Vietnam War Notebook
Battle of Bach Dang (January 939)
After a 1000 year reign in Vietnam, the ruling Chinese were in transition. The T’ang dynasty had just collapsed and in response the Han tried to fill the vacuum. They sent an invasion fleet into Vietnam in January of 939. What followed is known as the Battle of Bach Dang and it was a huge turning point in Asian history. In an incredible move, the Vietnamese defenders submerged sharpened stakes in the bottom of the Bach Dang river and the Chinese ships ran onto them, marooning themselves, then the Vietnamese destroyed them and their ships. After 1000 years Vietnam was independent. Even so the Vietnamese adopted the chu nôm system of writing and Confucianism & Buddhism became dominant, all Chinese influences. (Second Bach Dang 1288) (Tran Hung Dao )
quoc ngu system of writing
Had its origins in the early days of French presence in the form of the Rhodes Alphabet. Later, under colonialism, the quoc ngu system was crucial to the French system-- out of convenience primarily because it was Latinized. The French wanted also to suppress the chu nom system favored by the ruling Mandarins. The upshot: it provided a nationalizing force among Vietnamese through the quoc ngu popular press. Over time in the early part of the 20th century a new political culture grew from its seed. This began to make the French uneasy so they (the Surete) watched popular newspapers closely for dangerous trends. Quoc ngu had implications for various belief systems. A good example is Cao Daism; that particular belief system incorporated elements from numerous faiths, both east and west, pointing out the ability of many Vietnamese people to adopt particular ideas from their colonizers but apply them in unique ways. This process was spurred along by the explosion of literacy among ordinary Vietnamese people after the adoption of quoc ngu script.
The 'classic' three-phase Maoist model *From Wikipedia:
In China, the Maoist Theory of People's War divides warfare into three phases. In Phase One, the guerrillas work to earn the population's support and establish base areas. Propaganda and intimidation are used to co-opt the people. Then escalation is signaled by attacks on government institutions and local leaders. In Phase Two, attacks are launched against the government's military forces and vital institutions (guerrilla warfare). In Phase Three, conventional warfare and fighting are used to seize cities, overthrow the government, and assume control of the country. Mao's doctrine anticipated that circumstances may require shifting between phases in either directions and that the phases may not be uniform and evenly paced throughout the countryside. Mao Zedong's seminal work, On Guerrilla Warfare,[4] has been widely distributed and applied most successfully in Vietnam, by military leader and theorist Vo Nguyen Giap, whose "Peoples War, Peoples Army"[5] closely follows the Maoist three-phase approach, but emphasizing flexibility in shifting between guerrilla warfare and a spontaneous "General Uprising" of the population in conjunction with guerrilla forces.
Mekong Delta:
As opposed to the Red River’s wrath, the Mekong river floods the delta in a predictable manner. Another big difference between the two river deltas is that the Vietnamese didn’t reach the Mekong Delta until much later. The Vietnamese first set foot in the Saigon area around mid 1700s and within 100 years they had occupied the entire lower Mekong Delta. Under the Gia Long Emperor in early 1800s Vietnam continued to expand southward; they conquered and displaced (ethnic cleansing) much of the Cambodian population and drew new borders. In the war years rice from the Mekong Delta was used as a weapon against the North where it's much harder to cultivate and populations are more dense.
Cao Dai Religion:
Cao Dai religion began in 1919. The religion was really pushed to the forefront by a man named Van Trung. Cao Dai is a syncretic religion; meaning that it borrows elements from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and traditional animist beliefs. Some of the Cao Cao Dai saints were Mohammad, Buddha, Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, Sun Yat Sen and Thomas Jefferson. Cao Daism became hugely popular across large areas of the countryside of South Vietnam with a strong appeal for young Vietnamese who were put off by the Catholicism of the colonialists.
Colonial Period:
The French - Indochina War 1946-1954:
1945:From my reading it is quite apparent that the West had not considered Vietnam as strategically important during WWII because little provisions had been made for the post-war reorganization of the country. When the Japanese quickly capitulated after the dropping of the A-bombs the Western allies were caught holding the bag and had no plan for filling the associated power vacuum. In fact, up to that point Ho's guerrillas had been supported and trained by the OSS (see Archimedes Patti) to fight against the Japanese. According to numerous sources, including B. Fall, FDR, who was outspoken in his adversity to all colonialism, had given orders to his top military brass before he died directing them not to support the French if they attempted to re-assert themselves in Vietnam, which just added to the confusion in those chaotic days in 1945. For example, according to Claire Chennault (flying Tigers fame) he was ordered to ignore pleas for help from a doomed French garrison surrounded by the Japanese in the final days of the war. Did this confusion lead to the "August Revolution" whereby Ho's forces practically waltzed into Hanoi unopposed to seize power in August, 1945? In contrast, in Korea, when the war in the Pacific ended the Soviets and the Americans quickly occupied the two halves of Korea and began to build-up thier constabularies immediately (which also ended badly I might add). By 1946 it appears the Truman adminstration was still middling in its policy toward Vietnam, as evidenced by our hesitance to commit one way or the other when the French bombed Haiphong.
The Vietnamese Declaration sounds an awful lot like ours...did they copy the US declaration?
In Sept, 1945, the team of U.S. OSS agents led by Archimedes Patti were in Hanoi. As mentioned above Ho and his gang had enjoyed logistical support from the OSS and were quite interested in gaining official US recognition in order to forestall a French return. In a bizarre twist, at the Declaration ceremony Ho went to great lengths to have an autographed picture of Flying Tiger Claire Chennault displayed near the podium from where he claimed control. In Patti's memoirs (Why Vietnam?), he claims to have helped Ho correct a few errors in the Declaration to make it even more similar to ours. To top it all off, coincidentally(?), a US military jet happened to fly overhead during the declaration ceremony, giving some the impression that Ho had official US support.
And just to turn the screw one more time, upon evacuating Vietnam the Japanese left behind large caches of weapons for the Vietminh, which they used to harass the French efforts to reassert their colonial control, even though Ho had openly opposed them during the war. In fact, Ho had declared war on the Japanese occupiers in the waning days of the war. Yet, concurrently, the Japanese were scheming to arm the Vietminh! There is evidence to show that not only did the Japanese arm the Vietminh in those confused days, but that the Vietminh seizure of control in Hanoi in August 1945 was done with Japanese assistance. There was obviously a tangled web of allegiances and intrigue in the vacuum left by WWII.
The catastrophic defeat suffered by French forces along RC 4 between 30 September and 8 October 1950:
By early in 1950 General Vo Nguyen Giap had built up his forces in the Bac Viet* to five divisions. By later that year, after the monsoon season had passed, his newly strengthened Vietminh Army was poised and ready to attack and defeat the French along a rural stretch of road dotted by forts running between Lang Son, Dong Khe, and Cao Bang. The General's objective was to clear French forces from the area north of Hanoi near the border with China. In 1949 China's border became a sanctuary for Ho Chi Minh's operation after the victory by the Communists over Chiang Kai-shek. Giap suddenly had training camps and safe harbor across the border in China but the French forts along RC4 (route colonial) presented a serious obstacle to the free movement of his forces and supplies into the heart of Tonkin (the Red River Delta and Hanoi). Late in 1950 Giap, after months of planning, knew that circumstances were right for a quick decisive action against the French occupiers-- his target was the string of isolated French outposts along RC4. The French had taken the road (RC 4) in Operation LEA back in '47 where they barely missed capturing Ho and Giap by a matter of a couple of hours. They captured territory instead and had held it ever since through a series of garrisons erected at intervals along the road.
Giap had spent years building his forces from a band of guerrillas into a formidable army (People's Army of Vietnam PAVN) and he believed they were ready to begin the transition from Mao's stage two (guerrilla) to stage three (conventional) warfare (well maybe 2.5?). He clearly felt he had much to gain by attacking those particular garrisons; first, he could ease the process of getting supplies to his headquarters in the Bac Viet and to his armies in the field from China; second, he was looking to get his troops some hands-on combat experience; third, he knew that a decisive victory would lead to pumped up morale among the troops; and last he wanted his officers to get experience in deploying conventional units in battle.
By the onset of monsoon season in 1950 (roughly late April) the French had ceased supplying their fort at Cao Bang by truck (forts supplied by air drops only were called hedgehogs). They had also evacuated several of their other RC4 outposts leaving only the Thatke, Dong Khe and Cao Bang positions inland from Lang Son (where RD1 linked up from Hanoi). Giap launched an attack in May that proved to be a harbinger of things to come later in the year; he decided his first target would be Dong Khe, in the center of the French positions, where Moroccan troops manning the garrison were attacked by Vietminh forces using American-made 75 mm pack howitzers (captured from Chiang's nationalist armies by Mao's armies and transferred to the Vietminh) from the jagged Karst Mountains above. The Moroccans were beaten soundly, relatively few escaped. The French counterattacked quickly by dropping a parachute battalion right into the reeling position. Then the paras pounded the Vietminh, driving them back into the jungle. The French held the outpost, but it proved to be a temporary respite, come the end of the monsoon season Dong Khe was attacked again and did not fare as well the second time around. In fact the Dong Khe outpost was routed and only a handful of survivors would emerge from the jungle some days later.
At the time of the second Dong Khe attack, which kicked off Giap's major offensive in September, at the crucial moment, the French commander Carpentier wavered, he lost valuable time before finally deciding to evacuate Cao Bang. He may have been working with a lack of intelligence about the size and capabilities of Giap's forces but more likely he just didn't respect them, an error that westerners would make repeatedly over the coming years. Carpentier was probably over-confident in his assessment of his troops fighting spirit. At any rate, he had to devise a way to cover the withdrawal from Cao Bang. Carpentier had options: first, was air evacuation, second was a breakout to the south, but Carpentier decided instead for a linkup along RC 4 between the squad from Cao Bang and a force he would send up the road to meet them. This meant that Dong Khe would have to be re-taken. Once linked-up, presumably they would then fight their way back to the French held Red River Delta together. It was a plan that would require considerable speed and stealth to have a chance. Operation BAYARD was born.
Also, as part of the overall evacuation plan, Carpentier devised a feint attack, using trrops and artillery, in the direction of a village called Thainguyen halfway between Hanoi and Lang Son. It was an attempt to divert Giap's attention so that the Cao Bang evacuation might slip through undetected. It was an ill-conceived plan, not least because Thainguyen was tactically meaningless, and it failed accordingly. In fact it actually hurt BAYARD's chances rather than enhancing them. Giap, of course, was not fooled by the diversion attempt and thus did not commit any forces to stop it. But even more devastating was the fact that manpower and artillery used at Thainguyen was not available to cover the primary mission on RC4.
Commanding the Cao Bang column marching south was Colonel Charton. Leading the BAYARD expedition north was Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Lepage. BAYARD was a disaster in logistics and execution from the get-go. To start, Carpentier was so obsessed with maintaining the element of surprise and so paranoid of leaks that he didn't tell his BAYARD commanders, Lepage and Charton, any specifics about the mission! To compound matters, Carpentier lost any chance for success by failing to pull the trigger quickly. Having devised a plan based on speed and surprise, inexplicably, he hesitated. By the time Carpentier belatedly ordered BAYARD to move-out up RC 4 to link up with Charton all initiative had been lost. The element of speed had been compromised and had actually become a liability-- little did Carpentier, Charton, and Lepage suspect that they would be up against two Vietminh regiments with more on the way from the Chinese bases. In the crucial engagement for the success of the plan, the re-taking of Dong Khe, Lepage's charges failed. With no hope of making it to the rendezvous point the mission was doomed at that moment, but instead of calling it off Carpentier gave the orders to move forward, thus sealing the fates of many-- over one thousand French troops lost there lives as it turned out. Since it had not taken its objective of Dong Khe LePage's BAYARD task force was ordered to turn to the west and thrust into the heart of the jungle, through intimidating limestone Peaks (karst) and savage terrain, to meet up with Charton's group who would also be steered to the new link-up spot.
Upon reaching the original rendezvous spot, where he of course found no rescue force, Charton received word via drop that LePage's column had by that point become trapped in the jungle and that Charton should steer his column to the south, to attempt a rescue of his rescuers! The Cao Bang column was ordered to leave the road and cut through many miles of the jungle with machetes, they were ambushed and harassed but they slowly hacked their way through the dense flora until they eventually found Lepage's besieged task force. Unfortunately, by then, it was too late for LePage and most of the BAYARD expedition, they had become sealed off and trapped in a limestone gorge called Cocxa. After desperate fighting against overwhelming odds, they were annihilated. Somehow Charton escaped the rout at the Cocxa Gorge with what was left of his diminishing forces. He had no choice but to push onward, so he decided to try to escape back towards the fort at Thatke (little did he know it had been captured by then also) on the RC4. It was not to be, the Cao Bang group came under repeated Vietminh attacks and many never made it out alive. Charton, a legend of the legions, was wounded twice and eventually captured and marched to the camps. The French had also dropped a parachute team behind in the rear to keep the road to Lang Son open, they were ambushed and largely destroyed also.
In the end the French forces were mostly wiped out; eight battalions were destroyed or captured, half of them elite Foreign Legion and parachute troops. And though the human and material losses were crushing, it may have been the psychological defeat that resonated even further. (Note: most of the survivors were North Africans. Many were so traumatized that they would never fight well for the French again. So most were sent back to their home countries, only to turn against the French. Some of these men helped sow the seeds of rebellion against the colonialists in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, fighting alongside the rebels against their former French Legion officers and troops)
And just to add insult to injury, the French commander Carpentier and the Lang Son post commander Constans, still reeling from the catastrophic losses up the road, with no idea of where the Vietminh would strike next, decided to evacuate the fort at Lang Son (a town with over 100,000 residents), prematurely as it turned out. Here is Lucien Bodard's description:
"After a short period of relief the Expeditionary Force fell back into a dejection that the feeling of cowardice made worse than ever. Nothing was left to it but remorse and humiliation. They knew that all that had been stated, put forward and proved to justify the flight-- a flight intended to avert a massacre-- was false. The whole thing had been nothing but a hallucination provoked by fear, cold dread, and a shrinking heart."
"So Lang Son had been evacuated before there was any cause. But the most depressing news was that it had been abandoned virtually intact with all its immense stores, on the principle of not warning the Viets of the impending departure. The magnitude of these stocks was unbelievable: Giap's divisions (when at last they walked into Lang Son, long after the French had left) found all they needed in the way of food, clothing and medical supplies for years. Far more serious was the question of arms and ammunition. Almost everything that the Viets fired at the French in after years came from Lang Son: there were 11,000 tons of ammunition, including 10,000 75-mm shells (the Viets had 75-mm guns); there were 4000 new submachine guns; hundreds of gallons of gasoline-- an incalculable treasure of military stores." (pg. 323)
So, by the end of Giap’s very successful attacks along RC4 in 1950 their was panic in the streets in Hanoi among the French, they were in disarray and fearing for their safety and colony. In response, the French colonial administrators were making plans for the mass evacuation of as many colonists as possible from Tonkin (North Vietnam). But all was not lost, at least not at that early moment in time, because fortuitously they sent in a new commander-in-chief, a general of much higher caliber than the hapless Carpentier, his name was General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. The General ordered a halt to the evacuations then he built a series of pill-box strongholds around the Red River Delta, known as the de Lattre Line, for defensive and morale purposes. Giap, on the other hand, had read too far into the tea leaves after the victory along RC4; he had become too overconfident in his army’s ability to move to phase three conventional warfare, he must have reasoned that the French were ready to fall, that they were just barely hanging on, and his army was poised to deliver the knock-out blow. He was wrong, and he and his men would learn that lesson the hard way. Giáp launched a series of over-optimistic attacks on the French perimeter around the Red River Delta which he called his General Offensive. These attacks were expensive failures. General de Lattre's forces held up well and repulsed the Vietminh attackers on all fronts. But Giap learned from the defeat and adapted, adopting less ambitious tactics in the following years. From then on he adhered strictly to Mao's military concept of fighting a war of time, distance and will (until Tet 1968).
Note: at this exact moment, further north in Korea, MacArthur's brilliantly successful Inchon Landing (launched 9/15/50) was only two weeks passed and the US 8th Army was bearing down on Pyongyang, barreling toward disaster at the Yalu River. Meanwhile, on the other side of the peninsula, X corp and the 1st US Marines were readying to land at Hungnam to begin their ill-fated march into the mountains toward the "Frozen Chosin Reservoir."
* the Bac Viet, aka Ho Chi Minh's quadrilateral, was an isolated, mountainous, jungled covered area north and north west of Hanoi straddling China's border. It was too this unwelcoming region that Ho and Giap et al retreated after the French expelled them from Hanoi and Haiphong in 1946-47. Over the years it had become the stronghold and base area for the growing Viet Minh.
Cites:
Quicksand War by Lucien Bodard
Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1898-1952)
In the aftermath of the RC 4 disaster the French sent in Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. He brought a spirit back. He began by constructing a line of bunkers around the Delta to make it harder for the Vietminh traverse in and out of the crucial area. He was the commander of French Forces during Giap’s General counteroffensive against the Delta in 1951, where he won victories over the Communists at Vinh Yen, Mao Khe and Day River, but lost a son to their guns in the process. He Launched Operation LOTUS to interdict Vietminh rice supplies; it turned disastrous though in what Bernard Fall called a “meat grinder" at the battle for Hoa Binh. He was evacuated with cancer during Hoa Binh and replaced by General Salan.
Could the French have won in Indochina I?
If you believe Bernard Fall in Street Without Joy the French failed to embrace the nationalist groups in Vietnam (what was left of them after years of being on the short end of Ho's ruthless popular front politics) to strengthen them at the expense of the Communists and this was one of their chief mistakes in the lead-up to and during the war. Presumably it follows that, in the best case scenario, had they done so in both North and South, the French may have been able to keep the kettle from boiling over and ease out of Vietnam over time leaving behind a more palatable, friendly, political situation in Indochina. But the French, in typical colonialist form, shunned these crucial players until it was too late (as they had done with the anti-communist hill tribes like the T'ai and the Meo). In reality, the French pols and their viceroys hadn’t demonstrated much cause for confidence over the years...
At the Brazzaville Conference in the Congo in 1944 the French laid out their policy for post-war colonial administration. In some ways it was quite liberal (relatively speaking) and showed an abundance of forethought, basically the French acknowledged that there would be growing forces of self determination in the coming years and so they set out to devise the means to deal with it and still maintain their far-flung holdings. The policy was liberal in that it encouraged colonial administrators to embrace (co-opt?) nationalist movements within the framework of maintaining imperial unity. A balancing act to be sure! The French learned the hard way about the chasm between theory and practice in Vietnam; what went wrong? The colonial administrators in Saigon fought against, and in many cases sabotaged, the spirit of the policy and the government(s) in Paris were in constant turmoil creating a situation whereby after a few years, and a few governments, the policy no longer resembled its former self. (Martin Shipway: The Road to War. Oxford. 1996) So the track record in Vietnam was bad, and judging by their actions later in Algeria, the French didn’t learn anything about living up to their own ideals, they failed in the practical implementation of the spirit of Brazzaville, and there is no reason to believe they wouldn't have gone right on failing in North Vietnam had they won militarily and stayed on there (which is doubtful judging by the fiscal and political mood in Paris by 1954)….
Speaking of Algeria: the French would have sent more, better, troops there in the 50s and they would have had a much higher esprit de corps had they won in Indochina. Would it have made a difference? Probably somewhat in the short-term, but in the long run? Are there any colonies left?
What if the US had intervened on the French side at Dien Bien Phu?
There was a very intense debate within the halls of Washington and military plans (Operation VULTURE) were on the drawing board. President Eisenhower weighed his options and turned to another old soldier for assistance. The following passages are taken from Phillip B. Davidson's Vietnam at War pgs. 264, 267):
"Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, the Army Chief of Staff, spearheaded the opposition to VULTURE. Ridgway based his position on his solid experience in Korea. His view was that air and naval power could not win in Indochina any more than they could in Korea. He reasoned further that the people of the US would not support the necessary ground effort to insure success. Ridgway's position was compelling, valid, and eerily prophetic. Gen. Nathan Twining, Air Force Chief of Staff, and Adm. Robert Carney, Chief of Naval Operations supported Ridgway's opposition to (Gen.) Radford's scheme (VULTURE)."
"Radford found two supporters...They were John Foster Dulles... and Vice President Richard Nixon... Vice President Nixon endorsed VULTURE, but he was more "hawkish" and more realistic than even Radford. He was prepared to advocated the commitment of American ground forces if the bombing attacks failed, while Radford consistently evaded this fundamental and repugnant question."
" Looking back through the mists which still shroud some aspects of VULTURE, one is impressed by the clarity of vision of Nixon, Dulles, Radford and Ridgway. For a moment in history, these men glimpsed something of the future. The first three foresaw, dimly perhaps, that American intervention in Indochina was inevitable, and that the country ought to get in early rather than late. But the distinguished old soldier, Matt Ridgway, saw something even beyond intervention, something even more important-- he saw that American ground troops would have to committed in strength in Vietnam, and that meant a major, lengthy, and bloody war on the mainland of Asia."
Effect of Korea:In "The Two Vietnams" Bernard Fall implies that there was a sort of gentlemen's agreement between the French and Americans over coordination of events in Korea and Vietnam, that they had agreed to consult with one another before either signed a treaty to end their respective hostilities, presumably so that the full force of Chinese and Soviet support would not be brought to bear against one if the other opted out. Fall hints that the US didn't keep its word (settled in Korea nearly a year before the Fall of Dien Bien Phu in July 1953) and the French felt betrayed (sounds alot like the gentlemen's agreement Nixon supposedly made with Thieu 20 years later to get him to agree to the Paris Accords). I've never been quite sure what to make of this accusation?
Fast forwarding to the 2nd Indochinese War: I think our experience in Korea likely cast a shadow over the decision not to invade North Vietnam. For many in the administration, LBJ, Rusk, Taylor etc.., memories of what had happened to General MacArthur's forces after crossing the 38th parallel were still fresh. As the 8th Army and the 1st Marines approached the Chinese border at the Yalu River they were suddenly ambushed by over 200,000 Chinese; the 8th Army was hurt badly at Unsan and Kunu-ri and the fight by the Marines to breakout from the "frozen Chosin" reservoir was desperate and followed closely back home by millions, including Senator Johnson. We ended fighting a meatgrinder war against the Chinese in Korea for nearly 3 more years. Decision makers in Washington may have feared a repeat.
11 December 1960 coup d'etat:
In late 1960 a group of President Diem’s generals tried to orchestrate a coup against him. They didn’t want to overthrow him, he did have a mandate from heaven after all, they just hoped to scare him into changing his policies, especially those that seemed to favor family and Catholics regarding access to positions of power. The coup might have been successful if not for General Khan and Albert Thao (the latter being a Communist spy) who intervened to save the day. In retrospect, since we know that Thao was a Communist (see Viet Cong Memoir), many have concluded that he was under orders to keep Diem in power because Diem was such a good recruiting tool for the NLF/PRP. There are many, including Doug Pike, who say Diem learned the wrong lesson from the failed coup. The President, who was a devout Catholic, believed he had survived because God had intervened on his behalf, thus justifying his policies in his own mind. According to Pike in Viet Cong:
“He (Diem) missed the whole lesson of the aborted November 11, 1960 coup d’etat, for instance, not interpreting it as a sign of serious discontent in at least one segment of society but viewing its failure as evidence of Heaven’s approval of his policies, since “the hand of god had reached down” to protect him. What Diem was apt to say: “he is a person who commands a sizeable following, who is a potential successor to me; into jail with him.” (pg.60)
Background:
When JFK took office in January 1961 he inherited several foreign policy hot-spots from the Eisenhower Administration that ultimately haunted him throughout his time in office, right up to the last week in November 1963. The President was handed a Bay of Pigs invasion plan which already had considerable intelligence momentum behind it, and Laos and Vietnam, both of which had communist insurgencies actively being faced by American CIA elements in the field. In fact, when JFK and Ike met to pass the baton, it was Laos that rated advice from Eisenhower not Vietnam. Nevertheless, Ike and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, had played a key role in getting the US involved in the quicksand that was South Vietnam. In 1954-55, during the period following the French surrender of Tonkin, CIA agent Edward Lansdale was dispatched to Saigon to assess the situation on the ground. Lansdale judged that the best hope for the survival of an anti-communist South Vietnam was Ngo Dinh Diem, who at that time was emerging as the victor in a power struggle with the French installed Bao Dai. Lansdale recommended to the fervently anti-communist Dulles that the US should support Diem, a devout Catholic, and begin by sending him millions of dollars in aid, which Eisenhower promptly approved. Lansdale remained in Saigon for a time, working alongside other US agents, to assist the Diem government as it slowly, and sometimes brutally, consolidated its power base. For a fine account of the feel of this period in Vietnam read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.
By the time of Kennedy’s arrival what we were trying to do in South Vietnam was twofold: first, the US was logically carrying out it’s foreign policy of containment whereby Soviet and Chinese Communist expansionism was to be checked, using limited warfare and diplomacy, wherever it broke out; second, in support of goal #1, we were attempting nation building, plain and simple. South Vietnam had no real tradition of independent nationhood. In fact, democracy was totally unknown there. But suddenly, with US backing, Cochinchina (as it was called during the French period) had become South Vietnam and it was an independent republic-- yet it had only been five years since the French had left. In typically American “can do” fashion we had been sending diplomats over, we had sent doctors and humanitarian aid, we had sent police consultants, we had sent money, and of course we had sent intelligence agents—the quiet Americans
While this was all taking place, our intelligence was becoming increasingly concerned with the seemingly growing threat posed by an insurgency that had been building up in response to Diem’s anti-communist purges, among other things (see Doug Pike below for more on this topic). Diem had ample reason to want to crush the Vietminh, not only did they pose the greatest threat to his political survival, especially after he had defeated the Binh Xuyen gangs and the Cao Dai and Hao Hoa sects, but Diem had a more personal grudge against the Communists because they had executed his brother in the purges following the defeat of the French. Unfortunately for Diem, his anti-Vietminh sweeps had a tendency to be savage and indiscriminate and over time the program served to alienate huge numbers of people, especially in the villages. The US first provided arms to help Diem fight the insurgents and then we actually became directly involved in 1960 and 1961 when we sent in Special Forces.
Now, here comes JFK into the mix, what’s he going to do in Southeast Asia? He was looking at communist insurgencies in Laos and South Vietnam, he had to consider the situation in Europe, especially Berlin, when making any foreign policy decisions, he had an emboldened CIA breathing down his neck to approve the Bay of Pigs operation to take out Castro, and he was of course facing the traditional bludgeoning tool of the Republicans-- their persistent cry that Democrats “lost China” because they are soft on Communism and hence they can’t be trusted to keep the country safe. I don’t think inaction in South Vietnam was a viable option for him. After reviewing the situation JFK called on retired General Maxwell Taylor to go to Vietnam, investigate, and then consult the President on next steps. Taylor was already a war hero by that time; he had dropped behind German lines on Normandy and he had commanded the 8th Army in Korea after Matt Ridgway. He had also been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs which prompted him to write a book called The Uncertain Trumpet, a detailed critique of Eisenhower's defense funding strategies and his support for the policy of mass retaliation. The book impressed JFK. General Taylor accepted Kennedy’s charge honorably, like the good soldier that he was, and set out for Vietnam, along with White House adviser Walt Rostow in 1961. It didn’t take long for the two of them to come to the mutual conclusion that there was a pretty dangerous insurgency in motion that was steadily getting worse. It was much worse than either had anticipated. What to do? Taylor knew President Kennedy wanted a low-profile in Vietnam, but he also saw that things could get away from Diem quickly without some sort of action. Taylor, a true believer in limited warfare, started small by recommending that we provide ARVN with three companies of helicopters and some Air Force Air Commandos. Kennedy went with it. So in December 1961 the first Army helicopter units arrived in Vietnam, by the end of 1962 Army aviation “advisors” were cutting edge when it came to use of the helicopter gunship—UH-1, or Hueys.
Let’s stop here and take a quick look back at the recent history of the insurgency. In 1959, after an internal power struggle over military strategy in Hanoi, the communists moved to take the fight openly to the enemy and ordered military dau tranh in the South. By 1960, elements of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) were operating in South Vietnam and we saw the birth of the 9th Viet Cong Division. In April of 1960 North Vietnam announced conscription. In December 1960 the National Liberation Front (NLF) was founded and proclaimed itself the shadow government of South Vietnam. On 16-17 April, 1961, the Bay of Pigs debacle took place. Shortly thereafter, in June of 1961, Diem formally requested U.S. Military advisors on South Vietnamese soil. That gets us back to the second half of 1961 when Taylor, McNamara, and Kennedy decided to honor Diem’s request.
Throughout the remainder of ’61 and ‘62 there were plenty of skirmishes, neither side really gained much of an edge though. For the most part the NLF spent the time doing organization building and stage-one operations, namely the establishment of secure base areas, propaganda and recruitment among the villagers, infiltration of police and civic institutions, and build-up of arms stockpiles throughout the countryside. Diem’s oppressive policies, strategic hamlets being the latest to outrage many villagers, continued to create fertile ground for NLF recruitment. But the NLF and their benefactors in Hanoi knew that prospects for success dimmed with each escalation of American involvement, they desperately needed a morale boosting victory on the battlefield not just to prove that they could fight and win to themselves, but also to prove it to the villagers who are the ultimate prize in revolutionary warfare.
Map: South Vietnam
Major areas of wet rice cultivation in green. Note the short distances. Ap Bac is only 38 nautical miles from Tan Son Nhut Airport. That was only about fifteen minutes flying time for the C-123s that dropped the paratroops.
John Paul Vann and Ap Bac:
That brings us to January 1963 and the battle of Ap Bac. It came at a time when both sides were hungry for a decisive victory to galvanize their fortunes. As mentioned, the Viet Cong were particularly anxious for something to kick-start an insurgency that seemed to be losing some steam in light of American involvement.
The key American figure in the battle was a guy name John Paul Vann, an Army Lieutenant Colonel, and the senior advisor to 7th ARVN Division assigned to the lower Mekong Delta, a breeding ground for guerrillas. Vann was a no nonsense intense tough soldier who pushed the ARVN commanders to take the fight to the Viet Cong. Vann was a decorated veteran of the Korean war and he had volunteered for action in Vietnam. In the battle for Ap Bac the commander of the 7th ARVN was Colonel Bui Dinh Dam.
Vann’s military philosophy was straightforward: find the Viet Cong and destroy them. Easier said than done. How do you find an adversary that is masterful at concealing its whereabouts and movements? Even when you did locate a squad they were experts at breaking-off contact, disengaging, and melting away into the jungle before they could be taken. The solution was stealth, speed, and overwhelming firepower. Helicopters were perfect for such missions. But you can’t hit what you can’t see and the VC consistently thwarted most attempts to draw them into a pitch battle out in the open. It was frustrating.
Finally, Vann got a break when his outfit intercepted a VC radio transmission that indicated that communist troops, elements of the 261st Viet Cong Battalion, were in Ap Bac. Vann’s reaction was pretty much what you would expect from a guy itchin’ for a fight-- based on that single flimsy piece of intelligence he lobbied Colonel Dam hard, finally persuading him to commit his 7th Division to a multi-battalion attack, scheduled to kick off near dawn on January 2, 1963. With the time difference factored in most Americans were just finishing up their new years day festivities when Vann’s plan went into action. If I’m not mistaken, I believe that USC and Wisconsin played a memorable game in the Rose Bowl that day. On the other side of the world the Hueys and M113s hit the rice fields near Ap Bac.
In his capacity as a US military “advisor” to ARVN Vann requested that thirty H-21 helicopters be assigned to the operation for troop airlift, supported by five UH-1B helicopter gunships. He also asked for Air Commandos on call in reserve. For his part, Colonel Dam committed two Civil Guard battalions from his regional forces and from his 7th ARVN division, he committed an infantry battalion and a company of thirteen M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs). The M-113 was an armored box on tracks with an exit ramp at the rear for the eight infantrymen it normally carried. There was a driver and a gunner and a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top. It was amphibious and therefore could navigate in flooded rice paddies. In addition, Colonel Dam held two infantry companies in reserve at Tan Hiep airfield. Finally, Dam requested, and received, a parachute battalion in support of the operation. Vann would call the shots for the operation from above in the back seat of an aircraft.
Map: The Battle of Ap Bac, 2 January 1963 - Disposition of Communist Forces and 7th ARVN Division Plan of Attack.
The above map reflects the actual Viet Cong order of battle and the Allied plan of attack developed by Lt. Col. John Paul Vann in his capacity as senior American advisor to Colonel Bui Dinh Dam, 7th Division commander. Note that Vann had no actual command authority over any of the Allied tactical units involved. Ap Bac is in IV Corps, some thirty-five miles southwest of Saigon.
Looking at the map above we see that the actual Viet Cong order of battle was not what Vann and Dam anticipated. Remember Vann’s shaky intelligence? It had indicated that Ap Bac was occupied by little more than a company of the 261st Viet Cong Battalion. Wrong! In fact, the entire 261st VC Battalion was in Ap Bac and neighboring Tan Thoi, and what’s worse, they were reinforced by a heavy weapons platoon. The operation was already off to a bad start and the over anxious Vann had not bothered to draw-up a contingency plan. Big mistake. Something almost always goes wrong in warfare, it’s up to the commander to try to anticipate what it will be, and come up with a plan for dealing with it. Carl von Clausewitz called it friction, by which he meant all those factors that prevent orders from being carried out as they were intended to be. As you can see from the order of battle on the map, friction began to manifest itself even before the operation jumped off. For instance, recall that Vann was expecting thirty H-21 helicopters for his initial lift, instead he got only ten. That meant that the battalion slated to attack Ap Bac from the north wouldn't arrive on time, and therefore the ground attack from the North would be delayed.
To add to ARVNs woes, during the night, the Communist commander in the village received reports of heavy equipment and road traffic in the area. He promptly ordered his men to be on their guard. So Dam and Vann had lost the element of surprise and didn’t know it. The 261st VC were good troops and they were well entrenched. The VC commander setup his defenses on and around the dikes that reached out into the paddies—the men dug machine gun bunkers into the dikes. By dawn, they were waiting for the attack, ready for action. And this time there was a different dynamic to the fight; unlike in the past when the VC had the tendency to break contact and disengage when the going got too tough, this time the communist commander at Ap Bac had direct orders to stand and fight, not matter the cost. They simply had to have a victory, especially over the dreaded helicopters, if they were to maintain any credibility with the populace on whose support they depended so heavily. There would be no cutting or running.
Map: Ap Bac - The Situation at 1000 Hours (10am)
It became clear immediately that the fates were going to have their way with Vann and Dam that day. Events began badly and then quickly spiraled out of control. To begin, the Civil Guards that were placed south of Ap Bac became pinned down behind an outcropping of trees that stood between them and the village. A thick fog rolled over the battlefield just in time to hinder the first troop lift of the 7th ARVN north of the village. Remember, Vann’s timing for the lifts was already bankrupt due to the lack of H-21s, now it would take even longer to move the soldiers into place. Fog as friction. The operation was on hold until the haze lifted. The upshot: the attack from the north wasn't ready to jump off until 0930.
Back on the south side of Ap Bac the Civil Guards were still pinned down, hence they weren’t performing their operational support roles. Unknown to Vann the Civil Guards weren’t actually under the control of Dam, instead, because they were some of Diem’s best anti-coup forces they had been entrusted to a Diem loyalist, the local province chief, with orders not to commit them in battle. Vann’s failure to understand and navigate the intricate workings of the South Vietnamese political and military structures had come back to bite him, the operation was already at great risk. And it hadn’t really even started yet! Again, he had no plan B, and by mid-morning everything was off schedule and none of the troop formations were they should have been.
And what of the M-113s, where were they? Not where they were supposed to be. They were commanded by a captain (named Ba) who as it turned out was also tacitly controlled by the same province chief who had been dragging his feet to commit Diem’s Civil Guards. Predictably, in hindsight, as you might expect he didn’t want the M-113s damaged either. Picture Vince Lombardi trying to coach players who had been ordered not to risk injury by the team’s owner. So there they were, armored personnel carriers crucial to the success of Vann’s operation, just sitting in place going nowhere fast. They (the M-113s) had moved as far forward as the last irrigation canal short of Ap Bac and then stopped, cold. Things were quickly going from bad to worse.
Vann, in a scene reminiscent of General Walton ”Johnny” Walker at the Pusan Perimeter in the Korean War, was reportedly screaming into his radio as he circled in the spotter plane above. He watched helplessly while Captain Ba’s M-113 APCs sat, parked, just short of the edge of the assault radius. But what could Vann really do? He had no real authority over any of the troops that he had staked his entire operation on. I wonder if it crossed his mind at that moment that his plan may have been too complicated to begin with? Whatever the case, it was clear by then that the thing was unraveling in an accelerated fashion and Vann really had no vested power to turn it around. His actions from that point forward resemble those of a man plunging from a cliff, grasping in desperation for any ledge or extended branch that might somehow break the fall. Catching a life-line in such dire straits is a rare occurrence indeed, as Vann was to discover throughout the rest of the day.
His next move was to call in some air strikes by the A-26s, which did little to help his fading cause. He then requested one of the ARVN companies in reserve be committed to the fray. He ordered his helicopters to insert the company in the middle of the rice paddies west of the village 350 yards out in the paddy, out of range of the small weapons fire that would come from the dikes but close enough to mount a lightning charge under the covering fire from supporting Huey gunships. But you guessed it, the helicopters weren’t his either. This time it was an inside job, these helicopters, and their pilots, were on loan from another US advisory unit. Now things begin to get a bit murky, and the argument over what happened next is still alive to this day. According to Vann’s telling, the helicopter formation leader disregarded orders and took the reserve company closer toward the defensive formations in the dike, approximately 150 yards out, leaving the squadron vulnerable to the heavily fortified automatic weapons in the bunkers lining the dike. The H-21s came under a hail of fire; one was immediately shot down and crashed into the rice paddies; another was seriously damaged but managed to flutter away and land nearby, it was out of action. The rest of the H-21s turned and fled before delivering their human cargo. Then the H-21 squad commander turned and attempted to rescue his downed crew and he was shot down. Seeing the disaster unfolding before him, the leader of the supporting Huey gunships opened up and made a daring pass to cover his downed brothers—and he too was shot down. Vann was looking at four helicopters on the ground burning in a matter of minutes. When the pictures hit the world press it had the effect of cold water to the face—the little insurgency in South Vietnam had now exploded onto the front pages—America’s “engagement” there had taken a shocking twist—the brush-fire war was headed for the big time. The pictures of the downed helicopters in the rice paddies are now quite famous, you will see them in practically any photo-documentary of the war.
But the disaster wasn’t over, not by a long-shot. It wasn’t even noon yet!
Obviously, at this point, the situation was dire to say the least. At crucial moments like this in the heat of a battle calmer heads must prevail if anything even resembling success is to be salvaged. Unfortunately for the “good guys” Vann was anything but cool. ARVN troops were pinned down in the rice field and south of town. First he called in another futile air strike by the A-26s. Then, in a state of panic mixed with seething anger, Vann threatened to have the ARVN Captain, Ba, shot on the spot if he didn’t immediately send the M-113s forward into the rice paddies. Left with no other choice, Ba ordered the APCs into the fight. It was approximately 1:30pm when they went in. The M-113s had a big advantage because the Viet Cong forces didn’t possess anti-tank weapons, their machine guns alone couldn’t have stopped the onrushing ARVN armored troop transports. At any rate, standard operating procedures for armored infantry was to stay inside the APCs right up to the last possible moment, the drivers were trained to drop the rear ramps for disembarkation only once they were right on top of their objective. Riding on top of the APCs were gunners with .50 caliber machine guns charged with covering the infantry once they jumped from the vehicles.
So in they went, the communist fire was intense, and the .50 caliber gunners were exposed and completely unprotected. It didn’t take long for them to cut and run, the ARVN gunners buckled out of fear and retreated inside the vehicles. Then as fate would have it Captain Ba, who was orchestrating the attack, was knocked unconscious. Now the M-113s were driving blind with no covering fire and no functioning commander. The drivers kept going forward until they reached the forward edge of the Communist infested dike. At this point the infantry troops were supposed to jump from the APCs and attack under the cover provided by the machine gunners, but those gunners were no longer in position and nobody was in charge. The soldiers inside the vehicles, listening to enemy rounds pinging off their armor, refused to leave the immediate safety of the vehicles to attack. They just stayed there, like sitting ducks.
Then, all at once, the Viet Cong troops rose from the trenches, with machine guns blazing, and charged the stalled APCs. This was something new. In the past the Viet Cong, worried about taking heavy losses in an open fight against American firepower, had been content to settle for inflicting some casualties before melting way into the jungle to fight another day. Not this time. Not only had they been ordered to stand and fight, but now, seeing how things were shaping up in their favor, they were obviously emboldened and smelling blood. The Viet Cong weren’t going to act like guerrillas this time—they were poised to put the hammer down on the ARVN and Vann. Shocked, and with their commander out of action, the APC drivers turned tail and beat it on out of there fast. The Viet Cong was suddenly looking at the major victory that they so desperately needed.
Game, set, match? Not quite, although in reality the fight was over. Vann, true to his bull-dog reputation, refused to give up. He was grasping at straws, and he must have known it, even so, he was not going to go down easily. Remember the parachute battalion held in reserve? Vann, in a last ditch attempt at turning the tide, requested that they be committed. The request was approved, but by now the Viet Cong, having won a huge symbolic victory, were getting ready to break contact. In their eyes the time was right to quit while they were ahead. They began moving out of Ap Bac to the east as darkness began to descend. Vann, with his bird’s eye view, saw what they were doing and tried to get Dam to order the parachute battalion dropped in their path to seal off the escape route. Dam wasn’t about to go for it—he was not about to send in one of President Diem’s elite units, which would have incurred heavy casualties, to an engagement that was all but lost. He knew his career probably would not survive if the paras were wiped out. So he played both ends against the middle and gave the order for the paratroops to drop into the originally agreed upon drop zone-- west of the village! Dam had opted to play it safe. But of course, in this whirlpool of misfortune and pitiful execution, even this seemingly cautious action turned bad when the drop was bungled and the paras, who were supposed to land out of small arms range, fell smack-dab in the middle of the rice paddies. Needless to say they were pinned down by the Viet Cong rear guard. Lucky for them though, the VC were on the way out of town and let them off the hook once the sun went down. Flying overhead, Vann was in a state of absolute rage. The South Vietnamese forces had outnumbered the VC 10 to 1- the textbook ratio for success against guerrilla's. Yet the vastly superior ARVN forces suffered 61 KIA and 100 wounded while the VC left only three bodies behind. It had been a bad day.
Map: Ap Bac Situation at Dusk
Almost beyond belief, MACV publicly claimed victory simply because the enemy had disengaged first and left the battlefield! But the insiders of course knew better, Kennedy adviser Roger Hilsman informed the president that it had been "a stunning defeat." (Herring pg.106)
In the aftermath of the debacle at Ap Bac John Paul Vann accused the South Vietnamese soldiers of incompetence and cowardice and US reporters printed his charges. Many reporters, Neil Sheehan in particular, considered Vann to be a moral hero who was risking his career to get the truth out. In hindsight they may have been a bit naïve. Sheehan was one of a crop of young reporters who came to Vietnam in the early years. They covered the war vigorously and quickly perceived that the MACV press office wasn't coming clean with them and was painting an unwarrantedly optimistic picture. Vann, on the other hand, was a straight shooter in their eyes who was willing to do the right thing by telling the truth about things, like how ARVN wouldn’t fight and how reports were being falsified to paint a rosy picture of the situation. You can read all about this in Sheehan’s book A Bright Shining Lie. Whatever the truth may be, one thing is clear to me-- Vann badly overreached himself at Ap Bac. His plan was too complicated and would have taken inspired leadership plus pinpoint execution to be pulled off as intended. So, who was responsible for defeat?
Also abundantly clear is that the communists, the NLF and Viet Cong, considered the battle of Ap Bac a major psychological victory. They were right. In the rear-view mirror we can say that it was a key turning point that resonated throughout Southeast Asia and America for years to come. What had been portrayed by western media and politicians as a rag-tag band of guerillas took on the firepower and expertise of the mighty US Army and whipped them. Four helicopters shot down in five minutes! Maybe even more important, it provided stark proof to millions of villagers who were fed up with the Diem regime that the Viet Cong were not only on their side, but were ready, willing, and able to fight for them. The NLF could be counted on. It was a major psychological victory.
Cites:
George Herring. America's Longest War. McGraw Hill, Boston. 1979
Neil Sheehan. A Bright Shining Lie. Vintage, New York. 1988
Ngo Dinh Diem - On Revisionism:
One of the hottest "what ifs" these days in the Vietnam War revisionists' arsenal goes like this: our failure to support Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 represents a "triumph forsaken." They make some interesting claims regarding Diem: that the Buddhists were in league with the Communists and knowingly gave their lives as part of a publicity stunt; that Halbertam, Sheehan, and Karnow (the axis of evil) were unwitting Communist dupes, secretly manipulated by a Vietnamese stringer from Reuters, a reporter buddy who was in reality a Communist spy; that Kennedy was under the spell of said journalists and therefore at the mercy of the Communists (very Manchurian Candidate isn't it?). The victim of all of this espionage and skull-duggery is of course none other than Ngo Dinh Diem, the tragically misunderstood patriot, South Vietnam's last best chance for victory. Poor Diem, they imply, was brought down by a scheming president, who was brainwashed by the dreaded NY Times, and his pointy headed number crunching whiz kid advisers who were all "out of their league." Of course, they conveniently fail to mention wide swaths of critical contextual information about Diem's Government of Vietnam (GVN). (I've included a sampling below)
The textbook for this point of view is Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken : the Vietnam War 1954-65. In the book Moyar provides some intriguing source material and citations, he may play a little fast and loose with some of his interpretations, like we all do sometimes, but it is interesting nonetheless. The revisionists, and Moyar counts himself proudly as a card-carrying member, contend that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who has been consistently portrayed as a tyrannical reactionary by historians, was in reality a very wise and effective leader. They usually heap praise on those who supported Diem, mainly Catholics, and downplay the religious aspects of the country's divisions. Moyar writes that Kennedy's support for the November 1963 coup was the worst American mistake of the war (although ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, jr. is the real scoundrel in his view). Did some of this damaging manipulation exist? Looks like it. Was it a factor in Diem's downfall? One factor among many, yes. Is the German journalist Peter Scholl-Latour, in his Death in the Ricefields, correct in criticizing Kennedy for his handling of the Diem coup? Maybe so. Does all of this add up to triumph forsaken? Not in my view. In the end Mr. Moyar did not succeed in his primary objective, he failed to make a strong enough case to convince me of his claim that Diem was a missed opportunity, that he was somehow South Vietnam's savior in disguise. It's a bit of a stretch for me.
Douglas Pike and Joseph Buttinger, who were both in Saigon at the time, are my preferred chroniclers of the events of November, 1963:
From Viet Cong by Douglas Pike (Cambridge, MIT Press. 1966) :
Pike's primary thesis:
CCP war against Chiang: a war of strategy
Viet Minh war against French: a war of resistance
DRV/NLF war against South Vietnam and US: a war of organization
The Ngo Dinh Diem Record:
“He (Diem) missed the whole lesson of the aborted November 11, 1960 coup d’etat, for instance, not interpreting it as a sign of serious discontent in at least one segment of society but viewing its failure as evidence of Heaven’s approval of his policies, since “the hand of god had reached down” to protect him. What Diem was apt to say: “he is a person who commands a sizeable following, who is a potential successor to me; into jail with him.” (pg.60)
“No political leader could go on indefinitely alienating one major social group after another and expect to survive. Yet that is exactly what Diem did.” (pg61)
“ No leader could afford to alienate his country’s professional political leaders; the arrest of Dr. Dan in 1960 probably was the Diem government’s point of no return. Disenchantment gained momentum (by this time actively encouraged by the NLF) in the mismanaged strategic-hamlet program and then among the Buddhists. After May 8, 1963 the whole nation caught fire; bonzes in self-immolation, students in mass rioting, soldiers refusing to fire on crowds and openly encouraging demonstrators. The social pathology spread like a prairie fire. Saigon, those last days of Diem, was an incredible place. One felt that one was witnessing an entire social structure coming apart at the seams. In horror, Americans helplessly watched Diem tear apart the fabric of Vietnamese society more effectively than the Communists had ever been able to do. It was the most efficient act of his entire career.” (pg 73)
The Diem Timeline, 1954-1963: (pg. 71-72)
The Chronological record of alienation is enlightening:
1955-56 – the three major sects: the Binh Xuyen, the Cao Dai, and the Hoa Hao, all three of which had their own armed forces, lucrative interests, and special privileges (note: many of them became supporters, if not outright members, of the NLF according to Pike)
1956 – certain elements of the armed forces that challenged Diem’s right to rule
1955-1956 – the monarchists who supported Bao Dai
1959 – persons and families victimized by improper administration of Law 10/59
1960 – professional politicians of almost all groups
1960-1962 – rural villagers, victims of mismanagement of the various resettlement programs – the prosperity zone, the agroville, and the strategic hamlet
May 1963 – the Buddhist hierarchy and then Buddhist laymen
July – August, 1963 – students
August – November 1963 – the field grade office corps, the young Turks
Finally, the General Staff; to a man not one general acted to save Diem at the end
According to Pike, the NLF faced a crisis after the fall of Diem because widespread hatred for Diem's government, not ideological affinity, had been the NLFs primary recruiting tool in the early 1960s!
<end Douglas Pike>From A Dragon Defiant by Joseph Buttinger . Praeger, New York. 1972):
On Ngo Dinh Diem:
"Instead of combatting, with American aid, the social causes that had led so many of his countrymen to follow the Viet Minh, Diem preferred to fight the Communists with totalitarian methods of propaganda combined with police and army terror against regions known to be still Viet Minh controlled. More than 80% of the total American aid went into building up the army, sustaining the administration, and financing the many secret services and security forces that the regime needed to keep itself in power against mounting popular discontent. The Buddhists, leaders and followers, complained about the many advantages given to the Catholics, whom Diem soon had reason to regard as his only reliable supporters. The highly political intellectual elite was incensed by the denial of basic civil liberties and the arrest of anyone who dared openly criticize the regime, often men of known anti-Communist convictions. Eventually, even formerly loyal members of the civil service, as well as officers and generals of the army, began to oppose Diem's dictatorship. What enraged these men was the arbitrary method of promotion and punishment, dealt out, in disregard of merit, solely on the basis of demonstrated loyalty to the President and to the members of his family, the only ones with a share in power. Elections were conducted so as to produce the results customarily acheived in totalitarian states. A secret party, formed and led autocratically by the President's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, engaged chiefly in spying on and intimidating officials, army officers, and prominent private citizens suspected of lacking enthusiasm for the regime. Even early American supporters of Diem, who regarded him as an answer to the attraction Ho Chi Minh exercised on the Vietnamese people, finally had to admit that the Saigon regime was a repressive and politically ineffective police state."
"General discontent and the lack of meaningful social and economic progress favored the insurrection that the Communists started a year after Diem's refusal to hold the elections of July, 1956, provided for in the Geneva Agreement. Politically guided and materially supported by Hanoi, this insurrection engulfed the entire South in a civil war after 1960. Diem's Communist enemies came close to victory toward the end of 1963, when the embittered leadership of the army decided to take action. The hated regime was overthrown on November 1, 1963, by a military coup and Diem and his brother Nhu were assassinated by the leaders of the rebellion." (pgs 94-95)
<end Buttinger>
National Liberation Front (organized 20 December 1960):
NLF was formed for multiple reasons in 1960, most importantly it was to be the popular front organization that would carry out the dau tranh and it was to be the shadow Communist government in South Vietnam. It's military arm was called the Viet Cong (PLAF). The NLF was beholden to Northerners but had autonomy; the fact that the NLF was not immediately for agricultural collectivization and that it recruited among the bourgeoisie who opposed Diem, gave the Southern faction a distinctive flair. It was an organization that grew as the opposition grew to Diem and it took full advantage of Diem’s repressive policies to build strength among the rural populations. Through his heavy-handedness Diem provided fertile ground for the NLF to grow. His attempts at exterminating former Viet Mnh, the strategic hamlets program, his favoritism toward Catholics, and widespread disdain for his brother Nhu and his outspoken wife Madame Nhu, led millions of villagers, intellectuals, students, merchants, you name it, to side with the rebels. Many of his own actions ultimately came back to haunt the ill-fated leader.
<More from Viet Cong by Douglas Pike:
The National Liberation Front (NLF):
“The NLF was not simply another indigenous covert group, or even a coalition of such groups. It was an organizational steamroller, nationally conceived and nationally organized, endowed with ample cadres and funds, crashing out of the jungle to flatten the GVN. It projected a social construction program of such scope and ambition that of necessity it must have been created in Hanoi and imported. The creation of the NLF was an accomplishment of such skill, precision, and refinement that when one thinks of who the master planner must have been, only one name comes to mind: Vietnam’s organizational genius, Ho Chi Minh.” (pg. 76)
Somewhere Pike makes this comparison: (paraphrasing because couldn’t re-locate it in text) whereas Ho was an organizational master, Diem on the other hand was an organizational disaster.
The Administrative Liberation Association:
"was elite, narrow, and relatively easy for cadres to control. It resembled a vertical governamental organization running from the NLF Central Committee down through a nuber of intervening administrative levels to the village administrative liberation association, which was also headed by a committee. This was the "shadow" government of Vietnam to which nws stories often refer... The administrative liberation association had its genesis in the Viet Minh experience; its forebears were the administrative and resistance committees conceived and established by Ho. Chi Minh." (pg.112)
The Functional Liberation Association (the social movement):
"was mass based, more socio-political than governmental; it was large, unwieldy, difficult to control once organized, but full of promise. These organizations existed only at the village level and, unlike the administrative liberation associations, were horizontal rather than vertical... Of the six functional liberation associations, the NLF leadership considered three to be of prime importance: the Farmers' Liberation Association (FLA), the Youth Liberation Association (YLA), and the Women's Liberation Association... By far the most important was the FLA." (pg. 113)
The Social Movement as Communication Channel:
"With the social organization as a communication device we reach the heart and the power of the NLF. Here lay the solution to the mystery that for so long puzzled knowledgeable and thinking Americans: how could the NLF achieve success in the face of overwhelming GVN military superiority and massive inputs of American material resources ..? Not superior ideology, not more dedicated personnel, not because voluntary support of the villager had been won, but the social movement shaped into a self-contained, self-supporting channel of communication-- that was the NLF's secret weapon... Working from the fundamental assumption that if an idea could be rooted in the group it would become strong, durable, and infinitely more difficult to counter, the NLF created a communication structure far beyond any simple propaganda organization... In the hands of the agit-prop cadres the social movement as a communicational device made (many critical -see list on pg 125) contributions to the NLF cause." (Pg 124)
"The significance of the social movement as a communicational device and the contribution it made to the NLF effort cannot be stated too strongly. Its essential importance was clearly grasped by the NLF from the earliest days, the result of lessons learned in the Viet Minh war... What the NLF leadership realized-- and was all too poorly understood in the US-- was that the social organizations are especially potent communication devices in underdeveloped countries...What the NLF did was deliberately to create such an organizational structure specifically to transmit information, data, ideals, beliefs, and values." (pg 125 - 126)
Northern Influence:
"The Northern Take-over, or regularization, phase began in mid 1963, when it was obvious to all the the Diem government was doomed, and continued until the end of 1965, when the NLF was taken over by cadres from North Vietnam and managed by them even down to the village level. It began with a clash between Diem and the Buddhist heirarchy, which, as it grew, confronted the NLF leadership with the prospect that its chief propaganda target, Diem, soon would be deposed." (pg.116)
"Of course the NLF leadership had anticipated a change of governament earlier, at least as early as February 1962, when two pilots from the Vietnamese air force bombed the Presidential Palace in Saigon and nearly killed Diem...Had the attack on Diem's life been successful the NLF probably would have split, Northern cadres versus indigenous southerners. But, given warning, the leadership was able to regularize the organization so that when Diem was overthrown the NLF went through a traumatic shock but did not split." (pg.116)
"It is ironic that during this period, as discontent in South Vietnam spread, the NLF, which had for so long stood as the only organized opposition to Diem, began to find its support dwindling. Suddenly everyone-- intellectuals, Buddhists, students, the junior military-- all were engaged in antigovernmental organization work, breaking the NLF monopoly on such activity... It is estimated that NLF strength shrank from 300,000 to perhaps as low as 200,00, with the low-point being reached in August 1963, at the moment when Diem's repressive measures were most severe." (Pgs 116-117)
"... the Diem demise placed terrible tensions and strains on the NLF. Its basic rationale had been "down with the US-Diem clique." Diem, the NLF's personification of evil, was a theme of great strength but, because man is mortal, one of great weakness as well." (pg117)
<end Pike 2>
LBJ takes over:
We don't need another Dean Rusk: In the crucial period (1964 ) when LBJ was assuming power and Vietnam was becoming increasingly disastrous. LBJ was facing an election, he had a strong domestic agenda in mind and he didn't want Vietnam to become a big public issue-- the plan was to hold the line in Vietnam and keep it off the front pages. This was a year before the fateful decision was made to commit large numbers of combat troops and begin massive bombing in North Vietnam. But the military had already been there for several years in an "advisory" capacity to the South Vietnamese government and army (sometimes fighting alongside them in battle) and while things had been steadily deteriorating, the military command (MACV) had persistently misrepresented the situation to civilian leaders and reporters on progress (which evolved into a battle all of its own).
There had been much debate in the previous year (in the lead up to the Diem coup and JFK assassination) on whether to get out or to escalate-- it was sometimes very heated. The doves on the left (from the tradition of Adlai Stevenson, Chester Bowles and Averill Harriman-- Harriman was actually present in many of the debates and extremely wary of the Vietnam trap), much of the intelligence community (especially the CIA amazingly), and many of the best people at the Dept. of State (but not Rusk importantly) felt that Vietnam was a quagmire from which the country would suffer greatly to extricate itself. The hawks on the Right (From the tradition of Dean Acheson-- remember this was a Democratic administration-- and Robert Lovett), the DOD, and the strong anti-communist forces (who had made a living at depicting the Democrats as weak-kneed softies on national security) believed that might made right, that superior US military force could not fail, and that if things didn't go well at first all that was needed was more, and more, and more (they had curiously ignored all of the lessons of the French debacle in Indochina ten years earlier-- typical hubris?).
In 1964 the military was protecting its own interests in Vietnam and was continuing to take on a life of its own-- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was seen as the all powerful whiz kid (the war at the time was referred to frequently as McNamara's war). Secretary of State Dean Rusk was busy cozying up to fellow southerner LBJ (in a time when the State Department was dominated by north easterners) and was not willing to stand up to McNamara, who was held in awe by LBJ at the time. Like Powell, Rusk had come from a military background (he was the man who had drawn the line at the 38th parallel dividing post war Korea-- we know how that turned out!) and was a protege of John Foster Dulles. His real dream was to have become the Secretary of Defense but Kennedy offered him State instead (at the suggestion of Lovett). This was crucial. In fact, in 1964, LBJ asked State to prepare a report for him on the prospects for success of a bombing campaign in North Vietnam (remember this was before Tonkin). With the help of the intelligence community, the "Bob Johnson Report" gave a bleak assessment for the possibility of success-- in fact it stated that bombing was about the worst possible thing that we could do-- The DRV had little in the way of economic or industrial infrastructure to destroy, it was in large part a peasant nation, so there would be little to gain on that front and furthermore the bombing would serve to further unify the opposition against the US and its southern "puppet"-- it would become the rallying cry for Ho's forces (which of course became true-- in the words of the great British counterinsurgency fighter Sir Robert Thompson "once the US began bombing North Vietnam they we were in a losing race against the birth rate").
So what became of the State Department report to LBJ? Well it wasn't exactly what the hawks at the top expected so It was quashed by Rusk (and Walt Rostow), who didn't want to go against McNamara and Defense. Another report was quickly commissioned, this time supervised in close coordination with the military, that said just the opposite of the original report. It was that report that went to LBJ. Soon thereafter the controversial (mysterious?) Gulf of Tonkin incident took place and before we knew what hit us, the American people were treated to a bombing campaign in our name. Within a year the "Rolling Thunder" bombing campaign was in full throttle, the Marines landed at Danang, and within two years we were approaching 500,000 combat troops in Vietnam. And where was Secretary of State Rusk through all of this? After purging the primary dissenters from the department-- Hilsman, Forrestal and even Harriman plus two of the most experienced and brightest minds on SE Asia, Kattenburg, and Trueheart-- Rusk filled Roger Hilsman's position, Assistant Secretary of State for South East Asian Affairs, the crucial slot for dealings in Vietnam, with William Bundy from, you guessed it, McNamara's office. The rest as they say is history, very sad history
Nguyen Chi Thanh (1890?-8 July 1967):
Part of the southern faction within the ICP, along with Le Duan and Le Doc Tho, who were for an immediate carrying of the revolution to the South in the early stages of the second Indochina War. In opposition, was General Giap, who believed a more gradual (Mao's 3 stage) approach was required to win against the overwhelming firepower advantage held by the Americans. The Southern faction eventually prevailed and Thanh was tasked with planning and leading the military effort, while Giap was to resupply the Viet Cong and PAVN armies, which he did brilliantly, arming them with all sorts of new weaponry courtesy of the Soviets and Chinese. Thanh’s plan was to launch an offensive over New Years (Tet) in January-Feb 1968 (under differing pressure from the Soviets and Chinese) Thanh died mysteriously in July 1967 and Giap replaced him, ironically Giap was then forced to execute his plan, which he had opposed from the beginning.
Vietnam and the Dollar:
After WWII a new monetary system (much like the Gold Standard) was established at Bretton Woods. It went like this: countries fixed their exchange rates relative to the US dollar. The US promised to fix the price of gold at $35 per ounce. This meant that all currencies pegged to the dollar were also fixed in terms of gold. It was President Nixon (not LBJ) who eliminated the fixed gold price in 1971, partly due to to the financial strain of Vietnam. This ushered in the era of the petro-dollar whereby the price of oil is pegged to the the dollar and all currency used to buy oil on the world markets is converted to the dollar. After the initial shock of the oil embargoes of the 70s this system served the US interests well, but nowadays we are seeing that this system is under tremendous strain as well, due in part to the weak dollar.
Note: LBJ, for all of his faults and failures, did institute some war taxes, including a 10 percent surcharge on phone use and tax surcharges on large estates, so that the then current generation of Americans would have some responsibility for paying for the Vietnam war. This is something our current administration, and many in the current generation of Americans, refuse to do to pay for Iraq, opting instead to borrow and run huge deficits, which future generations will be forced to pay. 21st century guns and butter.Davidson points out that we lost in Vietnam because the Communists had a superior grand strategy (mixture of political and military) and that they simply outlasted us. He mentions the failure of our leaders to put the country on a war footing, to "mobilize" the populace for the war, as an important contributor to that failure. That is hard to dispute, but could it have been done by either JFK or LBJ?--after the carnage of WWII and Korea was the abstract Domino Theory sufficient ammo to mobilize the masses with? We Americans were at a distinct disadvantage from the start concerning "the grand strategy" because our open society naturally fosters questioning, and many times impatience. Free speech and open debate, carried on TV, radio, and in newspapers and books, has the tendency to place politics within a frame that emphasizes short-term results, usually at the expense of long-term planning, much like the "bottom-line" pressure shareholders exert on corporations.
The Communists on the other hand used discipline and strict adherence to the revolution as their modus operandi. They never wavered in their stated objective: the unification of all of Vietnam under one, Communist, authority. No matter how long it took. They adopted Mao's dictum that revolutionary warfare is based on mastering the strategy of "time, distance, and will." Basically the acquisition of territory is no longer the primary goal, in fact, by giving up territory when necessary an army/insurgency can gain valuable time to regenerate and wear down the will of the enemy's support in the long run. In the Maoist revolutionary-style quagmire we fell into military victories weren't the only, or even most important, factor in achieving success-- the political realm was every bit as important and the battle for the so-called hearts and minds was crucial, both "in-country" and back on the home-front. After years of stalemate in a war with poorly defined national objectives, steady casualties, and mounting debt the majority of American people ultimately came to the conclusion that the costs outweighed the benefits of continuing the war. So the Vietnamese Communists outlasted us in the political war. Some have argued that the US Army itself fostered its own misfortune by deploying the wrong fighting doctrine and then compounded the problem by failing to adjust strategy, maybe so, everyone these days seems to have an angle on what happened and why.
My feeling: I just don' t see how we could have salvaged anything resembling victory without committing to a long-term, violent (unlike Korea and Japan), occupation or to an all out invasion of the North, or both. By 1975 the old-guard Northern Communists (Lao Dong Party) and their military extension, the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN, aka NVA) were bloodied but obviously unbowed--after thirty years of war they still had enough left in the tank to overrun the South (as predicted ARVN collapsed knowing the US would not be there to bail them out); they seized political control from their own southern cadres; they carried out a campaign of widespread intimidation and terror; and followed that all up by ruling with an iron fist for decades. This after somehow surviving politically and militarily throughout decades of struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds! They fought damn well against the French and versus the US and our South Vietnamese allies and, by the way, they’ve yet to lose a war. In 1979, they turned the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army back! Given this amazing resiliency and seeming elasticity, forever expanding and contracting to meet the situation, could the US ever have left Vietnam victoriously without first conquering the North?
Some other considerations:
1) How to deal with the age-old Vietnamese dislike of foreigners (Americans had already been in country for over a decade, the French for over a century). Most South Vietnamese villagers where not political ideologues but instead they were political survivors, doing whatever they thought best to out-last the war; they were pragmatists who, like chameleons, tended to change their colors to blend in with whichever force seemed to be dominant at any given time, most just wanted the war to leave them alone so they could work their farms and rebuild their villages. Problem: many villagers felt that when the Americans showed up in a village or hamlet the grief of war was usually not far behind them.
2) How to speed up the disappointing pace of the development of ARVN and most South Vietnamese civil and political institutions? What miraculous effort would turn around nearly 15 years of mediocrity? According to former Phoenix Program operative Stuart Herrington in his book Stalking the Vietcong "there were no indications as 1972 began that there had been any major growth in the number of people who were positively oriented toward the Saigon government." (pg.124)
3) What end-game strategy could successfully account for the ability of General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Northern Communists to replenish their ranks by taking a long-term approach to insurgent warfare? (Giap had adeptly guided his forces in and out of Mao’s three stages* of revolutionary warfare for thirty years with surprisingly good results, considering the opponents)
4) The North had their population on board for the long-haul (via both sticks and carrots)
5) The North had time and geography on their side (they were after all fighting in their ancestral homeland).
6) The majority of the country’s food, especially rice, is produced in the South and access to it was apparently a prize worth fighting for; that rice represented a life-line-- by gaining steady access to it the DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) would not then be forced into the unenviable position of relying on China for both military and dietary subsistence (though a military benefactor at the time, historically China has always been THE primary enemy of the Vietnamese, especially for the northerners with whom they share a border). This was a long-term consideration that directly affected the future prospects for Vietnamese sovereignty.
7) Over the course of the war we dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we had during all of WWII and Korea. When finally they fell silent the South Vietnamese tumbled like a house of cards. Many believe we didn't drop enough and that increased bombing of the North would have brought the DRV to heel eventually. Many argue that had we destroyed their dams, bridges, oil refineries, and the intricate patchwork of dikes and levies that we would have starved them out, or that by mining Haiphong Harbor we could also have won through attrition. Maybe so, we did get the Communists back to the bargaining table by adopting those tactics. But fear of starvation might lead to more attacks into the South rather than fewer. I don't see any evidence that we could have subdued the Northern insurrection with air power alone, eventually we would have had to send ground-troops into the North to close the deal, or hope to wait them out-- that could have taken decades.
Could we realistically have expected the DRV to just give-up or somehow wither on the vine? How long would that have taken? Or should we conclude from history (remember, the Vietnamese had turned back the Chinese and the Mongols long before defeating the French) that they would have likely persisted in attacking the South for years, maybe even decades to come? By the fall of Saigon, we had been supporting and training the South Vietnamese government and military for many years, going back to the days of President Ngo Dinh Diem, yet, when stripped of the US military force-field, they had fallen in a matter of months under the final assault by the Communists.
The question for the revisionists: how many more years was it going to take before they would have been ready to fend for themselves? The track record doesn't breed confidence I'm afraid, and frankly, the Northern Communists weren’t going to go away any time soon; they had their own sovereign territory plus strategic depth across the borders of Laos, Cambodia, and even China; they had demonstrated repeatedly that they knew the value of time and how to use it to their advantage; they continued to enjoy popular support at home and international support abroad (USSR, China, Algeria).
Book Reviews:
For those in the class interested in further study of the French Indochina war I highly recommend the following books, all of which are available through the OSU library:
The Quicksand War by Lucien Bodard (the scene in Saigon and Tonkin in the years leading up to the French/Indochina War-- what a read!)
The Road to War by Martin Shipway (a look at the French government's role, both in Paris and Vietnam. It's a monograph and a bit political sciencie but helpful all the same)
The Centurions by Jean Larteguy (tremendous historical fiction based on characters like Bigeard who fought, lost, and went to the camps and then fought in Algeria later)
Yellow Fever by Jean Larteguy (a novel concerning the transition from the French to the victorious Viet Minh in the North up through the US replacement of the French in the South. Larteguy has an interesting take on the early days of the American efforts to influence events in South Vietnam.
and of course Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall (a classic!)
If you're interested in following on to France's later colonial disaster in Algeria you might try A Savage War of Peace by Alistaire Horne, The Praetorians by Jean Larteguy, or War in Algeria by Jules Roy (a quick read)
Other books read for this course:
Stalking the Vietcong by Stuart Herrington
For anyone in the class interested in counterinsurgency style warfare I very much recommend Stalking the Vietcong by Stuart Herrington. Herrington's story recounts his days as an operative in the Phoenix Program. In addition to giving a great feel for the situation in the South Vietnamese countryside in years following Tet it also provides a textbook example of low-level village-centered counterinsurgency tactics in practice. He doesn't mention them by name but the teachings of the great counterinsurgents like David Galula and Sir Robert Thompson are evident in his training. This is particularly relevant today for understanding the recent success we've had on the ground in Iraq; the key turning point for my money was the arrival of General David Petraeus who is believed by many to be our military's greatest counterinsurgency expert (the proof has been in the pudding I might add) and he learned his trade from studying the aforementioned authors. Herrington's description of the lack of support for the Thieu regime by 1973 in the villages provides first-hand evidence to counter the revisionist claim that Thieu had the villages under control after the Easter Offensive, the Viet Cong insurgency may have been subdued for the moment but the Saigon government had very little popular support according to the author. All the while, Hanoi was preparing for the final offensive, so it was not a good situation contrary to what some would have us believe. I can't recommend this book enough.
Another note on General Petraues: he was promoted today to be the head of CENTCOM, General Odierno will replace him in Iraq. There is a long way to go in Iraq and much still to transpire but I believe General Petreaus will, and should, be remembered by history as one of, if not the, key figure of the war, the man who turned it around, much like Matthew Ridgway did in Korea.A Vietcong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang
A Vietcong memoir is a fascinating inside look at what it was like on the other side of the fighting in Vietnam. It was written by Truong Nhu Tang, the former Minister of Justice in the Vietcong underground, who became a boat refugee when he could no longer support the brutal actions of his former allies in the Communist Party leadership. Granted, the author displays sour grapes and certainly has a bone to pick with his former Communist allies who for all intents and purposes cut him out when power was seized in 1975, but for its inside look into the workings of the South Vietnamese insurgency it is a valuable document. In it you’ll find vivid descriptions of the formation of the guerrilla underground and subsequent revolutionary political parties in South Vietnam, the rigors and terrors of jungle/guerrilla fighting (these people were tough!), the internal disputes among the Communists over whether to align more closely with the Soviets or the Chinese, the role of Algeria and other non-aligned nations who helped bank roll the insurgency, and the party intrigues that characterized the always tenuous relationship between the southern communists (the Vietcong (PRG /NLF) and their more veteran northern comrades from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Two things stood out for me:
1) In his description of the Easter Offensive in 1972, Truong relates that even though the Communist forces were ultimately pushed back after initial successes on the battlefield (only after US air forces intervened), the episode was seen internally as a sort of Pyrrhic psychological victory for the Communists because, they believed, it reinforced the fear throughout ARVN that they would be dead-meat if left alone on the battlefield versus the NVA without US military backing. After the poor showing by ARVN in spring ’75 it’s hard to argue with their assessment!
2) Also eye-opening were the similarities between events in 1975 and those that took place at the end of WWII in 1945; according to the author the southern revolutionaries (Vietcong) were caught by surprise when the ARVN and the South Vietnamese Government caved so quickly. They had planned on the final offensive taking two years not two months! It is very much like what transpired when the Japanese surrendered so quickly after Hiroshima in ’45. And just like in August/September 1945, the North Vietnamese Communist leaders clearly had a plan in place to exploit the political vacuum-- they executed it like seasoned pros by quickly seizing power throughout the South’s shaken political institutions. Many leading Vietcong were quickly marginalized and alienated, cut-off from power in their own country after they had fought so valiantly for it. Truong relates the near universal depression among the southerners, most had lived and fought in the jungle for years only to be undermined in their moment of glory. For the DRV’s part, this was a textbook application of the popular front tactic used to great affect for years by Ho and his gang. Truong admits that the Vietcong leadership failed to plan for post-war government and security; he relates how they were caught completely off-guard, and that they were badly outmaneuvered by their so-called allies during the days of celebration, homecomings, and general euphoria immediately following Saigon’s fall. This heart-breaking development led to widespread flight among the Vietcong representatives, including the author
Vietnam At War by Phillip B. Davidson:Author Phillip B. Davidson writes in Vietnam At War: "Few commentators pinpoint the primary reason for the Communists' victory: they had a superior grand strategy. (Grand strategy is defined as the employment of all facets of national power to achieve a political objective.) From the beginning to the end of the Indochina wars, the Communists had one national objective-- the independence and unification of Vietnam, and eventually of all of French Indochina...
"If the US was to win the Vietnam War it had to develop a strategy superior to that of revolutionary war...Our principle vulnerability was the weakness inherent in democracy itself-- the incapacity to sustain a long, unfocused, inconclusive, and bloody war far from home, for unidentified or ill-defined national objectives...
"While no grand strategy can be devised without a clear national objective, other massive failures doomed the US. The greatest failing was that the US violated Clausewitz's fundamental dictum: "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish...the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, or trying to turn it into, something which is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive." The American failure to meet this "most supreme" act of judgment defeated the US" (See also: The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich)
Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster:
H.R. McMaster's book is an excellent analysis of the crippling effects of the interplay between the hubris of the Johnson Administration and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs. I was struck by his description of the JCS who were consistently unable to overcome crippling inter-service rivalries and therefore never presented a united front in support of their positions. In fact Dereliction of Duty focuses much attention on the poor performance of the Joint Chiefs in Vietnam. (Sidebar: The legendary marine Chesty Puller, believed by many to be one of the greatest combat officers we've ever produced, was outspoken in his criticism of the JCS performance in the Korean war. He charged that they were derelict in their duties because they cowered from MacArthur even though he worked for them! And since Puller never trusted officers who only commanded from the rear, back at the CP, the JCS were just a repeat of that problem on a larger scale in his mind. One man with an opinion). The author certainly takes the JCS to task on Vietnam but even so I got the sense that he wants to give them the benefit of the doubt-- he cautiously implies that things might have been different had not McNamara, the "Whiz Kids," and Maxwell Taylor colluded against them. I'm not sure the track record warrants such confidence-- like many of the other "what ifs" of the war in Vietnam we'll never know. But we do know this:
After the 1986 reorganization of the military undertaken by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not have operational command of U.S. military forces. Responsibility for conducting military operations goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense directly to the commanders and thus bypasses the Joint Chiefs of Staff completely.
Music/VideoA sampling of music videos of tunes from Vietnam era:
The Animals - We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place (1965)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieEpor9JJmA
Barry McGuire: Eve of Destruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8SfiCnwF28
Bob Dylan - Blowing In the Wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmgWazMt28Q
The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWg3b15ITS8
Country Joe McDonald - I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA
Donovan - Universal Soldier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohXsdbF-7jc
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young "Ohio"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCS-g3HwXdc
Edwin Starr – War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv5BYEOQYLo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48KVZXroyjA
Eric Burdon and the Animals - Sky Pilot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LyR8T0Dbc
Guess Who - American Woman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1x6NNNfVJc
Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU
Vietnam Jimmy Cliff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3UaDDvDNvc
Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFLy8eGtSYo
John Lennon - Give Peace a Chance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OnWAOqZj58
Kingston Trio - Where Have All the Flowers Gone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBtT9NfWtbE
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETIjVvv1Ds
Phil Ochs - Draft Dodger Rag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N68BjrCHCGM
Simon and Garfunkel - The Sun Is Burning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWUrUYGs2g
Temptations - Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZWYmxr8XE
Thunderclap Newman Something In The Air
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJzo5RFqCQg
Tom Paxton - Lyndon Johnson Told a Nation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpBUiOuYaGE
Barry Sadler - The Ballad of the Green Berets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94
Bill Ellis - Grunt
A sampling of videos on Vietnam from the Internet Archive:
US Army 1966 “The Unique War”
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava17237vnb1
US Army 1968 “Vietnam Crucible”
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava06050vnb1
US Navy/Marines “Contact Ambush”
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava04620vnb1
US Navy 1975 “Trial by Fire: A Carrier Fights for Life” 14 January, 1969
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava19833vnb1
Rifle 5.56mm, XM16E1, Operation and Cycle of Functioning TF9-3663 (1966)
http://www.archive.org/details/Rifle556mmXM16E1OperationandCycleofFunctioningTF93663
US Army 1965 “Know Your Enemy: The Vietcong”
http://www.archive.org/details/Know_Your_Enemy-The_Vietcong
US Army 1967 “The Airmobile Division”
http://www.archive.org/details/TheAirmobleDivision
US Army 1967 “Progress To Peace”
http://www.archive.org/details/ProgressToPeace
Peace March. Thousands Oppose Vietnam War, 1967/04/18
http://www.archive.org/details/1967-04-18_Peace_March
US Army 1965 “The Army Air Mobility Team”
http://www.archive.org/details/TheArmyAirMobilityTeam
US Air Force 1968 “Airpower at Khe Sanh”