[News] Vietnam Will Win: the Politics of Strategy

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/07/vietnam-will-win-the-politics-of-strategy/ 



  Vietnam Will Win: the Politics of Strategy

by Wilfred Burchett 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/wilfred-burchett/> - February 7, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------


To mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 Têt Offensive, CounterPunch is 
serializing Wilfred Burchett’s /Vietnam Will Win/ (Guardian Books, New 
York, 1968) over the next few weeks. Readers can judge for themselves 
the validity of the facts, observations, analysis, conclusions, 
predictions and so on made by the author. The books is based on several 
visits to the Liberated Zones controlled by the National Liberation 
Front (‘Viet Cong’) of South Vietnam in 1963-64, 1964-65 and in 1966-67 
and close contacts with the NLF leadership, resistance fighters and 
ordinary folk. Wilfred Burchett’s engagement with Vietnam began in March 
1954, when he met and interviewed President Ho Chi Minh in his jungle 
headquarters in Thai Nguyen, on the eve of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. 
He was also on intimate terms with General Vo Nguyen Giap, Prime 
Minister Pham Van Dong and most of the leadership of the Democratic 
Republic of Vietnam during the country’s struggle against French 
colonialism and American imperial aggression. Wilfred Burchett was not 
writing history as a historian, with the benefit of hindsight, access to 
archives etc. He was reporting history as it was unfolding, often in 
dangerous places. He was an on-the-spot reporter, an eyewitness to 
history. In his reporting, he followed his own convictions, political 
and moral. The book he wrote after his first two visits to the Liberated 
Zones, /Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerilla War/ (International 
Publishers, New York, 1965) concludes with this short sentence: “The 
best they [the Americans] can do is to go home.” /Vietnam Will Win/ 
confirms that.

Unfortunately, it took another seven years (1968-75) of death and 
devastation – and the extension of the war into Cambodia and Laos – for 
the U.S. to finally leave Vietnam in ignominy in April 1975. So here, 
chapter by chapter, Wilfred Burchett exposes the futility of fighting a 
people united in their struggle for independence, liberty and unity. It 
also explains, soberly and factually, why they were winning and how they 
won.

George Burchett, Hanoi

*Politics of Strategy*

“The political situation in the villages surrounding the target was very 
favorable,” said Huynh Minh, a sharp featured, wiry man. While talking 
he was stabbing a bamboo pointer at a large map hung on a tree to 
indicate an oval shaped area surrounding a large air base-an area in 
which villages were huddled together so closely and in such a pattern 
that on the map they looked like tank traps.

“Everyone hated this base,” he continued.

    “It was to build it that their original villages had been destroyed,
    simply razed to the ground-orchards, bamboo, tombstones, everything
    swept flat as a paddy field, because the Americans wanted another
    740 acres of land to extend the airfield and widen the road leading
    to it. More than 35,000 peasants were expelled from their homes and
    ancestral villages and herded into about a hundred ‘strategic
    hamlets’ located around the outer perimeter of the base. The
    Americans’ idea was that they would serve as human barriers against
    any possible infiltrations. The ‘strategic hamlets’ were ‘protected’
    by a ring of 70 military posts and together they were considered the
    first line of defense guarding the base. After that, there were five
    rows of barbed wire, minefields, armored car patrols, sentries with
    dogs and what the Americans considered impregnable defenses.

    “But the people behind the barbed wire of the ‘strategic hamlets’
    were boiling with rage. They had waged a furious political struggle
    to save their villages but in vain. Escorted by troops and tanks,
    they were taken off, village after village, and put behind barbed
    wire. A lot of the younger men, including myself, saw that further
    political protest alone was useless. We took off for the jungle with
    whatever weapons we could lay our hands on, mainly hoes and knives.
    In the jungle, we sharpened lengths of bamboo into spears and we
    used these to stage small ambushes to get arms. Once we had a few
    firearms, we sent word back into our villages, and more and more
    young men came out…

    “Later on we infiltrated cadres into the villages. They were our own
    people who were received and protected as sons and brothers, as
    often they literally were. Instead of being barriers against
    infiltration, the ring of ‘strategic hamlets,’ with the aroused
    political consciousness of the people inside, became the greatest
    factor in making infiltration possible. With the help of old women
    selling cakes, shoeshine boys polishing officers’ boots, children
    picking flowers and village youth press ganged into the army and
    serving inside the base, we gradually built up a complete picture,
    from exact sketches of the aircraft parking areas and the different
    categories of planes to the location of minefields and the habits of
    the sentries.

    “Literally hundreds of people had taken part in the work which went
    on for weeks. But not a word had leaked out. That the enemy never
    suspected a thing is also a tribute to the high political level of
    the people, and this was directly related to the bitterness and
    hatred felt toward the U.S. invaders, especially once the political
    cadres explained things to them. Their bitterness was increased by
    the fact that every few minutes they saw and heard planes roaring
    off the runways to attack their compatriots. It was from here that,
    for months previously, planes had been taking off to spray poison
    chemicals on fields and orchards just beyond the perimeter villages
    and that a terrible attack ‘by mistake’ had been made on a fleet of
    sampans, killing more titan 400 fishermen. Everyone in the village
    knew of these things. So when the moment came for us to strike, it
    was the people of the so-called ‘barrier areas’ that passed us
    through the first line of defense…”

A few weeks previously Huynh Minh had led a band of guerrillas to 
unleash a mortar barrage on the pride of the U.S. bomber fleet in South 
Vietnam, squadrons of B-57 bombers parked wingtip to wingtip on the 
mighty Bien Hoa air base, just 15 miles north of Saigon. It was just 
before midnight, and they picked off one after another of the huge 
bombers, which exploded in enormous spouts of flames and black smoke. At 
the time, it was the greatest “air victory” in military history. What 
air force could knock down at least 27 aircraft, 20 of them giant B-57 
bombers, within 15 minutes without the loss of a plane or a man? 
Twenty-seven aircraft destroyed and $15 million damage was the official 
U.S. figure. NLF reports gave a far higher figure: 58 planes destroyed 
or damaged. The 36 completely destroyed included 21 B-57s, 11 
Skyraiders, one U-2 “spy plane” and three helicopters. At the time of 
the NLF attack – October 31, 1964 – it was an absolute secret that B-57s 
were being used in South Vietnam. Even usually well-informed Saigon 
correspondents did not know that B-57s were based at Bien Hoa until the 
attack. Several of them later confirmed to me that the total of planes 
destroyed or damaged was much closer to the NLF figures than the 
official one. In any case, after that one devastating attack, B-57s 
virtually disappeared from Vietnamese skies, and when the Americans 
shortly afterward started using the eight engined B-52s they were 
careful not to base them on Vietnamese soil. They based them in 
“sanctuaries” on Guam and in Thailand.

“Due to help from the local population,” continued Huynh Minh, “we 
withdrew without the loss of a man, our path of withdrawal lit up by the 
flames devouring planes and barracks. By the time we passed back through 
the perimeter villages, everyone had climbed onto the roofs to watch the 
flames… The people were overjoyed. One old man came out with an ox and 
insisted on our unit taking it to have a good meal back at the base. We 
have strict orders not to accept gifts so we thanked him but refused. 
‘Take it,’ he said, ‘the puppets will eat it anyway if you don’t.’ We 
refused. But we ate and drank on the spot some of the things the 
villagers brought out and then got back to our base without incident.

“Every man in our unit, including my deputy commander and myself, were 
from Bien Hoa. We were on our own soil, among our own people. On the way 
to and from the perimeter villages, we knew every tree, every stone and 
even every dog – the latter is very important,” Huynh Minh said, 
laughing. “But more important still is that once within the perimeter 
area, we were completely among our own people. Our attack was successful 
because we had the complete support of the people, and we had that 
support due to the careful political work conducted for months prior to 
the attack…”

Political preparation is a key part of planning for every military 
action by forces of the National Liberation Front (NLF). Even before the 
NLF’s formation, when central guiding policies were lacking, the 
resistance paid great attention to the political climate in the target 
area and to political agitation among enemy troops. This was clearly 
exemplified in the first large-scale attack by resistance forces at Tua 
Hai in Tay Ninh Province in late January 1960, during which the 
guerrillas seized enough arms to equip their own battalion of 350 men 
and send one weapon to every district throughout central and southern 
Vietnam.[1] <#_edn1>

Quyet Thang (determined to win), the /nom-de-guerre /of the guerrilla 
who commanded the attack on Tua Hai, when explaining it to me, stressed 
that one of the reasons Tua Hai was chosen as the first target was not 
only because of the existence of a large stock of arms there, but 
because the population in the surrounding areas was furious with the 
Diem troops who had been on a kill-and-pillage expedition in late 
January 1960 and had seized everything the people had managed to save 
for the Têt, the Lunar New Year celebrations. Many of the rank-and-file 
troops were repelled and demoralized by this action they had been forced 
to carry out, and collaborated with the attackers. On a smaller scale, 
there was the same sort of cooperation between attackers, population and 
some within the enemy garrison, as at Bien Hoa in October 1964.

On October 17, 1963, NLF forces wiped out a government post at Nha Ngang 
near Loc Ninh.[2] <#_edn2> As the Saigon forces did not react 
immediately, the next day they destroyed two more bases at Ben Luong and 
Lai Niem, and for good measure blew up a 100-foot bridge over the Cai 
Chanh River at Ben Luong. The following day, government troops were sent 
by road, river craft and helicopter, and a big battle developed at Ai 
Bai hamlet in Loc Ninh village. It resulted in a crushing defeat for the 
U.S.-Saigon forces and speeded up the end of the Diem regime, which 
crumbled just two weeks later.

This was an historic battle because it marked the fullest application 
till then of an NLF tactic to which neither the Diem army of that time 
nor the U.S. forces of today has ever found a real answer. The tactic is 
to “attack enemy posts and annihilate enemy reinforcements.” In other 
words, the attack on a post is used as bait to bring enemy troops to the 
rescue at a place and time chosen by the NLF.

The Loc Ninh battle also exemplified the great importance the NLF 
attaches to the political aspects of a military action, to both its 
local and broader political implications.

“It [Lac Ninh] was a region well known for the poverty of the people,” 
explained Khanh Liet, a gaunt political cadre who had participated in 
the battle. “Before the first resistance, all land was in the hands of 
the landlords. After the August Revolution of 1945, most of the 
landlords ran away to Saigon, and the resistance administration 
distributed their land to the poorest of the peasants, including some of 
the city poor from Saigon. There was plenty of land available. People’s 
living standards improved rapidly. There were no taxes or rent to pay, 
only voluntary contributions to the resistance. After the Geneva 
Agreements, Diem’s officials came back and tried to grab the land again. 
They got some of it under nominal control by setting up some military 
posts in the area. But the landlords could not get their lands back 
completely, so although the peasants lived a bit worse than under the 
resistance administration, it was still better than under the French.

“When the armed struggle started, there were no great losses in this 
area in spite of enemy raids, and living standards remained good. The 
few landlords who had come back with the Diem troops again fled. Because 
of benefits gained from the resistance, the fact that the region was not 
completely under Diem’s control and since there was a nucleus of old 
guerrillas in this area, we were able to promote an effective guerrilla 
movement. On the basis of the solid support for the guerrillas, we 
decided this was a favorable spot for a decisive trial of strength. 
Results show that our evaluation of the situation was correct.”

Truong Ky, a top staff officer at Liberation Army Headquarters, took the 
story of the Loc Ninh battle somewhat further.

“At the time,” explained Truong Ky, a former Saigon history teacher, 
“there were grave differences between the U.S. generals and Diem on the 
question of the deployment of military forces and on numerous tactical 
questions. The U.S. wanted to concentrate military forces and use them 
to hold strategic points and accumulate reserves. Harkins[3] <#_edn3> 
was very worried about the facility with which our forces were taking 
outposts in all areas and seizing vast quantities of munitions. He 
wanted to cut the losses and also concentrate troops for mobile 
reserves; he wanted to build up a striking force to carry out 
large-scale offensive operations. Diem opposed this. Harkins tried to 
prove that such tactics could not fail to be successful, but Diem still 
opposed them. Diem saw that to abandon posts meant abandoning territory 
and population; it meant loss of revenue, loss of prestige, loss of 
popular support. Harkins was not in the least interested in Diem having 
popular support or taxes. He was only interested in having an efficient 
military instrument to beat us. Harkins was in a hurry, and he was 
looking for short cuts. Harkins thought in exclusively military terms 
and Diem thought in almost exclusively political terms. As for us,” 
Truong Ky said with a smile, “we think in political and military terms 
with the accent on the political. That is why we decided to hit hard at 
Loc Ninh. We considered that to present General Harkins and Diem with a 
large-scale example of their dilemma in the form of the Loc Ninh battle 
would force things to a head and deepen the contradictions between them.

“In fact, neither Harkins’ nor Diem’s view was correct,” continued 
Truong Ky. “Consider Harkins’ strategy first. Accumulation of mobile 
reserves for bigger aggressive actions against our people will only 
stiffen resistance and drive more and more people into our ranks. Even 
the Saigon press writes about the American plan. If carried out, it will 
further clarify our thesis that our real enemy is U.S. imperialism. Diem 
realized that withdrawals meant abandoning his plans to defend and 
extend the ‘strategic hamlet’ system. But Diem was wrong and Harkins was 
right when the latter said that by scattering forces all over the 
country, trying to hang on to ‘real estate’ as Harkins expressed it, 
they would be exposed to certain piecemeal annihilation. In this Harkins 
was correct. But actually they were both wrong because they were on the 
wrong side and whatever they did would be wrong.

“On purely political matters, there were also contradictions. The 
Americans wanted a broader political front, more right-wing elements 
grouped around Diem to fight against us. But Diem refused because he 
suspected a U.S. trap to infiltrate elements at the top that would 
eventually replace him.

“Washington used the Loc Ninh defeat to back up the military argument in 
favor of concentration rather than dispersal and sent Henry Cabot Lodge 
to Saigon to organize the overthrow of Diem. As we had foreseen, Saigon 
was plunged into a very serious political crisis.”

One did not have to spend very much time with a unit of the NLF forces 
or at NLF headquarters to realize that political factors dominate all 
others in military planning and execution. The combination of the 
political and military aspects of strategy and tactics is an absolute 
constant of the struggle as waged by the NLF. This was true also during 
the first resistance war. It is one of the special contributions of the 
Vietnamese to the special type of neocolonialism war waged by the United 
States.

The political-military strategy guiding the NLF has been summarized by 
Le Duan[4] <#_edn4> as follows:

    “… The people having built up their armed forces… are waging
    simultaneously political struggle and armed struggle … Until the
    present moment/the close combination of politico struggle and armed
    struggle constitutes the fundamental form of revolutionary violence
    in South Vietnam/ … [Emphasis in original by Le Duan.] The South
    Vietnamese revolution has thus developed by using revolutionary
    violence of the masses to launch partial insurrections in the
    countryside; by organizing the revolutionary forces in the
    countryside as in the towns; by holding firmly to a position of
    offensive to attack the enemy at all levels, militarily,
    politically, by propaganda and agitation within the enemy ranks,
    waging at the same time military activities and political struggle
    in the three strategic zones, the countryside, the towns and
    mountainous regions, in order to succeed in smashing all the
    political and military intrigues of the enemy to pun off the final
    victory…”[5] <#_edn5>

After the overthrow of Diem, Harkins got his way with the various 
military dictators who replaced Diem. Hundreds of posts were abandoned, 
especially throughout the Mekong Delta. Platoon and company-sized units 
were consolidated into battalions, and within a year a sizable number of 
mobile battalions had been knocked together for the “search and destroy” 
operations Harkins yearned for as a means of wiping out the “Vietcong” 
main-force units.

“We are in a region,” said Le Thanh Long,[6] <#_edn6> “which the enemy 
believed to be one of the safest for him in all South Vietnam.” Le Thanh 
Long was talking to a small group of journalists in a rubber plantation 
about 25 miles southeast of Saigon.

    “It is an area largely populated by Catholic peasants and fishermen
    whom the U.S.-Diem officials tricked into leaving the North, just
    after the Geneva Agreements went into force. The Saigon puppets have
    assured the Americans that these are the most loyal subjects of the
    Saigon regime. They may have been in the first few months when they
    were still under the spell of all the promises that had been made.
    But neither the Americans nor the puppets seemed to have bothered to
    find out what the former refugees really think.

    “They are embittered and full of hatred toward Diem and the
    Americans. They were promised rice fields and fishing equipment,
    good homes and a good life. In fact, they are locked up in the
    concentration camp ‘strategic hamlets’ like everyone else. In the
    early days those who went into Saigon and demanded repatriation to
    the North were shot down in the streets. Many of them think with
    longing of the coastal villages they abandoned because they fell for
    the U.S.-Diem propaganda… Many of those who came had helped us in
    the old days of the anti-French resistance. They left the North
    because they were tricked and it was easy for us to make contact
    with them again.

    “A second favorable factor was that there are rubber plantations in
    this area and most of the plantation workers are from the North,
    indentured in the French days on contracts that were for a few years
    only, after which they hoped to go back with lots of money. But they
    also were tricked because things were so arranged that they could
    never get out of debt to return home. They had been strong
    supporters in the first resistance war. Refugees from the North who
    got no land at all also went to work as coolies on the rubber
    plantations.

    “For years past we have had solid political bases established among
    the plantation workers and refugees. We had guerrilla bands
    organized and we had great difficulty in persuading them not to go
    into action quickly, but recently they had their chance.

    “Our first action was at the Binh Gia ‘strategic hamlet,’ in which
    there were 6,000 peasants, most of them Catholic refugees, but also
    a thousand from the national minorities, with whom we also had
    excellent contacts. We wanted to take the enemy really by surprise,”
    said Le Thanh Long. “They were used to us attacking ‘strategic
    hamlets’ by night and from the outside. This time, because of our
    political bases, our men got into the hamlet and we attacked from
    the inside at dawn on December 5, 1964. The garrison of three
    platoons (about 90 men) panicked and offered no resistance. The
    people helped us to round them up and we collected all their arms.
    At the same time we attacked and wiped out a company of Rangers[7]
    <#_edn7> and a platoon of Civil Guards[8] <#_edn8> to the north of
    Binh Gia, preventing any immediate intervention…”

Harassing actions, developing in size and scope, continued for more than 
three weeks as the guerrillas quickly got accustomed to military action. 
The situation developed to the point at which Harking decided to make an 
example of the Binh Gia guerrillas and use some of his reserve 
battalions to teach them a really sharp lesson.

On December 29, General Khanh (the “strong man” of the day in Saigon) 
sent in the 33rd Ranger Battalion, one of the 11 elite units of Saigon’s 
“strategic reserve.” It was for this that the NLF regular forces had 
been waiting. Late on the afternoon of the 29th, they launched a furious 
assault and in a battle that lasted just one hour, the 33rd was put out 
of action to a man, including the commander and deputy commander killed 
and two U.S. advisers captured within minutes of the first assault 
directed against the battalion command position. Because it was almost 
dusk by then and the Saigon generals never liked risking their troops 
away from bases at night for fear of the famous NLF night attacks, no 
reinforcements were sent that evening. The dead and wounded lay on the 
battlefield all night, the NLF medics giving first aid to the wounded, 
the local guerrillas picking up the entire equipment of the 33rd 
Rangers, handing over heavy weapons to the regular forces and keeping 
the rest for themselves.

Early the following morning a battalion of regular troops with more than 
100 helicopters was sent in to pick up the dead and wounded. “But they 
didn’t dare to pick up the bodies,” said Le Thanh Long. “They feared an 
ambush or mines and tried to force the Binh Gia inmates to do the job as 
they knew we wouldn’t attack civilians. The latter refused. ‘We’re 
civilians’ they said. ‘It’s your job.’ In the end, the battalion 
commander sent for planes to bomb the whole area, including the 
battlefield. Many of those men died twice, and plenty of their own 
wounded, bandaged up by us, were killed by U.S. bombs. During the whole 
day of the 30th, bodies and wounded were ferried back. We didn’t attack 
this rescue battalion because it was not what we were after.

But toward the end of the day, we rushed and captured one helicopter in 
which they had just loaded two American bodies. The ferry operation 
ended then, but we knew they would make exceptional efforts to get the 
helicopter back. All night long, helped by the Binh Gia people, we dug 
trenches and tunnels, the younger people helping us dig, the others 
bringing us food and tea.

“On the morning of December 31st, a battalion of marines was 
helicoptered in. We made one feint attack killing about 20 and then 
pretending to withdraw. Toward midday the whole battalion in close 
formation started moving cautiously toward the helicopter. Our troops 
waited till they got very close, then swarmed up out of the ground with 
supporting fire from the jungle perimeter and flanking attacks by our 
guerrillas armed with weapons picked up the previous night. Again we 
wiped out the whole battalion, including six U.S. advisers killed and 
one captured. By 4 p.m. we had complete mastery of the battlefield. We 
thought the enemy would send in more troops but they didn’t, and as on 
the 29th, the dead and wounded were left all night on the battlefield. 
We took only the heavy equipment and the local guerrillas picked up the 
rest, down to the last pistol. The regular enemy troops were completely 
demoralized. Everything took place before their eyes but they did not 
dare intervene. On January 1, planes bombed the whole area again and on 
the evening of that day, several battalions of shock troops were 
parachuted in to protect the operation of evacuating the dead and 
wounded. We knew a proportion of those parachuted in must move back over 
the main road.[9] <#_edn9> There were not enough helicopters to take 
them all. The highway ran through the ‘strategic hamlet’ of Binh Bo and 
there we prepared an ambush. Although there was an enemy post at one end 
of the hamlet, the local inhabitants smuggled our men in at night and 
helped us dig trenches and fire positions. Our target was the 35th 
Ranger Battalion, another of the ‘strategic reserve’ units. We let the 
first few trucks pass through and opened up when all the rest of the 
convoy was completely within our positions. They never had a chance. Two 
of the battalion’s three companies were put out of action. It was 
typical that, those whom we let through did not bother to turn back to 
help their comrades when the firing started, nor did troops from the 
local post intervene.”

That action took place on the night of January 3, 1965. As Le Thanh Long 
explained it to us the following day, he considered this the end of the 
main part of the Binh Gia action, a victory of unprecedented dimensions 
for the NLF forces.

“The basic reasons for our victory,” said Le Thanh Long, “are the following:

    “The policy of the NLF leadership of constantly raising the material
    and cultural standards of the Liberation Army which fights for the
    aspirations of the whole Vietnamese people.

    “The role and support of the people in the Binh Gia area in fighting
    shoulder to shoulder with us and lending every imaginable aid in
    transporting supplies, bringing us food and water, helping the
    wounded, at times helping us prepare our attack positions,
    protecting us from enemy observation and other support. We prepared
    our ambushes under the very eyes of the population, but they never
    revealed a word to the enemy. They helped dig trenches and cut
    branches to camouflage our positions. All this was due to the
    patient political work of our cadres.

    “The great efforts made by our local guerrillas, whose heightened
    political consciousness resulted in great improvements in their
    tactics and technique.”

Back at Nguyen Huu Tho’s headquarters, staff officer Truong Ky had some 
observations about the significance of Binh Gia: “It marks another 
historic phase in the war,” he said.

    “For the first time the NLF forces have engaged the enemy’s elite
    battalions in classic daytime battles and inflicted a most serious
    defeat, despite their monopoly of air power. As at Loc Ninh, we
    chose the terrain only after careful political analysis of the local
    situation and that in Saigon. The conclusion for the enemy is
    obvious. The Liberation Army has now come of age and is capable of
    defeating the best troops the enemy can field against us. Of a total
    of 11 strategic reserve battalions, two have been wiped out and a
    third was put out of action in this one battle. Khanh and the
    Americans know that the days of the puppet army are numbered.

    “We selected Binh Gia because of the favorable local political
    conditions and also because the enemy considered it one of their
    greatest strongholds, which made the political impact in Saigon so
    much the greater. We destroyed their crack battalion in their
    ‘safest’ area. We chose the time because of the great political
    demoralization and confusion in Saigon at the moment and because
    some new contradictions have emerged between the Americans and their
    puppets. It is a moment of coups and counter coups between the
    military and civilian puppets and it is useful to discredit the
    military at this time, to show up the ‘strength’ of the so called
    strong man, General Nguyen Khanh, for what it is. It is necessary to
    show the Saigon puppets that their situation is hopeless, that
    despite all the American strength, they have neither political,
    popular nor military support. It is up to the enemy to draw the
    conclusion.”

On January 4, 1965, there were renewed Buddhist and student riots in 
Saigon, followed by riots in Hué three days later on such a scale that 
the city was brought to a standstill. Throughout January the riots 
continued in all major cities. For the first time anti-American slogans 
and the demand to “let Vietnamese settle their own problems” were 
voiced. On January 11-12 there was a general strike in Hué. In Saigon on 
January 20, paratroopers were called out to deal with mass 
demonstrations which were taking on more and more the form of organized 
street fighting. The U.S. Information Service (USIS) library in Hué was 
sacked on January 23 and two days later a crowd of more than 20,000 
attacked the homes of the chief of police in Hué and the head of the 
USIS library. The city was placed under martial law and the following 
day the death penalty was announced in Saigon for anyone engaged in 
“terrorist” activities. The end of everything that Washington had set up 
in South Vietnam was clearly in sight. The death blow to “special war” 
had been dealt at Binh Gia and the political backwash was reaching tidal 
wave proportions, threatening to sweep away the debris of the 
U.S.-backed Saigon regime at any moment. “Strong man” Khanh “resigned” 
on February 22 and went into an exile from which he has never returned. 
Washington decided the only way to save the situation was to take over 
the war and as the speediest symbol of this, to start bombing North 
Vietnam. And so on February 8, 1965, the system a tic bombing of the 
North was initiated.

The bombings of the North were intended to be a terror weapon against 
the South and a symbol of further intervention to come; they were 
intended to inject some new note of authority into the feeble voice of 
the Saigon dictator of the moment. Just one month later U.S. combat 
troops landed in South Vietnam and the United States began the process 
of transferring from “special war” policies in which South Vietnamese 
combat troops under U.S. command played the major role, to “limited war” 
in which U.S. combat troops would constitute the Expeditionary Corps of 
a classical colonialist enterprise.

*Notes.*

[1] <#_ednref1> For a detailed description of the attack at Tua Hai see 
the author’s /Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerrilla War, /International 
Publishers, New York, 1965, pp. 109-121.

[2] <#_ednref2> Not to be confused with the Loc Ninh north of Tay Ninh 
near the Cambodian border, scene of an important battle between NLF and 
American forces at the end of October 1967.

[3] <#_ednref3> General Paul Harkins, who then headed the U.S. Command 
in Saigon.

[4] <#_ednref4> Le Duan, a southerner, is secretary general of the North 
Vietnam Lao Dong (Workers) Party and is considered an outstanding 
communist theoretician.

[5] <#_ednref5> Translated from: /En Avant sous le glorieux drapeau de 
la Révolution d’Octobre/, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, 1967.

[6] <#_ednref6> Le Thanh Long means the Blue Dragon, and like almost all 
other names which NLF officers used in introducing themselves, it was 
obviously a pseudonym.

[7] <#_ednref7> U.S.-trained commando type troops, better trained and 
armed than the regular Saigon army.

[8] <#_ednref8> Paramilitary formations used for garrisoning “strategic 
hamlets” and the posts set up to guard the latter.

[9] <#_ednref9> National Route No. 15 linking Saigon with Vungtau – 
formerly Cap St. Jacques – an important port 37 miles southeast of Saigon.

*NEXT: Chapter Two – Making of a Soldier*

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20180207/67784f2e/attachment.htm>