Correct which is why in 1945 and 46 German and Japanese commanders were on trial instead of American, British, and Russian.

Winners make the rules, and write history.

Another example, notice their are no large Confederate cemeteries like Arlington? They lost, their is nothing chucked into the dust bin of history faster than failed rebels, or failed monarchs like the Russian Czar to name one.

Even today how many countries get squeezed by the big players on a regular basis on a whim, winners make the rules.


Its always good to win, and morals are relative and written about after the fact.

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2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

Nowhere have I promoted the idea that losing a war and/or being wiped out is a good thing. What troubles me in our nations history since WW2 is that none of the wars we've fought carried any risk to our nation, beyond economic risk. Well, there is the issue of wiping out OBL dens of AQ plotters to avert another 9/11 if possible, but I mean no real chance that our losing meant we were going to wiped out, subjugated, our woman and children taken into slavery.

Not that I yearn for risk of this sort, my point is that the same rules of 'wipe out the enemy at all costs' don't really work the same way in such conflicts. And yet hawks still talk about 'we shoulda turned Vietnam into a parking lot.'

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

You are very much in-line with the presidents who got us into those wars.

A curious confidence that we lost all of them?

The US has been fighting such wars since the beginning. First the Barbary pirates, than the Philippines, than the Boxer Rebellion, and the list goes on. Off the top of my head we also changed governments in Panama to get the canal built.


If you want to be on top and have international interests you have to protect them.

__________________
2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

And you have the little guy doing the grunt work, dying in mud, being paid $40 a week, while the barons do the billionaire thing. That's where Smedley Butler was coming from.

Bot, you assume that a victory was possible in Vietnam. That was not Korea where the south wanted to be apart from the nutjob in the north. In Vietnam, we'd have needed a larger force than was left in Korea to maintain any sort of post-victory peace and I doubt it would have lasted. In more conventional wars, the aggressor is thrown off, pretty French girls plant kisses on soldiers who bask in the glory, and stability proceeds as the natural state of things.

Butler:

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Of course absolute military victory was entirely possible. We had the tools. We didn't have the will to use them all to their fullest extent.

Victory was victory in WW2 because the aggressors were bruised and damaged sufficiently such that they withdrew. Where were the Vietnamese going to withdraw to? Let's go FTSOA with a Vn population of 40m. How many killed would be victory? What industrial sites were there to be destroyed? If their main industry is ag., I reckon we could have amped up Agent Orange dispersal to 30, 40, and 50% of the nation to shut down their economy.

I dunno man, the word 'victory' doesn't seem to fit whatever we would have to have done to get them to say Uncle (Sam). And, if we had to leave forces in place forever to sustain that victory, would start to seem more like loss than a win.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Victory is attained when the enemy is compelled to do what one's bidding.

If we look at victory as limited by the people and tools, tactics, and strategy actually used, then victory may not have been possible.

Yankees/unionists/federale conscripted soldiers who fought Lincoln's war buried in the backyard of the Confederate General's home.....what's with that? Did they think by interring Union dead in Lee's backyard they were sticking it to the South? What if American soldiers were buried in the backyard of North Vietnam's president/dictator Ho Chi Minh's home in nice rows of uniformly identical grave markers?......weird....

They weren't trying to "stick it to the south" as much as stick it to ole Bobby Lee. It worked. Lee did not return to Arlington

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Let's take a walk down another path momentarily. I feel the following information relates directly to our discussion concerning Union dead buried in Lee's backyard.

As I'm sure you are aware, there exists a flag, color black that is titled 'MIA' referring to Vietnam veterans who are considered missing in action. When one looks deeper into the issue, one finds that not only were soldiers left behind, but also thousands upon thousands of service dogs were also LEFT BEHIND. The United States government had the necessary resources to bring our boys home, but they chose not to. Seems much of the problem began with Nixon and Kissinger.

Please take the time to carefully read and consider the following article:

POWS LEFT BEHIND IN INDOCHINA


A story from National Geographic about the service dogs left behind:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140519-dogs-war-canines-soldiers-troops-military-vietnam/

Yeah because Lee refused the command of the US Army and prolonged the war, and they did stick it to him he never returned.

Sorry your guys lost but your proving my point.

__________________
2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

Victory from a strictly military standpoint in Vietnam was obtainable, it would have probably taken a couple dozen nuclear warheads.

But as bot said which you don't seem to be following compelling the enemy to bend to your will from a military and political standpoint are very different. In every war since WW2 the US has had the power to force any enemy to submit or to simple exterminate them. But from a political sense do we really want to do such horrible things? The answer is no hence limited wars that don't end well.

We did it in WW2 BTW. We literally destroyed the post war Japanese society. Which started with the Meiji period and lead to imperialism was literally obliterated with our conventional and later nuclear bombing.

__________________
2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

The act of burying Union dead in Lee's backyard sh** on two parties. Lee, and the Southern cause was one, two, the Union soldiers being the other. At that time Virginia represented the South and to be buried in Southern soil would have been (and still is) a great insult to a yankee boy. Union soldiers were buried in the land of the enemy, abandoned by their government AND their families they had so loyally served. Confederate soldiers, OTH, WERE buried in the South; Hollywood in Richmond and other cemeteries physically located throughout the South.

Yankee families were told that by burying their native sons in Southern soil they would be contributing to the beginning of a great national cemetery; a story they bought hook, line and sinker. Southerners had no desire for a national cemetery in their own backyard. Therefore the Union dead buried there were not accepted by Southerners. Still aren't. More of "MY will be done and to he** with your desires" type action.

Their government saw to it that their souls were reclaimed from their resting place in eternity; instead their bodies were to become a reminder that the body politic and the nation came first.

The foregoing paragraph is not my idea; I just copied an hour long television show produced by PBS "American Experience - Death and the Civil War". I suggest if you have the opportunity to carefully view it because they make my case.

That's pretty close.

Lincoln didn't want to have Lee residing in his plantation after the war so he directed the plantation be turned into a national cemetery. Without sure process, of course.