SwiftVets.com

[jalexson]

"Nobody wins a war. Some just lose more than others." B.Gen. Frank Savage, commander of the WWII 918th Bombardment Group in the tv series "12:00 High" made this statement in the episode "P.O.W: part 2".

Savage provides a different view of victory in war from the one that assumes the country that controls the battle field after the war is the "winner".

We usually consider WWII to be a war we won, but what did we actually win?

We didn't gain any large territory. Instead, we gave the Philippines its independence.

We didn't take money or other wealth from the losers. Instead, we helped rebuild them.
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We had significant losses with over 400,000 deaths and a huge debt. Our enemies suffered much heavier losses with deaths in the millions and destruction of their cities.

What is important about WWII is not what we "won" but what we didn't lose. Thanks to the efforts of men like my dad and my uncles we didn't lose our freedom.

The countries we defeated had to accept rule by others with the victors determining their form of government. Germans had to accept division of their country for several decades after the war.

This form of evaluation can be applied to the current conflict in Afghanistan. We're not trying to win control of Afghanistan or to take whatever mineral wealth it might have. American firms could purchase those minerals without a war.

We're not in Afghanistan to "win" anything. We're there to prevent losses like those that occurred on 9/11.

Success in Afghanistan will depend not upon how much we win, but on how much we don't lose. Afghanistan is part of the War on Terror that may last as long as the Cold War.

The above is what I'm posting on my newspaper blogs under the pen name Reason McLucus. this form of evaluation can also be applied to Vietnam.

One of the problems people have understanding Vietnam is that there wasn't anything for us to "win". As Sly and the Family Stone said in song "it's one, two, three what are we fighting for. Don't ask me..." We could have been fighting to maintain a Cold War base there, but Lyndon Johnson threw away that possibility.

Our stated goal was preventing North Vietnam from taking all of Southeast Asia, including Thailand, which we did. We successfully gave the South Vietnamese the opportunity to have their own government, but corruption in that government, including the military, left them vulnerable to attack.

Our troop losses were far less than those of North Vietnam including their Viet Cong forces. the DRV got control of the South lost many of the South's most productive citizens who fled to the U.S.

Our biggest loss was in our credibility as a nation. Osama bin Laden cited our abandonment of Vietnam as one reason he thought he could get away with the 9/11 attack.
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"That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house."
-- Mark Twain

[Hap]

(paraphrasing)

"This Group…This Group…that is your only reason for being. And if any one thinks they have some kind of special hide to be saved, I don't want him in this group."

"I don't have a lot of time for this what are we fighting for stuff…we're in a war, a shooting war…we've GOT to fight; and some of us have got to die…consider yourself already dead…then it won't be so tough."

"This is a military base…not a zoo!"