[Jiggy]

Originally Posted by Pale_Horse

One thing my CO told me once was, that no one ever wins a war, you simply survive it.
The number of soldiers was a very small part of why things went the way they did. You could have had 5x the numbers their witht the draft in effect, but that does not mean everyone there would be fighting with the best of their ability. Now a days people willingly sign up for military service, and willingly put their life on the line to defend what they beleive is right, but you put someone that doesn't want to be there in the first place, who knows what will happen in the time of war. I heard stories where in the middle of a firefight, some people loose it, freak out, and stand up to run away only to get shot dead in the back. All that is doing is raking up the bodycount.

Moral, mindset, training, willingness to take anothers life, planning, communication, amount of soldiers, transportation, and so forth are all factors into what would also be the outcome of a war. To say that it would be won on a larger amout of soldiers is only one small factor.

Look at Pearl Harbor. That was a suicide mission, no one was expected to survive, but yet, many did. This was because of training, proper transportation, communications, planning, and the men that fought wanted to be there. Yes the numbers were large, but, it was not the only factor.

Another example, would be small deployment teams like 5 men to take out something. A army is not needed to do so, but, would make things easier. That is where planning, training, willingness, moral, mindset, ect are important.

Look at the current situation in Iraq, their will be no way in hell, that that war will ever be over, to the point that we declair victory. I am not saying what you see on the news is lying, but, being there first hand it is vastly different. We could have 50 million soldiers there and the things would be the same. Who do you fight, when all you see is smiles in the daytime, and those smiles turn to rage filled screams of gunfire at night?
In Vietnam, most of the kamakazis were friendly faces to the armed forces. Then all of a sudden one night those faces come running into camps blowing themselves up along with others.

Nuber of troops is not everything their is to winning a war. If you believe so, go to anyone that served in a war, and ask them if that is true. You will learn alot.

With the exception of moral, and even then, only in the late war, we had everything you listed as being important to winning a war. I'm quite sure, that if someone is shooting at you, and you have no other option, you are going to try your best to stay alive, which in most cases would mean shooting back. The troops in Vietnam we're just as effective at what they were doing as any other time in history.

As to small deployments such as the navy SEALS and Delta Force, it is alot easier to send in those groups then to send in an entire army. For 1, the enemy would certainly notice your entire army mobilizing. For 2, mobilizing an army requires vast amounts of resources. For 3, The small teams are elite, and likely to be undetected. For 4, There is a much smaller risk involved. Losing 10-20 men worst case, is nothing compared to the 500-1,000 best case if you chose to do something with your entire army.

In WWII, there was a draft, and I think it's fair to say we had fairly good men in service at the time.

I'm just saying, that if Johnson had the troops he had wanted to do the job, things would have gone very differently.