American foreign internal defense: Pillars of sand (part 2)

Bang up job on the telling of this tale. Enjoyed all the hard work you put into this. As a student of military history I had yet to learn anything of Che's take-down. The detail you weave into stories in impressive often with pictures and accounts of many who were involved. Even following up with what Pappy did after "retiring" your a real asset to SOFREP and do a real service to relay stories that would otherwise have fallen by the wayside. Gonna start convincing idiots with Che's shirts on to start subscribing so they can read how heroic he was.

Great story, I'm going to have to read more about this. Wonderful to hear of when things went "right"; as in what we did made a difference, and we didn't have to get all in another countries business/war. If only some of our more recent international endeavors could have gone so well.

. ...Some...at the time... might have wondered why the U.S. did not simply send in a battalion of American paratroopers to quickly "mop up the problem..." Their competence and willingness to close with the enemy could hardly have been doubted. And "Commandante" Guevara had bollixed up his chances of success. ...But of course, it was very "late in the day" when his precarious situation became commonly suspected. The initial reports...which were all that anybody could take into consideration...seemed to indicate that he had built up a strong presence in the mountains. ...By early 1967 the U.S. had tried to "take over" much of the war in Vietnam, including counter-insurgency. Military competence had not been rewarded with "those on the fence" rallying to our side as say... the French Resistance had in WWII. Instead, the "white corpuscle" reaction (demonstrated so prominently in Afghanistan) had a negative effect on the populations response to "alien soldiers from an alien culture..." The Vietnamese were one of the most Xenophobic peoples on the planet. Our best and most sincere efforts too often resulted in increasing recruits for the local VC commands. ...In the Bolivian mountains the local campesinos did not love their government... but preferred a government presence to one of (up to that point) almost entirely foreign guerrillas...(who all too often were extremely patronizing not only to the population... but to such Bolivians who had joined Guevara's band.) The "alien" nature of the guerrilla command structure offended not only the locals... but both factions of the Bolivian Communist movement...(who at the end of the day found themselves... no matter how committed to Communism... Bolivians first.) ...Terrorists without popular support can of course be "excised" by a "visiting team" with little impact. But knowing nothing of the depth of the insurgency, the ambassador, the Secretary of State, and the Special Forces decided that Bolivia had to solve its own problem. Help, yes... training, equipment. But it needed to be their young men closing with the guerrillas. ...If the guerrillas actually had a healthy insurrection under way, American forces might very well convince some of the locals that foreign Latinos were preferable to foreign "Yanquis..." The Communist factions might stop sitting on their hands as they were known to be doing and started sending supplies... and especially new recruits. And radical students and radical miners. ...Guevara's most fervent wish was that the U.S. would intervene with its own forces in great numbers. With luck, his guerrilla force would swell... but even if the were eventually defeated... nothing would have been proved... except that "Imperialism can sometimes succeed if they pump in massive numbers of troops early enough..." ...But those troops could not remain. And the next guerrilla group might find many among the population who had a burning resentment...who felt that most likely their government was in the pocket of the U.S. ...And of course, if the Americans were as ham-fisted as they had often (with the best will in the world) been in Vietnam... then a spillover into many of the countries that surround Bolivia a distinct possibility... And then it would be entirely an American war... without meaningful political support from the peoples caught up in the maelstrom. ...But instead: Timid barefoot campesinos with bad teeth...almost entirely all conscripts... were converted into first rate soldiers that aggressively closed with a dangerous enemy... Even after taking casualties, killed an wounded... they re-deployed and killed or captured almost all of the guerrillas. ...Propaganda that "the U.S. killed Guevara" might be believed on some college campuses... but the Bolivian people knew that their own peasants... not regulars... not foreigners... not strangers... had destroyed a man who was popularly believed in many quarters to be a "god of insurgency.." Castro knew it... and his Soviet backers who had advised against starting insurgencies where conditions were not yet ripe knew it... and never let Castro forget it. ...Later, "narco-terrorist" insurgencies would wreak their own havoc... but they were a different animal than a "popular Marxist insurgency..." Marxism has not taken over all of Latin America... certainly is not wildly popular in Venezuela these days... ...When the civil war in El Salvador was at its worst, some in the Pentagon were insisting (as some of their predecessors had in the early days of the Vietnam war...) that, "We won't win this war until we have large numbers of American troops on the ground..." Wiser heads prevailed... We kept our footprint small... We gave measured support to the government, but made sure that they understood that we were *never* going to fight their war for them... and if they got into really "playing us" as the Vietnamese did... we'd let them stew in their own juices. ...Both sides exhausted themselves, and the war ended. ...So yes... It is not always a lost cause to train up the locals. In Bolivia, our government showed enough "sand" tor prevent politicos and generalissimos from mucking with the fighting instrument that we built for them. .-Yankee Papa-

Fascinating! Looking forward to the next piece.

Not always a lost cause to train up the locals.