[News] Vietnam Will Win: Introduction

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/02/vietnam-will-win-introduction/


  Vietnam Will Win: Introduction

by Wilfred Burchett 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/wilfred-burchett/>- February 2, 2018
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/Wilfred Burchett interviews Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, 1962./

*Introduction by George Burchett*

    “One man, Wilfred Burchett, alerted Western public opinion to the
    nature of this war and the struggle of the Vietnamese people. He is
    the contemporary historian, the meticulous journalist who has chosen
    to identify himself with the Vietnamese people whom he has served
    admirably well. It is because he has written in such a moving way
    and with such conviction that many of us became directly engaged in
    defending the Vietnamese cause. Burchett has found the correct blend
    of moral and political commitment. His reporting, always precise and
    factual, informs and at the same time mobilizes those who have the
    good fortune to read him.”

    – Bertrand Russell (Introduction to /Hanoï sous les bombes/ (Hanoi
    Under Bombs), Maspero, Paris, 1966

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 Têt Offensive, CounterPunch 
will serialize Wilfred Burchett’s /Vietnam Will Win/ (Guardian Books, 
New York, 1968) over the next few weeks.

I chose this quote from Bertrand Russell to introduce the book because 
it captures the essence of Wilfred Burchett’s reporting from the “the 
other side” of the Vietnam War – the side fighting for independence, 
liberty and unity .

Burchett’s original title was /Why The Vietcong Wins/? The Guardian 
Books editors insisted on a more “triumphalist” title – which also 
proved prophetic. And no doubt helped turned the book into a best seller 
in the USA, where it mattered most.

Very often, when I meet visiting Americans in Ha Noi they’ll tell me: I 
read your father’s /Vietnam Will Win/.

I first read it in Phnom Penh, in French, under its original title 
/Pourquoi le Vietcong Gagne?. /It was the first of my father’s book that 
I actually read – I was 13 then – by the pool at the /Cercle Sportif/ in 
Phnom Penh, now occupied by the American Embassy.

So why did the Vietcong win? Why did Vietnam win?

Wilfred Burchett gives a sober and logical assessment based on several 
trips in the jungles of South Vietnam with the National Liberation Front 
of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) and many visits to the North, to Hanoi 
under American bombs. He was on the spot, where the action was, talking 
to the right people: President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap, NLF 
President Nguyen Huu Tho and many others, NLF commanders, student 
activists, women revolutionaries and guerillas, intellectuals, religious 
leaders, peasants.

/Vietnam Will Win/ explains in great detail how the war of resistance 
was fought south of the 17th Parallel. It is well worth reading today 
because some fundamental facts never change: foreign occupation will 
always be resisted.

David Dellinger wrote the original introduction to /Vietnam Will Win/. 
No one can do a better job of re-introducing the book to CounterPunch 
readers today. And trust me, it’s excellent reading material as Vietnam 
prepares to celebrate the Lunar New Year and  mark the 50th Anniversary 
of the Têt Offensive.

Happy Têt 1968 and best wishes for the New Year of the Dog!

George Burchett
Hanoi

*Introduction*

*By David Dellinger*

This book is automatically assured a large circulation. It will be read 
by thousands of bewildered experts in the U.S. military, diplomatic and 
foreign subversion agencies who cannot figure out on their own how the 
mighty United States, with all that technology, money and destructive 
power, could be so thoroughly defeated by tiny “backward” Vietnam. Some 
of them will read it in their office. Others will sneak out and buy it 
with their beer money, smuggling it home between the pages of /U.S. News 
& World Report/.

Fortunately it won’t do most of them any good – or should I say harm? It 
won’t show them how to be more successful in future aggressions. It 
won’t even teach them how the United States can win the hearts and minds 
of underdeveloped peoples while clinging with the heroism of George II 
and Louis XV to exploitative economic exploitative and power 
relationships. Maybe it will teach a few of them – if they are not 
careful – that in the long run them are no substitutes for 
self-determination, justice and truth; that liberation begins at home; 
and that, like a lot of former supporters of Diem and Ky in Vietnam, 
they should change sides and values.

That brings us around to the people for whom I presume that the book was 
written: the growing liberation forces in the United States. These are 
people with a wide range of commitments and attitudes but sharing an 
increasing awareness of the interconnections between this country’s 
foreign and domestic policies. It’s not just that the violence and 
hypocrisy of the United States in Vietnam, like fallout, cannot be 
confined within artificial national boundaries and not increasingly 
poison domestic affairs as well. It’s also a matter of recognizing that 
poisoned fruits do not grow, by accident, on healthy trees. The contempt 
for life, the flagrantly antidemocratic policies that have been made so 
clear to us in U.S. actions in Vietnam are seen to have their roots in 
domestic institutions and relationships. Having seen the faces of 
napalmed and tortured Vietnamese, having experienced the insistence of 
the military industrial complex on continuing an unjustifiable and 
losing war which has already killed off more than 30,000 Americans, we 
have taken a fresh look at the liberal corporate economy at home. We are 
reexamining the system of “representative democracy” which assures the 
privileges and preserves the power of the power elite. We are 
questioning the relevance of an antiwar movement which has not faced up 
to the causes of war and has been insensitive to the daily 
institutionalized violence of America’s property relationships.

For Americans who believe in human dignity and genuine, 
democracy-cultural, economic and political-the question is not so much 
“What went wrong in Vietnam?” as “What went right?” How did the 
Vietnamese manage to unite as a people, achieve such high morale, work 
out sound strategy and successful, flexible tactics? It’s clearly not a 
question of making any direct and mechanical application of Vietnamese 
methods to the vastly different conditions in the United States. In 
fact, one of the lessons to be learned from the Vietnamese is the 
importance of local initiatives and the indigenous development of 
methods that grow out of indigenous conditions. This leads not only to 
sounder strategies but to the growth of a genuine “people’s” movement. 
The Vietnamese have scored an electrifying victory for man over 
technology by putting man back at the center of things, not man in the 
abstract but the living human beings who are the victims of corrupt and 
unjust systems and must h berate themselves by their own initiatives. 
This requires national and international solidarity among those who do 
put man at the center, but it mies out doctrinaire prescriptions, 
bureaucratic control, and slavish imitations. Nothing could be more 
amusing to those who have had contact with the Vietnamese or studied 
their methods than the charges by befuddled U.S. politicians that 
American demonstrations are planned in Hanoi. Not even the initiatives 
of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam are planned in 
Hanoi. Moscow and Peking have learned to their sorrow that in a genuine 
people’s war, arms and food from outside are welcome, but political 
control is not.

I first discovered Wilfred Burchett many years ago in the pages of the 
/New York Times/. Two or three times a year he was quoted as the author 
of some eminently sensible observations but always in some such context 
as the following: “Wilfred Burchett, an Australian Communist journalist, 
claimed today…” How intriguing. A journalist who seemed to have 
authentic information and genuine insights but was always condemned to 
appear in public print with a warning. His wares were never presented 
without the label “Communist,” like the bottles on the shelf that must 
be labeled “Poison,” lest they fail into the hands of the unwary.

This practice assumes, in the first place, that the American public 
lacks the intelligence to make up its own mind on the relative merits of 
the conflicting claims that are aired on those infrequent occasions when 
Burchett is allowed to appear at ail. A few paragraphs from this 
dangerous man can upset the mountains of prose that are constructed 
daily by ordinary journalists from government handouts, briefings and 
leaked information. Sewndiy, the .label suggests that, unlike the 
reporters whose stories fill the overground press,Burchett is committed 
not to the objective truth but to one side of a partisan conflict. Oddly 
enough, in view of all this, Burchett’s reports and predictions turn out 
through the years to be remarkably accurate, whereas the American press 
never seems quite able to catch up with reality.

In actuality, Burchett rarely makes predictions. If’s just that his 
reports conflict, at the time they are issued, with the reports of 
American politicians and most American newsmen – including those who 
form the government’s loyal opposition. It’s only later, when the truth 
is seen to be as Burchett has claimed all along, that he seems to have 
made a prediction. I give you as examples his reports of the remarkable 
rebuilding and economic progress in the Democratic People’s Republic of 
Korea, facts that have been confirmed by Dr. Joan Robinson of Cambridge 
University and William Rose of the /Guardian /and other experts but have 
not yet reached the consciousness of the general public; his early 
reports of the disaffection of the people from Syngman Rhee in Korea and 
Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, of the high morale and winning battles of the 
NLF; of the saturation bombing of civilian areas in the Democratic 
Republic of Vietnam; of the widespread use of pellet bombs and other 
antipersonnel weapons which are useless against military installations 
but deadly against human flesh. When Burchett fast reported the use of 
pellet bombs, the Pentagon categorically denied that they were being 
used. More than two years and one International War Crimes Tribunal 
later, it could not keep up the pretense any longer. It declassified 
these obscene weapons and released the design for public bidding.

It is a mark of what we owe to Wilfred Burchett and the /Guardian /that 
the real purpose behind the government’s denials is not “military 
security,” as is sometimes claimed, but to deceive the American people. 
After all, the Vietnamese knew that their homes, schools, churches and 
hospitals were being blanketed by pellet bombs.

I finally met Burchett in person in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in August of 
1966 and I have met him on a number of occasions since. Meanwhile I have 
traveled in many of the countries he writes about: North and South 
Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and China. I have learned that Burchett does 
not adjust his eyesight to his political views (whatever they may be). I 
have never caught him in an exaggeration, distortion or significant 
omission. Because he has a remarkable sensitivity to the finest 
aspirations of human beings – for dignity, social solidarity, self 
determination and economic justice – he is able to understand and 
interpret people like the Vietnamese who are dedicated to these same 
goals. In writing not only from his own observations but from extensive 
interviews with the Vietnamese he communicates to Americans how 
activities that are described one way in the American press (even when 
they are not consciously distorted) appear quite different to the 
Vietnamese. Thus the Americans think that they “build a base.” Huynh 
Minh makes clear, in Chapter One, what they really do. The Americans 
think they can surround it with friendly Vietnamese who win warn against 
possible attacks. Huynh Minh and others make it inescapably clear why 
this scheme and all schemes for a continued U.S. presence in Vietnam are 
doomed to failure.

/David Dillinger/

*Author’s Introduction to First Edition*

When some 2,000 journalists from all over the world converged in Paris 
in early May 1968 for the start of the Washington-Hanoi preliminary 
“peace talks,” a major question in the minds of the more thoughtful of 
them was “How come?”

Having followed the course of the war from the DRV-NLF side more 
intimately than any other non-Vietnamese, I was on the receiving end of 
the perplexities of many of them “How come” the mightiest ever of the 
Western giants, at the apex of its nuclear-muscled power, had to sit 
down with a small, backward, truncated nation to discuss affairs of war 
or peace between them? History had scarcely a parallel for such 
high-tension dealings between two such unevenly matched opponents.

A superficial reply came easily enough from the lips of William Jorden, 
the official spokesman of the U.S. delegation headed by W. Averell 
Harriman and Cyrus Vance. In the South, the “Vietcong” were at their 
last gasp, the Têt offensive having been a great catastrophe. The North 
was cracking under the weight of bombs. Taken together, the DRV-NLF were 
on the point of collapse, which is why they had so swiftly grabbed – as 
a drowning man at a straw – at President Johnson’s offer of talks. It 
sounded plausible at first to many. But not to the few veteran 
correspondents who had just come from Saigon. And not to certain 
realistic souls who thought: “If it’s true that we’ve got them cornered, 
why don’t we go for the knockout? How come we are in Paris?”

Answering this “How come?” is the real purpose of this book. Obviously 
the reason given by Jorden was a fraud of Hitlerian proportions. Had it 
been true, there would have been no offer of talks. Had it been true, or 
even nearly true, General Westmoreland would not have been removed and 
dragged upstairs still shouting: “We’ve never had it so good. I was just 
about to win.” Had it been true, he would have been allowed the “glory” 
of dealing the final blow.

The fact is that by May 1968, U.S. military-political strategies in 
Vietnam had been driven into bankruptcy. Even President Johnson realized 
that the 206,000 more troops demanded earner by Westmoreland could not 
change the situation. The Paris talks could serve as a means of 
diverting Public opinion from the real situation they could serve to 
gain time to develop new strategies and also to defuse the halt-the 
bombing, end-the war agitation inside and outside the United States. 
This latter very important calculation worked out for a time. But it was 
more than offset by something that did not enter Johnson’s planning: the 
extreme panic reaction of the leaders of the shaky Saigon regime to the 
mighty United States sitting down and talking on equal terms with Hanoi.

Johnson could not have expected this latter reaction because there was a 
high-powered apparatus to shield him from the military-political facts 
of life in South Vietnam. His July 20-21 conference with General Thieu 
in Honolulu and subsequent hawkish promises not to end the bombing were 
an attempt to repair the damage in Saigon caused by the Paris talks and 
to put some spunk into Thieu and Ky. It was a measure of the spiraling 
political crisis in Saigon caused by the mere fact of the Paris talks.

After a year of talks the “How come?” was more pertinent than ever. The 
DRV delegation, joined by their NLF colleagues when the bilateral talks 
became quadrilateral, showed no signs of weakening. During the first 
five and a half months, for representatives of a country about to 
“collapse” under the weight of U.S. bombs, the DRV delegation displayed 
elaborate indifference to Johnson’s demand for some sort of “payment” 
for a total end to the bombings of the North. On passing, one must note 
that this symbolic “payment,” stripped to its essentials, was that under 
the guise of “reciprocity” the DRV should agree to abandon the NLF and 
allow the United States under some form or other to seal off all 
contacts between North and South.) During the first few months of the 
talks, Westmoreland’s aggressive “Search and Destroy” strategy had been 
replaced by Abrams’*[1] <#_edn1> “Clear and Hold”-which quickly 
degenerated into what could be called a “Hold What We Can” strategy. And 
there was no possibility of changing this for the better-from the U.S. 
view-point. “How come?”

At the end of the first five and a half months, President Johnson 
finally decided to halt the bombings “unconditionally” or “without 
conditions,” as the Americans preferred the text should be worded. 
Nothing had changed except perhaps that Johnson and his negotiators in 
Paris discovered that the DRV delegates meant what they said and that 
their stand was fully justified by the political-military situation in 
the South.

Simultaneous with the agreement to end the bombings of the North was the 
announcement that a four-party conference would start on November 6, 
1968, with delegates from the NLF and the Saigon administration joining 
the DRV and U.S. negotiators. The NLF delegation arrived in Paris on 
November 4. But the Saigon regime, overtly backed by the more hawkish 
elements within the Johnson administration, refused to send a delegation 
until Washington signed a secret pledge never to recognize the NLF.

After two and a half months of bargaining over what seemed to be the 
innocent question of the shape of the conference table – the real issue 
was whether the NLF was an independent, home-grown product of the South 
or a mere agent of the North, as the U.S.-Saigon delegates pretended-the 
DRV concept of a round table was accepted. The four delegations would 
sit down as separate entities each with the right to speak 
independently. The U.S.-Saigon position was for a rectangular table, or 
at least a table divided w two to suit their “your-side our-side” 
formula under which they would later demand the DRV-NLF “side” to 
withdraw all their armed forces from the South. U.S.-Saigon maneuvering 
to deport all resistance forces to North Vietnam was the ultimate 
significance of the debate over the shape of the table.

Two days before President Johnson was to leave office the four 
delegations announced the agreement to hold their first meeting. What 
coincidence in timing! The announcement to halt the bombings five days 
before the presidential elections and the date set for the first meeting 
came just in time for Johnson to claim that he had got the real peace 
talks started! Eight months had been lost while tens of thousands of 
Vietnamese and Americans became casualties of Johnson’s showmanship.

By January 20, 1969, when Nixon took over at the White House, there were 
about 550,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam, not counting navy and 
naval-air personnel, nor troops and pilots at American bases in 
Thailand, from where the main air attacks were being g made. South 
Koreans, Australians, Thais and other “non-Vietnamese allies” accounted 
for another 70,000, plus another 800,000 in various branches of the 
Saigon regime’s armed forces: a total of over 1,400,000 troops. There 
was one soldier to every 10 men, women and children in the whole of 
South Vietnam. The United States had more divisions committed than 
against Japan w World War II, more than were used in the Korean War.

If one accepted official figures available to Saigon correspondents at 
the end of 1967, this enormous force was deployed to bring two million 
people in the NLF-controlled areas [2] <#_edn2> under Saigon control – 
two soldiers for every three men, women and children.

Just half of the total U.S. standing armed forces as units and far more 
than half the combat-trained troops have already been committed in South 
Vietnam. The four reserve divisions stationed in the U.S. for home 
defense are below strength, their effectives having been quietly 
transferred to units in Vietnam to replace combat losses.[3] <#_edn3> 
All elite units specially trained w jungle and counterinsurgency warfare 
had already been committed, as had the two airborne divisions also 
earmarked for defense of the U.S. itself.

More than half of all the U.S. Air Force’s fighter-bomber squadrons were 
also engaged and many of those remaining existed only on paper because 
planes and pilots had been switched to Vietnam. At the time of the North 
Korean seizure of the electronic espionage ship U.S.S Pueblo, the ardor 
of U.S. senators demanding immediate air-sea action cooled down somewhat 
when the press revealed that total U.S. air strength in South Korea at 
the time was just eight nuclear bombers, not a single fighter-bomber, 
and that the two U.S. infantry divisions there were much under strength, 
their effectives having been sent as replacements to South Vietnam.

Even before the sharp rise in casualties from the Tet offensive on, 
announced U.S. casualties were running at a higher monthly average than 
during the Korean war and real casualties were known by correspondents 
on the spot to be far higher than those announced total official 
casualty figures exceeding those of the Korean war were released as the 
Paris talks ended their third month.

As for the U.S. Navy, one third of all major combat vessels, including 
aircraft carriers, were already in Vietnamese waters and the latter had 
aboard virtually all the modern carrier-borne aircraft that the U.S. 
possessed.

U.S. planes were dropping a greater tonnage of bombs every month on 
North Vietnam than on Germany at the peak of World War II, a greater 
tonnage per year than the total dropped on North Korea during three 
years of war. (This latter was by no means negligible. It was enough to 
destroy every town, village, factory and virtually every building in 
North Korea except those that had been placed underground. ) But despite 
all this, the war in Vietnam, the question of bringing those “two 
million” people under control – ten million if one accepts the NLF 
figure which is certainly more nearly correct –  the question of forcing 
the 17 million Vietnamese in the North to abandon the cause of their 
compatriots in the South had plunged the U.S. into a national crisis of 
unheard-of proportions  – illustrated by the scenes which shocked the 
world at the Chicago convention of the Democratic Party in August 1968. 
Not only a political crisis and not only a moral crisis, but something 
of a financial crisis as well.

Never in the history of any nation had so many with so much been arrayed 
against so few with so little. In comparison with the U.S. versus the 
Vietnamese people, the story of David and Goliath seems like a combat 
between near equals. But miracle of miracles, despite all the laws of 
averages and statistics, it is the Vietnamese people who are winning on 
all fronts.

One of the most convincing illustrations of this was the feat, 
absolutely unprecedented in military history, of the NLF forces on 
January 30-31, 1968, in launching a generalized offensive along a front 
of well over 600 miles. The NLF simultaneoU.S.ly attacked and for the 
most part seized 140 towns and cities from the 17th parallel in the 
north to the Ca Mau peninsula in the extreme south, including 37 of 
South Vietnam’s 40 provincial capitals and about a hundred district 
centers. For any classical army, an offensive of such dimensions would 
pose insoluble problems of supply, communications and coordination. The 
NLF forces, without any modern transport or communications and with 
supplies carried on their backs, pulled it off. In complete secrecy, 
under the noses of the most sophisticated military machine that has ever 
taken the field equipped with the most modem electronic detection 
devices, they attacked the heart of every major military and 
administrative installation in South Vietnam. Among the objectives 
attacked were all four zonal headquarters of the Saigon army, eight out 
of 11 divisional headquarters, 15 regimental headquarters and two 
American army field headquarters. Among 18 major targets attacked in 
Saigon itself was the U.S. Embassy, the joint  U.S.-Saigon armed forces 
headquarters, the South Vietnam naval headquarters and the Saigon radio 
station (which was completely destroyed). Thirty airfields were 
attacked, including 11 of South Vietnam’s 14 major air bases, with the 
destruction of 1,500 planes and helicopters, according to NLF sources. 
The latter figure may be disputed, but in the weeks that followed there 
was a drastic reduction in U.S. combat air activity over South Vietnam.

The ease with which the NLF forces implanted themselves in every major 
city dealt a mortal blow to the Saigon government of General Nguyen Van 
Thieu and Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and caused an upheaval of 
cosmic proportions in Washington. The Saigon administration literally 
faded away in Saigon and many other cities; it had been practically 
nonexistent in the countryside long before the coup. The armed attacks 
were accompanied by simultaneous uprisings by urban dwellers, armed with 
weapons the NLF took when they seized arsenals and munitions depots as 
priority targets.

The 1968 Lunar New Year attacks were indeed the most striking 
illustration of the fact that despite the unprecedented weight of men 
and materials arrayed against the NLF in South Vietnam and the three 
years’ bombing onslaught against North Vietnam, it is the 
administrations of Ho Chi Minh in the North and Nguyen Huu Tho 
(president of the National Liberation Front in the South) that remain 
strong and stable, while the regime in Saigon, in spite of the 
prodigious investment of human, material and financial resources to keep 
it viable, has been in a state of permanent crisis for nearly ten years. 
Ho Chi Minh’s administration has been in power longer than almost any 
other government in the world, with most cabinet members serving for the 
past 23 years, since the August 1945 revolution. The NLF administration 
in the South remains the same as on the day of its formation on December 
20, 1960, with Nguyen Huu Tho as its elected president and effectively 
at the helm from the time he was rescued from a Diem prison by NLF 
guerrillas in October 1961. With all the fantastic military power at 
their disposal, U.S. forces have never succeeded in penetrating the 
strongholds of the NLF*, *have never succeeded in capturing a single 
member of its central committee.

One of the most ironic spectacles played out in Saigon every year is the 
November 1 parade at which white clad U.S. diplomats solemnly mount the 
tribunal on Thong Nhat Boulevard to take part in the annual celebration 
of the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem, whose “invitation” for U.S. help still 
remains the official basis for American military intervention in South 
Vietnam. All the rest – the bombings of the North, the threatened 
extension of the war to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand and perhaps 
elsewhere – is based on the commitment to Diem. The repudiation of those 
“solemn engagements,” according to Dean Rusk, would mean the end of U.S. 
prestige throughout the world. That it was U.S. Ambassador Lodge who 
masterminded the coup that ended in the overthrow and murder of Diem 
lends added savor to the November 1ceremonies.

A timetable of the political merry-go-round that followed the overthrow 
of the Diem regime on November 1, 1963, gives some idea of the 
formidable difficulties that Washington has had in order to maintain 
somebody in place in Saigon to perform the unpopular task of 
periodically renewing the original “invitation” to intervene. The 
“intervention” fable is one that Harriman constantly tries to perpetuate 
at the Paris talks; another is that the Thieu-Ky regime is 
constitutionally elected and represents the will and aspirations of the 
South Vietnamese people. A question I have often been asked is whether 
the fact that Thieu and Ky have remained in power since June 1965 does 
not mean that the political situation has been stabilized. After all, 
there have been no new coups d’état.

The real reason is that by June 1965 the U.S. had completely taken over 
the running of the war. U.S. combat troops were pouring in. No new coup 
could take place without the coup-makers having to deal with U.S. 
troops. When Lodge turned up for his second tour as ambassador in 1965, 
his instructions were just the opposite to those he had received in 1963 
when he had played the major role in unseating Diem and unwittingly 
provoking the series of coups that followed. In 1965 he brought with him 
“no more coups” instructions. By then Washington had given up hope of 
finding a South Vietnamese “strong man” who could win the war.

If it was not immediately an all-American war, it became at least a 
mainly American war in which the South Vietnamese generals and 
politicians were assigned a secondary role. But the U.S. forces needed a 
stable political rear, and so “No more coups!” And there were no more. 
As far as the Vietnamese people were concerned, their energies were 
switched to the main enemy, the U.S. invasion forces. The U.S.-Saigon 
command was the supreme symbol of repression, not the Saigon regime. It 
was clear to all, including nationalist and patriotic elements within 
the Saigon army and administration, that it would be a waste of time and 
blood trying to replace one clique of generals for another in Saigon as 
long as a foreign expeditionary force held the real power. The defeat of 
that force became the primary task, that of unseating the Saigon regime 
could wait.[4] <#_edn4>

By the time the Thieu-Ky combination had consolidated its takeover, some 
20 of South Vietnam’s 60 generals were in jail or in exile; in some 
cases, like Nguyen Khanh in a vaguely defined roving diplomatic status. 
Khanh prudently stayed abroad when summoned from his “diplomatic post” 
to return to face charges of corruption.

If the casualties among South Vietnamese generals and politicians have 
been considerable, the United States also has its modest list, headed by 
the country’s most famous soldier and one of its most famous diplomats, 
General Maxwell Taylor, who gave up his post as chairman of the U.S. 
Joint Chiefs of Staff to go to Saigon to run the war as an 
“ambassador-general” with exceptional powers to run military and 
diplomatic affairs. He failed and was withdrawn. Henry Cabot Lodge, 
former U.S. chief delegate at the United Nations, one-time 
vice-presidential candidate and considered a very promising Republican 
presidential candidate for the 1964 elections, ruined his political 
prospects for all time when he went and failed twice in South Vietnam. 
Under-Secretary of State Alexei Johnson as Maxwell Taylor’s deputy 
ambassador (a rare thing indeed for an ambassador to have an 
under-secretary of state as an aide) shared Maxwell Taylor’s failure. 
General Paul Harking is another who tried and failed. Deputy 
commander-in-chief and chief of staff of the U.S. Army in the Pacific 
area when he took the job of heading the U.S. Military Assistance 
Command in Saigon in February 1962, even the operations Harking 
personally directed in the field were failures. In June 1964 he was 
relieved of his command and replaced by General William C. Westmoreland.

Taylor and Harkins faded in the application of “special war,” a strategy 
invented by Taylor while serving as special adviser to President John F. 
Kennedy. Westmoreland was sent out to direct a “limited war” with the 
very best U.S. Army and Marine combat divisions at his disposal. But he 
too failed and by the end of 1967 he had been effectively replaced as 
operational commander by his “deputy,” General Creighton Abrams, 
considered an expert in tank warfare. Westmoreland is the greatest 
failure of them all until now because of the scope of his defeat. To 
fail against armed forces developed from peasant guerrillas, with an 
army of well over a million superbly armed troops at your disposal, plus 
the world’s most modern air force and unlimited artillery, is a failure 
of monumental dimensions.

If one were to add to the list a couple of generals relieved of their 
commands on the battlefield, others lolled or wounded in action, then 
the high-level casualty list becomes impressive. Especially when it is 
topped by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, whose nine visits to 
South Vietnam, each followed by optimistic “progress reports,” failed to 
produce any real changes in favor of the United States up to the time 
that President Johnson unceremoniously relieved him That other important 
heads would roll after the military-political disaster that the Tat 
offensive represented for U.S. strategies and prestige was certain. That 
Westmoreland would finally get his marching orders was a foregone 
conclusion. That the supreme commander-in-chief, President Johnson, 
would add his name to the casualty list could not have been foreseen. 
But there it is!

How come?

Possibly no single question is agitating the minds of so many people 
at this moment in world history-not only the minds of generals and 
diplomats, of journalists and the general public, but the minds of those 
all over the world, especially those in the “third world” who are 
involved in or are planning struggles of national liberation similar to 
that w which the Vietnamese people are engaged.

It is to supply some of the answers that the chapters which follow are 
devoted. The answers are far from complete. It will only be when the 
leaders of the struggle in the jungles, mountains and rice fields of 
South Vietnam have time to lay aside their guns for their pens that we 
will have the elements of a complete answer.

Wilfred Burchett,
Paris, September 1968
Revised August 1969

*Notes.*

[1] <#_ednref1> General Creighton Abrams succeeded General William C. 
Westmoreland as U.S. Commander in South Vietnam on June 10, 1968.

[2] <#_ednref2> These figures are based on those given by Hanson 
Baldwin, military editor of the /New York Times, /usually quoted as 
America’s most authoritative writer on military affairs. He was 
reporting from Saigon on December 26, 1967, after a series of top-level 
briefings at the U.S. high command in Saigon. “Statistics,” wrote 
Baldwin, “show that the Vietcong control almost 40 percent of the 
territory, mostly jungle and 13.5 percent of the population as compared 
with 51 percent and 19 percent on October I 1966…” (The population of 
South Vietnam before the B-52s set to work on the densely populated 
areas around Saigon and in the Mekong Delta is usually given as 14 
million.) The results of the 1968 Têt (Lunar New Year) offensive, 
launched just one month after Baldwin’s article appeared, show to what 
extent even authoritative analysts allowed themselves to be hypnotized 
by plausible incompetents like Westmoreland.

[3] <#_ednref3> The U.S. standing armed forces consist of 24 divisions. 
Those committed to South Vietnam by October 1968 include the 1st, 4th, 
9th and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 101st and 58th Airborne Divisions 
(the latter only partly), the Americal and First Cavalry (Airmobile) 
Divisions, the 1st, 3rd and 5th Marine Divisions (the latter two of its 
three regiments). The missing elements in the 82nd Airborne and 5th 
Marine Divisions are more than made up for by independent units such as 
the l99th Infantry Brigade, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and others.

[4] <#_ednref4> The situation is very different today. The U.S. command 
has been forced into a passive, defensive posture. The Alliance of 
National, Democratic and Peace forces, formed just after the Têt 
offensive, has great influence an ally of the NLF in the cities and 
among the middle class and the intellectuals. It has close links with 
patriotic elements within the Saigon army and administration. In the 
past, the NLF could never throw its weight behind one set of generals 
struggling for power against another. But it is possible to envisage a 
new type of coup in the future behind which the NLF could throw its 
weight, including its armed forces, its political organizations, its 
prestige. The fact that the United States has had to sit down and talk 
in Paris has greatly stimulated an upsurge of nationalist forces that 
had hitherto remained passive and hopeless in the face of the 
U.S.-Saigon regime and its power structure.

This upsurge reached its highest point thus far with the formation on 
June 8, 1969 of the Provisional Revolutionary Government headed by Huynh 
Tan Phat, to which the NLF handed over all of its administrative 
functions and which represents the last stage before formation of a 
provisional coalition government that win replace the Saigon puppet 
regime. The NLF and Alliance comprise the major components of the new 
government, but places were left open for a third element-authentic, 
patriotic national forces, whose inclusion would ensure the broadest 
possible government of national union which the NLF has always advocated.

*NEXT: Chapter One – Politics and Strategy*

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