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Originally Posted by peter12
Sure he did. He started the carpet bombing in the North, escalated troop levels, and changed American Rules of Engagement. Bad, bad left-wingers.
Seriously, the left-right divide is ######ed.
Conservatives, like myself, find the high-tech wars of today to be absolutely horrifying.
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Not to degrade this into a vietnam war discussion.
While he and McNamara did increase troop levels, they put a ineffectual bombing campaign into place because they refused to close the ports where Soviet and Chinese freighters were off loading supplies. They refused to go after supply depots, put assinine rules of engagement into place including a refusal to go after Northern SAM sites that would have saved the lives of aviators.
The thing that Killed the Americans in the Vietnam war was its own government who decided that Bureaucrats thousands of miles away from the war, who had no military experience were the ones that made the tactical decisions.
If the American's had put up the pressure bombed the crap out of the Vietnamese supply centers in and around Hanoi, mined the harbour's to prevent resupply, and gone after anti air defenses instead of dropping bombs on empty fields the American's could have blunted the Norths supply of men and equipment to the south. They could have put pressure on the Russians not to supply Vietnam, and they could have actually fought a proper war of occupation instead of the stupidest ground war ever created, where American's would win battles and territories only to give them back.
LBJ might have been a good domestic president, but frankly as a war time president he was an utter disaster.
If McNamara had been the Sec def in WW2, the American's probably would have lost the pacific.