Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
This is the title for a new article on Westmoreland and Vietnam by Army Historian Dale Andrade ... Andrade's bigger point is that if we as the United States Army aspire to be a learning organization, a good place to start is by understanding the past; specifically Vietnam and then move to a better understanding of the flawed lessons that we have dervived from that war along with myths in order to get at the truth.
Couldn't agree more with your premise. We certainly should eliminate the flawed lessons of Viet Nam -- however, we should also be very careful not to preselect the lessons we wish to learn -- or eliminate.

My sensing tends to coincide more with Steve Blair than with Andrade. Westmoreland was right -- to an extent. He was also wrong to an extent. IMO, he was more wrong than right, Andrade can differ as can you but there is little denying three salient facts:


- The primary Operational level of effort, COIN, was given only lip service from 1963 until late 1968.

- There were a number of flawed decisions by MACV during that period that ranged from placing the Marines in the wrong CTZ (as Steve pointed out) and the Army having to develop a Riverine capability to operate in 4 CTZ on the fly; the infusion program and the force protection measures that insisted on large unit operations and constant US Artillery cover (two things the VC and NVA quickly learned to exploit). Most of these and more sprang from the NW Europe mentality of Westmoreland and the MACV Staff that could not wrap itself around the flexibility required to confront an agile enemy * .

- The vast majority of contacts were initiated by the enemy, not by us and that is by any measure a significant operational and tactical failure. As that NVA Colonel told Harry Summers, not being whipped in battle was irrelevant.

It did not need to be that way and Westmoreland was in command. So, no, he wasn't right...

In any event, Afghanistan, Iraq and Viet Nam are three very different wars fought against three very different enemies in three very different sets of terrain in a different time and with different levels of troop training and capability. Few of the lessons of Viet Nam translate directly and we should be extremely careful of those we choose to adopt.

* An example of that is the statement recently made in a war game prep at Knox to an acquaintance by a senior person regarding reconnaissance; "We (Americans) don't have the patience to sneak and peek, we just mount up and go out looking for trouble and you have to have Armor to do that." I submit that worked in NW Europe at the tail end of WW II; it took the Remagen Bridge, for example, good job. It may work today in a European or even in some Iraqi settings. It did not work in Viet Nam and it does not work in Afghanistan.