Vietnam War query

It strikes me that most depictions of the Vietnam War indicate that political decisions trumped war prosecution. Now, however it happens, how does the war change if the generals are given free rein to "get the job done," assuming they know how and the politicians dictating their moves are silenced.

What happens when the 'kid gloves' come off?
 
Look the other thread this week at,
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=371339

The problem is IMO that the political factors are about not starting WW3 or losing the US support for the war and therefore the army's funding (risking losing both Vietnam and CW), both of them trump any 'war prosecution' in importance even if later generals and commentators are not willing to agree and want a stab in the back story to shift any blame.
 
^Agreed. Remember that American military officers since World War Two have been very reluctant to go to war of any kind in the first place and reluctant to escalate as well.

I don't see General Westmoreland being all that interested in "taking the gloves off" when he was in charge.
 
the "arm chair generals fucked it up!" line is largely a myth, I mean short of an invasion of North Vietnam itself, or the use of nuclear weapons, we did EVERYthing, we bombed and invaded Laos and Cambodia, and dropped enough bombs on NV to pave the whole country in 6 inches of steel.

any ways the military is unlikely to invade NV or use nuclear weapons, and if they did ether, well there'd be World War III, at best with the first one the Vietnamese would badly bloody us before the Chinese forcefully step in, and we get the second round of the Korean War, one with a far worse out come for us
 
the "arm chair generals fucked it up!" line is largely a myth, I mean short of an invasion of North Vietnam itself, or the use of nuclear weapons, we did EVERYthing, we bombed and invaded Laos and Cambodia, and dropped enough bombs on NV to pave the whole country in 6 inches of steel.

any ways the military is unlikely to invade NV or use nuclear weapons, and if they did ether, well there'd be World War III, at best with the first one the Vietnamese would badly bloody us before the Chinese forcefully step in, and we get the second round of the Korean War, one with a far worse out come for us

It's the US equivalent of the "stab-in-the-back" theory...
 
Westmoreland wanted to go north: not into NVN, mind, but Laos. Cut the HCM Trail and bring the NVA into open battle. Lam Son 719 in 1971 was essentially the Westmoreland plan, but with ARVN instead of U.S. Forces. He had a plan involving the 1st Cav, 4th ID, 3rd Marine Division, and Thai forces, and he felt it was workable. Much to his lament, such contingency plans "Gathered considerable dust." The State Department felt it would infringe on Laotian neutrality (guaranteed by the U.S., the Soviets, Red Chinese, and, ironically, Hanoi). Well, excuse me, Mr. Striped-pants diplomat, aren't the NVN already violating Laotian neutrality by (a) staging combat units through Laos to Cambodia and SVN, (b) having base areas for NVA divisions in Laos near the SVN border, and (c) moving war materiel and other supplied down the trail to support said combat units?

Two other things the JCS wanted early on was to mine the NVN harbors (Navy A-1 squadrons were practicing mine drops off of NAS Cubi Point in the Philippines in the 1964-65 period), and do away with the restricted/prohibited target areas around Hanoi and Haiphong: basically, let the air commanders choose targets and strike MiG fields and SAM sites without any concern for killing Soviet advisors at those targets (to give one example).

Essentially, none of the "Graduated Response" stuff that MacNamara and the Whiz Kids favored is what the JCS wanted: "If we're going in, we go all out or we don't go in at all." No bombing pauses, none of this "Hurt them a little to see if they cry Uncle" nonsense. Again, as I've said previously, the goal is not to take NVN (nobody wanted that), but to force them to stop supporting the VC in the South and withdraw NVA forces from SVN. Essentially, force Hanoi to recognize the independence of South Vietnam. That was the goal; but no thanks to LBJ and MacNamara, we didn't go about it very well.
 
...

Essentially, none of the "Graduated Response" stuff that MacNamara and the Whiz Kids favored is what the JCS wanted: "If we're going in, we go all out or we don't go in at all." No bombing pauses, none of this "Hurt them a little to see if they cry Uncle" nonsense. ...

Who made the remarks quoted in that section?
 
the "arm chair generals fucked it up!" line is largely a myth, I mean short of an invasion of North Vietnam itself, or the use of nuclear weapons, we did EVERYthing, we bombed and invaded Laos and Cambodia, and dropped enough bombs on NV to pave the whole country in 6 inches of steel.

Everything eventually.

In the air war in particular political interference was pronounced, which is why ridiculous in hindsight on/off "message sending" campaigns like Rolling Thunder were conducted, compared to more effective ones like Linebacker I and II at the end of the war.
 
The political interference in ROLLING THUNDER was pretty bad at first: approach routes, time-over-target dictated by either DOD or the White House, the 30NM restricted/10NM prohibited zone around Hanoi (and a 10NM/4NM restricted/prohibited zone around Haiphong), no strikes on MiG airfields or SAM sites under construction (for fear of killing Soviet advisors), etc. It wasn't long until some of these were lifted (SAM sites were fair game when they started shooting at U.S. aircraft, strikes into the Hanoi area began May 19, 1967, some strikes on NVN airfields, etc., but not enough.

LINEBACKER I did more damage to the NVN's infrastructure in two weeks than ROLLING THUNDER did in three years. Apart from a ten mile buffer zone south of the PRC border, any military target in NVN was fair game for LINEBACKER. Nixon and Kissinger, along with SECDEF Mel Laird, let the air commanders do their job. Unlike LBJ and MacNamara.....
 
That's cool. What would have happened, say, if bombing had killed a whole bunch of Soviet Advisors. What if the Soviet Ambassador had been under one of those bombs.

What would the Soviets have done? Would they have just said 'oh poop'? Would they have withdrawn? Would they have decided that this sort of thing requires payback? Would payback have come in Vietnam? If so, what form would that take? Or would payback come elsewhere?
 
The Soviets admitted in 1988 that 16 of their advisors were killed in action in Vietnam, and as we know, they did nothing. North Vietnam wasn't as important to Soviet strategy as, say, Cuba was, or East Germany.

Hitting a few airfields and killing some Soviet Air Force flight instructors won't start World War III, nor would mining Haiphong Harbor in 1965-67. When the mines were laid in '72, nobody left port. The ships in port stayed until the mines were swept as part of the cease-fire in 1973.

Some historians (such as Norman Polmar and John Gresham-who helped Tom Clancy with his nonfiction books), argue that the reason for the excessive micromanagement re: LBJ and MacNamara was due to their experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they were desperate to avoid any action that might cause another showdown. They overreacted, IMHO. North Vietnam in 1965-67 was not Cuba in October, 1962.
 
The Soviets admitted in 1988 that 16 of their advisors were killed in action in Vietnam, and as we know, they did nothing. North Vietnam wasn't as important to Soviet strategy as, say, Cuba was, or East Germany.

Hitting a few airfields and killing some Soviet Air Force flight instructors won't start World War III, nor would mining Haiphong Harbor in 1965-67. When the mines were laid in '72, nobody left port. The ships in port stayed until the mines were swept as part of the cease-fire in 1973.

Some historians (such as Norman Polmar and John Gresham-who helped Tom Clancy with his nonfiction books), argue that the reason for the excessive micromanagement re: LBJ and MacNamara was due to their experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they were desperate to avoid any action that might cause another showdown. They overreacted, IMHO. North Vietnam in 1965-67 was not Cuba in October, 1962.


Not bombing SAM sites was utter madness.


And I must note that this great concern about our enemy's safety was strangely NOT shared by our enemies who weren't concerned about our feelings about the vast amount of support they were providing for the purpose of killing our soldiers.
 
The Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis was still only three or four years in the past. It wasn't ancient history. It was yesterday to them. And it was only the most recent of a series of brutal confrontations in that phase of the Cold War.

And one of the reasons the Soviets did nothing was that they were well aware of how far out of the way the United States was going to avoid a direct confrontation. Different US conduct may well have resulted in different Soviet conduct.

But hey, I love how moderns would have handled the cold war.
 
The Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis was still only three or four years in the past. It wasn't ancient history. It was yesterday to them. And it was only the most recent of a series of brutal confrontations in that phase of the Cold War.

Only eleven years before Tonkin Gulf, the United States and the Soviet Union had been SHOOTING at each other in a prolonged aerial campaign in the Korean War. That particular conflict managed to stay both covert and contained for which countless people should be grateful. Only a complete fool, however, would count on any such future duet remaining secret or limited. Why risk that for such little gain in return?
 
One of the Whiz Kids told some air planners "The North won't use them (SA-2s). Putting them in is just a political ploy by the Russians to appease Hanoi." This was in April, '65, when U-2 and tactical recon photos showed SA-2 sites under construction. And the first SA-2 sites to go active and shoot down aircraft? Soviet PVO crews were manning them, not NVA personnel, who were still under training.

The Whiz Kids were loathed and despised to a man by the professional military. I still get a hearty laugh about the one kicked off a carrier by an admiral for suggesting that no CSAR missions be launched to recover downed pilots and aircrew, saying it was more cost-effective to train new crews than risk a dozen planes and crews to go after one or two men. Another admiral remarked after this, "I doubt Mr. MacNamara has a morale setting on his computers." Kicking the snot off the carrier was richly deserved, though some old Chiefs might have wanted to throw him overboard instead of sending him back to Saigon.
 
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