The Vietnam War: A Military History, Wawro - A*

             "What motivated the United States to go to war and stay there was a fear of appearing weak." Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon did not want to lose a war, or be castigated as Truman was for losing China.

              Both Eisenhower and Kennedy provided South Vietnam with a minimal amount of support. LBJ inherited Kennedy's hawkish advisors, and declared he wouldn't lose Vietnam. "The State Department report of February 1964 spelled out the reality that would dog the war effort in Vietnam: it was unwinnable under all conceivable scenarios." Lyndon Johnson wanted to focus on domestic issues, and had no desire to expand the war.  He felt he could not invade North Vietnam without drawing in China and the USSR. So, variations of a limited war were the only options on the table. The reserves would not be called up, taxes would not be raised, and costs would be contained. There was no plan to win, just the hope to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table. Less than a year after his election as the peace candidate, LBJ had committed almost 200,000 men to Vietnam. The US built a hundred airbases, a dozen ports, and enough infrastructure to support a million man army.  The approach was  'search and destroy,' and to travel by airmobile helicopters. The more effort and men the US put into Vietnam, the greater the number the north sent south. In 1965 alone, the north quadrupled their men in the south. The US escalated and had almost 500,000 men there in late 1966. The year 1967 saw costs rise to $22B and 300,000 men drafted. Westmoreland requested an increase to 700,000 men so he could invade N. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and told Washington he couldn't win the war until 1972. After a year or so of accomplishing virtually nothing in the Central Highlands, Westmoreland moved the war south to the Mekong Delta, a swampy, wet agricultural region where American "mobility and firepower" would never be the game changers MACV hoped for.  Nonetheless, the Politburo in the north began to worry about America's perseverance, wealth and obstinacy and concluded a dramatic move was necessary. They decided on an all or nothing/go for broke effort in Vietnam's major population centers. In late 1967, they lured American forces away from the cities into sparsely populated areas. The NY Times surmised the war might be a stalemate, and Life magazine declared it "no longer worth winning." The goal of the Tet Offensive was not to beat the Americans, but to break the spirit of the American public. The first attacks were at Pleiku in the Central Highlands, and the US effectively and immediately countered afflicting a high volume of casualties on the enemy. In DaNang and in the Mekong, where there were fewer Americans, the ARVN refused to fight and ran from the NVA and VC. In the area around Saigon, the VC breached the wall at the US Embassy and almost overran MACV headquarters, sending Westmoreland into a bunker for a possible last stand. The US counterattacks in the Saigon area killed 8,500 attackers, thwarting the communist hope for a spontaneous uprising. To the north, the battle in Hue went on for three weeks when 6,000 NVA regulars overran the city. They killed thousands of local civilian supporters of  Saigon.  The Marines and ARVN, who fought well in Hue, eventually recovered the city. The north had suffered serious losses and Westmoreland wanted more men to expand the war. However, the sight of the Embassy in Saigon being breached convinced Americans that the North had prevailed in Tet. The physical and psychological devastation in the south shook the regime.  On February 27th, Walter Cronkite said there was no reason "to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds." He concluded that the best we could hope for was stalemate, and LBJ said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the  country." He was correct. The year 1968 saw the nation conclude the war was a mistake. One of the Wise Men, Dean Acheson who LBJ occasionally gathered for advice, told him: "We can no longer accomplish what we set out to do in the time we have left and the time has come to disengage." In March, LBJ sacked Westmoreland and announced he would not run for re-election. May saw the north initiate a mini-Tet that rocked Saigon, and killed more Americans than any other month of the war. The American aerial response left another 155,000 homeless in the capital. Johnson's attention turned to negotiations and by the fall, the US and North Vietnam were close to a deal. However, a backdoor approach to the south by Nixon and Kissinger scuttled the opportunity to end the war in 1968. Twenty-eight thousand more Americans would die before 1973.

             The man who ran on his secret plan to end the war acceded to the presidency on Jan. 20, 1969. There was no plan. Nixon and Kissinger decided to hit the north harder, turn the tide and end America's discontent with failure. He began the bombing of Cambodia, increased the use of napalm in South Vietnam, and resumed B-52 raids. He also began to withdraw American forces, and replaced them with Vietnamese. The negotiations in Paris were going nowhere, escalation had no impact on the north's determination to pursue independence, protests in America were erupting, and in late 1969, the cover up of My Lai was exposed. Chinese and Soviet support now assured that the communists were well supplied with modern weapons. At year's end, the troops met Bob Hope's Christmas show with Black power salutes, middle fingers, and a cascade of boos. MP's had to hustle Hope away. In the new year 1970, the administration set its sights on Cambodia the source of supplies for the southern half of South Vietnam's communist troops. Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia a week after reporting the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 men. The announcement led to widespread and virulent opposition at home all for an event that Nixon was advised would fail. It did. It led to the failure of the Cambodian government. Congress withdrew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and attempted to suspend funding. By the end of 1970, the combat readiness and morale of the grunts was "rotting" away as drugs, alcohol, and a complete disregard for their being in country mounted. At home, the Calley trial was the only consequence of an investigation that found that dozens of officers, including West Point graduates, had either participated in atrocities or covered them up.  Before the Senate, Lt. John Kerry stated: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam...To die for a mistake." The last major effort in the war was that spring and was an ARVN attack into Laos intended to halt incursions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It failed because of the inability of the southerners to fight, and led to 2,000 American deaths as 726 of the 750 helicopters used were either shot down or shot up. Nixon announced that "Vietnamization was a success." Seventy percent of Americans believed he was lying. Over the winter of 1971-72, the North sent thousands more men south and even moved MIG airbases close to the DMZ in the hope of taking Saigon by May 19, Ho's birthday. The NVA launched its spring offensive in March. Once again, the ARVN were humiliated. Nixon retaliated by bombing the north for the first time in four years. American airpower ended the spring offensive. Under pressure from the Chinese and the Soviets, the North indicated a willingness to come to terms in Paris with Nixon. The agreement was signed in January, 1973, allowing the remaining 25,000 Americans and the 591 POW's to leave. It was essentially the same deal Nixon had undercut four years earlier. The North was resupplied and slowly recovered from the heavy bombing of 1972. The end for the South came when Saigon fell in April, 1975. 

              The war "was a luxury that only a phenomenally rich great power like the United States could afford." Three presidents escalated because they could and they did not want to appear soft. Jack Kennedy had toured Indochina as a senator and said that no war could be won against an enemy that "was nowhere and everywhere." War games early in the Johnson administration indicated a chance of victory if we bombed the ports and cities of the north and caused a vast amount of casualties. LBJ opted instead to slowly escalate in the hope the north would negotiate. Militarily, the US was unprepared and incapable of taking on the pure guerrilla war tactics of the VC, and the quasi-guerilla war tactics of the NVA. There were no set piece conflicts where we could prevail.  The ethos of why we fought continued even afterwards. When Saigon fell, Ronald Reagan compared Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford to Neville Chamberlain.

              This book is extraordinary because it does not focus on what every book I have read focused on, the politics and the lies. Just about everything in the last half a century emphasized the deceits about the domino theory, the deception about Tonkin, the delusional light at the end of the tunnel speeches, and the unknown and illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia that came cascading into full view with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. This story is about the endless deceptions bordering on, if not actually treason by Westmoreland throughout his tour at MACV. He and his staff constantly manipulated the numbers and lied about their meaning. Search and destroy never really succeeded, so they made up the numbers. They covered up My Lai and reveled in bombing campaigns that ended in innumerable homeless refugees. The ARVN could do nothing right, but they were a 'success.' It was a decade of deceit, delusion and contempt for the truth, the South Vietnamese, and our young men. The author highlights over and over again Nixon's actually treasonous interference in 1968.  Often mentioned here was LBJ's fear of Chinese intervention. As all of the participants lived through the Chinese crossing the Yalu River in Korea, that is somewhat understandable. I wish the author had addressed whether this was a real threat. After all, China was going through famine and the Cultural Revolution, and was almost 500 miles from the DMZ. Critics have suggested that this will be 'the' book on this war.

            

              

Postscript: I've included the three most iconic photographs that appeared in color in US magazines during the war because the author emphasizes the import of the middle one in swaying American opinion during Tet.