankster]

Oh no, SergeantHeretic has been possessed by Snake Featherston. Maybe he's a Goa'uld.

Here's an idea: Have Richard Nixon, when running in 1968, blame the hell out of MacNamara, LBJ, etc. as part of his election. He's a Republican and they're Democrats, after all.

(This doesn't mean he can't slam the hippies too--The Spitting Image is a load of crap, there were antiwar people who were cruel to the soldiers too.)

[ModernKiwi]

Have the US keep to it's secret accord with South Vietnam and resume bombing the crap out of NVA forces when they invade in 1975 and keep supplying the South Vietnamese armed forces. Result: Repeat of the NVA defeats of '72/'73 and South Vietnam stays as a nation state. Therefore no defeat in Vietnam.

[freivolk]

Humpfrey wins the election of 1968. He follows a poltic of "Vietnamisation" similar to OTL, but without a Invasion in Cambodshia. 1972 North-Vietnam starts his Eastern-Offensive, Humpfrey hesitate to recall the bombing stop and South Vietnam collapse. The Republicans lay the full blame for the disaster on the incompetens of the democratic Administration. In November 1972 Ronald Reagan wins in a landslide and never forgets in the next eight years to remember everybody, that the Democrats leaded the Nation in a futile Land war in Asia.

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by ModernKiwi

Have the US keep to it's secret accord with South Vietnam and resume bombing the crap out of NVA forces when they invade in 1975 and keep supplying the South Vietnamese armed forces. Result: Repeat of the NVA defeats of '72/'73 and South Vietnam stays as a nation state. Therefore no defeat in Vietnam.

Well, it's nice to see some "oh we could have easily won" in this thread

[Plumber]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

Well, it's nice to see some "oh we could have easily won" in this thread

No one said that it's easy, but if that had happened South Vietnam would be around.

This myth doesn't have much credence in the US, anyways.

[ModernKiwi]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

Well, it's nice to see some "oh we could have easily won" in this thread

Don't know where you got that from.

None of that fixes the screw up that is the South Vietnamese state, but the historical evidence points to the US air support in '73 being one of the decisive reasons why that invasion failed.

Throw into that the fact that some ARVN units were quite competent and you have an ability for the South Vietnamese to carry on for many more years - who knows they may even be able to pull a South Korea. All of which meets with the original posters question.

[Killer300]

Originally Posted by ModernKiwi

Don't know where you got that from.

None of that fixes the screw up that is the South Vietnamese state, but the historical evidence points to the US air support in '73 being one of the decisive reasons why that invasion failed.

Throw into that the fact that some ARVN units were quite competent and you have an ability for the South Vietnamese to carry on for many more years - who knows they may even be able to pull a South Korea. All of which meets with the original posters question.

The last is ludicrous beyond belief. South Korea, while having a brutal dictatorship, did have a competent government.

South Vietnam did not, and additionally, had no legitimacy. If the US doesn't station troops there, it will not survive as a state past a couple years, air support be damned.

[ModernKiwi]

Incompetency in government and indeed dodgy legitimacy does not stop the country from continuing. Please do however explain how short of a full scale invasion from the North that the South would have fallen?

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by ModernKiwi

Don't know where you got that from.

None of that fixes the screw up that is the South Vietnamese state, but the historical evidence points to the US air support in '73 being one of the decisive reasons why that invasion failed.

Throw into that the fact that some ARVN units were quite competent and you have an ability for the South Vietnamese to carry on for many more years - who knows they may even be able to pull a South Korea. All of which meets with the original posters question.

"Some ARVN units" is a pretty useless characterization, sure you had the ARVN rangers, marines, and airborne which were competent, but those units were not able of holding the line by themselves when every other part of the ARVN was incompetent and composed of soldiers who really didn't give a crap about the state they were fighting for.

And the whole air support == won war thing is just absurd. The logic is that, well air power delayed RVN defeat in 1973 -> it will delay RVN defeat indefinitely, despite overwhelming air power being unable to achieve victory for the last 10 years. And the entire reason why the US committed ground troops in 1965 in the first place was because the failure of air power to delay a RVN defeat indefinitely.

[ModernKiwi]

The reason why air power was decisive in 1973 and would have again been in 1975 was that the invasion was a conventional invasion. You know, trucks, artillery, tanks. The whole long tail with logistical support etc etc that is highly vulnerable to air attack, bridges being dropped, that kind of thing.

The fact that airpower was less than decisive against guerilla forces is completely irrelevent to this scenario.

[Matt Wiser]

The '72 Easter Offensive was an all-out, full-scale conventional invasion. It wasn't no guerilla uprising. The NVA were using armor, artillery, etc; 20 divisions, with 600 tanks coming south from the DMZ, out of Laos, and from Cambodia. U.S. Airpower helped blunt the offensive, but it was the ARVN on the ground that ultimately stopped it.

As for the OP's question: Have a POD of 1965: LBJ decides that he wants his own man as SECDEF, and gets rid of MacNamara (and in so doing, the whole Whiz Kid bunch as well). And he gets a SECDEF who tells him that if he wants an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam, he's got to go all-out. Cut the Trail, mine the harbors, unrestricted bombing of North Vietnam, etc. Basically, what both Westmoreland and Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp (CINC-PACCOM at Pearl Harbor and Westmoreland's immediate superior) wanted to do. None of this "porportional response" or "graduated response" (what ROLLING THUNDER started out as) BS. Either go in fighting to win, or don't go in at all.

[Killer300]

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

The '72 Easter Offensive was an all-out, full-scale conventional invasion. It wasn't no guerilla uprising. The NVA were using armor, artillery, etc; 20 divisions, with 600 tanks coming south from the DMZ, out of Laos, and from Cambodia. U.S. Airpower helped blunt the offensive, but it was the ARVN on the ground that ultimately stopped it.

As for the OP's question: Have a POD of 1965: LBJ decides that he wants his own man as SECDEF, and gets rid of MacNamara (and in so doing, the whole Whiz Kid bunch as well). And he gets a SECDEF who tells him that if he wants an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam, he's got to go all-out. Cut the Trail, mine the harbors, unrestricted bombing of North Vietnam, etc. Basically, what both Westmoreland and Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp (CINC-PACCOM at Pearl Harbor and Westmoreland's immediate superior) wanted to do. None of this "porportional response" or "graduated response" (what ROLLING THUNDER started out as) BS. Either go in fighting to win, or don't go in at all.

And promptly get slapped back as political realities insue on why we didn't do that, which could include everything from China invading to the whole situation going nuclear.

[jaybird]

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

Either go in fighting to win, or don't go in at all.

The last time that happened, half the PLA came pouring over the border.

Then again, the last time that happened, the American puppets evolved into a functioning democracy that's now one of the most prosperous nations in Asia while the Communist puppets...well. All in all, I suppose it comes down to how sunny it gets down in Indochina.

[pnyckqx]

Originally Posted by SergeantHeretic

This one is simple, how do we prevent the arising of the "Stabbed in the back" myth after the end of the war in Vietnam.

The so called "Doltchstosslegende" that created the myth that the U.S. in Vietnam was defeated because of the peace movement and acedemics and those who opposed the war.

How do you make sure the the blame falls where it belongs, with the Washington leaders and strategists who mismaneged and then lost the war due to micromanegment mishandling and straight out incompatence.

(Not to mention the over the top comical incompatence and stupidity of the fechless kleptocracy in Saigon.)

How early do you have to go to prevent the misdriection of blame for American defeat in Vietnam?

In a word...win.

That probably wasn't going to happen no matter what we did with the leadership that was in place.

Second, some of the writers and fighters needed to get their books out earlier, before the apologists took up typewriter at bidding of the perfumed princes.

Joe Galloway and Hal Moore took too long to write "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" And David Hackworth didn't get About Face out until 1989.

The Generals and field grade officers hoping for advancement in the post Vietnam Military kept their mouths shut. The writers who pleased the powers-that-be got advancement, and the fighters who knew better got maxed out at colonel if they were lucky.

Third, and i have mixed feelings about this one, too much good and bad can come of it. We needed better congressional oversight of the Vietnam war. Generals and political hacks needed to be called to account for some of their decisions. In particular...you and i discussed some of this...some of the obviously 'inflated' body counts and after action reports that were designed to advance an officer's career needed to be carefully looked at.

"Excuse me Colonel (fill in the blank), would you mind explaining to this committee how you arrived at a claim of 276 dead enemy, when only 23 bodies were discovered by actual count with less than 20 weapons...Oh, the Viet Cong carried their dead off...really? A Viet Cong Battalion is about 300 men. How could 30-40 survivors in the middle of combat actions carry off 250+ bodies AND weapons through your 'perfect seal'?

[Matt Wiser]

There's no way the Soviets are going nuclear over what happens to NVN. Premier Kosygin, when he visited Hanoi in early '65, called the NVN "First-Class Bastards." The Chinese have their own problems: namely, something called the Cultural Revolution. (PLA vs. Red Guards, to name but one problem...) Such fears from October, 1962 and from Korea were overblown, IMHO. Though that fear influenced policymakers....

The actual course of the war was a recipe for failure. And it all falls on SECDEF MacNamara and LBJ. The former had the gall to testify before a Congressional commitee that when reports got back to D.C. that there was a bomb shortage for ROLLING THUNDER, he testified under oath there was no such thing. Well, guess what? There was. You had guys going out with one or two 500-pounders on their A-4s or F-105s, to try and drop a bridge that wasn't worth one. I met a former POW (6 1/2 years in Hanoi) who went out in an A-4 with two 250-pound bombs to try and drop a railroad bridge-along with his squadron. The bombs failed, he was shot down, and he went to the Hanoi Hilton. He still despises MacNamara today.

Want to prevent the "stab-in-the-back?" Have congressional hearings in 1969-70: force MacNamara, MacGeorge Bundy (National Security Advisor), Rusk (SECSTATE), and some of the Whiz Kids as well, to testify as to why they made the decisions in 1965, and did they still stand by those decisions. Expose the mismanagement, the micromanagement, etc. and let the blame fall where it belongs: on the civilian leadership in D.C. The military did what the civilian leaders told them they could do, and they did that to the best of their abilities. If such hearings were held, I'd love to hear how some Whiz Kid tried to explain to Carrier admirals why they shouldn't mount Combat SAR into North Vietnam: "it's more cost-effective to train new pilots than it is to risk more aircraft and crews to go after downed pilots." That led to not only said Whiz Kid getting kicked off the carrier, but one Admiral said "I doubt Mr. MacNamara has a morale setting on his computers."

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by ModernKiwi

Have the US keep to it's secret accord with South Vietnam and resume bombing the crap out of NVA forces when they invade in 1975 and keep supplying the South Vietnamese armed forces. Result: Repeat of the NVA defeats of '72/'73 and South Vietnam stays as a nation state. Therefore no defeat in Vietnam.

Wouldn't that violate the even more secret accord with North Vietnam to cut the south loose and allow the North to overrun the south after a reasonable interval.

[RGB]

Somehow I don't think the OP is going to get his question answered. Instead he will get long lectures about how the political class kept stabbing the army in the back

[MacCaulay]

Don't we already have a thread on this? Like...isn't it exactly the same thing? Yeah, you guys could say "oh, but he's not saying 'have the VC win a battle'" but the main point is the same, isn't it?

[RGB]

Originally Posted by MacCaulay

Don't we already have a thread on this? Like...isn't it exactly the same thing? Yeah, you guys could say "oh, but he's not saying 'have the VC win a battle'" but the main point is the same, isn't it?

Different OP though I bet both questions were inspired by that epic Snake vs. Matt exchange in Chat.

It will pass into AH.com memetic legend when "American Doltchstosslegende" will be universally joined by "Whiz Kid(s)" as a common shorthand for this scenario's respective ideological starting points.