November 1, 2001
Narco News 2001
Vietnam
Generals:
"This
War Fails, Too"
Gen. Van Tie Dung:
"War
Doesn't End the
Hate"
Afghanistan: "A
Quagmire"
By Agence France
Presse
Publisher's Commentary: The
New Colombia News Agency - ANNCOL - brought to our attention that
the Bogota daily El Tiempo published a story Wednesday
morning: "Excombatants of Vietnam doubt U.S. success in
Afghanistan."
"Curiously,"
writes ANNCOL, "the article lasted no more than a half-hour
on the El Tiempo website. Readers can draw their own conclusions."
The story, by Agence France
Presse, appeared in Spanish, but has not been made available
in English by the French press agency.
October
31, AFP: The former combatants of the Vietnamese army, that 26 years ago defeated United States
troops, doubt that the North Americans will easily obtain their
objectives in Afghanistan. They say that U.S. military chiefs
have not learned the lesson of the 58,000 soldiers they lost
in Vietnam.
To have a chance of winning in Afghanistan,
and not of sinking slowly as happened in Vietnam, "The United
States must change its strategy and tactics," said Colonel
Vu Le Thi, 74. The former communist military official asked if
the North Americans had "really learned something from their
defeat in Vietnam, that cost 58,000 U.S. soldiers their lives."
At the side of Lieutentant Colonel Pham
The Hao, 72, who fought against the North Americans for 15 years,
he said that the war in Afghanistan is very different than Vietnam,
but remembered that in spite of the incessant bombings of Vietcong
positions, and the use of chemical arms like Agent Orange, "the
air force and infantry of the U.S. never were able to drive our
guerrillas and militias, hidden in tunnels dug in the jungle,
out."
"If the North American soldiers are
today better equipped than they were during the war in Vietnam,
they are not accostomed to ground combat in places where mountain,
climate and geographic conditions are very difficult," added
the ex-combatant.
"This war, as a consequence, could
last longer than predicted and end up with U.S. troops sinking
into a quagmire," Hao predicted.
The U.S. "advisors" to the army
of South Vietnam and the special forces "did not succeed
in impeding the military operations of the North along the Ho
Chi Minh Trail," he said. "I fought U.S. soldiers in
the south of Vietnam and although it was very difficult to chase
them from the zone, their bombings were not very effective,"
he affirmed.
For his part, General Van Tien Dung, 84,
lead strategist of the victory of North Vietnamese forces against
the Saigon and U.S. regimes, also expressed his doubts about
a U.S. victory over Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
"I'm certain that they will fail,"
declared the ex-defense minister, who brought the North Vietnamese
troops to a lightning-fast victory during the Ho Chi Minh campaign
that ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, marking the end of
the Vietnam War.
"War doesn't end the hate. It just
adds more gasoline to the fire, provoking more hate and a harder
vengence, above all on the part of those who have sworn to die
for their religion," added General Van Tien Dung.
"How will the United States put an
end to this war? How will it get out of it? Its soldiers will
find themselves with geographical difficulties that the Soviets
could not surpass before," the general concluded.
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