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Lessons from Vietnam

Interesting little interview.

quote:

How North Vietnam Won The War By Grunt.com Grunt.com | April 26, 2004 What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism. Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans? Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out." Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory? A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us. Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits? A: Keenly. Q: Why? A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win. Q: How could the Americans have won the war? A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war. Q: Anything else? A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept. Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam? A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so. Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese? A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South. Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important? A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units. Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail? A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets. Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam? A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us. Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive? A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year. Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern? A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over. Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids. [lloks like a re-writing of history with the benefit of hindsight] Q: What about the results? A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was. Q: What of Nixon? A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam. Q: What else? A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.

very interesting read.

vietnam wasn't a very smartly fought war on the American side but we learned from it as from all previous wars. Its strange knowing what could have won the war and what the enemy was thinking now in hindsight.

Re: Lessons from Vietnam

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka Interesting little interview.

As strange as it seems, I have to agree largely with your point for bringing up this article. It was well known that the politics interfered greatly with the Vietnam War, as well as our goals being fairly murky to begin with.

Similar to the situation that we are in now, as much as I disagree with us being there in the first place, we have no choice but to either do 1 or 2 things:

1. Commit

2. Don't commit and pull the f$ck out.

It seems that the reasons many folks make the comparisons between this war and Vietnam is due to the half-ass nature of our commitment and lack of planning post-war wise, which is becoming more and more evident. Furthermore, most of our troops in there are doing jobs they were not trained to do. So unfortunately, I believe we should either commit more troops to the region (calling up more reserves but without a draft, mind you). And if this entails more UN peacekeeping involvement, then Bush and Rummy ought to swallow their pride and ask for the necessary help.

Or they should get the f$ck out and allow the Shia majority take over (probably after a civil war breakout).

But this half-ass commitment is creating a greater danger to our military servicemen and women as well as a danger to our political stance.

quote:

Originally posted by BadBadNeil very interesting read. vietnam wasn't a very smartly fought war on the American side but we learned from it as from all previous wars. Its strange knowing what could have won the war and what the enemy was thinking now in hindsight.

Have we really learned, given our current situation?

interesting read indeed.

and i agree with mister opus, what have you actually learned from this? as to me it doesn't feel like you have learnt anything about how to fight small groups... really hope that this doesn't evolve to a new vietnam, but sometimes it really seems like it :S

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Have we really learned, given our current situation?

Well heres a few things I think we learned from Vietnam. Remember this war is nothing like Vietnam so comparisons really cannot be made other than soldiers are dying. Its not really a stalemate because we have objectives and they are in sight.

1) We learned that a strategic objective must be made. In Vietnam no real goal was set so we were forced into the, "lets just kill more vietnamese" mode. With no real objectives in place the war never felt like it had a series of real victories. In present day definite objectives are set ahead of time and they are taken and advanced upon. A lot of battles in Vietname were over various hills which were abandoned once taken.

2) The leadership of the country must be dedicated to the war in order for it to succeed. In the Vietnam time you had LBJ who was fighting for re-election much like bush is today but LBJ ignored and excluded most of his head advisors from dicussions on Vietnam. He made short term goals in which he would give the Chiefs of Staff a force and tell them to do the best they could with it rather than making long term objectives in the war. Today the leadership is kept in close contact and information is spread around and discussed very frequently. Plans are more long term based even if the resistance was underestimated during this year.

3) You have to commit to the war. You can't fight and have casualties and then pull out. Its bad enough when soldiers die and the public resents it but I think its worse to start a war and then not finish the job, leading the public to think the war was for nothing. Bush is standing firm saying we will stay till the job is done and when the final objective is reached the war will not be for nothing even if some still believe so.

I'll write some more when I have more time.

quote:

Originally posted by BadBadNeil Well heres a few things I think we learned from Vietnam. Remember this war is nothing like Vietnam so comparisons really cannot be made other than soldiers are dying. Its not really a stalemate because we have objectives and they are in sight. 1) We learned that a strategic objective must be made. In Vietnam no real goal was set so we were forced into the, "lets just kill more vietnamese" mode. With no real objectives in place the war never felt like it had a series of real victories. In present day definite objectives are set ahead of time and they are taken and advanced upon. A lot of battles in Vietname were over various hills which were abandoned once taken.

I'll agree with this point, though I don't think it's particularly strong point because I think the differences on strategic objectives were pretty obvious. The objective of this war was pretty clear from the get go - disarm Saddam's army, take over Iraq, find WMD (oops), and rebuild the country (not going quite as planned so far). Is that to say that we learned this lesson as a result of Vietnam? Hardly. I would say the goals were more than obvious, even to the public.

quote:

2) The leadership of the country must be dedicated to the war in order for it to succeed. In the Vietnam time you had LBJ who was fighting for re-election much like bush is today but LBJ ignored and excluded most of his head advisors from dicussions on Vietnam. He made short term goals in which he would give the Chiefs of Staff a force and tell them to do the best they could with it rather than making long term objectives in the war. Today the leadership is kept in close contact and information is spread around and discussed very frequently. Plans are more long term based even if the resistance was underestimated during this year.

Agreed up to the last sentence. In no way, shape, or form were long-term plans for rebuilding even remotely evident, which is painfully obvious given the current situation. Do you think we had plans to hand over a town to one of Saddam's former generals, and THEN 3 days later replace him with a Saddam dissenter?

Actually, I would also take issue with the spreading of information around. In no way has info. been very open, save a handful of folks in the Bush Admin. and the Pentagon (if even that). Wasn't it the top Pentagon official who oversaw Iraqi prisoners who said that he had only recently seen the 53-page memo created back in Jan. that outlined the atrocities that's been revealed on Iraqi prisoners today? Oh sure, he could be lying (which isin't good either), but if it's true, that's not very good communication, esp. when it goes from the "bottom on up" through the chain of command.

quote:

3) You have to commit to the war. You can't fight and have casualties and then pull out. Its bad enough when soldiers die and the public resents it but I think its worse to start a war and then not finish the job, leading the public to think the war was for nothing. Bush is standing firm saying we will stay till the job is done and when the final objective is reached the war will not be for nothing even if some still believe so.

Isin't this what Bush Sr. did in the Gulf War I? How much did daddy Bush really learn from the Vietnam lesson then?

The rest I somewhat agree with. We have to stay and finish the job, regardless of how we got there. I just tend to think that UN peacekeepers ought to be called in to help out with the policing, a job from which the military should NOT be doing.

Here's an article that shows 11 mistakes made during Vietnam, and how Bush is repeating those same mistakes:

quote:

COMMENTARY 11-Step Program for Iraq Failure The Bush team is repeating the mistakes the U.S. made in Vietnam. By Lawrence J. Korb, Lawrence J. Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information. In his press conference on April 13, President Bush argued that comparing the quagmire in Iraq with Vietnam would only be a disservice to our troops. However, if one reviews the list of mistakes that former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara claims we made in prosecuting the war in Vietnam, it is clear that Bush, his advisors and the American people can learn a great deal about how we got ourselves into the current situation in Iraq and how we can get out of it. In his book "Retrospect," McNamara argues that he and his colleagues in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made 11 mistakes in their handling of Vietnam. The first, and presumably the most egregious, was to exaggerate the dangers our adversaries posed to us, something the Bush administration did in Iraq by exaggerating intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its ties to Al Qaeda. Bush's comments about how we are fighting the enemy in Baghdad so we will not have to fight it in Boston (or Brooklyn) are eerily reminiscent of President Johnson's comments about how we were fighting communists in Saigon so we would not have to fight them in San Francisco. McNamara's next four mistakes concern our misjudgments about the political forces, nationalism and the history and culture of Vietnam as well as our ability to shape every nation in our own image. It is now clear that our lack of knowledge about Iraq, coupled with the belief that America could shape Iraq in its own image, led the Bush administration to assume that we would be greeted as liberators, and that the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds would agree to set up a federal republic modeled after our own. Another three of McNamara's criteria focus on the use of military power. He warns that high-technology military equipment is insufficient to win the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture. He also says Congress and the American people should be drawn into a full, frank debate on the pros and cons of large-scale military involvement, and that military action should be carried out only in conjunction with the real support of the international community. Casting these lessons aside, the Bush administration failed to heed the advice of military professionals that our overwhelming conventional military power would not be enough to translate a military victory into a stable peace without the deployment of a large number of ground troops for a long time. The administration failed to let Congress and the American people have a full, frank debate about the reasons for going to war or how long it would take or how much it would cost. Finally, though 30 nations lent their political support to the cause, the only significant practical support has come from the British; more than 90% of the casualties and the cost has been and will be continued to be borne by the United States. Two of McNamara's mistakes concern the failure to explain to Americans when and why unanticipated events forced us off course and to make it clear to the people that in international affairs we may have to live in an imperfect, untidy world. The Bush administration has still not explained why it was mistaken about the primary reasons for going to war. Even in the face of recent setbacks, it has yet to acknowledge that creating a stable Iraq will be a long, difficult and costly endeavor and cannot be accomplished by an artificial deadline like June 30. The president has not recognized that we may have to live with an Iraq that is not a Jeffersonian democracy. The final mistake that we made in Vietnam was to not organize the executive branch to deal with the complex range of political and military issues that situation presented. If anything, the organizational failures are worse in Iraq. The State Department began planning for the Iraqi reconstruction about 18 months before the invasion, but when the Pentagon was unexpectedly given responsibility for reconstruction, its first viceroy, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, was not even allowed to consult with the State Department. Moreover, the invading troops were not given any guidance about what to do when the regime fell and even a year after the fall of Baghdad it remains unclear who is in charge of reconstruction and stabilization. Not learning from our mistakes in Vietnam would be the real disservice to our troops and the country. In fact, learning from those mistakes might be the best, if not the only, way to understand how we got into the current mess in Iraq and how we might get out of it. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...,1,436129.story

I think Bush didn't necessarily look at Vietnam and say "we'd better not do this and this" but I think after every war you learn a few new things to do and not to do. I think Bush was probably more influenced by the first gulf war than Vietnam directly and Gulf War 1 was influenced by previous battles.

Also I agree that the long term plans went way wrong but I believe they had a long term plan but when it didn't go as they had planned they didn't have any backup plans so the original is so far off course that it appears to be chaos.

I'm sure after this war is done the next conflict will have much more thought into the after effects as this war has been pretty much a disaster since the heavy armed conflict ended. Brilliant war, horrible reconstruction. Also from this war I will assume that the army and marines will use armored hummers in the following conflicts as non armored vehicles has caused a large portion of the casualties from roadside bombs.

Sounds like Kosovo and Afghanistan. Wait us out. We'll tire, leave, and they'll get back to old business...


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