What Happened in Vietnam?

Robert Farley explains:

In narrow military terms, the US had the capacity in 1972 to prevent South Vietnamese collapse, and in some sense the South Vietnamese position was stronger than it had been during parts of the 1960s. But these facts are almost irrelevant to the conclusion of the war; the North Vietnamese weren't going to give up, and knew that they could force the US to pay a higher price than it was willing to by continuing the fighting. Everyone on all sides of the conflict understood these basic points, and only someone who utterly refuses to acknowledge the political dimension of military conflict could misunderstand the situation as badly as Rodman.

I concur. I should add that I was taught this material by Stephen Peter Rosen who's something of a frothing right-winger. US military support for the Saigon regime had a fundamentally paradoxical quality to it. South Vietnamese forces had access to better equipment and training than did North Vietnamese forces, but they performed much worse than the North Vietnamese because their government lacked legitimacy. It lacked legitimacy because it was seen as a kind of corrupt quisling regime, a creature of French and then American imperialism. Massive external military support staved off military defeat, but made it completely impossible for Saigon to constitute itself as a politically legitimate alternative to unification under a nationalist regime in Hanoi.

Comments

Matt, I think you are mixing up your analysis here. The illegitimacy of the south Vietnamese regime was of great importance during the counter-insurgency phase of the war against the Viet-cong because this illegitimacy sustained the logistical and intelligence needs of the opposition. During this time the superior equipment and training of ARVN and other south Vietnamese forces was moot, because they were trained and equipped to fight a different kind of war. But there is a reason that everyone refers to Tet as a military defeat for the VC--in 1968 they got wiped out by American artillery. After 1968, the COIN part of the war was much smaller, and America arguably got better at it. By 1972, the VC had been more or less rolled up, and the war had become highly conventionalized. At this point, the superior arms and training of the South Vietnamese mattered more, and the legitimacy of the regime a lot less. There really is a case to be made that the withdraw of American air support ended an otherwise sustainable situation. Now, whether the Southern regime was worth sustaining, and whether the region as a whole mattered at all, are different questions. But in order to fight the right on this issue, don't confuse your trump card, which is the impossibility of political reconciliation, with situations of conventional war, which is the kind of problem America is pretty good at solving.

Posted by brendan green | August 24, 2007 3:45 PM

"At this point, the superior arms and training of the South Vietnamese mattered more, and the legitimacy of the regime a lot less. There really is a case to be made that the withdraw of American air support ended an otherwise sustainable situation."

I can't see how the legitimacy of the regime is not of paramount importance. If you don't have that, then what is all the fighting about? Just to delay the advance of the enemy without creating anything tangible in its stead? This cues the question: what was sustainable? A grinding war that killed Americans and Vietnamese alike by the day? Who would support a war based on the perpetuation of a meatgrinder?

In the end, the American people figured out what politicians were reluctant to reveal. The war wasn't worth the cost.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 3:55 PM

Matt--If you're in communication with Rosen, you might let him know that his bio appears not to have been updated since the mid-1990s. Academics are like that [I'm one, so I know].

Posted by David | August 24, 2007 3:58 PM

"Legitimacy of the regime" -- it's never legitimate if it's only a front for the interests of American corporations or of drug-cartels which help to finance U.S. intelligence operations such as the Hand Bank.

Posted by Garuda | August 24, 2007 4:04 PM

Unreal Veal--

by 1972, the were very few American ground troops left in Vietnam, and the costs were reasonably low for America. Your preceding questions about the point of the fighting and the tangible costs to the Vietnamese people are good ones, but they are answered in the same way military dictatorships have always answered them: the point was to keep the current leaders in power. This was also the point of American policy for twenty years; i.e. let's have our thugs in charge rather than the communists. Perhaps this policy was morally or strategically dubious. Nonetheless, the killer argument for getting out of Iraq is the simple impossibility of solving either the political or military problems. It will not do to confuse this with a different situation at the end of the Vietnam war. One can always argue against war on moral grounds alone, but this is not a class of argument that is often successful.

Posted by brendan green | August 24, 2007 4:11 PM

Unreal Veal--

by 1972, the were very few American ground troops left in Vietnam, and the costs were reasonably low for America. Your preceding questions about the point of the fighting and the tangible costs to the Vietnamese people are good ones, but they are answered in the same way military dictatorships have always answered them: the point was to keep the current leaders in power. This was also the point of American policy for twenty years; i.e. let's have our thugs in charge rather than the communists. Perhaps this policy was morally or strategically dubious. Nonetheless, the killer argument for getting out of Iraq is the simple impossibility of solving either the political or military problems. It will not do to confuse this with a different situation at the end of the Vietnam war. One can always argue against war on moral grounds alone, but this is not a class of argument that is often successful.

Posted by brendan green | August 24, 2007 4:12 PM

Brendan, how did that 1971 ARVN invasion of Laos go? How'd the superior arms and training work out against the North? Not so well, right?

Posted by Anderson | August 24, 2007 4:17 PM

It might just be me, but these constant references to courses (Modern Japan) and professors can get annoying. I suppose it is useful in understanding the context of how Matt reached his conclusions, but sometimes it seems more like name-dropping (has he mentioned he went to Harvard?) rather than contributing anything to the analysis itself.

Posted by Space Monkey | August 24, 2007 4:21 PM

BG: You said, "Nonetheless, the killer argument for getting out of Iraq is the simple impossibility of solving either the political or military problems. It will not do to confuse this with a different situation at the end of the Vietnam war."

I'm not sure that we disagree. I think, by 1972, the US had withdrawn much of its ground forces but kept some troops and advisors in place to serve a dubious goal: the perpetuation of a war with the goal of keeping a defective regime in place. That regime collapsed in the absence of our presence. Given its lack of legitimacy, was it worth fighting for?

I'm not saying the situation is exactly the same in Iraq, but we should be asking similar questions: is this regime worth fighting for? Can it stand on its own? All the evidence seems to suggest that the current regime is a joke. If so, enough of our people have died in its service.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 4:23 PM

The legitimacy of the regime (or lack of same) is relevant to the discussion, not so much in moral terms (although that aspect of the situation is certainly important) but because the lack of legitimacy goes to the question of motivation. It should not be surprising that the ARVN collapsed like a house of cards--they had no stake in the fight (in terms of nationalism). Compare their effort with that of the Vietminh, Vietcong & North Vietnamese, all of whom sustained insane losses for years while fighting the world's most powerful military. Certainly no one would claim that they had a material advantage during that time.

Posted by dolphy | August 24, 2007 4:45 PM

The notion that the US had defeated the VC is bullcrap. They may have blunted them, but they were not defeated. And the notion that they were defeated by "artillery" OR air bombardment (another used fable) is laughable.

Besides which, the distinction between South and North Vietnam is obviously bogus. There was only ONE Vietnam, partitioned by Western stupidity.

Therefore the very notion of the two Vietnams was itself illegitimate.

This was a classic case of Fourth Generation Warfare except for the presence of the North Vietnamese regular army - and even then they were mostly engaged in a guerrilla war - NOT a conventional war - against US forces.

And in Fourth Generation Warfare, "legitimacy" (however incorrect, as it is a matter of perception, not actually reality) is key.

Which is why the US could never win in Vietnam, and why it can never win in Iraq and why it will never win in Iran - and why Israel will never win in Palestine or Lebanon or anywhere else.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 24, 2007 4:55 PM

Unreal Veal--

I think we do agree, if with slightly different emphases. The argument in favor of staying in Vietnam was that a communist Vietnam was a Bad Thing in and of itself, and would cause other Bad Things if it came to pass. If you accept this argument, which I think neither of us do, then continuing to support the South Vietnamese regime with air power made a certain amount of sense. Similarly, the argument for staying in Iraq is that the consequences of civil war are untenable, and therefore we must stay to prevent one. The difference is that I think there is no hope of preventing an Iraqi civil war, while there probably was a possibility of preventing the collapse of the Southern regime. Legitimacy is important in its own right, but sadly we support many an illegitimate regime with nary a peep from the public and not much more from the elite. Legitimacy does, though, play a really important military role in Counter-Insurgency, and quite less of one in conventional war. For political reasons, I wish matt would not confuse the two, because I think it makes his argument less effective. The point may be pedantic, however.

Anderson--I take your point on ARVN, and only put the lines about superior arms and training in because it appeared in the farley quote referenced. In many respects, ARVN was a pack of jokers. However, they were able to make a fairly adequate conventional defense with American air support. Not so much without it. That is the key empirical counter-factual, and I admit that one can make a case either way.

Posted by brendan green | August 24, 2007 4:56 PM

"legitimacy" =df the presentation of a concept, thing or person as entrenched within institutional structures accepted by the speaker of the term.

- Rightwingers Guide to Decoding Normal English, Harvard Univ. Press.

Posted by scudbucket | August 24, 2007 4:59 PM

Very interesting exchange in the comments here but I've got to break in regarding this from Brendan above:

the argument in favor of staying in Vietnam was that a communist Vietnam was a Bad Thing in and of itself, and would cause other Bad Things if it came to pass. If you accept this argument, which I think neither of us do, ...

I don't accept that argument either but it is not a theoretical question. We've now advanced to that scary future we were so worried about back then and we can answer the questions that seemed so important to Americans. Those being:

Did the dominoes start to fall leading to the ascendance of communism, the Soviet Union, or China?

Did America suffer attacks on its interests because it withdrew from Vietnam?

Did losing the Vietnam War hurt the security of the United States?

Is there any real doubt that the answers to all of those questions is "no"? Until this latest bout of historical revisionism by the Bush Administration I really wouldn't have thought you could find many people to even argue the point.
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Posted by Curt M | August 24, 2007 5:19 PM

The notion that the NLF was defeated by 1968 or 1972 is specious. Witness the cadres that surfaced in Saigon at the end of the war when the NVA took over.

Even more specious is the contention that ARVN was better trained and armed than the NVA. The NVA were seasoned fighters with incredibly good leadership. They had an abundance of Soviet and Chinese arms which were pretty damn effective. At that point in time, the AK 47 was arguably a better firearm than the M-16. Vietnam was the last war in which American air planes were shot down with some regularity.

ARVN was not worth crap. Americans repeatedly had to take back territory lost by them. Their leadership was hopeless.

A guerilla war in which one of the indegenous forces has to rely repeatedly on the air power of a foreign power -- and that foreign power uses its air force for indiscriminate destruction -- is a war that is going to be lost.

The problem with revisionism is that it frequently involves inventing not only new theories by which to look at things, but also the creation of a whole new set of "facts" that are anything but.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | August 24, 2007 5:38 PM

Nixon couldn't go to China until we withdrew totally from Vietnam. It was a sideshow for both sides which had outlived its usefulness. In the end we were really fighting Chinese Communism anyway by proxy in Vietnam, Loas and Cambodia too for that matter, with detente on the way with China the war lost it's purpose.

Naturally all we hear from the stab in the back crowd is how the poor Vietnamese suffered after the withdrawal and fall. All that is BS of course since the base never gave a crap about those 'gooks' anyway. 6 million of whom died during the war by the way.

The Paris Peace Accord which brought our withdrawal was exactly the same deal that was on the table when Nixon took office in 68. It allowed the NVA to stay in the South. They were suppose to play nice or not play at all but of course we knew and they knew that they were going to finish the job.

Before Nixon ended the war by taking the deal in early 73 he did his own surge. The Christmas Bombing campaign which blew up a few more civilians, if anyone in the North could be called a civilian, in order to prove how tough we were and to make them suffer. The additional blood was the price that had to be paid for the deal to go through. Punnishment handed out and dutifully taken as each side played it's role in the great game of nations.

The loss was a bitter blow for the base and they have been trying to avenge it ever since. That it was one of their own, Nixon, who sold them out is one of the reasons for the schizophrenic nature of the Hawks ever since.

I've always had a very alt. idea that Nixon would never have been impeached if he hadn't 'lost' Vietnam. It was the price he paid for losing. It allowed Washington to purge the whole mess from it's system and try to start out fresh.

Posted by rapier | August 24, 2007 6:01 PM

The South Vietnamese army was pretty bad, but it was a helluva lot better than whatever we have in Iraq as our "ally."

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 24, 2007 6:10 PM

"Naturally all we hear from the stab in the back crowd is how the poor Vietnamese suffered after the withdrawal and fall. All that is BS of course since the base never gave a crap about those 'gooks' anyway. 6 million of whom died during the war by the way."

Very true. Think of how the right refused to face what he had done to innocent Vietnamese. Nixon, after all, pardoned William Calley after My Lai and called him a hero. If the right cared more about such issues, they could join Amnesty International or the Peace Corps, but having worked on human rights issues and violations by communist states, it seems that the base really doesn't get involved. When you do meet a right-winger there, they tend to be along the lines of libertarians are religious Christians who are embarassed by the type of Christianity that is the force behind the Republicans today.

Posted by Reality Man | August 24, 2007 6:29 PM

At 8/24/07 at 6:01PM, rapier wrote:

Naturally all we hear from the stab in the back crowd is how the poor Vietnamese suffered after the withdrawal and fall. All that is BS of course since the base never gave a crap about those 'gooks' anyway. 6 million of whom died during the war by the way.

Following up on that observation, this brings to mind a symposium with former RAND Corporation defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg (he of Pentagon Papers fame) during the Vietnam war. Ellsberg described in detail the kinds and intensity of destruction we were visiting on Vietnam. After his presentation, Ellsberg took questions from the audience. An exchange with one audience member was interrupted by someone in the balcony who shouted (referring to the audience member with whom Ellsberg was interacting), “He’s the director of IDA!” (IDA was —perhaps still is— the Institute for Defense Analysis, a think tank working for the Pentagon.) The man in question affirmed his identity and Ellsberg invited him onto the stage for a dialog. This exchange ensued (quotations are approximate—it’s been well over 30 years and I didn’t take notes at the time):

Ellsberg: Under what conditions would you decide to resign as head of IDA?

IDA Director: If I felt that my work was contributing to a holocaust.

Ellsberg: Based on what I’ve described tonight, would you characterize the results of our efforts in Vietnam as a holocaust?

IDA Director: Yes, I would.

I raise this because the overwhelming majority of comments, media attention and of course, claims on the right that U.S. withdrawal led to a bloodbath, all conveniently overlook the almost unimaginable destruction the U.S. wrought in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

One point here is that the fact we had to unleash such enormous force on 3 small agrarian countries testifies to the ferocious opposition we faced. (There was no such intensity on the part of the governments we were propping up.) The intensity of that opposition in turn undermines the claim by stab-in-the-back theorists that if only we’d stayed in Vietnam, everything would have (somehow) come out right (at some unknown point in the future).

Another is, of course, that the Decider’s attempt to use Vietnam as a rationalization for our continued involvement in Iraq is based on a claim about the nature of the choice to withdraw that turns reality upside down (not unusual for the current infestation of the White House). Anyone who bothers to look at the evidence can see clearly that we caused far more death and destruction in Indochina than all of our opponents in that conflict could have ever imagined.

One thing I don’t see many comments about is the fact that Iraq, like Vietnam, represents an attempt to create a state out of whole cloth by policymakers who are totally ignorant of the history and culture of the country in question. The sheer arrogance of the presumption that such a thing can be done successfully just astounds me.

Lastly, I think it’s obvious but bears saying anyway that the enormous destructiveness visited upon both countries has clear moral implications as well. It seems the only thing the current administration (if that’s the word for it) has learned from Vietnam is to hide the effects of the conflict from the people in whose name it is supposedly being waged.

Posted by dolphy | August 24, 2007 6:59 PM

I volunteered at Marshall University's draft counseling office in the "final throes" of the VN draft. Lots of returning vets came in for one reason or another. They were just glad to be home alive ( as we all were, us dirty fucking hippies! ). Not a one of them ever saw the point. THEY told the stories of atrocities that were occurring on an all too regular basis. There was no distinction between the VC and the civilians-- they were all dehumanized "gooks". These kids weren't prepared to fight that war--they were forced to and you guys seem to forget that part of the equation.

Posted by magisterludi | August 24, 2007 7:05 PM

South Vietnamese forces had access to better equipment and training than did North Vietnamese forces, but they performed much worse than the North Vietnamese because their government lacked legitimacy

That's why I've always doubted our need to train the Iraqi forces.

Iraqis fight just fine. They just don't do it when they're fighting for the American installed Iraqi government.

Posted by Jinchi | August 24, 2007 7:21 PM

I served in the Embassy in Saigon with time off for good behavior from 1963 to 1975. We constantly tried to find what are now called metrics in order to tell how we were doing. It was always up and down--one area would show progress and then regress, while another place would be doing the opposite. We never were ahead as a whole.

Douglas Pike wrote a groundbreaking book, Viet Cong: The Organization and Technique of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam published on Nov 15, 1966. I only became aware of the book many years later and I never ran into anyone else who had read it, though they should have. It tells you why the VC won--they were extremely effective in mobilizing support, whether civilian or military. We never came close to matching them.

These are two lessons from Vietnam that our leaders would do well to learn.

Posted by John Bennett | August 24, 2007 7:41 PM

On 8/24/07 at 7:05PM, magisterludi wrote:

Not a one of them ever saw the point. THEY told the stories of atrocities that were occurring on an all too regular basis. There was no distinction between the VC and the civilians-- they were all dehumanized "gooks". These kids weren't prepared to fight that war--they were forced to and you guys seem to forget that part of the equation.

Good point, magisterludi. The position our troops were placed in reflects the lack of knowledge our own leaders had about the region in which we intervened. It also reflects a total lack of concern about the troops and the Vietnamese. Both were just abstractions to the best and brightest who dragged us into that quagmire (and this one). Another reflection of that official indifference is the fact that the shifting official rationales for our involvement in Vietnam had one thing in common—none of them (despite official claims to the contrary) really had to do with Vietnam itself.

Posted by dolphy | August 24, 2007 7:52 PM

The idea that we need to train the Iraqis also strikes me as intellectually bankrupt. Train them to do what? As long as the main goal among the Iraqi soldiers is the power of their own tribe then the training is not only worthless, it is affirmatively counterproductive.

The premise seems to be that we can somehow train them to be loyal to an entity -- Iraq -- that doesn't really seem to claim anyone's loyalty at this point.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | August 24, 2007 8:01 PM

The deal the USA worked out in Paris was it got S Vietnam to sign based on a US pledge that the US would withdraw its military, train up the Vietnamese and back Saigon with guaranteed and continuing military and economic support.

"Those guarantees were written in to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger under which North Vietnam pledged to withdraw from Laos and Cambodia and not to overthrow the Saigon Government. But Hanoi knew it could violate the accord with impunity, confident that the large postWatergate Democrat majority in Congress would never authorise renewed airstrikes. Not only that; the Democrats refused to authorise the promised US military aid, leaving the South Vietnamese all but defenceless against North Vietnam’s rapid Soviet-assisted military build-up, and its full-scale tank-led invasion in 1975."

What Richard Steven Hack febrily touts as 4th Gen Warfare unstoppable with what he calls local sentiments of "legitimacy" has in fact gone on since the dawn of history and "locals" have frequently lost to external armies. His arguement is further undermined by the fact that the USA and S vietnam had largely wiped out the North's VC proxies from 1968-1971. After the Democrat Congress betrayed the terms of the Paris Peace accords and left the South high and dry as a further measure to "punish" the departed "evil" LBJ and Nixon, the Soviets and Chicoms loaded up the NVA with supplies and armor.

The North's victory was a conventional invasion from the North Vietnamese, coming down through the DMZ and through Cambodia via the Ho Chi Minh Trail the McGOvernites had banned the US air suport left from bombing. The NVA thrust was spearheaded with tank columns and massive artillery in accordance with Soviet doctrine, many pieces of equipment still bearing Chicom and Soviet divisional markers.
When the South ran out of US shells for couterarmor strikes, and Teddy Kennedy, Church, McGovern banned resupply, THEN the South collapsed.

Today's Left can squeal all they want about how politically correct they were to cause S. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia's defeat - the memoirs of the Soviets, N Vietnamese military and diplomats, and military historians now tell the actual story. It is a lasting stain on the Left wing of the Democratic Party and why they are so profoundly mistrusted on matters of national security even with a disastrously bad Republican President in office.

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1. Did the dominoes start to fall leading to the ascendance of communism, the Soviet Union, or China?
2. Did America suffer attacks on its interests because it withdrew from Vietnam?
3.Did losing the Vietnam War hurt the security of the United States?
Is there any real doubt that the answers to all of those questions is "no"? Until this latest bout of historical revisionism by the Bush Administration I really wouldn't have thought you could find many people to even argue the point.Posted by Curt M

***The dominoes did fall in 3 countries. Indonesia thwarted theirs by preemptively killing close to a million citizens and Chinese suspected of communist loyalties, most in 1965. Thailand had used the years the Vietnam conflict shielded them to build up their military and make political reforms. Burma, as so many forget, found itself going to a military dictatorship to defeat the communist insurgency there, which persists as an odious dictatorship today.

The Philippines found themselves in a significant communist rebellion after Vietnam fell. Citizens and US soldiers there were dying in significant numbers as the Commies tried to take over whole provences. Which caused the Marcos dictatorship to replace the ineffective civilian government.

The US suffered attacks on its interests globally as the Russians seeded 5 separate Latin American Marxist revolutions that caused tremendous bloodshed and had Cuban proxie Armies and advisors in 16 countries in Africa and defeating S Africa's military in major battles within 200 miles of S Africa's borders. The Red Army began moving SS-19 mobile missiles into Europe in 1978, and invaded Afghanistan. China began threatening Taiwan again. In the ME, the Soviets pushed the US and the Saudis.

And of course, the knowledge of US weakness led to Iran throwing the US out while humiliating us by attacking our embassy w/o consequences.

Yes, Russia and China were on the move, America in global retreat. That is one reason why people in the US were so delerious when we beat the Russians at hockey at Lake Placid. After nearly a decade of being losers, we finally beat the Russians at something.

****Yes, the security of the USA was badly hurt, then Ronald Reagan's Administration came in and from Latin America to Afghanistan to the Philippines, we began rolling back and bleeding the Soviets.

While leaving them and the Cubans stuck spending treasure in African shitholes that didn't matter. In Europe we countered the Soviet nuclear advance with Pershings and The Pope. When the Cubans arrogant from their African adventures took one step too far and tried making Grenada an Cuban island base, Reagan squahed them in 3 days.

The first 5 years of Regan were pushing the Soviets back from gains they made from Vietnam's loss and US weakness from Watergate and a Bumbler, then an incompetent weakling in office between Nixon and Reagan, something the Left forgets. The Soviets didn't just magically collapse in 1989. It took Pershings and Cruise missiles shoved in their faces despite hysterical Euroweenies and dumb asshole Lefty Brit housewives at Greenhaven holding "peace vigils" to Stop the Nuclear Insanity (of opposing the new Soviet MRBM missiles, it seemed).

Posted by Chris Ford | August 24, 2007 8:16 PM

***The dominoes did fall in 3 countries. Indonesia thwarted theirs by preemptively killing close to a million citizens and Chinese suspected of communist loyalties, most in 1965. Thailand had used the years the Vietnam conflict shielded them to build up their military and make political reforms. Burma, as so many forget, found itself going to a military dictatorship to defeat the communist insurgency there, which persists as an odious dictatorship today.

The dominoes theory held that letting any one country fall would lead to a landslide of countries falling into the Soviet sphere until the United States was beseiged on all sides. Yet the past 35 years have shown us that no catastrophe occured with our withdrawal nor with the conversion of Vietnam into a single country. The US persisted as those who understood the minor nature of Vietnam to our strategic well-being knew it would.

Truth is, Vietnam was never very important to US interests. Only the rabid fear of communism and the fact that the domino theory was held as fact by so many inflated its importance.

The Soviets certainly made the always fearful right-wing crap their pants in this country with their challenging of our interests but the truth is our security was never in doubt. After Vietnam the US still had the finest military, still had the best bases in the best locations, still had the best aircraft carriers, still had better subs and better missiles. We had a better economy and better allies. In fact, even after Vietnam we were still much more powerful than the Soviets which became apparent after their facade cracked and they fell.

Right-wingers have a terrible need to believe the left lost the war but the facts belie their lies. We were in no position to occupy all of Southeast Asia! What madness!

The Vietnamese had been fighting off foreign forces for decades yet we apparently were just on the cusp of victory? What sort of victory were we to have Mr. Ford? A stable South Vietnamese government which was able to defend itself without our army? That could handle guerilla forces determined to bring it down? There was no sign of such a government on the horizon. If there had been hope Nixon would have kept waging the war. That they didn't says volumes about the prognosis for "victory" through continued war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
.

Posted by Curt M | August 24, 2007 8:52 PM

Wow, Chris, that's a prety impressive litany of misinformation and incorect chronologies. Can you name the 16 African nations that the Cuban army was in? And the five Marxist revolutions in Latin America -- I come up with Nicaragua, with an unsuccessful attempt in El Salvador. Am I missing something?

As for battling the South African army 200 miles from the South African border -- wasn't that because South Africa, that bastion of Reaganite values, invaded Namibia and sent its forces into Angola?

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | August 24, 2007 9:03 PM

The North Vietnamese essentially worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week with no pay for 25 years to kick out the foreigners. In the process they built one of the finest armies in modern history, well trained, well disciplined, and well lead. One doesn't have to like that they did it or why they did it but you goddamn had better respect it.

Richard Pearl has made a career out of Vietnam claptrap, a lot of money one Iraq war, and has a villa in France. To site one example of why America is becoming synonymous with loser.

Posted by rapier | August 24, 2007 9:16 PM

There is another lesson of Vietnam that nobody ever brings up. So I will. If you want to win someone else's civil war, you should back the most popular side. Back in 1945, we could have chosen to back Ho Chi Minh instead of the French. Had we done that, the war would have been over by 1948 and we would have won. Unfortunately, the lesson doesn't apply very well to Iraq. There is nobody in Iraq (not even Sistani) that is even close to being as popular as Ho Chi Minh was in 1945 Vietnam. But who knows? Maybe if we gave full backing to SIIC and went on a genocidal rampage against everyone else, we might win the war in 10 years with only 10 million Iraqi deaths. I don't actually support this course of action, but maybe we would "win".

Posted by fostert | August 24, 2007 10:16 PM

The American Left can defend their "great triumph" over America in Vietnam and how WE were responsible for the Cambodian genocide by destabilzing the country all they want. The truth from military historians, General Giap's and 2nd negotiator Nygen Lee hit the lying Lefties right in the gut by crediting the American Left and media with being "communism's indispensible allies" and writing extensivel how the decades-planned takeover of Cambodia relied not on American "destabilization" but open violation of Cambodi's neutrality by NVA Troops creating infiltration routes and sanctuaries for NVA men and material from Ho Chi Minh Trail routs being bombed by the USA in Vietnam until what the Quislings called "Nixon's bombing extending the war into Cambodia" happened. And Vietnamese and Combodian genocide historians now know that installation of Pol Pot's group was done with China and Vietnam's support and mainly through NVA military force toppling Lon Nol's regime. That has to be a sour feeling in the guts of every lying Lefty as their "approved Vietnam narrative is shredded by all the words and memoirs of the Commies themselves.

And outside that, Gorbachev, ex-Soviet ambassadors - and KGB - wrote some very open and honest memoirs of how bad the US defeat in Vietnam was in their eyes and where they failed - mainly by getting sidetracked in Afghanistan, Africa and Latin America rather than press their advantage where it would have counted, in Asia and in Europe, when it was clear how weak Jimmy Carter and his Democratic Congress were. Then believing the American media on how Reagan was nothing, his people were nothing.

Still, they count the Soviet disinformation campaign and recognition the US media could be used to win the War for the communists despite the US military defeating them on every battlefield as a true great episode in Communism.
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Rapier - In the process they built one of the finest armies in modern history, well trained, well disciplined, and well lead. One doesn't have to like that they did it or why they did it but you goddamn had better respect it.

If only the Left had similar respect for America and the US military!

If only the left was as concerned with the 1,000 Hadithas AQ did in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the hundreds of My Lais in Vietnam the NVA and VC did. BUt ask a Lefty what villages were wiped out by Commies, what towns AQ did mass atrociies in and they can't name a single one.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 24, 2007 10:28 PM

If only the Left had similar respect for America and the US military!

If only the left was as concerned with the 1,000 Hadithas AQ did in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the hundreds of My Lais in Vietnam the NVA and VC did. BUt ask a Lefty what villages were wiped out by Commies, what towns AQ did mass atrociies in and they can't name a single one.

If only the right wing fought to actually improve the lives of our U.S. troops, instead of continually stabbing them in the back by sending them on crazy, unjustified missions and by screwing them over every chance possible with their benefits and pay!

If only the right wing cared who died when the bombs they are so excited about get dropped!!!

If only the right wing and their liberal hawk friends hadn't continually built up thugs and murderers and criminals like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar!

Wow, it was such a great idea to build up an army of thugs, terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, and drug runners in Afghanistan -- it worked out sooooo well for the USA, what when it gave way to Osama bin Laden's career, and the collapse of Afghanistan to warlordism, and the takeover of the Pakistani / CIA supported Taliban, and then Al Qa'ida who attacked us on 9/11/2001 with Saudi volunteers! Wow, you go right wingers!!!

'Cause, gosh, when I was in the military, I always knew it was really the right wing who loved me because they always shouted loud and beat their chests about how much they loved war and how tough they were and how they would buy yellow ribbons and stuff!!!

'Cause, gosh, we in the military must have all been a bunch of stupid yokels who would believe whatever steaming pile of sh*t we were being shoveled by the loud-mouth chest-beating right wingers who claimed they loved us!!!

And boy, did my relatives who were sent to Vietnam thank the right every day for sending them there! Man did they feel the love!!!

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 10:42 PM

"What Richard Steven Hack febrily touts as 4th Gen Warfare unstoppable with what he calls local sentiments of "legitimacy" has in fact gone on since the dawn of history and "locals" have frequently lost to external armies."

I might be inclined to agree that "4GW" is basically just good tactics, but comparing the sort of "insurgency" one could do when the primary weapon was a sort vs the sort of insurgency you can do with IEDs is fairly stupid.

"His arguement is further undermined by the fact that the USA and S vietnam had largely wiped out the North's VC proxies from 1968-1971."

Says who? You don't "wipe out" insurgencies, especially in Asia. You might persuade enough of them to stay home that they don't win, but that's not the same thing. You might also persuade the population not to support them, just depriving them of their legitimacy - but that obviously was not the case in Vietnam.

"After the Democrat Congress betrayed the terms of the Paris Peace accords and left the South high and dry as a further measure to "punish" the departed "evil" LBJ and Nixon, the Soviets and Chicoms loaded up the NVA with supplies and armor.

The North's victory was a conventional invasion from the North Vietnamese, coming down through the DMZ and through Cambodia via the Ho Chi Minh Trail the McGOvernites had banned the US air suport left from bombing. The NVA thrust was spearheaded with tank columns and massive artillery in accordance with Soviet doctrine, many pieces of equipment still bearing Chicom and Soviet divisional markers. When the South ran out of US shells for couterarmor strikes, and Teddy Kennedy, Church, McGovern banned resupply, THEN the South collapsed."

That might well be true. It is also, as the North Vietnamese officer told the American officer, "irrelevant." The VC would have won eventually in the South (with support from the North) regardless of whether the North had engaged in any form of conventional war against the South. The stupidity of the US invasion made it clear to the North that the war would go on far too long and with too much damage to the South unless they intervened. So they did. And due to the utter incompetence of the US military command, the US and the South lost - as they would have lost anyway unless they had a) established legitimacy with the population (an almost impossible task since there WAS NO legitimacy) and b) managed to deprive the VC of both local support by the South Vietnamese and external support by the North Vietnamese (also impossible without invading and overthrowing and occupying North Vietnam).

As usual, Ford, you're full of it.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 24, 2007 11:13 PM

Now, let's take a look at the analogy that was most relevant and informative to American leadership during the Vietnam War: the Korean War, a similar civil war between a northern communist and southern capitalist pair of regimes. We managed (barely) to fight to a draw, putting the border back where it was at a cost of 33,000 lives, and who knows how many Koreans and Chinese lives.

From the perspective of 2007, was the Korean War worth it? If we hadn't fought, then the most likely outcome today would be that the crazy Kim dynasty would rule the entire peninsula rather than just the northern half. South Koreans would be a half foot shorter than they are now, just as the North Koreans are due to malnutrition.

So, was the Korean War worth it?

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 24, 2007 11:45 PM

Richard Steven Hack,

Just out of curiosity: in what way is an unelected government that outlaws any competing parties and tortures and kills its opponents especially "legitimate"? Does the lack of U.S. support make it "legitimate" in your eyes? Does it lose no legitimacy from having Soviet support?

Posted by Harry | August 24, 2007 11:49 PM

Chris Ford's post deserves a severe Fisking, but I don't have the time. I will, however, address this statement:

"And Vietnamese and Combodian genocide historians now know that installation of Pol Pot's group was done with China and Vietnam's support and mainly through NVA military force toppling Lon Nol's regime."

To accuse the Vietnamese of supporting the Khmer Rouge is just plain nonsense. You obviously seem to have forgotten that the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia to OVERTHROW the Khmer Rouge, not support it. Now maybe you think that Vietnam supported the KR in the early 70's and then switched sides, but that is nonsense as well. The rhetoric employed by the KR always included the concept that the KR would conquer and control the entire Mekong delta region when they came to power. And you think the Vietnamese would have supported a group that vowed to conquer Vietnamese territory? You are obviously completely insane. But it gets even worse for your argument because we can actually talk to Cambodians who were the victims of the Khmer Rouge. And I have talked to dozens of them in Cambodia. While everyone accepts that the Chinese were backing the KR, not a single person I talked to ever claimed Vietnamese involvement. Now, you are probably thinking that the Cambodians are just covering for the Vietnamese because they love them so much, but think again (or, perhaps for the first time). The Cambodians hate the Vietnamese even more than the Czechs hate the Russians, and that's a lot, I know. In fact, the worst insult you can lay on a Cambodian is to call him "Vietnam" (the Cambodians drop the "ese" part). I have witnessed many an argument where that insult was used, and I can assure you things always got very ugly after that. The Cambodians I've met never hesitate to blame the Vietnamese for their problems, so it would seem very strange that they would let the Vietnamese off the hook for the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Unless, of course, there no was basis whatsoever to accuse the Vietnamese of backing the KR. And there is no basis for such claims. If you don't believe me, visit Cambodia for yourself. But be prepared to have all your delusions wiped away.

Posted by fostert | August 24, 2007 11:58 PM

If we had continued to fight in Vietnam today Vietnam might be ruled by a corrupt dictatorship that is moving towards capitalism and trades with the US.

Considering how the Khmer Rouge were anti-Vietnamese (Samantha Power points out that they eliminated the ethnic Vietnamese minority in Cambodia) and the fact that we supported them in the 1980's against the Vietnamese-backed government in Cambodia that came about after the worst communist government in history was overthrown, we have to admit that our support for Pol Pot was an extension of our basic "Fuck North Vietnam" policy mindset. If we were still in Vietnam in 1979 or so, we would probably have been actively supporting the KR against Hanoi and calling them democrats fighting for freedom.

It should also be pointed out that Nixon ran on ending the Vietnam War and his secret plan for peace that he turned out not to have. For those who think we should have continued to fight the war, we should remember that not even the Republicans were willing to run on backing the war. I wonder if people who think we betrayed the troops in Vietnam by eventually taking them out would think, for instance, that the British stabbed their own troops in the back by pulling them out of the Boer War.

Posted by Reality Man | August 25, 2007 12:14 AM

"Indonesia thwarted theirs by preemptively killing close to a million citizens and Chinese suspected of communist loyalties, most in 1965. "

I'm starting to gather that this has become a common meme among righties. I'm also getting the impression they approve of the mass murder of nearly 1 million people, because it ended the communist threat in Indonesia.

Funny thing is, Chomsky was saying something along those lines decades ago--that the mass slaughter in Indonesia was something US officials approved of, and presumably hoped to duplicate in Vietnam.

Posted by Donald Johnson | August 25, 2007 12:38 AM

I wonder if people who think we betrayed the troops in Vietnam by eventually taking them out would think, for instance, that the British stabbed their own troops in the back by pulling them out of the Boer War.

Posted by Reality Man | August 25, 2007 12:14 AM

Yes. Yes they would.

Except the British mainly won, and the bitter enders were actually the (white) Boers who rose up yet again against the British when at the start of World War I the British ordered their Union of South Africa allies to attack the German colony of South West Africa (Namibia today), and forces led by General Maritz rebelled. But then Smuts crushed their rebellion and arrested them for a while, letting them out later so that they could form one big, happy government devoted to crushing the rights of Coloureds and Black Africans and instituting those beloved fascist institutions, the Nationalist Party and Apartheid, so indirectly beloved by our own right wing, who backed 'contra' armies throughout Southern Africa to help out our South African fascist friends defend themselves from a free and independent South West Africa and Angolan and Mozambican and ANC "Communists".

Posted by El Cid | August 25, 2007 12:50 AM

A couple of points that need to be reiterated here:

*Everyone knew that the Paris Peace Accord meant the end of South Vietnam. Kissinger himself admitted that it was designed only to create a "decent interval" and prevent America in general, and the Nixon administration in particular, from being blamed for the outcome. Once U.S. troops were out, they weren't going back in, regardless of what the North did. Everyone understood that.
*Getting out of Vietnam was very popular across the political spectrum by the mid-1970s. A majority of Republicans voted against Ford's last proposal for emergency aid, which probably wouldn't have been effective anyway.
*The Democrats did not pay any immediate political price for withdrawing from Vietnam, because the public supported this. After all, Jimmy Carter was elected a year after the fall of Saigon. It was Carter's screw-ups in foreign policy that really damaged the Democratic Party's foreign policy reputation - and allowed the "Stab in the Back" mythology to take hold.

Posted by Josh G. | August 25, 2007 4:13 AM

While we're into historical analogies, did not the USSR incursion into Afghanistan contribute significantly to its demise? May not the lesson be that superpowers ought not to seek to prop up friendly regimes by force of arms?

Posted by Arun | August 25, 2007 9:58 AM

Re: And of course, the knowledge of US weakness led to Iran throwing the US out while humiliating us by attacking our embassy w/o consequences.

My goodness, didn't you forget to blame 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina on the loss of Vietnam as well?

Re: Yes, Russia and China were on the move, America in global retreat.

Which is why the Hammer and Sickle flies over the Capitol building in DC today, as goose-stepping storm-troopers led by Soviet advisors march before gigantic portaits of Chairman Mao and Comrade Hall.

Now back in the real world the end of the Vietnam War paved the way for the shrewd move that gave the US its biggest trump card in the Cold War: the China Card. Once the US was no fighting a war in China's backyard the two nations became de facto allies of convenience against the USSR, which was then confronted with the dreaded two-front war scenario. Indeed, the US had the USSR all but surrounded with NATO in the west, Turkey and (until 1979) Iran in the South, and China and Japan in the east. Soviet foreign policy thereafter was a futile attempt to either break-out (as in Afghanistan) or flank (in Africa and Latin America) this encirclement. And yes, the Russians failed, big time.

Posted by JonF | August 25, 2007 12:31 PM

Using Vietnam, 1972, to compare to Iraq, 2007, is arbitrary and rather silly. The comparison point should be Vietnam, 1964. In the upheaval after the Diem assassination, there were members of the Soth Vietnamese government who seriously wanted to negotiate with the NLF. That would have meant letting the NLF into the government. Ultimately, it could have met the Vietnams uniting. Instead of allowing this wholly sensible process to go forward, the U.S. rooted out these members of the supposedly 'sovereign' state of South Vietnam. In 1964, the NLF had actually taken a nationalist turn, and part of their program was "South Vietnam for the South Vietnamese', implying that any potential future unity would be balanced by true power given to the government of the South - but the U.S. decided that the NLF, a stable, semi-nationalistic South Vietnamese communist entity, did not deserve a place at the table in the South Vietnam D.C. decided to create.

Similarly, D.C.'s fantasy image of Iraq bears little resemblence to the real country, and the chance to withdraw with honor, leaving behind a country able to mitigate the violence of the last four years as well as rebuild the infrastructure and operate independently is going to be sacrificed to the goofy testosterone problems of the rightwing, with Republicans too stupid to notice how they are screwing up and Democrats to fixated on triangulating their way into a moronic centerism to do what they have the power to do now. In this way, Iraq will not just be 'lost' - for 'lost' implies that it was somehow in America's playroom, another nation toy - but Iraq will become a byword for bloodshed, like Lebanon in the 80s. And it will be entirely the fault of that peckerwood utopia, the U.S.A.

Posted by roger | August 25, 2007 2:11 PM

On August 24, 2007 at 11:45 PM, Steve Sailer wrote:

Now, let's take a look at the analogy that was most relevant and informative to American leadership during the Vietnam War: the Korean War

Steve, it’s interesting that you chose Korea as the analogy that, in your terms, ”was most relevant and informative to American leadership during the Vietnam War.”

I assume you’ve never heard of the Never Again Club. It included generals and other officers who served in Korea and were determined, based on that experience, that the United States should never again fight a land war in Asia.

Not only did Korea serve as a cautionary tale to the members of the Never Again Club; the analogy was neither relevant nor informative because the nature of the two conflicts was very different. In Korea, the armed forces of the North embarked on a full-scale invasion of the South. The war was characterized by confrontations between two conventional armies. For most of the Vietnam War, the conflict was between a conventional army occupying an area declared by our government to be a sovereign nation and guerrilla forces. Those guerrilla forces, btw, contrary to right-wing claims, were composed and led largely if not entirely by residents of the south. In fact, it was southern Vietminh members who forced the issue in inaugurating military action against the French in defiance of the more reticent northern Vietminh leadership. (See William Duiker’s Ho Chi Minh: A Life for further reference.)

As to whether Korea was worth it from the standpoint of 2007, I have a few observations:

1. The standpoint of 2007 was irrelevant to those involved at the time. It is ahistorical and therefore very misleading to substitute present points of view for those involved in the events that one is examining. The result is that any attempt to account for motivations of historical actors is obscured. God knows there’s enough obfuscation of history going on at the moment—we certainly don’t need any more.

2. The point of your question, however, is obviously to apply the same question by inference to Iraq. There was a single adversary in Korea, unlike in Iraq, where our forces face the Mahdi Army, elements of SCIRI, various Sunni tribes and clans, Al Qaeda in Iraq, unknown number of criminals and asylum inmates freed by Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the invasion, former Baathists, soldiers and police under the Hussein regime who were forcibly unemployed by the Provisional Authority under Jerry Bremer, and who knows how many others. I think Kim Il Sung had already developed a reputation for aberrant behavior, but I’m not sure. Whatever the case may have been, it was surely a model of clarity in contrast to the situation we face in Iraq. Will the Shiites take control of Iraq after a brutal (already ongoing) civil war? Will the war spread into a regional conflict? Will violence gradually die down once we withdraw, given that our occupation of Iraq, dismantling of its infrastructure, and de-Baathification have had everything to do with the development of the insurgency?

BTW, the question is ahistorical when applied to Vietnam as well. To test it, let’s try a contrathetical: Imagine the frame of reference of the Ho Chi Minh who prior to our military involvement in his country, contacted the U.S. government repeatedly (after first trying to so unsuccessfully at the Versailles Treaty conference in 1919) in an attempt to gain our support for Vietnam’s independence. Imagine how his thinking changed over time as we became ever more deeply involved in efforts to deny that independence. Imagine now that we hadn’t sided with Vietnam’s former colonial rulers, the French, but had supported Vietnamese independence after 1945 (as FDR had wanted to do before death precluded any action on his part). Can you truly say that the outcome in 1975 was foreknown from the beginning? Can you truly say that Korea can be used almost as a train schedule to predict the outcome of a conflict when not only did the conflict change over time (from support for the French to advisers, to small number of troops to 550,000 men, carpet bombings and the rest), but where at every point there were contingencies? Was it foreordained that we had to make all the choices we made at every step of the way? It seems to me that a serious examination of the evidence in any historical event will yield numerous examples of choices made that could have gone another way, to very different effect. Certainly that applies to Vietnam and Iraq.

Posted by dolphy | August 25, 2007 7:04 PM

"Just out of curiosity: in what way is an unelected government that outlaws any competing parties and tortures and kills its opponents especially "legitimate"? Does the lack of U.S. support make it "legitimate" in your eyes? Does it lose no legitimacy from having Soviet support?"

I don't know where any of these questions come from, since the only "legitimacy" of interest here is that of the civilian population.

I said nothing about whether the government in power has any legitimacy from any other source.

Now, if you're asking if the North Vietnamese government was "legitimate", I couldn't say, not having ever read any poll of the population. My guess would be, probably not.

In any event, that is irrelevant to my point. The South Vietnamese government was not legitimate, and the VC and North Vietnamese thus had some pull, even if their tactics also frequently brutalized that group of South Vietnamese population that did support the government or the presence of the US. Nobody is saying the VC or NVA were the "good guys" here in some Pollyanna model.

And most importantly, the US had no legitimacy in South Vietnam. That much is pretty clear. And that was why the US lost - along with its support for a corrupt South Vietnamese government, but mostly for its equally brutal conduct of the war.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 25, 2007 7:23 PM

Didn't South Vietnam cancel the unification elections that were scheduled to be held in 1956, which Ho Chi Minh most assuredly would have won? You can look it up as they say.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | August 25, 2007 8:08 PM

Didn't South Vietnam cancel the unification elections that were scheduled to be held in 1956, which Ho Chi Minh most assuredly would have won?

More specifically, the U.S. government cancelled the unification elections in violation of the Geneva Convention terms it had sworn to uphold 2 years previously. According to President Eisenhower at the time, Ho Chi Minh would have won the election with 80% of the popular vote.

Another great moment in legitimacy...

Posted by dolphy | August 25, 2007 10:24 PM