During the Vietnam War, it was body count. That turned out to be a great way of incentivizing the most murderous troops.
There were occasions in the Vietnam War where regions were declared to be free fire zones, and everyone within was to be killed, down to the last child and granny.
A 'free fire' zone is an area wherein there is no requirement for soldiers to coordinate heavy arms fire with other units via HQ etc.. This is a very reasonable policy in jungle fights where units can come under ambush at any time, i.e. "We're in an ambush and we're about to die, can you ring up HQ to see if we can shoot back?"
But the notion that US forces would just designate an area where everyone including civilians are to be killed is an outright and offensive lie.
Though there are some situations in which Army Units did actively and knowingly fire on citizens, these are known and well documented tragedies of soldiers acting with fury in the moment agains villagers who were supporting insurgent forces - this was not and never was any kind of US policy, and the perpetrators faced Court Martial.
The Vietnam war is so completely misinterpreted in pop culture; even to this day, it's disturbing.
I'm sorry, but I will show you to be mistaken below.
But the notion that US forces would just designate an area where everyone including civilians are to be killed is an outright and offensive lie.
Then you should have an issue with the Ken Burns documentary. I think I got the terminology wrong; "free fire zone" means something else. However, the practice I am referring -- that of designating everyone in a certain place as an enemy, then killing everyone within -- did happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
From Ken Burn's "The Vietnam War" Part 5 narration: (00:44:43,393 --> 00:44:47,428)
In the summer of 1967, Tiger Force was sent to the fertile Song Ve Valley. The entire population had already been herded from their homes and crowded into a refugee camp. But some had come back to resume the farming they had always done. The valley had officially been declared a free-fire zone, and Tiger Force's officers took that literally. "There are no friendlies," one lieutenant told his men. "Shoot anything that moves." Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians. Among their victims were two blind brothers; an elderly Buddhist monk; women, children, and old people hiding in underground shelters; and three farmers trying to plant rice. All were reported as "enemy... killed in action."
The US does not declare that US forces should just go and kill anyone, rather, 'anyone' can be considered a target, which is perfectly reasonable policy while fighting an insurgency.
In normal rules of engagement, the women and children running out of the village are obviously out of bounds. They are civilians. You can't fire at them for any reason.
In a 'free fire' zone, anyone can be considered an enemy combatant if the situation indicates as such. The woman running out of the village with an AK-47 - is 'in bounds' as an enemy combatant in an area where villagers are considered on the side of the insurgents. Obviously, random civilians are not.
The misinterpretation of 'free fire' or the 'loose application' of it are considered 'war crimes' by the US and it was absolutely never intended that the policy be used by soldiers to just shoot up people - your implication that it was used this way is completely false.
The My Lai massacre was a war crime, not an intentional act sanctioned by US forces.
Also: war is dirty. There are no wars without war crimes. Once the bad genie comes out ... it spills all around, the best we can do is contain it.
FYI that's one of the hardest things to do, i.e. make those kinds of calls in the field - often it's not obvious.
Go and watch one of the documentaries that delve into US forces wrangling over a decision to drop munitions, and consider how tricky those decisions are ... so many factors.
"There are no friendlies," one lieutenant told his men. "Shoot anything that moves." Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians. Among their victims were two blind brothers; an elderly Buddhist monk; women, children, and old people hiding in underground shelters; and three farmers trying to plant rice. All were reported as "enemy... killed in action."
> In normal rules of engagement, the women and children running out of the village are obviously out of bounds. They are civilians. You can't fire at them for any reason.
During the Korean War, my grandmother had her life saved by a wad of cash (large, because of wartime inflation) hidden in a secret pocket in her skirt. It stopped a piece of shrapnel produced by strafing from a US Douglas A-1 Skyraider. Was she "in bounds?"
> The misinterpretation of 'free fire' or the 'loose application' of it are considered 'war crimes' by the US and it was absolutely never intended that the policy be used by soldiers to just shoot up people
Can you see how using Body Count as a metric would tend to produce "targeting" of the metric which would result in the targeting of people to turn into corpses? That is my whole point here.
Civilian casualties are generally avoided if possible. I'm happy that your grandmother was saved, but it's not relevant.
"Can you see how using Body Count as a metric would tend to produce "targeting" of the metric which would result in the targeting of people to turn into corpses?"
No. 'Body count' is used in every war and has been since the dawn of time, and we continue to use it today as one of many metrics.
Using this metric will not encourage professional soldiers to arbitrarily murder civilians.
(And mispronounce.)
And FYI the US handily and clearly won the Vietnam war; the South Vietnamese insurgency was defeated and the North Korean Army was obliterated.
Due to political pressure at home, the US withdrew after the war, and a short while later the North Vietnamese were able to rebuild their army and waltz in and topple the fragile S. Vietnamese government. The Communists then murdered 10's of thousands of people in the streets and imprisoned 100's of thousands and of course enforced totalitarian rule which kept millions in fear and poverty.
Were the Americans to have simply left a contingent of soldiers in the South, thereby keeping the legitimate threat of violence, it's unlikely the South would have fallen and might very well look like S. Korea today.
To your point, 'body count' is not a very good number to use when you're fighting an insurgency where there are a lot of irregular forces who can come in and out of fighting, or where soldiers can be replenished (i.e. North Vietnam can recruit willy nilly on their turf).
But it's still a valid measure and though you don't hear about it these days (for PR reasons) you can absolutely be assured that all NATO forces meticulously con't how many enemy forces are destroyed, and that it is a 'target' on many missions.
That’s a serious, if delusional claim that requires a loooooot of support. “Handily” in particular seems like a ridiculous way to state it, even if you only look at US casualties.
This is a valid point: we though it was going great because hey - look at the 'battles won' and 'body' count, but really it wasn't.
But the US did not remotely lose the war.
There is no rational basis for suggesting this - it doesn't even make sense.
This is the weird delusional pop culture response that is the problem: misquotes, lies, exaggerations, political statements - all of this about this war specifically that lends reasonable people to think something happened ... that did not happen.
It got a little ugly but the US won on fairly hard terms: South Vietnamese insurgency was wiped out, and the North Vietnamese Army was in tatters. This only after a few short years of heavy fighting, with limited engagement by the US, an something like 10-1 casualty rates favouring the Americans.
It's ironic because the Americans actually did kind of 'lose' in a way in Korea and we don't look at it the same way due to the different political nature of the war.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-330-...
Subject: Program of Action to Prevent Communist Domination of South Viet Nam
The US Objective: to prevent Communist domination of South Vietnam and to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society.
The US had not achieved those objectives 12 years later. The communists won control over the whole country a few years after US withdrawal finished. Vietnam's government is still communist today.
This is basically what I learned browsing through encyclopedias when I was a kid. I did a quick fact-check just now in case I had been misled or misremembered. I can sort-of understand saying that the communists didn't achieve victory over the USA either (because they also didn't manage to install an allied government in the territory of the USA), but claiming that the US won is weird.
Yes. They did.
The US did achieve those objectives in the early 1970s'.
The US vanquished the South Vietnamese forces, and did considerably damage to North Vietnamese forces using air power - to the point where North Vietnamese did not have a capable fighting force.
Communism was basically gone in the South, in the North, inoperable, at least militarily.
Then the US left.
A few years later, the North built up their armies and waltzed into the South.
It's really crazy, strategically that the US withdrew - all they had to do was leave about 50K soldiers, sitting 'behind the wire' not really fighting, maybe an aircraft carrier, i.e. 'the threat of violence' and S. Vietnam would be as free today as S. Korea. The Americans withdrew because of populist political pressure back home i.e teens protesting. I don't believe the US should have necessarily gone to war in Vietnam, but after they did, they should have stayed - it would have cost very little.
Anyhow - as per the article - 'points of measure' can be misleading, as it was with 'bodycount' in Vietnam, but they're not entirely misleading.
Number of enemy combatants, civilians, allies killed or wounded is a very important metric in every conflict. It's just not 'the' metric.
This needs to be said a lot more in our civilization, in 2018.
By that argument, all of western Europe didn't save a viable society since Germany was able to defeat them.
I don't agree with that.
France had a credible defense. Also, France certainly survived their enemy in the long term.
France today is not the same as France in 1939 - the period from 1870-1940 is generally considered the French Third Republic, and they're on the Fifth Republic now. Poland today is not the same as Poland in 1939. Germany today is certainly not the same as Germany in 1939. Not only are the people in charge different, but the whole system of government is different, the cultural values are different, and many of the cities were rebuilt from the ground up.
Just because a society collapses doesn't mean the people disappear, or even that they start to think of themselves as a different nationality. Society is all of the organizational superstructure on top of that, and barring rare cases like governments-in-exile-that-can-pick-up-where-they-left-off-when-liberated, that usually doesn't survive being defeated in warfare.
By that measure, fine, yes, the US strategy in Vietnam failed, and it was basically due to the fact they left.
It had nothing to do with 'bad measures' like 'body count' and nothing to do with military failures or ventures.
The misleading metric of 'body count' really didn't change the fact that the US wiped out the VC and destroyed most of the North's ability to fight.
Militarily it was a definitive victory for the US.
And then the US bailed and it fell apart.
Let's not confuse the fact it was a terrible and ugly war, with way too many civilian casualties with things like 'bad measures'.
The 'bad measures' of 'body count' did not create an existential problem for the US strategy, really.
What's delusional and troubling is the degree to which this war is completely misunderstood in pop culture.
The US handily won the Vietnam war, full stop.
In classical terms is was a clear and unambiguous outright victory.
Think of Korea for example: a stalemate, whereas the US obliterated their oppponents in Vietnam.
The US hardly lost a single battle and losses in the war are consistent with the losses forces have in a 'regular war' - it's just that they seem large today's because the US hasn't fought against capable forces. Losses were consistent with Korean war, just a decade previous.
The Vietnam experience is often misunderstood because the US technically did spend a very long time there, they had trouble initially with the South Vietnamese insurgency, because the US eventually resorted to heavy bombing campaigns with too many civilian casualties, and because of complex political issues such as North Vietnamese forces hiding out in Cambodia etc..
But really the 'hard war' was not very long - you can see the troop buildup and then withdrawal here [1]
The US 'under committed' to the effort early on, and then did a slower build up to defeat the insurgency, and relatively handily defeated them after the buildup and then withdrew after a major air campaign.
The length of direct engagement by US forces in Vietnam is shorter than for Iraq and Afghanistan, and roughly on par with Korea. The number of US casualties was roughly on par with Korea as well.
The Vietnam war is understood by most people via Hollywood films and very poorly conceived documentaries. It was a turning point in some ways because it's the first time that American citizens were given insight into how horrible war actually is (i.e. reporters on the front lines etc.).
The only measure of success is whether or not you accomplish your objectives. The US did not accomplish its objectives in Vietnam of keeping a US-friendly government in power. Regardless of tactical measures of success, the US failed in its strategic objectives. I agree that popular culture has not accurately portrayed the Vietnam conflict, but saying that the US won in Vietnam is completely untrue.
Yes. They did. While there was conflict.
Then they left, and effectively abandoned those objectives.
When the North Vietnamese rebuilt it's army and re-invaded the South - propping up the S. Vietnamese government was obviously no longer a military objective, and barely a political one.
So the US won a war, withdrew, and then abandoned their ally.
Which is crazy.
Which is crazy.
Sounds an awful lot like our government was gaming their "target" just to say they achieved it, even though hitting the target wasn't in everyone's best interests.
Until such was achieved, we had _always_ lost the war. Winning battles, paid for with American blood, was only a means of temporarily staving off the likely collapse for another year or two.
As for "abandoned", what does that even mean? The South had: large material advantages in artillery, vehicles, and AFVs; a significant air force (2000 craft), plus >10 years of a huge US training effort.
Progress was defeating a ruthless and murderous North Korean Communist regime who, upon victory, mass murdered 10's of thousands of their own citizens, put 100's of thousands in concentration camps and ruthless oppressed their population for decades.
My homework partner in high school was a child of Vietnamese immigrants - literally 'boat people'. Also my first boss in the Valley was Vietnamese from that era. They have some stories.
“Who, upon victory, mass murdered 10's of thousands of their own citizens...”
Proofread! Or at the very least, try not to include outright contradictions in your outlandish claims. Claiming that the US won in one sentence, and in the very next declaring the opposite is baffling.
The Americans defeated the Viet Kong insurgency and the North Vietnamese, and then withdrew shortly thereafter.
After a few years, the North Vietnamese were able to rebuild their Army. They invaded and toppled South Vietnam.
Again, my point: people don't seem to have any idea of what actually happened.
The military objectives were 'gamed' by using 'body count' which mislead us in terms of progress.(Actually, they were not 'gamed' so much as the old metric of 'body count' was not useful in this type of insurgency - so more a matter of 'lack of insight').
BUT - the strategic objectives did not fail for this reason.
The military objectives of defeating the VC and North Vietnamese were still outright successful. Despite all the challenges, it was a definitive military victory for the US: VC wiped out, North Vietnamese totally neutralized. The North Vietnamese basically surrendered their objectives and a 'peace treaty' was signed.
The 'failure' in Vietnam was a geopolitical one - once the US withdrew, the North Vietnamese rebuilt their army and waltzed into the South.
My point is - the two are separate issues.
The now accepted view of 'body count was misleading' actually did not fundamentally affect military outcomes. It was a bad measure, but the US still one. It affected some things, maybe a 'shock' to public opinion, but it was not existential in terms of changing the military outcomes.
The 'failed objectives' were simply due to (arguably premature) US withdrawal. You can see from US casualties [1] during the war that the war was 'won' (about mid 1970) several years before US withdrawal and even longer before a resurgent North Vietnamese invasion after US withdrawal.
Hence the confusion.
There were so many civilian casualties, so many geopolitical bits of ugliness, the US casualty rate was high enough, the terrible massacres on both sides - that all of this leaves us with a clouded view of the events.
It's hard to quantify the cost of the bad PR that comes from killing children and grannies.
The military objectives of defeating the VC and North Vietnamese were still outright successful...The 'failure' in Vietnam was a geopolitical one
The programming objectives were successful...the startup's failure was an economic one. Right here, we go up one level of abstraction, and we see the more fundamental failure. Does it really matter how good the code was, if your company goes bankrupt?
My point is - the two are separate issues.
No. One is a means. It's a form of implementation. I should sincerely hope you aren't all about "art for art's sake" when the "art" in question is military action and deadly force. As for the 2nd thing -- the actual goal, living up to values -- that gets to the crux of the true failure.
The now accepted view of 'body count was misleading' actually did not fundamentally affect military outcomes. It was a bad measure, but the US still one. It affected some things, maybe a 'shock' to public opinion, but it was not existential in terms of changing the military outcomes.
I went to a military academy for a boarding school. I had a 1903 Springfield rifle (disabled) locked to a rack in my room. I was taught by Vietnam vets. I think the majority of them would agree with many parts of your assessment, but I suspect at least some of them would be aghast at how you're missing the point. Does it matter how a military or a government achieves it's objectives? Unless you think the ends justify the means, yes it does. Does it matter if the actions align with your values? Yes it does.
You, yourself, have noted how the repercussions have reverberated down the years, but I'm not sure you're correctly interpreting what that means.
In a way, it's the same sort of mistake made by the worst of the authoritarian SJWs. Let's say you use technically legal force, bureaucratic pressure, and bad PR tactics to frighten and coerce people into doing what you want, but in doing so you convince nobody while violating a bunch of values, principles, and feelings -- what does that actually get you? It gets you further from the underlying goal. By the same token, let's say you use military force and kill or frighten everyone opposed to your client state, what does that really get you? If you've turned enough of the populace against you, it gets you less than what you had before.
In 2018, winning is through convincing, not coercing.
No, it was existential, because that shock to public opinion was a large part of the reason that the strategic goal was abandoned. The draft may have been a larger part, but the point remains: tolerating and perhaps even encouraging excessive civilian casualties was a military failure that played a role in the geopolitical failure. They are not separate issues at all.
History is never about "good guys killing bad guys".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Corps_inciden...
I’d like to point out that our allies in that war did all that stuff too, and there’s no reason to think they would have been much nicer if they had won. Part of why they lost is that they alientated much of the population by being oppressive and murderous.
The way it was portrayed in Ken Burns' "The Vietnam War," Ho Chi Minh was an admirer of the US, and would have become an ally, if the US hadn't decided to wholly back France in preserving its colonial interest.