Great New Book on the Vietnam War

[whitehall]

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.

With all due respects, LCDR Nancy Kneipp's opinion of the Tet offensive seems to be at odds with reality. There might have been problems with the timing of the V.C. offensive but there was also problems with the communications network in the U.S. Military and the defensive strategy . The fact is that the V.C. was only able to achieve success in a guerilla or ambush strategy and was never able to defeat U.S. forces in a battle. Giap rolled the dice in a desperate all out offensive that he could only hope to influence anti-war factions in the U.S. but it didn't work until Cronkite came along.

 

[mikegriffith1]

With all due respects, LCDR Nancy Kneipp's opinion of the Tet offensive seems to be at odds with reality. There might have been problems with the timing of the V.C. offensive but there was also problems with the communications network in the U.S. Military and the defensive strategy . The fact is that the V.C. was only able to achieve success in a guerilla or ambush strategy and was never able to defeat U.S. forces in a battle. Giap rolled the dice in a desperate all out offensive that he could only hope to influence anti-war factions in the U.S. but it didn't work until Cronkite came along.

Her points are not at odds with reality, not at all, but are solidly grounded on a wide range of sources. I'm wondering if you read the whole post.

Anyway, a few more facts to get straight:

-- Following the end of WW II, the North Vietnamese Communists used intimidation, propaganda, and violence to consolidate their power in northern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh tasked General Giap, who was arguably one of the worst war criminals in world history, with the job of consolidating Vietminh power, and he did so with a “campaign of terror and intimidation” that resulted in the murder of several thousand people. Historian James Warren, who is no conservative and who adheres to the orthodox version of the war:

While negotiations stalled, Ho and Giap worked feverishly to consolidate their power as the only voice for the people of Vietnam. The task of neutralizing potential nationalist rivals fell to Giap. How could this task be accomplished? Through the tried-and-true Communist method: discredit, discourage, and eliminate rival parties through any means necessary. The chief rivals of the Vietminh were the VNQDD and the Dai Viet parties. Until spring 1946, they had been protected by the Chinese occupiers, who had hoped to use them for their own purposes. Now that their protectors had departed, Giap launched a vicious and decidedly effective campaign of terror and intimidation against these groups. Specially trained Vietminh security units—in effect, Giap’s secret police force—pounced on rival nationalist political figures and their chief adherents, killing several thousand and forcing others to flee north to China. The revitalization campaign cemented Giap’s growing reputation for ruthlessness in the quest to consolidate Communist power. In Giap’s eyes, dissenters, even if they were sincere patriots, were by definition traitors to be silenced for the good of the Revolution. (James Warren, Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013, p. 3)

Gee, could this be part of the reason that 2-3 million North Vietnamese tried to flee to South Vietnam during the open-borders period mandated by the Geneva Accords from July 1954 to May 1955? (Only about 1 million made it to South Vietnam because the Vietminh used violence, intimidation, and other coercive methods to prevent people from leaving.)

-- Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh by no means enjoyed universal support from the Vietnamese people when the Vietminh seized power after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, although they claimed to speak for all Vietnamese. In fact, there were large segments of the population, even in the North, that opposed the Vietminh (William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, Westview Press, 1981, pp. 96-102).

In August 1945, the Vietminh seized power in much of Vietnam, but certainly not most or all of Vietnam. Even then, their seizure of power was mostly the result of the chaos and confusion that reigned in the country after Japan’s surrender. The Vietminh’s authority in Vietnam was “shaky at best,” and most of their supporters did not yet realize that the Vietminh leaders were Communists, notes William Duiker, who spent years in Asia as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and later became a professor of East Asian Studies at Penn State University:

During two frenetic weeks in August the Communists, behind the mantle of the Vietminh Front, had seized political power in much Vietnam. To keep it, however, would be quite another matter, for their victory was more a consequence of the chaos at the end of the war and the temporary disorientation of their rivals than it was a testimony to their power and influence in Vietnam. . . .

Furthermore, the new government’s authority in Vietnam was shaky at best. Although the struggle that had led to the revolutionary takeover had been engineered by the Communists, they had seized power in the name of a board nationalist alliance linked to the Allies’ victory elsewhere in Asia. The Party itself was small. . . . The mass base of the Vietminh Front was broad but shallow, for the Communist coloration of the leadership was not as yet directly evident to the vast majority of supporters. (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 107)

-- Although North Vietnam put on a great public show of appearing to welcome the 1956 elections stipulated in the 1954 Geneva Accords, Vietminh Prime Minister Pham Van Dong confided to a foreign diplomat that “You know as well as I do that there won’t be elections” (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 172).

-- The North Vietnamese government’s “land reform” program in 1956 resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 peasants due to “drumhead trials” and “hasty executions,” notes military historian Phillip Davidson:

The program was carried out with excessive zeal and spread terror among the people with its irresponsible accusations, drumhead trials, and hasty executions in which 100,000 peasants were killed. It paralyzed agricultural production, which fell to disastrous levels. Since Ho Chi Minh and the Communist regime could not take responsibility for the failed program, Ho designated Chinh as the scapegoat and Giap as the “hatchet man” to chop him down publicly. (Phillip Davidson, Vietnam at War, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 10)

-- In his famous study on “democide” (murder committed by government) titled Statistics of Democide (University of Virginia, 1997), R. J. Rummel determined that North Vietnam killed approximately 216,000 people. Rummel discusses some of the war crimes that North Vietnamese forces and the Vietcong committed:

North Vietnamese troops or their guerrilla Viet Cong surely committed more democide than that for which I have been able to find estimates. Throughout the guerrilla period and during the war they shelled and attacked civilians in strategic hamlets and refugee camps, attacked refugees fleeing on the roads in order to create chaos, shelled civilians in most government-controlled cities and towns, and purposely mined and booby-trapped civilian areas (as of mining roads traveled by civilian buses). Moreover, thousands or tens of thousands were abducted to disappear forever, but are not included here under assassinations and executions. The sources give no estimates of these killings and to leave it at this would thus create a large hole in the total democide. Accordingly, I will assume that the additional deaths from these North Vietnam/Viet Cong atrocities and terror amounted to at least 200 a month over the twenty-one years from 1955 to the end of the war. This seems consistent with both sympathetic and unsympathetic descriptions of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tactics and actions during the war. (Chapter 6)

Rummel explains why he treats North Vietnam’s atrocities in South Vietnam was foreign democide:

As a result of the 1954 Geneva Agreements that formally ended the Indochina War, Vietnam was officially split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, all be it until Vietnam wide elections were to be held. As the possibility of these elections receded and both Hanoi and Saigon took on all the domestic and international functions of permanent governments, South Vietnam was also diplomatically recognized by a number of countries and carried out formal diplomatic interaction. Moreover, in the Paris Agreement of 1973 signed with the United States, North Vietnam officially recognized the sovereignty of South Vietnam. Thus North Vietnam's democide in South Vietnam is treated as foreign democide, not domestic. (Chapter 6)

-- The old Communist claim that the Vietnam War was really just a civil war and that we made things worse by intervening is so absurd that it does not deserve serious discussion. For one thing, this argument ignores the meaning of the term “civil war” itself. A civil war is when two factions fight for control of the same government and/or the same country. But South Vietnam never tried to conquer North Vietnam, nor did South Vietnam ever seek to take sole control of a national Vietnamese government, because there was no such government. There was no Vietnamese-run national government in Vietnam before the Vietnam War began, just as there was no Korean-run national government in Korea before the Korean War began. In both cases, the Communists claimed to run the only legitimate government in the country, but their claim was false and dishonest.

 

[whitehall]

Her points are not at odds with reality, not at all, but are solidly grounded on a wide range of sources. I'm wondering if you read the whole post.

Anyway, a few more facts to get straight:

-- Following the end of WW II, the North Vietnamese Communists used intimidation, propaganda, and violence to consolidate their power in northern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh tasked General Giap, who was arguably one of the worst war criminals in world history, with the job of consolidating Vietminh power, and he did so with a “campaign of terror and intimidation” that resulted in the murder of several thousand people. Historian James Warren, who is no conservative and who adheres to the orthodox version of the war:

While negotiations stalled, Ho and Giap worked feverishly to consolidate their power as the only voice for the people of Vietnam. The task of neutralizing potential nationalist rivals fell to Giap. How could this task be accomplished? Through the tried-and-true Communist method: discredit, discourage, and eliminate rival parties through any means necessary. The chief rivals of the Vietminh were the VNQDD and the Dai Viet parties. Until spring 1946, they had been protected by the Chinese occupiers, who had hoped to use them for their own purposes. Now that their protectors had departed, Giap launched a vicious and decidedly effective campaign of terror and intimidation against these groups. Specially trained Vietminh security units—in effect, Giap’s secret police force—pounced on rival nationalist political figures and their chief adherents, killing several thousand and forcing others to flee north to China. The revitalization campaign cemented Giap’s growing reputation for ruthlessness in the quest to consolidate Communist power. In Giap’s eyes, dissenters, even if they were sincere patriots, were by definition traitors to be silenced for the good of the Revolution. (James Warren, Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013, p. 3)

Gee, could this be part of the reason that 2-3 million North Vietnamese tried to flee to South Vietnam during the open-borders period mandated by the Geneva Accords from July 1954 to May 1955? (Only about 1 million made it to South Vietnam because the Vietminh used violence, intimidation, and other coercive methods to prevent people from leaving.)

-- Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh by no means enjoyed universal support from the Vietnamese people when the Vietminh seized power after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, although they claimed to speak for all Vietnamese. In fact, there were large segments of the population, even in the North, that opposed the Vietminh (William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, Westview Press, 1981, pp. 96-102).

In August 1945, the Vietminh seized power in much of Vietnam, but certainly not most or all of Vietnam. Even then, their seizure of power was mostly the result of the chaos and confusion that reigned in the country after Japan’s surrender. The Vietminh’s authority in Vietnam was “shaky at best,” and most of their supporters did not yet realize that the Vietminh leaders were Communists, notes William Duiker, who spent years in Asia as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and later became a professor of East Asian Studies at Penn State University:

During two frenetic weeks in August the Communists, behind the mantle of the Vietminh Front, had seized political power in much Vietnam. To keep it, however, would be quite another matter, for their victory was more a consequence of the chaos at the end of the war and the temporary disorientation of their rivals than it was a testimony to their power and influence in Vietnam. . . .

Furthermore, the new government’s authority in Vietnam was shaky at best. Although the struggle that had led to the revolutionary takeover had been engineered by the Communists, they had seized power in the name of a board nationalist alliance linked to the Allies’ victory elsewhere in Asia. The Party itself was small. . . . The mass base of the Vietminh Front was broad but shallow, for the Communist coloration of the leadership was not as yet directly evident to the vast majority of supporters. (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 107)

-- Although North Vietnam put on a great public show of appearing to welcome the 1956 elections stipulated in the 1954 Geneva Accords, Vietminh Prime Minister Pham Van Dong confided to a foreign diplomat that “You know as well as I do that there won’t be elections” (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 172).

-- The North Vietnamese government’s “land reform” program in 1956 resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 peasants due to “drumhead trials” and “hasty executions,” notes military historian Phillip Davidson:

The program was carried out with excessive zeal and spread terror among the people with its irresponsible accusations, drumhead trials, and hasty executions in which 100,000 peasants were killed. It paralyzed agricultural production, which fell to disastrous levels. Since Ho Chi Minh and the Communist regime could not take responsibility for the failed program, Ho designated Chinh as the scapegoat and Giap as the “hatchet man” to chop him down publicly. (Phillip Davidson, Vietnam at War, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 10)

-- In his famous study on “democide” (murder committed by government) titled Statistics of Democide (University of Virginia, 1997), R. J. Rummel determined that North Vietnam killed approximately 216,000 people. Rummel discusses some of the war crimes that North Vietnamese forces and the Vietcong committed:

North Vietnamese troops or their guerrilla Viet Cong surely committed more democide than that for which I have been able to find estimates. Throughout the guerrilla period and during the war they shelled and attacked civilians in strategic hamlets and refugee camps, attacked refugees fleeing on the roads in order to create chaos, shelled civilians in most government-controlled cities and towns, and purposely mined and booby-trapped civilian areas (as of mining roads traveled by civilian buses). Moreover, thousands or tens of thousands were abducted to disappear forever, but are not included here under assassinations and executions. The sources give no estimates of these killings and to leave it at this would thus create a large hole in the total democide. Accordingly, I will assume that the additional deaths from these North Vietnam/Viet Cong atrocities and terror amounted to at least 200 a month over the twenty-one years from 1955 to the end of the war. This seems consistent with both sympathetic and unsympathetic descriptions of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tactics and actions during the war. (Chapter 6)

Rummel explains why he treats North Vietnam’s atrocities in South Vietnam was foreign democide:

As a result of the 1954 Geneva Agreements that formally ended the Indochina War, Vietnam was officially split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, all be it until Vietnam wide elections were to be held. As the possibility of these elections receded and both Hanoi and Saigon took on all the domestic and international functions of permanent governments, South Vietnam was also diplomatically recognized by a number of countries and carried out formal diplomatic interaction. Moreover, in the Paris Agreement of 1973 signed with the United States, North Vietnam officially recognized the sovereignty of South Vietnam. Thus North Vietnam's democide in South Vietnam is treated as foreign democide, not domestic. (Chapter 6)

-- The old Communist claim that the Vietnam War was really just a civil war and that we made things worse by intervening is so absurd that it does not deserve serious discussion. For one thing, this argument ignores the meaning of the term “civil war” itself. A civil war is when two factions fight for control of the same government and/or the same country. But South Vietnam never tried to conquer North Vietnam, nor did South Vietnam ever seek to take sole control of a national Vietnamese government, because there was no such government. There was no Vietnamese-run national government in Vietnam before the Vietnam War began, just as there was no Korean-run national government in Korea before the Korean War began. In both cases, the Communists claimed to run the only legitimate government in the country, but their claim was false and dishonest.

Lots of information about the V.C. but it was LBJ's war and LBJ was guilty of stolen valor by recommending himself for a Silver Star for a trivial experience in WW2 and he set the rules so that the U.S. could win every battle and still lose the war. The dirty little secret was that CIA clerks and "analysts" with no combat experience were in charge of military strategy while the generals were bypassed. In G.I. terms the Vietnam adventure was a clusterfuck from the git-go.

 

[Mushroom]

LBJ was guilty of stolen valor by recommending himself for a Silver Star for a trivial experience in WW2

Once again, he did not recommend himself. General MacArthur recommended him for it. Just as he recommended the Distinguishing Service Cross to Lt. Col. Francis Stevens, another member of the inspection team.

 

[whitehall]

Once again, he did not recommend himself. General MacArthur recommended him for it. Just as he recommended the Distinguishing Service Cross to Lt. Col. Francis Stevens, another member of the inspection team.

Are we to believe that MacArthur was so concerned about young Lyndon Johnson's seat in a transport plane that he took time off in his military strategy to recommend him for a Star? The likely scenario is that Mac had a subordinate sign the recommendation, along with hundreds of others, that was drawn up by the young LBJ.

 

[Mushroom]

Are we to believe that MacArthur was so concerned about young Lyndon Johnson's seat in a transport plane that he took time off in his military strategy to recommend him for a Star?

No, not at all.

Lyndon Johnson was a Congressman, and a rather prestigious one. A protégé of FDR, he had already conducted a fact finding mission for the Secretary of the Navy on the West Coast when FDR tasked him with a similar mission to the Pacific. Mac knew he was a Congressman, and had the ear of the President.

Max was known to have used awards as a way to curry political favor. He himself is known to have placed a great deal into awards, as among his were seven Silver Stars he earned in WWI.

 

[DudleySmith]

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

I remember 1968, when the VC were crushed and never a viable force after that, the NVA had to take over, and the commies and UN did nothing about the illegal conduct of their actions. You have company on the Right, though, like the same morons who bash FDR for winning WW II also bash LBJ's winning policy of escalation.

 

[DudleySmith]

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.

What was 'insane' about LBJ's 'agenda'? That it was what crushed the VC, pissing off isolationists and assorted GOP hacks?

LBJ played a major role in making many New Deal policies work successfully in Texas, Washington state, and some other places, so naturally he has to be smeared by GOP shills, same as Roosevelt.

 

[DudleySmith]

Not all VC were Reds; many of the cells in the Mekong Delta remained an independent resistance to the Communist takeover even after the 1975 collapse. Of course they couldn't hold out for long without outside support and were finally dissolved around 1980. The North continued to recieve support from the Soviets and Red Chinese aftere we shamefully cut them off, which is the only way they could win.

 

[whitehall]

No, not at all.

Lyndon Johnson was a Congressman, and a rather prestigious one. A protégé of FDR, he had already conducted a fact finding mission for the Secretary of the Navy on the West Coast when FDR tasked him with a similar mission to the Pacific. Mac knew he was a Congressman, and had the ear of the President.

Max was known to have used awards as a way to curry political favor. He himself is known to have placed a great deal into awards, as among his were seven Silver Stars he earned in WWI.

Good point. Nothing better for a career politician than a Silver Star and Mac was well aware of it.

 

[Mushroom]

Good point. Nothing better for a career politician than a Silver Star and Mac was well aware of it.

And Mac was well known as being one of the most "political" high ranking officers before, during, and after WWII. He would use absolutely anything in order to get things he thought were important listened to by the decision makers. And in that case, that meant FDR. General Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff hated his guts so he could not even rely on his own service to forward his wishes.

LBJ was at that time just one of many Congressmen that had put on the uniform. If he had been a Republican or not on a mission for the President, I can promise he never would have gotten that award. If he was a former Congressman that had stepped down to put on the uniform and was then just a Major who was a pilot of said aircraft, he would not have gotten that award. But he was a mid-ranking Congressman and Navy Officer who just happened to report directly to the President himself. And was part of the "Democratic Inner Circle" of the President.

And remember, he himself was badly out of touch with the US political scene by that time. He had left the US in 1935, and the closest he would get to "returning to the US" was in 1944 when he was summoned to meet FDR in Hawaii (where he went under protest). He would not return to the US until 1951, after he was relieved in Korea. The man literally spent 16 years outside of the US, and the closest he returned was to a US Territory 9 years into that 16 years away.

Myself, I am often amazed at how out of touch the old General was. He even tried to run for President in 1948, from Japan. His own son never set foot in the US until he was 13 years old (Arthur MacArthur IV was born in the Philippines in 1938). He even thought that in 1951 he had a good chance of becoming President as he expected Ike and Robert Taft to become deadlocked, and the Republicans would turn to him to lead a "Coalition Ticket". Which once again shows how out of touch he was. He got 10 votes in the first ballot to Ike's 595 and Taft's 500. Ike took it on the second ballot, and 6 of Mac's 10 supporters defected to Ike.

And when Ike won the Presidency that year, Mac's comment was that Ike was "the best clerk that ever worked for him".

No, I believe that medal was entirely Mac's idea, and it is typical of him attempting to curry favor of those who had the ear of the President. He was badly out of touch after almost seven years out of the political circles, and was trying anything he could think of to worm his way back in.

 

[mikegriffith1]

When the pro-communist Cambodian regime had the nerve to complain after South Vietnamese forces crossed the Cambodian border to pursue Vietcong fighters in 1964, none other than Adlai Stevenson, a former two-time Democratic presidential nominee and our UN ambassador at the time, delivered a stinging response before the UN Security Council. Stevenson pointed out that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that South Vietnam was the victim, that the war was no civil war, that Communist China was backing North Vietnam’s aggression, that the Vietcong were controlled by Hanoi, and that the Vietcong’s type of warfare was “as dirty as any waged against an innocent and peaceful people in the whole cruel history of warfare”:

It is the people of the Republic of Vietnam [i.e., South Vietnam] who are the major victims on armed aggression. It is they who are fighting for their independence against violence directed from outside their borders. It is they who suffer day and night from the terror of the so-called Viet Cong. The prime targets of the Viet Cong for kidnapping, for torture, and for murder have been local officials, school teachers, medical workers, priests, agricultural specialists, and any others whose position, profession, or other talents qualified them for service to the people of Vietnam--plus, of course, the relatives and children of citizens loyal to their government.

The chosen military objectives of the Viet Cong--for gunfire or arson or pillage--have been hospitals, school houses, agricultural stations, and various improvement projects by which the Government of Vietnam for many years has been raising the living standards of the people. The government and people of Vietnam have been struggling for survival, struggling for years for survival in a war which has been as wicked, as wanton, and as dirty as any waged against an innocent and peaceful people in the whole cruel history of warfare. . . .

The United States Government is currently involved in the affairs of the Republic of Vietnam for one reason and one reason only: because the Republic of Vietnam requested the help of the United States and of other governments to defend itself against armed attack fomented, equipped, and directed from the outside. . . .

Aggression is aggression; organized violence is organized violence. Only the scale and the scenery change: the point is the same in Vietnam today as it was in Greece in 1947 and in Korea in 1950. The Indochinese Communist Party, the parent of the present Communist Party in North Vietnam, made it abundantly clear as early as 1951 that the aim of the Vietnamese Communist leadership is to take control of all of Indochina. This goal has not changed--it is still clearly the objective of the Vietnamese Communist leadership in Hanoi.

Hanoi seeks to accomplish this purpose in South Vietnam through subversive guerrilla directed, controlled, and supplied by North Vietnam. The Communist leadership in Hanoi has sought to pretend that the insurgency in South Vietnam is a civil war, but Hanoi's hand shows very clearly. Public statements by the Communist Party in North Vietnam and its leaders have repeatedly demonstrated Hanoi’s direction of the struggle in South Vietnam. . . .

The International Control Commission in Vietnam, established by the Geneva Accords in 1954, stated in a special report which it issued in June 1962, that there is sufficient evidence to show that North Vietnam has violated various articles of the Geneva Accords by its introduction of armed personnel, arms, munitions, and other supplies from North Vietnam into South Vietnam with the object of supporting, organizing, and carrying out hostile activities against the Government and armed forces of South Vietnam.

Infiltration of military personnel and supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam has been carried out steadily over the past several years. The total number of military cadres sent into South Vietnam via infiltration routes runs into the thousands. Such infiltration is well documented on the basis of numerous defectors and prisoners taken by the armed forces of South Vietnam.

Introduction of Communist weapons into South Vietnam has also grown steadily. An increasing amount of weapons and ammunition captured from the Viet Cong has been proven to be of Chinese Communist manufacture or origin. For example, in December 1963, a large cache of Viet Cong equipment captured in one of the Mekong Delta provinces in South Vietnam included recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, carbines, and ammunition of Chinese Communist manufacture.

The United States cannot stand by while Southeast Asia is overrun by armed aggressors. (hd11_vietnam25.pdf (ku.edu)).

Amen. Amen. And Amen.

 

[mikegriffith1]

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

Sigh. . . . Just sigh. . . . One, you only know what liberal sources tell you. Two, you won't read anything that disagrees with what you already want to believe. Three, we've known for many years now that Mao let Washington know early in LBJ's second term that China would not enter the war unless Chinese territory were attacked.

We can just thank God that the same 1960s and 1970s liberals who betrayed South Vietnam and its 18 million people to communism in the Vietnam War were not around to betray South Korea in the Korean War. Virtually every criticism that you can make against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War. The big difference was that in the Korean War, most liberals were not willing to aid the Communists and smear our war effort and the South Korean government.

 

[there4eyeM]

The U.S. wasted lives, treasure, time and political capital through lack of foresight and understanding. The Vietnamese just wasted lives and time. That is pretty much the difference between the two sides' foolishness.

 

[mikegriffith1]

In previous replies, I’ve mentioned some of the evidence that has emerged from North Vietnamese sources. I’ve also mentioned that liberal scholars on the Vietnam War ignore this evidence because it has proved highly embarrassing and problematic for the liberal version of the war. In contrast, conservative scholars on the war, including Mark Moyar, George Veith, Geoffrey Shaw, and Dale Walton, have made extensive use of this important evidence. Let us take a closer look at what this evidence has revealed.

First off, where does this evidence come from? Some of it comes from the numerous volumes of internal North Vietnamese government documents that the government of Vietnam released in 2005 to mark the 30th anniversary of the communist victory. These documents include memos between the leaders in Hanoi and North Vietnamese army (NVA) commanders. Another part of this evidence comes from memoirs written by North Vietnamese civilian officials, NVA officers, and Vietcong (VC) officers and officials. Many of these memoirs were not available in English until the 1990s and early 2000s.

Here is some of what we have learned from North Vietnamese sources:

-- Hanoi’s leaders were pleasantly surprised that the American anti-war movement and news media would uncritically repeat communist propaganda, such as North Vietnam’s false claims that the Thieu government was holding 200,000 political prisoners and that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN—read as “Ar-vin”) was engaging in widespread abuse of NVA and VC POWs.

-- When President Thieu released 37,000 NVA/VC POWs, they were generally healthy, unlike most of the few thousand ARVN POWs who were released by the NVA. In fact, the NVA/VC POWs were in such good condition that the NVA quickly put them back into active service.

-- The Hanoi regime did all they could to covertly support and encourage the American and European anti-war movements. (We know from released Soviet records and disclosures that the KGB did the same thing.)

-- Hanoi’s leaders viewed Ngo Dinh Diem as a mortal enemy because he enjoyed considerable support from the general public in the South and because even a sizable portion of the North’s general public viewed him favorably.

-- North Vietnamese agents infiltrated the Buddhist community in South Vietnam and led some Buddhists to engage in agitation against the Diem government. The Buddhists who burned themselves alive in public did so at the behest of communist agents in an effort to damage Diem’s credibility.

-- Hanoi believed it was important to infiltrate the Buddhist community in the South because Diem was actually reaching out to Buddhists and was even allocating funds to rebuild Buddhist places of worship.

-- North Vietnamese agents regularly fed propaganda stories to American journalists in Saigon, including Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam, and those journalists usually repeated them (they didn’t realize that their sources were communist agents). Some of those false stories involved the treatment of the Buddhists, the nature of the Buddhist protest movement, ARVN, and South Vietnam’s government.

-- None other than General Giap himself opposed the 1968 Tet Offensive and the 1972 Spring Offensive (aka the Easter Offensive). He opposed both offensives because he felt it was a grave mistake to engage the Americans in a large set-piece battle.

-- Hanoi’s leaders were astounded that the American news media was describing the Tet Offensive as an American defeat. After the catastrophic losses that the NVA and the VC suffered during Tet, Hanoi’s leaders admitted among themselves that the offensive had been a military disaster, but they were greatly encouraged by the American news media’s coverage of the offensive and by the impact that this coverage had in the U.S.

-- Hanoi’s leaders were shocked and dismayed when most South Vietnamese stood by the Saigon government and refused to support the Communists during the Tet Offensive, especially during the initial phase of the offensive when the communists were able to capture a number of cities. Hanoi’s leaders had truly believed that most of South Vietnam’s population would rise up in revolt against Saigon once the NVA and the VC launched the Tet Offensive.

-- The NVA hoped to capture the American base at Khe Sanh. They hoped that the fall of Khe Sanh would have the same devastating impact on the American government that the fall of Dien Bien Phu had had on the French government. (As it turned out, Giap’s forces at Khe Sanh suffered severe losses, were never able to shut down the airfield, were never able to take any of the high ground around the base, were chronically low on food because most of their supply lines were cut, and were forced to flee in desperation by the surprise American counterattack.)

-- Hanoi’s leaders were puzzled and pleasantly surprised by the Johnson administration’s “gradual escalation” bombing strategy. This strategy (which even the level-headed and temperate Colin Powell later called “a disaster”) left numerous crucial targets and entire areas untouched, literally untouched. Hanoi’s leaders were downright puzzled by the strategy. They were only too happy to take full advantage of the strategy by placing airfields, weapons depots, and bases in the areas that they quickly realized were “prohibited areas” for American air raids.

-- The VC were entirely controlled by the NVA. COSVN was nothing more than an extension of the NVA command structure.

-- The Hanoi regime hoped that George McGovern would win the 1972 presidential election.

-- The Hanoi regime wanted a coalition government because they intended to use it to take full control and planned on destroying the coalition government once they had seized power in the South. (Similarly, after Saigon fell, the Hanoi regime broke its repeated promises to the NLF and the PRG about power-sharing and imposed communist rule on the South led by North Vietnamese communists.)

-- Although Hanoi’s propaganda machine portrayed ARVN as an inept, unwilling army of stooges, the NVA knew that, on balance, ARVN was actually a formidable fighting force.

-- Soviet and Chinese military aid, especially Soviet aid, was absolutely crucial. Without that aid, North Vietnam would not and could not have waged war.

-- The NVA suffered such heavy losses in manpower, armor, and artillery during the 1972 Spring Offensive that massive Soviet military aid was required before the NVA could launch another large-scale operation.

-- The December 1972 Operation Linebacker II air raids “overwhelmed” Hanoi’s air defenses. The damage and losses that the North Vietnamese were suffering from Linebacker II were “unsustainable.” During periods of the operation, the NVA actually ran out of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). (Without SAMs, Hanoi was defenseless against B-52 attacks. B-52s flew too high to be hit by anti-aircraft guns. The only way to shoot down B-52s was with SAMs.) Linebacker II caused panic and desperation among Hanoi’s leaders, which is why they were so worried about the return of American air power after the Paris Peace Accords.

-- Hanoi’s leaders decided they could safely brazenly violate the Paris Peace Accords once they realized that the U.S. Congress would not allow Nixon/Ford to intervene to defend South Vietnam. However, before they came to this realization, given the devastating effects of the Operation Linebacker II bombing raids, Hanoi’s leaders were deathly afraid of doing anything that would provoke the U.S. to carry out more air raids like Linebacker II.

-- After the NVA conquered South Vietnam, the Communists imposed a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese that included executing tens of thousands of “traitors” and “collaborators” and sending 1-2 million people to brutal “reeducation” camps.

-- Ho Chi Minh was an ardent, hardcore Communist and a long-time tool of the Soviet and Chinese governments. He had no intention of ever being a U.S. ally. He deeply admired the Soviet Union and later Maoist China and firmly intended to remain in the Communist orbit. Ho was trained in the Soviet Union. The Soviets tasked Ho in 1924 to organize Vietnamese emigrants and other Asians in Canton into revolutionaries. In 1939, the Soviets sent Ho to Hong Kong to combine two factions of Vietnamese communists into a single group.

-- In the early phase of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh told the Chinese government that the Vietminh cause was hopeless without large-scale Chinese intervention.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Lots of information about the V.C. but it was LBJ's war and LBJ was guilty of stolen valor by recommending himself for a Silver Star for a trivial experience in WW2 and he set the rules so that the U.S. could win every battle and still lose the war. The dirty little secret was that CIA clerks and "analysts" with no combat experience were in charge of military strategy while the generals were bypassed. In G.I. terms the Vietnam adventure was a *($^* from the git-go.

Actually, LBJ and McNamara ignored most of the CIA's recommendations regarding our operations in the Vietnam War. For example, the CIA recommended that we mine Haiphong Harbor, since North Vietnam got the bulk of its weapons and supplies through that harbor, but LBJ and McNamara refused, citing their idiotic fear that this would prompt Chinese entrance into the war ala the Korean War.

When Nixon finally mined Haiphong Harbor, and other harbors, and began bombing key logistical targets in North Vietnam for just six months in Operations Linebacker I and II, North Vietnam's flow of weapons and supplies was cut by nearly 80%--and China did not enter the war.

If we had carried out a similar operation for seven or eight or nine months, North Vietnam would have been rendered practically toothless and unable to wage aggressive war. At any 7-9-month period during the war, we could have won the war by conducting such an operation, saving tens of thousands of lives, but LBJ and McNamara refused to do so.

 

[Moonglow]

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.

A lot of people died in that war over a future to freely sell blue jeans on the open market.

 

[konradv]

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.

I turned against the war when I realized we’d been at it longer than WWII. Regardless of right or wrong, I felt it was being mismanaged and just wanted the men home.

BTW, I never spit on anyone and feel that story has become bigger than the actual events.

 

[mikegriffith1]

We can learn much about the Vietnam War, and about the brutality that North Vietnam imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, from a book written by a former high-ranking Viet Cong leader: A Viet Cong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1985), written by Truong Nhu Tang. Tang was a high-ranking Viet Cong official and served as a leader in the National Liberation Front and as the minister of justice in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG).

When Tang could no longer stomach the “reign of terror” (his words) that the North Vietnamese communists were imposing on the South, and when he realized that his protests against the brutality were pointless, he quit his position as the PRG minister of justice and eventually fled the country.

What makes Tang’s book so important, and at times so annoying, is that he never stopped believing in the justice of the Viet Cong cause, and that he remained an admirer of Ho Chi Minh for many years after he fled the country. He had met Ho Chi Minh as a young student in Paris and was mesmerized by him. Only years later, long after he left the country, was Tang able to bring himself to acknowledge the ugly truth about Ho Chi Minh, such as the mass executions and bloody purges that Ho carried out in the late 1950s in North Vietnam (pp. 298-302).

Here are some of things we learn from Tang’s book:

-- The North Vietnamese imposed a “reign of terror” on the South that included “outrages of every description” (pp. 280-281).

-- These outrages caused Tang to realize that North Vietnam’s communists were not interested in a genuine national unity government but in “the ruthless consolidation of power” (p. 281).

-- Tang said the communist terror included “a wave of arbitrary arrests that scythed [slashed] through the cities and villages” (p. 279).

-- Tang said that at least 300,000 people were put into the camps, and he noted that this figure only counted the number of former government officers, state officials, and members of South Vietnam’s political party who were formally summoned for reeducation (p. 282). He added,

This figure does not include people who were arrested in the sweeps by governmental organs and military authorities that terrorized both Saigon and the provinces during that period. (p. 282)

-- The “reeducation” camps were “vicious” and “destructive” (p. 274). Tang complained about the camps to the PRG president, Huynh Tan Phat, but was told that the camps were necessary and would continue (pp. 274-276). He even complained about the camps directly to North Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Van Dong, but to no avail (pp. 280-282).

-- One reason Tang was so upset about the camps was that he had personally persuaded many former South Vietnamese officials, functionaries, and professionals to report to the camps on the basis of North Vietnam’s and the PRG’s assurances that they would only be there for 30 days (pp. 277-279). He even persuaded two of his own brothers, Bich and Quyhn, to report to the camps on the same assurance.

-- When Tang saw his brothers at the Long Thanh detention camp, he was distrubed that they were “pale and thin” and looked “frightened,” and that the other prisoners looked “dazed” (p. 279). (Tang was eventually able to get Bich released, but Quyhn spent another 10 years in the camps. Quyhn’s “crime” was that he was a doctor who had attended a political gathering that the communists did not like.)

-- Another reason that Tang became increasingly troubled and distraught over the detention camps was that the former officials, functionaries, and professionals whom he had persuaded to report to the camps were not released after one month or even after one year, and he was ashamed that “this all happened during my tenure as minister of justice” (p. 282).

-- Even over a year after Saigon’s fall, communist brutality against the South Vietnamese continued:

Over a year had passed since the intentional sabotage of our reconciliation policy, and still the wave of official terror continued to swell. (p 287)

-- Tang felt terrible that he had convinced his family, all of whom lived in Saigon, that life under communist rule would be better than life under the Diem and Thieu governments. His own mother and his friends confronted him on the matter:

[His mother asked him] What had possessed me to inflict this misery on my family and my people? “Your Communist friends are full of double-talk—lies and violence.”

She had applauded the liberation of Saigon in April 1975, but in the intervening year her sympathy for the revolution had turned to repugnance.

My mother’s feelings were hardly unique. Talk about what was happening enveloped Saigon. And among my friends, much of it seemed directed at me. [Said his friends,] “At least under Diem and Thieu there was honor among thieves. But these [Communist] Party people are wolfing everything in sight.”

“Do you think it was such a wonderful idea to chase the Americans out? At least when the Americans were here, we had food. Now what do we have?” (pp. 287-288)

-- The mid-1973 Case-Church Amendment, which effectively assured North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of South Vietnam, played a key role in North Vietnam’s decision to resume military operations against the South, in violation of the recently signed Paris Peace Accords (p. 229). Hanoi’s leaders followed U.S. Congressional debates very closely (pp. 229-231).

-- However, the communists initially resumed their attacks on South Vietnam in a limited manner because they were not certain to what extent the Case-Church Amendment “might actually control American conduct, especially if there were to be a major escalation in the level of fighting” (pp. 229-230). The North Vietnamese were particularly worried about “the return of American air power” (p. 230).

-- Once it became apparent that the U.S. Congress would not authorize further military operations to protect South Vietnam, the communists decided to launch a full-scale assault on the South (pp. 230-240, 248-257).

-- Tang spends considerable time talking about how pleased North Vietnam was with the American news media and the American anti-war movement, and the fact that the communists viewed our news media and the anti-war movement as valuable allies (e.g., pp. 145-148, 207-216, 282-286).

-- The 1968 Tet Offensive was a military disaster. The communists “suffered agonizing and irreplaceable losses during the frontal assaults of Tet” (p. 192). It took the communists about two years to recover from the losses they incurred during the Tet Offensive (p. 204).

-- Tang deeply regretted the Hue Massacre committed by communist forces shortly before they retreated from the city toward the close of the fighting of the Tet Offensive (pp. 154-156).

-- In the 1972 Spring Offensive (aka the Easter Offensive), the communists suffered “prodigious” losses (pp. 211-212).

-- The communists were thrilled and grateful when the U.S. Congress “prohibited funds for American operations in Cambodia and Laos” after the highly effective U.S. attacks on North Vietnamese forces and bases in eastern Cambodia and Laos (p. 211).

-- North Vietnam’s bases in Cambodia and Laos were absolutely crucial supply points and staging areas for the communist war effort against South Vietnam (pp. 159-170). When Nixon authorized attacks on those bases, the attacks caused great damage and were very concerning to Hanoi (pp. 170-173, 179-184). (No wonder North Vietnam was so happy when our Democrat-controlled Congress forbade further attacks on those bases.)

-- The Soviet Union began supporting North Vietnam’s communists in 1948, and when China fell to the communists in 1949, this enabled Russia and Red China to begin supplying large amounts of weapons to Ho Chi Minh’s forces (pp. 25-34).

-- The B-52 attacks authorized by Nixon did severe damage and caused many troop casualties. However, assistance from Soviet intelligence prevented the B-52 attacks from being even more damaging. Soviet intelligence ships in the South China Sea provided advance warning of approaching B-52 raids in many cases (pp. 168-170).

-- Before the last phase of the final offensive against South Vietnam, the Soviets supplied North Vietnam’s army with enormous amounts of weapons and supplies. This massive injection of war material “altered the balance of military forces” in favor of the communists (pp. 232, 250-251). This was happening at the same time our Democrat-controlled Congress refused to honor our Paris treaty commitment to resupply South Vietnam’s army if the North invaded.

-- The North Vietnamese attacked and seized the key southern province of Phuoc Long in January 1975 and were “jubilant” that the U.S. did not respond (p. 250). The fact that the U.S. did not respond to the attack on a key province that bordered Saigon was a clear signal that the communists had nothing to worry about from the U.S.

-- South Vietnam’s shortage of supplies, especially fuel, was a major disadvantage in the final months of the war (pp. 229-232, 248-253).

-- When the Americans left Cambodia, this enabled the murderous Khmer Rouge to take over that country (pp. 176-181, 254-255).


Finally, it is important to keep in mind that Tang was a genuinely moderate member of the National Liberation Front (NFL) and of the PRG. He admired Marx and Lenin, but he was not a hardcore communist. He believed Hanoi’s promises that under communist rule, the southern part of Vietnam would be allowed to form its own regional government that would be part of a national unity government, and that the southern region would have a genuine voice and influence on national policy. It is surprising how many times in his book Tang tacitly and overtly acknowledges that there were significant long-standing differences between northern Vietnam and southern Vietnam. He was shocked and disillusioned when he realized that North Vietnam had no intention of keeping its promises to the NLF and the PRG regarding a degree of autonomy and self-rule for the South, and he was furious over the brutality that the communists inflicted on the South.