Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975

If you only read one book on the Vietnam war, make it this one
Over the years, without any particular goals other than learning, I’ve read a number of books that either directly or tangential dealt with that war. This included, “Best and Brightest” , “Dereliction of Duty” , “We Were Soldiers Once, and Young”, “The Quiet American”, “The Ugly American” “Foreign Correspondent, a Memoir”, LBJ and McNamara Bios, “The Pentagon Papers” (segments) and others somewhat less memorable at the moment. Based on this reading and subsequent events I concluded some time ago that the US was embarking on a fools errand when it tried to use its military to shore up a foreign government that was not supported internally by its people. The Iraq and Afghanistan experience in recent years has solidified my opinion on this topic.So It was with a receptive attitude that I recently read this new history; by Sir Max Hastings, an award winning British journalist and historian. This is a long and deeply researched history told mostly in chronological fashion. It draws on many of the published personal history (“I was there”) accounts and the more inciteful political/military critiques. He also accessed and quoted myriad personal letters from all sides (including many letters from North Vietnamese combatants and non-combatants that he had had translated by an old CIA hand from the Saigon station that served to illustrate his larger points. Consequently the book presents an exceptionally rich tapestry of many facets of the war, from the cockpits of burning US bombers, through the travails of Vietnamese teenagers humping artillery shells down the Ho Chi Minh trail, to the private conversations of LBJ, McNamara, Nixon, and Kissinger. A very rich and largely seamless tapestry indeed.My main take-aways that filled in many blanks and otherwise colored my understanding:1. As noted above, the signal US failure in Vietnam was the implicit assumption that the people of South Vietnam would support their newly constituted government and help fight for freedom and democracy. The facts turned out to be that the largely Buddhist peasant population never became enthused about the French Catholic elites that were set up to rule them, thereby providing fertile ground for the Viet Cong and its revolutionary zealotry in the countryside throughout the war. This lack of support to the Saigon government, that had been created only after partition, extended to the South Vietnam’s conscripted and poorly paid and treated armed forces, who with, few exceptions, were unreliable and a major drag on US military activities. “Nixon”s “Vietnamization” was never a reasonable expectation for defeating the North. Indeed, Hasting’s makes it clear that the concept was really a Kissingerian fig leaf for US withdrawal.The South’s army officers generally treated their troops badly (feudal) and were often the first to seek a spot on evacuation helos. In some contrast, the South Vietnamese aviators were much more reliable and effective. The South’s Army seems to have really become effective on its own only in 1972 and later as the US was withdrawing, when it stopped the North’s southward advance for many months, but that was its last major gasp.2. The book reinforces the point that an overwhelming consideration in all US decision making during this long period was US presidential politics; at the cost of tens of thousands of US and other lives. Trump is not the first president to equate the Nation’s interest with his personal interests.3. The conventional wisdom in the US seems to be that Ho Chi Minh was the architect of the North’s success. In fact he became unhealthy and was kicked upstairs circa 1967. The subsequent Northern efforts were led by Le Duan. Le Duan was a true zealot for forcing Vietnamese independence and integration/solidarity, however long it took. He was a hard core believer in, but not subservient to, the oppressive philosophy of Mao’s China. He ruthlessly purged all vestiges of frenchiness and intellectual learning from the ranks of the Northern Army, and, as the main source of support for the VC, forced the same ideology and purge mentality on them. He also ensured that there were essentially no outside observers in the North that could document the extent of his cruel purges and his indifference to horrendous military casualties, so the West never really had a clue. But he also kept his own children safe in schools in Europe.4. Per the foregoing, the North was strongly ideologically driven towards independence in a way that the South never was. This went a long way to explain the superhuman endurance of northern cadres on the Trail.5. The effectiveness of the truly massive US bombing was disappointing, particularly in the early years of the war, which were dominated by guerrillas operating under triple canopy jungle. In 1972 however, when the North mounted a large scale conventional attack through more open country in the Central Highlands, the 150,000 tons of bombs dropped during Operation Linebacker I was very effective in decimating the North’s artillery and tracked vehicles, thereby seriously slowing the advance to Saigon.6. Because the South’s people – mostly rural peasants – were not strongly committed to the Saigon government, but just wanted to be left alone to tend their rice paddys, the massive and destructive US bombing/WW II-type campaigns and forced re-locations from ancestral lands quickly soured indigenous attitudes toward the US’ war efforts.7. As depicted in many movies, the helos were crucial to US troop movement and rescues throughout the war. The US helo loss rate was as high as 1000/year. I was surprised at the ability of the North, helped by China and the Soviets, to largely keep up with US advances in aircraft self protection electronic warfare gear. Their SAMs and MIGs really were more effective against US aircraft than I knew.8. The deterioration of morale in the US military in the later stages of the war – after TET in 68, but even more when Nixon began the long slow withdrawal of US forces while Kissinger was negotiating with a losing hand in Paris, was worse than I knew. Much of it reflected the growing domestic US disenchantment with the war which trickled down to the draftees, but also reflected growing racial disharmony in the US, some of which was fanned by the perception that US black soldiers were dying at a disproportionately high rate. Incidents of US brutality against civilians increased. Calley wan’t alone.The author quotes some authority as asserting something like “the US went to war in Korea with a lousy army and came out of Korea with a superb army; but that we went to war in Vietnam with a superb army, but came out with a lousy army”. It took 15 years of turmoil after ’75 for the US to rebuild an effective, integrated army. Fragging was highly demoralizing of the officer corps.Kissinger and Nixon both knew the losing score but continued scheming for a “decent interval” between US withdrawal and a takeover of the the South by the North. Nixon’s tapes were telling.Nixon’s punitive “Christmas Bombing” in 72 was billed as a reaction to the North’s breakouts from the enclaves that had been agreed to in the Paris Accords, but in fact no one in the White House expected the enclaves to persist. The deadly Christmas Bombing was reportedly really mostly Nixon striking out irrationally to try to deflect attention from his cascading Watergate problems. Buried in the spasm of renewed killing via carpet bombing the Hanoi area was the highly successful aerial mining of Haiphong harbor, which completely dried up Soviet shipment of war material until the end of the war in 75. Some believe that such mining much earlier could have been highly effective in reducing the North’s fighting abilities, but LBJ and McNamara were leery of damaging the Hanoi area for fear of bringing in the Chinese, much as MacArthur’s overreach in Korea two decades earlier had done.The Paris Accords assured the South that the US would come back to their aid if the North broke the rules. But, as expected, the North did breakout from its enclaves, and the South geared up to fight better but needed supplies from the US that the Congress was increasing loath to provide. Hasting’s sees the Congressional failure to support the South with material as promised to be very shameful but consistent with the cascading US public disenchantment with the war.9. The conventional US view is that TET in 68 was a communist victory that led to the end of the war. In fact TET was a major defeat to the southern Viet Cong, which resulted in the North taking over the fighting in the south, going from 25/75 NVA/VC in ’67 to the reverse in ’69 and later10. Despite the rapprochement symbolized in recent years by US celebrity visits to Vietnam, it remains a Stalinist dictatorship unblemished by fair elections and human rights.11. This is by far the most insightful and fair history of the defining war of my professional life that I expect to ever read. If you read only one book on the history of the US in Vietnam, make it this one.

“Only those who never fought in a war discuss who lost or won” , once said a vietnamese veteran; in this book we can see the roots, the ways and consequences of the most significative conflict in American history, the end of the Lore of the “Manifest Destiny” , a crude portrait of America’s loss of innocence; Must Read !

Pages it has

Anyone interested in deployments, tactical thinking and operations would find this book disappointing. The book covers a vast perspective and depth. It goes into history post World War 2 and ends at the final conquest of South Vietnam by an implacable North. The Domino Theory remained at the forefront of western thinking as communism took over Russia and then China. It moved south as Ho Chi Minh attempted to overthrow the French through Chinese help. Better organised and motivated, ruthless and implacable in its resolve, North Vietnam snatched its independence from the French, despite Eisenhower trying for an intervention by the West. Churchill, on the cusp of senility, refused to oblige and Vietnam was divided into two. While the North maintained its ruthless grip on its people, the South under an effete Emperor, and an ineffective Prime Minister, deteriorated into an incompetent military state, which was incapable of suppressing the home grown Viet Cong. It started with Kennedy, who sent in advisors, which grew into a large intervention force under Johnson, kept on expanding into large scale bombings with tremendous collateral damage. It made little difference to the leaders now led by Le Duan. They refused to bend to American might and throughout maintained an aggressive policy. Mass bombings did not deter them, until finally America under a fig leaf of an agreement abandoned Vietnam. Their conventional might was unable to overcome a people imbued with resolve and led by a leadership who thought little of sacrificing its own people. By the time the war was over in 1975, Vietnam, though united, was devastated. Barely a million South Vietnamese escaped. Their loyalty and pleas fell on deaf American ears and they were forced to face the devastating consequences of occupation. There is a lesson in this to those who think that an alliance with the mighty USA will deliver them. Over the years most countries have been faced with the cruelty of abandonment and Afghanistan is likely to be the next. American military leadership proved hopelessly inadequate mired in statistical inanities. In the end a large number of soldiers had taken to drugs and were loath to risk their lives. The South Vietnamese Army inadequately supported, when it required most help crumbled, except for a few instances. The North leadership relentlessly attacked and ultimately conquered. This book which covers a vast subject in 700 pages could obviously not go into great detail but Hastings, with knowledge and rare felicity succeeds in covering a vast canvas and effectively conveys the pathos of a war which enveloped soldiers and civilians alike. Innumerable first hand accounts give an urgency and authenticity. Also the dominoes did not fall further. Was the desperate and futile stand of South Vietnam responsible?