Vietnam War Statistics And Facts 4

Giap was prepared to take a gamble. His divisions had been battered whenever they met the American forces in conventional combat and the VC- if not exactly on the retreat -was at least being pushed backwards. Hanoi was perfectly aware of the growing US peace movement and of the deep divisions the war was causing in American society What Giap needed was a body-blow that would break Washington's will to carry on and at the same time would undermine the growing legitimacy of the Saigon Government once and for all. In one sense, time was not on Giap's side. While Hanoi was sure that the Americans would tire of the war as the French had before them, the longer it took, the stronger the Saigon Government might become. Another year or so of American involvement could seriously damage the NLF and leave the ARVN capable of dealing with its enemies on its own. Giap opted for a quick and decisive victory that would be well in time for the 1968 US Presidential campaign.

Giap prepared a bold thrust on two fronts. With memories of the victory at Dien Bien Phu still in his mind, he planned an attack on the US Marines' firebase at Khe Sanh. At the same time. the NVA and the NLF planned coordinated attacks on virtually all South Vietnam's major cities and provincial capitals. If the Americans opted to defend Khe Sanh, they would find themselves stretched to the limit when battles erupted elsewhere throughout the South. Forced to defend themselves everywhere at once, the U~ARVN forces would suffer a multitude of small to major defeats which would add up to an overall disaster Khe Sanh would distract the attention of the US commanders while the NVA/VC was preparing for D-day in South Vietnam's cities but, when this full offensive was at its height, it was unlikely that the over-stretched American forces would be able to keep the base from being overrun and Giap would have repeated his triumph of fourteen years before.

It's highly doubtful that the NVA/VC expected to hold all or even some of the cities and towns they attacked, but the NLF apparently did expect large sections of the urban populace to rise up in revolt With a few exceptions, this didn't happen. South Vietnam's city dwellers were generally indifferent to both the NLF and the Saigon Government but the VC clearly expected more support than it actually got. The object of attacking the cities was not so much to win in a single blow as it was to inflict a series of humiliating defeats on the Americans and to destroy the authority of the Saigon Government. When the US/ARVN forces finally drove the NVA/VC back into the jungle, there would be left behind a wasteland of rubble, refugees, and simmering discontent. Stung by their defeats, the Americans would lose heart for the war and what was left of the Saigon Government would be forced to reach an agreement with the NLF and Hanoi which - after a time - would simply take over in the South. This offensive would begin in January 1968 at the time of the Vietnamese Tet (New Year) holidays.

The village of Khe Sanh lay in the northwest corner of South Vietnam just below the DMZ and close to the Laotian border Khe Sanh had been garrisoned by the French during the first Indochina war and became an important US Special Forces base early on during the second. Its importance lay in its proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From Khe Sanh, US artillery could shell the trail and observers could keep an eye on NVA traffic moving southwards. If necessary they could call in air-strikes or alert CIA/Meo raiding parties across the border in Laos. Special Forces working with local Montagnard tribesmen also harried NVA traffic in the area and were a definite nuisance to Hanoi. In 1967, the Marines took over Khe Sanh and converted it into a large fire base. The Special Forces moved their base to the Montagnard village of Lang Vei.

Towards the end of 1967, it was obvious that Giap was planning something. Broadcasts from Hanoi were speaking of great victories and of ta king the war into the cities of South Vietnam. Two NVA divisions- the 325th and the 304th were spotted moving into the Khe Sanh area and a third was positioning itself along Rout#9 where it would be able to intercept reinforcements coming in from Quang Tn. The two NVA divisions near Khe Sanh had fought at Dien Bien Phu and the warning was clear Westmoreland picked up the gauntlet and began to reinforce the base despite predictions of upcoming bad weather which could hinder air support and interfere with vital supply planes. Appearances to the contrary, Westmoreland had no intention of duplicating the French mistakes at Dien Bien Phu. American airpower was capable of delivering devastating attacks on concentrations of enemy troops and - apart from anti-aircraft guns - was unopposed. Helicopters and parachute drops by low-flying cargo planes reduced the dependence on re-supply by road.

By late January, some 6,000 Marines had been flown in to reinforce the Khe Sanh garrison and thousands of reinforcements had been moved north of Hue. The NVA build-up also continued; 20,000 North Vietnamese were ultimately moved in around Khe Sanh but other estimates put the number at twice that Initially, Giap would position his artillery in the DMZ and then send his assauIt troops against the fortified hills surrounding Khe Sanh which the Marines had captured in the dogged fighting in 1967. Having captured the hill positions, Giap reasoned, the NVA artillery could be moved onto the heights above the beleaguered base. Then - as happened at Dien Bien Phu - waves of determined infantry would steadily grind away until the defenders were pushed into a corner and finally over-run. The White House and the US media became convinced that the decisive battle of the war had begun. TV news reports were so obsessed with Giap's threatened replay of Dien Bien Phu that day-to-day life at Khe Sanh became lead-story material even when it showed nothing other than anxious Marines waiting for something to happen.

The first attack began shortly before dawn on January 21st, when the NVA attempted to cross the river running past the base. It was beaten back but followed by an artillery barrage which damaged the runway, blew up the main ammunition stores, and damaged a few aircraft. Secondary attacks were launched against the Special Forces' defenses at Lang Vel and against the Marines dug-in on the hills surrounding Khe Sanh but these attacks were aimed more attesting the defenses than anything else. The next day, helicopters and light cargo aircraft flew in virtually every few minutes replacing lost ammunition but the weather began turning worse.

The NVA began a concentrated artillery barrage and moved their troops forward to begin building a network of entrenched positions in which they could prepare for further assaults on Khe Sanh's outer defenses. Anti-aircraft guns and the worsening weather made incoming supply flights difficult running skirmishes designed to break through on Rout#9. Air and supporting US forces moved-up to engage the NVA in running skirmishes around Khe Sanh were intensified and despite the weather- pounded the North Vietnamese hour after hour. Electronic sensors of the types running along the McNamara Line surrounded Khe Sanh. Seismic and highly sensitive listening devices enabled the Americans to monitor everything from normal conversations to radio communications. Overhead, high-flying signal-intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft intercepted communications traffic over the entire front and to and from command centers in North Vietnam. While the world was watching the drama unfolding at Khe San h, however, NVA and VC regulars were also drifting into Saigon, Hue, and most of South Vietnam's cities. They came in twos and threes, disguised as refugees, peasants, workers, and ARVN soldiers on holiday leave. In Saigon, roughly the equivalent of five battalions of NVA/VC gradually infiltrated the city without anyone informing or any of the countless security police taking undue notice. Weapons came separately in flower carts, jury-rigged coffins, and trucks apparently filled with vegetables and rice. There was also a VC network in Saigon and the other major cities which had long stockpiled stores of arms and ammunition drawn from hit-and-run raids or bought openly on the black-market. It was also no secret that VC drifted in and out of the cities to see relatives and on general leave from their units. Viet Cong who were captured during the pre Tet build up were mistaken for regular holiday-makers or deserters. In the general pattern of the New Year merry-makers, the VC's secret army of infiltrators went completely unnoticed.

Tet had traditionally been a time of truce in the long war and both Hanoi and Saigon had made announcements that this year would be no different - although they disagreed about the duration. US Intelligence had gotten wind that something was brewing through captured documents and an overall analysis of recent events but Westmoreland's staff tended to disregard these generally vague reports. At the request of General Frederick Weyand, the US commander of the Saigon area, however, several battalions were pulled back from their positions near the Cambodian border. General Weyand put his troops on full alert but- due to a standing US policy of leaving the security of major cities to the ARVN -there were only a few hundred American troops on duty in Saigon itself the night before the attack began. Westmoreland later claimed to have anticipated Tet but the evidence suggests that he was not prepared for anything approaching the intensity of the attack that came and that he was still concentrating his attentions on the developing battle at Khe Sanh where he thought Giap would make his chief effort. In the early morning hours of January 31st, the first day of ]the Vietnamese New Year, NLF/NVA troops and commandos attacked virtually every major town and city in South Vietnam as well as most of the important American bases and airfields. There were some earlier attacks around Pleiku, Quang Nam, and Darlac but these were largely misinterpreted as the enemy's main thrust by those who were expecting some activity during Tet Almost everywhere the attacks came as a total surprise. Vast areas of Saigon and Hue suddenly found themselves "liberated" and parades of gun-waving NVA/VC marched through the streets proclaiming the revolution while their grimmer-minded comrades rounded up prepared lists of collaborators and government sympathizers for show trials and quick executions.

In Saigon, nineteen VC commandos blew their way through the outer walls of the US Embassy and overran the five MP's on duty in the early hours of that morning. Two MP's were killed immediately as the action-team tried to blast their way through the main Embassy doors with anti-tank rockets. They failed and found themselves pinned-down by the Marine guards who kept the VC in an intense firefight until a relief force of US lO1st Airborne landed by helicopter. By mid-morning, the battle had turned. All nineteen VC were killed, their bodies scattered around the Embassy courtyard. Five Americans and two Vietnamese civilians were among the other dead. The commandos had been dressed in civilian clothing and had rolled-up to the Embassy in an ancient truck. The security of the Embassy was not in serious danger after the first few minutes and the damage was slight but this attack on 'American soil" captured the imagination of the media and the battle became symbolic of the Tet Offensive throughout the world. Other NVA/VC squads attacked Saigon's Presidential Palace, the radio station, the headquarters of the ARVN Chiefs of Staff, and Westmoreland's own MACV compound as part of a 7O0 man raid on the Tan Son Nhut air-base. During the heavy fighting that followed, things became sufficiently worrying for Westmoreland to order his staff to find weapons and join in the defense of the compound. When the fighting at Tan Son Nhut was over, twenty-three Americans were dead, eighty-five were wounded and up to fifteen aircraft had suffered serious damage. Two NVA/VC battalions attacked the US air-base at Bien Hoa and crippled over twenty aircraft at a cost of nearly 170 casualties. Further fighting at Bien Hoa during the Tet offensive would take the NVA/VC death total in Saigon to nearly 1200. Other VC units made stands in the French cemetery and the Pho Tho race track. The mainly Chinese suburb of Cholon became virtually a NVA/VC operations base and, as it later turned out, had been the main staging area for the attacks in Saigon and its immediate area. President Thieu declared Marshal law on January 31st but it would take over a week of intense fighting to clear-up the various pockets of resistance scattered around Saigon. Sections of the city were reduced to rubble in heavy street by street fighting. Tanks, helicopter gunships, and strike aircraft blasted parts of the city as entrenched guerrillas fought and then slipped off to fight somewhere else. The radio station, various industrial buildings, and a large block of lowcost public housing were leveled along with the homes of countless civilians who were forced to flee. The city dissolved into a chaos which took weeks to begin to put right.

The fighting within Saigon itself was pretty much over by February 5th but it carried on in Cholon until the last week of the month. Cholon was strafed, bombed, and shelled but the NVA/VC held on and even mounted sporadic counter-offensives against US/ARVN positions within the city and against Tan Son Nhut airport. B-52 strikes against communist positions outside Saigon came within a few miles of the city When the NVA/VC were finally driven out of Saigon's suburbs, they retreated into the surrounding government villages and fought there. US and ARVN artillery and strike-aircraft bombed and shelled these supposedly pacified villages before troops moved in to reoccupy them. The NVA/VC repeated this tactic again and again in a clear effort to make the Saigon Government destroy their own fortified villages and, by doing so, further alienate the rural population. A month after the offensive began, US estimates put the number of civilian dead at some 15,000 and the number of new refugees at anything up to two million and still the battles went on.

Elsewhere in South Vietnam, the success of the Tet offensive was erratic. Many of the attacks on the provincial cities and US bases were easily beaten back within the first minutes or hours, but others involved bitter fighting. In the resort city of Dalat, the ARVN put up a spirited defense of the Vietnamese Military Academy against a determined VC battalion. Fighting raged over the Pasteur Institute - which changed hands several times-and the VC dug themselves in the central market Fighting in Dalat went on until mid-February and left over 200 VC dead. In cities like Ban Me Thuot, My Tho, Can Tho, Ben Tre, and Kontum, the VC entrenched themselves in the poorer sections and held out against repeated efforts to push them out The biggest battle, however occurred at Hue.

The Buddhist crisis had left bitter feelings towards the Saigon Government in the ancient Vietnamese capital and, within a few hours of their attack, the disguised insurgents supported by some ten NVA/VC battalions had overrun all of the city except for the headquarters of the ARVN 3rd Division and the garrison of US advisors. The main NVA/VC goal was the Citadel, an ancient imperial palace covering some two square miles with high walls several feet thick. NVA troops assaulted the Citadel and ran up the VC flag on the early morning of January 31st but were unable to displace ARVN holding out in the northeast section. Having overrun the city and found considerable support among sections of Hue's populace, the NVA/VC began an immediate revolutionary "liberation" program. Thousands of prisoners were set free and thousands of "enemies of the state" - government officials, sympathizers, and Catholics were rounded up and many were shot out of hand on orders from the security section of the NLF which had sent in its action squad with a prepared hit-list. Most of the others simply vanished.

After Hue was finally recaptured at the end of February South Vietnamese officials sifting through the rubble found mass graves with over 1200 corpses and-sometime later-other mass burials in the provincial area. The total number of bodies unearthed came to around 2500 but the number of civilians estimated as missing after the Hue battle was nearly 6000. Many of the victims found were Catholics who sought sanctuary in a church but were taken out and later shot Others were apparently being marched off for political "re-education" but were shot when American or ARVN units came too close.

US Marines and ARVN drove into the city and, after nearly two days of heavy fighting, secured the bank of the Perfume river opposite the Citadel. Hue was a sacred city to the Vietnamese and apart from the ancient Citadel held many other precious historical buildings. After much deliberation, it was reluctantly decided to shell and bomb NVA/VC positions. Resistance was heavy and sending the Marines into the city without air and artillery support would have meant an unacceptable cost in lives. To many, the battle for Hue reminded them of the bitter street-by-street fighting that occurred during World War lI. The NVA had blown the main bridge across the Perfume River. US forces crossed in a fleet of assault craft under air and artillery cover which blasted away at the enemy-held Citadel. Its walls were so thick that few were killed but the covering fire made the enemy keep their heads down while the Marines and soldiers hit the bank below.

While the ARVN, with US support, fought its way through the streets of Hue block by block, the Marines prepared to assault the Citadel. On February 2Oth American assault teams went in through clouds of tear gas and the burning debris left over from air and artillery attacks. The NVA/VC were pushed into the southwestern corner of the Citadel and finally overwhelmed on February 23rd. Enemy resistance in Hue was finally reduced to isolated pockets and sniper teams. As the Citadel fell, NVA/VC units began retreating- some of them marching groups of soon to be massacred prisoners before them - into the suburbs while their rear guards fought holding actions with the advancing ARVN. The fight for Hue ended by February 25th at a cost of 119 Americans and 363 ARVN dead compared to about sixteen times that number of NVA/VC dead.

The dramatic difference in fatalities makes the battle look a one sided affair But it wasn't! The difference in casuaity figures came largely from the heavy use of artillery and aircraft back-up to devastate NVA/VC positions throughout Hue which reduced large sections of the city to body-laden piles of rubble. Had the commanders decided to preserve the ancient and revered city US/ARVN casualties would have been much higher American wounded during the battle for Hue came to just under a thousand compared to slightly over 1,200 ARVN. Nearly 120,000 citizens of Hue were homeless and, of the close to 6,000 civilian dead, many died in the bombing and shell-fire. Contrary to many reports, large sections of Hue escaped relatively undamaged but after the battle they were forced to suffer days of looting by soldiers from the original ARVN garrison who had spent the previous weeks keeping their heads low. Their commander-who had also sat out the city's Buddhist rebellion against Ky-was later accused of having known about the coming attack for days beforehand. His defense was that he had allowed the NVA/VC battalions into Hue in order to spring a trap! In the villages outside Hue, the battle went on for another week or so as the retreating NVA/VC took over the villages just long enough for them to be destroyed by bombing and concentrated artillery shelling. Civilian deaths and refugees increased.

On February 5th, the fighting died out in Saigon and the Marines prepared for their river assault on the Citadel in Hue. The electronic sensors around the besieged fire-base at Khe Sanh warned of enemy preparations to assault the entrenched positions on Hill 881, which was outside the main camp. Intensive artillery fire broke up the assembling NVA troops but a second planned attack on Hill 881 had gone unnoticed until the Marines found themselves fighting off waves of oncoming North Vietnamese regulars. For half an hour the beleaguered Marines battled the NVA in hand to-hand fighting - even trusting their flak jackets enough to use grenades at close quarters - until the artillery could be brought to bear on the hill and the attackers forced to withdraw.

Two days later, the Green Beret's camp at Lang Vei was attacked by an NVA assault force led by ten Soviet-built, FT-76 light, amphibious tanks. Despite a shortage of anti-tank ammunition three of the armored vehicles were put out of action before the NVA swarmed over the wire. Because of the very real likelihood of an ambush, no relief force was sent and the Lang Vei commander, Captain Frank Willoughby, ordered his men into the jungle, and called down air and artillery strikes directly onto the camp. Of the original force of twenty four Special Forces and 900 Montagnard, only Willoughby and seventy-three others managed to struggle into Khe Sanh. The next day NVA troops overran nearly half of an outer Marine position at Khe Sanh before being blasted back by artillery, aircraft, and armor.

Giap's ambition to win a massive victory against the Americans was thwarted by massive aerial bombardments of NVA positions. B-52's and strike aircraft dropped their loads with pin-point accuracy within a few hundred feet of Khe Sanh's perimeter. During the course of the battle, tons of bombs and napalm were dropped around Khe Sanh. Bad weather and increasing anti-aircraft fire inhibited the steady flow of incoming supplies but the vital cargo planes and helicopters kept coming despite losses. The fortified hills around Khe Sanh were supplied by Sea Knight Helicopters, frequently accompanied by fighter escorts. The battle settled down into a siege. The NVA concentrated on shelling the base and trying to stop the supply planes with anti-aircraft fire while digging in around the camp. Both sides employed teams of snipers to harass each other's movements.

The NVA launched further attacks on February 17th, 1&h, and 29th but massed artillery and air-strikes broke the first up fairly easily while the second involved heavy fighting. In early April, relief forces reached the base. A 1st Cavalry helicopter assault force landed near Khe Sanh as American and ARVN forces hit NVA positions along Rout#9. Khe Sanh was relieved on April 6th and, four days later, Lang Vei was reccu- pied. Fighting continued around Khe Sanh for a time but Giap had long since given up any hope of overrunning the base. The drive to relieve Khe Sanh had gone smoothly and without heavy resistance. From this, many inferred that the whole siege of Khe Sanh had been a feint to cover preparations for the Tet Offensive in the South. And to an extent, this was true but the evidence suggests that Giap's moves on Khe Sanh had a more deadly purpose than simply drawing American attentions away from the South at the critical time. By the middle of February it was obvious that the battle for South Vietnam's cities was failing and that US airpower would deny the NVA another Dien Bien Phu. Seeing the inevitable, Giap seems to have began a slow wind down of the siege before the US counter-attack began.

The Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh may well have reminded Johnson and Westmoreland of the Duke of Wellington's dictum: "If there's anything more melancholy than a battle lost, it's a battle won" Giap had been frustrated at Khe Sanh and defeated in South Vietnam's cities. NVA/VC dead totaled some 45,000 anc the number of prisoners nearly 7000. But the shockwave of the battle finished Johnson's willingness to carry on. Westmoreland was pressuring Washington for 206,000 troops to carry on the campaign in the South and to make a limited invasion of North Vietnam just above the DMZ. As the battle for Hue died out, Johnson asked Clark Clifford (who had recently replaced a disillusioned McNamara as Secretary of Defense) to find ways and means of meeting Westmoreland's request.

Clifford and an advisor group looked at the war to date and among others, consulted CIA Director Richard Helms who presented the Agency's gloomy forecasts in great detail. On March 4th Clifford told Johnson that the war was far from won and that more men would make little difference. Johnson then turned to his chief group of informal advisors (which included among others, Generals Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway, and Maxwell Taylor; Cyrus Vance, Dean Acheson, and Henry Cabot Lodge). Johnson soon found that they too, like Clifford, had turned against the war. According to Thomas Powers, Johnson's "wise old men" had been told that recent CIA studies showed that the pacification programme was failing in forty of South Vietnam's forty-four provinces and that the N LF's manpower was actually twice the number that had been estimated previously. Not only had Tet shown that the optimism of the previous year had been an illusion but it now seemed that the enemy was far stronger than anybody had thought and that the long efforts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" had largely been a disaster

If Tet wasn't a full-scale shock to the American public, it was at the very least, an awakening. The enemy that Johnson and the generals had described as moribund had shown itself to be very alive and, as yet, unbeaten. America and its ARVN ally had suffered over 4,300 killed in action, some 16,000 wounded and over 1,000 missing in action. The fact that the enemy suffered far more and had lost a major gamble mattered little because the war looked like a never ending conflict without any definite, realistic objective. The scenes of desolation in Saigon, Hue, and other cities looked to be war without purpose or end. Perhaps the most quoted US officer of the time was the one who explained the destruction of about one-third of the provincial capital of Ben Tre with unintended black humor: "It became necessary to destroy it," he said, "in order to save it". For many, this oft-quoted statement was not just a classic example of Pentagon double-think but also a symbol of the war's futility. Westmoreland became the parody "General Waste-mor-land" of the anti-war movement.

Being against the war became more-or-less politically respectable for liberal elements. Robert Kennedy spoke of giving up the illusion of victory and Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson for the Presidential nomination on a peace platform. He was supported by thousands of students and young Americans opposed to the war. Vocal elements of the extreme right largely supported the war but condemned the Administration for not going all out for victory. The JCS backed Westmoreland but convinced him to settle for half of the over 200,000 additional troops he wanted to take the initiative. The JCS then reported to the White House that the extra men were needed to get things back to normal following the battles of the Tet Offensive.

Johnson's dilemma was complete. He couldn't meet the generals' manpower requests without either depleting Europe of American troops- which was unacceptable- or without calling up the active reserves which would have been a political disaster His most senior advisors had turned against the war and Johnson took another briefing from the CIA analyst whose gloomy reports had soured some of his most hawkish counselors. A few days after this briefing, Johnson went on TV to announce a bombing halt of the North and America's willingness to meet with the North Vietnamese to seek a peace settlement. Johnson then said that he was not a candidate for reelection under any circumstances and would spend the rest of his term in a search for peace in Indochina.

One of those present at the special CIA briefing which convinced Johnson that a change of course was inevitable was General Creighton Abrams, Westmoreland's deputy commander. Shortly after Johnson's turnabout, Abrams replaced Westmoreland as head of US forces in Vietnam. Westmoreland came home to become Army Chief of Staff- a move many saw as a kick upstairs- but, whatever the reasons behind the changeover, Abrams went to Saigon with a mission. He was to institute a program of' Vietnamization" in other words, to take all necessary measures to enable the ARVN to bear the main burden of the fighting and gradually return the chief role of American troops to that of advisors. Vietnamization had always been a feature of America's role in Vietnam but it had been on a back-burner since 1965 when it seemed that Saigon was incapable of doing the job. Now things were to be returned to what they were supposed to have been from the beginning. Vietnamization is usually credited to Nixon but it began in the wake of the Tet Offensive and Johnson's turnabout.

Giap's gamble had another side effect When the Tet Offensive began, many US officials believed that the N LF had offered the Americans a golden opportunity by fighting a pitched battle where it could be defeated in open combat. In effect, the NLF was "leading with its chin" and the massive losses it suffered bear this out The VC was not broken by the Tet Offensive but it was severely crippled by it and, from then on, the North took on the main burden of the war Further fighting in 1968 and the increasing activity of the Phoenix Program further decimated the NLF's ranks and the role of the North grew even larger. The northern and southern parts of Vietnam had ancient cultural and social differences and while the communist cadres at the center of the N LF had managed largely to suppress these natural antagonisms, there still were basic differences in goals and approach. The N LF had gone into the Tet Offensive in the hope of giving a death-blow to the Saigon Government and, if it couldn't capture power directly, it could at least gain a coalition leading to ultimate authority. The NLF's dream vanished in the rubble of South Vietnam's cities and it would be Hanoi that conquered Saigon.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

Ho Chi Minh returned from the USSR in 1925 with Borodin's mission to China in order to form a communist movement in Indochina, called first the Revolutionary Youth League and later in 1930 the Indochinese Communist Party. The party in 1930 led a peasant uprising in the central provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh and created village "soviets" which were soon crushed by the French military. The party returned to clandestinity. It built a first guerilla base in upland Cao Bang and Bac Son, participating in an abortive-uprising in the fall of 1940. In May 1941 the party formed a broad united front called the League for the Indepedence of Vietnam (Vietnam Doc-Lap Dong-Minh Hoi, or in short, the Viet Minh). (The term Viet Cong, the contraction for Vietnamese communist, was later used by opponents more with the implication of the southern arm of the movement).

The Viet Minh moved to mollify the Chinese occupiers, keep out the French and destroy such native rivals as the VNQDD and Trotskyites. The Viet Minh did well in consolidating its position except in the south, where they faced the opposition of the sects and the British and French forces. In March 6, 1946, agreement, the French government, "recognized the Republic of Vietnam as a free state which has its own governmment, parliament, army, and finances and which is part of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union." (But a seperate French controlled Republic of Cochinchina was proclaimed June 1, 1948, with a flag of three horizontal blue stripes on yellow.) Although the French even for a short while helped the Viet Minh combat its nationlist rivals, French policy hardened, particularly as carried out on the scene by Admiral d' Argenlieu. In concert, the Viet Minh took a harsher line, for instance, holding public ceremonies where citizens burned their French diplomas and destroyed their French medals.

The communist army claims its official orgin in the first "Platoon of National Salvation" formed in the 1940 uprising. In December 1944 Ho Chi Minh created the "Vietnamese People's Propaganda Unit for National Liberation," which became in September 1945, with the new republic, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Under the capable General Vo Nguyen Giap the PAVN was built quickly using the concept of a people's war, arms of varied orgin, and a balance of political indoctrination and military professionalism. by 1946 it had about 100,000 men under arms, plus 35,000 paramilitary, and it continued to expand steadily thereafter. It fought with both great courage and heavy casualties, taking at times beatings from the French forces, but also securing major victories at Cao Bang in 1950, over Group Mobile 100 in 1953, and finally at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The divisions then consisted of the 304th, 308, 312th, 316th, and 320th, and the 351st Heavy Division.

The Indochinese Communist Party, following recongnition by Peking and Moscow of the DRV in 1950, abandoned its clandestinity and changed its name to the Vietnam Workers Party (Dan Lao-Dong Vietnam). with the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel as a result of the Geneva agreements, the DRV gained full territoral control of the north. As its soldiers and cadre were "regrouped" to the north, the DRV apparently abandoned its position in the south pending unification of the country under an election to be held according to the terms of the agreement. The election was never held, Diem believing the communists would not tolerate any true one. As the Diem government unexpectedly reduced the chaos of the south and gained control, the communist had to rethink their strategy for the south. They initially, however, were preoccupied with building their own system in the north, partly through the brutal purges of the "land reform" program.

Starting in 1959 several thousand of the "regroupees" southern cadre were again sent to the south and there began again the effort to achieve "a general uprising". There was then announced a purportedly seperate party for the south, the People's Revolutionary Party (Dang Nhan-Dan Cach-Mang), and a broader front organization the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam-NLF (Mat-Tran Dan-Toc Giai-Phong Mien-Nam). Control was retained in Hanoi and discipline over the southerners ensured by the security apparatus. The flag of the NLF was half red, half light blue with a gold star in the center, close to that of the DRV. In December 1963 the Ninth Conference of the Central Executive Committee made the decision for a full effort to take the south, and the Second Indochina War commenced in earnest.

In 1957 the PAVN had been systematically modernized on the Soviet model. Previously officers were designated by function, such as battalion commander, and had no rank and wore no insignia. Following a 1958 law, ranks were established and insignia and epaulets worn. The PAVN soldiers and units sent to the south, in order to maintain the pretense of a separate southern movement, used the functional rank designations of the People's Liberation Armed Force of South Vietnam (PLAF) and their more modest insignia and decorations. Military operations in central Vietnam, however, were controlled directly from the north, and that area was divided into four tactical zones: the CMA Front, Military Region Tri Thien Hue, Military Region 5 below on the coast, and the B-3 Front inland. Military operations further south were controlled by the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), located usually on the Cambodian border directly north of Saigon.

After the "Special war" of 1961-63 against the strategic hamlet program and the shaky ARVN, the communist forces then challenged in "armed struggle" the entering American units. Local guerilla and regional forces were intended to provide a "seething quality in the coordinated struggle", while the main forces carried out "annihilating blows" that would cause "turning points in the war." Put on the defensive by the hard pressing American units, the communists husbanded their forces for a major offensive during Tet 1968. They achieved the desired surprize in attack, and impetus to the anti-war movement in the US, but the southern communist units were so heavily blooded that thereafter the southern communists had little role in the war. The PLAF divisions, the 3rd, 5th and 9th, were largely thereafter staffed by PAVN soldiers infiltrated down the impressive road supply network from the north. The DRV did not acknowledge its direct involvement in the war in the south, and unit designations were camouflaged.

A COSVN directive of early 1971 called for continuing attacks to achieve "piecemeal" victories and to defeat pacification and Viernamization. While achieving on the ground no real victories against the US forces, the communists kept the blood flowing and the bulk of their forces safe in Cambodia. They caused the Americans, just like the French, to grow tired of the political burden and to abandon the war. In January 1973 there were some 220,000 PAVN troops in the south comprising 15 infantry divisions and many independent infantry, sapper, artillery, armor, anti-aircraft regiments, the rear service and other units. Five divisions (304, 312, 320B, 324B and 325) were north of the Hai Van Pass in MR- I and two were south (711 and 2nd). In MR-2 there were three divisions (3rd, 1oth, and 320); in MR-3 two (7th and 9th); and in MR-4 three (1st, 5th and 6th). Other divisions were in the north and Laos.

In the 1973 Paris accord the US gained its prisoners back, but did not get the communist to withdraw their forces from the south. The DRV got the US out of Vietnam, but did not get the US to pull down Thieu and the Republic of Vietnam as it left. But the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) did gain status from its participation in the talks. With President Nixon's political collapse, US pledges of continued support for the Republic of Vietnam proved false. The spurious peace disappeared. By 1975 the PAVN was better armed by the Soviets and Chinese than the ARVN was by the US. It also had far more maneuverable battalions. In the major offensive of 1975 the ARVN fell apart and "unification" was achieved. It was a victory of the main force PAVN units, manifested in the Saigon victory parade in May which featured bemedaled. brass bands, tanks, SAM missiles, and only a few southern guerillas.

The aftermath was disappointing to the communist. Hanoi could manage war, but not peace, and certainly not an economy. The attractions of the rich south, moreover, corrupted veteran cadra; the southerners were resentful of northern control; and a major border war developed with the vicious Khmer Rouge. This was complicated by a deepening quarrel with China, which was angered over Vietnam's proud and ungrateful attitude and deepening ties with the USSR. The PAVN was expanded to some 33 infantry, 12 economic construction, and 6 engineer divisions. In January 1978 it blitzkrieged Democratic Kampuchea but had to leave there for the protection of its client state the 5th, 302nd, 307th, 309th, and part of the 950th divisions. The border war of February-March 1978 with China was a standoff, although the Vietnamese second line border units fought well. The SRV was the most formidable military power of Southeast Asia, but also isolated, impoverished, and heavily dependent on Soviet aid.

Later, tiring of the quagmire in Cambodia and of the economic and diplomatic costs of its intervention there, Hanoi reluctantly and gradually pulled its forces out, leaving the problem to the United Nations. with the distressing collapse of communism in East Europe and the Soviet Union, Hanoi cautiously mended its relations with Beijing. They remained divided over the rancor of history and competing territorial claims on the border and the South China Sea. But they shared interest as two of the only four remaining communist states. Moreover, the SRV, just as the PRC, was proceeding with economic liberalization, while resisting political liberalization. As feared by its SEA neighbors, the international community, and even the US.

The three horses pulling the chariot of war are leadership, organization and strategy. The ideal general in any army would posses to perfection each of these in careful combination. Evaluating the performance of General Giap, therefore, must be in terms of his performance as leader, organizer and strategist, all three. While the jury is still deliberating, this much about him seems reasonably clear: he was a competent commander of men but not a brilliant one; he was a first rate military organizer once the innovative conceptual work was past, a good builder and administrator of the military apparat after the grand scheme had been devised; as a strategist he was at best a gifted amateur.

Giap of course, is a legend, with a larger-than-life image which the party and State in Hanoi, as well as the world's press, have enthusiastically contributed. His metaphoric appellation is Nui Lua, roughly "volcano beneath the snow" meaning a cold exterior but boiling within, an apt description of his personality according to those who know him. Associates also have described him as forceful, arrogant, impatient and dogmatic. At least in earlier years, he was ruthlessly ambitious and extraordinarily energetic, with a touch of vanity suggesting to interviewers that he should be considered an Asian Napoleon. He is said to be fiercely loyal to those of his political faction who grant him unreserved loyalty. He once told an associate that he took a "Darwinian view" of politics, and is said always to have been indifferent to arguments or reasoning based mainly on dogma. He always has been surrounded by political enemies and the victim of decades of sly whispers campaigns so common in Vietnam. (A typical whisper: General Dung, not Giap, planned the final successful at the battle of Dien Bien Phu because Giap had been struck down by diarrhea.)

Vo Nguyen Giap was born, by his account, in 1912 in the village of An Xa, Quang Binh province, although other reports say he was born into a peasant family, but former associates say his family was impoverished mandarin of lower rank. His father worked the land, rented out land to neighbors, and was not poor. More important as a social indicator in Vietnam, his father was literate and familiar with the Confucian classics. Giap, in manner and in his writings, demonstrated a strong Confucian background. At 14, Giap became a messenger for the Haiphong Power Company and shortly thereafter joined the Tan Viet Cach Mang Dang, a romantically-styled revolutionary youth group. Two years later he entered Quoc Hoc, a French-run lycee in Hue, from which two years later, according to his account, he was expelled for continued Tan Viet movement activities. In 1933, at the age of twenty-one, Giap enrolled in Hanoi University. He studied for three years and was awarded a degree falling between a bachelor and master of arts (doctorates were not awarded in Vietnam, only in France). Had he completed a fourth year he automatically would have been named a district governor upon graduation, but he failed his fourth year entrance examination.

At the end of 1941 Giap found himself back in Vietnam, in the mountains, with orders to begin organizational and intelligence work among the Montagnards. Working with a local bandit named Chu Van Tan, Giap spent World War II running a network of agents throughout northern Vietnam. The information collected, mostly about the Japanese in Indochina, went to the Chinese Nationalist in exchange for military and financial assistance which in turn, supported communist organization building. Giap had little military prowess at his command, however, and used what he did have to systematically liquidate rice landlords who opposed the communist.

During these early years, Giap led Party efforts at organization busting which, with the connivance of the French, emasculated competing non-communist nationalist organizations, killing perhaps some 10,00 individuals (although these figures come from surviving nationalist and may be exaggerated). One of the liquidation techniques used by Giap's men was to tie victims together in batches, like cordwood, and toss them into the Red River, the victims thus drowning while floating out to sea a method referred to as "crab fishing." Giap's purge also extended to the newly created Viet Minh government: of the 360 original National Assembly members elected in 1946, only 291 actually took their seats, of whom only 37 were official opposition and only 20 of these were left at the end of the first session. Giap arrested some 200 during the session, some of whom were shot. He also ordered the execution of the famed and highly popular South Vietnamese Viet Minh leader, Nguyen Binh. Giap sent Binh into an ambush and he died with a personal letter from Giap in his pocket. He also was carrying a diary which made it clear he knew of Giap's duplicity, but Binh went to his death in much the same manner in which the old Bolshevik, Rubashov, in darkness at Noon. Giap later confessed to a friend, "I was forced to sacrifice Nguyen Binh."

In military operations in both the Viet Minh and Vietnam Wars, Giap was cautious and so meticulous in planning that operations frequently were delayed because either they or the moment was premature. Giap's caution and policies led his opponents to underestimate both his military strength and his tactical skill. Although as someone noted, in war everyone habitually underestimates everyone else. Historians, particularly French historians, tend to case Giap in larger than life terms; they write of his flashing brilliance as a strategic and tactical military genius. But there is little objective proof of this. Perhaps the French write him large as a slave for bruised French ego. Giap's victories have been due less to brilliant or even incisive thinking than to energy, audacity and meticulous planning. And his defeats clearly are due to serious shortcomings as a military commander: a tendency to hold on too long, to refuse to break victory to intoxicate and lead to the to the taking of excessive and even insane chances in trying to strike a bold second blow; a preoccupation, while fighting the "people's war," with real estate, attempting to sweep the enemy out of an area that may or may not be militarily important.

Giap always was at his best when he was moving men and supplies around a battlefield, far faster than his foes had any right to expect. He did this against the French in 1951, infiltrating an entire army through their lines in the Red River Delta, and again in advance of the Tet offensive in 1968 when he positioned thousands of men and tons of supplies for a simultaneous attack on thirty-five major South Vietnamese population centers. If Giap is a genius as a general at all, he is, as the late Bernard Fall put it, a logistic genius. General Giap's strategic thinking early in the Vietnam War, from 1959 until at least 1966, was to let the NLF and PLAF do it by the Viet Minh War book. Cadres and battle plans in the form of textbooks were sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Southern elements were instructed in the proper mobilization and motivation techniques, centered on the orthodox dau tranh strategy that had worked with the French and in which Giap had full faith. Certain adjustments might be necessary with respect to political dau tranh and some minor adaptations of armed dau tranh might be required, his writings at this time indicated but essentially the necessary doctrine was in existence and was in place.

What changed Giap's thinking, and his assumption that the war against the Americans could be a continuation of the war against the French, was the battle of Ia Drang Valley,the first truly important battle of the war. Giap's troops veterans of Dien Bien Phu, when thrown against green First Cavalry Division soldiers, experienced for the first time the full meaning of American-style conduct of war: the helicopters, the lightweight bullet, sophisticated communications, computerized military planning, an army that moved mostly vertically and hardly ever walked. Technology had revolutionized warfare, Giap acknowledged in Big Victory, Great Task, a book written to outline his strategic response to the U.S. intervention. The answer he said, was to match the American advantage in mass and movement or, where not possible, to shunt it aside. He was still searching for the winning formula when suddenly he was handed victory. The South Vietnamese Army which had stood and fought under far worse conditions in January 1975, under minor military pressure, began to collapse. Soon in could not fight coherently. Giap was handed a victory he neither expected at the time nor deserved. How much command responsibility Giap had in the last days of the war, in 1975, is debated - much direction had passed to General Dung but is unimportant in terms of distributing laurels, since none was deserved by any PAVN general.

After the Vietnam War General Giap slowly began to fade the scene, withdrawing gradually from day-to-day command of PAVN. General Dung began to take up the reins of authority. Giap was given a series of relatively important short term tak force assignments. He supervised the initial assumption by PAVN of various production and other postwar economic duties. He reorganized and downgraded the PAVN polotical commissar system, as the battle organized Reds and Experts tilted ever more clearly towards the latter. He defended PAVN's budget against the sniping attack of cadres in the economic sector.

When the 'Pol Pot problem" developed truly serious dimensions in late 1977, giap returned to the scene. He spent most of 1978 organizing an NLF style response for Kampuchea, that in creation of a Liberation Army, a Liberated Area, a radio Liberation, and a standby Provisional Revolutionary Government. This was the tried method, but by its nature, slow. Apparently the politburo judged it did not have time for protracted conflict, and so in 1978 opted in favor of a Soviet-style solution: tanks across the border, invasion and occupation of Kampuchea. Giap opposed it, although evidence of this is mostly inferential, holding that a quick military solution was not possible, that Pol Pot would embrace a dau tranh strategy against PAVN and the result would be a bogged down war. Giap proved to be painfully correct and, for the sin of being right when all others are wrong in a collective leadership decision-making process, was eased out of Politburo level politics. Apparently all factions ganged up on him, but his removal was designed to eliminate Giap as factional infighting without tarnishing Giap the legend. It appears he did not resist this power play as he might have done, with possibly bloody consequences, which may be a tribute to his better judgements.

Today Giap still is on the Vietnamese scene, but plays a lesser role. He has taken upon himself the task of lifting Vietnam by its technological boot straps, has become the leading figure in the drive to raise the country's technical and scientific capability. This requires, among other things, soliciting continued Soviet assistance, something Giap is able to do well because of the regard for him in the USSR. He confers frequently with Soviet advisors in Hanoi and in the Soviet Union; in 1980 he went to Moscow three times in a nine-month period.

Jane Fonda is a beautiful and talented actress. But for many Vietnam veterans, she is remembered more as a despicable traitor whose betrayal undermined the sacrifices of millions of American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen - and in the process contributed significantly to a Communist victory in Indochina that led to the slaughter of millions of innocent human beings and the consignment of tens of millions of others to a Communist gulag that continues to rank among the “worst of the worst”[ 1] among the world's human rights abusers.

My Life So Far is Fonda's attempt to justify the first six decades of her existence. She tells us far more than most would care to know about her difficult childhood, her battles with eating disorders to maintain her trim figure, and her various problems with a series of failed marriages. There are few acknowledged regrets,[ 2 ] considerably more efforts to rationalize and spin behavior by leaving out essential facts, and an underlying theme that almost seems calculated to be setting the stage for an insanity defense. (There is, after all, no statute of limitations barring a treason prosecution even after passage of a third of a century.)

One of her regrets is the publication of “the photograph.” The infamous photograph-which is hardly the worst of her transgressions while visiting Hanoi-showed a gleeful Fonda sitting in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun and apparently pretending to shoot down American pilots. But in her autobiography, Fonda dismisses it as a consequence of being “used” and deceived by her otherwise wonderful Communist hosts. She had told them, she asserts, that she did not wish to visit any military installations; and the only reason she happened to be wearing a North Vietnamese military helmet at the time was that it was “required” by her hosts.[ 3 ]

She now acknowledges that “[i]t is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned” and that she was “used.”[6 ] Interestingly, she still doesn't seem to understand that other portions of her trip might have been “planned” by Hanoi to “use” her. But in this instance it is very difficult to accept Fonda's explanation anyway, as her other behavior in Hanoi is far more consistent with the idea that she knowingly and willingly sat in the gun chair and pretended to shoot down the hated American “war criminals” who she tells us were intentionally targeting schools, hospitals, and dikes in an effort to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. And she would have had to have been high on drugs to allow some unknown individual to force her into the seat of an anti-aircraft gun and then gleefully pretend to shoot down American planes as a pack of international photographers snapped her smiling face (all the while apparently oblivious to what was happening)-that explanation really fails to pass the “straight-face” test. Furthermore, Fonda's hatred for U.S. pilots and POWs was obvious at the time, and she even admits that her 1973 denunciation of returning American POWs as “liars” for saying they were tortured (which she now admits did occur) was provoked in no small part by her anger over the warm reception they received from the American people.[ 7 ]

Fonda characterizes her permitting herself to be photographed pretending to shoot down American pilots as a “two-minute lapse of sanity.”[8 ] And the volume is peppered with little comments suggesting that poor little Jane Fonda really couldn't control her own actions, and that she was pretty much programmed through her life to do whatever was necessary to please the current man in her life. Roger Vadim told people she really wasn't very bright, and she acknowledges that she has “always been numerically challenged” and her poor little mind simply “goes blank” when it comes to understanding details like “bomb tonnage.”[ 9 ] (I recall hearing her on I believe it was the Tonight Show in the early 1970s talking about B-52 bombers being launched from aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf. Even the modern Nimitz-class carriers only have a total length of about 1,100 feet, or less than one-tenth of the runway length used by the enormous B-52 Stratofortresses.)

Consider her response to being asked whether she enjoyed “being with women” while married to Vadim. (He would often bring prostitutes home to share their bed, and Fonda admits that she was sometimes the procurer.) “I don't know [if I enjoyed it]. I thought I did at the time because I'm so good at becoming whatever my man wants me to be. I can convince myself of practically anything in the name of pleasing.”[10 ] Ergo, she really should not be held responsible for her treasonous behavior, as she became enamored with what she calls “small-c communism”[11 ] while married to Vadim and then married an American leftist radical from the “Red Family Collective” in Berkeley.[ 12 ]

There are few textual references to serious source materials (she asserts that husband Tom Hayden sometimes quoted the Pentagon Papers,[13 ] but most of the “facts” she attributes to that source are in reality readily refuted by a careful reading of the documents therein[ 14 ]), and given the unsupportable factual errors that permeate the volume that oversight is understandable. It may be useful to address a few of the specific myths that remain widely accepted by Americans who do not follow these issues closely, but first a “big picture” view of the origins of the war may be useful.

One wonders if she has even wondered why anyone thought it necessary to maintain our “credibility as an ally.” So let's very briefly recall some of the events that led to the almost unanimous and bipartisan commitment to defend South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from Communist aggression. One might begin with the founding of the Third (or Communist) International (Comintern) in 1919 by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin for the purpose of uniting the Left and promoting a world revolution. Or perhaps a better starting point would be two or three decades later, when it became increasingly clear that Josef Stalin and his comrades were serious about promoting violent revolutions around the globe.

For the record, as numerous Hanoi official biographies have long acknowledged,[19 ] Ho Chi Minh became a co-founder of the French Communist Party in December 1920 and was soon sent to Moscow for training as a Comintern agent. For the next three decades, he traveled around the world for the Comintern. Indeed, as Hanoi sources regularly confirm, when the Indochinese Communist Party was established in Hong Kong on February 3, 1930, Ho Chi Minh was present as the official representative of the Comintern in Moscow.[20 ] The term “Indochina” was a French concept for the territories in Southeast Asia it has colonized over the years, but Moscow instructed the delegates to the founding conference to adopt the name “Indochinese Communist Party” rather than their initial choice of “Vietnam Communist Party.” Ho Chi Minh had first left Vietnam in 1911 and did not set foot on Vietnamese soil for another 30 years, when he was sent back by Moscow to establish a new Leninist front organization, the Viet Minh. Ho tried hard to conceal his own Leninist past and the true character of the new front-e.g., by using no less than twenty-eight pseudonyms[21 ]-and the effort was successful in deceiving some OSS[22 ] operatives during World War II.[ 23 ]

In August 1945, Ho actually quoted Thomas Jefferson in his Declaration of Independence for Vietnam. But by 1950 Ho's Leninist character had become clear and both Moscow and Beijing (Mao had seized power in China the previous October) began sending aid to Ho's Viet Minh. The invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea that June increased western anxiety over armed Communist aggression in Asia. In July 1954, Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel with Ho's Viet Minh getting the North and non-communist nationalists getting South Vietnam. The following year the United States Senate consented to the ratification of the SEATO Treaty with but a single dissenting vote, thus pledging the United States to come to the defense of South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia if they requested assistance in defense against armed Communist aggression.[ 24 ]

During the Vietnam War, the State Department charged that Hanoi had made a decision in May 1959 to “liberate” South Vietnam. As will be discussed, the partition of Vietnam (like the earlier partitions of Germany and Korea) created separate sovereign states, and the UN Security Council denunciation of North Korean aggression against South Korea is a clear legal precedent for the situation in Vietnam. But Hanoi's defenders in the United States didn't usually challenge that principle. Instead, they alleged that the State Department was “lying” about the allegation of “Aggression From the North” (the name of a February 1965 State Department “white paper” documenting Hanoi's aggression), and they claimed that the “National Liberation Front” had started the “revolution” in South Vietnam independently from Hanoi.

Colonel Bui Tin was the North Vietnamese Army officer who officially accepted the South Vietnamese surrender on April 30, 1975, at the Presidential Palace in Saigon. He later served as editor of Nhan Dan (“The People”), the Party daily newspaper in Hanoi. When asked in 1995: “Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?” he replied: “No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party.”[ 26 ]

The reality is that decades before Hanoi made these admissions, any literate American who wanted to understand the Vietnam war and had access to a major library could have found North Vietnamese documents (translated by Hanoi into English to make the inquiry easier) that showed clearly the NLF was Hanoi's creation. Hanoi published a three-volume collection of documents from the 1960 Third Party Congress that openly acknowledged the passage of a resolution that stated: “To ensure the complete success of the revolutionary struggle in south Vietnam, our people there must strive to . . . bring into being a broad National United Front . . . “[ 28 ] Such “united fronts” had long been a central tenet of Leninist strategy. Yet, when Hanoi announced the establishment of the NLF in December 1960, it was widely accepted as authentic in the west.

In December 1961, President Kennedy sent U.S. military advisers to help the Republic of [South] Vietnam defend itself against this Communist aggression. This was consistent with both the bipartisan Containment Doctrine originally enunciated by the Truman Administration and reaffirmed by Eisenhower and Kennedy, and more specifically with the nation's formal commitment to defend the non-Communist regimes of Indochina embodied in the SEATO Treaty, and as such it engendered little national debate. What little congressional criticism there was tended to come from “hawks” who wanted combat units to be sent to South Vietnam immediately. Consider the position of Rep. Paul Findley (R-Ill.), who in 1973 was a strong opponent of the war and chief Republican co-sponsor of the War Powers Resolution. In May 1961, after noting that the Korean War began because our adversaries did not believe the United States would defend South Korea, Representative Findley attacked LBJ's unwillingness to send U.S. combat troops to Indochina by saying:

By 1964, Communist terrorists had been assassinating South Vietnamese civilians and public officials for seven years. Daniel Ellsberg, who Fonda repeatedly praises in her book,[30 ] wrote of the assassination problem in 1965: “Statistics like these are hard to comprehend in familiar terms; yet the 11,000 civilians assassinated or kidnapped [by the Viet Cong] in 1964 would correspond in terms of United States population to more than 100,000, the 1,500 Vietnamese civic officials [murdered] to more than 15,000 U.S. mayors and councilmen.”[ 31 ]

Both the American people and Congress were becoming angry at President Johnson's failure to act firmly in response to the growing success of Communist aggression in South Vietnam. Professor Jerold M. Starr, a strong critic of the war and self-proclaimed “activist,” acknowledged: “In early 1964, a majority of Americans expressed dissatisfaction with Johnson's handling of the war in Vietnam. However, after Johnson called for a resolution to permit him to respond to the alleged attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, his support zoomed to 85 percent.”[32 ] To say Johnson's approval “zoomed” is no hyperbole - as this was an increase during a single month of 58 percent, or a full 30-point jump in LBJ's approval rating.[ 33 ]

One of the many great myths of the war was that LBJ dragged the country kicking and screaming into an unpopular war without the approval of the American people or the consent of Congress. Believing that Truman had erred by not seeking formal legislative authorization for the Korean War,[ 34 ] LBJ was unwilling to go to war in Indochina without the formal authorization of Congress. His request for authorization was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a vote of 88-2 in the Senate - a combined vote of 504-2, or a 99.6 percent majority. That rounds up to 100 percent, and it is worth noting that the two `nay' votes in the Senate came from men who were defeated in their next election campaigns.

The reality is that LBJ - for all of his faults, which were considerable - did not drag Congress or the nation into Vietnam. Congress and public opinion pushed him into the war. When President Johnson first sought a resolution authorizing the use of force to stop a Communist takeover in Indochina, he included a request for money. Congress did not approve that request-it more than tripled it. Indeed, an indication of the strong level of support for the war in the early years can be found by examining the margin by which massive appropriations for the war were approved in each house of Congress over the next few years. In 1966, a $13 billion supplemental appropriation passed 389-3 in House and 87-2 in Senate. The following year-and by this time there were hundreds of thousands of American troops engaged in a major war in Vietnam- a $12 billion supplemental passed 385-11 in House and 77-3 in Senate. And a House amendment to prohibit the use of funds for combat operations over North Vietnam received only three affirmative votes.[ 36 ]

In 1965, as U.S. troops joined in the fighting in Vietnam, “support for the war rose very considerably” according to Professor John Mueller, a leading authority on public opinion during times of war.[37 ] In November 1965, when there were roughly 200,000 American soldiers in Vietnam, a Gallup poll asked whether Americans would be more or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who favored “sending a great many more men to Vietnam.” Of those expressing an opinion, sixty percent said they would be “more likely” to support such a candidate favoring massive escalation of the war.[ 38 ]

In September of 1966, another Gallup poll asked a sampling of “prominent Americans” (selected from Who's Who) about Vietnam, and sixty percent of those expressing a view favored escalating the war.[39 ] Throughout the mid-1960s, there remained a broad consensus on the importance of containing Communism and a recognition that North Vietnamese efforts to take over South Vietnam by force was a serious threat. As will be discussed, while many students and some other Americans were taken in by false accusations that the United States was undermining democracy and human rights and was seeking to promote a “dictatorship” in Vietnam, even among critics of the war the “withdraw now” group was greatly outnumbered by the “super hawks” who believed that the war was not being fought with sufficient vigor.[ 40 ]

After Korea, the Eisenhower Administration had decided that fighting land wars in Asia to contain Communism was unwise, and had instead decided that Moscow could be deterred by threats of “massive retaliation” at a place and time of America's choosing in response to future Koreas. The Army was cut back significantly and most defense resources were put into strategic weapons. Before authorizing another Korean War, it was thought, Moscow would have to contemplate the consequences of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union itself. And during the late 1950s this clearly did deter Nikita Khrushchev, who stopped supporting “armed struggle” to advance the boundaries of Communism in the short run.

The socialist countries should regard it as their internationalist duty to support the people's revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America . . . Viet Nam is the most convincing current example of a victim of aggression defeating U.S. imperialism by a people's war. The United States has made South Viet Nam a testing ground for the suppression of people's war . . . The more they escalate the war, the heavier will be their fall and the more disastrous their defeat. The people in other parts of the world will see still more clearly that U.S. imperialism can be defeated, and that what the Vietnamese people can do, they can do too. [Emphasis added.] [ 41 ]

Had the United States decided to walk away from Vietnam in 1965 or 1966, it would have confirmed that Castro, Mao, Lin Biao, and Vo Nguyen Giap were correct - America could not defeat what Mao called “people's warfare” and others called “wars of national liberation.” And the lesson would not have been lost on those who were watching. Dissidents throughout the Third World would have been tempted to seek Communist assistance - perhaps with the wishful but unrealistic belief that once they had gained power they could simply toss out the Communists. And how many Third World governments vulnerable to Leninist revolution would have relied upon American promises of assistance rather than trying to cut the best deal they could with the Communists in the hope of retaining some form of power or at least saving their lives? Soon, the world would like have seen a dozen or more “Vietnams” - and the United States could not have dealt with even three Vietnams without resorting to nuclear weapons. The outcome of the Cold War was very much at stake.

As a veteran of more than 100 debates, teach-ins, panels, and other programs about the war between 1965 and my entry into the Army in 1968, I encountered the same litany of false accusations, misinformation, and lies day after day. Some of these could be traced directly back to Hanoi's propaganda machinery, others had an unclear origin. But it was an exceptional experience to encounter a war critic who did not seem to be reading from the same script. (It was even more exceptional to find an antiwar leader who would debate me more than once.)