What was the problem?
Strategic Hamlets, Resettlement, Nation Building, Free-fire zones, Napalm, Helicopter Gunships, B52 Drops, Hogjaw Bulldozers, Compensation.
These were the solutions. Tried again and again. I've heard it complained that if the doves back home would have just shut up and let the military do what it needed to do, this war would have been over and done. I get the feeling that the 'hostile civilians' were the problem. If only they could have done away with them. The war would have been over.
'They just aren't friendly to us here,' the man said. Just like the psychopath who quite rationally sees what he needs and sees no reason not to get it. Unfortunately, what the stalker needs is in the other person; so it is with US foreign policy. When 'we' need a country, it is quite rational for us to destroy it to get it.
Did we lose the Vietnam war? There is no 'we.' Many many companies made billions of dollars. Much new technology was developed. Policy planners made a point: A country moving out of colonial rule was sent into horror and depravity for its trouble. Other countries were 'bombed into the stone age.' Millions of people were killed. Chemical poison and unexploded bombs littered the country. Did the world learn its lesson?
As some US pundit put it shortly after the war: 'but the devastation was on both sides.' Hardly an equitable distribution: Fifty-some thousand Americans were killed. Our country moved towards... chaos or open democracy?
But the 'crisis of democracy' in the US has apparently been solved. Has it?]
Re: it seems Schell was able to travel freely and talk with whom he wanted, accompanied only by an interpreter. Maybe? I was their in the first air assault with A Co., 1/26th infantry, 1st ID hours before school and any reporters were there. The village was a very dangerous place and we lost several men to mines both pressure detonated and command controlled. Wandering in the Village as we protected him might've happened; but wandering out and about by himself would have not been easy or sensible. I read his book and he is credible. But wandering around Ben Suc would have made him a big target. I find that very hard to believe.
ReplyDeleteI was in Lima Platoon, A Co., 1/26th infantry, 1st ID at Ben Suc. Nasty few days.
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