After being elected Presidenr in 1964, Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder, massiveLy bombing North Korea's economic resources to diminish supply to guerillas in South Korea, along with bombing NLF-controlled territory in South Korea. This was planned for eight weeks, but lasted three years, involving 1 million tons of bombs. General Curtis LeMay, Head of US Air Force said, with the new technology, North Vietnam could be "bombed back to the Stone Age".The NLF retaliated by effectively attacking the airbases of the bombers, so that commanding General Westmoreland asked for more soldiers to protect the many air bases. In the long run, an estimated &300 million damage was done to North Vietnam, but 700 aircraft were shot down for a loss of &900 million, : "ten dollars [cost] for every dollar's damage inflicted." So Rolling Thunder was ASTRATEGIC.)
The 3500 Marines sent in March were described to the public as a short-term effort, so that an opinion poll listed 80% support of this operation.
NLF guerlla strategy and tactics derived from those of Commmunist leader. Mao Zedong, in China. Orgbanizing into small cells of three to ten soldiers, with each cell having only "need-to-know" connection with other cells, a captured member could provide the enemy with little or no information. Mao also taught the NLF that "without the constant and active support of the peasants ... failure is inevitable." In South Vietnam 50% of the land was owned by on 2 1/2% of the population (including the Roman Catholic Church), so that two-thirds of the peasants owned no land and must work for rich landlords.
When land was captured, the NLF gave it to the peasants who had worked it, sometimes executing the landowners. In response, peasants all around supplied and hid guerilla fighters. And some peasants took up arms and liberated villages. The NLF taught the peasants that the ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) and American marines were their enemies and would take their land from them. Unfortunately, ARVN and American tactics often involved torturing peasants to get information. A U. S. marine, William Ehrhart, said of this, "... if they weren't Vietcong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left." (A major ASTRATEGY.) A 1964 US survey of captured enemy weapons should that 90% had been taken from the ARVN or American forces.
An effective NLF weapon was the "booby-trap", land mines set to be triggered by invadingers, often built from unexploded American aerial bombs. (An estimated 800 tons of unexploded American bombs became available every month.) ARVN and American troops who suffered from this often "took it out on the next village encountered". In 1965, Gen. Westmoreland instituted the "search and destroy" strategy against the NLF, which (ASTRATEGICALLY) became difficult to execute, as one marine captain noted: "You nevr knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They all looked alike. And they all dressed alike." Thousands of innocent civilians were killed by mistake. Another Marine officer described the unwritten rule: "If he's dead and a Vietnamese, he's VC." The consequence was to spread opposition and considerably prolong the warfare.
The HO Chi Minh Trail was a complex web of various paths from Hanoi to outside Saigon in the south, providing a daily average of 6o tons of supplies, by porters, ponies or bicycles. These paths were impossible to see by air so massive bombing was daily executed. Between 1965 and 1973 the total of bombs dropped here was three times the amount dropped durng all of WWII in Europe or in Asia. (So the bombing was essentially ASTRATEGIC.) Also napalm bombs were dropped, with a combination of petrol and gel-mixture which attached to the skin, often burning the victim down to the bone. Anti-personnel bombs, containing needles and metal or plastic pellets, which seriously injured more than killed, reasoning that this would divert personnel to care for the injured. In 1962, President Kennedy approved Operation Ranch Hand, for spraying "Agent Orange" over jungle areas to kill the trees and lay bare the enemy trails. But one result was that American veterans suffered from this for years, often dying from it. (A future casualty was the son of Admiral Zumwalt, who directed some of the "Agent Orange" bombing.) "Agent Orange" was later acknowledged as one of the greatest ASTRATEGIES of the entire "Vietnam Era".
Troops complained about many command decisions. A prototype was "Hamburger Hill" where 476 of 600 men (appromately 79%) of the men deployed to take the NLF hill were killed. Such cases resulting in troops "fragging" their officers, trying to kill them by grenades and othe means.
In September, 1967, launched a series of attacks on American positions, losing 90,000 men by the end of the year. This misled General Westmoreland to believe that this loss seriously weakened the NLF, and he told President Johnson that "the end is in sight". And self-confidence rose in the American public.
It was the Vietnamese custom to honor their dead each final day in January. On Jan. 31, 1968, ocurred the famous "Tet Offensive", with 70,000 NLF attacks on more than one hundred cities in South Vietnam, including the U. S. Embassy in Saigon, capturing it for a few hours. It was then realized that the NLF purpose in their September attacks on U. S. garrisons was to divert American and ARVN troops away from South Vietnamese cities to expose them to this "Tet Offensive". Although the NLF lost 37,000 men, to a loss of 2500 for Americans, it was realized that the NLF had an "inexhaustible" supply of attackers.
This NLF STRATEGY was a public recognition of American ASTRATEGY and was the turning point in American confidence about Vietnam warfare. In March, 1968, Secretary of Defense MacNamara confided in President Johnson his opinion that the US could not win and urged negotiated withdrawal. This same month, President Johnson said on national television that he was reducing air-raids on North Vietnam and would seek a negotiated peace.
This same MacNamara -- who previously had been Head of General motors -- had many times committed a serious ASTRATEGISM -- which any thinking student of probability theory was trained to avoid. IN DECISION-MAKING, YOU SHOULD NOT BE GUIDED BY PROBABILITIES, BUT BY EXPECTATIONS. Mathematically, THE EXPECTATION OF ANY EVENT IS THE PRODUCT OF THE EVENT'S PROABABILITY WITH ITS VALUE OR COST. Example: Given a "fair lottery" selling one thousand equal-value tickets, we have, for the probability of the event, P(E) = 1/1000. If the winning ticket is awarded $1000, then the expectation is (1/1000)($1000) = $1. (Obviously, a ticket must be sold for more than one dollar to make a profit.) A more familiar importance example is this: ALTHOUGH THE PROBABILITY OF FIRE IN YOUR HEIGHBORHOOD AND TYPE OF DOMICILE IS VERY SMALL, YET THE COST MAY BE GREAT (INCLUDING LOSS OF LIF), SO THE PRODUCT OF THIS PROBABILITY WITH ITS POSSIBLE COST IS MUCH MORE NEGATIVE THAN THE COST OF A FIRE INSURANCE PREMIUM, SO ENSURING IS A WISE ACTION. Now, MacNamara often said that South Bietnam would win against guerrillas since there were 10 soldiers of the ARVN to every Vietcong, seeming to invoke a high probability of success. But some one asked, "What is your ten ARVN soldiers won't fight and that one Vietcong fights like hell?"
American anti-war demonstrations increased each year, especially againt use of cemical weapons such as napal and Agent Orange in Vietnam. In 1967, a group of academics, led by mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (x-y), established The internation War Cromes Tribunal. Many witnesses were said to have presented evidence that the US was using weapons in violation of international law and torturing captured military prisoners and innocent civilians and other types of behavior which were compared to those of the Nazis in WWII. Emulating Vietnamese Buddhist monks, several noted pacifists burned themselves to death on streets of America.
The use of the Draft of young men, 18 years or older, especially incited anti-war fervor, since the Draft mostly involved lower income men and ethnic minorities. Public burmong of draft cards increased. Many fled to Canada to avoid the Draft. Between 1963 and 1973, 9,118 mem were prosecur=ted for refusing to be drafted, the most famous which was Mohammed Ali, world heavyweght boxing champion. Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King argued "tat America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor as long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some destructive, dnonic section tube." Civil Rights activist Eldridge Cleaver noted that, in many southern states, blacks were denied voting rights, so blacks were fighting in Vietnam for something [for the Vietnamese] they don't have for themselves." (I suggest comparable discrimination in 2004. Since so many our present military personnel joined to escape poverity and have families at home on food stamps, they are being asked to help provide people in Iraq with benefits and facilities that they ahd their families do not enjoy at home.)
Several cities suffered riots in black ghettos. In New York over one million anti-war protesters assembled. Public opinion polls showed only narrow support for the war effort, and the polls also showed that most of the support came from middle class families whose sons avoid the Draft by going to college, a group which was also more responsive to "talking". President Johnson had to be sneaked into sites he needed to visit, to avoid angry demonstrators, some shouting, "Hey! Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many soldier have you killed today?" And Johnson realized that, if the war continued, he would have to draft college students.
Between 1960 and 1973. more than half a million soldiers deserted. Many Americans were moved by the letter left only to be opened on his death by soldier Keith Franklin, killed on May 12, 1970: "The war that has taken ny life and so many thousands before me is immoral, unlawful and an atrocity ,,, I had no choice as to my fate. It was determined by the war-mongering hypocrites in Washington. As I lie dead, please grant my last request, Help me inform the American people, the silent majority who have not yet voiced their opinions."
In 1967. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, demonstrating across America, many in wheel chairs and on crutches. (I have noted, elsewhere ONLINE, the Vietnam paraplegics got built the curb cuts in our cities and iniated the movement resuling in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.) Life Magazine, in one edition, published photographs of 242 American soldiers killed in Vietnam.
Since Johnson had come into the Presidency as Vice-President to the assassinated Preident Kennedy, and had only been elected to the Presidency once, in 1964, he was still elegible to run for this office under the "two-term" condition passed by Congress after President Frnaklin Roosevelt's four time election. But, in March, 1968, Johnson announced he would not run for office, leaving the field to Democratic noomine Herbert Humphrey and Republica nominee Richard Nixon. But Humphrey had been Johnson's Vice-President and seeme too closely related to the events of the past four years, so Mixon was elected.
Nixon announced a policy of "Vietnamization", planning for the Vietnam populace to bear more of the burden, so that some of our soldiers could come home. To increase size of the ARVN, a mobilization act was passed to draft able=bodied South Veitnamese men between ages seventeen and forth-three. in June, 1969, President Nixon announced the first troop withdrawl, reducing the 540,000 force by 25,000, and another 60,00 were to follow in December. But some of Nixon's advisors feared this could contribute to more NLF victories. So, one of the chief US negotiators, Bob Haldeman, spread the "Madman Theory", that Nixon was mentally unstable and so hated Communism that continuance of warfare could drive Nixon to use nuclear weapons.
Another Nixon innovation at this time was The Phoenix Program. Planned in 1967, in violation of the Geneva Cpnvention, the CIA instituted, in Saigon, The Phoenix Peogram for "neutralizing" the civilian infrastructure supporting the VietCong insurgency in South Vietnam by assassination, kidnaping and torture. (This is described in his book, The Phoenix Program by Douglas Valentine, and at his ONLINE Website "The Memory Hole".) One branch was a "Hamlet Informant Program" to motivate local "snitches". For th "Province Interogation Program", secret tortune chambers were built by the CIA in each of the 44 provinces of South Vienam. The most exploited tool for gathering information was blackmailing or terrorizing family members of a suspected individual. When NLF sympathizers were named, Death Squads were sent to eliminate them. Between 1968 and 1971, an estimated 40m 97a persons were killed inthis way. Acording to Valentine, the Phoenix Armed Propaganda Teams are now models for our 2004 Department of Homeland Security. In retaliation, these teams left severed heads on fence posts. Phoenix, in its "Pacification war", was supervised through the Office of Civil Occupation, which (Valentine says) became a model of our Department of HOmeland Security. Later, Phoenix was absorbed into another "pacification" program. Phoenix failed in its primary purpose and have many counter-effects: more ASRATEGY.
The NLF had long used air bases just inside the borders of Cambodia. Nixon now secretly ordered those bases to be bombed. Failure of this effort motivated Nixon, im 1970, to send troops into Cambodia, which provoked mass demonstrations in America and Europe. One of these was at Kent State University in Ohio, where National Guard soldiers opened fire on student demonstrators, killing four students. 450 colleges closed their doors in memorial protest. (Big ASTRATEGY in America.)
Arrival of Marines in Cambodia aroused hostility. The Kmer Rouge Communist movement had, until this time, little success among Cambodian peasants. Claiming that the US was about to take over Cambodia, their ranks increased rapidly, leading eventually to the infamous campaign of Kmer Rouge leader, Phnom Penh, to take Cambodia back to ancient conditions by killing millions and destroying "modern" conveniences. (This was dramatized in the 1984 film, The Killing Fields , starring Hang S. Ngor who had lived through this to earn an Academy Award.) (ASTRATEGY!)
Laos, also bordering Vietnam, was invaded by American troops in 1970, provoking native hostity. By 1973, Pathet Lao Communists controlled most of Laos. (More ASTRATEGY.)
in 1971, Colonel Robert Heini said: "By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state of collapse with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden and dispirited where not near-mutinous.
The US Army long suppressed information about the raping and killing of civilians, but pressure by newspapers led, in March, 1971, to Lt. William Calley -- on trial for war crimes -- was found guilty of murdering 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Calley only served three years before release from prison. During warfare in Vietnam, 25 US soldiers were charged with war crimes, but Calley was the only one found guilty. Reporter Seymour Hersh, who first published details about My Lai killings, said Calley was "as much a victim as the people he shot." A mother of one of the soldiers under Calley also accused of killing My Lai civilians, said, "I sent them [the US Army] a good boy, and they made him a murderer."
A helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, with crew members Larry Colburn and Gerald Anderson, witnessed the killing from the air. Landing, and in risk of his life, Thompson stopped some of the killing and airvacuated some victims to hospital. For this, Thompson was denounced as a "traitor" and had to conduct future observations without the customary gunship air porotection, so was shot down five times. Over the years, Thompson, Colburn and Anderson received phone and mail threats. A 1989 TV documentary about My Lai caused many viewers to consider them as heroes. One was David egan, a Clemson U. professor who had serve din a WWII village where Nazis killed many innocent civilians, campaigned to have Thompson and his tream awared the prestigious Soldier's Medal, which was finally presented Thompson and Colbert (Anderson has previously died) in 1998.
Peace talks between both sides had been taking place in Paris since January, 1069. Nixon put Henry Kissinger in charge of negotiations, but his "formu;a" of October, 1972, would leave North Vietnamese soldiers to retain their positions in the South. To drive them out, Nixon ordered air-raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. In this most intense bombing in history, 100m000 bombs were dropped om these cities in eleven days. Condemnation of the bombing circulated the world, with such newspaper headlines as "Genocide", "Stone-Age Barbarism", and "Savage and Senseless". But the bombing did not achive its intent and President Nixon reluctantly agreed to sign peace treaty. Despite temporary impressions of many of the American public, this historic bombing was a spectacular ASTRATEGY.
The last US combat troops departed Vietnam in March, 1973. In the uneasy peace, fighting erupted between ARVN and NLF troops in 1974. THe US continued to send military supplies, which the ARVN soulduers did not effectively use. President Nguyen Van Thieu appealed for financial aid, which the US Congress refused. At peakm uS aid had reached 30 billion dollars a year, but had fallen to 1 billion by 1974. Unpaid and driven by NLF victories in 1975 and losses of Danang and Hue, senior ARVN officers abandoned their men and went into hiding. President Nguyen Van Thieu desperately noted a signed letter from Presiden Nixon promising military aid if the NLF began winning in South Vietbam, But Nixon had now been forced to resign. President Gerald Ford tried to obtain such aid, but the Senate blocked it. President Thieu resigned and left the country with many of his advisers.
The NLF arrived in April 30, 1975. Declaring Vietnam to be a unified country, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam wasablished in July, 1976. Communist governments were also established in Laos and Cambodia.
In the period 1961-75, an estimated 10% of the populations of Vietnam, Laos and Canbodua were killed; 56,889 US troops were killed, another 153,329 seriously woinded. And the long-term traumatic effect on veterans is still with us.
I have, in these two "Vietnam" files, listed 19 instances of what I belivee to be ASTRATEGEMS. So I argue that this whole effort was one long string of ASTRATEGEMS.
Referemces can be found ONLINE at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.