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The Vietnam War As History: Ten Years Doesn't Make It Any More Glorious

By VVAW

In April 1985, Vietnam is ten years ago. Ten years since the last American troops and diplomats lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. For those who were part of the war 10 years may have dimmed the memories, but in few cases had the experience been forgotten. There are, however, lessons left to learn, and 10 years is plenty of time to have learned at least some of them.

Vietnam was an ordeal for a generation of Americans: those who went off to fight as well as those who stayed home. Yet administrations since 1975 have tried to persuade the American people to forget Vietnam in the interests of getting involved again somewhere else. Vietnam meant 58,000 dead American troops; 300,000 American troops disabled. The deficit that hangs over the American economy can be traced to the Vietnam War.

So, what was Vietnam? A mistake? A "noble cause"? Foreign aggression? A case of U.S. troops with their hands tied by politicians? The debated have not ended after 10 years.

U.S. involvement in Vietnam began during World War II. The OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) sent agents to make contact with anti-Japanese guerrillas in Southeast Asia. Among a number of different Vietnamese nationalist groups, only the Viet Minh under their leader, Ho Chi Minh had the national network of underground organizations and guerrillas necessary.

Ho Chi Minh met with the U.S. operative Major Archimedes Patti and they agreed on anti- Japanese actions. The U.S. dropped supplies behind the lines to Ho, and the Viet Minh helped Americans downed behind Japanese lines. The first American advisors helped train, equip and arm the Viet Minh. In 1945 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was formed in Vietnam with Ho Chi Minh as its president. American planes flew over Hanoi in celebration of the founding. The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence was modeled on the American version, and Ho asked Americans to honor their commitment to independence.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, was trying to improve relations with France, and the French price was the return of former colonies. U.S. relations with Vietnam turned sour. President Truman refused to answer Ho's cables or letters. France finally got all her old colonies including Vietnam and the U.S. got the closer ties it wanted.

The French return to their former colony was not easy. At first they had to use former Japanese POW's to get a foothold. They could retake the towns, but never the countryside. By 1950, Vietnamese General Giap launched a general offensive against the French which, though premature, still resulted in 6000 French killed or captured. Though the French called it a "victory" the commentator Bernard Fall described it as France's "greatest colonial defeat since Montcalm died at Quebec." France turned to the U.S. for aid. First it was $10 million a year, but grew to $1 billion by 1954 at the time of the final French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, when the U.S. was footing 80% of the bill.

The French were driven out. The U.S. moved in. According to international agreement Vietnam was temporarily to be divided into North and South, with free elections to take place nation-wide in 1956.

Ngo Dinh Diem, a Vietnamese Catholic living in Boston was chosen by the U.S. government to be Premier of South Vietnam (which was 95% Buddhist). The U.S set up MAAG (the Military Assistance and Advisory Group— forerunner of MAC-V) to train a "nationalistic" Vietnamese force of a quarter of a million men. It turned out to be mostly Vietnamese who had fought for the French and were far from popular. In 1956 the U.S. refused to go along with promised elections because, in words of President Eisenhower, "Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote in a free election." U.S. money and manpower. American troops rose to 500 under Eisenhower, 15,000 under Kennedy.

Diem was in trouble despite American support; former Viet Minh helped to support a number of groups opposing Diem and the U.S. Buddhist unrest rose in the cities; in the countryside Diem cronies were killed. In its paranoid view of the situation, U.S. government could not understand people who were nationalists or Buddhists or other 3rd force supporters who were neither Communist nor were for Diem and the U.S. for the U.S. government someone was either for us and for everything we did (no matter how stupid) or they were the enemy.

With Diem's regime collapsing, the U.S. backed a coup of Vietnamese generals. Not only did eliminate Diem and assassinate him, but they then proceeded to kill off each other on a regular basis.

The situation was desperate. More and more American troops were put in to replace Saigon troops who could not or would not fight. The Saigon government had little base other than what could be bought by U.S. aid. And the U.S. got exactly what it paid for: pimps, prostitutes, cowards and gangsters, masquerading as a government and a military.

This situation was bad enough. But, it was coupled with incredible arrogance on the part of U.S. governmental and military leaders. They could not believe that Asians could stand up tot eh might and technology the U.S. threw into the war. The U.S. war plan progressed from one stage to another with little change: we tried strategic hamlets, Vietnamization, search and destroy, pacification. All of these programs had been tried by the French had been tried by the French without success. They didn't work for the French and they didn't work any better for the Americans.

The American people were not being told of the plans or policies of the government. To the contrary, Lyndon Johnson ran as a peace candidate in 1964 saying, "I won't send American boys to do the fighting for Asian troops." Americans were told that Vietnam was two countries (skipping over 2000 years of history) and that the North was invading the South.

All of this didn't do much to answer the question of the 19-year old Americans fighting the guerrillas in South Vietnam. Somehow, in order to save Vietnam we had to destroy it. We bombed hospitals to save orphans, we sprayed Agent Orange to save crops, we burned hamlets to save villages, and turned Vietnam into a huge whorehouse to save Vietnamese culture from Communism.

As GI's in Vietnam we often saw the stark realities of the country and could compare them to the "truths" the American people were hearing. We saw corrupt Saigon generals stuffing their pockets while neither they nor their armies would fight. We saw hate in the eyes of the villagers who never welcomed us as "liberators" with bouquets of flowers. The only Vietnamese who seemed to want us there also wanted our greenbacks in exchange for drugs, booze, or women or all three. We also saw the enemy fight and had to admire both his bravery and tenacity in taking on the U.S. tanks, planes and helicopters with grenades and rifles. We supposedly valued human life while the enemy did not. Yet, we paid $600 for each rubber tree we blew up (to the owners of the Michelin plantation) and a top price of $120 in compensation to the parents of a child killed during a mistaken U.S. bombing.

We fought up hills, winning what the press called "victories, but what we saw was that half our friends were killed to enhance the career of a lifetime military officer who wanted high body count. And then we would leave the hill, only to return a week of month later to fight for it all again. The war was not something to be won or lost, not by the grunt on the ground; it was 365 days to be survived.

The U.S. tried everything to win the war. We dropped more than three times the total tonnage of bombs dropped by both sides during World War II. We conducted "Operation Phoenix" during which the CIA and Saigon government killed up to 200,000 suspected Viet Cong. We defoliated 10% of the land, much of it permanently. We bombed, shot, killed, and burned for more than 10 years at a cost of $140 billion ) with more still to come). And we still lost.

The U.S. did not pull out of Vietnam because we were winning, but because the Vietnamese were. Some generals today are saying that we lost the war but never lost a battle— but what the hell did we "win" at Khe Sanh or in the Iron Triangle or in Laos or Cambodia besides having some officer's career card punched in the right places?

The simple fact is that neither the American people nor American GI's in Vietnam thought that the goals— real or imagined were worth the lives and money being squandered. The war was lost on the battlefield and in the hearts and minds of the American People.

During the war VVAW led tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans demonstrating against that war. No comparable group of Vietnam veterans demonstrating against that war. No comparable group of Vietnam vets ever rose to challenge VVAW or our goals. In fact when VVAW brought 1500 vets to protest Nixon's renomination the Republican Party could only come up with 6 vets to support the war (and not even all these supported Nixon). Vietnam vets knew firsthand about the real war—and opposed it.

Today the Reagan Administration seems determined to see us involved again. In a place like El Salvador U.S. allies are at least as corrupt as Diem or Thieu or Ky in South Vietnam. Vietnam was not just a mistake: neither will be a U.S. venture in some other part of the globe except for the GI's who buy the government's lies. Vietnam was not a "noble cause" except for those who fought to Bring Our Brothers home after they had made the mistake of going. Foreign aggression? Each time the U.S. government condemns the USSR in Afghanistan or the Vietnamese in Cambodia it lists the actions taken by the U.S. government during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was simply foreign aggression which the U.S. government could not win.

The war was never in the interests of the vast majority of those of us who fought it. That war was in the interest of the majority of the Vietnamese who fought against us. The Freedom and Independence for which they fought are still worthy goals today.