Major U.S. Mistakes in the Vietnam War
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Failure to Fully Utilize Air and Naval Superiority - Part 4
The fifth big mistake in Vietnam was failure to utilize our most powerful military assets—our overwhelming superiority in Air and Naval Power—early in the conflict. Pacific Area Commander (CinCPAC), Admiral Grant Sharp, believed this was the greatest mistake in the war. This mistake was closely related to and overlapped the fourth big mistake, which was the Johnson-McNamara doctrine of gradualism discussed in part 4 of this series.
On April 20, 1965, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara held a conference in Honolulu to inform General Wheeler, the Chairman of the JCS and his top commanders in the Pacific of the Johnson-McNamara strategy to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to the Communist regime in Hanoi. Also attending this meeting were Admiral Sharp; General Westmoreland, Commander of the Military Advisory Command in Vietnam (MACV); and retired General Maxwell Taylor, the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon. McNamara brought with him his most influential advisor, Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton, and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. This was a mere seven weeks following the commencement of Operation “Rolling Thunder,” Johnson’s plan to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table by a gradually escalating campaign of bombing targets in North Vietnam.
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The Biggest Mistakes of the Vietnam War
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Still Popular in the Liberal Democrat Playbook - Part 3
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we identified three of the biggest mistakes of the Vietnam War:
President Kennedy’s failure to challenge North Vietnam’s glaring and extensive violation of the 1962 Geneva Treaty on the neutrality of Laos, President Johnson’s compounding of this error by allowing Laos and Cambodia to become sanctuaries for North Vietnamese troops and supplies, and Kennedy’s regime change call that encouraged a South Vietnamese military junta to replace elected South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. The junta unfortunately murdered Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. This threw South Vietnamese civil government and military leadership into chaos for over two years, which the Communists exploited to the fullest, forcing a huge expansion of American commitment and troops. This regime change was the greatest mistake of the war. President Carter’s failure to support the Shah of Iran, long-time U.S. ally, in the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the Obama/Hillary Clinton backed Arab Spring involving Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria in 2011 were repeats of this media-pleasing liberal ideological error.
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Major U.S. Mistakes in the Vietnam War
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Mistake #3 – the Biggest Mistake of the War - Part 2
On November 1, 1963, the Kennedy Administration encouraged and abetted a military overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. As a consequence, Diem and his brother and chief political advisor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were killed the next day. This led to more than two years of unstable government and military leadership in South Vietnam, which was fully exploited by North Vietnam’s Communist leaders and led to more extensive commitments of American manpower to save South Vietnam. President Johnson, who succeeded to the presidency after Kennedy’s own assassination on November 22, later called the overthrow of Diem the biggest mistake of the Vietnam War. President Nixon, writing in 1985, agreed that it was one of the three greatest mistakes of the war.
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Major U.S. Mistakes in the Vietnam War
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Thirteen Political Formulas for Endangering America’s Future - Part 1
On June 23, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, still today considered one of the greatest generals and military tacticians in history, made one of the greatest strategic military mistakes in history. Napoleon gathered his Grande Armee of 685,000 men (300,000 French and 385,000 Austrian, Prussian and Polish allies), perhaps the greatest military force ever gathered at the time, and invaded Russia. Despite fierce Russian resistance at Borodino on September 7, and their scorched earth retreat leaving nothing behind them to sustain the Grande Armee, Napoleon occupied Moscow on September 14. However, the Russians burned much of the city and refused to surrender or engage Napoleon in pitched battle. The Grande Armee had already been substantially reduced by casualties and sickness (including typhus) and was in precarious logistical straits. On October 13, it began to snow. A few days later, Napoleon realized that the Grande Armee’s Russian campaign could not be sustained. In snow and bitter cold, with low food rations, starving horses, no winter uniforms, and sick and exhausted troops, Napoleon began his retreat out of Russia. On December 6, temperatures on his route of retreat into Lithuania dropped to 36 F. degrees below zero, so cold that men falling asleep by a campfire never woke up. By the time his Grande Armee crossed into Lithuania, it had less than 27,000 fit troops. Nearly 400,000 had died, 100,000 had been captured, and the rest scattered, deserted, or missing.
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Four Roots of Islamic Violence and Jihad
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
The four roots of Islamic violence and Jihad exposed here are not poverty, discrimination, the Crusades, or Colonialism. They come straight from the Koran and other sacred doctrinal texts of Islam.
Karl Troutwein, in his 2009 book, The 9/11 Verses: Terrorist Teachings in the Koran, describes four main elements in the Koran and the Sunna (the words and actions of Muhammad) that when combined result in a high probability of Islamic violence.
The first is “An attitude of anger and hate towards non-Muslims.”
This is corroborated by the analysis Dr. Bill Warner in his writings and books on “Political Islam.”
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Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
