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<h1 id="reader-title">Vietnam Will Win: Introduction</h1>
<div id="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr" style="text-align:
left;">by <span class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/wilfred-burchett/"
rel="nofollow">Wilfred Burchett</a></span><span
class="post_date" title="2018-02-02"> - February 2, 2018</span></div>
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<div id="attachment_99440" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img
class="wp-image-99440 size-full"
src="https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2018/02/bruchettho.png"
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<p class="wp-caption-text"><em>Wilfred Burchett
interviews Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, 1962.</em></p>
</div>
<p><strong>Introduction by George Burchett</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>– Bertrand Russell (Introduction to <em>Hanoï sous
les bombes</em> (Hanoi Under Bombs), Maspero, Paris,
1966</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 Têt Offensive,
CounterPunch will serialize Wilfred Burchett’s <em>Vietnam
Will Win</em> (Guardian Books, New York, 1968) over
the next few weeks.</p>
<p>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 .</p>
<p>Burchett’s original title was <em>Why The Vietcong
Wins</em>? 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.</p>
<p>Very often, when I meet visiting Americans in Ha Noi
they’ll tell me: I read your father’s <em>Vietnam Will
Win</em>.</p>
<p>I first read it in Phnom Penh, in French, under its
original title <em>Pourquoi le Vietcong Gagne?. </em>It
was the first of my father’s book that I actually read –
I was 13 then – by the pool at the <em>Cercle Sportif</em>
in Phnom Penh, now occupied by the American Embassy.</p>
<p>So why did the Vietcong win? Why did Vietnam win?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>Vietnam Will Win</em> 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.</p>
<p>David Dellinger wrote the original introduction to <em>Vietnam
Will Win</em>. 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.</p>
<p>Happy Têt 1968 and best wishes for the New Year of the
Dog!</p>
<p>George Burchett<br>
Hanoi</p>
<p><strong>Introduction</strong></p>
<p><strong>By David Dellinger</strong></p>
<p>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
<em>U.S. News & World Report</em>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I first discovered Wilfred Burchett many years ago in
the pages of the <em>New York Times</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<em>Guardian </em>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.</p>
<p>It is a mark of what we owe to Wilfred Burchett and the
<em>Guardian </em>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>David Dillinger</em></p>
<p><strong>Author’s Introduction to First Edition</strong></p>
<p>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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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’*<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[1]</a>
“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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[2]</a>
under Saigon control – two soldiers for every three men,
women and children.</p>
<p>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.<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[3]</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<strong>,
</strong>have never succeeded in capturing a single
member of its central committee.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<a href="#_edn4"
name="_ednref4">[4]</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>How come?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Wilfred Burchett,<br>
Paris, September 1968<br>
Revised August 1969</p>
<p><strong>Notes.</strong></p>
<p><a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[1]</a> General
Creighton Abrams succeeded General William C.
Westmoreland as U.S. Commander in South Vietnam on June
10, 1968.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[2]</a> These figures
are based on those given by Hanson Baldwin, military
editor of the <em>New York Times, </em>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.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[3]</a> 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.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[4]</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>NEXT: Chapter One – Politics and Strategy</strong></p>
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