Quinn 4 wrote:
If we have known history, Korea and Vietnam would have not happen. Here we are today still at war, who is the dummy on history?
Korea came about because of Chinese expansion into the Korean peninsula. They backed the NK's from the outset. Mao had no interest in the Koreans, and he needed a buffer in that area to consolidate holding in Manchuria. If the Koreans, North and South, had killed each other to a man, Mao would still be happy, since he could occupy that land.
By resetting Southeast Asia to Antebellum ownership, the French, British, and Dutch believed they could return to their glory days of empire expansion. However, just as warfare changed, so did political views and realities. As soon as the Japanese surrender document was signed, we returned to near pre-WWII military levels. The Navy suffered heavily, as did the U.S. Air Force and Army.
Truman was not worldly in his view of the bodies politic. His State Department was riddled with Russian agents, passing on intel to the Russians, who in turn, passed the same intel to the Chicoms. Hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to the Soviet Union was passed directly to the Chinese, to help them accomplish the conquering of China by Mao. That everyone in D.C. was surprised on 25 June 50, is testament to the blinders by which we conducted foreign policy.
The French were really stupid in the way they handled things in Viet Nam. They were committed to ground tactics suitable for Europe, not jungles. They refused to bolster their paratroop units in favor of straightleg conventional forces. They ignored nonlinear warfare and the tactics needed to be successful.
Dien Ben Phu was completely avoidable, and came about as a result of French General Staff myopia and incompetence.
The U.S. error was believing there could be a negotiated dividing line between North and South Viet Nam. The North's ultimate goal was to win the South, and they were willing to do whatever it took to win. However, the U.S. military ignored the North's strategy, and tried piecemeal battle, leaving Hanoi and Haiphong intact. They ignored a main tactic - Never give the enemy a place to rest and rearm.