China ChiCom News Thread

[Zachowon]

Albeit probably be much better to remove a lot of the graft and overpricing than increasing the budget other than to counter inflation as related to stuff not in the field of personnel. Aka Healthcare, improving quarters and field kit, food, and of course wages and increasing personnel count

Lord knows getting rid of a solid chunk of the corruption and the like would dramatically increase the funds available for infrastructure upgrades and procurement

Like that would happen.

It is Appropriations time already?

Because that's pretty much the standard line given whenever the budget fight is about to begin, and the Army thinks it will get last place in priority behind other services.

We aren't going to be doing much 'ground war' that needs infantry, and if we are doing opposed landings/island hopping in the Pacific or storming into an occupied France again, the situation is already gone very, very wrong, so wrong that no amount of army grunts will fix it.

Face it, modern warfighting the US is likely to engage in is not stuff where the Army matters much, outside of air defense purposes.

Ha.
Hey Bacle.
Who has to hold the ground captured? The US Army.
what captured ground you ask?
The captured ground that we are helping , say Taiwan, defend. The Marines armt ones to hold ground and are not the main fighting force. The Army, they are the main fighting force.
Guess who will be supplying the marines with a logistics train.
not just the Navy, the most powerful army in the fucking wirld is what will be providing that.

you are ignorant for not knowing how every brach acts and is responsible for.

Are you aware of 'fleet in being' doctrine?

It applies to large formations of soldiers as well.

Exactly

Again you lost our last war in Afghanistan and you had an infinite budget. Vietnam the same. A future war with Iran also the same you are capitalist right? Well capitalism means that businesses audit themselves and reduce things that aren’t helpful. The Army is created to fight to protect Americans citizens rights. Yet it lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Those nations did not end up taking away the rights of Americans thus I can conclude that the wars were unnecessary, because those fights were not about protecting our rights. So it would be good to reduce the military so people are less tempted to use it in foreign entanglements.

Every person I work with have hated our current admin for what they did with A-stan.
That alone, shows you that what causes our loses is not military might but political will

 

[Bacle]

I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are determined, again, to still think like a leftist.

Again, 'think like a Leftist' is not worth anything in this debate, and doesn't do anything to change the reality of what I said.

Also, maybe consider that just because it is 'Leftist' thinking, doesn't mean it is axiomatically wrong, which you seem to like to imply by using that argument.

Who do you think is less likely to declare war against the USA, or a US ally, a nation/dictator that knows we have no ability to occupy their capital, and in fact would have to recruit and train an army from scratch, or a nation/dictator that knows that within 48 hours we can have a Brigade on-site, and within a week a full-fledged invasion can be under way?

What do you think detered the Russians from attacking Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania? They're both smaller nations than Ukraine, more easily occupied, and with territory that the Russians want. Unlike with Ukraine, sheer size disparity would be completely overwhelming, like it was with Georgia, and they'd also be able to link up with their Kaliningrad Exclave.

Nukes and Article 5 are what deter Russia moving on the Baltics, not Army tank divisions or US troops on the ground.

I'll tell you what deters the Russians:

Knowing that the US military would come and kick their faces in if they tried it.

NATO allies would certainly contribute, but the Russians are not intimidated or scared of the Poles, the Germans, the Brits, etc. Smarter Russians know not to dismiss them out of hand, but it is the American military that is the primary muscle behind the alliance.

Again, nukes, not tanks, are what deter Russia.

'But muh nukes!'

Nukes matter whether you like it or not, and are what actually deter invasions, not US Army divisions on the ground.

If you are weak to conventional conflict, there will be people who will seriously consider throwing the dice that you won't start a nuclear exchange if they 'just' take a bite out of a minor allied nation.

'Surely President Biden won't escalate to nuclear force just because we invaded Estonia!'

Given the historic weakness and cowardice of every Democrat in the WH since JFK, they'd probably even be right. And if you have no response available except nuclear, then every conflict is all-or-nothing.

This forgets the UK exists and would go to nukes over Article 5 even without the US involved, and the Brits have been fighting the Russians longer than the US has existed.

So no, I think the idea that conventional ground pounders truly matter near as much as they used to, in the sort of conflicts the US likely to be engaged in, is living in the past.

As I have said, the Army's value is mostly in the AA units and Corp or Engineers now, not the grunts. It hurts the feeling of the grunts, but that doesn't mean it's not the reality they face.

It's been 32 years since the USSR dissolved, and absolutely nothing that has happened since then has suggested that conventional armies are obsolete. Strategic nuclear weapons change the calculus of war, but they do not obsolete every other part of the war machine.

No, not every part, just the parts that the US Army was mostly geared for in ground combat; Army AA units will still have their value going forward (and frankly it's likely to increase), but their infantry units...are mostly superfluous to the sort of fights that are likely coming down the line.

And 90% of the infantry work that is likely to be in the US's future is the type handled better by Marine's or SOF units, not armored formations or infantry battalions the Army is geared around.

Like that would happen.

Ha.
Hey Bacle.
Who has to hold the ground captured? The US Army.
what captured ground you ask?
The captured ground that we are helping , say Taiwan, defend. The Marines armt ones to hold ground and are not the main fighting force. The Army, they are the main fighting force.
Guess who will be supplying the marines with a logistics train.
not just the Navy, the most powerful army in the fucking wirld is what will be providing that.

you are ignorant for not knowing how every brach acts and is responsible for.

If we are having to attempt to 'retake' land on Taiwan, shit's already FUBAR, and no amount of Army help will change the outcome.

Because the fact the CCP made landfall on Taiwan, with enough numbers to take and hold land, means the US Navy and Air Force, plus whatever allies and forces Taiwan has of it's own, have likely been gutted in-theater and thus the supply line to Taiwan has also been cut/put at risk such that resupply would be damn near impossible. So welcome to Bataan 2.0, hope you like the Uighyer camps.

And I know plenty about the different services, including their internal PR bullshit.

 

[LordsFire]

snip.

Summary: 'The Wunderwaffen have made the common soldier useless.'

At this point, it's clear that you're not going to listen to reason, or pay attention to evidence. I've done my due diligence; you can continue in wilful ignorance if you want.

 

[Marduk]

And you fail to understand the US public does not want us going and invading places.

We need an Air Force, we need a Navy, and we already have the Marine's to guard the Navy's nukes and Coast Guard to do the semi-civilian coastal enforcement/patrol duties.

Outside of AA work, and work for the Corp of Engineers, there isn't much call for Army grunts in the wars the US is likely to face in the future, or much reason outside the Corp of Engineers for the Army to continue to exist as a separate service, instead of being rolled into the Air Force, Navy, and Marines to cut down on bureaucratic overhead.

We could strip the Army down to ACE and AA units, give the tanks to the Marines, and we wouldn't really lose an capabilities that we are actually likely to need as a nation going forward.

We do not need to 'take and hold' any territory that is not US territory already.

And then when in 10 or 20 years it turns out that something happened that means you do need to, suddenly you have no army. It's fool's errand to make decisions with 20-40 year to have their full consequences or be turned around on the basis of current year conditions.
To make such a pronouncement with such certainty alone proves that this is an uninformed choice from your side.

Neither Veitnam nor A-stan were nuclear powers, and frankly neither are wars that should be used to try to elevate the image of US armed forces or any particular branch/service.

A polished turd is still a turd, and as far as most of the US public is concerned, and the lethality of our forces upper-end abilities don't matter when the fact is war is always a political event, and politics decides when wars end more than force does for most of human history. When the political winds turn against a conflict, doesn't matter how lethal, prepared, brave, or dedicated our service-members are, politics is the ultimate arbitrator of what is allowed to be done by the US armed forces.

That the US Army/military wants to deny that reality, and pretend only it's kinetic force that matters in international affairs and the direction of conflicts, and ignore the domestic realities outside their insulated military bases/lives, it should not be surprised when people aren't signing up in droves.

How does the US Army deny that reality? Are you expecting the US Army to try become a junta or what?

The US military won't fix it's recruiting and budget woes till it stops huffing it's own farts about PR and starts realizing that it cannot defend Veitnam and A-stan if it wants to bring people onboard. The US public doesn't give a fuck about the military's institutional pride when it allows itself to be used in fucked up endeavors like Veitnam and A-stan became.

The idea we will need a 'traditional' Army to protect ourselves/fight future wars, instead of as AA/Corp of Engineers work, is part of that PR/pride bullshit, and no amount of just yelling 'Lefty' at me is going to change what I have said above.

Yes, this is a pet political demand of people who for ideological reasons want nothing to do with the Army regardless of what it does. Army catering to such people with their PR makes as much sense as trying to sell death metal to religious grandmas.

 

[Bacle]

Summary: 'The Wunderwaffen have made the common soldier useless.'

At this point, it's clear that you're not going to listen to reason, or pay attention to evidence. I've done my due diligence; you can continue in wilful ignorance if you want.

And it is clear you ignore how much warfare has changed, along with the realities of modern battlefields, and do not actually care to address the arguments I've made, rather than dismiss them as 'Lefty thinking'.

Short of the CCP and Canada getting cute and stupid, Army ground pounders simply don't have much use going into the future wars the US may find itself in,

The best use of Army grunts these days is as border guards to deal with illegal immigration on the border, not as combatants against an actual foreign power. I trust the Army to handle the Cartels and shit on the border, but they ain't going to be 'liberating/retaking' anywhere anytime soon, and need to stop being fetishistic about capabilities that don't really help anymore.

And then when in 10 or 20 years it turns out that something happened that means you do need to, suddenly you have no army. It's fool's errand to make decisions with 20-40 year to have their full consequences or be turned around on the basis of current year conditions.
To make such a pronouncement with such certainty alone proves that this is an uninformed choice from your side.

As I have said, short of Canada letting the CCP try something cute by allowing the CCP to move an Army group over there, the best use for the US Army is as AA units, border guards, and as Corp of Engineers workers.

The way warfare has evolved, and what fights may be coming down the pipe, show that the US needs fewer ground pounders, more sailors and airmen, and a shit load more AA/ABM units, which is where the Army of the future is likely to find it's niche.

And for land combat, we would still have the institutional knowledge of the Marine's to draw from, if needed.

How does the US Army deny that reality? Are you expecting the US Army to try become a junta or what?

It wants to pretend that the US Army is going to be 'liberating/retaking' places, when that just isn't happening in the sort of fights that are coming.

Most lands that would need to be 'retaken' would be such that losing them to begin with likely would have pushed things to the nuclear level, where Army AA/ABM is far more valuable than tanks or infantry.

Yes, this is a pet political demand of people who for ideological reasons want nothing to do with the Army regardless of what it does. Army catering to such people with their PR makes as much sense as trying to sell death metal to religious grandmas.

Well, like it or not, most of the US populace feels like I do about Veitnam and A-stan than the way the US military likes to portray it, and they are already having serious recruiting issues.

This is part of the 'deny reality' with the US military as well; not wanting to address the realities of the populace they have as a recruitment pool, instead wanting to be almost Bud Light level's of PR stupid in their approaches most of the time.

And admitting that there is far less need for ground pounders than AA crews/sailors/airmen is part of that denial of reality as well.

Then again, the US Army has never forgiven the US Air Force for becoming a separate branch, and tend to dislike how much the air war has come to dominate the modern battlefield. Plus, their kinda salty the Army doesn't get nukes anymore, since the Army's old nuclear ABM forces were stood down and their nukes removed from service, while Marine's get to guard both the Navy's nukes and POTUS.

 

[King Arts]

Again, 'think like a Leftist' is not worth anything in this debate, and doesn't do anything to change the reality of what I said.

Also, maybe consider that just because it is 'Leftist' thinking, doesn't mean it is axiomatically wrong, which you seem to like to imply by using that argument.

Nukes and Article 5 are what deter Russia moving on the Baltics, not Army tank divisions or US troops on the ground.

Again, nukes, not tanks, are what deter Russia.

Nukes matter whether you like it or not, and are what actually deter invasions, not US Army divisions on the ground.

This forgets the UK exists and would go to nukes over Article 5 even without the US involved, and the Brits have been fighting the Russians longer than the US has existed.

So no, I think the idea that conventional ground pounders truly matter near as much as they used to, in the sort of conflicts the US likely to be engaged in, is living in the past.

As I have said, the Army's value is mostly in the AA units and Corp or Engineers now, not the grunts. It hurts the feeling of the grunts, but that doesn't mean it's not the reality they face.

No, not every part, just the parts that the US Army was mostly geared for in ground combat; Army AA units will still have their value going forward (and frankly it's likely to increase), but their infantry units...are mostly superfluous to the sort of fights that are likely coming down the line.

And 90% of the infantry work that is likely to be in the US's future is the type handled better by Marine's or SOF units, not armored formations or infantry battalions the Army is geared around.

If we are having to attempt to 'retake' land on Taiwan, shit's already FUBAR, and no amount of Army help will change the outcome.

Because the fact the CCP made landfall on Taiwan, with enough numbers to take and hold land, means the US Navy and Air Force, plus whatever allies and forces Taiwan has of it's own, have likely been gutted in-theater and thus the supply line to Taiwan has also been cut/put at risk such that resupply would be damn near impossible. So welcome to Bataan 2.0, hope you like the Uighyer camps.

And I know plenty about the different services, including their internal PR bullshit.

Why are you suckling up the marines so much? They are more useless than the army why do we need a second army? I want to reduce the army not abolish it.

Every person I work with have hated our current admin for what they did with A-stan.
That alone, shows you that what causes our loses is not military might but political will

I don’t think you get what I’m saying. The pull out was in the end a good move Trump saw that. Biden may have fucked the execution but leaving Afghanistan is fine otherwise we’d still be there peoples on all sides still dying. Now the Taliban won but us Americans are doing ok our rights are safe. But this brings up a question what other wars could we lose without actually facing repercussions?

 

[Marduk]

And it is clear you ignore how much warfare has changed, along with the realities of modern battlefields, and do not actually care to address the arguments I've made, rather than dismiss them as 'Lefty thinking'.

Ask people with a better idea on "how much warfare has changed, along with the realities of modern battlefields". You will be surprised with the answers.

Short of the CCP and Canada getting cute and stupid, Army ground pounders simply don't have much use going into the future wars the US may find itself in,

The best use of Army grunts these days is as border guards to deal with illegal immigration on the border, not as combatants against an actual foreign power. I trust the Army to handle the Cartels and shit on the border, but they ain't going to be 'liberating/retaking' anywhere anytime soon, and need to stop being fetishistic about capabilities that don't really help anymore.

As I have said, short of Canada letting the CCP try something cute by allowing the CCP to move an Army group over there, the best use for the US Army is as AA units, border guards, and as Corp of Engineers workers.

The way warfare has evolved, and what fights may be coming down the pipe, show that the US needs fewer ground pounders, more sailors and airmen, and a shit load more AA/ABM units, which is where the Army of the future is likely to find it's niche.

Fewer? Probably. But cutting some COIN-specialised stuff accumulated over last 2 decades is a far cry from the stuff you are suggesting here. It's such a radical capability cutting idea that even tiny european countries unlikely to take part in any serious war, like Switzerland or Portugal still keep around ordinary mechanized forces.

And for land combat, we would still have the institutional knowledge of the Marine's to draw from, if needed.

It wants to pretend that the US Army is going to be 'liberating/retaking' places, when that just isn't happening in the sort of fights that are coming.

Most lands that would need to be 'retaken' would be such that losing them to begin with likely would have pushed things to the nuclear level, where Army AA/ABM is far more valuable than tanks or infantry.

I don't know what will be going on in 20 years in geopolitics, and you know no more than me about it. If i told you 10 years ago that Russia will be doing a full scale invasion of Ukraine right now, you would think me a Tom Clancy wannabe warmonger.

Well, like it or not, most of the US populace feels like I do about Veitnam and A-stan than the way the US military likes to portray it, and they are already having serious recruiting issues.

Well, do they, or is it just your wild assumption based on own social bubble?

CBS News Poll: U.S. involvement in Vietnam

50 years after the Tet Offensive, the percentage of Americans who think the nation should have stayed out of the conflict has changed

www.cbsnews.com

With the passage of time, the percentage of Americans who think the U.S. did the right thing in Vietnam is relatively the same as when CBS first asked the question back in 1985, while the percentage that says America should have stayed out of the fighting has dropped over time, while the percentage who don't have an opinion has climbed.

So turns out little has changed in public opinion of Vietnam since 1980's, and what little change was there was a minor mellowing out of the anti-Vietnam side, which really wrecks your narrative here.

We were already over it many times regarding why US has recruiting issues, and as far as the people in question are concerned, random lefty pet peeves are far down the ranking.
Money matters, comfort matters, and corporatisation of workplace are far bigger potential gamechangers if they want to fix recruiting problems.

Why are you suckling up the marines so much? They are more useless than the army why do we need a second army? I want to reduce the army not abolish it.

I don't think you get what I'm saying. The pull out was in the end a good move Trump saw that. Biden may have fucked the execution but leaving Afghanistan is fine otherwise we'd still be there peoples on all sides still dying. Now the Taliban won but us Americans are doing ok our rights are safe. But this brings up a question what other wars could we lose without actually facing repercussions?

I for one was skeptical of continuing US presence in Afghanistan even before the pullout (you can find my posts on that here from 2020), and for the very simple reason that it wasn't going to achieve anything and was a pointless waste of resources as such. Frankly it should have been initiated as soon as OBL was dealt with, which was the objective the war was initiated with. Which brings up the usual point, what are the victory conditions? If driving AQ out of Afghanistan as a meaningful force was the main objective, USA won. If you set the objectives sky high, and make them incredibly optimistic political objectives rather than something military force can even theoretically achieve, then obviously USA can never win any war again. The shifting political line is the border between victory and defeat in that regard, but the fact is that the original objective was fulfilled.

 

[Bacle]

Ask people with a better idea on "how much warfare has changed, along with the realities of modern battlefields". You will be surprised with the answers.

Fewer? Probably. But cutting some COIN-specialised stuff accumulated over last 2 decades is a far cry from the stuff you are suggesting here. It's such a radical capability cutting idea that even tiny european countries unlikely to take part in any serious war, like Switzerland or Portugal still keep around ordinary mechanized forces.

Actually, the COIN-specialized stuff is needed, we just need it at the Southern Border instead of the Mid-East. If the Army wants a job to justify itself and the ability to wreck/invade shit overland, go unfuck Mexico again like their forebearers.

But the political will would never allow another Pershing Expidition to root out criminals, CCP agents, Hezzbollah agents, and whatever's left of Russia's HUMINT network, because it would also mean admitting Mexico is effectively a failed state.

So the one job that would actually justifiy the huge standing Army land combat formations is one of the few jobs it will never be given.

Thus, most of the large conventional infantry formations and the non-AA equipped/specialized mechanized cav units that the Army has are likely superflous, or better folded into the Marine's than kept separate, for deployability ease.

The Corp of Engineers structural/geological engineering expertise and perview and it's importance to US civie infrastructure are the only thing the Army has that no other service does, or is set to do easily.

I don't know what will be going on in 20 years in geopolitics, and you know no more than me about it. If i told you 10 years ago that Russia will be doing a full scale invasion of Ukraine right now, you would think me a Tom Clancy wannabe warmonger.

See, I would have agreed that Clancy seemed nutty, but now...kinda a prophet in a weird way.

However, it is also because of Clancy's work I feel that we need to be realistic about what forces are still useful for what ends.

The sooner all institutional pride and illusions are tossed out, the sooner the US military and civic leadership can start unfucking the decades of damage stupid decisions by their forebearers have done and rebuild the US in what the public feel we should be, with real pride and cultural cohesion again.

The PR bullshit might help in the short term, and with specific short term target audiences, however the bullshit piles up and then shit like Veitnam and A-stan happen and it looks like all the death and suffering was for nothing more than lining the pockets of certain people and groups.

All while claiming to fight the commies, and instead just playing games with them while actually empowering them in the long run.

If we had been willing to back Ho Chi Min against the French, as many WW2 vets who fought beside him against the IJA pleaded for, instead of throwing him under the bus to protect the French Catholic gov that France was trying to use to keep their colony, maybe we could have avoided so much needles death and social corrosion from corruption related to the war and US leadership.

It wasn't the commies who engaged in Watergate, it wasn't the commies who did Agent Orange, and it wasn't the commies who made the Veterans Affairs organization so badly run and corrupt for decades afterwards.

The US is perfectly able to shoot ourselves in the foot with no help from the commies, even if the commies do still fuck with us.

Well, do they, or is it just your wild assumption based on own social bubble?

CBS News Poll: U.S. involvement in Vietnam

50 years after the Tet Offensive, the percentage of Americans who think the nation should have stayed out of the conflict has changed

www.cbsnews.com

So turns out little has changed in public opinion of Vietnam since 1980's, and what little change was there was a minor mellowing out of the anti-Vietnam side, which really wrecks your narrative here.

That article is from 2018, and it's from CBS; they are not going to publish anything saying Veitnam still has a negative impact on the image of the US military or gov.

It might be interesting to see what a similar survey said these days, after A-stan ended, and how the comparisons affect public perception of both.

Does Rassmussen seem a satisfactory polling agency to trust to you?

We were already over it many times regarding why US has recruiting issues, and as far as the people in question are concerned, random lefty pet peeves are far down the ranking.
Money matters, comfort matters, and corporatisation of workplace are far bigger potential gamechangers if they want to fix recruiting problems.

Never said those didn't matter.

However, if it was not a factor, the why does the US military continue to avoid Veitnam references in recruiting ads?

I think we both know why.

The Veitnam War is not a war the US military should try to defend fighting anymore, particularly given we actually have pretty good relations with Veitnam now, precisely because we left, instead of trying to outright colonize them as France, Japan, and the CCP have all tried to do at one point.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Not so for Vietnam. The Cold War was a war, it was fought across the whole globe, and the perception of weakness created by American political surrender in Vietnam resulted in many believing that the USSR was stronger than the USA and NATO.

Vietnam was France saying "help us keep our colony or we're leaving" mixed with the "domino effect" theory of Communism "metastasizing", rather than a remotely normal strategic concern like one could argue with Korea.

 

[Zachowon]

@Bacle let me tell you this.
I know exactly how useful the Army will be in a INDOPACOM war.
It's called logistics.
And a war in Europe is also guaranteed

 

[Marduk]

Actually, the COIN-specialized stuff is needed, we just need it at the Southern Border instead of the Mid-East. If the Army wants a job to justify itself and the ability to wreck/invade shit overland, go unfuck Mexico again like their forebearers.

But the political will would never allow another Pershing Expidition to root out criminals, CCP agents, Hezzbollah agents, and whatever's left of Russia's HUMINT network, because it would also mean admitting Mexico is effectively a failed state.

So the one job that would actually justifiy the huge standing Army land combat formations is one of the few jobs it will never be given.

Yes, it is mostly a politically locked off option. Then again, this sort of work is not for the army anyway, it's technically police\cloak&dagger work.

Thus, most of the large conventional infantry formations and the non-AA equipped/specialized mechanized cav units that the Army has are likely superflous, or better folded into the Marine's than kept separate, for deployability ease.

So you want to be a grand reformer of the whole US military and shift most of it under USMC...
Unfortunately for you, this is considered an idea bordering between ridiculous and pointless according to everyone with a clue about the matters involved.

The Corp of Engineers structural/geological engineering expertise and perview and it's importance to US civie infrastructure are the only thing the Army has that no other service does, or is set to do easily.

See, I would have agreed that Clancy seemed nutty, but now...kinda a prophet in a weird way.

However, it is also because of Clancy's work I feel that we need to be realistic about what forces are still useful for what ends.

So you know that you nor anyone else can say for sure what capabilities will be needed in 10, nevermind 20 or 40 years, but you think you can arbitrarily cut most of them on the bet that they won't be needed?

The sooner all institutional pride and illusions are tossed out, the sooner the US military and civic leadership can start unfucking the decades of damage stupid decisions by their forebearers have done and rebuild the US in what the public feel we should be, with real pride and cultural cohesion again.

No, what you are asking for is silly virtue signalling to people who want nothing to do with the military and still won't, while being anti-PR to majority of the people who still are interested.

The PR bullshit might help in the short term, and with specific short term target audiences, however the bullshit piles up and then shit like Veitnam and A-stan happen and it looks like all the death and suffering was for nothing more than lining the pockets of certain people and groups.

Again, polling says your narrative has little to do with reality.

All while claiming to fight the commies, and instead just playing games with them while actually empowering them in the long run.

If we had been willing to back Ho Chi Min against the French, as many WW2 vets who fought beside him against the IJA pleaded for, instead of throwing him under the bus to protect the French Catholic gov that France was trying to use to keep their colony, maybe we could have avoided so much needles death and social corrosion from corruption related to the war and US leadership.

It wasn't the commies who engaged in Watergate, it wasn't the commies who did Agent Orange, and it wasn't the commies who made the Veterans Affairs organization so badly run and corrupt for decades afterwards.

The US is perfectly able to shoot ourselves in the foot with no help from the commies, even if the commies do still fuck with us.

Again, the military get more benefit by hammering the factual and political problems with the narrative presented here from media and education system than by agreeing with it.
You are basically asking for the military to not only engage in direct politics, which it really shouldn't, but to do so in the stupidest way possible, becoming their own version of the "today's republican is a democrat of 10 years ago" meme.
By now you should know far better than to ask an institution to go and virtue signal to a "wider audience" of people who never liked it and never wanted to have anything to do with it, if they don't outright hate it, and expect a positive, or even neutral result from this.

That article is from 2018, and it's from CBS; they are not going to publish anything saying Veitnam still has a negative impact on the image of the US military or gov.

Have you read their results? If you are just casually dismiss it, why should i give damn about your "dude trust me" based narrative?
It's about Vietnam, not Afghanistan, so what massive difference are 5 years supposed to make?

For one CBS is left leaning if anything.

It might be interesting to see what a similar survey said these days, after A-stan ended, and how the comparisons affect public perception of both.

For one if anything changed, it would be something indicating effects of current news that may well change yet again according to other future events, as time travel is impossible.

Does Rassmussen seem a satisfactory polling agency to trust to you?

Depends on how the poll is structured, don't try silly games with me, you know i will not play along.

Never said those didn't matter.

However, if it was not a factor, the why does the US military continue to avoid Veitnam references in recruiting ads?

Because of the propaganda sown since then, victims of which you and your social group are representative of, still hang around the US society. So, why would they?

I think we both know why.

The Veitnam War is not a war the US military should try to defend fighting anymore, particularly given we actually have pretty good relations with Veitnam now, precisely because we left, instead of trying to outright colonize them as France, Japan, and the CCP have all tried to do at one point.

Where the hell are you seeing "US military defending fighting the Vietnam war"? What the fuck does it have to do with what the US military is supposed and allowed to do recruiting wise anyway? It's a complicated matter that people with far better idea of the underlying politics and military science than you (nevermind far less insistent on grinding a political axe while doing so) write huge books about. Either way, your idea of the military turning around to shit on own past like lefties want everyone to just to make said lefties feel good about themselves is completely useless for purpose of anything that military would want to achieve.

 

[Bacle]

@Bacle let me tell you this.
I know exactly how useful the Army will be in a INDOPACOM war.
It's called logistics.
And a war in Europe is also guaranteed

And logistics isn't infantry formations or tank battalions, is it? It's heavy lift planes and the Army's own little fleet of transports.

Aka things that are actually related to the air and sea domains at the end of the day, even if it is the Army who operates them.

Also, a war in Europe at this point is one of three things.

Either:
A) The situation in Ukraine has deteriorated to the point Russian troops are at the Polish border and looking to cross, so would end up with nuclear exchanges anyway and then it's the AA/ABM that matter more than infantry or armor.

B) The Balkans have gone stupid again and the NATO peacekeeper forces suddenly have to not be peaceful, which doesn't necessarily need US troops to handle in the long term and is more of a SOF/air force issue like the first one was. Not sure how much Army ground units will be helpful here.

C) Greece and Turkey get into a throw down and the US has to decide whether to help Greece or Turkey and send forces there. This...is just messy as fuck depending on how it happens, and frankly I'm not sure US military forces would be enough to quell a full on fight between the Greeks and Turks; they just hate each other that much as a baseline.

So you want to be a grand reformer of the whole US military and shift most of it under USMC...
Unfortunately for you, this is considered an idea bordering between ridiculous and pointless according to everyone with a clue about the matters involved.

I think that the Army's obsession with pretending ground combat of the type they are geared to fight is still as vital for likely US defense interests, compared to AA/ABM work, is looking backwards, not forwards, in the threat environment as it is.

So you know that you nor anyone else can say for sure what capabilities will be needed in 10, nevermind 20 or 40 years, but you think you can arbitrarily cut most of them on the bet that they won't be needed?

I think that short of a Carrington event forcing the US and global militarizes to revert to steam-age tech for a while, the threat environment and geostrategic situation the US is likely to face is one where air, space, and sea dominance is far, far more key to winning/surviving conflicts than having a large amount of infantry or armor formations.

The Army is good for AA/ABM work going into the future, however the ground combat forces are either going to have to shift to be either organically capable of providing AA support to themselves, or face very limited scope of practical battlefield abilities.

Drone warfare is showing why SHORAD and short range AA in general is going to be very vital going into the future, to keep any infantry effective.

No, what you are asking for is silly virtue signalling to people who want nothing to do with the military and still won't, while being anti-PR to majority of the people who still are interested.

You seem to think that the US military has an endless population pool of able, fit, psychologically sound bodies to get recruits from at will, and that it doesn't need to listen to any detractors not already in the service or saying what service chiefs like to hear.

"It's the public's fault, not yours, that your service isn't getting recruits at the numbers you want" bullshit was sold to the DoD for years by recruiters who didn't have the balls to admit the deeper systemic issues that the DoD could address, because it might hurt their own promotion chances.

Again, the military get more benefit by hammering the factual and political problems with the narrative presented here from media and education system than by agreeing with it.

Except the military's version of events for Veitnam is a bunch of fucking self-serving PR bullshit at this point, as everything regarding Agent Orange and how it was handled shows, and as history has proven with how the US military leadership tries to pretend Veitnam doesn't matter for recruiting, till told directly otherwise by people on the ground.

We could have had the relationship we have with Veitnam now, back in Ho Chi Min's time, if we had just told the French "No, you don't get to keep your colony by screaming 'commies'." and asked France to kindly stop trying to piss off the people who just fought off the IJA.

You are basically asking for the military to not only engage in direct politics, which it really shouldn't, but to do so in the stupidest way possible, becoming their own version of the "today's republican is a democrat of 10 years ago" meme.

The US military is and always has been engaged in politics in the US; that's it's separate in any real way from politics is part of the PR illusion, used to keep officers and enlisted from getting too ambitious too early in their careers and to keep the general public from realizing how politically connected our military and political offices are.

The idea the US military has ever truly been apolitical is one of the biggest PR illusions of them all.

By now you should know far better than to ask an institution to go and virtue signal to a "wider audience" of people who never liked it and never wanted to have anything to do with it, if they don't outright hate it, and expect a positive, or even neutral result from this.

Have you read their results? If you are just casually dismiss it, why should i give damn about your "dude trust me" based narrative?
It's about Vietnam, not Afghanistan, so what massive difference are 5 years supposed to make?

For one CBS is left leaning if anything.

As the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive approaches, few Americans today think the U.S. did the right thing in getting involved in the fighting in Vietnam. By a margin of more than two-to-one (51% to 22%), Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of the conflict, versus those who believed the "did the right thing" by participating in the war. Roughly a quarter of respondents (27%) had no opinion.
...
This is particularly true of younger Americans. Americans who are under 50 are less likely to think the U.S. should have stayed out, and more likely to not have an opinion about the Vietnam War.
...
Seven in 10 Democrats think the U.S. should have stayed out of Vietnam, while Republicans are more divided. Independents tend to think the U.S. should have stayed out, though they are also the most likely group to have no opinion

If we take the poll at face value, it's still not the unchanging half-and-half you said it was, when over 25% simply say they don't know, and 50%+ say it was a mistake, and the proportions of what age group are saying what is not constant.

For one if anything changed, it would be something indicating effects of current news that may well change yet again according to other future events, as time travel is impossible.

As I said, the only change I could see happening to force the US to need more infantry and ground pounders is the CCP doing something cute in Canada, and that's something where I kinda doubt we'd ever let it get that far to begin with.

Depends on how the poll is structured, don't try silly games with me, you know i will not play along.

Yes, it does depend, and I pointed out above that the poll was more nuanced in what it said than you implied.

Because of the propaganda sown since then, victims of which you and your social group are representative of, still hang around the US society. So, why would they?

Have you considered there are more people in the US who are 'victims' of not feeling the Veitnam war was justified than there are people who do feel it was justified?

Have you considered that the US military needs to deal with the cultural and social legacy of Veitnam as it is, rather than attempt to continue to polish a turd out of institutional pride and PR reasons, if it wants to actually stay aware of the mood of the general populace?

The Pentagon thinking it can ignore the feeling of the US public about it's actions, and just keep running PR cover for it's fuck ups or banking on the legacy of WW2 to gloss over shit, is not working anymore, never mind the pay and quality of life issues that have been gutting recruiting and retention.

Where the hell are you seeing "US military defending fighting the Vietnam war"? What the fuck does it have to do with what the US military is supposed and allowed to do recruiting wise anyway? It's a complicated matter that people with far better idea of the underlying politics and military science than you (nevermind far less insistent on grinding a political axe while doing so) write huge books about. Either way, your idea of the military turning around to shit on own past like lefties want everyone to just to make said lefties feel good about themselves is completely useless for purpose of anything that military would want to achieve.

What the hell do you think all the 'Veitnam shouldn't matter anymore.', 'We won in the field!', and 'Well, it was all the politicians fault!' cope comes from, if not from trying to defend the actions taken by the US military during Veitnam or at least pretend they shouldn't matter anymore.

And again, if the US military could just shrug off the recruiting isses they face now, the reports about it would not be making a wide a news as it has. I mean you now have more military parents than ever telling their kids it's not worth it to enlist, where in-house/in-family recruiting used to be a reliable source of recruits that is now drying up too.

Do you understand the US military needs to deal with the populace they actually have, not the populace they wish they had, and that means dealing with the social and cultural realities their nations civilians live in and grow up in. I get that the Pentagon and recruiters don't want to address the Veitnam elephant in the room, when they were already dragging their heels/spinning BS on QoL basics like not having black mold everywhere.

However the longer the DoD puts off coming to terms with the feelings of the populace as whole, instead of just their 'preferred' ideological demographics, the longer it will be till they course correct and maybe start dealing with the cultural baggage of Veitnam, and now A-stan, directly.

 

[Zachowon]

If we helped the commies it would have been political suicide.
And we don't mention the Vietnam War anymore in the military.

And again, actually do your research on what the Army is capable of in INDOPACPM

 

[Bacle]

If we helped the commies it would have been political suicide.

Instead it turned into the needless, fruitless deaths of tens of thousands of people before the US finally realized we were not welcome, and that the locals were tired of people trying to colonize them, even if the latest excuse was 'Commies' and 'we have to or France sides with the USSR.'

There is a reason we are on better terms with Veitnam now, and it's because unlike the other people who tried to colonize them, we actually left when push came to shove instead of trying to commit genocide/win an unwinnable war, and admitted we as a nation fucked up (even of the DoD won't do the same).

And we don't mention the Vietnam War anymore in the military.

Yes, because it's an institutional black eye to both the US gov and military that both would prefer be swept under the rug and out of the public consciousness.

So the lessons in PR and in the social spheres about Veitnam and it's consequences are ignored by the people who should pay attention to it the most, and the clusterfuck with A-stan showed the US gov and DoD learned and/or retained none of those lessons in the long run.

And again, actually do your research on what the Army is capable of in INDOPACPM

...well, I guess those Army units helping the Indians out in the Himalaya's on the CCP border would count as active ground combatants against the CCP, in a way. Not going to matter much if things go loud over Taiwan though.

If the CCP make land fall in enough numbers to require ground to be 'retaken', rather then CCP forces just bottled up and destroyed in detail by Taiwanese ground forces should they even get to the beaches at all, then we are once again at the point of nuclear escalation and AA/ABM units being more important than infantry or armor.

Logistics is all well and good, but that's not the same thing as trying to keep infantry and armor units in the same numbers or insist they are still as relevant to the US's likely future adversaries.

Anyone without nukes is someone we probably don't need to invade rather than just do conventional air strikes, and anyone with nukes is someone where the Army is more useful as AA/ABM than as ground pounders trying to take and hold/liberate territory.

I see the Army of the future looking more like a bunch of AA/ABM units with guards and support personnel, who double as construction crews when the Corp of Engineers need them, than as a ground combat force of old.

 

[Marduk]

I think that the Army's obsession with pretending ground combat of the type they are geared to fight is still as vital for likely US defense interests, compared to AA/ABM work, is looking backwards, not forwards, in the threat environment as it is.

Except that you are looking forward through a clueless person's glasses.
The argument you are making is not new, it was "invented" over and over by people who think they are clever since at least 1950's, the last iteration being the "peace dividend" of 90's.
So, going by hindsight, how many combat deployments did US Army specifically have since the 90's?

I think that short of a Carrington event forcing the US and global militarizes to revert to steam-age tech for a while, the threat environment and geostrategic situation the US is likely to face is one where air, space, and sea dominance is far, far more key to winning/surviving conflicts than having a large amount of infantry or armor formations.

Which USA doesn't have a large amount of to begin with (relative to Cold War), so i don't understand what are you arguing against.

The Army is good for AA/ABM work going into the future, however the ground combat forces are either going to have to shift to be either organically capable of providing AA support to themselves, or face very limited scope of practical battlefield abilities.

Drone warfare is showing why SHORAD and short range AA in general is going to be very vital going into the future, to keep any infantry effective.

You seem to think that the US military has an endless population pool of able, fit, psychologically sound bodies to get recruits from at will, and that it doesn't need to listen to any detractors not already in the service or saying what service chiefs like to hear.

"It's the public's fault, not yours, that your service isn't getting recruits at the numbers you want" bullshit was sold to the DoD for years by recruiters who didn't have the balls to admit the deeper systemic issues that the DoD could address, because it might hurt their own promotion chances.

Yes, US Army mean need more air defense, but that in no way fits your other arguments.
Also don't think 99% of potential recruits are thinking of US Army's SHORAD shortcomings.

Except the military's version of events for Veitnam is a bunch of fucking self-serving PR bullshit at this point, as everything regarding Agent Orange and how it was handled shows, and as history has proven with how the US military leadership tries to pretend Veitnam doesn't matter for recruiting, till told directly otherwise by people on the ground.

What is the "military's version" anyway, and i'm pretty sure "self-serving bullshit" is the very definition of what anyone's PR is supposed to be.

We could have had the relationship we have with Veitnam now, back in Ho Chi Min's time, if we had just told the French "No, you don't get to keep your colony by screaming 'commies'." and asked France to kindly stop trying to piss off the people who just fought off the IJA.

By that logic you could have had the same relationship you had with Deng's China except with fucking Mao. No, no time travel for you, different time, different circumstances, different leader.

The US military is and always has been engaged in politics in the US; that's it's separate in any real way from politics is part of the PR illusion, used to keep officers and enlisted from getting too ambitious too early in their careers and to keep the general public from realizing how politically connected our military and political offices are.

The idea the US military has ever truly been apolitical is one of the biggest PR illusions of them all.

I think you are mixing up "engaged in politics" and "politicized".

If we take the poll at face value, it's still not the unchanging half-and-half you said it was, when over 25% simply say they don't know, and 50%+ say it was a mistake, and the proportions of what age group are saying what is not constant.

But the fact that there are no major changes in this since the 80's completely blows your narrative of changes in public opinion necessitating massive shifts in policy, because at least on this matter, there is remarkably little change at all. Lefties still hate it, right wingers have their own less heated arguments over it, center doesn't care as usual, life goes on.

As I said, the only change I could see happening to force the US to need more infantry and ground pounders is the CCP doing something cute in Canada, and that's something where I kinda doubt we'd ever let it get that far to begin with.

I suggest improvements to your imagination and the things it sees.

Yes, it does depend, and I pointed out above that the poll was more nuanced in what it said than you implied.

Have you considered there are more people in the US who are 'victims' of not feeling the Veitnam war was justified than there are people who do feel it was justified?

Sorry, but "feelings" are a matter for psychologists and politicians, not historians or military leaders.

Have you considered that the US military needs to deal with the cultural and social legacy of Veitnam as it is, rather than attempt to continue to polish a turd out of institutional pride and PR reasons, if it wants to actually stay aware of the mood of the general populace?

Your vision of that legacy is obviously tainted by leftist cultural influences, of which my personal opinion is, well, by now you probably can guess how low it is.
For one, i think you know the political situation well enough to not throw such a silly term as "mood of the general populace" around, as there is no such thing as universal mood of it, the antifa crowd most definitely doesn't share the mood of the libertarians nor the Trump supporters.

The Pentagon thinking it can ignore the feeling of the US public about it's actions, and just keep running PR cover for it's fuck ups or banking on the legacy of WW2 to gloss over shit, is not working anymore, never mind the pay and quality of life issues that have been gutting recruiting and retention.

Running PR cover for its fuckups is probably the #1 purpose for Pentagon to have PR services at all.
Also you put the issues in completely wrong order. It's the pay and QoL issues that are the current big deal for them, the high minded "legacy of Vietnam" ideas you bring up here are somewhere in distant fifties or hundreds on priority list and mostly affect people so ideologically oppositional that putting any effort into trying to cater to them is a waste of resources.

What the hell do you think all the 'Veitnam shouldn't matter anymore.', 'We won in the field!', and 'Well, it was all the politicians fault!' cope comes from, if not from trying to defend the actions taken by the US military during Veitnam or at least pretend they shouldn't matter anymore.

Should or shouldn't, it doesn't, at least not to the people interested in the military recruitment. People interested in throwing heaps of more or less historical accusations on the military probably won't be interested in joining no matter how much ritualistic self-humiliation it engages in (at the price of driving away more realistic recruits), so why bother.

And again, if the US military could just shrug off the recruiting isses they face now, the reports about it would not be making a wide a news as it has. I mean you now have more military parents than ever telling their kids it's not worth it to enlist, where in-house/in-family recruiting used to be a reliable source of recruits that is now drying up too.

And why is that so? Definitely not "legacy of Vietnam" (after all that would have been far more relevant few decades ago). It's part shit more or less related to lefty politics, part purely material stuff. And of these things, the latter is easier for the military to address than the former.

Do you understand the US military needs to deal with the populace they actually have, not the populace they wish they had, and that means dealing with the social and cultural realities their nations civilians live in and grow up in. I get that the Pentagon and recruiters don't want to address the Veitnam elephant in the room, when they were already dragging their heels/spinning BS on QoL basics like not having black mold everywhere.

Yes, and i think you need to stress the "actually have" part. The volunteer military in terms of recruitment works a lot like any business. And this is why i brought up all the recent history of businesses reaching for "wider audience".
There is no "Vietnam elephant in the room", there is a Vietnam shadow in the room, it's on the left, and people there were never fans of the military anyway, so there is no theoretically possible set of PR statements about Vietnam that could be made to change that, so again, why bother.
And we are talking about gearing up for a fight against the CCP, doubly so, that's not gonna be a selling point to the lefties anyway.

However the longer the DoD puts off coming to terms with the feelings of the populace as whole, instead of just their 'preferred' ideological demographics, the longer it will be till they course correct and maybe start dealing with the cultural baggage of Veitnam, and now A-stan, directly.

Popular feelings, which, as i said are already severely fractured along cultural-political lines in the US and are getting more so if anything, are a fickle thing. By all logic " cultural baggage of Vietnam" is only going to be slowly getting less significant with time, rather than more, and the poll i've linked does suggest that.

 

[Zachowon]

Instead it turned into the needless, fruitless deaths of tens of thousands of people before the US finally realized we were not welcome, and that the locals were tired of people trying to colonize them, even if the latest excuse was 'Commies' and 'we have to or France sides with the USSR.'

There is a reason we are on better terms with Veitnam now, and it's because unlike the other people who tried to colonize them, we actually left when push came to shove instead of trying to commit genocide/win an unwinnable war, and admitted we as a nation fucked up (even of the DoD won't do the same).

Yes, because it's an institutional black eye to both the US gov and military that both would prefer be swept under the rug and out of the public consciousness.

So the lessons in PR and in the social spheres about Veitnam and it's consequences are ignored by the people who should pay attention to it the most, and the clusterfuck with A-stan showed the US gov and DoD learned and/or retained none of those lessons in the long run.

...well, I guess those Army units helping the Indians out in the Himalaya's on the CCP border would count as active ground combatants against the CCP, in a way. Not going to matter much if things go loud over Taiwan though.

If the CCP make land fall in enough numbers to require ground to be 'retaken', rather then CCP forces just bottled up and destroyed in detail by Taiwanese ground forces should they even get to the beaches at all, then we are once again at the point of nuclear escalation and AA/ABM units being more important than infantry or armor.

Logistics is all well and good, but that's not the same thing as trying to keep infantry and armor units in the same numbers or insist they are still as relevant to the US's likely future adversaries.

Anyone without nukes is someone we probably don't need to invade rather than just do conventional air strikes, and anyone with nukes is someone where the Army is more useful as AA/ABM than as ground pounders trying to take and hold/liberate territory.

I see the Army of the future looking more like a bunch of AA/ABM units with guards and support personnel, who double as construction crews when the Corp of Engineers need them, than as a ground combat force of old.

Bacle, the US military kicked the commies butts in Nam and only left because our politics said we had too.
And yes, siding with France because commies bad is why we did it.
Don't like it? Go be a traitor like Hanoi Jane.

The US military doesn't care about Vietnam.
Most of the people who fought in it are dying off and are no longer serving.
We domt care about Vietnam because it was over 5 decades ago. We don't hold onto those days and go "WE SHOULD TREAT EVERYTHING LIKE VIETNAM!!!" No.
We only use lessons learned from Vietnam.

You are literally sounding like a hippie and asking the military to cater towards the lefties and the ones who will LITERALLY never join

 

[Bacle]

Bacle, the US military kicked the commies butts in Nam and only left because our politics said we had too.
And yes, siding with France because commies bad is why we did it.
Don't like it? Go be a traitor like Hanoi Jane.

Nixon was a much a traitor for his actions in regards to Veitnam as Hanoi Jane was, and let not get started on the heroin supply angle to Veitnam either that DC never wants to talk about.

We should have told France to pound sand, and tried to find a way to bring Veitnam over to our side earlier and without all the unnecessary and pointless waste of life that ensued.

Ho Chi Min City is a name now instead of Saigon because in the end we as a nation got tired of sending people to die to maintain France's empire against the local populace, so much so we killed the draft too because of the backlash.

The US military doesn't care about Vietnam.
Most of the people who fought in it are dying off and are no longer serving.
We domt care about Vietnam because it was over 5 decades ago. We don't hold onto those days and go "WE SHOULD TREAT EVERYTHING LIKE VIETNAM!!!" No.
We only use lessons learned from Vietnam.

Yet the lessons of domestic politics and PR from Veitnam seem to have been completely forgotten by the DoD and DC as a whole, as evidenced by their actions over the past few years.

If it wasn't for arms supplies to Ukraine and helping train their people to use our stuff, the US military and gov wouldn't have much in terms of good current PR for it, internationally or domestically.

You are literally sounding like a hippie and asking the military to cater towards the lefties and the ones who will LITERALLY never join

No, they don't join as enlisted often (outside of the Air Force), they go become officers and then politicians, and make the decisions the more conservative enlisted have to obey and live with.

Or do you think the 'woke Pentagon' is something that appeared out of nowhere after 2016 in response to Trump?

 

[Zachowon]

Except most leftist officers leave as soon as they can.
Because they have to basically serve through multiple presidents. Often times serving under a republican at least once.
So yeah now how it works buddy.

And bacle, no one in the military on the enlisted side, cares about a war most of our parents wernt even alive for.
I work woth Warrants and Officers and Senior NCOS who have kids able to join and they were all born after Vietnam.
The only ones who were born around the time of Vietnam are the highest levels, and they are slowly fading out and reaching mandatory retirement age.
He'll, MILLEY is on his last term as CJoCS.

 

[King Arts]

Bacle, the US military kicked the commies butts in Nam and only left because our politics said we had too.
And yes, siding with France because commies bad is why we did it.
Don't like it? Go be a traitor like Hanoi Jane.

The US military doesn't care about Vietnam.
Most of the people who fought in it are dying off and are no longer serving.
We domt care about Vietnam because it was over 5 decades ago. We don't hold onto those days and go "WE SHOULD TREAT EVERYTHING LIKE VIETNAM!!!" No.
We only use lessons learned from Vietnam.

You are literally sounding like a hippie and asking the military to cater towards the lefties and the ones who will LITERALLY never join

I'm feeling like playing devil's advocate so don't hold it against me and bite my head off.

Zach you say that Jane Fonda is a traitor to America but many people see the U.S. in the Vietnam war as the bad guy, if she really believed that the just thing to do is too oppose it and advocated for the Vietnamese is that actually morally bad? Would you call a German or Japanese who fought against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan a traitor? What about a modern Russian who acted in ways counter to Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Would they be a traitor to Russia, should Russians support Putin even if it's morally wrong?

 

[LordsFire]

I'm feeling like playing devil's advocate so don't hold it against me and bite my head off.

Zach you say that Jane Fonda is a traitor to America but many people see the U.S. in the Vietnam war as the bad guy, if she really believed that the just thing to do is too oppose it and advocated for the Vietnamese is that actually morally bad? Would you call a German or Japanese who fought against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan a traitor? What about a modern Russian who acted in ways counter to Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Would they be a traitor to Russia, should Russians support Putin even if it's morally wrong?

Jane Fonda didn't just 'advocate for leaving the war' or similar. That would be misguided but acceptable.

She went to Hanoi, went on a public radio broadcast, and urged American soldiers to surrender.

This fits the literal definition of 'lending aid and comfort to the enemy' in a time of war.

That is treason.