If you think its non nonsense I suggest you watch the 1000 day war and
see what Gen Geip stated in his own words That if the US would of
continued bombing another 2 weeks they would of signed the peace
treaty but he know
that the protesters are getting stronger, that the protesters will win
the war for us.Thats not my statement its Gen Geip.
Vietnam Vet

What are the facts?

When people influence their government it's called democracy.
Maybe General Giap understood that fact better than Johnson and
Nixon.

If you think its non nonsense I suggest you watch the 1000 day war and
see what Gen Geip stated in his own words That if the US would of
continued bombing another 2 weeks they would of signed the peace
treaty but he know
that the protesters are getting stronger, that the protesters will win
the war for us.Thats not my statement its Gen Geip.
Vietnam Vet

What are the facts?

When people influence their government it's called democracy.
Maybe General Giap understood that fact better than Johnson and
Nixon.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:53:49 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com> wrote:

If you think its non nonsense I suggest you watch the 1000 day war and see
what Gen Geip stated in his own words That if the US would of continued
bombing another 2 weeks they would of signed the peace treaty but he know
that the protesters are getting stronger, that the protesters will win the
war for us.Thats not my statement its Gen Geip.
Vietnam Vet

What are the facts?

http://www.lcompanyranger.com/weapons/colonelbuitinpage.htm
I purchased the interview article from the Wall Street Journal <You owe
me a six pack:-)
The Wall Street Journal, 1419 words
Aug 3, 1995
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar
movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S.
have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former
colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the
following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a
Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the
general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional
surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of
the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in
Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits
of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South
Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we
only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear
was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day
our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to
follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by
people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and
ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of
battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red
Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of
American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of
America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that
power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through
dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen.
William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh
trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers
were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers
were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power
in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army]
believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for
victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be
needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had
a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid
made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese
Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure
to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice
one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the
fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge
effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams,
medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks
on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage,
but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons
to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes
rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have
hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under
Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare
alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready
to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets
bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putt-ing on us in late
1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential
election year.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/guerrillawars/giaptranscript.html
Q: Was your Têt offensive in 1968 a failure?
Giap: As far as we're concerned, there's no such thing as a purely
military strategy. So it would be wrong to speak of Têt in purely
military terms. The offensive was three things at the same time:
military, political, and diplomatic. The goal of the war was
de-escalation. We were looking to de-escalate the war. Thus, it would
have been impossible to separate our political strategy from our military
strategy. The truth is that we saw things in their entirety and knew that
in the end, we had to de-escalate the war. At that point, the goal of the
offensive was to try to de-escalate the war.
Q: And did the de-escalation succeed?
Giap: Your objective in war can either be to wipe out the enemy
altogether or to leave their forces partly intact but their will to fight
destroyed. It was the American policy to try and escalate the war. Our
goal in the '68 offensive was to force them to de-escalate, to break the
American will to remain in the war....
We did this by confronting them with repeated military, as well as
political and diplomatic victories. By bringing the war to practically
all the occupied towns, we aimed to show the Americans and the American
people that it would be impossible for them to continue with the war.
Essentially, that's how we did it.
atheist@home#1554