Technically began January 30th, 1968 instead of the 31st, but close enough. Interesting how all these milestones continue whether it's from the post-war era or a century ago.

I watched the Ken Burns documentary, which was one of his better ones. What irked me was that McNamara told LBJ in 1965 there was no way the war could be won.


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(01-31-2018 11:00 PM)Jjoey52 Wrote:  McNamara told LBJ in 1965 there was no way the war could be won.

Another example of how McNamara was wrong about almost everything.

McNamara was a nominal Republican, and JFK appointed him as SecDef because of his (McNamara's) connections to America’s corporate leadership, which was in those days (1960) overwhelmingly Republican. But the selection turned out to be an absolutely unmitigated disaster.

As for the Tet Offensive, it should be noted that every engagement of the battle came out in favor of the US/RVN side. It’s just, we had no idea the enemy was capable of launching such an offensive, even if it did end in failure. So the shock value of the whole thing was very high in US media.

I still remember a certain lecture at Tulane. The professor was probably about 45-50 (if so, born about 1940-45) and was talking about the Tet Offensive. He seemed to gradually realize that none of us 18-20 year olds in the audience had any idea what he was referring to. The mixture of disbelief-annoyance-frustration that came over him was a joy to behold.

But what can you say. Time does march on. I was talking to to a 16-year-old (a bright kid, but still: 16) a few weeks ago and said something about 9/11. She looked blank and I had to explain what that was.

There was a credibility gap already so LBJ had no chance to convince the public that we inflicted damage.

Winning any war will depend on who's calling the shots. If you have someone in the White House looking at polls or how the press is treating him. You are not winning anything. Get someone in there that will do whats needed, even if lt's not popular and you are on the way to winning. The next and finial step is to have a President that will listen to those that are smarter than he is on WAR. Then if you trust the person....

get the F### out of his way and let him do his job

I F'ing guarantee you that if that war happened today Trump has the balls to let his Generals win that war. If it was 8 years ago we lose.

Walter Cronkite stabbed the country in the back.

(02-01-2018 04:20 AM)bubbapt Wrote:  Walter Cronkite stabbed the country in the back.

Not really. The presidents and American people were not willing to do what was necessary to win the war. Korea and WWII were fresh in their mind. We were still doing fallout drills. People were scared of WWIII and the end of the world. Its like that comment above about Tet and 911. People who didn't live through the Cold War can't understand the euphoria when the Berlin Wall fell and can't understand the mentality in the 60s.

And it would have been like Afghanistan even if we crossed the border and didn't have to go to war with the Chinese. The Viet Cong would have been in the jungle sniping at the RVN for decades.

We could have driven the NVA back well beyond the border and done much more massive bombing. But the Chinese probably would have entered if we went to Hanoi and we couldn't win that type of war without WWIII. The Chinese had almost unlimited manpower and the Russians would have given them all the supplies they needed.

Best case scenario is to win the war in South Vietnam, move the border north 50 miles, create a DMZ, and have a mild insurgency that wouldn't end until the South became prosperous like South Korea.

Our troops involvement in the war just wasn't necessary and LBJ's conduct of it was criminal. He didn't try or expect to win yet kept sending more troops to die. What we have now is better relations with Vietnam than the Chinese do. We could have had the same result with 50,000 less Americans dead.

(01-31-2018 11:00 PM)Jjoey52 Wrote:  I watched the Ken Burns documentary, which was one of his better ones. What irked me was that McNamara told LBJ in 1965 there was no way the war could be won.


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That was a great documentary. I thought I was pretty well informed on a lot of the crap that went on during that time but I learned quite a bit from watching it.