Re: Request for non-member

[<Cfbernard@aol.com>]

Sorry,

This is what I meant to paste to the previous sending.

Carl



We older folk recall our losing a war some 30 years ago, before we become 
sensitive.  This makes this soldier's concern about being more likely to lose 
now because we are more sensitive a bit illogical, i.e., not a credible 
threat in the "cause and effect" train of events and circumstances.

The new CSIS Report: American Military Culture in the Twenty-First Century 
speaks to serving soldiers' concerns for their present situation.  It posits 
a rationale for something I've insisted on to many folk, i.e., that 400 men 
from the 7th Cu Chi Main Force Battalion neutralized half the U.S. Infantry 
Division with which they shared the province.  Note also that they were 
located 25 miles from Saigon, and that this province was rated 44th in 
security of the 44 in country.  We were not very sensitive, but we were 
losing the war we were in.  Why?

In one section the CSIS Report lays this loss on our centralized command 
structure in which squads were commanded by general officers hovering 
overhead in helicopters.  The VC used "mission type" orders.  

The Report also cites our individual replacement system, i.e., each person 
being transferred from his unit about the time he appreciated what he was 
doing.  All our units were in a constant flux.  The VC learned their trade in 
the area where they lived and were moved to the higher echelons in the same 
area, as they were needed.  The 7th Cu Chi was the top of the ladder in its 
district; its members stayed there in this unit, after their initial 
assignment to it until after the war was over.

The real issues: 1) do we use mission type orders now that we've learned what 
a difference it makes?  Or have we elected to stay with our failed system of 
centralized command?  2) Do we keep people in the same unit now or do we 
still practice our failed policy of replacements by individuals?  The young 
soldier who is so distressed with being made sensitive may not realize the 
traditional handicaps he will take into combat with him.  These two alone 
assure he will likely lose that the war he gets sent to fight will be lost if 
our antagonists are of the caliber of the 7th Cu Chi.

One more concern.  Stouffer's WWII study, The American Soldier, concluded 
that "assigning a stupid man to the infantry is tantamount to condemning him 
to death."  Recall that a Cat V man in a rifle squad gets hit six times for 
each time a Cat I man doing the same work gets hit once.  And look at which 
category we had  in rifle squads then, and what we have there now.  

Another element in support of this was published earlier today in the 
Washington Post.  It is on page 3, titled "Asian Americans Coping with 
Success," and worth all of you calling up on your machines.  Simply stated, 
28 percent of MIT students are Asians; 39 percent of U.C. Berkeley's are 
Asians.  This may support my profound belief that Asians are smarter than we 
are.  I became suspicious of this hearing the older Marines in my regiment 
speak of Japanese infantrymen.  My own exposure to the Chinese in Hopei 
province in 1945-6 made this seem reasonable.  Posted in Japan in 1949; going 
from there to fight the North Koreans in 1950 and then the Chinese later that 
year, made this suspicion Asians being superior intellectually even more 
credible.  Recall, our "winning" this war is not really what happened.  There 
are those who believe this war was "forgotten" because we did not win.

My involvement with the Laotians, the Hmong, and the Vietnamese in the north 
of Laos in 1961 where I was in the Special Force, did nothing to make me 
revise this opinion.  I did not spend the entire two years of my tour in 
Vietnam in the 7th Cu Chi's insecure area, but the persons who understood the 
war we were fighting then were NOT Americans.  My six years at the University 
of California at Berkeley made the intellectual qualities of Asians 
undeniable.  In my day only 15 percent of the students were Asians and they 
were studying to become engineers and scientists.  Now they are everywhere on 
campus.

Why is my offering these old appreciations of the world we are in relevant 
now?  It is because we have to face the real issues, not just the minor 
social irritations of the day.  This "sensitive soldier" is probably not 
historian enough to appreciate our real problems.  Sadly, neither are our 
chiefs today, if the lack of fixes is an indication of our willingness to 
work on causes us to lose wars.

Protecting the 50 American States from invasion by manning their National 
Guards was a certain success.
No invasion occurred.  My suggestion to the Berkeley student body that 
protecting their state had the Selective Service sending persons less 
qualified than they were to be combat infantrymen, and assured
that a disproportionate number would be killed by the patently superior VC 
forces.  

 My sharing an appreciation with Berkeley's students that their "guarding" 
the state caused their far more vulnerable fellows (those identified in The 
American Soldier) to be killed, was not well received.  Some thought my 
public statements would validate the fears of blacks in downtown Oakland that 
they were being put in dangers well beyond the percentage their numbers 
warranted.  

There is no question but that the persons who took themselves to Canada; or 
hired out to the safe rear areas where most Air Force bases are located; or 
found work chipping the paint on the Navy's ships; forced local draft boards 
to people our fighting elements with less imaginative people.  There are 
valid reasons for this soldier to worry about our Army not being ready to win 
the next war we undertake.  He and his present chiefs need to go far into the 
reasons we lost the last one, and eliminate these.  The American Military 
Culture in the Twenty-First Century does not speak of the findings of The 
American Soldier.  However, these two works parse the problem and are 
relevant.  We need focus on the reasons Korea and Vietnam proved to be 
military catastrophes and face these, not distract ourselves with extraneous 
matters.