> In both cases the US was the occupying force, in both cases the
> US met much heavier resistance than anticipated, and in both
> cases the US was caught off guard. ....
Well, among other things, because your first statement is false
and your third statement is questionable.
As far as I know, many pro-Vietnamese nationalists did see the US as
the successors to the French, which is to say, as an occupying force.
In any event enough Vietnamese (in both the North and the South)
thought badly of the US to organize the supply of armies and to
inspire or coerce others to enter those armies.
(Obviously, most people were simply intimidated by one side or the
other. Incidentally, I remember that a stated US reason for the war
was to protect Seattle and San Francisco from invasion by Russian or
Chinese Reds.)
Also, it is true that the US met heavier resistance than anticipated.
I remember quite vividly calculating in 1962 or 1963 that the US would
need several hundred thousand troops to defeat an enemy of 20,000.
(The rule of thumb was that 10 conventional soldiers would be required
to defeat 1 guerilla. My unstated presumption was that the
pro-American South Vietnamese soldiers would be little use, possibly
because they were already being defeated.) This was at a time when
the US government was saying it would require far fewer soldiers.
Possibly people in the US government knew that more soldiers would be
needed; in that case, they did not anticipate the resistance to lying.
I am sure they were caught off guard by the `credibility gap'.
(Bear in mind this was a war. In war, it is important to anticipate
or deal with rapidly every kind of resistance, whether among the enemy
or among potential supporters. A failure to deal with rapidly or
anticipate resistance to a technique of war, lying, is as dangerous as
failure to anticipate resistance to soldiers.)
As for catching the US government off guard: I remember being told
there was `a light at the end of the tunnel' (and it was not meant as
the later joke, `the light is the headlamp of the oncoming train'). I
really do not think President Johnson or Defense Secretary McNamara
expected their anti-Soviet action to be so difficult. I also do not
think that in 1968 to-be-elected President Nixon thought the US would
eventually lose.
--
Robert J. Chassell
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http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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