Great New Book on the Vietnam War

[mikegriffith1]

Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 will soon be published (December) and is available for pre-order on Amazon. Using long-neglected information from North Vietnamese sources, among other sources, Moyar debunks the liberal version of the Vietnam War and shows that it was a noble and winnable effort. Here's the publisher's description of the book:

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side.

Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America’s war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson’s refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate.

The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America’s defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America’s great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.

Dr. Moyar is the William P. Harris Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College. Before accepting this position, Dr. Moyar he served as the Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at USAID, and as the Director of the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.

 

[The Duke]

There were things happening in Vietnam before 1965. Somebody that was there told me.

I cannot remember who to save my soul right now. I think it was Christmas..

 

[Mr Natural]

Had it not been for enslavement via the draft, the Vietnam escapade could have gone on forever.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Had it not been for enslavement via the draft, the Vietnam escapade could have gone on forever.

That's utter fiction. Operation Linebacker II in late 1972 proved that we could have won the war in a matter of months if we had unleashed our air power earlier and for just a bit longer. In just 11 days of bombing, we brought North Vietnam to the verge of collapse and caused Hanoi to plead to resume peace talks.

BTW, most of the troops who served in Vietnam were *not* draftees.

Liberals still lie about the war because the anti-war majority in Congress threw away victory and betrayed South Vietnam, and then fell silent when the Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese, sent 1-2 million to concentration camps ("reeducation" camps), and turned the whole country into a gulag that remains one of the most repressive nations on Earth.

 

[rightwinger]

Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968

I remember the years 1965-68

Victory was just around the corner, if we just send in 100,000 more troops, they will be home by Christmas

Again and again and again
Truth is they had been fighting for 25 years and were not about to stop. The thing is…..they LIVE there and were going to keep resisting as long as we were there

 

[mikegriffith1]

I remember the years 1965-68

Victory was just around the corner, if we just send in 100,000 more troops, they will be home by Christmas

Again and again and again
Truth is they had been fighting for 25 years and were not about to stop. The thing is…..they LIVE there and were going to keep resisting as long as we were there

"Truth is" you simply ignored my point about Linebacker II and repeated one of the debunked liberal myths about the war. I'm guessing you won't be buying Moyar's book, right?

Are you aware that we now know from North Vietnamese sources that the Hanoi regime was twice on the verge of giving up and was on the verge of collapse by the ninth day of Linebacker II? Liberal scholars don't like to talk about these sources because they destroy the unwinnable-war myth.

If LBJ and McNamara had not imposed insane, absurd restrictions on our war effort, we would have won the war by 1966 at the latest. As Moyar shows, when LBJ partially lifted the restrictions in 1967, we began to destroy more war material than Hanoi could replace, and the Communists began losing their grip in key provinces in the South.

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

Any war is winnable as long as your willing to do shit the people who never wore the uniform won't like.

 

[rightwinger]

If LBJ and McNamara had not imposed insane, absurd restrictions on our war effort, we would have won the war by 1966 at the latest.

We learned our lesson when we invaded N Korea is search of a quick victory.
All it did was bring the Chinese into the war

 

[Mushroom]

The thing is…..they LIVE there and were going to keep resisting as long as we were there

They did not "live" there. It was North Vietnam that was attacking them.

That would be like saying that as Ukraine was once part of Russia, the Russians have a right to take it back.

 

[Mushroom]

We learned our lesson when we invaded N Korea is search of a quick victory.
All it did was bring the Chinese into the war

The Chinese were going to enter the war no matter what. They started forming their "Volunteer Army" back in early 1950, and had said outright that if any nation entered North Korean territory, they would send forces in.

This claim is once again without any merit and makes no sense. It would be like in WWII if we had simply ejected Germany from all of the nations they occupied, then simply stopped there and refused to enter Germany to put an end to it.

 

[rightwinger]

They did not "live" there. It was North Vietnam that was attacking them.

That would be like saying that as Ukraine was once part of Russia, the Russians have a right to take it back.

It was Vietnam before we divided it.
We also promised free elections that we reneged on when it became clear we would not win

 

[mikegriffith1]

Here is more information on the harmful, self-defeating restrictions that LBJ and McNamara placed on our air operations. This comes from Dr. Wayne Thompson’s book To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam 1966-1973, published by the U.S. Air Force (2000) and available online:

Jacob Van Staaveren’s Gradual Failure: The Air War over North Vietnam, 1965–1966 took our story through the belated attempt to destroy North Vietnam’s oil storage facilities in the summer of 1966. By then the North Vietnamese had dispersed gasoline and other oil products from tank farms to barrels scattered around the country. It was another lesson in the weakness of a gradual bombing campaign like Rolling Thunder. After eighteen months of bombing, even North Vietnam’s airfields were still largely unscathed, not to mention its principal port at Haiphong and its capital city of Hanoi. The Air Force had proposed bombing targets in all those areas at the outset with B–52s, but President Lyndon Johnson kept all air attacks well away from the major cities for months and eventually permitted only fighter aircraft to attack targets near them. No earlier president had so involved himself in the details of target selection and tactics. . . .

During the long Rolling Thunder air campaign over North Vietnam from March 1965 to November 1968, Johnson con[1]fined B–52 targets in North Vietnam to supply depots and transportation routes near the border with South Vietnam and Laos. Even these marginal B–52 raids on the North did not begin until April 1966. . . .

About a third of North Vietnam’s imports came down the northeast railroad from China, and most of the rest came by sea through Haiphong. Since North Vietnam imported almost all its military supplies, including gasoline, General Momyer deemed it essential to close the port of Haiphong and the rail connection with China. But Soviet ships at Haiphong caused President Johnson to worry that an international incident might lead to a wider war. [Of course, when Nixon bombed targets in Hanoi and Haiphong and mined the Haiphong Harbor, no international incident resulted. The Soviets and the Chinese were not about to risk war with the U.S. over North Vietnam.] The President refused to approve Navy bombing or mining of Haiphong harbor, and the Air Force was left to bomb the northeast railroad without much hope of making a critical difference. In any case, bridges along the route were hard to hit with unguided bombs in the teeth of heavy enemy air defenses. Johnson had not even approved striking the biggest bridges across the Red River at Hanoi and across the parallel Canal des Rapides for fear of civilian casualties. Nor were railyards promising targets without the heavy bomb loads only forbidden B–52s could carry. Trains could make a quick run from the Chinese border to Hanoi at night, skipping the intervening yards, and the downtown yard was, of course, off limits. . . .

The Air Force and the Navy had sought permission to go after oil from the beginning of the war. Without gasoline, North Vietnamese trucks would be useless. But the big tank farms were in the cities of Haiphong and Hanoi, where President Johnson hesitated to do any bombing. By the time he gave the go-ahead, the enemy had dispersed gasoline around the country in drums and small underground tanks. When bombing caused the tank farms to go up in billowing flames and smoke, their significance had already been reduced to a minimum. Planes spent the rest of the summer chasing gasoline drums, while the trucks kept moving. . . .

In Rolling Thunder the Johnson administration devised an air campaign that did a lot of bombing in a way calculated not to threaten the enemy regime’s survival. President Johnson repeatedly assured the communist rulers of North Vietnam that his forces would not hurt them, and he clearly meant it. Government buildings in downtown Hanoi were never targeted. Even the government’s ability to communicate was left almost untouched. . . .

The U.S. response to SAMs was almost as inadequate as its failure to attack North Vietnamese airfields. In April 1965 when American reconnaissance began to observe the construction of SAM launch sites within twenty miles of Hanoi, Secretary of Defense McNamara took Assistant Secretary McNaughton’s advice and forbade attacks on the sites. . . .

Since SAMs proved too mobile and antiaircraft artillery too numerous and most of the MiG fields were off limits, all three arms of North Vietnam’s air defense remained deadly. They worked increasingly well together through practice and through a growing radar-communications network. By putting SAMs and guns on or near dikes, hospitals and schools, the North Vietnamese found they could put American pilots in a no-win situation—either permit these units to fire unhampered or give the North Vietnamese the kind of publicity that could win friends in the United States and threaten a pilot’s career. . . .

In such ways did North Vietnam’s rulers seek to persuade their own people, as well as Americans, that American high technology could be beaten. The U.S. government cooperated to a remarkable degree by giving Rolling Thunder a gradual, even tentative character of self-imposed sanctuaries and bombing pauses. Since the North Vietnamese took the position that they would not negotiate while they were being bombed, the Johnson administration found itself under pressure to stop bombing to prove its interest in a negotiated peace. . . .

President Johnson’s prohibition on bombing near Hanoi came at the beginning of the most important North Vietnamese propaganda initiative before the Tet Offensive of 1968. TASS, the Soviet news agency, issued reports that the December 1966 bombing attacks had killed civilians in downtown Hanoi, capturing headlines in the United States and Europe. (To Hanoi and Back, pp. vii, 3, 26, 29-31, 35, 37, 44, https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/01/2001309673/-1/-1/0/ToHanoiAndBack.pdf)

This is just small sample of the information in Dr. Thompson’s book. He also spends considerable time debunking the North Vietnamese/Soviet/American liberal claim that we engaged in carpet bombing and that our bombing killed large numbers of civilians who lived far away from valid military targets.

 

[Augustine_]

Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 will soon be published (December) and is available for pre-order on Amazon. Using long-neglected information from North Vietnamese sources, among other sources, Moyar debunks the liberal version of the Vietnam War and shows that it was a noble and winnable effort. Here's the publisher's description of the book:

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side.

Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America’s war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson’s refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate.

The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America’s defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America’s great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.

Dr. Moyar is the William P. Harris Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College. Before accepting this position, Dr. Moyar he served as the Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at USAID, and as the Director of the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.

Well Mark Moyar can go fuck himself. These pieces of shit love nothing more than seeing their own fellow citizens returned home in caskets, dying for nothing.

 

[Mushroom]

It was Vietnam before we divided it.

We did not divide it.

First of all, it was Indochina, not Vietnam. Apparently you are not even aware of that, or of the "French-Indochina War". Indochina, which was the name before Vietnam. It was not called the "French-Vietnam" war after all.

*shakes head*

And no, "we" did not divide it. It was divided by an international conference in Geneva, that was negotiated by diplomats from France, PRC, USSR, North and South Korea, and the US. And they broke Indochina up into North and South Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos.

You really do not know history at all, do you? I suggest you take the effort to learn some, because what you said was absolutely stupid and was not even close to the truth.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Now let’s get some facts straight about the Tet Offensive. Tet provides us with perhaps the best example of (1) the news media’s misleading and distorted reporting on the war, and (2) the equally misleading and distorted version of the war given by liberal scholars.

Imagine how ludicrous it would have been if, four days after the desperate German gamble of the Battle of the Bulge ended, Walter Cronkite and other liberals had declared that the war in Europe was a stalemate and was unwinnable. Imagine if they had lamented, “What’s going on? We thought we were winning the war. How could the Germans have mounted such a powerful offensive if we are winning the war? Surely our government has been lying to us about the war.”

The Tet Offensive was a desperate gamble that was done because Hanoi realized they had to abandon their prolonged-war strategy and go for a decisive victory to end the war. Why? Because the NVA and VC were suffering increasing casualties and because LBJ had finally lifted enough of the air-power restrictions that, by the spring of 1967, our bombing was destroying more war material than Hanoi could replace (Leonard Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, pp. 85-90). Vietnam War scholar Leonard Scruggs:

By mid-1967 the NVA’s escalating casualties and tightening logistical circumstances convinced the leaders of North Vietnam that they could not sustain a protracted war against the U.S. Time, they thought, was no longer on their side. They decided to abandon their protracted-war strategy and go for a swift and decisive victory that would quickly collapse the government in Saigon and result in a humiliating U.S. withdrawal. (Lessons from the Vietnam War, p. 90)

Historian Arthur Hermann:

By the end of 1967, the Communist cause in the Vietnam War was in deep trouble. The build-up of American forces — nearly half a million men were deployed in Vietnam by December — had put the Vietcong on the defensive and led to bloody repulses of the North Vietnamese army (NVA), which had started intervening on the battlefield to ease the pressure on its Vietcong allies.

Hanoi’s decision to launch the Tet offensive was born of desperation. It was an effort to seize the northern provinces of South Vietnam with conventional troops while triggering an urban uprising by the Vietcong that would distract the Americans — and, some still hoped, revive the fading hopes of the Communists. The offensive itself began on January 30, with attacks on American targets in Saigon and other Vietnamese cities, and ended a little more than a month later when Marines crushed the last pockets of resistance in the northern city of Hue.

It not only destroyed the Vietcong as an effective political and military force, it also, together with the siege of Khe Sanh, crippled the NVA, which lost 20 percent of its forces in the South and suffered 33,000 men killed in action, all for no gain. (“The Tet Offensive Revisited: Media’s Big Lie,” Hudson Institute, January 30, 2018, The Tet Offensive Revisited: Media’s Big Lie - by Arthur Herman)

The after-action report of the U.S. Army II Field Force gives us a good idea of some of the developments that led Hanoi to conclude that they had to gamble on a major offensive to win the war quickly:

By November 1967 the operations of II FFORCEV and III Corps within III CTZ had succeeded in driving the bulk of the VC/NVA main forces away from the more heavily populated areas into the sparsely settled border regions. A captured document showed that the VC in MRIV - the region around Saigon - had suffered three times the losses in 1967 as in 1966.

The threat in Gia Dinh Province surrounding Saigon was reduced to the point that the 199th Lt Inf Bde was able to phase out Op FAIRFAX, and to move into War Zone D, leaving to the 5th ARVN Ranger Group primary tactical responsibility for the security of the Capital Military District.

The VC were in serious straits in Phouc Tuy and Long Khanh Province where allied pressure had broken down their supply system. The VC in western Hau Nghia Province had been reduced to the point that the 25th US Div was able to shift its brigade forces to operations northwest of Cu Chi; while the 25th ARVN Div continued pacifying Hau Nghia.

The 1st Inf Div had been successful in opening and holding open Highway 13 to Quan Loi, splitting War Zone C from D, as well as facilitating civil and military movement north of Saigon. v/ The 9th Inf Div had commenced clearing Highway 1 from Saigon to the II-III Corps boundary turning it over progressively to the 18th ARVN Div.

The 9th Div was also able to draw down on forces in the northeastern portion of its TAOI while concentrating on expanding Mobile Riverine Force operations in IV CTZ in the Delta.

The Revolutionary Development program was accelerating. Public administration training was underway in all Provinces. Economic activity was improving, partly as a result of the opening of many road LOCs particularly in Hau Nghia and Binh Duong Province.

There was ample evidence that . . . the VC political infrastructure was losing its influence over key sectors of the population. (TET Offensive II Field Force Vietnam After Action Report, Defense Technical Information Center, 1 March 1968, pp. 1-2, DTIC ADA534568: TET Offensive II Field Force Vietnam After Action Report 31 January - 18 February 1968 : Defense Technical Information Center : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive)

The Tet Offensive was a botched invasion that incurred staggering losses. Several North Vietnamese sources describe those enormous losses. The offensive started badly when, due to confusion in the chains of command, some NVA and VC units attacked prematurely, squandering the element of surprise against most targets. The NVA/VC failed to take most of their objectives, and in a matter of hours or days they lost most of the objectives that they did take. Only in Hue and in a sector of Saigon did they manage to hold on for about four weeks, before being mauled by ARVN and American forces. Much to the Communists’ surprise, many ARVN units fought well, and very few South Vietnamese welcomed the NVA as liberators. And, NVA and VC atrocities during the offensive caused most South Vietnamese to more strongly support the Saigon government.

However, this is not the story that the American people were told by the news media. In his massive study Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Yale University Press, 1978, abridged edition), Vietnam War correspondent Peter Braestrup documents the countless erroneous, misleading reports that journalists and major news outlets gave about Tet. For example, Braestrup notes that the news media reported that VC fighters had occupied the first few floors of the American Embassy in Saigon, when in fact they never got inside the building and were killed in the embassy compound within six hours. Some reporters in Vietnam did file accurate reports on Tet, but the major news outlets in the U.S. ignored them.

Uwe Simeon-Netto, who witnessed Tet as the Far East correspondent for the German newspaper group Axel Springer, sheds light on the subject:

Forty years ago today, I witnessed the start of the most perplexing development in the 20th century – America's self-betrayal during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

The reason why I have never ceased wrestling with this event is this: On the one hand, Tet ended in a clear military victory for the United States and its South Vietnamese allies, who killed 45,000 communist soldiers and destroyed their infrastructure.

On the other hand, the major U.S. media persuaded Americans that Tet was a huge setback for their country. . . .

At 3 a.m. on Jan. 31, I stood opposite the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, watching a fierce firefight between Marines and Viet Cong attackers. . . .

Some days later, I was in the company of Marines fighting their way into communist-occupied Hué, Vietnam's former imperial capital. We found its streets strewn with the corpses of hundreds of women, children and old men, all shot execution-style by North Vietnamese invaders.

I made my way to Hué's university apartments to obtain news about friends of mine, German professors at the medical school. I learned that their names had been on lists containing some 1,800 Hué residents singled out for liquidation. . . .

Then, enormous mass graves of women and children were found. Most had been clubbed to death, some buried alive; you could tell from the beautifully manicured hands of women who had tried to claw out of their burial place.

As we stood at one such site, correspondent Peter Braestrup asked an American T.V. cameraman, "Why don't you film this?" He answered, "I am not here to spread anti-communist propaganda."

Many reporters accompanying U.S. and South Vietnamese forces realized and reported that the fortunes of war and the public mood had changed in their favor, principally because of the war crimes committed by the communists, especially in Hue, where 6,000-10,000 residents were slaughtered.

But the major media gave the Tet story an entirely different spin. (“The Tet Offensive and the Media,” Vietnamese and American Veterans of the Vietnam War, The Tet Offensive and the Media - Americans were told that a U.S. military victory was a defeat).

David Henard, a former Army chopper pilot who served in South Vietnam during Tet:

Terrified reporters crouched behind the cover of the high wall that surrounded the embassy compound. . . . They nonetheless filed colorful, wildly inaccurate, and totally fabricated stories, claiming that the Vietcong had occupied the first five floors of the American Embassy. This claim was made despite the fact that the Vietcong failed to even enter the building. They reported too quickly before they had the facts and misled the American public. (Victory Stolen, LitFire Publishing, 2018 edition, pp. 110-111)

We now know that General Giap strongly opposed launching the Tet Offensive, fearing that if the NVA and VC left their safe areas in large numbers, they would be decimated. But Giap was overruled by the fanatics in the Politburo who truly believed that ARVN would quickly crumble and that most South Vietnamese would embrace the invaders as liberators. When Tet ended up being a horrendous military disaster, Giap was so upset that he left North Vietnam for a while.

Hanoi’s leaders were so shocked by the scale of the defeat that they considered halting the war effort for a few years (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, p. 101; Dave Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet, Presidio Press, 1978, pp. 208-210)—and they may well have done so if they had not realized that the American news media was turning their severe defeat into a shocking political victory.

Liberal scholars usually understate the degree of decimation that the NVA and the VC suffered in the Tet Offensive, and they describe Tet as a “monumental intelligence failure.”

“Monumental intelligence failure”? Westmoreland, his staff, and senior field commanders concluded from U.S. intelligence and field reports that the Communists were going to carry out a major assault around the time of the Tet holiday. However, they believed the attack would come after the holiday, and they underestimated the scale of the assault because they did not believe the NVA and the VC would be foolish enough to come out in large numbers far from their sanctuaries. We had always wanted them to do this, but they had not obliged.

Westmoreland and his staff believed the attack would come sometime after the Tet holiday because Hanoi had announced weeks earlier that they would once again honor the usual Tet ceasefire. The Communists had made similar Tet ceasefire announcements in the past and had always refrained from any major military actions during Tet, so we assumed they would do the same thing this time.

So, yes, Tet was an intelligence failure, but not in the usual sense of the term. In the weeks before Tet, Westmoreland informed numerous officials, and even some journalists, that he believed a major NVA/VC attack would soon occur. He was so convinced of this that, two weeks before Tet began, he wisely moved 15 battalions from outlying areas to positions near Saigon, a move that proved crucial during the offensive.

If our news media had covered Tet with honesty, balance, and perspective, they would have reported that the offensive was an enormous blunder by North Vietnam and a resounding victory for America. The Tet Offensive was only a “political victory” for North Vietnam because our news media made it into one. The 11th Armored Cavalry Vietnam veterans’ website sums up the situation well:

The 1968 Tet offensive was a total and complete military disaster for the North Vietnamese Communists no matter how you look at it. If you measure victory by territory gained or enemy killed, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong failed dismally in their attacks.

The NVA and VC had counted on a "People's Uprising" to carry them to victory; however, there was no such uprising. They did exactly what the American military wanted them to do. They massed in large formations that were incredibly vulnerable to the awesome fire support the U.S. military was able to bring to bear on them in a coordinated and devastating manner.

The NVA and VC attacked only ARVN installations with the exception of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Despite reports to the contrary by all major television news networks and the print media, the VC sapper team never entered the Embassy’s chancery building and all 15 VC were dead within 6 hours of the attack.

In the first week of the attack, the NVA/VC lost 32,204 confirmed killed, and 5,803 captured. U.S. losses were 1,015 KHA, while ARVN losses were 2,819 killed.

Casualties among the people whom the NVA/VC claimed to be "liberating" were in excess of 7,000, with an additional 5,000 tortured and murdered by the NVA/VC in Hue and elsewhere. In Hue alone, allied forces discovered over 2,800 burial sites containing the mutilated bodies of local Vietnamese teachers, doctors, and political leaders.

Only the news media seemed to believe that in some way the Communists had achieved a "victory.” To put this in perspective, the news media would have reported the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last-ditch attempt to stop the Allied forces in Europe, as a "disaster" for the Allies. They would have said that "despite Allied efforts, the enemy still has the means to mount a major offensive, and therefore the war in Europe is unwinnable." Sound goofy? Well, that is exactly what Walter Cronkite said on national TV after the 1968 Tet Offensive. (“Myth: The Tet Offensive Was a Communist Victory,” Myth The Tet Offensive Was a Communist Victory)

 

[whitehall]

Korea was a noble effort but it was based on an illegal Executive Order and mishandled to the point that even the fawning media had enough and refused to support Truman. Vietnam was a noble effort but it was based on a faked "crisis" and the rules were set by LBJ so that we could win every battle and still lose the war. Democrats managed to blame Nixon for the unfortunate adventure and the media went along with it.

 

[mikegriffith1]

During the Vietnam War, liberal members of Congress and the anti-war movement, often literally repeating Communist propaganda, portrayed American and South Vietnamese military actions as negatively as possible, regardless of the facts on the ground. One sad example of this is the battle for “Hamburger Hill.” To this day, liberal scholars repeat most of the wartime North Vietnamese and Soviet myths and distortions about this battle.

“Hamburger Hill” was assaulted and taken during Operation Apache Snow in May 1969 under the command of General Melvin Zais. “Hamburger Hill” was actually Ap Bia Mountain (Dong Ap Bia) in the vital A Shau Valley, and was designated Hill 937 during the operation. The following is typical of the inexcusable falsehood and distortion that one finds in liberal sources on the subject:

Though the heavily-fortified Hill 937, a ridge of the mountain Dong Ap Bia in central Vietnam near its western border with Laos, had little strategic value, US command ordered its capture by a frontal assault, only to abandon it soon thereafter.

First of all, Hill 937 had significant strategic value, which is why the North Vietnamese army (NVA/PAVN) occupied it and fought so hard to try to keep it. The NVA occupied it to try to prevent us from taking the crucial A Shau Valley.

Hill 937 provided a commanding position in the A Shau Valley. The A Shau Valley branched off the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was therefore a critical part of the NVA’s logistical network. The valley also provided a major avenue of approach for the NVA to assault Hue and other populated areas in the coastal lowlands. During the Tet Offensive, the NVA launched their attack on the city of Hue from the A Shau Valley. Another reason the valley was vital was that it was barely 3 miles from the border with Laos, where the NVA had sanctuaries with large bases.

Yes, we “abandoned” Hill 937 after we took it because we took the A Shau Valley and remained in the valley for nearly three years.

Our losses in Operation Apache Snow, which included the taking of Hill 937, were mild by any rational measurement, whereas the NVA regiment in the valley was destroyed as a fighting force. Out of the entire 1,800-man 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, 78 soldiers were killed in the operation, 47 to 56 of whom died in the taking of Hill 937, while the NVA had at least 600 soldiers killed. The NVA were usually fanatical about not leaving behind corpses, weapons, and supplies, but they were forced to flee with such haste that they left behind over 600 corpses and large amounts weapons and supplies.

Military historian Kelly Boian explains the importance of the A Shau Valley and the losses suffered in the operation to secure the valley, in his monograph “Major General Melvin Zais and Hamburger Hill,” published by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College:

Gen. William C. Westmoreland . . . was determined to deny the ability of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army from resupplying itself via the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. Key to removing this logistical superhighway was controlling the A Shau Valley, where the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had developed logistical bases. . . .

Gen. General Creighton Abrams . . . approved the 1969 XXIV Corps mission APACHE SNOW to prevent a potential North Vietnamese Army offensive as the enemy built up stockpiles of supplies in the A Shau Valley. . . .

The assault on Dong Ap Bia resulted in the death of approximately 600 North Vietnamese soldiers, and reports of another 1,100 enemy dead and wounded removed from the hill to Laos, or buried in collapsed tunnels and bunkers. For the Screaming Eagles [i.e., the 101st Airborne Division], 56 soldiers died, with another 367 soldiers wounded. General Zais had achieved his objective of wearing down the north’s 29th Regiment, having virtually wiped out the 7th and 8th battalions of the enemy. (pp. 24-25, 35, ADA569331.pdf (dtic.mil), emphasis added)

Yet, during this successful and important battle, Senator Ted Kennedy, displaying an inexcusable ignorance of the facts, called the battle “madness” and “senseless and irresponsible.” Similarly, most news outlets in the U.S. portrayed the battle as a costly, needless, and useless effort.

Boian discusses General Zais’s efforts to respond to the media’s warped coverage of the operation:

After operations at Dong Ap Bia, Zais interacted with the media to ensure the proper story of Dong Ap Bia was told. In his own words, General Zais stated, “I didn’t care about me, but I just thought that we had fought such a gallant and brilliant fight, and that Honeycutt had done well. For those men to think that it had all been a needless, suicidal attack just galled me, and that is why I was willing to talk to the television, radio, and newspaper people who obviously were aware of what Senator [Edward] Kennedy said and were clamoring to talk to me.”

General Zais learned that the media can be extremely critical, and later reflected in his retirement that the media could bolster the military, as occurred in World War II, or undermine it as Maj. Gen. Zais believed it did in Vietnam.

General Zais conducted his interaction with the media in a professional manner, even though he felt the media were ruining the war for the United States. General Zais commented later in his life that reporters covering the war in Vietnam were at a “D” grade level compared to the “A” grade level of reporters during World War II. Even when second-guessed about actions he directed, such as continuing the fight, or not pulling back and conducting strategic bombing on Hill 937, he swallowed his anger and calmly explained why certain actions had to be conducted. Zais emphasized the need to accomplish the mission accomplishment and to avoid losing contact with the enemy.

The media’s reporting on Hamburger Hill became one of the elements in increasing the unpopularity among Americans of the Vietnam War. Dong Ap Bia became another rallying point for anti-war protestors and political platforms for politicians to argue against continued U.S. involvement. Media on the battlefield continue to play a critical role in explaining military actions on the battlefield, and are another means of achieving strategic objectives as was evident when Presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler reinforced Zais’ message to the White House press corps 23 May 1969. The media will always be in the field to gather information for stories that sell best to the public. It is the job of leaders to ensure honest, truthful, and full aspects of the situation are highlighted, and to be forthcoming with any perceived negative actions. (pp. 37-38, ADA569331.pdf (dtic.mil))

If you want more information on “Hamburger Hill,” I recommend the video The Media Myth of Hamburger Hill, available on YouTube. Dr. Lewis Sorley provides a good scholarly analysis on the issue in his book A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (Mariner Books, 1999), pp. 138-141.

 

[Soupnazi630]

It was Vietnam before we divided it.
We also promised free elections that we reneged on when it became clear we would not win

Wrong it was always seperate kingdoms

French cololialism and japanese occupation forced them into being one territory

 

[whitehall]

Just when LBJ's insane agenda of wearing down a people who endured war for a thousand years seemed to be working after Tet, along came Walter Cronkite and pronounced the U.S. victory a "stalemate". Negative media reaction caused LBJ to give up the fight and announce that he would not be running for another term and it gave V.C. general Giap time to regroup.

 

[mikegriffith1]

In 1996, LCDR Nancy V. Kneipp wrote a superb project paper titled The Tet Offensive and the Principles of War for the Naval War College. Making good use of the North Vietnamese sources available at the time, Kneipp provided important insights about the events leading up to the Tet Offensive and the offensive itself. Let us consider some of those insights.

Kneipp noted that Hanoi’s leaders decided to launch the Tet Offensive because they perceived that the tide of the war was turning against them, that time was no longer on their side, and that their protracted guerilla-war strategy had to be abandoned because it had proved to be “unsuccessful”:

Until 1967, the North Vietnamese believed that victory in the South could be won using military dau tranh. The main debate was the type of armed struggle to be used. Most early activities used classic Maoist-style guerrilla warfare, concentrating on rural areas.

Things changed in 1967 for several reasons. Hanoi was surprised by the scope and pace of the U.S. buildup between 1965 and 1967. Allied search-and-destroy missions were disrupting logistics support to the People's Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) and National Liberation Front (NLF) forces, causing a significant decline in combat capability. Further, U.S. pacification efforts and South Vietnamese popular acceptance of the Americans contributed to a decline in NLF morale. By mid-1967, North Vietnamese leaders formally acknowledged that time was no longer on their side. The only hope for liberating the South was the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which, they agreed, would occur only when the cost of the war exceeded its benefits. Since the previous way of war had been unsuccessful, it was time for a change.

General Vo Nguyen Giap proposed a new direction, Tong Cong Kick, Tong Khoi Ngia (TCK-TKN)--General Offensive, General Uprising. (pp. 3-4)

Kneipp observed that the Hanoi regime launched the Tet Offensive based their belief that most South Vietnamese would rise up and aid Communist forces and that South Vietnam’s army (ARVN) would collapse when attacked, and based on their acceptance of erroneous status reports coming from the National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam:

It was widely believed in Hanoi that the South Vietnamese masses were ready to support the communists-they were so unhappy and disliked the Americans so much that they would overthrow the Thieu regime if given a little encouragement. They also believed that the GVN was on the verge of collapse; the ARVN was so inefficient it would disintegrate as a coherent military organization rather than fight; and attacks on Allied C3 systems would halt the American partnership in the war.

Additionally, the NLF claimed to have secret underground organizations in all communities in South Vietnam as well as control of four-fifths of the area; guerrilla units consistently submitted reports of the "vigorous movement in the South”; and urban cadres, wishing to keep their soft jobs and avoid the harsh guerrilla jungle life, consistently submitted enthusiastic progress reports-all were false. In other words, force planning for the Offensive was based on faulty assumptions and misinformation. Further, when Southern commanders, to their horror, were directed to prepare for TCK-TKN, they could not "lose face" by protesting or admitting the truth-they had to support the decision as best they could.

Similarly, for the plan to work, it was necessary for regular forces and local forces to coordinate closely. When effective coordination did not occur and local forces faced situations they could not handle alone, they were hesitant to report it to higher headquarters. As a result, the plan could not be effectively supported with available forces and readiness levels. From an economy of force perspective, the Offensive had little chance of success. (pp. 11-12)

Kneipp explained that Hanoi’s leaders made false assumptions about what Westmoreland would do as the date for the offensive neared. North Vietnamese army (NVA/PAVN) failed to communicate key information to some subordinate units, resulting in debacles such as the abortive attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon:

Even though intelligence collection and peripheral attacks provided insight into enemy intentions and although they were master manipulators and deceivers, the Communists fell into a "mirror imaging" trap. Although they accurately predicted the U.S. government and GVN [South Vietnam’s government] response to their extended truce proposal, they did not correctly assess the U.S. Army response. They expected that General Westmoreland and the U.S. Army to be controlled from Washington, to follow orders with virtually no deviation or independent thought. This was not the case; General Westmoreland was against the extended truce. In fact, he suggested the cease-fire be canceled altogether. Although the South Vietnamese refused to cancel it entirely, they did agree to shorten the period and to maintain ARVN units at half strength. As discussed above, this forced the Communists to change their plan, significantly reducing the effectiveness of their attacks. . . .

Although general operational objectives were stated, breakdowns often occurred at lower levels where troops were not privy to the "big picture." A typical example was the attack on the U.S. embassy. A small sapper unit penetrated the compound exterior wall and entered the compound, killing the duty MPs. Once inside, they stopped. Although there are no indications that this was to be a suicide raid, nothing had been said to them about replacements or an escape route. They carried enough explosives to blast their way into the Chancery building, but had no order to do so. Without specific orders or a clear mission, the sappers took up defensive positions and returned fire. Eventually all were killed or captured. (pp. 13-14)

Kneipp pointed out that many NVA soldiers were mere boys (some were as young as 14) and were less committed to Hanoi’s cause than other soldiers:

As in other wars of attrition, high Communist casualties had resulted in a force of young, inexperienced boys, many of whom were conscripted from rural areas. This created significant problems for the Communists. In addition to reduced readiness, these young soldiers were sometimes as fearful of the urban environment as they were of death. They were also much less committed to the Communist cause. The following account from a Saigon merchant is typical:

"I saw them right in my area.... About 10 to 15 of them ... were sitting together and eating and smoking. I saw they were very calm, and didn't show any signs of fear or fright at all, although ... there were some MPs and policemen surrounding the area.... They said that they had obeyed their superior's orders to come and take over Saigon and that they were not attacking anyone or doing any fighting at all. But if GVN [South Vietnamese government] forces hit them, they would fight back." (p. 15)

Kneipp noted that Hanoi severely underestimated how fiercely South Vietnamese soldiers would fight:

Hanoi seriously underestimated the resolve of the South to resist. Rather than the predicted passive response and quick surrender, South Vietnamese soldiers fought fiercely and effectively, beyond even the expectations of the U.S., eventually repelling the Communist advance. This situation was compounded by the last-minute change in execution date, making it difficult for NLF regulars and reserve forces to effectively respond to Allied counter-attacks. (p. 17)

Kneipp discussed the fact that Hanoi’s military leaders made a major blunder in their orders regarding when to begin the offensive, resulting in the loss of the element of surprise in many areas:

Although much effort had gone into detailed planning, there was a major execution problem in addition to those discussed above. In their haste to disseminate the new execution order, Communist leaders told their commands to attack on the first day of the Lunar New Year. However, Communist planners forgot that North and South Vietnam were using different calendars-this meant there were two execution dates. As a result, attacks did not begin simultaneously as planned. Those who started a day late faced troops who were already alerted. This significantly degraded the operation's overall effectiveness. (p. 18)

If you read liberal books on the Vietnam War, you will find they say little or nothing about this information. Liberal scholars are loathe to admit that the Tet Offensive was not only a military disaster but that it was an act of desperation because Hanoi realized time was no longer on their side. Liberal scholars also still insist on portraying South Vietnamese soldiers as being unwilling to fight and ineffective. And liberal scholars rarely admit that most South Vietnamese supported the Saigon regime, in spite of its many faults, because they knew that the Hanoi regime was much worse.