A rchive Date
[ 10-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[America's day of dishonour
War is hell. When you lose, it's even worse
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
April 30, 2000
NEW YORK -- Twenty five years ago today, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, ending the 30-year struggle for Vietnam. First France, then America, the world's greatest power, had been defeated by North Vietnam, a backward but fierce Asian nation of 25 million people.
The only thing worse and more wasteful than war is a lost war.
Vietnam was the first war America had lost since its invasion of Canada failed in the War of 1812. With the shame of defeat came national dishonour: America had thrown its faithful allies in Indochina to the wolves. April 30, 1975 was probably the lowest point in America's history.
With the wisdom of hindsight, it's clear America's involvement in the long Vietnam war was a disastrous error. But at the time - the tense Cold War days of the early 1960s - U.S. military intervention in Indochina made sense.
Two aggressive, allied Communist powers, the U.S.S.R. and China, had armed North Vietnam to the teeth and were using it to expand their influence in Southeast Asia. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all feared the "domino effect": if South Vietnam fell, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Indonesia, South Korea - even India and Japan - could be next. And after that, Berlin or the Mideast.
I enlisted in the U.S. Army in June, 1967, as America's military involvement in the Indochina war was surging, because I believed - and still believe - the ancient credo of the Roman Republic: it is the duty of every male citizen of a democracy to serve in the military. I could have taken advantage of the unfair system of student deferments by doing a PhD at Cambridge, but I chose to volunteer for infantry service in Vietnam. Thirty-three years later, I remain prouder of my Regular Army serial number, RA 11824792, than any PhD.
But by then, the war was already lost, thanks in large part to Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara. This grand architect of disaster misled both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and plunged the U.S. ever deeper into the Vietnam quagmire. McNamara authored the self-defeating policy of "gradual escalation," convinced he could slowly punish North Vietnam into ending the war.
The arrogant McNamara violated every rule of war. He refused to listen to his military advisers who had warned against massive intervention and gradualism and totally misjudged the enemy. McNamara proved war is too important to be left to civilians.
While the U.S. lacked clear strategy, the ruthless Communist regime in Hanoi was determined to conquer South Vietnam, no matter the human or material cost. The North's combined civilian-military leadership under Ho Chi Minh and the brilliant Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap was able to wage war on three distinct levels: tactical, strategic and informational.
Vietnam was the first televised war, a fact grasped by North Vietnam far sooner than by Washington. Thanks to McNamara's ineptitude, the war turned into an aimless, fluid conflict of skirmishes and occasional indecisive battles. Increasingly disgusted Americans saw this ugly war on TV and watched the body bags come home.
The government failed to make Americans understand why young men, most from the working class, were being drafted and sent to war. Many Canadians, however, did understand. In fact, more Canadians served in the U.S. armed forces during Vietnam than the number of Americans who fled to Canada to dodge the draft. Their heroic story remains untold. The Canadian government refuses to honour their memory.
The liberal media, academia and Hollywood stars like Jane Fonda amplified Hanoi's psychological war effort, helping turn Americans against the war. While walking in Boston in uniform, I was spat on by women and called "baby killer." At the same time, a draft dodger who was later to become president of the United States was hiding out in England while far better Americans were dying in Vietnam.
As the media war was being lost, North Vietnam, massively aided by the U.S.S.R. and China, intensified the ground war. The Communist Vietcong and Northern regulars were extremely brave, resolute and resourceful fighters. Driven by nationalist passions, and Communist discipline, they proved a match for American firepower. The U.S. inflicted enormous destruction on Vietnam, including defoliation of vast areas with the toxic Agent Orange, and heavy losses on the enemy, but it could not win a decisive victory.
At peak deployment, the U.S. had 550,000 soldiers in Vietnam. But of these, only a feeble 10%, or 55,000, were combat units fighting in the field. The rest were rear-area support troops who rarely saw action. The 350,000 Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars in the South, backed by a million transport troops, far outnumbered U.S. field forces. The 450,000 ARVN, or South Vietnamese troops, were used mainly for static defence; only a few elite divisions regularly saw combat, but they fought bravely.
Brutal and dirty war
The war was brutal and dirty. The CIA-led "Phoenix" program assassinated 20,000 underground Communist cadres in the south. The Communists murdered 100,000 government officials, teachers and Catholics. Civilians were routinely caught in the crossfire and died in large numbers. But at the same time, U.S. forces had their hands tied: after contact with an enemy unit, they often had to radio HQ in Saigon before being authorized to fire.
A fatal intelligence failure cost America the war. The CIA never learned the Soviet Union and China had split, a rupture that undermined the North's ability to fight, and ended the "domino" threat. By 1978, China and Russia were clashing; a year later, Vietnam and China fought a bloody border war.
But after the blow of the notorious Tet offensive, which was a military disaster for the Communists but a PR triumph, America lost its will to fight. After President Johnson proclaimed there would be no military victory in Vietnam but instead a negotiated settlement, GIs became justifiably demoralized and mutinous. Half the U.S. soldiers in 'Nam were on drugs. No one wanted to risk his life in a war that was officially declared lost. Johnson resigned from office in disgrace.
It was left to President Richard Nixon to extricate America from Vietnam. This he tried to do slowly, to prevent South Vietnam's collapse. But after the sham Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the U.S. Congress, dominated by liberal Democrats, cut off all military aid to embattled South Vietnam, which had managed to resist a series of large North Vietnamese offensives. Hanoi knew the U.S. had abandoned South Vietnam and prepared the coup de grace. As the Roman strategist Tacitus observed two millennia ago: "A bad peace is even worse than war."
On Feb. 5, 1975, 22 North Vietnamese divisions, backed by hundreds of tanks and heavy guns - more men and tanks than in Gen. Patton's 3rd Army in World War II - attacked the South. After initial resistance, South Vietnam slowly collapsed.
On April 30, in the most humiliating moment in U.S. history, the last Americans fled Indochina, abandoning their Vietnamese allies and brave montagnard fighters to Uncle Ho's firing squads and prison camps. Cambodians were left to the mercies of Pol Pot. An undetermined number of American prisoners were left behind in the rout.
The next day, North Vietnamese T-54 tanks entered Saigon. As cynically noted by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who sold out South Vietnam in Paris, it is more dangerous being America's ally than its enemy.
France lost 92,797 dead and 176,369 wounded from 1946-1953 in Indochina. America lost 58,000 killed in action and accidents, and 300,000 wounded. U.S. ally South Korea suffered 4,407 dead; Australia and New Zealand 469. At least 3.6 million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died on both sides. The U.S. claimed to have killed 800,000 North Vietnamese and one million Vietcong soldiers in battle.
Vietnam became a united nation under Communist rule while America retreated into 15 years of semi-isolation.
Ironically, while America lost the Vietnam War, it won the peace: the advance of communism in South Asia was permanently halted. The dominoes did not fall. Just as ironically, Vietnam, which won the war by titanic sacrifice, ended up losing the peace. Today, Communist Vietnam is a political and economic backwater, poor, repressive and forgotten. There was no light at the end of the Vietnam tunnel.
Dedicated to the American and Canadian soldiers who fell in Vietnam, fighting for a just cause in a bad war.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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