re: Could any strategy have worked in Vietnam?

That reminds me! Going Downtown is another must read. Broughton (author) was nearly court martialed for destroying gun camera footage from his pilots shooting at a AAA site in one of McNamara’s safe zones. The AAA site happened to be on a Russian ship if I recall correctly. Oops?

Killing AAA was pioneered during Vietnam though. We learned a lot of lessons on ground attack with FACs and dynamic targeting all seeing major advancements. Plus, the Air Force got its greatest acronym YGBSM

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Could any strategy have worked in Vietnam?

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For years I've wished I could have sat down with Harry Summers to discuss this topic.

I think if you put this question to Clausewitz he would say there was a confusion between tactics and strategy. You can see this in the 1968 FM 100-5 and how it defined and conflated national strategy and military strategy. You can see it later as we somehow decided there were three levels to war - there are only two levels. We got fancy with shite for no reason.

There was no confusion in WWII. But afterwards confusion set in and in my opinion it started with the notion of having a large standing army (military) that would/could deal with world problems not just national strategic objectives, that needed to be treated as an institution with rigid controls on personnel. We brought in the up or out system which has been nothing but a disaster.

In WWII numerous commanders were fired on the spot. They were sent elsewhere, they learned some lessons, and were put back in the pool and most ended up commanding again and they were better for the experience - which meant the units were better. After WWII with OPA which later became DOPMA, that all changed.

With OPA there was now a concern for someone's career, not just the mission. When you combine that with downsizing and budget reductions after a war, yet the intention to maintain a large military that could go anywhere you end up with Task Force Smith.

A by-product of this is a handoff of the strategy piece to the flag ranks because the military comes to be viewed as a political tool in and of itself, rather than part of the national strategy apparatus. Those in charge of the military don't fight this because it ends up granting them a lot of power, increased budgets, and so forth. They have no business fricking with the strategy piece, however. Civilians are supposed to do that, the people with stars are supposed to understand this and translate it into suitable tactics that will aid in accomplishing those strategic objectives.

All of this went wonky in Vietnam because military leaders didn't have the authority to make strategy but were often asked to do so. They did it in a bubble without the political calculus. Civilian leaders were all too happy to let the military handle that load, until it cost them political capital. In the end we really didn't craft a national strategy for Vietnam.

We still had good minds in the military during Vietnam and we had many excellent soldiers, whether they volunteered or got drafted. If we had a national strategy, clearly articulated to military leaders, I'm confident those leaders would have crafted the appropriate tactics.

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The reason Korea was successful

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it was not

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Was there anything we could have done other than not getting involved at all?

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Drop Chuck Norris into Hanoi. War over in a week.

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starsandstripes

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Many thanks

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This is going to be painful for those who served or who lost friends in Vietnam, but were the protestors right?

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I sometimes think the protestors protested more about us killing innocent VC civilians than than did about our own servicemen being killed. My evidence of that - you don't spit on and cuss your own troops when they come back home.

The problem with Vietnam was the people were going to be poor farmers. Communists, capitalist, didn't matter to them.
Also, every American who studied Korea knew we should never, ever get into a land war in Asia.

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not getting involved at all

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That's the key. Douglas MacArthur had warned against a American military campaign in Southeast Asia back in the 1950s, after the conclusion of the bloody Korean conflict. His words went unheeded.

American involvement in Vietnam was limited before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. What followed was escalation of the war and the worst American military tactical decision in its history, at least until the Iraq Invasion of 2003.

No the protesters were NOT right because of the way returning soldiers were treated.