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<h1 id="reader-title">Vietnam Will Win: Winning Hearts and Minds</h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span>
<span class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/wilfred-burchett/"
rel="nofollow">Wilfred Burchett - February 16, 2018</a></span>
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<p>To mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 Têt Offensive,
CounterPunch is serializing Wilfred Burchett’s <em>Vietnam
Will Win </em>(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, <em>Vietnam: Inside Story of
the Guerilla War </em>(International Publishers, New
York, 1965) concludes with this short sentence: “The
best they [the Americans] can do is to go home.” <em>Vietnam
Will Win</em> confirms that.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>George Burchett, Hanoi</em></p>
<p><strong>Winning Hearts and Minds</strong></p>
<p>If there was one matter on which all Americans in South
Vietnam were virtually unanimous at the turn of the
1967-68 year, it was that “pacification” was still a
failure. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and his CIA-trained
deputy Robert Rower could cite statistics of “Vietcong”
killed by body count, miles of roads opened and bridges
“secured”; acres of rice land taken out of “Vietcong”
control; the fact that elections had been held; an
increased number of “defectors” under the “open arms”
program – and add all this up to get a total of
progress. But even the most optimistic of the official
U.S. propagandists admitted that victory in the decisive
battle for the “hearts and minds” of the people was more
remote than ever and this knowledge permeated all the
end-of-the-year survey articles of the Saigon
correspondents.</p>
<p>Even Hanson Baldwin, military editor of the <em>New
York Times, </em>who strained facts and the
indulgence of his readers to the ultimate degree to
present an optimistic picture of the military situation,
wrote after one of his rare visits to South Vietnam:
“Most authorities agree that the job of eliminating the
underground government and terrorist apparatus in South
Vietnam, and of what amounts to nation-building, is just
starting, that it has made very limited progress…”
Baldwin tries to comfort his readers by adding that this
job “now appears to be on the right track” but “none are
hopeful that it can be accomplished quickly.”<a
href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[1]</a></p>
<p>This was after over 13 years of a United States shadow
government in South Vietnam, after six years of direct
U.S. military intervention in all-out war against the
NLF guerrillas and after almost three years of massive
intervention, with U.S. “advisers” running
administrative affairs from the ministerial level down
to civil affairs officers at provincial and district
level.</p>
<p>How is it possible that the expenditure of unlimited
billions of dollars and the unrestricted use of the most
complete and efficient repressive machinery ever
conceived have not prevented the NLF from winning the
hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people? It was
because this battle was won by the NLF years ago, and
the U.S. counteroffensive has never been able to reverse
the decision. How do you go about winning hearts and
minds when you have neither dollars nor guns, or at
least very few of the latter? The official U.S. answer
is that it was done by “terror,” and it is not by
accident that Baldwin refers to the “terrorist
apparatus” which has to be eliminated. And terror – l
prefer the NLF term “revolutionary violence” – has been
an element in the NLF success in winning the hearts and
minds of the people, especially in the darkest days of
the Diem dictatorship when for a time, police control
was nearly total and any district chief had complete
power of life or death over every single person within
his administrative competence. It was violence
selectively applied that brought the first rays of hope,
just as it did in the blackest days of Nazi occupied
Europe when a French patriot assassinated a notorious
Gestapo agent. Violence has been used selectively to
wipe out, usually after repeated warnings, some of the
worst local tyrants, with a most salutary effect on his
deputies or successors in almost all cases.</p>
<p>In an earlier book<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[2]</a>
I had mentioned the execution of a certain Chan, who
headed Ngo Dinh Can’s secret police<a href="#_edn3"
name="_ednref3">[3]</a> in the three north-central
provinces of Quang Ngai, Quang Nam and Binh Dinh. In
Chan’s safe, a bag was found containing 432 human ears,
in each case the left ear stapled to a document giving
the owner’s name and a receipt for 5,000 piastres. The
right ear had been forwarded to Can’s headquarters as
proof that the victims, former resistance cadres, had
been killed, and for each one Chan received 5,000
piastres. So violence or terror was visited upon Chan on
May 18, 1960, by an “armed propaganda group.” His body
was left on the road with a piece of paper stuck to it
explaining who he was and why he had been executed. This
was one of many similar acts undertaken at that time,
before the National Liberation Front had been formed, by
local patriotic groups determined to “break the grip” of
the enemy, as the cadre who executed Chan later
explained it to me. A list was found in Chan’s office of
several hundred former resistance members marked down
for liquidation, as well as the names of a network of
Chan’s agents. The intended victims were immediately
warned, one or two more of the worst of Chan’s agents
were killed and the rest warned to cease their
activities or else…</p>
<p>Following the publication of my account of Chan and the
filed ears, I had a visit from a U.S. Information
Service agent from Saigon, Dr. Milton Sachs, who
protested that the story could not possibly be true.
Neither the American “advisers” nor Ngo Dinh Can, who
was not at all the bloodthirsty tyrant that I had
depicted, according to Sachs, would ever have permitted
such practices. The “lie about the filed ears
invalidated the whole of my book.” In connection with
this official indignation, it is interesting to quote
from a passage of the interrogation by the French
lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, of witness David Tuck<a
href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[4]</a> at the second
session of the International War Crimes Tribunal:<a
href="#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[5]</a></p>
<p>Halimi: The ears of Vietnamese, for certain Montagnard
tribes, are reputed to be valuable. Can you confirm
instances of American bounties paid for Vietnamese ears?</p>
<p>Tuck: Well, as for the cutting off of ears – when I was
over there it was a practice of the 173rd Airborne
Brigade, after a battle, to cut the ears off of dead
Vietnamese and to use them as souvenirs. Also this was a
practice of the 25th [U.S. infantry division]. This was
more or less a passing fad. The person who had the most
ears was considered the number one Vietcong killer and
also when we would get back to base camp, the one who
had the most ears would get all the free beer and
whiskey they could drink. It was more or less a passing
fad, but they did cut the ears off of dead Vietcong to
show as souvenirs.</p>
<p>The execution of Chan was a typical example of violence
used to strike some sparks of hope in the hearts of
people against whom unrelenting terror was being applied
every day. It was a case of revolutionary violence being
employed to break or at least weaken a veritable reign
of terror. The lives of several hundred patriots were
saved by that one act, and for a time at least there was
a marked falling off in the repressive activities of the
Diem police in the provinces concerned. But violence
employed against the enemies of the people was only one
element in gaining support for the revolutionary
resistance struggle.</p>
<p>The aims of the NLF reflected the aspirations of the
overwhelming mass of South Vietnamese people. But how
could ordinary people in those first years of
insurrectionist activity really know that this was so?
After years of unrelieved terror, how could they have
any faith in the small groups that started to turn up,
agitating for a nationwide insurrection? How could they
believe they were sincere, let alone that they had any
chance of success? They might very well be Diem
agent-provocateurs sent to find potential resisters. And
indeed, often agents would use all sorts of
revolutionary phrases to deceive the gullible and mark
them down for later arrest. In the 1954-59 period, the
Diem police began registering, then tracking down and
finally arresting and liquidating all those who had
taken part in the anti-French struggle. Practically the
only way for former resistance cadres to survive was to
flee to the jungle and mountains, or in any case to
escape from their native district. To return to the
police-ridden “strategic hamlets” to make the first
contacts and to try to win the confidence of the people
was an extremely difficult task. In studying the
accounts of revolutionaries fighting in the mountains
and jungle of Latin America, it is clear that the first
contacts with the plains-dwellers are almost always a
major problem. The objective situation of identity of
interest between the aims of revolutionaries and the
aspirations of the people remains a theoretical concept
until contact is made and cemented.</p>
<p>Nguyen Mau, 53 years old when I met him, with a deeply
lined face and muscled arms and legs, was an NLF cadre
from Huong Tra District in Thua Thien Province, of which
Hué is the capital. He was one of those who had played a
role, “rather a prominent cadre,” he said, in the
anti-French resistance war. “When the Diem police
started hunting us down, I had to go into hiding. Not a
single former resistance cadre was spared in our
province, except the few of us who fled to the
mountains. In 1955-56 we could still move around and
carry out secret agitation for the elections, which were
supposed to be held in July 1956. After Diem carried out
the referendum that year making himself head of state,
the repression was even more severe. Contacts became
more difficult and we hesitated to subject the
population to reprisals by continuing to meet. By 1959,
with the introduction of Law 10/59,<a href="#_edn6"
name="_ednref6">[6]</a> we could have no contact with
the people. Law 10/59 was posted up in big letters on
bulletin boards everywhere. Anyone suspected of even the
slightest sympathy with the former resistance movement,
or of even the slightest opposition to the government,
was dragged off under Law 10/59. Repression went
hand-in-hand with some demagogic maneuvers to try to
persuade people that the Diem regime was interested in
their welfare. For instance, they confiscated land which
we had distributed during the resistance period – Huong
Tra was a liberated area then – and said that
one-quarter of this was being put aside for rebuilding
churches and pagodas, so people could benefit from
religious services. The rest they handed out to Diem
“trustees” for “services rendered.” They built roads and
bridges, and people with houses alongside the main
highway were ordered to repair and paint the outside to
present a facade of prosperity. No matter how poor,
people were forced to do this; if they could not raise
the money, they were automatically considered ‘vietcong’
and were dragged off. Night and day the theme was
drummed into people that they should forget the Vietminh
for all time.</p>
<p>“At the higher level, repression was carried out by the
paramilitary organs and secret police of Diem’s
administration. At lower levels, by the chiefs of the
‘self-defense’ units. The people were crushed between
these two levels of repression. Within the communities
there was the ‘neighborhood mutual information’
organization for mutual espionage, one such unit for
every five or six families, with one elder responsible
for reporting any movements, visits or suspicious
conversations. The elder had to be able to account for
the whereabouts of every member at any moment the
authorities demanded. The presence of any stranger had
to be reported immediately. Control was so close that it
was impossible for us cadres to live among the people.
But we came down from the hills at night to try to make
contacts. If the people were really voluntarily under
the thumb of the Diem authorities, we would not have
lasted long. But they remembered the resistance years
and stood by us. They found means of providing food for
us, [which was] a difficult problem in the mountains.</p>
<p>“In those days you could say we were ‘based’ in the
mountains, but these were ‘bases’ for survival. We had
no arms at all and barely the means of existence. All
adults in the ‘strategic hamlets’ had to be provided
with sticks, ropes and lanterns – ready to attack, seize
and tie up any stranger. They had to make a noise, beat
gongs or pieces of wood, shout at the top of their
voices ‘vietcong’ and rush out with torches. They would
do this when one of us turned up, but invariably they
would fall over each other, a dozen voices crying at
once: ‘He has gone this way… No, that way’ and shouting
in all sorts of directions but the real one. But 1957 to
1959 were very bad years for even those cadres who had
escaped Diem’s police net. We could just about keep
alive, but could not do much for the revolution. It was
difficult to know what was the political line from
above, so that even if with tremendous difficulties we
could make contact with the people, we could give them
no clear guidance. In the first two years at least the
line had been clear: to push for the loyal fulfillment
of the Geneva Agreements leading to the 1956 elections.
But once the elections were sabotaged and Diem and the
Americans openly turned their backs on the Geneva
Agreements, we were rather lost. We could keep alive and
that was about all; leave a scrap of paper in a field in
exchange for a packet of food.</p>
<p>“Late in 1959, when former resistance leaders got
together and decided to start armed resistance, our task
was to try to establish political bases in the villages.
We thought it would be very difficult after all the
repression and anti-‘Vietcong’ indoctrination. But in
fact we were received most warmly. The people had missed
us for so long, their sufferings had been so great and
there seemed no way out, no ray of light anywhere, until
we came back. We explained the new line, at first on a
very small scale, to an individual here and there. It
was forbidden for two persons to speak together, even
brothers… Under those circumstances it was long, patient
work. But with one or two contacts in each village, we
could move in at night, paint up a few slogans, leave
some hand-printed leaflets, above all let the people
know of our presence.</p>
<p>“It was necessary to know the people’s reaction to
this, that of the intellectuals, and also that of the
enemy – Diem officials. We quickly found that the masses
of the people were delighted and the Diem tyrants were
impressed. As a former liberated area, many of the
latter knew of the great prestige of the Vietminh. A
typical reaction was: ‘Ah, so the Vietminh is still
around. They didn’t all go to the North after all.’ And
so with our first modest measures, a slight tremor of
fear ran down the spines of the tyrants. Some of them
started justifying themselves to the people: ‘We are not
really bad. We have to act the way we do because of
orders from above, it’s not that we want to.’ Of
course,” Nguyen Mau added, “if our activities had been
restricted to one or two hamlets only, the enemy would
have concentrated his forces and caught us, wiping out
our fragile political base. But by the time we started
scrawling up slogans and leaving leaflets, we could do
it in many hamlets simultaneously.</p>
<p>“By 1961, after the NLF was founded and we secured arms
for our ‘armed propaganda groups,’ we had been able to
punish some of the worst of the tyrants and when we left
leaflets there were flags and banners of the NLF as
well. If, at first, it was only the most stouthearted
who worked with us, the appearance of flags and banners
and then printed leaflets gave fresh heart to everyone.
‘We feel we are nearing the day when our children will
meet their fathers again,’ was how one woman expressed
it in those early days. By then it was clear to
everybody that with the peaceful, political struggle
which had been our previous line of action, we would get
nowhere. We started a combination of legal and semi
legal action. There were mass actions from the hamlets,
with people marching to the district headquarters
carrying petitions for ‘freedom of movement’. This was
not only a question of petition, but by the act itself a
certain ‘freedom of movement’ had already been wrested
from the authorities. The young people showed a militant
spirit when the police and local authorities tried to
halt them.</p>
<p>“With the growth of this feeling we were able to
transform the enemy’s organizations into our own. After
all, the parents of those in the ‘Republican Youth’ were
peasants, our own people. Under our influence they
started working on their sons and on others within the
so called ‘self-defense’ units. These became our organs;
they seemed to be in the service of the enemy but in
fact they were protecting us, informing us of enemy
plans.</p>
<p>“During 1961 at the appeal of the Front, there was a
nationwide insurrection and armed struggle became
widespread. The enemy started to ‘conscript youth
throughout the countryside, every able-bodied man from
18 to 35. Parents wanted their sons in the NLF, not in
the Diem army, and the young people were pleading to
join us in the mountains. But if they just took off
there would be reprisals against the parents. So in one
village they asked us to stage an attack. We did this,
making a sham attack. It was the first armed action in
Huong Tra District. We came with troops, made a lot of
noise, used our loud speakers, held a public meeting and
then left; most of the young men left with us. The local
authorities carried out reprisals against some parents
denounced by Diem agents for having collaborated with
the attackers. So word was sent for us to come again and
deal with some of the most active agents, of whom five
were listed. We attacked again one night, captured the
agents, killed one and warned the others.</p>
<p>“This was repeated in hamlet after hamlet; the worst of
the agents, those responsible for the deaths of several
people, were killed. And it was always explained why the
particular tyrant was executed. At this period the mass
movement became much more active. People started
ignoring the most repressive regulations; they started
setting up all sorts of organizations as a pretext to
get together, some of them quite curious. For example,
there were ‘Burial Associations’ for pooling money to
ease the burden of funeral expenses in case of death of
a family member; and ‘Pig-Slaughtering Associations’ for
carrying out an old habit which consisted of a group of
families killing pigs in rotation and sharing the meat
since one pig for a single family was too much. The Diem
authorities tried to suppress such associations, but
they were made to look very ridiculous, and the local
officials were frightened anyway and winked an eye at
lots of things for which people would have been
arrested, tortured or at least imprisoned a few months
earlier. Although in appearance mutual aid associations,
they were political [groups]; they were covers for
getting together and organizing all sorts of activities.</p>
<p>“In 1962, Diem opened a new conscription drive and
youths started leaving on their own to join us in the
forest. When the parents knew they were well away, they
reported the fact to the authorities. ‘Our sons went off
into the forest to get firewood and never came back.
Maybe the Vietcong kidnapped them; you should go and get
them back. Or maybe it was you who conscripted them into
the government army. Anyway we want them back.’ And they
also used this pretext to march out of the ‘hamlets’ to
district headquarters to protest. By the end of 1962,
this was a general situation throughout the whole
province, with the exception of a few villages in the
immediate outskirts of Hué and the city itself. We had
the women, youth, old people, even children organized,
wresting back bit by bit all sorts of democratic
freedoms. Although we had no organization inside Hué,
news of what was going on was well known among students,
intellectuals and Buddhists. Copies of our leaflets and
NLF banners were smuggled in, news of certain of our
exploits was passed around by word of mouth. We had our
listening posts there, and ‘the Vietminh is still
around,’ was a current phrase in Hué by the end of 1962.
Sometimes we were helped by accidents.</p>
<p>“Once we badly needed some cloth for uniforms. We were
tipped off about a truck that was carrying just what we
needed. We laid an ambush, halted the truck and piled
the goods up on the road, assessing the value. Then we
found we had forgotten the money. We piled everything
back on the truck and sent it on its way into Hué. The
truck driver and his passengers soon spread the word and
in the marketplace we picked up the reaction: ‘These
Vietcong are not bandits. They are very honest, not like
the Diem troops who seize whatever they want.’ ”</p>
<p>The rest of Nguyen Mau’s account followed the classic
pattern of a gradual transformation of the political
struggle within the “strategic hamlets” into armed
struggle. In 1963 the inmates themselves in coordination
with the guerrillas staged uprisings, dealt with any
Diem agents or troops who offered opposition, tore down
the barbed wire fences and went back to their native
villages and rice fields and the tombs of their
ancestors. Attempts to round up people and to
re-concentrate them only increased the scope of the
armed struggle. Even if the period of liberty was at
times brief, the flames of struggle had been kindled and
could not be quenched until the whole “strategic
hamlets” system had been dismantled following the coup
which ended the regime and lives of the Ngo Dinh
brothers. What Nguyen Mau related was typical of scores
of other accounts I gathered from cadres who carried on
that patient, difficult work of establishing contacts
and stimulating action, and also from former inmates of
the “strategic hamlets.” The general picture was the
same as depicted by Nguyen Mau. Once the initial
difficulty of establishing contacts was overcome, the
first few propaganda acts carried out and confidence
established, mass political activity soon followed, and
political struggle was inevitably transformed into armed
struggle. But the work of Nguyen Mau and the handful of
cadres who worked with him was greatly facilitated
because the districts of Thua Thien Province in which
they operated were former liberated areas, where
memories of the Vietminh administration and its land
reform policies were still fresh and where the people
naturally went back to their old wartime organizations
of the first resistance.</p>
<p>What happened when the Saigon army came out in force?
And in regions which had not been liberated in the first
resistance? Le Van Chien, another veteran cadre from
Tien Phuoc District of Quang Nam Province, explained:
“We had not been able to set up a guerrilla base there
because enemy control was too thorough. It was only in
early 1963, when our armed forces were fairly strong,
that we could move down to liberate Tien Phuoc. At first
people showed some reserve because they had been in the
grip of the enemy for a long time. They also feared that
the NLF forces would be there for only a short time, and
they would be defenseless against reprisals once we
left. Before we made any move, our political cadres
tried to explain our policies. But the first time our
forces approached a village, they found only old people
and children. The able-bodied were afraid and fled with
their livestock and whatever they could carry. We stayed
around, looked after their property and did a bit of
field work, cleaned up the houses, bathed the children
and told them stories. The others sent back some scouts
and when they reported back on how our men behaved,
everybody returned. They were very impressed with what
we had done and started to listen to our explanations,
and to what had been done in Thua Thien and other
provinces. The enemy was afraid to move while we were
around, as we had a fairly strong force and we knew that
the provincial commander thought we were even stronger.
Our cadres had spread plenty of rumors in the
marketplace.</p>
<p>“Within a couple of months we had liberated almost
every hamlet in Tien Phuoc and had set up mass
organizations, including self-defense units which set
traps around all the approaches to the hamlets. When the
various organizations were consolidated, we pulled out
to liberate other districts.</p>
<p>“In March 1963, soon after we left, the provincial
command sent two regular army battalions, two battalions
of regional troops, an armored car unit and 57
‘self-defense’ troops on a sweep through a district of
which the total population was 15,000. When they entered
the first hamlet, they saw over the main entrance big
signs: ‘Down with the U.S.-Diemists,’ ‘Government
Soldiers Should Not Shoot Their Own Compatriots.’ The
hamlet was deserted except for some old people. Everyone
had gone off to the jungle. They asked one old man: ‘Who
wrote those signs? It must have been your friends, your
relatives.’ ‘No,’ replied the old man ‘they were written
by the NLF fighters.’ They arrested the old man and
ordered him to lead them to the Vietcong. But the old
man said: ‘Arrest me if you like, but I don’t know what
the Vietcong are. Your Republican Army is much stronger
than the Vietcong. But when they entered the hamlet
yesterday, your troops were not here to protect us. Why
weren’t you here yesterday when the hamlet was full of
Vietcong troops? Now it is full of your troops. You see
the slogans they stuck up everywhere. If you had been
around they would not have dared. But you came after
they left. And they have taken everyone with them. Maybe
they went to another village, or maybe in the jungle.
But I’ll give you a friendly warning. Don’t wander
around the houses or fields; the Vietcong have stuck
traps around everywhere. I don’t dare to move myself.’</p>
<p>“The old man was released and the troops took off for
another hamlet. The same thing. Only old people left.
They asked a woman of 60 where the Vietcong were. She
said they had come the previous day but had now left.
The officer in charge was very angry and demanded that
she lead them to wherever they had gone. She invited him
and one or two others into her home to drink some tea,
saying she would explain everything. After some
muttering a couple of them accepted. ‘Yesterday a lot of
Vietcong entered our hamlet,’ she said. There were very
many of them and what could we do? They had lots of
heavy guns. What sort they were I don’t know, but they
had a lot of guns so big that they needed several people
to carry them. They only left here 10 or 15 minutes ago
and they forced everyone to go with them and help
prepare an ambush for your troops.’ ‘Where? Where?’
demanded the officer in charge. ‘I don’t know because I
was afraid and hid until everyone had left.’ The
officers were very excited by this time and shouted ‘Is
this true?’ The old woman said: ‘You can see for
yourself there is no one here. I don’t know whether they
have really prepared an ambush but that’s what they
said.’</p>
<p>“The officers muttered among themselves that if they
had ordered the villagers to prepare an ambush, this
meant the Vietcong would probably take the initiative in
a surprise attack, so they decided to withdraw. They
told the old woman: ‘While the Vietcong are too close to
the villages we want to avoid any open clash because too
many villagers would be killed. For the moment while
they have a strong force here, it is better to obey the
Vietcong, but in your hearts you must remain loyal to
the Government.’ And with that they pulled out. The old
woman hoisted an agreed ‘all clear’ sign and the
villagers came back for a hearty laugh over the fact
that the words of an old woman could force the retreat
of an enemy battalion.</p>
<p>“What we quickly found was that once the enemy knew the
local people had been mobilized by the NLF they moved
with the greatest caution. After the people rise up the
first step is to do away with the most notorious of the
agents, which means the enemy has no eyes, ears or
tongues. The enemy’s usual tactics were then to circle
around the villages, burn down isolated houses, destroy
crops and any animals they found, but to avoid groups of
peasants like the plague. In this particular incident,
it was corn harvesting time, so the expedition turned
into a corn destroying operation. They destroyed as much
of the harvest as they could and then withdrew, but even
without any shots fired they had quite a few casualties
from the spiked traps. The fact that they tried to
destroy the harvests was in itself an admission of
defeat. They could not reestablish their administration.
Land reform had already been carried out, self-defense
units had been set up and Tien Phuoc District, which is
in the plains, became a springboard for liberating other
districts in northern Quang Nam.”</p>
<p>In many cases, of course, the Saigon troops could not
be “talked out” of a fight and there were very severe
clashes in which the “self-defense” forces often had
their first baptism of fire within a few days of being
established. But in very many cases head on clashes were
avoided by the high level of political consciousness of
the villagers and carefully thought-out political and
propaganda tactics which were applied with infinite
skill, courage and ingenuity. The decisive factor was
that the overwhelming majority of the people welcomed
the NLF forces in whatever form they came, once they
were convinced that they really meant business. And when
the abolition of the detested “strategic hamlet” system
got under way there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that
they really did mean business.</p>
<p>“When we take over a village,” Le Van Chien explained,
“we ask people to bring everything related to the Saigon
regime, photos of Diem and American bigwigs, banners and
flags, etc., into the village square and burn them. This
has a big political effect. We virtually never attack
unless the political base inside has first been
prepared. We always know who are the worst enemy agents
and these are arrested. We get the villagers to nominate
their own administration and then encourage them to
confiscate the land of the worst of the agents and any
absentee landlords, distributing it to the peasants,
starting with the poorest. This creates a good
atmosphere from the start. We announce, in the name of
the Liberation Front, the abolition of all taxes and
debts and that rent will be reduced following
discussions with any local landlords still around.</p>
<p>“We announce an amnesty for the families of agents,
even of the worst of them. We make a point of never
touching or even accusing the family members. Volunteers
are accepted into the self-defense corps and we usually
give them a few weapons to start them off, and before
our forces leave, we show them how to manufacture arms
and prepare traps. We explain that the new local
administration is an organ of the National Liberation
Front, not linked to any central administration,
competent in local affairs only. Some of the people are
usually a bit scared as to what may happen when our
forces pull out. They worry that their weapons are not
sufficient, but we explain that what is decisive is
their political viewpoint, their unity and solidarity,
and theirs is not an isolated case. Also, we explain
that our armed forces will always be somewhere in the
area. When they realize they are part of a huge movement
sweeping the countryside, then even the most timid gain
confidence. We help them to start up their vegetable
gardens and orchards again, help them to dig fish ponds,
plant bamboo and trees, build pigsties and chicken mops
and recreate the sort of physical surroundings they had
before they were herded into the ‘strategic hamlets.’
The new administrative committee immediately forms
subcommittees for education, public health, economic
affairs, defense and security, and people really feel
they are running their own lives.</p>
<p>“After our cadres or our forces have liberated a
village and helped the people start rebuilding their new
life,” concluded Le Van Chien, “no matter what trials
and sufferings they might have to endure later, their
hearts and minds are with us forever. This is proven in
thousands of ways every day. Even if the enemy deploys
great force and temporarily reestablishes his control,
the people remain with us and even under the most
difficult conditions they find means of letting us know
this.” Le Van Chien’s assessment was undoubtedly correct
and this is the insuperable obstacle that America’s best
generals and diplomats are unable to overcome.</p>
<p>The battle for hearts and minds has been lost by the
United States and the extent of this defeat became
clearer as hostility broke out into the open w
U.S.-Saigon occupied territory in late 1967.</p>
<p><strong>Notes.</strong></p>
<p><a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[1]</a> Printed in the
<em>International Herald Tribune </em>(Paris), Dec. 27,
1967.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[2]</a> <em>Vietnam:
Inside Story of the Guerrilla War</em>, International
Publishers, New York, 1965, pp. 142-143.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[3]</a> Ngo Dinh Can,
the third of the Ngo Dinh brothers to have been killed
following the coup in which Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh
Nhu were murdered. Can, who reigned supreme in Central
Vietnam, was a medieval type of sadistic, brutal tyrant
who took pleasure in personally torturing his victims
before he executed them. He took refuge in the U.S.
consulate at Hué after the anti-Diem generals’ coup. He
was later handed over to the Saigon authorities, who
tried and executed him for his bloodthirsty excesses.
His victims had included numerous army officers.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[4]</a> Private (First
class) David Tuck served in South Vietnam with A
company, 1st battalion, 35th infantry regiment of the
U.S. 25th Division, from January 8, 1966, to February 9,
1967.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[5]</a> The Bertrand
Russell International War Crimes Tribunal held its
second session at Roskilde, Denmark, from November 20 to
December 2, 1967. The author was present.</p>
<p><a href="#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[6]</a> A fascist law
introduced in May 1959 that provided the death penalty
or life imprisonment for anyone suspected of even intent
to commit “crimes against the state.”</p>
<p><strong>NEXT: Chapter 6 – Taking on the Pentagon</strong></p>
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