On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 04:12:28 -0700, in a place far, far away, Dale
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to
indicate that:

Vietnam was treated like an abberation in the day-to-day life rather
than an all consuming role.

It's odd if that was the attitude of the military, as it certainly seemed to
become "all consuming", pro and con, amongst the civilian population.

Not really. At least not for the first few years.

But
if you're suggesting that we could have won had we gone all out, I don't subscribe
to that idea. At least from the standpoint of the air war, wasn't our bombing of
Vietnam of even greater magnitude than all of our bombing in WW2?

In terms of tonnage perhaps, but not in terms of devastation or
effectiveness. We pulled our punches to keep China out of it, and
there were fundamental disagreements between the military high command
(particularly LeMay) and the civilians in the White House and at the
Pentagon over the proper strategy.

"Senior Col Bui Tin of the North Vietnamese Army General Staff
remarked in an interview:

Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?

A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would
have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages
under Johnson and it didn’t worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare
alternative routes and facilities.

Q: How could the Americans have won the war?

A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted
[Gen William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho
Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war."

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...pr01/kamps.htm