The Face of My Enemy

[39mto39g]

I got to respect your right to belive what you wish. But I would NEVER be in a photo like that unless some one had a gun on me, and it better be a big gun.


Ron

[exlrrp]

It was an almost completely agrarian nation--what else could they have been but farmers?? Real estate agents? Middle level management? Plumbers?

[exlrrp]

Originally posted by 39mto39g I got to respect your right to belive what you wish. But I would NEVER be in a photo like that unless some one had a gun on me, and it better be a big gun.


Ron

Well Ron, as long as you respect my right to believe what I want, and try and keep an open mind, we'll get along fine
It aint hard for me to hug kids, no matter where they are
Hot Jets!! Stay safe
James

[Seascamp]

In the timeline of things, Indonesia was to hook up with the PRC, Hanoi and North Korea. Indonesia was running an externally sponsored Communist insurgency operation against Malaysia and was spoiling into a pick a fight with the US and the UK. They called it ?The year of living dangerously?. Too dangerously I think because the Indonesian people sacked the Indonesian government and hunted down and killed every last Communist they could get their hands on. This was in 1966 and the Indonesian revolt triggered the PRC to internalize and go on an internal murderous rampage and purge.

You may recall the Red Guards and all that was going on. Prior to that, the PRC was the principal sponsor of the Vietnamese Communist effort to invade and subjugate the southern non-Communists. Truth be known, it was the PRC that talked Ho into challenging the US and this was as early as 1962 and part of the sweetening of the pie was thirty thousand Chinese to help build the Ho chi Minh trail in 1963 and 1964.
When the PRC internalized, the Soviet Union jumped into the power vacuum, planted the hook and the VN War really took off from that point on. I recall the Soviet air lift into Hanoi in 1966 and it was a Berlin deal all over again. Our air search radar had a range of 500 miles and the PPI was awash with green blips all stacked up and waiting to come on in. My thought at the time was ?holy shit, look at that for Christ?s sake?. After that, all the stuff from the Soviet east block came via rail or sea. As an interesting side note the PRC heavily taxed and out and out raided the soviet rail transport coming through and absolutely refused to allow the Soviet Union access to any PRC shipping ports. So much for fraternal solidarity and the seeds for a later proxy war between the PRC and the Soviet Union were sown.
The issue was regional domination and there was no way in hell the PRC wanted the Soviet Union on their southern flank, no way. But that?s what they got sure enough. The Cambodian civil war from 1970-1975 was about the PRC securing the eastern flank of Cambodia as their own and the later Cambodian war with Vietnam from 1975 on was all about the Soviet Union saying ?not on my watch you wont?.
And yes, I believe Col. Scout was talking about physical chaining in the tanks. I know this was SOP for the transport drivers along the Ho Chi Minh trail and that was common knowledge at the time.
The brief history I have outlined is well known outside the US but is as rare as lips on a woodpecker inside the US.

And James, enjoy your book and beliefs. It's no paint of my crash bars one way or another and I'm happy you are free to believe what you wish. I believed then and I believe now that the Vietnamese people were and are victims of a much larger three way power struggle that was going on. I'm sorry for them and I'm sorry for everyone else that got caught up in that horrid mess.

Scamp

[Arrow]

And James, enjoy you book and beliefs. It's no paint of my crash bars one way or another and I'm happy you are free to believe what you wish. I believed then and I believe now that the Vietnamese people were and are victims of a much larger three way power struggle that was going on. I'm sorry for them and I'm sorry for everyone else that got caught up in that horrid mess. - Scamp

What Scamp said....

Scamp and Scout, Thanks for replenishing our minds with the true history of the end of that war.- Packo

What Packo said...

I lost my rose colored glasses so I can't go with Jameshistoricalview of how the bear sh*t in the woods.And I won't forget that we traded our POW-MIA and their families for trinkets, t-shirts, and cheap vacation spots.

Family members, veterans organizations and other POW/MIA supporters throughout the country have consistently opposed steps to improve economic and political relations until Hanoi made the decision to cooperate fully to resolve the POW/MIA issue. The League supported a policy of reciprocity - steps by the U.S. to respond to efforts by Vietnam to locate and return remains and provide case-specific archival documents. In the League's view, important leverage was lost without commensurate results during the Clinton Administration.- National League Of POW-MIA Families

A stain glass window of a Catholic church on a streetsomewhere in Vietnam or right down the streetdoesn't represent freedom from oppression to me. But that'sall part of my war. I'll have to make peace with that in my time and in my way.

Arrow>>>>

[Andy]

James thank you. That isn?t a snide remark, I do appreciate your posts. I still hear and see a lot of, ?the good people of Chairman Ho?, but the folks pushing that are freeze dried hippies and not people who have been there.

You made a post that invoked a discussion and emotion, I like that. Your conclusions are different from mine but that?s ok, that?s our right! Rights, that?s what it?s all about.

When I first ?met you? on the old site you seemed rather hard core. You have changed, mellowed and certainly have a better opinion of Vietnam than you did 5 (?) years ago. That?s fine, we all change. I?m pro civil union for gays, 5 years ago I was against it. Change is to be expected.

Looking at the photo?s you posted, well one of them really hit me. In September of ?69 I was still in Vietnam with my 11B MOS. In September of ?71 seeing that picture of the ?brave Vietnamese woman with an M-16 and nice boobs? seemed offensive. Especially when the same people who posted it were accusing me of killing women.

With time things do change. I have as much ill will towards Bobby McNamara as I do for Uncle Ho. But those are symbols of a war that was fought wrong. In 10 or 15 years when the Vietnamese government officially renounces Communism, we will have won. Then the photo?s will no doubt be less offensive to any vets still alive. Then again, I could be wrong.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[Seascamp]

James,
re: ?Farmers?
Yes to all the fields of endeavor you listed and a lot more. My experience was in the coastal population centers of I Corps and as far as I was concerned everyone was VC to one degree or another. I found no monolithic ?I?m it? VC types, just a whole population covering their bets and burning the candle from both ends and I don?t blame them one damn bit. There was no such thing as a misty-eyed revolutionary that I saw, just people trying to survive and going with the flow and that?s about the sum of it.
And then there was a whole bunch of people taking advantage of the political/security instability and making a bunch of them Ps and MPCs and for sale to the highest bidder, including identified VC Cadre members.

As a group the coastal VC were very self-reliant and didn?t depend on the HCM trail for much of anything, if at all. And I will categorically state they were not at all fond of their supposed northern fraternal brothers. At least initially, the core VC control groups were the Cadres that were educated and trained in either the PRC or the Soviet Union. These people may or may not have been local, but fared much better in the population centers than out in the bush. As the war pressed on, the enmity between the VC and the PAVN/Hanoi/Moscow grew it became clear that someone had to go and subsequently the VC were virtually wiped out and ceased to exist as a main force unit beyond TET 68. They were used as front rank cannon fodder and that is a fact and a source of continuing squabble and acrimony within the current ranks of surviving Vietnamese combatants. But this confrontation is outside contemporary Vietnam, not within, for obvious reasons.
Rightfully so, the surviving VC feel that their revolution was hijacked by the Soviet Union for the Bear's purposes, not theirs, and are very outspoken about it all.

Scamp

[39mto39g]

Well James. as long as you respect my right to think the Vietnames people SUCK, then well get along.
I always thought we (The US) were on the wrong side, and we should have used bigger bullits, 10 mega ton would have worked.

Ron

[DMZ-LT]

Hope to see a lot of you at the campout. I ordered the book.

[BLUEHAWK]

Scamp, Scout -

Thank you... I'll step away from this thread now, learning a great amount from you and all...