The US will lose WW3

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 08:15

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Cerebral Bore posted:

what book is this from, because it sounds hilarious

"About Face", by Col. David Hackworth

and yes, it's a very entertaining look into the institutional rot of the US military, but especially because Hackworth really likes soldiering, and so these criticisms come from someone that's already predisposed to want the Army to be better in the first place

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 11:25

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

HonorableTB posted:

I like this book so far but can you break these up into smaller chunks because it's impossible to read on mobile. Like separate by page and post them one after the other on a separate line so we can enlarge it

let me know if this works better:

...

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 09:02

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

A tangential link to another book I read last year is that the bit about the US committing to Vietnam without a workable plan for logistics paved the way for the military to adopt shipping containers as a standard for transporting freight/cargo, and the port at Cam Ranh Bay became one of the big container-capable ports in Asia, second only to Japan at the time

not only did this popularize containerized shipping at a time when adoption was rather slow, but this was also one of the larger examples of privatization creeping into military operations, since the shipping was contracted-out to a private firm

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 09:29

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

dead gay comedy forums posted:

much appreciated Gradenko

btw, what program do you use to read?

i use "calibre" for opening ebook files, and my computer just defaults to using Microsoft Edge for PDFs (and in that case I track which page I stopped on, on a piece of paper)

calibre is nice because it natively supports highlighting text passages, which makes for very neat annotations

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 15:23

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

I guess the real takeaway is that overwhelming material superiority makes you stupid. The Vietnamese had to exploit every possible homefield advantage they could just to give the Americans a bloody nose, and we couldn't even tell that we were loving up from the sheer destruction we waged on the whole country.

Gibson's thesis is centered around the idea that the US got into a mentality of a "capital-intensive" war, where you'd inflict maximum damage with a minimum of labour by investing in high-tech weaponry, which at the time was Arclite strikes from B-52s, Air Cavalry units, and paradropped seismic listening devices that were supposed to allow the CIA to hear the footsteps of NVA troops as they marched down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Notwithstanding that the US never really managed to divorce itself from this idea, even when they tried to implement post-Vietnam reforms, the problem with this kind of warmaking was that it was a mismatch with the ideological grounding of their opponent. Ho and Giap weren't playing the same game, so it never mattered that the "return on investment", as calculated by the likes of McNamara, was so much higher.

___

# ¿ Jan 14, 2022 09:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Milo and POTUS posted:

What's slam in this case, SLA Marshall? I've either got the rona or the flu and I'm even dumber than usual and my eyes just glaze over the text

yes, the guy's name is SLA Marshall, and his nickname is "Slam"

# ¿ Jan 14, 2022 10:27

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

yeah sorry I don't mean to dominate / derail the thread I just thought all this stuff about how much the US military is a fuckup is germane

# ¿ Jan 14, 2022 15:39

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

my impression of the whole Fulda Gap thing was that NATO ground forces were always weaker than the nominal/predicted Warsaw Pact offensive force, and that they were designed to be deliberately be like this, such that they'd be overrun, which justifies the use of tactical nuclear weapons to stop the Russian tanks, but in the knowledge that use of tactical nukes would develop into escalations that go all the way up to MAD, and that the Soviets knew this, and it turns into a version of interlocking MAD all by itself: if you cross into West Germany, you will beat us, then we will nuke you, and you will nuke us back, and the world ends

but that only works if you manage to thread the needle of maintaining an army in Germany that's strong enough that it looks like you're going to resist and defend, but not so strong that they could beat a Soviet offensive in a stand-up conventional fight

# ¿ Jan 14, 2022 17:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Aglet56 posted:

weren't there lots of West German defensive deployments on the north German plain, too? fulda gap was just where the us troops were stationed so it got the Anglosphere spotlight

and also British, but yes

# ¿ Jan 15, 2022 03:59

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Tankbuster posted:

Can someone explain the special forces tier one operator space marine fetish please? I recall this particular time where a commonwealth doctrine following line infantry regiment straight up smoked a US trained special forces unit in terrain that special forces were supposed to be dominant in. Hell even in pop history books like charlie wilson's war the US brain trust realised that the Soviets using special forces in regular firefights was a huge L because the situation had become too desperate. Smash cut to the entire post 9/11 world and you have so many special forces units running around and creating their own cult following and are returning home to be giga rightwing cranks.

it's been about trying to slim down "boots on the ground" based on a post-Vietnam sentiment that part of the thing that caused the US to lose the war was that the people at home saw too many dead bodies

part of that was addressed by the whole "embedded program" and the general cooption of the media so that they'd always present a positive view of the wars

but the other angle of attack is to just wage war with fewer people, whether in the form of air strikes, that would later transform into drone strikes, or to shift away from large standing formations and use "special forces" all the time

# ¿ Jan 17, 2022 16:33

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

more from "About Face":

* DIT stands for Directorate of Individual Training

# ¿ Jan 18, 2022 08:46

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

rough approximation of current CSG deployments

Only six? That's not a lot lol

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 04:06

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Tempora Mutantur posted:

Highly recommend listening to this episode about the original m16 being hosed up so some assholes could make money, probably one of my favorites

"just buy Colt Industries" made me audibly gasp when I read it

Incredibly naked grift

# ¿ Jan 20, 2022 12:47

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

inRangeTV, one of the firearms channels I follow, actually did a "mud test" with the AR-15 versus the AKM some years back:

here's the AR-15 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAneTFiz5WU

and here's the AK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX73uXs3xGU

they have an interesting take on their findings, given that the AR performed better, even with the dust cover open

the cold thing though I've never heard of: what would make the AR act up under low temperatures?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2022 16:03

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

indigi posted:

why are diesel subs so much quieter than nuclear ones

you cannot "turn off" a nuclear reactor. even at the most minimal power level, you still need to keep the machinery running and the water pumping - this means that a nuclear submarine will always generate some level of noise no matter what

a diesel-electric submarine, on the other hand, can power itself (for a while) using nothing but stored energy from its batteries, which does not have moving parts. so if you run on batteries and don't do anything else, then there's no sound to be made

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 05:23

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

You could overwhelm a fleet from multiple directions out in the open ocean without them even being aware you're there.

when I would play Harpoon back in the 90s, the emphasis was that Soviet doctrine for killing a US carrier was to coordinate cruise missiles from Tu-22 Backfire bombers (the AS-4 Kitchen), cruise missiles from guided missile cruisers (SS-N-19 Shipwreck, carried on the Kirov), cruise missiles from submarines (also the Shipwreck, but launched from Oscar-class SSGNs), and wakehoming torpedoes (the Type 65, launched from an SSN like the Akula or the Victor III)

this was of course a very complicated act to coordinate, even with zero opposition, because you're trying to get three different weapons systems, launched from four different platforms with very different speeds, all impact at the same Time-On-Target

but goddamn was it ever satisfying if you actually pulled it off

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 05:57

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

indigi posted:

I feel like submarines should be mostly autonomous by now. sub drones. seems pretty easy to program a submersible ballistic missile launcher to just hang out in the ocean

e: I guess they'd have to be nuclear powered and it would be really stupid to just float nuke plants into enemy territory unmanned. nevermind

one way to think about diesel-electrics is that they're basically very intelligent sea mines: they're a black hole of sound sitting at the bottom of the ocean running on batteries, but as soon as they shoot at something they're going to be detected, and they don't have the speed to be able to evade any kind of determined ASW force, so you can treat them as a one-shot weapon against a high-value target

but we're not quite yet at the point where you can turn this into an automated process - communication through water is limited enough that you can't reliably pilot a "sea drone submarine" remotely, and if you sacrifice remote control in exchange for more indiscriminate firing you might as well just go all the way to using sea mines, which are much cheaper that way

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 08:00

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

HonorableTB posted:

Now that my sixer is up, does anyone have any info on how long a nuke SLBM sub can stay deployed, in general terms? They're limited to food and water on board since they have nuke gens, but how many supplies can a boomer take on board?

Ohio-class SSBNs go on 70 to 90-day patrols, so at least that long

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 08:12

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

more from "About Face":

(of course, the M1 Abrams is named after Creighton Abrams)

_

the Kahn being referred to here is Dr. Herman Kahn, one of the elders of RAND Corporation and the basis for the eponymous Dr. Strangelove in that Stanley Kubrick film of the same name

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 10:03

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

A Buttery Pastry posted:

he also visited vietnam

lol multiple times even

# ¿ Jan 27, 2022 07:00

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Rusting Minuteman missiles

Lmao

# ¿ Jan 29, 2022 05:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Being bad at your job when your job is ending the world seems like good karma

# ¿ Jan 29, 2022 12:32

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

BitcoinRockefeller posted:

They gave half the contract to a shipbuilder on the great lakes. You can't expect them to know about salt water. If the Toledo war happens again the LCS will kick rear end.

This is sort of like when the German high command assigned an engineering unit from Bavaria to be in charge of building the transport barges for Operation Sealion

# ¿ Jan 29, 2022 18:39

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

more from "About Face":

...

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 10:08

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

more from "About Face":

# ¿ Feb 9, 2022 11:04

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Keith Olbersturmfuhrer

# ¿ Feb 9, 2022 19:07

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Milo and POTUS posted:

The vietnamese have a military history that almost defies belief in its success

Vo Nguyen Giap is the greatest general of the 20th century, and is well within the top five of all time

(2nd place of course is Georgy Zhukov)

# ¿ Feb 10, 2022 08:18

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

sullat posted:

Reminds me of Patrick Cleburne, the Irish confederate general. In like 1864 or so, he was like "Hey, we're all about state's rights and liberty, so why don't we free the slaves so they'll fight for our independence against the hated Yankees?" and so he was laughed out of the room (and put in the front lines at Franklin and got shot).

lol drat he tried to By Your Logic the CSA

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 06:32

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Bar Ran Dun posted:

there is a more material explanation for bulk going to the metropole from colonies and finished goods going out and that relationship changing that doesn’t require all the words.

the container. when did the container become widespread?

I read all about this last year and while I'm on my phone I can tell you that containerization only really took off in the 1980s

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 17:36

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

A Buttery Pastry posted:

It appears to have grown essentially exponentially between 1985 and 2011, around 9% a year. Based on how well it fits, my first instinct would be that nothing really changed in the 80's and the reason it appears to take off is the exponential growth finally having some volume to work with. Someone in D&D mentioned the first big break for containerization being the Vietnam War?

Correct. It was a small and budding industry prior to Vietnam that mostly made US intranational shipping cheaper, but then the military's logistics going to Indochina is all ashambles and they contract container shipping lines to build out a port at Cam Ranh Bay and run freight to there.

Once you've got container vessels making regular runs to Cam Ranh, you also need them in Manila as a secondary base, so Subic Naval Base gets developed to handle containers too.

Japan was already seeing some containerization development in the early 70s since it made sense to do so for shipping goods to the West Coast, and they double-down on it with all the increased traffic

Singapore sees all this and deliberately positions itself as a hub for container traffic given its strategic location

And from there momentum builds

Other points:

- this was also the thing that got the ball rolling on the privatization of the US military and its dependence on private contractors

- underdevelopment of South America and Africa is partially related to their having "missed out" on the develoment of ports able to handle large container vessels

- containerization by itself contributed to globalization and the end of protectionism, because just the mere precipitous drop in shipping costs makes importation easier even with tariffs

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 18:13

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

SUNDAY, 27 JUNE 1971

GUEST: Colonel David H. Hackworth, U.S. Army

INTERVIEWED BY: Howard Tuckner, ABC News Saigon Correspondent

MR. TUCKNER: You have served in Korea, you have served in Vietnam for a long time, you have served back at the Pentagon. How do you rate the training of U.S. Army troops who came to Vietnam?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I think in the main the training for Vietnam from the standpoint of the individual soldier, the young officer, and even the battalion, brigade, and division staff officers and senior commanders has been totally inadequate.

I think that our training was geared to the individual replacement system of World War II. The curriculum was wrong, the quality of the instructors and the leaders was�in my judgment we didn�t have the type people that should have been there. The commanders there should have been�the battalion commanders should have commanded battalions in Vietnam. The company commanders should have commanded companies, here, and leaders should have been the finest leaders our country could have mustered to provide the young soldiers with the type training, the realistic training that they needed to confront a guerrilla enemy in Vietnam.

And I�d like to just make the point that when my well-trained, STRAC, one of the finest units in the U.S. Army arrived in Vietnam in June and July of 1965, the mistakes they made were criminal. The number of dead that they have killed among themselves, men that were shot by their comrades, artillery that had fallen on them. Great mistakes were made because of improper training, being not prepared for the war, even though we had from 1953 to 1965 to prepare for the war.

MR. TUCKNER: In your view did poor training lead to higher casualties in Vietnam?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I am convinced of it. I think that our casualties were at least thirty percent higher because of�or even higher than that, but I�d say, just safely, thirty percent higher because of troops that were not properly trained.

I participated in a study group in the Pentagon in �67 and early �68 which considered U.S. casualties caused by friendly fires and the group was composed of highly experienced personnel that had served in Vietnam and it was our conclusion that fifteen to twenty percent of the casualties caused in Vietnam were the result of friendly fire�one man shooting another man; artillery, friendly artillery firing on a friendly element; friendly helicopters firing on a friendly unit; tac air striking a friendly unit; and I could count you, in my own case, countless personal examples. For example, during the battle of Dak To, June the seventeenth, a rocket ship came into my A Company�s position by mistake and released its rockets right on top of the company killing the executive officer and wounding twenty-nine other troopers.

I can recall in September of 1965 as my battalion was deployed, artillery was fired in the wrong place killing seven men in one of my platoons.

MR. TUCKNER: Can it be said that the generals in the U.S. Army, many of them, did not really adjust to the tactics of this war?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I think the average general that came to Vietnam did not have a good concept, good appreciation of the nature of guerrilla warfare. In most cases because of their lack of even reading in depth about guerrilla warfare, they were not prepared for the war and they had to fall back on Korea and World War II and they used the thought process and the techniques that worked successfully there, moving in large formations, making battalion and brigade airmobile assaults on a small LZ and having everything very tidy, artillery in position and fighting much as we did on the plains of Europe.

I don�t feel that too many division commanders, or even separate brigade commanders, really understood the name of the game.

MR. TUCKNER: Did this mean more U.S. casualties, this misunderstanding of the name of the game, as you put it?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think probably one of the most classic examples is Hamburger Hill. Here was a hill that had to be taken. Hundreds and hundreds of casualties occurred taking this hill. They had the hill for a few days, the Americans did, and pulled off. So what was the point of taking the hill? Why not stand back if the enemy is on it and bomb, but why use infantry to take the hill?

MR. TUCKNER: Did the upper echelon of the Army really ever become changed on this war? Did they learn from their mistakes?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I don�t think so. I don�t think that the top level ever developed a realistic strategic plan nor did they ever have tactics to support that strategic plan.

MR. TUCKNER: Why?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I think that the top managers of the Army�and there is a big difference between a leader, a combat leader and a manager, the top managers were so involved in systems analysis, in the normal bureaucracy of it all that they were fighting from day to day just to move the paper that crossed their desk and they couldn�t see the forest for the trees.

In February when we went into Laos, we went into Laos conventionally. The idea was to block the enemy�s supply routes. So we dropped in there. We paid a horrible�the Vietnamese paid a horrible price. Tremendous mistakes were made. Again, conventional thinking. Conventional thinking put us in that operation rather than having a light, mobile guerrilla force, but a guerrilla force that belonged to the Government of Vietnam, or the American Army operating in there like guerrillas. It takes a thief to catch a thief. What we need is a thief. We don�t need a conventionally trained FBI agent dashing through the woods with a large force behind him.

We need small people, well trained, highly motivated, and this is what we have not had, because what we have now among the Army is a bunch of shallow dilettantes who run from pillar to post trying to punch their card, serving minimum time at company level because the exposure�you are very close to the heat of the furnace there, meaning you can get in trouble easily.

MR. TUCKNER: Have you found that many other U.S. Army officers who have been here in Vietnam feel the way you do?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Most of my young friends�that would be captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels�who have a considerable amount of experience in Vietnam, feel as I do. A number of very highly qualified full colonels whom I know feel as I do, and I suppose there are a few generals who feel as I do, but in the main this group unfortunately�I suppose it is because of the nature of the beast�is not highly vocal regarding their views because if one would become highly vocal you might become a Billy Mitchell. It might be the end of your career.

MR. TUCKNER: Hasn�t this silence meant that some who have died in this war might have been saved?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: That is right, and that is why perhaps we who have not been vocal should be charged for just criminal neglect, because it is our obligation, it is our responsibility, not only to train our soldiers well, to lead our soldiers well, but to make sure that there are no mistakes made, that they are protected as well as possible from mistakes and error and once you make mistakes they must be surfaced, critiqued, identified, and remedial action taken.

MR. TUCKNER: Colonel, I understand that because of the fact that you are considered one of the best infantry officers in the Army you have been asked a number of times to go to the War College, which is preparation for becoming general one day.

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Yes, I have been asked to go to War College for three years straight, and my reason for refusing is that I just simply felt that we were on the battlefield, we were engaged in a critical battle, and I didn�t need to go to school at the time to learn anything. I was learning it on the battlefield and I was transferring the skills that I had to my men and probably saving lives.

I can recall in November of 1969 a major general here in Vietnam told me that, when I asked him, should I extend again, he said, �Hack, get out. The war for the U.S. Army is over with in Vietnam/7

He said, �You�e got all the right tickets and all the right credentials. Go on to War College now and prepare yourself for bigger things.�

MR. TUCKNER: Colonel, we have heard a lot about body count in this war. What about it?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Well, it has been used as a rule of measurement of success. The body count has cost us a lot. It has cost us unnecessary casualties because always in the chain of command one commander is pressuring the other commander for what is the success, what is the body count and it ends up you are calling the platoon leader, �How many have you killed?�

The platoon leader is in a firefight and he hasn�t a clue of how many he has killed, but he may have to stop the fight. He may have to expose a few soldiers to go out and count the bodies during the fight. He may lose the momentum of the attack to stay on the enemy and pursue him while he is counting bodies. He may have to squat on the enemy and count the bodies.

It has also really weakened the moral fiber of the officer corps because it has taught them to lie; it has taught them to exaggerate because, again, it is a form of success. It is �How many touchdowns do you have? What is the final score of the game?� And the body count has been greatly exaggerated as a result of this and I would say it has been exaggerated to the tune of twenty to twenty-five percent.

MR. TUCKNER: Do you know of any example specifically where you were involved in trying to substantiate body count that you didn�t think was accurate?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Yes. I could give several good examples. One which comes to mind is a battle which was fought with a great number of friendly maneuver elements, found�reputedly found�an enemy force; we encircled the enemy force. All night long artillery, rockets, fighter bombers were placed on the enemy for us, and came the dawn when we swept the enemy positions there was a total of enemy dead on the battlefield of not more than twenty.

When I crossed over to the other side of the canal that we were fighting on to talk to the commander of the other battalion which was the other half of the encirclement force, the brigade commander came in and started talking about such a brilliant victory we had and that we killed something like two hundred seventy-five or two hundred eighty enemy dead, and this was a classic battle. It illustrated the techniques of mobile warfare, how we could drop on an enemy force, find them, fix them, surround them, and then destroy them, and I pointed out to the brigade commander, the acting brigade commander, I should say, that there wasn�t that many dead on the battlefield. We had only killed, I would say, no more than twelve or fifteen and the colonel on the other side had told me he had six or seven, so there couldn�t have been twenty or twenty-two or so and I was told there were two hundred eighty killed. II

This is what had been reported to Division. I said, �Well, it is not right. We only had�This battalion is reported to have a strength of three hundred and if we killed two hundred eighty that would leave less than twenty able-bodied men, able to remove the bodies from the battlefield,� which is a normal VC technique, which was his excuse for why the bodies weren�t on the battlefield.

He said, �Well, that night the survivors carried them off.�

I said, �Look, we had the enemy completely surrounded; there was no corridor in which he could escape. If there were a small path that he could have gained escape through our lines that would have meant that every survivor would have had to carry seven or eight bodies plus all their individual weapons.� I think there were five total individual weapons found on the battlefield, and this complete battle was a total lie in my judgment.

I was called in by the commander at the time to endorse his after-action report, this report which had all of these bodies in it, and great other irregularities and falsehood, I think designed to make this individual look like Rommel or look like some great tactician and very, very effective combat leader. And I refused to do it. And he and I had somewhat of a major confrontation.

Also during this time I was asked to sign a statement, a narrative statement to support an award for the Distinguished Service Cross for this individual who didn�t even get out of his helicopter during the �battle,� and I refused to do that.

It was insinuated if I would sign one or two of these documents that I would be�my unit would be considered, possibly, for a unit citation as a result of this action, which I, of course, refused to go along with.

MR. TUCKNER: Did you sign it?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Absolutely not.

MR. TUCKNER: When leading U.S. government officials, people like former Secretary of Defense McNamara, come to Vietnam for a visit, do they get the clear, straight picture?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I think what we do for a presentation for a senior official such as Mr. McNamara is put on a razzle-dazzle briefing, complete with charts and extremely well rehearsed briefing officers, and we try to put our best foot forward to try to look as good as possible. Perhaps a scenario would go kind of like this:

After the briefing Mr. McNamara turned to General Wheeler, who was with him, or to General Westmoreland, who I would think accompanied him, and said, �What do you think about that?� And General Wheeler said, �Great battle! We are knockin� �em dead.� And General Westmoreland would have said, �We really got �em that time! This is a typical action in Vietnam of your U.S. modern Army in action! We have really nailed them and that is the way we are nailing them and that is why we are winning this war. Just give us a few more troops, a few more resources, and we will have �em on the run. There�s light at the end of the tunnel.�

He didn�t say the VC was holding the candle but he said the end is in sight.

So as a consequence, Mr. McNamara, believing this, perhaps�because it looked real enough to believe�went back and he is sitting�again part of the scenario with the President, and Mr. Johnson says, �How�s it going in Vietnam?� and McNamara says, �We are winning.�

MR. TUCKNER: Colonel, in 1968 you were so highly thought of that you were selected from a group of a few officers to contribute to a report to General Westmoreland. What did you say in that report?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Well, my comments were very exciting insofar as the Army staff was concerned. I felt they were truthful and I said that in my judgment at the time this paper was written in 1968, the U.S. Army had badly botched the war in Vietnam and I had considered from a tactical standpoint we had lost the war.

And now my experience three years later only confirms those comments to General Westmoreland.

MR. TUCKNER: What�s happened since then? Has there been any change? Have your comments helped anything?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: No, I don�t think so. I said that I felt there have been no viable reforms. I felt that the corruption that exists in Vietnam, the graft, the failure to produce continues to exist. I felt that the military had not established any strategic goals, nor had there been any tactical concept developed to support the strategic goals which were not developed and announced.

I felt that we sent an Army to Vietnam that was not prepared to fight the war. We sent an Army that was top-heavy in administrators and logisticians and bloody thin on fighters, not trained for the war. I felt that we didn�t understand the nature of the war in the military. I felt that just everything we had done in Vietnam had been done wrong.

MR. TUCKNER: Do you think it is possible, Colonel, that past United States Presidents who have been involved during the Vietnam War, the present Administration, do you think it is possible they may feel they are getting the straight truth, but that it might not be?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Well, my thing is infantry, which I am very familiar with, and I don�t know what happens at the higher echelons. I know the nature of the beast in the military is to sanitize a report to look good. I have seen what has happened at brigade level where the whole situation has been distorted.

I think it is highly probable that all of these beautiful briefings and excellent reports were so production-line Hollywoodized that by the time they got to the President and they got to the people who were making decisions, they didn�t have the real facts; they didn�t understand what was happening.

MR. TUCKNER: Colonel, what do you think of the Vietnamization program? Is it viable now?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Well, my view of Vietnamization is, it is a nice word. I think that it has been glamorized; I think that it has been Madison Avenued; I think that it is perhaps a PR�s dream. It is a public-relations gimmick.

I have been with the Vietnamese a long time and I have seen great improvements, significant improvement, but I haven�t seen the improvements that I read about in many papers, and different magazines, and I hear leading statesmen of our nation say. I don�t think the Vietnamese are that good. I don�t think the whole Vietnamization thing is real.

MR. TUCKNER: If the enemy chose to react and if American troops were not here, what do you think would happen to the Vietnamese Army?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I think if the enemy had the capability of launching a concerted attack I would think we would find ourselves in a situation as we were in in �63, �64, and early �65, really, because of the American involvement here, was to save the shattered Vietnamese Army. We were losing on the average of, as I recall, almost a battalion of Vietnamese a week in �65 and I think we would find the same situation developing. If the North Vietnamese, who I feel have the capability�they certainly proved they were pretty dangerous and tough up in Laos�and we find that we recently made a foray into Cambodia, and the enemy is much harder in Cambodia. Last April the targets we were striking along my zone in Cambodia were like taking candy from a baby. Now you go to Cambodia and you find the enemy with his stuff together. He is tough; he is moving back into the areas we used to raid with ease. I think we are going to find it more and more difficult of making these raids into Cambodia.

MR. TUCKNER: Do you think that the programs that the U.S. military and perhaps the U.S. mission had here did not fit the situation for Vietnamization?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: Exactly. We gave them a sheet of music designed by the military and that is what they had to dance by, and the whole organization of the Vietnamese Army in my judgment has been wrong; it has not been tailored or designed to fight the guerrilla in this type of warfare and we have given them a lot of sophisticated equipment, helicopters, sensor devices, radars, complicated vehicles, other complicated equipment that the Vietnamese are just incapable of using, incapable of maintaining, so we have given them now all kinds of sophisticated junk and asked them to use this. Vietnamization now will suddenly win the war because the Vietnamese have helicopters. We will suddenly win the war because the Vietnamese have the M-16 rifle, but it takes a lot more than a piece of equipment or a complicated piece of equipment such as radar and sensors and so on for them to win the war.

Instead of saying, �What you need is well-trained soldiers, what you need is highly motivated soldiers, what you need is soldiers who are similar to the Viet Cong soldiers who are fighting for an ideal, who are fighting for something�similar to Christianity; who are fighting for a cause, a crusade, not fighting to get a Honda or get a new watch or get a portable radio or to have a nice house, but fighting for a cause, and this is what has not been inculcated in the whole army of Vietnam.

MR. TUCKNER: Colonel, do you feel it is possible you have become too emotionally involved in Vietnam?

COLONEL HACKWORTH: I have become emotionally involved in Vietnam. One couldn�t have spent the number of years I have spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn�t see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved.

I just have seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country. I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war, and I am wondering to what end it is all going to lead to.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2022 08:54

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I know "The Pentagon Wars was a documentary" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA) is a lukewarm take for a thread like this but it still brings a smile to my face that it keeps coming up

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 11:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The US will lose WW3

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