[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

~No army in the world can defeat an idea whose time-has comeT

Why We Lost the War.o

The United States has been de-
feated in Vietnam. Like the Chinese,
Mongols, Japanese and French be-
fore us, we are withdrawing from
Vietnam.

Though the U.S. has poured over
$100 billion into Vietnam in the-
last five years and dropped twice
the bomb tonnage we did in WWII,
the war is stalemated. This stale-
mate, in time, will lead to a Com-

in Vietnam

munist victory.

The clues to this failure of Am-
erican military might lie in Viet-
namese history-- in the heroic tradi-

tion of struggle against foreigners,

in U.S. support for French colon-
ialism, in the Communist-led vic-
tory over the French, and most
recently in U.S. aid to the corrupt
Saigon regime.

in effect, the U.S. has been

Lee

fighting on the wrong side in a
totally unjust war.

The Communist revolutionaries
are winning because for the past
25 years they have championed
the Vietnamese peopleTs drive for
independence and human rights.

We Americans are losing because
our leaders- from Truman to Nixon-
arrogantly believed that American
technology and money were more

~THIS BRUTAL, DISGRACEFUL
| AND UTTERLY INDEFENSIBLE WAR
b.. AGAINST A GALLANT PEASANT PEOPLE
_ WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR A THOUSAND YEARS

, AS ONE OF THE BASEST) MOST COWARDLY DEEDS

a

OF ALL TIME�

--- Gen. Hugh Hester f- Fs

oIT HAS BEEN MY IMPRESSION, AFTER VISITS TO VIETNA

Victor Hugo

ie

powerful thanT the patriotic faith
of Asian peasants.

The Vietnamese have proved our
leaders wrong, and 50,000 Ameri-
cans and hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese have died because of
that arrogance.

The day must come when the
American people will call these lea-
ders to account for having so gross-
ly misled us.

ELIEVE
WE SHOULD KEEP

OUR DIRTY, BLOODY,

DOLLAR-CROOKED FINGERS
OUT OF THE BUSINESS OF THESE
NATIONS SO FULL OF DEPRESSED,

oEXPLOITED PEOPLE�

4 -- Gen. David Shoup (Ret.) :
vr =. Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps,

Congressional Medal of

THAT A MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE IN VIETNAM
SUPPORT THE GUERRILLAS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
BUT DO NOT SUPPORT THE THIEU GOVERNMENT�

--- Senator Stuart Syr

nington (Mo.) ,

Guerrilla war defeats Mongol invaders

oWe have fought a thousand
years� is the proud boast of Viet-
namese patriots. oAnd we will fight

~.another thousand if needed.�

_For the two thousand years
Vietnam has existed, the Vietna-
mese have fought the Chinese, the
Mongols, the Thais, the Japanese,
ard the French.

Today millions of Vietnamese
are fighting against a huge Ameri-
ican expeditionary force sent in

1965 and 1966 to suppress a pop-
ular peasant revolution.

._ Vietnam was a Chinese province
from 111 B.C. to 939 A.D. when
the Vietnamese successfully revol-
ted. With the exception of a twenty

year period in the 15th century, the
Vietnamese were free from foreign
rule until the French arrived.

Of all the stories of Vietnamese
resistance to foreign intruders, few

show the stubborn character of the
Vietnamese people as well as their
heroic fight against the Mongol

hordes of Kublai Khan in 1284...
There were perhaps 300,000

Mongol troops arrayed against a

Vietnamese population of about
1,000,000.

In this hour of need a great mil-

itary thinker, General Dao, posed a

a strategy of what we now call guer-

rilla warfare.

As Bernard Fall (a highly respec-

ted French scholar and reporter of |

Vietnamese affairs) has noted: o~His

principles could just as well have
been written by Mao Tsetung or
DaoTs present day successor in Hanoi
Cencral Vo Nguyen Giap, the victor

of Dien Bien Phu. oThe enemy must

fight his battle far from his home
base for a long time... We must fur-
ther weaken him by drawing him
into protracted campaigns. Once his
initial dash is broken, it will be easy
to destroy him� �

Thus did the tiny Vietnamese na-
tion frce the mighty Mongol Em-
pire (which had pushed all the way

to the borders of Europe) to with-

draw from Vietnam.

In 1615, the first Italian and Por-
tuguese Jesuits arrived in Vietnam,
Opening up the country to Western
influence.

The Vietnamese,understandably ,
resented the white priests with their
missionary zeal. In 1833 the emper-
or issued a royal edict outlawing
Christianity.

Twenty-five years later a joint

French-Spanish fleet destroyed the
Vietnamese navy near Danang in

response to the deaths and persecu-
tions of Catholic priests. This oper-
ation soon developed into a policy
of. conquering Vietnam for the

~I think the American people

greatly underestimate

the determination of the Vietnamese

people.T

French empire.

By 1867, France had completed
its conquest of the lower third of
Vietnam, and by 1884, it had ex-
tended its control over the central
and northern parts.

Captain Charles Gosselin, an of

ficer who fought against Vietnam-
ese resistance movements after 1 883
offered this explanation of French

French Motives

that France came to intervene in
well-informed on history suppose

that France came to intervene in
Annam (French name for Vietnam)
solely for the protection of mis
sionaries or to seek vengeance for
acts of hostility committed against
the Catholic religion. The mission-
aries, in reality, have only been the
pretext for our action against An-
nam. The loss o fIndia in the 18th
century, the increasingly rapid ex-
tension in the Far East of our rival
England, imposed on us the obliga-
tion to set foot in the China seas,
the only alternative being our fall-.
ing into a state of contemptible in-
feriority. Annam gave us the oppor-
tunity, the massacre of Frenchmen
who were there as missionaries gave
us the pretext.�

Resistance to the French started
immediately as the young emperor, |
Ham Nghi, fled to the mountains to
fight. In 1888 he was betrayed, but .
the Vietnamese put up strong resis-
tance until the end of the century.

The French takeover of Vietnam
was a brutal process. One of theT
men France sent to be Governor-
General of Indochina tried to reduce
the peopleTs hatred of the French
by ending what he termed othe
acts of incredible brutality� against
the Vietnamese.

In 1894 he wrote: oIt seemed to
me that the burning of villages, the

mass shootings, the bayonet slaugh-

ters, and the executions of notables
should be replaced by other less

violent procedures.�
The anti-French resistance, by

this time, had gone underground
and spread its roots. There were
abortive revolts (1888, 1908,1916,

and 1930)with thousands of Viet-
namese murdered and other thou-

sands exiled. Secret societies mush-
roomed.

Ho Chi Minh is born

In 1890, a son was born to a
member of one such society. The
- father, an ardent patriot, named
the boy Nguyen (the family name)
That Thanh (Who Will Be Victori-:
ous). He would grow up to lead
his peopleTs fight for independence.
and take the name Ho Chi Minh,

Ho Chi Minh

At the age of 20, after leaving
a prestigious French-Vietnamese
high school in Hué, Ho became a
teacher, then a bakerTs apprentice
in Saigon. In 1912, he landed a mess-.

boyTs job on a French liner.

HoTs seafaring life took him to
London, Marseilles, Boston, New
York, even New Orleans. He was
deeply impressed by the racism,
the widespread poverty and deca-
dence he saw in the West. KKK
lynchings, the wretched plight of
labor (low wages, police attacks on.
fledgling unions), the excesses of
alcoholism and prostitution" these
and other weaknesses in Western
societies convinced Ho that the
white men who ruled his country
were hardly a master race.

When the Russian Revolution
broke out, Ho was living in Paris
and traveling among the Vietnamese
troops and factory workers (some

100,000) brought from the colony
to aid the Allied cause.

At this point, Ho still believed
that an appeal to the Western ideals

~of equality .and self-determination

would bring freedom for his coun-
try.

Ho at Versailles

The turning point in HoTs life

came in 1919 when, armed with a
modest 8-point program and wear-
ing a pinstriped suit, he went to the
Versailles Peace Conference to ask
the Allies to support the Vietnamese
cause in the post-war settlement.
Ho never got past the secretaries.
Bernard Fall describes the result:
oVersailles held out the hope of not
merely being another big-power pa-
laver where the map of the world:
would be carved up by a few super-

ce

hiTs and NehruTs, the Haile-Selas-
ies and Ho Chi MinhTs werenTt
about to forget.�

With Versailles, says Fall, odied;
HoTs hopes of a ~liberalT solution for
his country, and he was also able to
observe now what the other unsuc-,

cessful petitioners were muttering
among themselves, the Irish in the.
jead: armed revolution was the ans-
wer, the road to power via the ter-
rorist bomb and the guerrillaTs gun
barrel.�

At that very moment, one coun-
try not present at Versailles was
proving this very point"Soviet Rus-
sia. Her example was wildly debated
by every Socialist party in the
world. "

Ho joined the French Socialist
Party and soon found himself in the
midst of a heated debate about
whether the Socialist Party ought to
join LeninTs Third International:

Ho has explained what happened
then: oWhat I wanted most to
know-"and this precisely was not de-
bated in the meetings-was: Which
International sides with the peoples
of the colonial countries?

oT raised this question"the most
important in my opinion"in a meet-
ing. Some comrades answered: It is
the Third, not the Second Interna-
tional. And a comrade gave me Len-
inTs oThesis on the national and co-
lonial questionsT to read.

oThere were political terms dif-

French words to express all my
thoughts, I smashed the allegations
against Lenin and the Third Inter-
national with no less vigor. My only
argument was: oIf you do not con-
demn colonialism, if you do not
side with the colonial people, what
kind of revolution are you waging?�

In 1930 a unified Communist
party for Indochina was organized

under the leadership of Ho Chi
Minh. Soon it was the main force
in the nationalist movement for in-
dependence. ~

Joseph Buttinger in- his. defini-
tive work on Vietnamese history,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, ob-
served that other nationalist groups
did not think social reforms could
be made a vital issue in the struggle
for independence, whereas o...the
Communists spoke of the need for
lowering taxes, of the distribution
of estate land among the landless,
of higher wages and better medical
care for plantation workers and of
the right to organize unions.

oThey knew that peasants and
workers could be brought into the
fight only by showing them that
the people who wanted indepen-
dence wanted it also for reasons
important to them, that indepen-
dence also meant lower taxes and
higher wages.

oThe Communists were the only
group in the anticolonial camp who
spoke for the grievances of 90 per

~The Communists were the only group |
who spoke for the grievances of 90 per cent of the

people under colonial ruleT

powers but"as AmericaTs President
Wilson hoped"was to be the cradle
of a just peace for all and bring the
right of self-determination to na"'
tions yet unborn... The aspiring lea-
ders of such nations, from the Bal-
kans to the Caucasus, Eastern Eur-
ope and South Asia, hovered in the
wings in the hope of finding a pow-
erful champion for their causes...
oBut this was still a white manTs
world: Nobody backed indepen-

ence for any African or East Asian
country"a lesson which the Gand-

ficult to understand in this thesis.
But by dint of reading it again and'
again, finally I could grasp the main

part of it.
oWhat emotion, enthusiasm,

clearsightedness, and confidence it
instilled in me! I was overjoyed to
tears. Though sitting alone in my
room, I shouted aloud as if address-
ing large crowds: oDear martyrs,
compatriots! This is what we need,
this is the path to our liberation!�

oAfter that, I had entire confi-
dence in Lenin, in the Third Inter-
national... Though I was still lacking

Joseph Buttinger

cent of the people under the coloni-
al regime.
oIn contrast to the Communists

the nationalists never gained, never ~
even consistently sought any sup-
port among workers and peasants.
It was their belief that only the ~ad-
vanced elementsT of every class
could participate in the anticolonial
struggle.

oThe Communists soon proved
them wrong.�

By the beginning of World War II
the Communists were the only na-
tionalist group with any nationwide

~The case of Indochina is perfectly clear
France has milked it for one hundred years.
Indochina are entitled to something better than that.

The people of

FDR

U.S. backs French colonial war

organization.

The Japanese moved into Indo-
china (Vietnam, Laos and Cambo-
dia) in 1940. In contrast to their
policy elsewhere, they collaborated
-with the white European power in-
stead of working with the native
population.

Ho helps
U.S. pilots

Ho Chi Minh was freely recog-
nized by both the United States and
Nationalist China as the leader of
the Free Indochina movement dur-
ing World War II. The Allies sup-
plied HoTs forces with weapons and
ammunition. His forces, in return,
supplied intelligence and helped A-
merican pilots shot down over Viet-
nam.

In March 1945, the Japanese
ended their collaboration with the
French colonial government and set
up a puppet regime under Bao Dai-
the emperor of Vietnam who had
previously collaborated with the
French. On August 24, Bao Dai ab-
dicated.

A week later on September 2,
1945, Ho Chi Minh spoke from a bal-
cony in Hanoi and declared the in-
dependence of Vietnam.

He started by quoting this pas-
sage: o~All men are created equal.

They are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights, a-

mong these are Life, Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness.�

Then he continued: oThis im-
mortal statement was made in the
Declaration of Independence of the
United States of America in 1776.
Now if we enlarge the sphere of our
thoughts, this statement conveys a-
nother meaning: All the peoples on
the earth are equal from birth, all
the people have a right to live, be
happy and free.�

After listing grievances against
the French, Ho again appealed to
his former allies to support Vietna-
mese Independence: oWe are con-
vinced that the Allied nations which
have acknowledged at Teheran and
San Francisco the principle of self-
determination and equality of sta-
tus will not refuse to acknowledge
the independence of Vietnam.�

ooA people that has courageously
opposed French domination for
more than 80 years, a. people.that
has fought by the AlliesTTside thése
last years against the Fascists, such
a people must be free, such a people
must be independent.�

: o

British restore
French rule

?

For the Allied nations Septem-
ber 1945 was a time of rejoicing be-
cause the last of the Fascist powers,
Japan, had surrendered.

The Vietnamese were rejoicing
too, for it looked as if the war was
over and Vietnam once again was
free.

But the Vietnamese were to be
betrayed, by the U.S. among others,
in their hopes that the Allies would

support the Vietnamese desire for
independence.

The British moved into Vietnam

and began using defeated Japanese
troops to: restore French authority

66

in Vietnam.
Commenting on this, General
"Douglas MacArthur said: oIf there

~is anything that makes my blood

boil, it is to see our Allies in Indo-
china and Java deploying troops to

reconquer the little people we pro-s

mised to liberate. It is the most ig-
noble kind of betrayal.�

The British action was a blatant
violation of the Potsdam Accords..
But no country, not even the U.S:
moved to block the British.

For those .of a cynical turn of
mind it is well to note that neither
the Soviets nor the French Commu-

~ nists supported Ho Chi Minh.
Stalin was far more interested in.

befriending France so as to prevent
the formation of a Western Europe-
an military alliance.

The French Communist Party

~had hopes of remaining in the-post.

war coalition government in France

and the Communist cabinet ~mem-

bers voted with the government in
support of the war in Indochina. It
was only after the political ambi-
tions of the French Communists
had been clipped that they began to:

Dien Bien Phu falls

~call for a new policy in Indochina.

In August 1950 the United States
began to help the French as they
~fought to reestablish their control in
Indochina.

The first year U.S. aid amounted

to only $850 million, but by 1954

the United States (or rather the A-

merican taxpayer) was underwriting

80 per cent of the cost of FranceTs
effort-in effect America was a part-
ner in this attempt to revive Western

imperialism in Asia.

By so underwriting the French
war, the United States was betraying
not only the Vietnamese people but

~also its own revolutionary past as

the first colony to break away from
European control.
In May 1954, the American-

backed French effort in Indochina
collapsed near the Laotian border at
the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

It was a humiliating defeat for
Western imperialism in Asia.

General Navarre, the French,
Commander, wanted to bait a trapT
to entice Vo Nguyen Giap (now
Minister of Defense in North Viet-
nam) into throwing his main units

aaa OM ea

Asians beat the white man
at his own game.

Ne

Ho Chi

over

MinhT 8

General

troops
de

French General de Castries ii dile
~ When the Viets come down from
othe hills, we'll slaughter them.TT

~

raise
Castries

their flag

bunker.

into ~a set-piece battle.
In November 1953 Navarre be-

gan to send troops into Dien Bien
Phu.

Giap accepted the gambit.
The fatal mistake of the French

IKE admits U.S.

has imperialist motives

oLet us assume we lose Indo-
china....The tin and tungsten that
we so greatly value from that area

would cease coming. So when the
U.S. votes $400 million to help

that war, we are not voting a give-

away program. We are voting for

the cheapest way to prevent the

occurrence of something that would
be of the most terrible significance

to our power and ability to get

certain things we need from the
riches of Indochina.�

--- Eisenhower, 1953
~Yomnenricnsy: soocennmeranets eo: wet SERS

was in assuming that the Viet Minh
would not be able to supply a mas-
sive assault.

After a secret buildup, the Viet
Minh launched an attack on the ar-
tillery protecting the small airstrip
used to supply Dien Bien Phu.

On March 27, the airstrip was
destroyed, and on May 7, Dien Bien
Phu fell.

As Bernard Fall remarked: ooThe
Asians, after centuries of subjuga-
tion, had beaten the white man at
his own game.�

T

~«

/

"

17th parallel meant to be
a temporary dividing line

a LL

READ IT FOR YOURSELF

FINAL DECLARATION OF GENEVA TRUCE

A few weeks before the collapse
at Dien Bien Phu, an effort was
made to involve the U.S more di-.
rectly with air and naval support
and possibly troops and atomic

weapons. 3
John Foster Dulles, who was

then Secretary of State, sought Bri-
tish help, but the British-on Win-
ston ChurchillTs advice-refused to
intervene.

Richard Nixon, who was Vice
President, was one of the most out-

ARTICLE 6:
The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the agreement

relating to Vietnamis to settle military questions with a view to ending
hostilities and that THE MILITARY DEMARCATION LINE IS PRO-
VISIONAL AND SHOULD NOT IN ANY WAY BE INTERPRETED

AS CONSTITUTING A POLITICAL OR TERRITORIAL BOUNDARY.

_ otl never talked or correspon-
ded with a person knowledgable

spoken hawks in the administration.
Nixon said: ooThe United States,
as a leader of the free world, cannot
afford further retreat in Asia. It is
hoped that the United States will
not have to send troops there, but
if this government cannot avoid it.
the Administration must face up to
the situation and dispatch forces.�T
As in so many other cases the
phrase ofree world� distorted reality
and was being used by: Nixon to
deceive Americans into thinking
that they were about to embark on
a noble crusade, when in truth he
was proposing an imperialist policy
of helping to resubjugate an Asian,
people to white foreign rule. © ~
The cynicism of this policy can
only be fully comprehended when
it is fully understood what 80 years
of French rule had meant for Viet-
nam. Two sets of facts are particu-

larly revealing.
1) Before the French arrived 80

ver cent of the Vietnamese were lit-
erate. Only 20 per cent could read
and write by the time they left.

2) During the years from 1869 to - #

1937 exports of rice rose from al-
most nothing to about 1.5 million

tons per year.
At the same time per capita con"

sumption of rice dropped 30 per :

cent.

In times of poor harvests this .
meant that peasant families were ,

starving--literally starving.
French businessmen were rob-

bing Vietnam of the basic neces-

sities of life. Such was the morality

of capitalism in Indochina.
Gen. Ridgway
opposes Nixon

The Nixon view did not pre-
dominate - primarily for strategic,
reasons. General Matthew B. Ridg-
way, who along with General James
Gavin opposed U.S. intervention in
1954, wrote this in his memoirs:

oWhen the day comes for me to
face my Maker and account for my
actions, the thing I would be most
humbly proud of was the fact that
I fought against and perhaps con-
tributed to preventing the carrying
Out of some harebrained tactical
schemes which would have cost tlic
lives of thousands of men. To that
list of tragic accidents that fortun-
ately never happened, I would add
the Indochina intervention.�

f In July, 1954, the Geneva Con-
�,�rence which had intended to focus

essentially on the Korean truce
began to consider a settlement in
sndochina.
© Chi MinhTs forces had won
about % of the land in Vietnam
except for Hanoi and Haiphong,
. and about half of southern Vietnam
including the Mekong and most of

ARTICLE 7:

The Conference declares that, so far as Vietnam is concerned, the
settlement of political problems, effected on the basis of RESPECT
FOR THE PRINCIPLES OF INDEPENDENCE, UNITY AND TER-"
RITORIAL INTEGRITY, shall permit the Vietnamese people to enjoy
the fundamental freedoms, guaranteed by democratic institutions
established AS A RESULT OF FREE GENERAL ELECTIONS BY
SECRET BALLOT. In order to ensure that sufficient progress in
the restoration of peace has been made, and that all the necessary
conditions obtain for free expression of the national will, GENERAL
ELECTIONS SHALL BE HELD IN JULY, 1956 UNDER THE SUPER-
VISION OF AN INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION.

FINAL SESSION AT GENEVA: 1954

the area between the 13th and 17th
parallel.

Because of pressure from Com-
munist China and Russia the Viet=

Minh agreed to accept the 17th
parallel as a truce line.

The settlement which was finally
worked out provided for 1) the
cessation of hostilities, 2),regroup-
ing of Viet Minh partisans north of
the 17th parallel and French Union
forces (including Vietnamese who
fought for the French) south of the
17th parallel, 3) elections in 1956
to unify Vietnam.

These agreements have often
been misrepresented by the
Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon ad-
ministrations to justify. the war. It
is important to know that the agree-
ments explicitly stated that the
17th parallel was a oprovisional�
line of military demarcation and
oshould not in any way be inter-
preted as constituting a political or
territorial boundary.�

(In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was
to say that these oagreements guar-

anteed the independence of South

Vietnam.� They did no such thing
and anyone can confirm this for
himse'f by reading the Final Declara
tio1. « Geneva in any of several
books on Vietnam.)

The United States government
did not particularly like the Geneva
Agreements.

But in a separate statement. the
U.S. representative declared that his
government would not use force or
the threat of force to disrupt the
Agreements.

The main effect of the Geneva
Agreements was to move the strug-
gle from the battlefield to the po-
litical arena, i.e., in the form of
elections.

The Viet Minh were confident
they could win on either level, and
with good reason. "

President Eisenhower, in his
autobiography, attested to Ho Chi
MinhTs popularity, observing: oI ne-
ver talked or corresponded with a
person knowledgable in Indochinese
affairs who did not agree that, had

in Indochinese affairs who did not
agree that, had the elections been
held as of the time of the fighting,

possibly 80 per cent of the populace

would have voted for the Com-
munist Ho Chi Minh rather than
the Chief of State Bao Dai.�

--- President Eisenhower
in Mandate for Change

the elections been held as of the
time of the fighting, possibly 80 per
cent of the populace would have vo-

ted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh
rather than the Chief of State Bao
Dai.�

The Saigon regime obviously be-
lieved Ho Chi Minh would win in
1956, and it refused to even con-

sult with Hanoi about elections.
Townsend Hoopes who was Un-

der Secretary of the Air Force from

1967-69 explained what happened:

oIn July 1955, the new govern-
ment took, with U.S. encourage-
ment, the next logical step; it rejec-
ted the North Vietnamese invita-
tions to discuss elections...

oIt is significant that these pol-
icies and actions were strongly sup-
ported by the American people;
there was no dissent from within
government, very little from Con-
gress or the press, and nothing signi-
ficant from scholars or other close
observers of foreign affairs.�

oAs a nation we had very little
perception that we might be frus-
trating a widely supported national
independence movement by lending
our aid and prestige to what were
at best colonial puppets, who lacked
an innate capacity to win over any
sizable segment of the Vietnamese
people to their side, and who as it
turned out, could not govern at all
without the direct presence and sup-
port of a very large U.S. éxpedi-
tionary force.� T

U.S. backs
Diem

Midway through the Geneva
Conference a new man appeared on |
the scene to become Premier in the
French puppet government of Bao
Dai (Bao Dai was the ex-emperor
who abdicated in 1945 but re-
turned in 1948 to head a puppet
government under the French). This
man was Ngo Dinh Diem, and he
was to play an important role in
Vietnam for the next nine years.

On January 1, 1955, the French
handed the reins of government to
Diem and Bao Dai. Near the end of

~1955 Diem maneuvered Bao Dai

out of power.

eg Om eme a callie ea ax

the conflict.

=e = oAmeriea was stepping into France's boots..
the South was turned into a colonial base for a policy of
~pacificationT and ~democracyT while the North, the bastion
of national resistance;-sought to negotiate rather than resume

Would Vietnam ever cease to be the plaything and
the prey of the great powers?�

--- Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture in
End of a War Indochina, 1954

oe

b. a e % te fi: o :
Once mote




~

U.S. steps into FranceTs boots

Diem was a nationalist and a
Catholic. He had spent nearly two
years in the early fifties in the
United States in seminaries in New "
Jersey and New York. Though not
known how much influence the U.S.
exerted to move Diem into power
in Vietnam, it is clear that a con-
siderable amount of money and
energy was expended to help him
consolidate his power in the early
years of his rule.

DiemTs authority over the army

Dulles and Diem

was shaky. So the United States
government let the commanding
general know that if he attempted
to move against Diem, dollar help
would be cut off. "

Diem began to assert the author-|
ity of his government over two
large religious sects and one large
bandit gang, using as much as 12
million American dollars to bribe
sect leaders.

The U.S. assumed FranceTs finan-
cial and training responsibilities for
the Saigon Army and began to
furnish a large amount of economic
aid which would total over one and
a half billion dollars before Dicm
was assassinated in 1963 by officers
in the army.

In any revolution deep antagon-
isms are created and almost in-
evitably large minority groups leave.
After the American Revolution
about 100,000 American Tories
left for Europe or Canada, which at
the time was one of the largest
exoduses in history.

It is not surprising, therefore,
that some 900 ,000Vietnamese took
advantage of the provisions in the

Geneva Accords to move south of
the 17th parallel and about 100,000

went North.

The exodus to the south has
been at the center of controversy
ever since the mid-fifties. Some
points deserve to be clarified.

Between 80 and 85 % were
Vietnamese mercenaries who had
fought for the French or worked in
the French administration.

Bernard Fall observed :ooThe mass
flight was admittedly the result of
an extremely intensive, well-con-
ducted and in terms of its objectives,
very successful American. psycho-
logical warfare operation.�

oPropaganda slogans and leaflets
appealed to the devout Catholics
with such themes as oChrist has
gone to the South� and the oVirgin

Mary has departed from the North.�
These refugees became the back-
bone of DiemTs support but even as
they helped secure support, they
created tensions within South Viet-
nam. Vietnamese Catholics com-
prise about ten percent of the total
population and relations between
this minority and the rest of the
largely Buddhist Vietnamese have
not always been smooth.
Vietnamese Catholics were perse-
cuted before the French took over.
When the French were consolidat-
ing=their control in the 1880Ts and
1890Ts the Vietnamese Catholics,
through their collaboration, helped
crush the resistance which was led
by the emperor and high mandarins.
Diem himself was a Catholic,
and many Catholics moved into top
positions in his government creating

resentment among the Buddhist

population.

Bad effects

of French rule remain

The fact that France had physi-
cally left Vietnam did not mean

that the bad effects of French mis-
rule had ended. DiemTs bureacracy
was essentially the old colonial
bureacracy minus the French (but
plus the Catholic refugees).
DiemTs army was essentially the
mercenary army that had fought
~for the French. Even today, top
officers of the Saigon army are men
like Ky, a veteran of the Algerian

a Swiss account).

It was on this need to create

a more democratic society that the
Communists were to build a revo-
lutionary base so solid that it would
fight a° huge American expedition-
ary force to a standstill in the

1960Ts.
A new class

of despoilers

A Catholic intellectual, Ton That
Thien (editor of a Saigon newspaper
now banned by the government) has
described Vietnamese society thus:
**...France started training a new
elite to induce the Vietnamese to
serve them. The French colonial
administration offered them spec-
ial privileges, including a generous,
or rather over-generous, grant of

land" part of which was seized from
the peasants" and a status close to

that of French nationals.

~Some of the holdings were so
large that they were referred to in
popular parlance as oland over which
the stork can fly endlessly without
meeting obstacles.�

oIt was from this source that
the new class derived its immense
wealth. This inevitably alienated it
from the rural population, partly
because the rural inhabitants looked
upon the new class as despoilers.

oTo qualify for high government

oThe fact is that Communism, in the dress of nationalism and in its
advocacy of land to the peasants, represents a powerful force in South Viet-

nam, and one which receives widespread support from the peasant popula-

5

tion.

-- Robert Scigliano
in South Vietnam: Nation under Stress

war, who served the French.

French rule had created a West-
ernized elite in Vietnam which lived
aloof from the mass of landless pea-

* sants. Vietnamese society urgently

needed reforms to restore social
justice, and many Americans hoped
that Diem would press for these re-
forms. But this hope was naive be-
cause Diem was himself a part of
this privileged elite, as were the
officials of his government.

Over the years, this -Catholic
elite had given its allegiance, not to
Vietnam, but to the West by send-
ing their sons and daughters to ex-
pensive French schools and by stash-
ing their profits in Swiss banks.
(Pres. Thicu is reported to have
more than $500,000 deposited in

positions, new diplomas were re-
quired and these could be gained
Only through a long and expens-
ive period of schooling obtainable
only in the cities. The peasants were
therefore excluded from the high as
well as the middle positions.�

DiemTs failure

Ton That ThienTs view was that
the Americans were perpetuating
this system and making it inevitable
that the Viet Cong would keep con-
trol of the nationalist movement.

Diem failed to build a large poli-

tical following because he failed to
respond to the real social and eco-
nomic problems that 80 years of
French misrule had created.

The Viet Cong tells the peasants:

~You are oppressed by corrupt men.

: Land reform was and is the criti-
cal issue in a land where most ofthe

people are peasants.
Before the French came every

peasant had his own plot of land.
But the French consolidated these
holdings to turn rice growing into a
profitable enterprise. As a result
many Vietnamese families found
themselves working as tenants or
just laborers on their own ancestral
lands. "

During the struggle against the
French, the Viet Minh took the land
of landlords who were sitting out
the war in Saigon or Paris. The Viet
Minh then redistributed this land
and issued new deeds to the pea-
sants.

As the Diem regime asserted its
control over the countryside, the ab-
sentee landlords returned, in some
cases claiming 50% back rent for
the eight years they had been gone.

The Viet Minh thus had little
trouble persuading the peasants that
the Saigon regime was corrupt and
had to be overthrown.

Some Americans realized that the
Communists were winning the pea-
sants support largely because of the
land issue. They pressured Diem to
start land reform and dutifully land

reform measures appeared On paper.



The Vietnamese are a tough
whose life"style is more communal

closer to

But in the end DiemTs regime
failed to distribute more than about
10% of the available land.

Two Americans who were very
close to the agrarian problems of
Vietnam have suggested that a basic

the

communism than to

In a nation of Buddhist. peasants,

Diem family were
and devout

,hard ~ working opeople :

conflict of interest was the cause of
DiemTs failure in land reform.

John Montgomery, a U.S. foreign
aid expert, wrote: oThe Vietnamese
government, not wishing to disturb
the strong landowning classes, re-

rich aristocrats

Catholics.

than individual"

capitalism.

sisted the proposed transfers of land
and sharper rent controls.�

J. Price Gittinger, an agricultural
adviser, was more specific: o~Gov-
ernment officials, beginning with
the Minister for Agrarian Reform,
have divided loyalties, being them-
selves landholders.T

Gittinger added that the Minister
of Agrarian Reform was reported as
not having osigned leases with his
tenants as provided for in the land
reform decrees, and he is most cer-
tainly not interested in land distri-
bution which would divest him of
much of his property.�

But the peasantsT resentment of
the Saigon regime goes deeper than
the land issue.

Five years ago a French reporter
tried to explain why the Viet Cong
have popular support: oThe Viet
Cong tells the peasants, ooYou are
oppressed by corrupt men repre-
senting a government which has sold
out to a foreign country.� ¢

oOn hearing this the peasants
look around. The chief of the prov-
ince appointed by the Saigon re-
gime lives in a big house, drives a
Mercedes, and loads his wife with
jewelry. The Governor is a man of
importance who is approached with
deference, protected by police, sol-
diers and assistants.

oHis Viet Cong opposite number
can be seen every day. He is out
among the people. He is dressed like
a peasant, in black calico and with
sandals cut from an old tire. He
makes his rounds in his district on
foot, walking along the public roads.
You can be sure of one thing: he is
not getting rich on the backs of the
people.�

The Saigon elite has refused to
identify itself with the aspirations
of the peasants. For the young pea-
sant, therefore, the Viet Cong offers
the only outlet for his anger: and
his patriotism. That is why Viet
Cong officers, unlike those in the
ARVN who are drawn from the
elite, come from peasant stock.

Unwilling to believe that the
Communists have won their support
because they champion a popular
cause, Americans have accepted their
leadersT lie that ~terrorismT is the real
~basis for Viet Cong success. The
most frequently cited fact is the
killing of government officials.

But these officials were appoint-
ed by Saigon, were corrupt and
invariably outsiders to boot. A
French reporter, Max Clos, noted:
oWhen the Viet Cong began their
revolution in 1959 and 1960 it was
opened with a wave of terrorism.

oIn isolated places, in hamlets.
then in villages and cities, officials
and private persons loyal to Saigon
were assassinated. Government pro-
paganda strove mightily to exploit
these facts fo arouse popular indig-

nation.

o
This backfired. It was under-
stood too late that in most cases
the peasants had fearlessly helped
in the brutal liquidation of the men
on whose death the Saigon regime
was basing its case. Instead of mur-
derers, the terrorists were considered
dispensers of justice.�

Like the Thais and the Laotians,
the Vietnamese traditionally had el-
ected their own village officials.

Neither the Mandarins nor the French

had interfered with this practice.
But in 1956 Diem abolished this
village-level democracy and sent in
appointees.

Americans have been brainwashed
to believe that the South Vietnamese
government is democratic. Yet Diem
was ending an ancient democratic
system in the villages. And because
Diem was so dependent on U.S. aid
to survive, the U.S. must also be
held responsible for destroying real
democracy in Vietnam!

Bernard Fall considered this to
be DiemTs worst mistake. He wrote
that DiemTs appointees, o...most of
~them outsiders, were met with open
hostility by the villagers. DiemTs
men would have to go outside the

village to the police post to sleep
safely.

oMany of them were known to
be gouging the villages. The hard
fact is that when the Viet Cong ass-
assinated these men, they were giv-
en a Robin Hood halo by the pea-
sants.��

Nothing belied the official gov-
ernment explanation that terrorism

arth

oWe must honestly

Cong terrorism that drove the refugees
homes to the cities and towns-- though 1
impressment of the men and taxation have increased. |t was
nd Vietnamese bombing and shelling.

American a

-R Hilsman, Asst.
Pas Eastern Affairs in K

face the fact that it was not Viet

from their ancestral
Viet Cong terrorism

of State for
y Administration

U.S. bombing

A nightmare world of flying metal and flaming napalm.

the violence program indicated a_ fective method of winning popular

fairly widespread distaste for terror
on the part of the NLF rank and
file.�

He also noted: o~NLF cadres re-
garded the proper use of terror as
terror applied judiciously, select-
ively and sparingly...in general, the
NLF theoreticians considered terror
to be the weapon of the weak, the

oTerror is an integral part of guerrilla warfare, and the Viet Cong fight
with what they have. However, as applied by the Viet Cong, it is a terror the
people can understand-" although cruel, it is more ~selective than saturation bomb-

ing. Can you imagine the terror of waking up in the middle of the night to

a nightmare world of flying metal and rivers of flaming napalm?

22�

** Donald Duncan, ex- Green Beret

in The New Legions

was the basis for Viet Cong success
more than Douglas PikeTs research.

Pike, a USIA official, has written
the definitive study on the Viet
Cong. Though sharply critical of
the NLF policy of killing govern-
ment officials, Pike concedes that
~the internal: documents dealing
with criticism and self-criticism of

desperate or the ineffectual guer-
rilla leader. They held that most

oObjectives could be achieved with-

Out its use.�

Though the U.S. tried to make
the assassinations a major issue, this
selective (limited) tactic of killing
unpopular leaders was being taught
in Special Forces training as an ef-

support when trying to foment a
guerrilla war in an enemy country.

The simple truth is that the U.S.
government has exaggerated the ter-
rorism of the Viet Cong and distort-
ed its effect on the general popu-
lace in an attempt to divert attention
from the devastation caused by the
American military.

Though the Vietnamese have
known war for two thousand years,
no other invader has come closer to
destroying Vietnamese society than
the United States military.

American bombing alone has kill-
ed literally hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese civilians and cratered
the landscape. According to the
Department of Defense, between
Jan. 1965 and June 1970, the U.S.
has dropped 5,172,823 tons of
bombs on North and South Viet-
nam. This more than doubles the
total tonnage for World War II in
Europe and the Pacific (2,057,244)-
in an area about the size of lowa
and Missouri combined!

The English language press in
Saigon pleaded against the owanton
bombing and shelling of entire vil-

RE Sei tae. oe . ere

1963 Buddhist monk protests

1970 Tiger cages

DiemTs Repression Forces VC to Fight

A high ranking party member
who left the Front in 1965 because
of ill health (he died in 1968) and
disagreements with the Party leader-.
ship. had this to say about the ori-
gins of the armed uprising against

Diem.
The end of 1959 was o~the dark-

est period for the party in the
South, when if you did not have a
gun you could not keep your head

on your shoulders.
oThere was no place whereParty

members could find rest and securi-
ty. Almost all were imprisoned or

shot or were forced to surrender.
Some village chapters which had
four or five hundred members in

lages...the merciless destruction of
unharvested rice fields under a col-
umn of armored personnel carriers,
or the scorched earth policy of nap-
alm are examples of peasant grie-
vances.�

A quasi-police
state

Quite early in his regime Diem
began to repress those who had sym-
pathized or supported the Viet Minh
against the French.

A writer in Foreign Affairs, a
scholarly journal dealing with US.
foreign policy, wrote in late 1956:
oSouth Vietnam is today a quasi-
police state characterized by arbi-
trary arrests and imprisonment,
strict censorship of the press, and
the absence of an effective political
opposition... All the techniques of
political and psychological warfare,
as wellas pacification campaigns in-
volving extensive military operations
have been brought to bear against
the underground.�

This repression grew through
1958, and in 1959 Public Law 10/59
formalized DiemTs police state.

All this posed a serious crisis for
the Communist leadership in the
South.

Most of them had not been hap-

- py with the 1954 Accords, feeling ,
they should not have given up ter-
ritory which they already control-

led.
The old Viet Minh cadres fol--

lowed the political line of the Par-
ty, but DiemTs repression was ma-
king this ne longer viable.

1954 were now reduced to ten mem-
bers, and even those could not re-
main among the people but had to
flee into the jungle to survive.

oIn the face of such fierce activi-
ty by the Diem government the de-
mand for armed security by Party
members increased daily, particular-
ly in the West and particularly after
the proclamation of Law 10/59.

oParty members felt that it was
no longer possible to talk of politi-
cal struggle while looking down the
gun barrels of the government.�

oBut despite the bitterness with-
in the Party and the anger against
the Central Committee, the Region-
al Committee, etc., Party members
were unable to break out from the
organization that was killing them.

~o~There were never clear factions
or groups within the Party demand-
ing armed activity which might have
broken off from the Party Organiza-
tion in the South or from the Cen-
tral Committee in Hanoi-that could
never happen.

oNevertheless there were indivi-'
duals"say draft age youths"who be-
came so angry they took weapons
which the Party had hidden and
came out of the jungle to kill the

~Ne find ourselves supporting a government of mandar-
ins with little basis of popular support fighting for an army
that has little inclination to do its own fighting.�

Robert Sherrod in Life, Jan. 27, 1967

officials who were making trouble
for them or their families.�

oThey did this not because the
Party had condemned these offici-
als, but in order to preserve their
own lives or to defend their fami-
lies. Sometimes these individuals
were so angry at the Party that they
purposely allowed themselves to be
captured afterwards"just to spite the
Party.

This created a dilemma for the
party leaders in the South who were
exhorting cadres to continuc with

the political struggle at the same
time they were pleading with the
Northern leadership to renew the

military siruggle.
In May 1959 a new line was ¢s-

tablished: opolitical struggle mixed
to the right degree with armed strug-

gle.�
NLF quickly
wins support

By the end of 1961 the NLF had
extended its inflience over four-
fifths of South Vietnam.

Recognizing that itg control was
collapsing, the Saigon regime initi-
ated a program of strategic hamlets.

This plan to fortify villages and
thus to deny them to the Vietcong
was acknowledged in September
1963 to be in a orotten state� by
the chief American adviser to the
program, Rufus Phillips.

Systematic rape

of the countryside

Lt. Col. William Corson (USMC
ret.), who was deeply involved in
pacification efforts in Vietnam, call-
ed strategic hamlets part of the
osystematic rape of the country-
side.� He wrote of the forced re-
settlement, physical oppression, co-
ercion and political persuasion by
the club.

These measures naturally increas-
ed resentment among the peasants.

The theory of ostrategic hamlets
appealed to the ~progressiveT policy-
makers in Washington. But it had
to be abandoned as a major blunder
when faced with the realities of

BLACK VIEWS ON THE WAR

Another question crucial to under-
standing the war is, to what extent
are AmericaTs actions in Vietnam
compromised by racism?

Some critics argue that the indis-
criminate bombings, the ofree-fire
zones,� and the ruthless osearch and
destroy� operations of American
forces reveal an assumption of ra-
cial inferiority about the Vietnam-
ese by Americans.

The GITs bitter contempt for the
oogooks� (ogook,� like onigger,�
oowetback� or okike� is clearly a
racist hate-word) and their frequent
abuse of the villagersT buffaloes,
their paddies, their ~ohootchesTT,

(homes), their old men and young
girls" all this only widened the

~credibility gap about AmericaTs true
motives for being in Vietnam.

A 1967 poll taken by a Saigon
newspaper showed that a majority
of the Vietnamese polled believed
that Americans treated them with
scornful superiority.

As the war progressed, GITs re-
turning from Vietnam confirmed
the charge of racism with countless
stories of individual atrocities against
peasants, of rape and vandalism and

_ outright murder.

At the same time, GITs often
questioned the PentagonTs absurd
rationale for why the VC and NVA
troops were so dedicated and brave"
that they were all brainwashed and

doped out of their minds during
battle.

The experience of ohumping it
for a year through malaria-infested
jungles had taught GITs that men do
not lug cannons over mountains for
twenty years, or march ten miles
at night and keep fighting with five
M-16 rounds in them, for such flim-
sy reasons.

Some dream, some anger had to
be sustaining the guerrillas in their
fight.

"Here lies a yellow man,
killed by a black man,

fighting for the white man,
who killed all the red men,"

#* Malcolm X, on seeing

a photo of a VC soldier
slain by a black GI,

in The Autobiograph
Malcolm X

of

:

Martin Luther King

on Vietnam War

What do the peasants t

think as we ally ourselves with the landlords

and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning
land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on

them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine
in the concentration camps of Eur

independent Vietnam we Clair
voiceless ones?

They watch as we poison the
their crops. They must weep

Y) to he

ir Water,
as the
areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.

and new tortures
are the roots of the
building? Is it among these

ype? Where

as we kill a million acres of
bulldozers roar through their
They wander into the

hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower tor one
Vietcong-inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and see thou-

sands of the children,

homeless, without clothes,

running in packs

on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our

soldiers as they beg tor tood. They

see the children selling their sis-

ters to our soldiers, soliciting tor their mothers.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the tamily i}
and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. \Ve
have cooperated in the crushing of the nationTs only non-communist
revolutionary political force"the Unitied BuddhistsChurch. We have
supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted

their women and children and killed their men.

What liber

Who is really the aggressorT

Vietnamese society.

Not only was the incompetence,
corruption and brutality of the Sai-
gon regime involved in the failure
of strategic hamlets, but the army
lacked the motivation to fight and
the peasants would rarely betray
the Viet Cong to the government -
proof of where their true sympa-
thies lay.

Diem ousted

_ _In May 1963, a crisis broke out
in Vietnam which ultimately led to
the downfall of the Diem regime.

The Buddhists had long resented
the Catholic influence in the govern-
ment. In a parade on BuddhaTs
birthday nine tneanle were killed
by DiemTs police and this ignited the
Buddhist fesott.

An old monk burned himself to
death on June 11. The shock waves
led to a reevaluation of American

support for Diem and eventually
President Kennedy let it be known
that the U.S. would not oppose a
coup to remove Diem.

There were plenty of people who
were willing to overthrow Diem,.
and on November 1, 1963, Diem
and his brother were assassinated by
generals in the South Vietnamese
Army.

The people of Saigon staged a
wild, jubilant celebration, but the

new generals in command had nei-
ther the vision nor the ability to deal
with the problems of Vietnamese so-
ciety.

The new police chief, for ex-
ample, was arresting people only to
let them go if they paid big bribes
to him. Diem was gone, but a pal-
ace revolt was not going to alter the
basic nature of the conflict in Viet-
nam.

The authority of the Saigon gov-
ernments continued to slip and the
Johnson administration decided to
send large numbers of troops to Viet-
nam.

Tonkin incident

There is no quicker way to rally
a country to war than to be able to

claim that the country has been at-
tacked. (Remember the Alamo! Re-
member the Maine!)

Lacking a Pearl Harbor, the John-
son administration settled on what
was to be known as the Gulf of Ton-

kin incident.

In August 1964 the American
government charged that North Vi-
etnamese torpedo boats had at-
tacked two heavily armed U.S. de-
stroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

President Johnson retaliated with

the first bombing attacks on North
Vietnam, and Congress hastily pas-

sed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,

which Johnson later used as a blank
check to expand U.S. involvement
in the war.

Many prominent officials came
to doubt that the Tonkin Incident

was serious enough to warrant John-
sonTs reaction.

The first casuaty of war

is +yuth. - heschylus

The Tonkin incident was not pre-

ceded by any significant naval ac-
tion, nor did it herald the beginning
of open aggression on the high seas
against the United States.

Senator Wayne Morse, one of the
two Senators to vote against this re-
solution, said that the destroyers
were justified in returning the fire
but that the bombing of North Viet-
nam constituted a serious violation
of international law and a major es-
calation of the war.

Senator J. William Fulbright,
head of the Senate Forcign Rela-
tions Committee. has concluded

that it is a poss» lity we provoked
the attack in the act of supervising
a raid by the South Vie~namese.

Considering _ that United
States did not go to war over the
Pueblo incident or the shooting
down of a spy plane near Korea, it
is clear that the Gulf of Tonkin in-
cident was merely a pretext for move
ing troops into South East Asia.

Later it became known in Wash-
ington that Johnson and some of
his aides had carried drafts of the
resolution around with them for
weeks before the incident.

Contending that North Vietnam
was committing aggression against
South Vietnam, the United States
began bombing North Vietnam on a
continuing basis in February 1965.

This was the biggest myth of all
in a war built on myths.

The Senate Majority Leader,
Mike Mansfield, observed in 1966
that owhen the sharp increase in the
American military effort began in
1965, it was estimated that only a-
bout 400 North Vietnamese soldiers
were among the enemy forces in the
South which totaled 140,000 at the
time.�

It should be noted that at this
time there were 23,000 American
troops in Vietnam.

These uncomfortable facts raise
the serious question of who was the
real aggressor.

\

The February 1965 State De-
partment White Paper tried to sub-
stantiate its claim of North Vietna-
mese aggression through statistics of
captured weapons. ,

Inspite of the fact that 7500
weapons had been captured from

the Vietcong from the middle of
1962 to the end of 1963, only 179

were of foreign Communist manu-
facture.

Where were the rest of the-wea-
pons coming from?

Gen. HarkinTs view

General Paul D. Harkins, who
was in charge of American forces
before Westmoreland, admitted in
March 1963 that the guerrillas ob-
viously were not being supplied
from North Vietnam, China, or any
place else. Most of the weapons
were either captured or homemade.

A year later the State Depart-
mentTs Director of Intelligence can-
didly conceded that ~o~by. far the
greater part of the Vietcong forces
in South Vietnam are South Vietn
mese, the preponderance of Vig
cong weapons come not from Cog
munist countries but from capt
purchase and local manufacture.

Captured weapons

Bernard Fall estimated th
per cent of the Vietcong we

sion of the Geneva truce that had They eliminated two of the most

(the dreaded head of the secret

stranded these people in the north.

Theodore DraperTs appraisal
seems accurate enough: oIn man-
power and in weapons, North Viet-
nam was not, at least until 1965,
the main or even a significant provi-
der. It is fair to conclude that until
about 1960 the Vietcong was'strj
ly a Southern enterprise, ang
1965 the Northern co on
was mainly limited to £ ~

The real reason tf ed StatesT

government di a huge ex-

peditionary fg vietnam in

1965 and Lee because of

the North # Dut because

the Saigon fégime ling apgrt.
This wasT happ n

the fact that U.S. §
governme :
HanoiTs a
rades i
minima

Tranh, who had been a minister in

on the ballot,and Communists were
excluded. :

serious. contenders - the popular _ police) stood in the galleries, the :

General Minh who came to power
when Diem was overthrown, and a
brilliant economist, Au Truong

full assembly voted by only a 57-44
margin to accept the results.

The only candidate who had
dared run on a peace platform (af-
ter his place on the ballot had been
assured) soon found himself in pri-

fTs cabinet,/
F No oneTwho advocated a neu-
ralist solution was allowed to be

son. Though he was charged with
corruption, the real cause of his im-
prisonment was his peace platform.

The election had been a total

Four newspapers were shut down
during the election. fraud.

In the delta province of Kien George Romney was to be ridi-

Hoa voter registration increased to -cyled out of the 1968 LS ~Presiten.
419,000 from 120,000 in one tial election because he cant wey

month. General Thieu even admit- been brainwashed about Vietnam.
ted that oSome soldiers have been. [pn truth, the American people
given two cards.� : * had been brainwashed.
Because no area under Vietcong They had trusted their govern-
ontrol voted, only 56 per cent of ment. But their government had
p cligible populace took part. lied to them.

Of this the u-Ky Of course, eventually the truth

hieu-Ky ticket re-
ceived just 35 p@r cent of the vote. about Vietnam - that we were sup-
~porting an unpopular government
against a revolution that had the
support of the peasants - would as-

- sert itself. :

were captured American wediians cd

Thus, in the early stages 6f
war, the American logistical system
was supplying both sides of the
conflict.

The other majorT point in the
State DepartmentTs fabricated case
was the claim that between 1959
and 1964, 37,000 southerners who
had gone north with HoChi Minh in
1954 had returned to the south to
provide leadership and technical ad-
vice for the guerrilla forces.

But these people had left the
south in 1954 fully expecting to re-
turn in 1956 after the country was
reunified by elections.

It was the Diem governmentTs re-
fusal to honor this essential provi-

in a military coup.
His name was Nguyen Cao Ky.
In time, charges that this new
government was nothing but a mili-
tary dictatorship began to embar-
rass President Johnson. So elections
were set up in South Vietnam. ©
The story of these elections is
the story of a fantastic charade, and
it reflects'little credit on the Amer-
ican public that they could not de-
tect the hoax.
General Thieu and General Ky
refused to allow-anyone with Bud-
dhist connections to run even

though most Vietnamese are Bud-
dhists.

VIETNAM: A DRAGON EMBATTLED

Joseph Buttinger

THE VIETNAMESE AND THEIR REVOLUTION

John T. McAlister, Jr. and Paul Mus

ABUSE OF POWER
Theodore Draper

VIETNAM: HISTORY, DOCUMENTS

BOOKS

AND

OPINIONS ON A MAJOR WORLD CRISIS

ed. by Marvin Gettleman
THE INDOCHINA STORY

Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars

TO READ

~THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN

POLICY
Gabriel Kolko

VIETNAM: THE UNHEARD VOICES

Luce and Sommer

LAST REFLECTIONS ON A WAR
Bernard Fall

THE NEW LEGIONS

Donald Duncan

ON VIETNAM

VIETNAM: LOTUS IN A SEA OF FIRE

Trich Nhat Hanh

TWO VIETNAMS
Bernard Fall

No amount of lying

No amount of official lying in
Washington could alter the histori-
cal and social realities of Vietnam.

And these realities were deter-
mining the outcome of the war.

In November 1967, U.S. military
spokesmen were claiming that Viet

}.S. Generals
on Vietnam War

~ mission of the Constituent
gia hen voted 16-2 not to
E tho@esults of the election be-
fethegsicfeated civilian candi- .
dgaeen able to produce sub-
Hence of . fraud.

when the final vote was
and Brig. Gen. Ngoc Loan

RIDGWAY GAVIN
See Osa

land war in Asia. I think we would be fighting

a wrong war at the wrong place against the
wrong enemy,"

~- General Omar Bradley

e707e7e7e"e7e7e7e 0787675 s%e"etererete e's ete" etetetatatetetetetets
weacetatetetetetete tata tetate te tet tates ta etetetetetetetetetatetatetetet a etetetetetetateteteteteteretete"e solelererererereceleteteteteteteretetetetatetetetetetes
Bs Bet BrAL es ere elecererecerererererecerererecertrttstatstetst hehe etst te tet tate etate tate tatatatatetatatatatatatetatatetatetetetetstatetatatatetetatatatete stata stat tstetatats sets
x,

4

=: oAnybody who commits the land power of the Uni-
= ted States on the continent of Asia ought to
have his head examined,"

betta aa aes - General Douglas MacArthur #

*
eet nata tee ature ta terete ect an cada ase a atlas o ctsie ce ata a a state nate ste Me a tase atataMehna%e®. 8.0.0.0. 0.5.0 006 6 0 0.00600 6.6 6.0.6.0.0.0.0.0,0,0.0%
- oe

I I I RRR I he ee ee ee
NEP et ere ele terete eee eee ate ete a etererarere eH # elerere Sl8.#.# #1818 teases ewrererererareratetstatetetatatstatatctetatetatatatetatetetetetetetetetetr thee erarelerereterererstes.

eee ed hd Lh ed en ee ee eee eee ee

"I think we should go back to the 195), Geneva

: Agreements and hold free elections in Vietnam.
I have no doubt they would go Communist, but
our own political morality demands that we
abide by the results of free elections,"

~ General Wm, Wallace Ford

ERK,

pik ik fai b ne mh eee Ae
weleleletetelatetetetetetetetetetetatetatatatetetatatetetatatetetetetetetetatatatatatatatetetetatetatatatatatatatatatatstatstitatatetetstatatatatetatatatetatateteretererererarerslelersrersrenes
oases ce DDoS Deteteaeaeecetoaeegeteaetetetetebetetetetetetetetetetetatatetetetetets tess trsssrsteetereseteteleteteletetetetetetereteleretereletelelersteretetetemeaeter saat ritetet
ser eratete et etetaetatetatatetetatetetetaatatetatatetatetatstatatetenatetatstetatatatatetatstatstatetatatetetatetstetet tet tetreeeitete tate ete ate atete

% "I see no strategic or other reason for main-

% taining a base in Vietnam...our Communist ad-
ventures bring us no return, while social pro-
grams suffer at home and twenty million of our

citizens are in such despair that there is
rioting in the streets."

- Rear Admiral Arnold True

ote e eee see ee 8s 8s an n®.*.*.*,*,9. 8 8 808 6's + 9 0 © 8 © 8 6 8 ee 6 6 6 8 8 6 5 6 6 6.6 8 6 «6 6 6 8 6 8 6 8 6 ee eo 66 ee 8 ee a 8 ee oe se ee 8 6 + ea 6 8 ee oe ©
ones oe a ee

" -_"""

YEH~-+* BUT IT AAIGUT
BE HEACED wont
AT AHIGH RATE oF

WELL, AT LAST WE CAN SEE A
( LIGHT AT TH END OF THE TUNNEL.

let Explodes Myths

Cong morale was low and deser-

: ! trocities inflicted by the Vietnamese
tions were high as contrasted with

On Our compatriots in Hanoi, De-

The February 1965 State De-
partment White Paper tried to sub-
stantiate its claim of North Vietna-
mese aggression through statistics of
captured weapons.

Inspite of the fact that 7500

weapons had been captured from

the Vietcong from the middle of
1962 to the end of 1963, only 179

were of foreign Communist manu-
facture.

Where were the rest of the-wea-
pons coming from?

Gen. HarkinTs view

General Paul D. Harkins, who
was in charge of American forces
before Westmoreland, admitted in
March 1963 that the guerrillas ob-
viously were not being supplied
from North Vietnam, China, or any
place else. Most of the weapons
were either captured or homemade.

A year later the State Depart-
mentTs Director of Intelligence can-
didly conceded that oby. far the
greater part of the Vietcong forces

in South Vietnam are South Vietnag

mese, the preponderance of Vig
cong weapons come not from Co
munist countries but from capt
purchase and local manufacture. *%

Captured weapons.

Bernard Fall estimated t
per cent of the Vietcong w
were captured American wedgman
Thus, in the early stages 6
war, the American logistical system

was supplying both sides of the
conflict.

The other majorT point in the

State DepartmentTs fabricated case
was the claim that between 1959
and 1964, 37,000 southerners who
had gone north with Ho Chi Minh in
1954 had returned to the south to
provide leadership and technical ad-
vice for the guerrilla forces.

But these people had left the
south in 1954 fully expecting to re-
turn in 1956 after the country was
reunified by elections.

It was the Diem governmentTs re-
fusal to honor this essential provi-

sion of the Geneva truce that had
stranded these people in the north.
Theodore DraperTs appraisal
seems accurate enough: oIn man-
power and in weapons, North Viet-
nam was not, at least until 1965.
the main or even a significant provi-
der. It is fair to conclude that until
about 1960 the Vietcong was'strj
ly a Southern enterprise, and
1965 the Northern cong on
was mainly limited to tage.�
The real reason tk ed StatesT
government di a huge ex-
peditionary yietnam in
1965 and because of
the North Dut because
the Saigon ling gpert.
This wasT happ
the fact that U.S. §
governme
HanoiTs
rades i
minimal
gs

in a military coup. |

His name was Nguyen Cao Ky.

In time, charges that this new
government was nothing but a mili-
tary dictatorship began to embar-
rass President Johnson. So elections
were set up in South Vietnam.

The story of these elections is
the story of a fantastic charade, and
it reflects'little credit on the Amer-
ican public that they could not de-
tect the hoax.

General Thieu and General Ky
refused to allow-anyone with Bud-
dhist connections to run even

though most Vietnamese are Bud-
dhists.

VIETNAM: A DRAGON EMBATTLED

Joseph Buttinger

THE VIETNAMESE AND THEIR REVOLUTION

John T. McAlister, Jr. and Paul Mus

ABUSE OF POWER
Theodore Draper

VIETNAM: HISTORY, DOCUMENTS AND

BOOKS

OPINIONS ON A MAJOR WORLD CRISIS

ed. by Marvin Gettleman
THE INDOCHINA STORY

Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars

TO READ

~THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN

POLICY
Gabriel Kolko

VIETNAM: THE UNHEARD VOICES

Luce and Sommer

LAST REFLECTIONS ON A WAR
Bernard Fall

THE NEW LEGIONS

Donald Duncan

ON VIETNAM

VIETNAM: LOTUS IN A SEA OF FIRE

Trich Nhat Hanh

TWO VIETNAMS
Bernard Fall

They eliminated two of the most
serious. contenders - the popular

General Minh who came to power ©

when Diem was overthrown, and a
brilliant economist, Au Truong

Tranh, who had been a minister in
Ts cabinet,/

ge No oneTwho advocated a neu-
(tralist solution was allowed to be
on the ballot,and Communists were

excluded. ©
Four newspapers were shut down
during the election.

(the dreaded head of the secret

police) stood in the galleries, the :

full assembly voted by only a 57-44
margin to accept the results.

The only candidate who had
dared run on a peace platform (af-
ter his place on the ballot had been
assured) soon found himself in pri-

son. Though he was charged with
corruption, the real cause of his im-
prisonment was his peace platform.

The election had been a total
fraud.

/

In the delta province of Kien George Romney was to be ridi-

Hoa voter registration increased to -cyled out of the 1968 LS ~Presifen.
419,000 from 120,000 in one tial election because he said he had

month. General Thieu even admit- been brainwashed about Vietnam.
ted that oSome soldiers have been. [pn truth, the American people
given two cards.� * had been brainwashed.

Because no area under Vietcong They had trusted their govern-

ontrol voted, only 56 per cent of ment. But their government had
¢ eligible populace took part. lied to them.

Of this the Phieu-Ky ticket re- Of course, eventually the truth

about Vietnam - that we were sup-
~porting an unpopular government
against a revolution that had the

support of the peasants - would as-
sert itself. .:

No amount of lying

No amount of official lying in
Washington could alter the histori-
cal and social realities of Vietnam.

And these realities were deter-
mining the outcome of the war.

In November 1967, U.S. military
spokesmen were claiming-that Viet

U.S. Generals
on Vietnam War

mission of the Constituent
abieathen voted 16-2 not to
themesults of the election be-
iheagmiefeated civilian candi- .
dgmeen able to produce sub-
fence of _ fraud.
m�"� when the final vote was
and Brig. Gen. Ngoc Loan

land war in Asia. I think we would be fighting
a wrong war at the wrong place against the
wrong enemy,"

- General Omar Bradley

= "Anybody who commits the land power of the Uni-
= ted States on the continent of Asia ought to
have his head examined."

- General Douglas MacArthur #

* "I think we should go back to the 195), Geneva
Agreements and hold free elections in Vietnam,
[ have no doubt they would go Communist, but
our own political morality demands that we
abide by the results of free elections,"

~ General Wm, Wallace Ford

= "T see no strategic or other reason for main-
taining a base in Vietnam...our Communist ad-
ventures bring us no return, while social pro-
grams suffer at home and twenty million of our

citizens are in such despair that there is
rioting in the streets."

2, 1954, General Navarre
forces in Indo-China that he fu
months of hard fighting.

(French) told his French Union

lly expected victory...after six more

French victory.

On March 23, 1954, Admiral Arthur W.

; Radford, Chai
Joint Chiefs of Staff said: oThe F or airman of the U.S.

rench are going to win.�

In July 1959, ~Major General Sam Meyers (U.S.A.) said: oThe guerrillas
were gradually nibbled away until they ceased ta he 0-2
Im March 1903, Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared: othe strategic

hamlet program is producing excellent results� and omorale in the
countryside has begun to rise.� �

In May 1963, the Defense Department stated: oThe corner has definitely

been turned toward victory in Vietnam.�

On November 1, 1963, General Paul Harkins, the senior U.S. Army officer in
Vietnam said in STARS AND STRIPES: oVictory in the sense that
would apply to this kind of war is just months away. I'can safely say
that the end of the war is in sight.� ©

oON NOVEMBER 1, 1963, THE DIEM DICTATORSHIP WAS OVER.

THROWN. POLITICAL PRISONERS WERE RELEASED AND
THERE WAS ECSTATIC CELEBRATING. THE OPTIMISTIC
STATISTICS ON STRATEGIC HAMLETS WERE REVEALED
TO BE FRAUDULENT AS ONLY 20% COULD BE REGARDED
AS USABLE. "

In February of 1964, Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara said: oThe
U.S. still hopes to withdraw most of its troops from South Vietnam
before the end of 1965.� °

IN FEBRUARY 1965, PRESIDENT JOHNSON ANNOUNCED SENDING
50,000 TROOPS TO VIETNAM. THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF
MAJOR U.S. INTERVENTION. ~

In October 1965, McNamara said we have stopped losing the war.

AT THE BEGINNING OF APRIL 1967, THE UNITED STATES WAS

ABLE TO CLAIM CONTROL OVER FEWER VILLAGES THAN
IN 1962. ©

---1967 Republican Senate Committee Report on Vietnam

TRUE PATRIOTISM

oMy country, right or wrong.
When right, to be kept right.
When wrong, to be put right.�

" Senator Carl Schurz

the Saigon army.

Claiming they could see ~the

light at the end of the tunnel,T they

Said that the NLF was no longer ca-
pable of launching any major mil-

itary action,
In the early days of February

1968, the Vietcong launched their
Tet offensive.

Vietcong cadres penetrated Sai-

* gon and attacked the American em-

bassy.
More than 800 planes had been

damaged and 200 completely des- |

-- Neil Sheehan

in The New York Ti

October 9, 1966

tary ©raror 11VvuUuis.

"~ywe we wen eae
-

In Hue, the old Imperial City,
the Vietcong managed to hold out

for four weeks.
American forces launched a bar-

rage of firepower on Hué, and on
March 23, 1968, Robert Shaplen re-
ported for The New Yorker that:
oNearly four thousand civilians were
killed in Hué, most of them by A-
merican air and artillery attacks.�

In late 1969 after the story of
the My Lai massacre was uncovered,
high American officials including
President Nixon tried to pin the
blame for these deaths on the Viet-
cong.

This was perhaps a new story to

cember 19, 1946, are either inven-
_tions or erroneous.�

General Westmoreland claimed
that the Tet offensive had been a
setback for the NLF, but he also
requested 200,000 more troops!

At this point Lyndon Johnson
decided to reverse his course on
the war. He replaced Gen. West-
moreland, announced an end to the
bombing of North Vietnam, and
said he would not run for re-
election.

Clearly, as Robert KennedyTs

victories in New York, Oregon,
Pennsylvania and California showed,
the American people were disillus-
ioned with the war and wanted it
ended.

When Richard Nixon became
President, he announced that his
policy for Vietnam would be oViet-
namization�" meaning that as the
Saigon regime was more capable of
standing on its own feet, U.S. troops
would be withdrawn.

Yet the earlier attempt at oViet-

namization� had failed by 1965
when it was obvious that indirect
American support would not prop
up the corrupt Saigon regime. That

The weakness of Western technology

oDespite the enormous scale of violence and the far-
reaching changes in the country, the most important aspects
of the struggle remain the same. Pro-Western governments
are still trying to wrest control over the countryside away
from rural-based revolut@naries who have developed power
by relating their strategy to Vietnamese traditions.

In Vietnam therefore, the technological power of the
West has had its weaknesses exposed by the political power

Of a peasant people.�

-- John T. McAlister, Jr.
in The Vietnamese and Their Revolution

the American public, but the Viet-
namese had heard it all before.

When the French government
was trying to inflame French public
opinion in 1946 as well as distract
from the November shelling of Hai-
phong (where according to French
military estimates 6000 Vietnamese
civilians were killed), they told sto-
ries of Viet Minh atrocities in Ha-
noi.

By 1949, Paul Mus, the most
eminent French authority on Viet-
nam, wrote: oI am in a position to
state and to prove that four-fifths
of the stories or reports of awful a-

failure led to the oAmericanization�
of the war.

Anyone who understands the
flow of Vietnamese history knows
that the Saigon elite- largely Catho-

lic, French-trained and urban-oriented

in a country where the majority are

Buddhist peasants" will never be-

able to defeat the nationalist revo-
lution in their midst.

The only realistic course left -

for the United States- and Americans
pride themselves on being common
sense realists- is to leave Vietnam as

the Chinese, Mongols, Japanese and
French have all done.

9

US AURORA ERIE AR | aE, Roki cae
oWhich image do Americans prefer? Do they want the

world to regard them as a nation with a revolutionary tradi-
tion, sympathetic to colonies in their struggles against Sa
imperial rulers, regi sas and progress, and dedica-

rinciple of equality: : as

ne "a oa nebo. that other image which AmericaTs
adversaries depict, that of a counter-revolutionary America,
everywhere on the side of urban elites seeking to stamp out

the ardor for change on the part of the peasantry, against
all national movements which seem to have a socialist orienta-

tion, as a white supremacist power determined wscvgl td e
to put down wars of liberation started by the colored races:

Richard B. Morris :
in The Emerging Nations and

The American Revolution

lessons of
vietnam

The philosopher Santayana once
said that othose who refuse to learn
from history are doomed to repeat
a"

rhe world is full of poor, angry
peoples who are ruled by corrupt,

re nresentath\ eovernments, and

yples have in the past look-

ited States- the home

nationalist revolution

inspiration

their independence and

1itices- iO}

lragically, the United States has
yften betrayed these peoplesT hopes
yy allying itself with their colonial
nasters ( France, Britain, Portugal,
[he Netherlands, South Africa, etc.)
ind freanently sent American troops
of Haiti, Panama, Bolivia, Guatema-
a, Lebanon, Okinawa, Greece and

nany other countries- Vietnam the
atest example- show instances of

American interventions and econom
c exploitations.

If the United States remains
lind to the hard lessons. of. the
/ietnam War, there will surely be
ither, bloodier oVietnams� in Asia,
atin America and Africa, and
~mericans will be bitterly hated
hroughout the world.

To learn the lessons of Vietnam,
-mericans will have to give up
ur. cherished belief that we are
icially and culturally superior to
veryone else- a belief that under-
2s our Vietnam involvement.

Americans will have to face the
ct that our government has lied
» us time and again and has tried
» Cloak an imperialistic policy in

the noble rhetoric of odefending
freedom.�

We will have to face the fact
that Communists are quite capable
of winning popular revolutions and
that the U.S., in too many cases,
is quite capable of supporting the
most despicable tyrant

it is
to grow
ingenuity� and a onever-say-dic
football spirit can NOT solve every
problem in the world head-on!

It is past time for Americans
to see that the President and the
Generals are NOT always impartial,
infallible men who ohave all the
facts� and act without ulterior mo-
tives in the best interests of all con-

to see that other peoples do NOT
hold OUR truths" progress, Chris-
tianity, mass production, etc."o~ to
be self-evident.� '

Finally, it is past time for Am-
ericans, in the words of poet Robert
Burns, to osee ourselves as others
see usTT ~ all too often, as Swagger-
ing, red-faced, beef-fed men who
arrogantly try to impress others
with our size, power and wealth
and who wrongly assume that a
heavy dose of bombers, Bibles and
bank accounts is the way to other
peopleTs hearts.

IF we can learn these lessons
from our tragic adventure in Viet-
nam, then withdrawal will be more
than a cure for one crisis but will
lead to a way for America to live in
a revolutionary world, true to the
BEST side of the American charac-
ter instead of the worst!

past time
up and see

oThese bitter words, in bronze, are on
the East Bay grave of a 19-year old Marine
who was killed in Vietnam. The question
is his parents. The answers could be that
he died to make the world safe for Ky
and Thieu, to justify the wilfulness of
the Sage of the Pedernales, to save the
inscrutable Oriental face of Dean Rusk,
to support the mistakes of computerized.
Pentagon minds, to defend a meaningless
and temporary boundary line, to satisfy
the blood lust of safe if not sane old men
who watch the war on TV and say ,

This paper was prepared for Bragg Briefs by
Sp/5 Richard Olson and Sp/4 William Robb

WwIDnD TOR WHAT?

re]

oGo team, go!� as though it were a
football game, and who glory in such
dinner table jargon as oWe oughta take
Hanoi out with a nuke.�

The 19-year old died because we
intruded on a domestic fight. As the
graffiti says, oHow many Vietnamese
fought in OUR civil war?� If there are
no more Vietnams, perhaps the young
man did not die in vain" small comfort

to his parents and the other parents of

" Herb Caen

in the San Francisco Chronicle