Vietnsm Mistakes No.2

Strategic Mistake No. 2

On the world stage our repeat of the first Vietnam mistake is failing to see that the West is already in a cold war – not of our choosing – with China and that this war is all about trade, intellectual property, and interference in our internal national affairs.

For our next lesson let's go back to the strategic analysis of Vietnam. General Westmorland started out fighting a war of attrition. Remember the grisly business of the “body count”.

To evaluate this we need to reiterate our lesson on “centre of gravity”. The definition of a CoG is "the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act." Thus, the center of gravity is usually seen as the "source of strength"



One wants to destroy the enemy's CofG. It is standard modern military doctrine that directly attacking one's opponent's CofG – that is to say hitting him where he is strongest – is a bad idea. Better is to work out what things this CofG itself requires to operate (critical requirements) or what its critical vulnerabilities are and deal with one or more of these.



For example, say your house has an ant problem. What is the CofG of an ant nest? It is that they just keep coming. So if you try attrition warfare against them – spraying them as they appear – sure you'll kill some, but more will just keep coming. What does the ant nest's CofG require? Well it is the queen who keeps pumping out larvae. So feed the ants a slow poison that they take back to the queen and … kill the queen and the whole nest dies.



So what was a source of strength for North Vietnam? It was that it was a brutal dictatorship whose leader Ho Chi Minh had thought nothing of killing half a million of his own people in his “reforms” already. He didn't care how many soldiers were killed. So attrition warfare was exactly the wrong move against him.



On the other hand the US had a glaring critical vulnerability. The US politicians had to face elections, so they were very afraid of public opinion. One strong lever on public opinion was the US death toll. So Ho knew that killing US soldiers was exactly the right tactic for him to use against the US.



I really hope that top military minds are working out how this applies to Russia, China, and Muslim extremists right now.
On the internal threat, I suspect strategy is not being applied, and so this is where we need to start thinking using these tools.



The two lessons so far we can apply to the destruction of Christianity and the whole moral fibre in the West are these:



1. What sort of conflict are we fighting? I suggest we need to do a re-think of our position here: Once “we” were the established “government” so to speak, Of course actors were ideas rather than people. Then a cleverly disguised neo-Communism came as a guerrilla attack.



We have been fighting rearguard actions since the 70's thinking we were still the majority voice. We're not any more. We may as well scrap the tactics we've been using – they didn't work even when we were fighting an insurgency. Now they are the government and we are the insurgents. We need to switch to the tactics that work for insurgents! And we need to get in and fight with zeal.



2. What is the source of strength of the progressives and their ideology? That will take a great deal of thinking out. But it is an important question to answer, and the more people who are pondering it the more chance of success. Though two things I've noticed already I will mention. First progressives are very often fuelled by anger and hatred. These are very powerful emotions and so are a source of strength for “the cause” but they are very unpleasant and ultimately self-destructive for the individual. If we can rescue people from bondage to these we will be doing them a favour. The second we see in young adherents to progressive ideology. They are so indoctrinated that they cannot carry on any discussion. Their only response to views that are different from theirs is to shut down the “dissent”. Their response is that anyone who questions their “orthodoxy” is therefore a fascist or Nazi and so “should not be allowed to speak”. Having thoroughly brainwashed adherents is a source of strength, but very dysfunctional.