Vo Nguyen Giap, 1911-2013
General Vo Nguyen Giap, commander of North Vietnam’s armed forces during the French and US Indochinese Wars, has died. He was 102.
For decades, Giap was our enemy. Regardless, give the man his due: though he was an enemy, he was nonetheless an extremely effective commander – and was perhaps the most capable military strategist the US has ever faced.
Unfortunately, none of the various Saigon regimes we supported had a leader of Giap’s stature and ability. If one had, it’s possible things might have turned out differently.
Category: Historical
He had some good soldiers on campus in the US.
He beat the snooty, outnumbered French, the corrupt, demoralized South Vietnamese and had enough sense not to keep his troops from engaging the US head-on.
Screw him. Oh wait… Kerry is probably sad now. So screw him too.
Secretary of State Kerry (he served in Vietnam, you know) is on his way to Hanoi at this moment, carrying a large blanket of roses for the casket. Victory brought to Giap/NV by the democrats in the US Congress.
I don’t care for his cause. I respect his ability.
He was amerikkka’s enemy not america’s or mine. The taliban commander isn’t doing to bad either! Is kabul going to become osama bin ladin city as saigon is now ho chi minh city?
His use of murder and terror were truly a credit to the cause he fought for.
“You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.”
–Oscar Wilde
In the Military History classes I took in JROTC we went over the tactics and strategy of this man, especially with regards to the works of Sun Tzu.
Regardless of who he fought for, he was able to stand up against the might of the United States and that earns him my respect.
Whether Giap “was perhaps the most capable military strategist the US has ever faced” is an interesting question. My own thought is that although he would be on a short list, such a list would also include people such as Irwin Rommel, Robert E. Lee and, strange as it might sound, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.
It also always seemed to me that Giap had a couple of key talents that sometimes get ignored. The first was the ability to make best use of available resources even if they happened to be crude. The tunnels of Cu Chi and the Ho Chi Minh trail are both examples.
When Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954, it was not only a matter of making use of limited resources– with artillery being hauled by hand into the surrounding hills– but also one of Giap’s second talent, which was the ability to keep a secret. The French didn’t really know how precarious their position was until rounds started falling.
A similar level of secrecy was sort of woven into the Tet Offensive of ’68. Nobody on the American side was evidently aware until later how ambitious Giap’s plan was and how close it came to being able to succeed. It can also be argued that what the NVA wasn’t able to do militarily, it was ultimately able to accomplish politically.
He was a good military commander. He lost at K.S. He also lost during the Tet Offensive. However he won through the liberal medial press and the hippy scumbags, both protesting and reporting distorted news coverage.
Off subject: I am in tears that the NPS has been ordered to wire the gates closed at the WW-11 Memorial in DC. This is such an arrogant slap in the veteran’s face.
Another issue: abut how crappy obama is: persons that want to drift the Grand Canyon. It’s a lottery to draw. Some of these people have waited, or planned for twenty years. Now their pass is null and void because someone will not be there to see them sign the raft trip book. Service has the road blocked re: shut down. Park Service rescue is all aboard and paid to be on duty, so rafting trips are not an issue, and guided trips rarely need their assistance. . They only have one ranger at the road block telling them they can’t go to the launch site which never has any rangers anyway. What I’m saying is: the guided tours and experienced private groups go through there every year. All they have to do is sign the guest/ or portage book for access. Then take their trip. Why the cutoff? Just nobama crap. Again, I,ll just say I’m in tears about this figment of a wantabe Chicago type of govt.
@6: the fact that Giap was not your enemy while this nation was at war with his is telling. I believe the common term for your behavior is “aiding the enemy”.
Today it’s possible to go to Vietnam. Why don’t you do that and pay your respects to your late hero. And afterwards, why don’t you just stay there.
BinThuy66: there is substantial evidence that Giap did not plan (nor agree with) the Tet Offensive, and that Tet was rammed thru the North Vietnamese Politburo by Tho/Duan/Dung/Thanh against his wishes. Giap is reputed to have left the country for medical treatment in Hungary after the decision was made to approve Tet and to have not returned to Vietnam until after Tet had begun. History was to prove Giap correct, militarily, about Tet. Tet was a disaster for his side, particularly for the Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam. However, Giap did indeed fail to foresee the turning of US public opinion brought about by the combination of the LBJ administration’s continual lies about “progress in Vietnam” and the stark exposure of those lies by Tet. IMO missing that possibility was one of the few major strategic oversights in Giap’s career. — break — Perry Gaskill: Lee and Rommel excelled at tactical and operational (theater-level) execution, but were – bluntly – not particularly good strategists. A strategist discerns the long-term, overall trends of a conflict and plans/executes accordingly. Neither Lee nor Rommel were particularly good at that. A strategist Lee fixated on the NoVA theater during the US Civil War to the exclusion of other areas. The result was that the South lost that war in 1863 – but not at Gettysburg. Rather, the war was lost at Vicksburg and Chickamauga. The former split the eastern Confederacy from Texas and its resources; the latter ended any chance of holding Tennessee and preventing the invasion of Georgia and the Carolinas. Chickamauga (a nominal Confederate victory, but a Pyrrhic and unexploited one) also ended any chance of fomenting unrest in support of the Confederacy in the US midwest – where considerable support for the Confederate cause did exist in 1863 and 1864. Rommel likewise was a brilliant tactician and operational-level commander, but was lacking as a strategist. In North Africa, he failed to see that his logistical means did not allow him to continue long-range operations against Egypt, leading directly to the debacle at el Alamein. His later performance in North Africa… Read more »
I am under the impression that Giap had an equal healthy respect for Hal Moore and his cav troopers and for that reason only, agreed to meet with him and Galloway while researching for their book. Later, after the movie was released the government of Vietnam punished the daylights out of the actor that portrayed him until somebody negotiated for his release and allowed him to come stateside. That actor now resides in the Bay Area. In an October 2005 interview, Giap stated he was seriously concerned about Nixon bombing the North again, because if he would have the outcome of the war would have vastly changed in favor of the US and brought North Vietnam to its knees and back to negotiations. Tet 68- Giap acknowledged in other interviews as well, that his commanders, troops and the VC were a tad over confident. He hadn’t planned on our troops ability to adapt to the fight like they did. Communist Cronkite helped to cement in the minds of the American viewing public the US losing Tet when in fact, his side suffered major casualties. He was keenly aware of the anti-war movements progress in the US and felt it’d dampened the American spirit enough for him to push like he tried during the planning stages of TET. So, if Nixon would have said “Do it”, Vietnam would have had an entirely different outcome regardless of the anti-war movements collusion with the USSR and Communist Party. I’m cussing now because I lost the hard drive (it crashed big time) with the research I completed on this stored on it. FYI- There isn’t record one for the years 1965-1968 for the 1/7th US Cavalry Regiment anywhere in the national archives that Moore, Galloway or anyone else was able to find. Its been documented in the book, too. @ #6; Has anyone ever offered to feed you a knuckle sandwich served with a side of combat boot stuffed up your ass and yanked out through your throat? If not, let me be the first. Hondo, he probably wouldn’t survive long in Vietnam unless… Read more »
@ #8: While I definitely understand (and agree with) your sentiment here, I would argue that he never actually faced “the might of the United States.” Some parts of it, certainly, but never the full force of our military. And he also has my respect for what he was able to accomplish. A huge part of that was reading the impact of the anti-war protestors here in the US correctly.
One side was fighting to win. Our side did not. Our own whining children defeated us.
No tears here. I know all about him being a good commander and all that, but I also saw the torture, rape, and murder his soldiers did to innocent Vietnamese. He can rot in hell for all I care. Glad the SOB is dead.
I know #6 would love me to say something….but I won’t give it the satisfaction. He hasn’t earned the right to an answer from me.
Hondo (#12) Interesting that you bring up Kesselring as most seem to overlook him. He’s impressed me since I first started learning about him, his gift for strategy, and the fact that he did allow those under him to adapt and improvise on tactics at need. I’ve always felt he was one of the best, if not the best, strategist the Germans had.
As for Tet, others have said it well: they came out and tried to fight a conventional battle, and it ended up a disaster for them and a loss for us via the media. One of many reasons to piss on Uncle Walter’s grave.
#6: Delta is ready when you are. I’ll raise funds for your ticket over to the funeral. Only doing one way as I figure you would want to stay.
Regardless if you fight someone and disagree with who and what they are, you still have to respect their ability.
Something we seem to have forgotten.
Oooops. #16 was me, not sure how that happened. Must mean I need more coffee. That’s my story, sticking to it.
He should be the “Poster Child” for winning the battle, but losing the war.
Great. He successfully defended his country against the USA, just like North Korea.
So, don’t call him a visionary.
Has anyone been to Vietnam lately? I have. And, I’ll say one nice thing about Vietnam.
The rats are friendly…..
Hondo @12:
Kesselring was, indeed, a strategic genius, and an underrated one at that. Of course, Kesselring also enjoyed the good fortune of having as his opponent the vainglorious and incompetent Mark Clark, who was more concerned with seizing Rome and getting his face on the front page of the newspapers than he was with cutting off the escape route of the German 10th Army. This blunder probably prolonged the war on the Italian peninsula by at least a year.
Hayabusa: Lord knows I’m no fan of Clark’s generalship. But whether his “dash for Rome” prolonged the Italian campaign significantly is very much an open question. Even had Clark not directed Truscot to turn VI Corps 90 degrees left and race for Rome, many if not most military historians feel that Truscot’s forces cutting Route 6 near Valmontone would not have trapped the entire German 10th Army – though it would have caused them significantly more difficulty and losses. There were simply too many other routes available through the Apennines, and the British 8th Army (inching up the Adriatic coast at the time) was moving far too slowly to assist in cutting them off.
My guess is that Kesselring would have been able to delay in Italy until the end regardless. IMO much if not all of the 10th Army would have escaped in either case (though obviously less would have escaped had Clark not been such a damned prima dona publicity hound). He might have had to fall back a bit more quickly northward from Rome in June 1944, but IMO he’d have been able to stabilize the situation south of the Gothic line anyway. Allied units began to be withdrawn from combat not long after the fall of Rome to support Dragoon/Anvil, and as a result simply Clark didn’t have the forces for quick exploitation north of Rome.
@19 – At Tet, the Vietnamese lost the battle but won the war. And battles don’t matter much any more, especially against insurgents, such as the VC (but not the NVA), because they might be able to take a position but they could never hold it.
As a lifetime communist who was educated in Hanoi, I don’t think Giap could understand, let alone influence protestors in the USA – like Ghenghis Khan, he would probably wonder why the American government didn’t shoot or jail domestic protestors.
Giap, who was brilliant in the First Indochina War, has actually written a number of books on strategy, some of which are available in translation. I don’t know if they are on any US military reading list, but they ought to be: Big Victory, Great Task; People’s Army, People’s War; Ði?n Biên Ph?; and We Will Win.
@6 Suck a dick.
As a teenager in Cambodian in the 60s, my father-in-law fought alongside the US Army against the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge fellow travelers both in his native country and occasionally in Vietnam. He even had the pleasure of experiencing NVA hospitality as a guest of their POW internment system for a while. They were so kind that he and a bunch other prisoners risked additional torture and death to escape, and while he made it many others didnt. On the bright side, the experience prepared him to survive the hell that Giap’s buddy Pol Pot inflicted on the people of Cambodia in the 70s & 80s. He saw firsthand what your “heroes” did to people, including their own, and he still has no doubt that he was on the right side. If anything, his war experience makes him prouder to be a naturalized American.
Since then he has not been particularly fond of Vietnamese in general and Vietnamese communists in particular. You can probably guess how he reacted to the news of Giap’s demise. Suffice it to say, the phrases, “Fuck that guy!” and “Burn in hell, you son of a bitch!” have a very unique sound to it in Cambodian.
Today, my father-in-law is in his 60s, 5-foot-4, 140 pounds, diabetic, and doesn’t get around so good anymore. And you know what, “vietnamprotestor”? If he heard you spouting that bullshit, he would give you SUCH an epic asskicking your distant cousins would walk with a limp.
You’re proud of yourself for pissing on returning vets from the safety of 1st-Amendment-protected American soil. And you give us your version of “history”based on the claims of self-serving asswipes who have been repeatedly outed as liars. He wears the physical and emotional scars of two wars against communist aggression, a North Vietnamese POW camp, and the Khmer Rouge killing fields, and the stories he tells are shockingly identical to the stories of real (not liars like John Kerry) American vets. So you’ll understand if I consider him far more credible and respectable than you.
@Ian
Thanks for the info. I only know Giap left Vietnam as a wreck. I visited there two years ago and the place was a real hellhole. The scenery was nice, but the people were pissed off….
@6–congratulations on missing the point completely as well. Make sure you tuck that napkin in nice and tight when you dig into that fat steaming bag of dicks.
Giap might have been a capable military leader, but that doesn’t mean he was on the right side or that the world isn’t a better place for his departure from it.
Your constant gay slurs makes me assume you are repressed homosexuals and you should honor all gay soldiers who fought in all of are wars! Not only risking their lives for their country ;but having to listen to repressed homosexuals deal with their inner fears! Since I am not a repressed homosexual your gay slurs mean nothing to me. But they seem to mean something to you. When you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you! f.n.
I can understand the vitriol of many here and I am no “fan” of Giap for his politics. However, I do respect and admire hie elan and skills as a general. In that regard I offer my respectful condolences to any of his family or countrymen. He was an able foe and opponent and deserves respect for at least that.
@26: then let me put it another way for you, worthless one: you are most cordially invited to consume excrement and thereafter expire. But please be so kind as to leave the country before doing so. And don’t dawdle.
@26: or, alternatively, you can simply take this NSFW YouTube video clip to heart:
#26 = A repressed bedwetter…
Giap traded his troops lives for time, knowing that the American media had turned on the war effort and would compel us to leave Vietnam before complete victory. So was he really a great general or just an astute reader of the tea leaves?
And VietNam War Protester, you are a reprehensible blight. Go and repeatedly fuck yourself. I would call you a piece of shit, but that would give shit a bad name.
MGySgtRet: by the standards of Asian warfare, Giap was not particularly bloodthirsty, nor was he particularly cavalier towards his troops’ casualties. He also wasn’t the source of that policy.
In 1946 – before embarking on the First Indochinese War against the French – Ho Chi Minh warned the French: “You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.” The French ignored him. They found out the hard way he was serious. We learned the same lesson the same way.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988162,00.html#ixzz2h4K1Skfe
You and I have difficulty with the concept of treating troops as an expendable resource; most raised in a Western culture share that difficulty. We treat our troops as precious, and try to minimize casualties.
East, Central, and South Asian cultures don’t seem historically to have had that same reluctance. Rather, they seem more accepting of large-scale death than the West – and appear willing to chalk it up to the whims of fate, Kismet, the will of Allah, bad joss, whatever you like. I’m convinced that particular cultural difference is real and significant between East and West.
IMO that basic disconnect – that inability to project accurately what North Vietnam would do if we “made them suffer” – led the French (and us) to underestimate them grossly. We simply had no clue what the North Vietnamese were willing to endure to secure their independence from “foreign domination”.
@ #26: Good for your usual laugh! That is one of your better ones actually.