Weight of Combat Gear Is Taking Toll

[Pete]

There have been disconnects between strategic goals and the military operations used to achieve them; for domestic political reasons we decide to "do something" with military forces but then we don't think through the ends and means.

It happens again and again. When LBJ sent the first Marine Corps infantry battalions to Da Nang in 1965 to protect the air base it was to appease domestic political pressure. He had to "do something."

What was missing from the decision to send combat troops to Vietnam was a strategic appreciation of the situataion -- had we invaded North Vietnam and approached its northern border the Chinese may have come in, like in Korea; we had a fictitious and make-believe peace agreement in Laos where major elements of the NVA and the Ho Chi Minh Trail were located. For that reason ops in Laos were all CIA, MACV Special Studies Group and SF, concealed as it were from the U.S. State Department ambassador there. Thus we were stuck with attrition warfare within the geographic confines of South Vietnam and supporting a complacent government and armed forces run by a corrupt ruling elite.

At the highest levels of our government there is a passive-aggressive attitude between the administration in office and DoD and the armed forces. More four-stars should have the stones to ask, "Mr. President is your goal to 'do something,' win this war or get out of it?"