罗伯特-麦克纳马拉关于越南战争的理论是什么？

 罗伯特-麦克纳马拉关于越南战争的理论是什么？

当时，美国人对苏联、红色中国或北朝鲜、北越都不了解。前三者是封闭的社会。我们只知道世界各地的国家正在倒向共产主义，我们感到被包围了。他们拥有炸弹--我们面临着直接的生存危险。

麦克纳马拉相信多米诺骨牌理论。我们必须在越南阻止他们。

我们都认为所有的共产党人都是由莫斯科管理的一个单一的实体。我们当时很绝望。

我们相信他们的宣传。我们认为他们是超人，高效地建造潜艇、导弹和飞机。

所有这些都是废话，但我们不能冒这个险。

我们正确地知道，共产主义领导人非常愿意牺牲数以百万计的人命来实现他们的目标。

因此，麦克纳马拉致力于 "赢得 "越南战争，但他把胜利定义为数字游戏。他认为当血的代价无法维持时，敌人就会停止战斗。

他错误地认为尸体数量是正确的。他忽视了那些不能轻易量化的因素。因此，我们打了一场没有获胜希望的消耗战。

简单的数学告诉我们，我们杀他们的速度不可能比新出生的人快。

第一世界的天真蒙蔽了我们。我们没有意识到，"把他们炸到石器时代 "对那些生活在自然环境中的人来说没有任何区别。

麦克纳马拉的军事 "经历歪曲了他的观点。他分析了日本战场上的轰炸结果。他相信了日本人被原子弹打败的谎言。

所以他认为我们可以把北越炸得服服帖帖。

但是，如果仔细研究一下欧洲的轰炸行动--以及一些个人的反省--就会告诉麦克纳马拉，轰炸得太多会产生反效果。在你消灭了他们的战争机器之后，之后的每一次轰炸都会激怒受害者并坚定他们的决心。

但我们在越南投下的炸弹比整个二战期间各方在所有国家投下的炸弹还要多。

如果麦克纳马拉能听从将军们的意见--如果将军们能说服他（他们尝试过），他就会知道，战斗的胜利，不是靠炸弹，而是靠步枪手。

你必须占领敌人的家园（北越），你必须抓住他的领导人，你必须在枪口下迫使他的步枪手解除武装。但我们甚至从未试图入侵北方。

麦克纳马拉从不理解战争--然而他却负责战争。

What was Robert McNamara's theory on the Vietnam War?

At the time, Americans had no understanding of either the Soviet Union, Red China, or North Korea, or North Vietnam. The first three were closed societies. All we knew was that countries were falling to communism all around the world—we felt surrounded. And they had The Bomb—we were in immediate existential danger.

McNamara believe in the Domino Theory. We had to stop them in Vietnam.

We all thought all communists were together a monolithic entity run by Moscow. We were desperate.

We believed their propaganda. We thought they were supermen, efficiently building subs and missiles and planes.

All that was crap, but we couldn’t risk it.

We knew, correctly, that the communist leaders were very willing to sacrifice human lives by the millions to achieve their goals.

So McNamara was dedicated to “winning” the war in Vietnam, but he defined winning as a numbers game. He thought the enemy would stop fighting when the cost in blood was untenable.

He wrongly assumed the body counts were correct. He ignored factors that could not be readily quantified. So we fought a war of attrition with no hope of winning.

Simple math tells us we couldn’t kill them faster than new ones were born.

First World naivete blinded us. We didn’t realize that “bombing them into the Stone Age” made no difference to people who lived so close to nature.

McNamara’s military “experience skewed his view. He analyzed bombing results in the Japan theater. He bought into the lie that the Japanese were defeated by the A-Bomb.

So he thought we could bomb the North Vietnamese into submission.

But a closer look into the European bombing campaigns—and some personal introspection—would have told McNamara that bombing too much is counter-productive. After you’ve wiped out their war machine, every bomb after that just angers the victims and steels their resolve.

But we dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all sides dropped on all countries throughout WWII.

If McNamara would listen to the generals—and if the generals could get through to him (they tried), he would have learned that battles are won, not by bombs, but by riflemen.

You have to take the enemy’s homeland (North Vietnam) and you have to capture his leaders and you have to force his riflemen to disarm at gunpoint. But we never even tried to invade the north.

McNamara never understood war—yet he was in charge of it.