That is a Godwin, but to address it?
Look, Ho Chi Minh was an "evil" man. But unlike Stalin, maybe Mao, and other examples of human evil (Pol Pot, Idi Amin and
Robert McNamara), he had his goal/vision and he was efficient about it.
Example? He knew his nation would be bombed when it challenged the United States and that his nation would suffer horribly. His air generals started planning for that aspect of the war in 1958 when they sent carefully screened candidates to the soviet union to learn everything the Russians knew about air defense against a dominant enemy air force. Their success was in the returning trained cadres understanding that against the Americans, the Russian model would not work. A total war bombing campaign would reduce North Vietnam to ruins inside 6 weeks. THAT is what the students told Ho and his air generals. They had to try something else. So they added a propaganda element to HOBBLE American airpower by portraying an absolute air campaign as a war crime before the world community. It worked.
This was much the same as the rest of the Vietnamese war strategy. Attack the American mind via
wearing down the will of the enemy. That is not so much Mao Zedong, who stole it from Sun Tzu, as it is Clausewitz. Find the enemy's strategic center and impose your will upon it. Television became a weapon of war. That is PURE unadulterated political/military genius.
I don't care what you've written about anybody other than what you have written in this thread. I am commenting on your comments here, now. You however, seem to think I should be reading what you've written about in other threads. I have no idea why. You stand or you die by what you're writing now.
I see that we do not agree. Fine. I tell you, that your argument died here
when you claimed I did not understand Sun Tzu and implied you did.
"“Do not engage an enemy more powerful than you. And if it is unavoidable and you do have to engage, then make sure you engage it on your terms, not on your enemy’s terms.” –
Sun Tzu"
Let's see if I can pick a specific nation's 10 leaders that made that mistake?
Japan.
10 individuals who ignored the above quote and fell into American traps or were easily defeated.
1. Tojo. Oil embargo. He should have seen that one coming after he authorized the Indochina operation to take it over from Vichy France.
2. Hyaakutake. CARTWHEEL. Wrong target, wrong threat axis and wrong objective.
3. Fukodome. Halsey's ambush of his Special Attack Force RIKKO off Taiwan. ( A real beauty that one. Never take any bait an American offers.)
4. Yamamoto. Coral Sea, Midway, Solomon Islands, and finally his own death. Eyes wide open and headed into one ambush after another ambush. Never learned.
5. Takagi, (Braindead Takeo) lucked out at Java Sea, Failed at 4th Fleet, failed at 6th Fleet and seems to have never understood that brute force without a plan against the USN is kind of pointless.
6. Nagumo. ("If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.") That defines the ditherer of Pearl Harbor, Midway, and how Nagumo died on Saipan.
7. Kurita. ("The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach.") Well he flunked that one at Samar... TWICE. First at the moment of decision, he ran for his life. Then ("On the day they are ordered out to battle, your [enemy's] soldiers may weep, those sitting up bedewing their garments, and those lying down letting the tears run down their cheeks. But let them once be brought to bay, and they will display the courage of a Chu or a Kuei.") TAFFY 3 was the bunch he cornered and he got what he deserved, the yutz. Also forgot the one about leaving a cornered enemy an escape route through which they will pass and be killed. (The German example is the Falaise Gap. SAMAR is the American one.)
8. Horii. Kokoda Trail. That general forgot "“There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.” Also forgot what Sun Tzu specifically said about marching over ground which the general does not know.
9. Matsuoka. Not exactly Sun Tzu, but his failures fall under Sun Tzu's "Know Your ENEMY" maxims. Specifically Americans... "“You're in America now," ... "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.” Attributed to Jim Butcher of "The Dresden Files".
10. Suzuki, if possible a bigger fool than Matsuoka. Chose his words poorly when he "Ignored the Potsdam Declaration". In other words, he tried to appear strong, before his fellow Japanese, in a situation where his American enemy had offered him the sandwich and thereby earned the gun.
