Talk:Cambodian campaign

August 2020

User:A.S. Brown I have reverted your recent edits because I believe that you are adding excessive detail of U.S. decision-making and domestic politics to this page giving WP:UNDUE weight to this element of the campaign. We do not need to know every comment made by every member of the Nixon administration on their thoughts regarding Nixon's state of mind, the invasion or the electorate. Please discuss your changes here or raise an RFC on this. Mztourist (talk) 03:23, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Dear Mztorist, thank you for raising your concerns. I believe your concerns are valid, but I was merely covering some aspects that this otherwise good article had missed, and for your information I was almost done. Edit-warring is against the rules, and anyhow there it is a waste of my time to be working on this article just to have my work deleted. With all due respect to your concerns, when writing about history when must assess the effects of a particular occurrence. This article does a good job on the military aspects, but it does have some omissions about the political aspects of the campaign, which I was trying to cover. Ultimately, the political aspects were more important than the military aspects as it was discovered by Nixon that through he may had the support of the "silent majority", there was significant domestic opposition, and it did indeed rattle him, which is why I included the part of the late night visit to the Lincoln Memorial and this odd lecture. There is great deal of controversy about this, just as there is with practically everything about Nixon. There are incorrect interpretations of history and then are correct interpretations of history. As a rule, I would like to include the correct interpretations.

There are some historians such as Conrad Black in his highly admiring biography of Nixon who assert that Nixon heroically rode out the storm caused by the Cambodian controversy, but his is a minority view. Most historians would accept the thesis that the Cambodian controversy did indeed rattle Nixon, enough to make (relatively) more cautious than what he had been before. What may seem a violation of the undue weight rule was merely a way to show to back the historical consensus by presenting in a mere two paragraphs (which is not undue weight) why historians think that way. And likewise Nixon's remark about the "bums blowing up campuses" is what really seemed to have gotten on the nerves of his opponents, who kept coming to that remark, to such an extent that Nixon made a rare (partial) apology for that statement. Given the level of controversy that comment generated at the time, it seems relevant to include it. That is not an excessive detail or a violation of undue weight rule. Incidentally, neither is a "comment made by every member of the Nixon administration on their thoughts regarding Nixon's state of mind, the invasion or the electorate." Likewise, it is highly unusual for a cabinet secretary to publicly criticize the president, which is why I included Hickel's public letter, which seems noteworthy. And it is likewise highly unusual for the National Security Adviser to refuse to go home to his apartment, and instead live in the White House basement, which is a noteworthy detail. As I was about to explain that this did limit Nixon's options when to Vietnam. I think the problem here is that you see this article primarily as a military history article with the political aspects of Cambodian campaign as a lesser matter while I see this article as equally both a military and political history. Militarily, the United States was not defeated in Vietnam, but rather withdraw because the political costs of the war were too much. Much of ink has been spilled about whatever this is is good or a bad thing. That does not interest me. What matters is offering an explanation of how and why things happened. If I focused on the political side of things, it is because it was the political aspects that ultimately determined the outcome of the war, which is why I do not feel that is excessive detail.

Finally, this article does not cover much about the North Vietnamese side of things, which was something that I was going to address if you kindly let me instead of deleting all my hard work and forcing me to waste my time here. To write a proper military history, one must explains the decisions made by both sides. At present, the article rather neglects the North Vietnamese side of things. Note the relative lack of names about PAVN officers and the detailed list of American/ARVN units vs. the rather sketchy list of PAVN/VC units. If one want to talk about violations of the undue weight rule, this is one that needs to be addressed. Rather coming how to complain, it is better to just to do something, which is what I was planning on doing.

Furthermore, Mztorist you deleted the following: "The majority of the PAVN/VC forces had withdrawn deeper into Cambodia before the invasion with a rearguard left to stage a fighting retreat to avoid charges of cowardice. The Communist losses in manpower were minimal, but much equipment and arms were abandoned.[9]:610 The American and the ARVN captured a vast haul of Soviet and Chinese arms, and the for the rest of 1970 VC activities in the Saigon area were notably reduced..[9]:610 However, by 1971 all of the weapons and equipment had been replaced while the PAVN/VC returned to their frontier bases in the summer of 1970 after the withdraw of the Americans in June 1970.[9]:610 General Abrams was frustrated with the invasion, saying in his office in Saigon: "We need to go west from where we are, we need to go north and east from where we are. And we need to do it now. I'ts moving and-goddam, goddam".[10]:568 When one officer asked "Time to exploit?", Abrams replied: "Christ! It's so clear. Don't them pick up the pieces. Don't let them pick up the pieces. Just like the Germans. You give them 36 hours and, goddam it, you've got to start the war all over again"." That is not about "U.S. decision-making and domestic politics". The viewpoint of General Abrams, who was the man in charge of the Cambodian campaign about the campaign seems highly noteworthy and relevant. The Communists lost a great deal of weapons, which hindered their ability to conduct campaigns in South Vietnam for the rest of 1970, but were overall able to restore things to where they were within a year of the campaign. I do not like to praise myself, but I was able to summarize the results of the campaign very well, and none of that is about "U.S. decision-making and domestic politics".

As I already said, it was the political side of things, the "domestic U.S. politics" that are being deprecated here that ultimately determined the outcome of the war. Militarily, the North Vietnamese did not have the power to expel the United States from Vietnam, but that was not necessary. All they had to was to keep fighting until eventually American public opinion got tired of the war. The Cambodian campaign did temporarily limit their ability to conduct operations, but did not end it. In the long run, this campaign has to be considered a failure as the ability of the Vietnamese Communists to conduct operations was not crippled, let alone ended while at the same time it sent a warning to Nixon that there was significant domestic opposition and in effect served to limit his options, which is surely the most noteworthy aspect of the campaign. With all due respect, writing a history of the Vietnam as primarily a military history is myopic and misleading. The war has to be understood as just a result of politics as it was of battles. Mztorist, I accept your good faith, but I believe you are really mistaken here as this article should be just as a political as military history article. If it was the political side of things that ultimately determined the outcome of the war, and I do believe that the vast majority of historians will say that was the case, then the political aspects of the Vietnam war including the "U.S. domestic politics" should be given equal balance, which is all I was merely trying to do here. That is NOT undue weight.

I was making an good faith effort to improve this article, and as you seem like a reasonable character, I hope we came to a mutually satisfactory agreement here. Thank you for your time.--A.S. Brown (talk) 03:48, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree that the level of detail that you have given about Nixon, his decision-making process, US domestic politics etc. is justifed. You added 15kb yesterday and a further 8kb today. I do not agree with some things that you regard as noteworthy such as Nixon calling his daughter back to the White House, calling protesters bums or Kissinger sleeping in the White House basement. I reverted your changes today to try to restore some balance to the page. Of course the campaign was politically motivated, that is why we have vast sections on Preliminaries, Aftermath and Conclusion, far more than the actual military aspects under Operations and so your suggestion that I am solely focused on keeping this as a military history page are incorrect. I certainly agree that more detail of the PAVN side is warranted, but having just finished reading the official PAVN history, Victory in Vietnam, I know there isn't much available. I have reinstated the para regarding PAVN/VC material losses and Abrams reaction. A thinned down para about Nixon's visit to the Lincoln Memorial may be justified. Mztourist (talk) 05:51, 13 August 2020 (UTC)