Excellent point, I can't tell you how many guys were pissed to be there, disgruntled even, not understanding why etc. End of the day, they do their jobs and its like you said, for self preservation and that of the men and women next to them. Good post.
While I wasn't alive during Vietnam, that was the saddest part about the war when I studied it. Majority of those guys wanted no part of it but once your there, what choice do you have? The enemy doesn't care about your convictions. What is worse is that the US is always a model of "fighting fair". How many roadside bombs and suicide vests have the US used?
Often times too fair, not to mention the numbers of good guys that lost careers over "abusing" the enemy. What a crock. None, landmines years ago but never the sneaky tactics with EFPs that these bastards use.
As someone who spent a year in Nam I didn't have a choice. The sad part is most of us didn't understand why we were there. 45 years later, I'm still not sure.
My dad feels the same way. A good friend of mine's father was an F-104 driver and early in the war the MIGs would fly into South Viet Nam pop off some shots and flee when the Starfighters got near. Once they were across the border they could not be engaged. How 'effed up was that? Great video below:
Thanks, I learned something new. Didn't know that the 104s were deployed to Nam. Must have been early in the conflict.
Here is a link about their time there: http://www.i-f-s.nl/vietnam/ The take away is when they were allowed to do the job they were built for, they excelled, but were tasked outside of their intent. My dad was lucky he didn't get assigned to the P-2V Neptunes (which he had flown prior to assignment on the Coral Sea) in Viet Nam. Their losses were atrocious. While they could stay on station for a very long time, they were SAM and AAA bait.
"Fair" is in the eyes of the beholder. Yes, we pay better attention to the rules of warfare, but there is a lot of gray area. We don't practice terror tactics, to be sure. But we definitely terrorize our enemies when we go to war. We have used land mines and booby traps extensively. We use white phosphorus shells which is considered a chemical weapon by many. We have used nuclear weapons. We have used napalm on civilians. We have carpet bombed civilians. None of those people thought we were being "fair". War is not fair. It cannot be.
