Around 500 BC, the King of Wu summons Sun Tzu, one of the greatest military minds in history, to save his kingdom from a more powerful enemy.
Sun Tzu was a warrior, a philosopher and the author of The Art of War, a book still studied—for example at West Point—more than two-thousand years after it was written.
Sun Tzu is important because he had a cohesive, holistic philosophy on strategy. Sun Tzu tells the King of Wu he can defeat the enemy with a smaller army. Doubting him, the king challenges Sun Tzu to turn the palace concubines into a fighting force and Sun Tzu accepts.
Sun Tzu shows the concubines what to do, selects the best two students and puts them in charge of the others. When Sun Tzu orders the exercise to begin, the woman laugh.
He tries again but the concubines laugh again.
Sun Tzu says, “If instructions are not clear and commands not explicit, it is the fault of the general. But if the orders are clear, and my orders are clear, it is the fault of the subordinate officers.”
Without warning, Sun Tzu beheads the two concubines he had selected to lead the others. To Sun Tzu, war is a matter of life and death. This is the key principal of his teachings. Once understood, everyone from the general to the solider will be motivated to win.
While the bodies of the first two concubines are still warm, Sun Tzu appoints two new concubines to lead the others. This time the concubines follow his orders without hesitation. The king of Wu is convinced and appoints Sun Tzu commander of the Wu army.
Sun Tzu now must train an army of 30 thousand troops to fight a force ten times larger.
Vietnam is not our enemy today, but it was for almost twenty years (1955 – 1973)—a war that the U.S. started with the false claim that our Navy ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964.
The truth: “On August 2, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, mistaking the Maddox for a South Vietnamese vessel, launched a torpedo and machine gun attack on it. Responding immediately to the attack, the Maddox, with the help of air support from the nearby carrier Ticonderoga, destroyed one of the attacking boats and damaged the other two. … Regarding claims that the attacks on the US were unprovoked, veterans of US Navy SEAL teams say that US-trained South Vietnamese commandos were active in the area on the days of the attacks. … There were no U.S. casualties’, but three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six wounded.” Source: What was the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
“In early 1964, South Vietnam began conducting a covert series of U.S.-backed commando attacks and intelligence-gathering missions along the North Vietnamese coast. Codenamed Operations Plan (OPLAN) 34A, the activities were conceived and overseen by the Department of Defense, with the support of the Central Intelligence Agency, and carried out by the South Vietnamese Navy.
“The United States was playing a dangerous game. The South Vietnamese—conducted OPLAN 34A raids and the U.S. Navy’s Desoto patrols could be perceived as collaborative efforts against North Vietnamese targets.” Source: U.S. Naval Institute
How does Vietnam compare to Afghanistan and Iraq? You will discover that Vietnam also has a long history of war and rebellion.
In 111 BC, the Nam Viet Kingdom is annexed by the Han Dynasty and becomes part of China. During the next thousand years, China rules over Vietnam and there are many rebellions that are crushed.
In 939 AD, Ngo Quyen frees Vietnam (Dai Co Viet) by defeating China’s army at the Bach Dang River.
In 1010, The Ly Dynasty defeats attacks from China, in addition to the Khmer and Cham empires and then conquers the Cham destroying their culture.
In 1288 after fighting off thirty years of invasions by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China, the Mongols are defeated by Tran Hung Dao again at the Back Dang River. Kublai Khan (1215 – died 1294) conquered China and then ruled the Yuan or Mongol dynasty.
In 1407, the Ming Dynasty sends an army into Vietnam, and in 1428, China is defeated.
In 1788, China’s Qing dynasty invades again and is also defeated.
In 1858, the French Navy attacks Da Nang and South Vietnam becomes a French Colony while the north and center of Vietnam becomes a French protectorate.
Japan invades Vietnam in 1940, and after World War II, the French reoccupy South Vietnam followed by a war between France and the Viet Minh as the Vietnamese once again fight to regain independence from a foreign power just as they have done against the Chinese, the Mongols and the French. In fact, the Vietnamese defeated the Mongols where the tribes in Afghanistan and Iraq failed.
The bulk of the French army is defeated at Dien Bien Phu; the French leave in 1955, and are soon replaced by the (stupid) United States.
The United States—it is obvious that the US did not know their enemy—supports Ngo Dinh Diem who makes himself president of the so-called Republic of South Vietnam with support from the U.S. military. In 1963, Diem is assassinated in a US-initiated coup.
Defeated in its objective to end Communism in Vietnam, the U.S. leaves in 1975 and today, Vietnam is still ruled by a Communist government.
What I learned from this series of posts is that when attacked, citizens in other countries and cultures may want to decide their own political future and fight for that right. If the US had sought the advice of Sun Tzu, I’m sure he would have warned against wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam by just studying the history of these cultures
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
Adrenalin and our training kicked in—at least for three of us—and without realizing we had moved, we found ourselves a heartbeat later prone behind telephone poles positioned about thirty feet inside the wire to offer some form of protection in the sort of situation we had just found ourselves in—as exposed, easy to hit targets.
But one of us was missing. Once the flare floated to earth and fizzled out plunging us back into darkness, we went in search of our missing Marine and found him trapped inside the barbed-concertina wire stuck to the barbs. He was lucky that when he jumped in the wrong direction, he didn’t land on one of the mines. We plucked him off the barbs and off we went to the medic.
The third incident was on another all-night patrol as the sun’s early light was sneaking over the horizon and spilling across the rice paddies. We were on our way back to the base camp moving along a dirt road through the hills. There was the sound of a grenade spoon popping and the thud of a grenade hitting the ground.
The patrol—except for one—reacted as trained. One instant we were on the road spread out in the proper formation, and what felt like a heartbeat later I found myself in a ditch twenty feet away. And I still don’t know how I got there.
Looking up, I saw only one member of the patrol in sight as he stood frozen staring at the grenade sitting in the dirt in front of his feet. The rest of the patrol, like me, had vanished into the terrain on either side of the dirt road, and I couldn’t see anyone else.
Fortunate for that human Popsicle, the grenade turned out to be a dud and whoever threw it was in no mood to start a firefight with the patrol—he could have been a ten-year-old boy who had no other weapon but that one grenade. You see, in most of the world outside of the developed West, children are often not children—not as we think of children in the United States. They are just smaller people and just as dangerous as adults.
Why did these three Marines forget their training? Was it the parents, environment and lifestyle they had come from? Was it something genetic? Or were they just fortunate, klutzy dingbats?
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
Through intense training, U.S. Marines learn how to react in combat without taking time to think. Then why—for example—while I was in Vietnam in 1966, did other Marines I depended on literally jump in the fire ignoring all of the training designed to mold boys in to a fighting, killing machine?
“Without doubt, Marine boot camp is more challenging—both physically and mentally—than the basic training programs of any of the other military services. Not only are the physical requirements much higher, but recruits are required to learn and memorize a startling amount of information. There are more than 70 training days in a period a little longer than 12 weeks …” then after boot camp, there’s training at the School of Infantry—another 51 days. Source: Surviving Marine Corps Basic Training
But in Vietnam, that training failed for more than one Marine putting others on their combat team at risk.
The first incident: I was on a night patrol, and the patrol leader—without telling the rest of us—took off through the rice paddies in the inky darkness. He thought he heard the enemy and without much thought decided he wanted to be a John Wayne.
After he vanished without a sound, the rest of the patrol—including me—set up a defensive position thinking we were going to get hit hard, and we almost shot our sergeant when he returned after chasing his imagined enemy that turned out to be a panicked duck and her chicks as they fled this manic Marine.
The second incident took place on Hill 50-something [hills were named by their elevation]. Four of us were out inspecting the barbed-concertina wire along the camp perimeter. Under the wire were landmines and in front of the wire, outside the defensive perimeter, were trip flares.
We were inside the wire thinking we were safe in the darkness—it was midnight, cloudy and raining and visibility was a few feet—when one of those trip flares outside the wire went off and lit us up as if we were in Law Vegas on a sidewalk.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
For Vietnam (1953 – 1975): In 1965—soon after the so-called Tonkin Gulf Incident (the Vietnam War’s Pearl Harbor that was the propaganda to drum up support for war)—only 25% thought the war was a mistake. Source: DailyKos.com
In fact, Anup Shah writing for Global Issues, says it required massive propaganda to create the belief that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was because non-communist South Vietnam was invaded by communist North Vietnam and that the regime in the South was democratic—but there never was a democracy in South Vietnam.
This was all untrue. In addition, many think that the Vietnam War was lost due to the media revealing atrocities but this was also untrue. Noam Chomsky says the American elite typically regarded Vietnam as a “mistake” or tragedy.
Television news in particular was said to have helped America “lose” the war. Yet, television news coverage was arguably poor, and full of news-bites, rather than detailed documentaries. … The Vietnam experience highlights a multitude of factors that contributed to what can only be termed as propaganda for Cold War ideological battles: a mixture of ideological goals, geopolitical and military goals, and issues to do with the nature of reporting and the structure of the media and how it worked, combined with cultural norms, all impacted the way that things were reported, not reported, portrayed, or misrepresented, and this ultimately provided legitimacy for a war that saw millions killed. Source: Global Issues.org
Gallup reported that in 1965, soon after the so-called Tonkin Gulf Incident, 61% of American’s polled said that sending U.S. troops to fight in Vietnam was not a mistake. But by 1971, 70% would say yes—it was a mistake—to the same question.
Again, we hear the echo of President Abraham Lincoln’s words: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” In 1965, the majority of the American people were fooled but by 1971, only a few were still fools.
For the Gulf War—also known as Operation Desert Storm (August 1990 – February 1991)—we learn under the first President Bush that short wars with decisive victories provide less time for the public to change its mind. … In addition, President George H. W. Bush (1989 – 1993), remembering the lessons of Vietnam, sought public support … and he got it. The vast majority of Americans and a narrow majority of the Congress supported the President’s actions. Source: US History.org
But the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, had his Pearl Harbor on 9/11, and he squandered the public support by relying on false reports of Weapons of Mass Destruction to declare war on Iraq. But this false propaganda succeeded leading to Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003 – 2011).
“Being able to exploit the national anguish and anger over 9/11 was a critical ingredient, of course. But the success of the war-selling campaign was testimony to what a determined use of the opinion-molding capabilities of the government of the day, including the bully pulpit of the presidency, can accomplish.” Source: The National Interest
After Powell’s speech at the UN about WMDs in Iraq, a Gallup poll concluded that 79% of Americans thought the war was justified. However, by 2007, 65% would disapprove of the Iraq War thinking it was not worth fighting, and in March 2013, another survey found that 51.9% of the American public felt that the Iraq War had been a mistake—after all, you cannot fool all of the people, all of the time.
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (2001 to present): In 2001, Gallup reported that eight of ten Americans (80%) supported a ground war in Afghanistan. But by March 2012—more than a decade later—sixty-nine percent of Americans thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
I want to warn you that if you are a member of the uber-sensitive politically-correct mob—some of these people even want to censure literature and rewrite history to fit their politically correct sensitivities—and you are often offended at the use of vulgar/racist words, don’t read this post.
To history buffs, this post is not about the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man (1831-1890) who led his people as a tribal chief during years of warfare with the United States government.
This post is about an Okinawan whore in early 1966, who made a lot of money servicing dozens of American Marines nightly. Some of her paying customers were addicted to having sex with her and were willing to wait for an hour or more outside of her small house in Ken village across the street from Camp Hanson in Okinawa.
Maybe the U.S. Marines who were her customers and fans called her Sitting Bull because she sort of resembled the famous Sioux chief at a younger age.
The one time I saw her, she was wearing a knee length bath robe; had frizzy hair sticking out in all directions and was so overwhelmed from the dozen or more orgasms she’d already experienced that night, she had trouble walking as she came out of the bedroom to call in the next customer in line.
I think she was called Sitting Bull because her fiancé—a U.S. Marine—was a full-blooded Lakota Sioux. I don’t know his name but I know he was a Sioux and his job as a Marine was to drive one of the M48 Patton medium tanks in the 1st Marine Division tank battalion we were both members of.
While Sitting Bull, the whore, was conducting business in one end of her small house, her fiancé was watching TV with Sitting Bull’s mother and children at the other end of the house. She must have been one hell of a fuck, but I never found out. The only reason I stood in that line was out of curiosity. Once I saw her, I left and went to a local bar to get drunk.
Before we shipped out to Vietnam a few weeks later, Sitting Bull’s fiancé went a little crazy—no, really very crazy. He wanted to marry her and take her home but his request was denied by the U.S. Military after a background check of his fiancé.
The Sioux tank driver got drunk and attempted to drive a tank off base so he could be with his woman. The base commander talked him out of his drunken urge and sent him to the brig instead.
In 1969, at the height of the U.S. War in Vietnam, the Okinawan police estimated that 7,362 Okinawan women were working in prostitution though others estimated this number to be 10,000 or more. Today, some 7,000 Filipinas … are prostituted women—on entertainment visas—for U.S. military personnel in Okinawa. Source: GenuineSecurity.org
What is going to happen to the world’s prostitutes once the United States stops playing at being a global empire and brings the troops home from more than 611 foreign military bases (According to The Washington Post)?
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
Before I shipped out to Vietnam, I never received any classes, lectures, inservices or workshops on Southeast Asian culture and at that age—without a college education—I wasn’t curious or interested.
We were US Marines trained to kill. We weren’t there to understand the culture. The only workshop I remember was one about how to avoid getting an STD and how dangerous one strain of syphilis/gonorrhea was in Vietnam.
We were told that if we were careless with a Vietnamese woman, it could be a very painful death sentence from a viral form of an STD that no drugs could cure.
In fact, I didn’t know anyone in my unit who expressed the slightest bit of interest in Vietnam’s culture or history. When we went on five days of R&R during our tour of combat—for example to Hong Kong, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan, or the Philippians—most of us were interested in only one thing: getting drunk and getting laid.
And the hundreds of thousands of US troops who felt the same way were not alone in history.
“According to Beth Bailey and David Farber, during the Second World War a large number of prostitutes in Hawaii, each servicing upward of 100 men a day, made a fiscal “killing.” “Shackjobs,” or long-term, paid relationships with women of Hawaiian or Filipino descent were also common among military personnel stationed in Hawaii (as they were later in Vietnam). …”
And “during the war in Indochina, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and Sunday Times of London correspondent Murray Sayle maintained, independently of one another, that U.S. forces in South Vietnam had turned Saigon into a “brothel”—a reference to the estimated 500,000 Vietnamese prostitutes who served an approximately equal number of GI’s. … Source: John Brown University
In fact, “There were 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964, after the United States established seven bases in the country, that number had skyrocketed to 400,000.” Source: Prostitution in Thailand and Southeast Asia
In addition, “At the height of the US presence in the Philippines, for example, more than 60,000 women and children were employed in bars, night clubs and massage parlors around the Subic Bay and Clark Naval bases alone. Estimates of the total numbers of Filipina women and girls engaged in prostitution and other sex-based industries range between 300,000 and 600,000.” Source: PeaceNews.info – Command and control: the economies of militarized prostitution
And if you think times have changed, read this: “As recently as 2002, a brothel in Australia closed their doors when a group of 5,500 U.S. Sailors coming back from a war zone stopped off in Australia. From the article: Mary-Anne Kenworthy said she was forced to close the doors of her famous Langtrees brothel for only the third time ever yesterday because her prostitutes were so worn out they could no longer provide a quality service.” Source: Cause of Liberty – Prostitution
Do you condemn those who sinned—if it was a sin—or is it wrong to send a young virgin off to possibly die for his country while denying him the pleasure of a woman even if a prostitute was his only choice? What do you think?
When I joined the US Marines, I was a high school graduate and an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. I was not an intellectual—instead, I was a walking libido filled to overflowing with testosterone like so many of my fellow Marines.
I turned twenty-one in Vietnam, and up to that time Vietnam veterans were the best educated force the United States has ever sent into combat—79% had a high school education or better. Two-thirds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers, and eighty-six percent of those who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, and 1.2% were from other ethnic/racial groups.
If I had gone straight to Vietnam instead of spending a few weeks in Okinawa for additional training, I could have died a virgin—having never known what it was like to be sexually intimate with a woman.
And that reminds me of a film called Mrs. Henderson Presents staring Judi Dench as Mrs. Laura Henderson who opens a theater in London during World War Two with an all-nude female review for the allied troops, because her son had died a virgin in combat and she didn’t want these young men to die without having at least seen a young, nude woman at least once.
The subject of this series of posts is about US troops and prostitution. It has been said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession.
For example, in 2400 B.C., the Sumerians listed prostitution in one the earliest lists of professions, and the practice of prostitution in ancient Rome was both legal and licensed, and even Roman men of the highest social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval. In fact, rent from a brothel was considered a legitimate source of income in the Roman Empire.
In addition, Hammurabi’s Code (1780 B.C.) specifically mentioned the rights of a prostitute or the child of a prostitute.
And in China—600 B.C.—brothels were legal, while in Greece (594 BC) state brothels were founded and a prostitute’s earnings were taxed. Source: Historical Timeline – Prostitution
In fact, historically, “where there are soldiers, there are women who exist for them. … In some ways, military prostitution (prostitution catering to, and sometimes organized by, the military) has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare.” Source: The Asia Pacific Journal
That leads to when I was a US Marine age twenty in Okinawa on my way to fight in one of America’s wars, and I arrived a virgin who desperately didn’t want to be one. And when I left Okinawa for Vietnam, I had achieved a goal that hundreds-of-thousand—and maybe millions—in the US military have achieved both during peace time and war.
With the introduction of gun powder, combat casualties increased dramatically, but medical treatment in the battlefield also improved. Field hospitals were introduced by Napoleon. During the Civil War and later in World War I and World War II, trained military medics joined combat units to treat casualties in the field as troops were wounded.
By comparing deaths and the number wounded starting with World War I, we gain a better understanding of how those advances in battlefield medical care improved the odds of survival.
World War I (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918—one year and eight months): 53,402 deaths and 204,002 wounded in action—an average of 32,170 combat deaths annually.
World War II (Dec. 1941 to Aug. 14, 1945—three years and about nine months): 407,300 deaths and 670,846 wounded in action—an average of 108,613 combat deaths annually.
The introduction of the helicopter in Korea and then Vietnam to quickly medevac wounded troops to field hospitals saved many lives.
Korea (1950 – 1953—three years): 54,246 deaths and 92,134 wounded in combat—an average of 18,082 combat deaths annually.
Vietnam (1956 – 1975—nineteen years): 58,193 deaths and 153,303 wounded in combat—an average of 3,063 combat deaths annually.
Desert Storm (1990 – 1991—seven months): 378 deaths and 1,000 wounded in combat—an average of 54 combat deaths a month.
Iraq (March 2003 – December 2011—about eight years): 4,403 deaths and 31,827 wounded in combat—an average of 550 combat deaths annually.
Afghanistan (October 7, 2001 to present—about eleven years) 2,094 and 18,584 wounded in action—an average of 190 combat deaths annually while back home in the United States more than 30,000 die in vehicle accidents on the roads and highways every year. Sources: Timeline of U.S. Wars and Conflicts and Defense.gov
Today, there are more casualties from suicide than combat. In 2012, the number of active-duty casualties from suicide actually outnumbered the combat deaths in all of Afghanistan, 349 -295. But it’s even worse than that if you look at the number of suicides by America’s veterans. As of February 4th, TWENTY-TWO veterans kill themselves EVERY DAY. That’s one EVERY 65 MINUTES. Source: Innocence-Clinic.law
Now the challenge is to discover how to treat the invisible wounds and trauma of the mind.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
