Vietnam Scenarios: Real and Speculative

Hahahahahahaha!...ahhhhhhhhahahahahaha! Conservatives expected relief from the courts! No standing for election fraud and the US Attorney for Southern New York gets Trump's tax returns. But judges, right Mitch? Excuse this blog while it hits the laugh track once again. Sorry, I can't stop. Because we're a naïve fool we'll just go ahead and assume the Dems won't steal everything in 2022. Reader(s) just go ahead and hit that laugh track button again. Anyway, if GOP candidates aren't promising to impeach Biden and prosecute Hunter, then we're not interested.

William Westmoreland was the Mitt Romney of generals. Outwardly impressive, and good at certain things, but not cut out for the top slot in the corporation.* That President Johnson left Westmoreland at MACV for four years is one of his great failings. Lewis Sorely suspects that Johnson kept him in there throughout '68 because he was worried Westmorland had political ambitions. This wouldn't be the first time that happened. President Polk cast a weary eye toward General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. 

Anyway we're also a hundred pages into James S. Robins' This Time we Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. This is an excellent revision of the Tet Offensive conventional wisdom. Two things we've learned. The American public was impatient and generally disapproved of the handling of the war even before Tet. A huge chunk of the public wanted to escalate and win**. Second, Hanoi was impatient, wanted to get on with things and felt that the war in the South was becoming a, what's the word, oh yes, quagmire.

The Confederate Contingent brings up nuking Hanoi in The Great Nuclear War of 1975. This is an interesting point. When hostilities break out it's only been a few months since the fall of Saigon and Pnohm Pehn. We make an oblique reference in the opening, but we can't pretend these events didn't happen and don't matter. Maybe the US decided hell with it? Nuking 'everything red' was in the Pentagon's DNA and was the plan till Kennedy told Air Force to come up with some other options. 

We read several Salvation '76 scenes yesterday and touched them up. Overall the first part of the chapter with the Americans getting pushed south moves very fast, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It might benefit from a few additional scenes, maybe one involving the air force. Overall we pronounce ourselves pleased, which just means today should be a bear [Oh my, the knobhead learns-Ed]. See, in anticipating the ironic wrath of the literary gods one can forestall them. [Idiot, don't say that outload!-Ed]. Ed's Never taunt the gods. [I am always right-Ed]

*If you don't know that's a reference you shouldn't be reading this blog. 

**Why don't we just nuke that bastards?

A very February Friday

What a February. More snow here in New Jersey. It snowed, sleeted, iced snowed again and is planning to snow some more. We got about four inches [That's what she said! Sorry, couldn't resist -Ed] and didn't even bother to break out the snow blower, except to clear the driveway entrance. Right now the driveway is a sheet of ice. Very Russian. 

One other thing about Rush that always stuck with me. He used to talk about how much he loved his job. How on Sunday nights he felt a sense of anticipation when most people felt angst. On Monday mornings he'd pop out of bed and couldn't wait to get to work. That's exactly how I how I approached about being a college professor. Thanks, Rush. 

We've moved on to Lewis Sorely's biography of Westmoreland. It is with sadness, scorn and disappointment that we shake our head. Generals came back from the field telling Westy that his attrition search and destroy strategy just isn't working. He didn't listen. Almost everyone else in MACV saw it. Why didn't he? Sorely's bio is great, BTW. Highly recommended. 

After the war, well, we shake our head again. The man failed at just about everything. Westmoreland insisted the US didn't lose the war. He ran for office and lost. He sued CBS and settled rather then take the case to a jury.  Westmoreland tried to be an elder statesmen type but nobody wanted him. As they say Westmoreland faded. He was forgotten. We had no idea he lived till 2005. Very few showed up to his funeral at West Point. Our dad was still at NBC News then, and when he asked if anyone wanted to go up there and cover the story, nobody even knew who he was. 'Oh, right....the Vietnam guy.'

Next week we'll tackle the Great Salvation of 1976's Korean War chapter. Since we broke the original MS into two books we get to explore ideas in greater detail. We'll be expanding this chapter. With the general officer corps decimated, the Western White House is going to tap Westmoreland to command the relief task force. We had slated Haig for this job. But Rockefeller and the DoD (now in Gillette, Wyoming) will decide they need him representing America's interests in Europe. And so begins Westmoreland's redemptive story arc. Some of you people didn't want us to turn this into a trilogy. Never forget that we are very good at what we do.

Below, your Friday Flag:

Banned by Facebook

We're Getting Paranoid [Getting?-Ed]

So this blog has been getting some traffic lately to some weirdly specific older posts about the Charlottesville incident, Richard Spencer, our Kek flag, the Capitol Hill Mostly Peaceful Protest, etc etc. This blog has been scanned before by plagiarism software* and some media 'anti-disinformation' outfit. One of our articles was even mentioned in a report about 'Russian disinformation'.**It's almost as if someone where trying to connect us to something. We've always been a little paranoid about our writing for Inforos. We've wondered, 'What if the Feds decide it's collusion?'

We were pondering this very question when, we swear this is true, a big black SUV drove past, went around the cul-de-sac, and then stopped in front of the house.

'It's happening!' we shouted.

'Huh?' Mrs. Stroock replied.

A man got out with a fruit arrangement a day late for Valentines Day. We took it, thanked him, and then checked for listening devices. 

This William Westmoreland is an interesting fellow. Confident, competent and driven but not to the point of arrogance or false modesty. Westmorland studied under Omar Bradly at West Point and came to admire him greatly even though they had totally different command styles. He was, as it was once said, groomed for the top slot in the corporation almost from the beginning. Regular  and general officers all saw it. One even remarked, 'He's going to be Chief of Staff one day.'  Westmoreland commanded an arty regiment in North Africa and pretty much single handedly stopped Rommel at Kasserine. 

So after Mitch McConnell slammed Trump, Trump slammed Mitch McConnell right back in the most Trumpian way possible. Trump also promised to support MAGA candidates in the primaries. So no, Trump isn't going away. And why should he?  A recent Morning Consult Poll shows 52% of the GOP would vote for Trump in the 2024 primary. That can change of course, but wow. The war for control of the party between the GOP-E and the GOP base is over and the GOP-E has lost. Bigly.

This blog doesn't know if Trump should run in 2024. Maybe it's time to move on. We're open to someone like Ron DeSantis, who fights MAGA but not MAGA style. Here's our fear, though. The GOP will nominate DeSantis but Trump brings the house down at the RNC and we'll think, coulda had Trump. This blog councils patience.

Here's a good Substack theme: Ronald Reagan. We have an article titled Reagan's War on Terror, another on the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters, a third on Khaddaffi....ahhh that takes us back. We used to have a Khaddaffi Duck T-shirt. We can't find it on the internet because we can't figure out how it was spelled. In the above mentioned articles we used 'Qadhafi'.  

Yesterday the temperature reached the high 40's. So we shoveled off the back deck and let the sun do the rest. After the gym, we cracked opened a bottle of Cavalliere d'Oro and lit up an Arturo Fuente Short Story, our first since 28 December.  We damn near had a religious experience out there.

*Accuse us. We're laughing at the superior intellect. 

**They didn't give proper attribution. Fuckers.

Tuesday Sovietskaya et al plus three Jews on Substack

That nice Russian girl who's our contact at Sputnik News media messaged us again for commentary. We'll collude some more. Pay no attention to the fact that's she's an angelically beautiful Russian blonde. We're enchanted...Ouch! Oof! Hey knock it off! [Knobhead-Ed]. Jealous? Waaaaaang! Ouch! [That was my biggest frying pan-Ed]

Last night we went to the basement library to see just what books we had about the Vietnam War, only to find we had a book about General Westmoreland. And away we go. We'll reserve judgement. So far he seems like a focused, hardworking kid, the kind of young man you want to take your daughter out on a date. In the mail, America's Last Vietnam Battle, Black April, This Time we Win. Recos welcome.

The Substack thing is working great. We went through some articles yesterday and got to work on our overview piece on the South African Bush War. We're quite impressed. We'll publish late this week, we think, and follow up next week with an article on the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. The peace was published in Military Heritage five or six years ago but they've never put it online (see sidebar), so we'll put it out on Substack. 

We're sitting on tons of articles on ancient Rome. These include Scipio Africanus, the Battle of Zama, Crassus, Marius, Metellus, and Masinissa. Heh, the Masinissa piece was a origionally a paper for Professor Brian Todd Carey. He liked it and suggested we try to publish it. That was our start. It's never been printed. Rome month in March?

We've subscribed to Bari Weiss and suggest readers do the same. She's an interesting left of center writer who hates Wokeness. So is  Glenn Greenwald. This isn't about top marginal tax rates and Obamacare anymore. It's about freedom. Those persons on the left who like freedom will always have a place at our table. [Kinda cute right? Aren't you gonna say Bari Weiss is kinda cute?-Ed] I'm afraid to. [Good-Ed]