The Vietnam experience continues to influence America's political leaders and field generals.

From Barry R. McCaffery's article

    President H.W. Bush expressed hope at the end of the 1991 Desert Storm victory that the dramatic 100-hour air-ground-sea American blitzkrieg had put a rest the ghosts of Vietnam. Hardly. However, the Gulf War proved to be in most ways the "anti-Vietnam." We were blessed by political and military leadership at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of command that capitalized on all that had gone so wrong  a generation earlier. The memories and trauma of Vietnam continue to affect our leaders and policymakers. The Gulf War leadership and those they mentored are affected to this day but the lessons of Vietnam, now burned into our culture.

    The Gulf War did allow the brilliant leadership of our civilian and military senior team to skillfully employ enormous military power fully integrated with economic, political and diplomatic leverage. The outcome was a stunning victory that accomplished our national security purpose with a rapid and lopsided defeat of the Iraqi aggressors.

   (* Since then we had to do it all over again. The Iraqi aggressors didn't learn or want to learn from that experience. This time we had to overthrow the aggressors. Time will tell how long we need to be there and what if anything could be done differently to improve the situation.)

    The American people were politically prepared and informed. They saw an evil in Saddam Hussein, an evil to be exterminated. They saw an innocent Kuwait to be freed and a danger to be forestalled by preventing Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It is worth analysis in coming years to sort out how this dramatic and total military victory was so poorly exploited for subsequent political and strategic gain.

    The generals and admirals of Desert Storm were the lieutenants and ensigns of Vietnam. They were determined to avoid the painful and humiliating disasters that engulfed our forces in Southeast Asia.

    This was the legacy  of Vietnam in the military. The nine Army and Marine division commanders, the three Army and Marine Corps commanders, the air war planners, the Naval Force battle leaders, were not going to let down our troops or America.

    We were products of our age. For 15 years, our mantra had been to never again make the fundamental mistakes of Vietnam.

   *Statement from webmaster.

Looking Back

   Vietnam was a sea of blood. In 15 years of bitter combat, 58,000 Americans were killed and 303,000 were wounded or injured. About 75,000 of these mostly teen-age boys were severely disabled. A million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong perished in absolute dedication to a Marxist economic theory that never worked. Communism would doom much of the earth to nearly three generations of slavery under ruthless dictators.

   More than 250,000 of our brave South Vietnamese died in battle, hoping to save their culture, their religions, their regional freedom  - and because Americans said, "We will stand with you against the global evil of communism. Untold hundreds of thousands of civilians in the South and Laos and in Thailand's border regions, were murdered by VC retribution, starved to death, executed in post war concentration camps or made refugees by the poorly targeted and massive us of U.S. firepower throughout the region.

   In the end, the communists trumpeted and crushed the million-man South Vietnamese Armed Forces, driving the Americans and their failed policy into the sea of political and military defeat.  The communist leaders who succeeded at war have gone on to create one of the most oppressive and ineffective nations on earth. They are stuck with an Asian police state based on the Soviet KGB model from the 1950s. It's goofy and ineffective economic model, marked by lack of freedom of speech, assembly and workplace, as well as the complete repression of minority and religious rights. What are we to make of this?

   It is still difficult for those of us who struggled so valiantly in Vietnam to look analytically at this horrible struggle that consumed so  much treasure and human life to such little American purpose. Ten percent of our generation served in the Southeast Asia Theater. Nearly 3.5 million troops served in-country between 1961, when President Kennedy sent in the first 3,000 military advisors - including my brother in law Capt. Dave Ragin, who was killed in action in August of 1964 and posthumously awarded one of the first Distinguished Service Crosses of the war - until April 30, when the last two Marines killed at Ton San Nhut Airport during the chaotic final days of free Vietnam.

    The Vietnam experience was dramatically different fro all of us. It depended on when and where you served and, most importantly, in what echelon and type of unit. In1969, at the peak strength of more then 540,00 troops battling in -country, less than 25 per cent actually served in frontline combat units. They disproportionately suffered the bulk of the casualties. Losses in rifle companies, reconnaissance units, attack helicopters and lift aircraft were horrific in the meat-grinder battles on the DMZ and Central Highlands, and in huge clashes along the sanctuary frontiers of Cambodia and Laos. My division, the 1st Cavalry, suffered 5,444 killed in action and 26,592 wounded during its service in Vietnam. Air Force combat pilots flying out of Thailand and naval aviators coming off the decks of carriers in the Tonkin Gulf left austere living conditions at base to face fiercest and most effective air-defense system in military history. Hundreds of these brave men were killed by anti-aircraft artillery, weather, fatigue or years of unbearable barbarism in North Vietnamese cages.

   Another 40% to 50% of supporting military forces were intermittently shelled, rocketed, exposed to mines and occasional ambushes, sprayed with Agent Orange, or worked like animals in sweltering heat, bugs and loneliness 12,000 miles from home. All of this sacrifice took place in the context of a war that American political, media, academic and entertainment elites increasingly came to view as misguided, ineffective and wrong.

   Our poor soldiers. Their Congress, families and judges told them to do their duty. They were mostly volunteers; 25% were draftees, compared to 66% in World War II. They were the most educated soldiers ever put into battle. Seventy-nine percent were high-school graduates, compared to 66% in Korea and 45% in World War II. They were so young. Their average age was 19, compared to 26 for World War II troops; 61% of those killed were 21 or younger. They were all races and religions. More than 12% of those killed in action were black; 5.2% were Hispanic. They came from all socioeconomic levels. Half were from middle-income families.

    They also were among the most dedicated troops ever in uniform. Those of  us privileged to lead them in battle came to admire their courage, natural courtesy, sense of humor and the teamwork and trust they gave to each other. Ninety-seven percent of Vietnam veterans received honorable discharges. Ninety percent of those who saw heavy combat tell pollsters they are proud to have served. The overwhelming majority who saw heavy fighting - 82% - say the war was lost because of lack of political will. Reassuringly, 87% of Americans hold Vietnam veterans in high esteem.

Looking Ahead

   In Vietnam, we never lost a battle - but we lost the war. In a larger sense, however, I suspect that historians will conclude in coming decades that the enormous valor of our men and women in uniform were a key part of the global strategy that successfully encircled and held at bay the menace of international communism that threatened the political and economic freedom of our allies. Vietnam was a painful tragedy that produced an enduring national political wariness. In the armed forces, however, the result was a stronger military force of volunteers with enormous professionalism and a much keener awareness of he requirements for coordinated military operations capably integrated with other agency resources. Most crucially, Vietnam taught us to never allow the political leadership of the nation to put us into battle without the support of the American people. Never again.

What did the U.S. Armed Forces learn from Vietnam?

The strategic purpose of war must be understood and articulated, and resources must be explicitly tied to a concept. If a fundamental disconnect exists between the Congress that provides the resources and the administration that devises the strategy, failure will result.

The American people must be told of the strategic purpose of the military effort and asked for their participation and sacrifice to make it succeed. We must level with them. We cannot spin them into a policy that will always entail unanticipated risks, bloodshed and tradeoffs on the domestic agenda. There was a lack of trust and honesty on the part of our Vietnam-era political an military leadership, best exemplified by the fundamental lack of policy integrity of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. A disconnect must not exist between the soldiers of our democracy and the American people. Our young men and women must feel the support of their families, communities, and national leadership or we cannot commit them to battle. The Reserves and National Guard are a direct connection to 8,000 communities in America. When they are called to service, the nation sees all their young people at risk. In Vietnam only 9,000 National Guardsmen served, and 22 were killed.

The U.S. Armed Forces must openly deal with the media. We cannot communicate with journalists deceptively or see them as the enemy. We have a responsibility to the American people to transparently demonstrate the execution of our war aims. In Vietnam, many senior uniformed deceived. This is a disaster in a democracy. Conversely, the media have an equal responsibility to understand and respect the armed forces and to remember that journalists are not neutral observers. They have a stake in the successful outcome o U.S. military operations. Ridicule, hostility and exploitation of sensitive classified information that places our forces at risk should not be acceptable to American media.

Vietnam was an operational art disaster for the integrated use of military power. Goldwater-Nichols has gradually worn down the incredible parochialism of the services. It must be a single coordinated air war. Ground forces must be complimentary in capabilities. Intelligence must be focused to target the use of our technology and firepower. Naval and Marine power exists to work the strategic flanks of enemy centers of gravity. A unified commander must have the authority to bring together the operational, administrative and logistical power of the joint force.

The last thing any military commander should do is get in a tactical fair fight with enemy forces. Spending seven years fighting it out in the jungle with hand grenades and automatic weapons in a battle of attrition with the NVA soldiers stumbling off the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a stupid tactic. When you are stuck in a desperate firefight, you have to attack a flank or withdraw. The North Vietnamese had too much courage and commitment to be deterred by endless tactical struggles at the company level.

Vietnam illustrated that we needed to operationally escalate both horizontally or vertically. We should have gone north - vertical - and smashed their military center of gravity. We should have used unrestricted air power and ground forces to widen our response against North Vietnamese military sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia - horizontal.

The constraints on the employment of airpower were absolutely ludicrous. The only time air power was unleashed was during Operation Linebacker II in the 1972 Christmas bombing campaign. In 12 days, more than 120 B-52s dropped 20,000 tons of bombs. We lost 26 aircraft but brought the war to a close, and our prisoners came home. The strategic control of air power was not sound. Targets were picked in the White House. The air campaign was carefully modulated in intensity instead of being designed to overwhelm the North Vietnamese political and military will. If we were unwilling to escalate to win then we should have quit years earlier than we did. Military actions that do not achieve their purpose and are repeated endlessly are prima facie evidence of policy insanity.

Use other nations' soldiers to achieve our common purpose where possible. I served a tour in combat with the Vietnamese Airborne troops and observed other elite forces such as their Marines, Ranger battalions, the 1st ARVN Division and others. From the start, we should have given our allies a lead role in the war and given them the equipment and technology to do the job. The only thing not in short supply in the Vietnamese paratroopers was courage. However, they were equipped with the U.S. World War II weapons and backed by a technologically weak air force and helicopter force until late in the war. We also failed to use our political and economic muscle to force land reform and to reduce the endemic political and military corruption that so dreadfully weakened their will to prosecute the war.