American Legion News Articles
Why We Fought & Why We Would
Do it Again
September 2003
Against a backdrop of political
mismanagement and social angst, history has failed to respect those
who gave their all to the war in Vietnam.
Forty years ago, Asia was at a vital crossroads, moving
into an uncertain future dominated by three different historical
trends. The first involved the aftermath of the carnage and
destruction of World War II, which left scars on every country in
the region and dramatically changed Japan’s role in East Asian
affairs. The second was the sudden, regionwide end of European
colonialism, which created governmental vacuums in every second-tier
country except Thailand and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines.
The third was the emergence of communism as a powerful tool of
expansionism by military force, its doctrine and strategies
emanating principally from the birthplace of the Communist
International: the Soviet Union.
Europe’s withdrawal from the region dramatically played into the
hands of communist revolutionary movements, especially in the wake
of the communist takeover of China in 1949. Unlike in Europe, these
countries had never known Western-style democracy. In 1950, the
partitioned country of Korea exploded into war when the communist
North invaded South Korea, with the Chinese Army joining the effort
six months later. Communist insurgencies erupted throughout
Indochina. In Malaysia, the British led a 10-year anti-guerrilla
campaign against China-backed revolutionaries. A similar insurgency
in Indonesia brought about a communist coup attempt, also sponsored
by the Chinese, which was put down in 1965.
The situation inside Vietnam was the most complicated. First, for a
variety of reasons the French had not withdrawn from their long-term
colony after World War II, making it easy for insurgents to rally
the nationalistic Vietnamese to their side. Second, the charismatic,
Soviet-trained communist leader Ho Chi Minh had quickly consolidated
his anti-French power base just after the war by assassinating the
leadership of competing political groups that were both anti-French
and anti-communist. Third, once the Korean War armistice was signed
in 1953, the Chinese had shifted large amounts of sophisticated
weaponry to Ho Chi Minh’s army. The Viet Minh’s sudden acquisition
of larger-caliber weapons and field artillery such as the
105-millimeter Howitzer abruptly changed the nature of the war and
contributed heavily to the French humiliation at Dien Bien Phu.
Fourth, further war became inevitable when U.S.-led backers of the
incipient South Vietnamese democracy called off a 1956 election
agreed upon after Vietnam was divided in 1954. In geopolitical
terms, this failure to go forward with elections was prudent, since
it was clear a totalitarian state had emerged in the north.
President Eisenhower’s frequently quoted admonition that Ho Chi Minh
would get 75 percent of the vote was not predicated on the communist
leader’s popularity but on the impossibility of getting a fair vote
in communist-controlled North Vietnam. But in propaganda terms, it
solidified Ho Chi Minh’s standing and in many eyes justified the
renewed warfare he would begin in the south two years later.
In 1958, the communists unleashed a terrorist campaign in the south.
Within two years, their northern-trained squads were assassinating
an average of 11 government officials a day. President Kennedy
referred to this campaign in 1961 when he decided to increase the
number of American soldiers operating inside South Vietnam. “We have
talked about and read stories of 7,000 to 15,000 guerrillas
operating in Vietnam, killing 2,000 civil officers a year and 2,000
police officers a year – 4,000 total,” Kennedy said. “How we fight
that kind of problem, which is going to be with us all through this
decade, seems to me to be one of the great problems now before the
United States.”
Among the local populace, the communist assassination squads were
the “stick,” threatening to kill anyone who officially affiliated
with the South Vietnamese government. Along with the assassination
squads came the “carrot,” a highly trained political cadre that also
infiltrated South Vietnam from the north. The cadre helped the
people prepare defenses in their villages, took rice from farmers as
taxes and recruited Viet Cong soldiers from the local young
population. Spreading out into key areas – such as those provinces
just below the demilitarized zone, those bordering Laos and
Cambodia, and those with future access routes to key cities – the
communists gained strong footholds.
The communists began spreading out from their enclaves, fighting on
three levels simultaneously. First, they continued their terror
campaign, assassinating local leaders, police officers, teachers and
others who declared support for the South Vietnamese government.
Second, they waged an effective small-unit guerrilla war that was
designed to disrupt commerce, destroy morale and clasp local
communities to their cause. And finally, beginning in late 1964,
they introduced conventional forces from the north, capable of
facing, if not defeating, main force infantry units – including the
Americans – on the battlefield. Their gamble was that once the
United States began fighting on a larger scale – as it did in March
1965 – its people would not support a long war of attrition. As Ho
Chi Minh famously put it, “For every one of yours we kill, you will
kill 10 of ours. But in the end it is you who will grow tired.”
Ho Chi Minh was right. The infamous “body counts” were continuously
disparaged by the media and the antiwar movement. Hanoi removed the
doubt in 1995, when on the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon
officials admitted having lost 1.1 million combat soldiers dead,
with another 300,000 “still missing.”
Communist losses of 1.4 million dead compared to America’s losses of
58,000 and South Vietnam’s 245,000 stand as stark evidence that
eliminates many myths about the war. The communists, and
particularly the North Vietnamese, were excellent and determined
soldiers. But the “wily, elusive guerrillas” that the media loved to
portray were not exclusively wily, elusive or even guerrillas when
one considers that their combat deaths were four times those of
their enemies, combined. And an American military that located
itself halfway around the world to take on a determined enemy on the
terrain of the enemy’s choosing was hardly the incompetent,
demoralized and confused force that so many antiwar professors,
journalists and filmmakers love to portray.
Why Did We Fight?
The United States recognized South Vietnam as a political entity
separate from North Vietnam, just as it recognized West Germany as
separate from communist-controlled East Germany and just as it
continues to recognize South Korea from communist-controlled North
Korea. As signatories of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, we
pledged to defend South Vietnam from external aggression. South
Vietnam was invaded by the north, just as certainly, although with
more sophistication, as South Korea was invaded by North Korea. The
extent to which the North Vietnamese, as well as antiwar Americans,
went to deny this reality by pretending the war was fought only by
Viet Cong soldiers from the south is, historically, one of the
clearest examples of their disingenuous conduct. At one point during
the war, 15 of North Vietnam’s 16 combat divisions were in the
south.
How Did We Fight?
The Vietnam War varied year by year and region by region, our
military’s posture unavoidably mirroring political events in the
United States. Too often in today’s America we are left with the
images burned into a weary nation’s consciousness at the very end of
the war, when massive social problems had been visited on an army
that was demoralized, sitting in defensive cantonments and simply
waiting to be withdrawn. While reflecting America’s final months in
Vietnam, they hardly tell the story of the years of effort and
battlefield success that preceded them.
Little recognition has been given in this country of how brutal the
war was for those who fought it on the ground and how well our
military performed. Dropped onto the enemy’s terrain 12,000 miles
away from home, America’s citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity
and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe
the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider
the enormous casualties to which the communists now admit. And those
who believe that it was a “dirty little war” where the bombs did all
the work might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S.
Marine Corps has ever fought. Five times as many Marines died in
Vietnam as in World War I, three times as many as in Korea. And the
Marines suffered more total casualties, killed and wounded, in
Vietnam than in all of World War II.
Another allegation was that our soldiers were over-decorated during
the Vietnam War. James Fallows says in his book “National Defense”
that by 1971, we had given out almost 1.3 million medals for bravery
in Vietnam, as opposed to some 1.7 million for all of World War II.
Others have repeated the figure, including the British historian
Richard Holmes in his book “Acts of War.” This comparison is
incorrect for a number of reasons. First, these totals included air
medals, rarely awarded for bravery. We awarded more than 1 million
air medals to Army soldiers during Vietnam. Air medals were almost
always given on a points basis for missions flown, and it was not
unusual to see a helicopter pilot with 40 air medals because of the
nature of his job.
If we compare the top three actual gallantry awards, the Army
awarded:
289 Medals of Honor in World War II and 155 in Vietnam
4,434 Distinguished Service Crosses in World War II and 846 in
Vietnam
73,651 Silver Stars in World War II against 21,630 in Vietnam
The Marine Corps, which lost 103,000 killed or wounded out
of some 400,000 sent to Vietnam, awarded:
47 Medals of Honor (34 posthumously)
362 Navy Crosses (139 posthumously)
2,592 Silver Stars
Second, although the Army awarded another 1.3 million “meritorious”
Bronze Stars and Army Commendation Medals in Vietnam, this was
hardly unique. After World War II, Army Regulation 600-45 authorized
every soldier who had received either a Combat Infantryman’s Badge
or a Combat Medical Badge to also be awarded a meritorious Bronze
Star. The Army has no data regarding how many soldiers received
Bronze Stars through this blanket procedure.
Atrocities?
We made errors, although nowhere on the scale alleged by those who
have a stake in disparaging our effort. Fighting a well-trained
enemy who seeks cover in highly contested populated areas where
civilians often assist the other side is the most difficult form of
warfare. The most important distinction is that the deliberate
killing of innocent civilians was a crime in the U.S. military. We
held ourselves accountable for My Lai. And yet we are still waiting
for the communists to take responsibility for the thousands of
civilians deliberately killed by their political cadre as a matter
of policy. A good place for them to start holding their own forces
accountable would be Hue, where during the 1968 Tet Offensive more
than 2,000 locals were systematically executed during the brief
communist takeover of the city.
What Went Wrong?
Beyond the battlefield, just about everything one might imagine.
The war was begun, and fought, without clear political goals. Its
battlefield complexities were never fully understood by those who
were judging, and commenting upon, American performance. As a rifle
platoon and company commander in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of
Da Nang, on any given day my Marines could be fighting three
different wars: one against terrorism, one against guerrillas and
one against conventional forces. The implications of these
challenges, as well as our successes in dealing with them, never
seemed to penetrate an American populace inundated by negative press
stories filed by reporters, particularly television journalists, who
had no clue about the real tempo of the war. And one of the most
under-reported revelations after the war ended was that several top
reporters were compromised while in Vietnam, by communist agents who
had managed to gain employment as their assistants, thus shaping in
a large way their reporting.
Most importantly, Vietnam became an undeclared war fought against
the background of a highly organized dissent movement at home. Few
Americans who grew up after the war know that a large part of this
dissent movement was already in place before the Vietnam War began.
Many who wished for revolutionary changes in America had pushed for
them through the vehicles of groups such as the ban-the-bomb
movement in the 1950s and the civil-rights movement of the early and
mid-1960s. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the
infamous antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society was created
at the University of Michigan through the Port Huron Statement in
1962 – three full years before American ground troops landed at Da
Nang. The SDS hoped to bring revolution to America through the issue
of race. They and other extremist groups soon found more fertile
soil on the issue of the war.
Former communist colonel Bui Tin, a highly placed propaganda officer
during the war, recently published a memoir in which he specifically
admitted a truth that was assumed by American fighting men for
years. The Hanoi government assumed from the beginning that the
United States would never prevail in Vietnam so long as the dissent
movement, which they called “the Rear Front,” was successful at
home. Many top leaders of this movement coordinated efforts directly
with Vietnamese communist officials in Hanoi. Such coordination
often included visiting the North Vietnamese capital – for instance,
during the planning stages for the October 1967 march on the
Pentagon – a few weeks before the siege of Khe Sanh kicked into high
gear and a few months before the Tet Offensive.
The majority of the American people never truly bought the antiwar
movement’s logic. While it is correct to say many wearied of an
ineffective national strategy as the war dragged on, they never
stopped supporting the actual goals for which the United States and
South Vietnam fought. As late as September 1972, a Harris survey
indicated overwhelming support for continued bombing of North
Vietnam – 55 percent to 32 percent – and for mining North Vietnamese
harbors – 64 percent to 22 percent. By a margin of 74 percent to 11
percent, those polled also agreed that “it is important that South
Vietnam not fall into the control of the communists.”
Was It Worth It?
On a human level, the war brought tragedy to hundreds of thousands
of American homes through death, disabling wounds and psychological
scars. Many other Vietnam veterans were stigmatized by their own
peers as a classic Greek tragedy played out before the nation’s
eyes. Those who did not go, particularly among the nation’s elites,
were often threatened by the acts of those who did and as a
consequence inverted the usual syllogism of service. If I did not go
to a war because I believed it was immoral, what does it say about
someone who did? If someone who fought is perceived as having been
honorable, what does that say about someone who was asked to and
could have but did not?
Vietnam veterans, most of whom entered the military just after
leaving high school, had their educational and professional lives
interrupted during their most formative years. In many parts of the
country and in many professional arenas, their having served their
country was a negative when it came to admission into universities
or being hired for jobs. The fact that the overwhelming majority of
those who served were able to persist and make successful lives for
themselves and their families is strong testament to the quality of
Americans who actually did step forward and serve.
On a national level, and in the eyes of history, the answer is
easier. One can gain an appreciation for what we attempted to
achieve in Vietnam by examining the aftermath of the communist
victory in 1975. A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia, the
likes of which had not been seen since World War II. Two million
Vietnamese fled their country – mostly by boat. Thousands lost their
lives in the process. This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam’s
long and frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam, a million of the
south’s best young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more
than 50,000 perished while imprisoned, and others remained captives
for as long as 18 years. An apartheid system was put into place that
punished those who had been loyal to the United States, as well as
their families, in matters of education, employment and housing. The
Soviet Union made Vietnam a client state until its own demise,
pumping billions of dollars into the country and keeping extensive
naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay. In fact, communist Vietnam did
not truly start opening up to the outside world until the Soviet
Union ceased to exist.
Would I Do It Again?
Others are welcome to disagree, but on this I have no doubt. Like
almost every Marine I have ever met, my strongest regret is that
perhaps I could have done more. But no other experience in my life
has been more important than the challenge of leading Marines during
those extraordinarily difficult times. Nor am I alone in this
feeling. The most accurate poll of the attitudes of those who served
in Vietnam – Harris, 1980 – showed that 91 percent were glad they’d
served their country, and 74 percent enjoyed their time in the
service. Additionally, 89 percent agreed that “our troops were asked
to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would
not let them win.”
On that final question, history will surely be kinder to those who
fought than to those who directed – or opposed – the war.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS