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Why We Fought & Why We Would
Do it Again
Reviewed & Forward by Kiet Nguyen.
Against a backdrop of political mismanagement and
social angst, history has failed to respect those
who gave their all to the war in Vietnam.
By James Web
Forty years ago, Asia was at a
vital crossroads, moving into an uncertain future
dominated by three different historical trends.
The first involved the aftermath of the carnage
and destruction of World War II, which left scars on
every country in the region and dramatically changed
Japan’s role in East Asian affairs.
The second was the sudden, regionwide end of
European colonialism, which created governmental
vacuums in every second-tier country except Thailand
and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines.
The third was the emergence of communism as a
powerful tool of expansionism by military force, its
doctrine and strategies emanating principally from
the birthplace of the Communist International: the
Soviet Union.Europe’s withdrawal from the region
dramatically played into the hands of communist
revolutionary movements, especially in the wake of
the communist takeover of China in 1949.
Unlike in Europe, these countries had never
known Western-style democracy. In 1950, the
partitioned country of Korea exploded into war when
the communist North invaded South Korea, with the
Chinese Army joining the effort six months later.
Communist insurgencies erupted throughout Indochina.
In Malaysia, the British led a 10-year
anti-guerrilla campaign against China-backed
revolutionaries. A similar insurgency in Indonesia
brought about a communist coup attempt, also
sponsored by the Chinese, which was put down in
1965.
The situation inside Vietnam was the most
complicated. First, for a variety of reasons the
French had not withdrawn from their long-term colony
after World War II, making it easy for insurgents to
rally the nationalistic Vietnamese to their side.
Second, the charismatic, Soviet-trained communist
leader Ho Chi Minh had quickly consolidated his
anti-French power base just after the war by
assassinating the leadership of competing political
groups that were both anti-French and
anti-communist. Third, once the Korean War armistice
was signed in 1953, the Chinese had shifted large
amounts of sophisticated weaponry to Ho Chi Minh’s
army. The Viet Minh’s sudden acquisition of
larger-caliber weapons and field artillery such as
the 105-millimeter Howitzer abruptly changed the
nature of the war and contributed heavily to the
French humiliation at Dien Bien Phu. Fourth, further
war became inevitable when U.S.-led backers of the
incipient South Vietnamese democracy called off a
1956 election agreed upon after Vietnam was divided
in 1954. In geopolitical terms, this failure to go
forward with elections was prudent, since it was
clear a totalitarian state had emerged in the north.
President Eisenhower’s frequently quoted admonition
that Ho Chi Minh would get 75 percent of the vote
was not predicated on the communist leader’s
popularity but on the impossibility of getting a
fair vote in communist-controlled North Vietnam. But
in propaganda terms, it solidified Ho Chi Minh’s
standing and in many eyes justified the renewed
warfare he would begin in the south two years later.
In 1958, the communists unleashed a terrorist
campaign in the south. Within two years, their
northern-trained squads were assassinating an
average of 11 government officials a day. President
Kennedy referred to this campaign in 1961 when he
decided to increase the number of American soldiers
operating inside South Vietnam.
We have talked about and read stories of 7,000
to 15,000 guerrillas operating in Vietnam, killing
2,000 civil officers a year and 2,000 police
officers a year, 4,000 total, Kennedy said. How we
fight that kind of problem, which is going to be
with us all through this decade, seems to me to be
one of the great problems now before the United
States.
Among the local populace, the communist
assassination squads were the stick, threatening to
kill anyone who officially affiliated with the South
Vietnamese government. Along with the assassination
squads came the carrot, a highly trained political
cadre that also infiltrated South Vietnam from the
north. The cadre helped the people prepare defenses
in their villages, took rice from farmers as taxes
and recruited Viet Cong soldiers from the local
young population. Spreading out into key areas such
as those provinces just below the demilitarized
zone, those bordering Laos and Cambodia, and those
with future access routes to key cities, the
communists gained strong footholds.
The communists began spreading out from their
enclaves, fighting on three levels
simultaneously. First, they continued their
terror campaign, assassinating local leaders, police
officers, teachers and others who declared support
for the South Vietnamese government. Second, they
waged an effective small-unit guerrilla war that was
designed to disrupt commerce, destroy morale and
clasp local communities to their cause. And finally,
beginning in late 1964, they introduced conventional
forces from the north, capable of facing, if not
defeating, main force infantry units including the
Americans on the battlefield. Their gamble was that
once the United States began fighting on a larger
scale as it did in March 1965 its people would not
support a long war of attrition. As Ho Chi Minh
famously put it, For every one of yours we kill, you
will kill 10 of ours. But in the end it is you who
will grow tired.
Ho Chi Minh was right. The infamous body counts
were continuously disparaged by the media and the
antiwar movement. Hanoi removed the doubt in 1995,
when on the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon
officials admitted having lost 1.1 million combat
soldiers dead, with another 300,000 still missing.
Communist losses of 1.4 million dead compared to
America’s losses of 58,000 and South Vietnam’s
245,000 stand as stark evidence that eliminates many
myths about the war. The communists, and
particularly the North Vietnamese, were excellent
and determined soldiers. But the wily, elusive
guerrillas that the media loved to portray were not
exclusively wily, elusive or even guerrillas when
one considers that their combat deaths were four
times those of their enemies, combined. And an
American military that located itself halfway around
the world to take on a determined enemy on the
terrain of the enemy’s choosing was hardly the
incompetent, demoralized and confused force that so
many antiwar professors, journalists and filmmakers
love to portray.
Why Did We Fight?
The United States recognized South
Vietnam as a political entity separate from North
Vietnam, just as it recognized West Germany as
separate from communist-controlled East Germany and
just as it continues to recognize South Korea from
communist-controlled North Korea.
As signatories of the Southeast Asian Treaty
Organization, we pledged to defend South Vietnam
from external aggression. South Vietnam was invaded
by the north, just as certainly, although with more
sophistication, as South Korea was invaded by North
Korea. The extent to which the North Vietnamese, as
well as antiwar Americans, went to deny this reality
by pretending the war was fought only by Viet Cong
soldiers from the south is, historically, one of the
clearest examples of their disingenuous conduct. At
one point during the war, 15 of North Vietnam’s 16
combat divisions were in the south.
How Did We Fight?
The Vietnam War varied year by year and
region by region, our military’s posture unavoidably
mirroring political events in the United States. Too
often in today’s America we are left with the images
burned into a weary nation’s consciousness at the
very end of the war, when massive social problems
had been visited on an army that was demoralized,
sitting in defensive cantonments and simply
waiting to be withdrawn. While reflecting America’s
final months in Vietnam, they hardly tell the story
of the years of effort and battlefield success that
preceded them.
Little recognition has been given in this
country of how brutal the war was for those who
fought it on the ground and how well our military
performed. Dropped onto the enemy’s terrain 12,000
miles away from home, America’s citizen-soldiers
performed with a tenacity and quality that may never
be truly understood. Those who believe the war was
fought incompetently on a tactical level should
consider the enormous casualties to which the
communists now admit. And those who believe that it
was a dirty little war where the bombs did all the
work might contemplate that it was the most costly
war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought. Five
times as many Marines died in Vietnam as in World
War I, three times as many as in Korea. And the
Marines suffered more total casualties, killed and
wounded, in Vietnam than in all of World War II.
Another allegation was that our soldiers were
over-decorated during the Vietnam War. James Fallows
says in his book ‘National Defense ’ that by 1971,
we had given out almost 1.3 million medals for
bravery in Vietnam, as opposed to some 1.7 million
for all of World War II. Others have repeated the
figure, including the British historian Richard
Holmes in his book ‘Acts of War’. This comparison is
incorrect for a number of reasons. First, these
totals included air medals, rarely awarded for
bravery. We awarded more than 1 million air medals
to Army soldiers during Vietnam. Air medals were
almost always given on a points basis for missions
flown, and it was not unusual to see a helicopter
pilot with 40 air medals because of the nature of
his job.
If we compare the top three actual gallantry awards,
the Army awarded:
289 Medals of Honor in World War II and 155
in Vietnam. 4,434 Distinguished Service Crosses in
World War II and 846 in Vietnam. 73,651 Silver Stars
in World War II against 21,630 in Vietnam.
The Marine Corps, which lost 103,000 killed
or wounded out of some 400,000 sent to Vietnam,
awarded 47 Medals of Honor (34 posthumously), 362
Navy Crosses (139 posthumously) and 2,592 Silver
Stars. Second, although the Army awarded another 1.3
million meritorious Bronze Stars and Army
Commendation Medals in Vietnam, this was hardly
unique. After World War II, Army Regulation 600-45
authorized every soldier who had received either a
Combat Infantryman’s Badge or a Combat Medical Badge
to also be awarded a meritorious Bronze Star. The
Army has no data regarding how many soldiers
received Bronze Stars through this blanket
procedure.
Atrocities?
We made errors, although nowhere on the
scale alleged by those who have a stake in
disparaging our effort. Fighting a well-trained
enemy who seeks cover in highly contested populated
areas where civilians often assist the other side is
the most difficult form of warfare. The most
important distinction is that the deliberate killing
of innocent civilians was a crime in the U.S.
military. We held ourselves accountable for My Lai.
And yet we are still waiting for the communists to
take responsibility for the thousands of civilians
deliberately killed by their political cadre as a
matter of policy. A good place for them to start
holding their own forces accountable would be Hue,
where during the 1968 Tet Offensive more than 2,000
locals were systematically executed during the brief
communist takeover of the city.
What Went Wrong?
Beyond the battlefield, just about
everything one might imagine.
The war was begun, and fought, without clear
political goals. Its battlefield complexities were
never fully understood by those who were judging,
and commenting upon, American performance. As a
rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous
An Hoa Basin west of Da Nang, on any given day my
Marines could be fighting three different wars: one
against terrorism, one against guerrillas and one
against conventional forces. The implications of
these challenges, as well as our successes in
dealing with them, never seemed to penetrate an
American populace inundated by negative press
stories filed by reporters, particularly television
journalists, who had no clue about the real tempo of
the war. And one of the most under-reported
revelations after the war ended was that several top
reporters were compromised while in Vietnam, by
communist agents who had managed to gain employment
as their assistants, thus shaping in a large way
their reporting.
Most importantly, Vietnam became an undeclared
war fought against the background of a highly
organized dissent movement at home. Few Americans
who grew up after the war know that a large part of
this dissent movement was already in place before
the Vietnam War began. Many who wished for
revolutionary changes in America had pushed for them
through the vehicles of groups such as the
ban-the-bomb movement in the 1950s and the
civil-rights movement of the early and mid-1960s. In
this regard, it is interesting to note that the
infamous antiwar group Students for a Democratic
Society was created at the University of Michigan
through the Port Huron Statement in 1962, three full
years before American ground troops landed at Da
Nang. The SDS hoped to bring revolution to America
through the issue of race. They and other extremist
groups soon found more fertile soil on the issue of
the war.
Former communist colonel Bui Tin, a highly
placed propaganda officer during the war, recently
published a memoir in which he specifically admitted
a truth that was assumed by American fighting men
for years. The Hanoi government assumed from the
beginning that the United States would never prevail
in Vietnam so long as the dissent movement, which
they called ‘the Rear Front,’ was successful at
home. Many top leaders of this movement coordinated
efforts directly with Vietnamese communist officials
in Hanoi. Such coordination often included visiting
the North Vietnamese capital,for instance, during
the planning stages for the October 1967 march on
the Pentagon, a few weeks before the siege of Khe
Sanh kicked into high gear and a few months before
the Tet Offensive.
The majority of the American people never truly
bought the antiwar movement’s logic. While it is
correct to say many wearied of an ineffective
national strategy as the war dragged on, they never
stopped supporting the actual goals for which the
United States and South Vietnam fought. As late as
September 1972, a Harris survey indicated
overwhelming support for continued bombing of North
Vietnam: 55 percent to 32 percent and for mining
North Vietnamese harbors: 64 percent to 22 percent.
By a margin of 74 percent to 11 percent, those
polled also agreed that it is important that South
Vietnam not fall into the control of the communists.
Was It Worth It?
On a human level, the war brought
tragedy to hundreds of thousands of American homes
through death, disabling wounds and psychological
scars. Many other Vietnam veterans were stigmatized
by their own peers as a classic Greek tragedy played
out before the nation’s eyes. Those who did not go,
particularly among the nation’s elites, were often
threatened by the acts of those who did and as a
consequence inverted the usual syllogism of service.
If I did not go to a war because I believed it was
immoral, what does it say about someone who did? If
someone who fought is perceived as having been
honorable, what does that say about someone who was
asked to and could have but did not?
Vietnam veterans, most of whom entered the
military just after leaving high school, had their
educational and professional lives interrupted
during their most formative years. In many parts of
the country and in many professional arenas, their
having served their country was a negative when it
came to admission into universities or being hired
for jobs. The fact that the overwhelming majority of
those who served were able to persist and make
successful lives for themselves and their families
is strong testament to the quality of Americans who
actually did step forward and serve.
On a national level, and in the eyes of history,
the answer is easier. One can gain an appreciation
for what we attempted to achieve in Vietnam by
examining the aftermath of the communist victory in
1975. A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia,
the likes of which had not been seen since World War
II. Two million Vietnamese fled their country mostly
by boat. Thousands lost their lives in the process.
This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam’s long
and frequently tragic history.
Inside Vietnam, a million of the south’s best
young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more
than 50,000 perished while imprisoned, and others
remained captives for as long as 18 years. An
apartheid system was put into place that punished
those who had been loyal to the United States, as
well as their families, in matters of education,
employment and housing. The Soviet Union made
Vietnam a client state until its own demise, pumping
billions of dollars into the country and keeping
extensive naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay. In
fact, communist Vietnam did not truly start opening
up to the outside world until the Soviet Union
ceased to exist.
Would I Do It Again?
Others are welcome to disagree, but on
this I have no doubt. Like almost every Marine I
have ever met, my strongest regret is that perhaps I
could have done more. But no other experience in my
life has been more important than the challenge of
leading Marines during those extraordinarily
difficult times. Nor am I alone in this feeling. The
most accurate poll of the attitudes of those who
served in Vietnam. Harris, 1980, showed that 91
percent were glad they’d served their country, and
74 percent enjoyed their time in the service.
Additionally, 89 percent agreed that our troops were
asked to fight in a war which our political leaders
in Washington would not let them win.
On that final question, history will surely be
kinder to those who fought than to those who
directed or opposed the war.
James Webb served as a rifle platoon and company
commander with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam.
A former secretary of the Navy, he is the author of
‘Fields of Fire’ and ‘Lost Soldiers’. He also was
the creator and executive producer of the film
‘Rules of Engagement’. His website is at
www.jameswebb.com |