Vietnam  How the United States got into trouble.

When the Second World War ended in 1945 France returned to their colonies in what was called French Indochina. Russia had desires to control the world by then so they encouraged indigenous peoples everywhere to fight for their independence with the aim being to make them Communist Satellites. In Vietnam the local Communist leader was Ho Chi Minh and in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu he defeated the French and was given the Northern Half of Vietnam. The French wanted out of Vietnam but the American Administration of Eisenhower did not want Communism to take over all of Indochina so they decided to back the South Vietnamese nation.

Major General Edward Lansdale had gained fame by saving the Philippines from the Communists when he got lucky and found an honest and patriotic Filipino named Ramon Magsaysay to lead his people. With financial and military aid from the U.S. Magsaysay had beaten the Commies and formed a democratic government. Lansdale was then sent to Vietnam to try to repeat his success. Unfortunately the man he picked to lead Vietnam was not as honest or patriotic as Magdsaysay. Ngo Dinh Diem was a Catholic in this heavily Buddhist Nation and his only interest was remaining in power. He viewed the Vietnamese Army as his personal bodyguard and did not want to risk, or alienate it by having it hurt in a fight. Diem also did not seem to understand the danger that the local Communist rebels, the Viet Cong, posed. He did not seem to care that they where taking over the countryside and winning over the people. He felt as long as he controlled the cities that his mentors in the U.S would save him.

When John F. Kennedy became President in 1960 he wanted to exert control over the area with the might of the U.S. so he sent a small force of "Advisors" to Vietnam to help train the locals to defend themselves. Naturally things escalated and this small force grew and added more firepower, planes, helicopters, guns, canons, technology, etc. Yet the Vietnamese leadership would not commit they troops to battle. It was at this point that the tragedy was born.

Military thinking in the late 1950s had been taken over by the "Intellectuals" eggheads that had never, and would never, go to war personally developed the theory of "Limited Warfare". The way to stop Russia and China from expanding was to face their forces and beat them in conventional infantry wars. These "Thinkers" could visualize drafting and sending innocent youths off to fight and die as a way to convince the Commies that trying to expand would not work. These cold-blooded bastards thought of the canon fodder as just another tool and never considered that they where living human beings. Henry Kissinger was one of these "Intellectuals" forming that policy. He, and others, had a profound influence on Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

Kennedy expected that the South Vietnamese would fight to remain free and he was getting his information from the diplomats and Generals in the area. The lower level advisors soon knew the truth that the Diem Government would not risk the Vietnamese Army fighting the Communists and they conveyed this information to their superiors in the U. S. Army but the leading Generals and Diplomats where telling Kennedy that everything was coming along just fine. They told of the numbers of Viet Cong killed (the body count) and the numbers of weapons confiscated. They only passed on good news; they never reported any bad news. Our Government in 2007 is repeating this in Iroc.

The lower level advisors (below the rank of General) soon discovered that the soldiers in the Vietnamese Army had nothing but contempt for the local peasants; they mistreated them badly, torture, rape, and murder where common. Theft of military supplies and corruption where commonplace. Yet when they reported this it never went any higher so nothing was done to stop it. The Catholic Diem also had not respect or love for his fellow Buddhist countrymen so he cared little for they problems.

What Diem had in mind was not governing Vietnam for the people, he wanted a royal dynasty and had made his brother his #2 and just like so many other would-be big shots there was a ruthless woman right behind him, his brothers wife. She wanted complete control over every citizen’s life.

The Vietnamese people had been divided against themselves for a long time. Ho’s Communist roots go back to 1920 and his communists had been at war with Vietnamese Nationalists and Vietnamese that collaborated with the French. They had been killing each other in their bid for power from before the Second World War. In Russia the Communists won, in 1930s Germany the non-communists had won, in Vietnam the issue was still up for grabs.

The average peasant was promised a better deal from the Commies and got nothing but repression from their government under Diem. Most where sympathetic to the Communists because they had been told they where fighting the French to make them free and independent. So you had a government that did not want to fight any battles but did want to repress it’s own people. Yet the American Leadership could not see this happening. The repressed took up arms and around 1960 the North was back in the war business. The repression that the American Leadership favored had ignited a war.

American governments had always held the poor and lower working class in contempt and done everything they could to make the rich even richer so why should what they wanted for Vietnam be any different. The peasants had nothing but a self-sustaining lifestyle in their villages all the large rice growing areas and rubber tree plantations belonged to the rich and the Communists promised it would be given to the poor if they won.

In the early 1960s the Viet Cong were a small poorly equipped force. The U.S. sent more and more guns and ammunition that where handed out to the local village militias, then the VC would attack the villages and capture these guns. Each new gun allowed them to add a new fighter so they grew larger and more powerful. The advisors duly reported all this but the top Generals in charge refused to pass this information on to Washington. Instead they where sending optimistic reports stating that they where getting close to winning in the future so Kennedy and his team where in the dark.

In June of 1963 a Buddhist Monk set himself on fire as a protest of the Diem administrations harassment setting off protests by the people in the cites; now the people in the cities, and the country hated their leaders. City people need services and that is the function of government; self sustaining peasant villagers need very little from a government. The U.S. could have set up competing political parties and held elections letting the people give vent to their feelings instead they allowed Diem to run the place as a dictator. Again here we are 50 years later and the U.S. has learned nothing. In Iroc or any other nation that we want to stabilize we need to allow competing parties whether that is the Communists in Vietnam or the Bathists in Iroc to have a place in the system; freedom of speech and freedom of competing newspapers must be allowed. The people need to be allowed to make their feelings known and have elections to choose their government. Dissenting opinions must be allowed to be heard. What we must not allow is to let one party take over and have complete control. The people must have the option of changing a government that they do not like.

The only sensible thing to do would have been to explain to the people of South Vietnam that they needed to beat the Communist themselves. They would need to give up corruption, put together an army and train it to fight. They would have to put forth the sacrifice or they would be beaten and be forced to become communists with all the loss of freedom that that meant. Unfortunately they would not do that and the U.S. leadership thought they would do it themselves. They thought they could do this by just defeating the forces in the south without total war up north. Imagine if our government had said we would fight the Germans or Japanese without destroying they military plant in their homeland, yet this is what they tried to do in Vietnam.

In 1963 Kennedy sent Henry Cabot Lodge to Saigon as the new U.S. Ambassador. He was convinced that the Diem regime must go and set up a coup, against the wishes of many other top American leaders. The coup started on Nov 1 1963. On Nov 22 1963 Kennedy was shot. There were only 17.000 military in Vietnam and only 120 deaths up to this point.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson became President and in August 1964 he used the Tonkin Gulf battle between U.S. Navy Destroyers and North Vietnamese Gunboats to start the war in earnest. By June of 1965 there were 50,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. By December 25 1965 there were 185,000. January 31 1966 General Westmoreland wanted 459,000 men, on Dec 23 1966 385,000 troops where in Vietnam. In 1967 the general wanted 678,000 men. By mid 1968 525,000 American soldiers where in Vietnam, and the peak was hit in April 1969 with 543,000. Many young men volunteered but 874,000 where "Drafted" which is another word for being made a slave of the government. "Contractors" where everywhere building bases and ports and thousands of Vietnamese where being paid to work for the Army instead of fighting.

The citizens of the United States and all the young men sent to Vietnam where told we where going there to keep the people of the area free from a communist dictatorship. It was an honorable goal. We had fought WW2 to defeat ternary and keep people free. At least that is what the common people thought.

The top Generals and the Johnson administration bureaucrats thought the way to win the war was to have large battles and kill the Communists in large enough numbers that the north would get discouraged and quit. They sent the young troops out into the countryside to find the Viet Cong and most of the time they walked into well built traps so as they where killing the opposition they where also being killed. In 1966 12,000 South Vietnamese died and 6,000 U.S. solders where killed. In 1967 13,000 men from both groups lost their young lives and in 1968 14,600 American young men where killed.

By the end of the war 14,691 Marines had died, 3 times as many as in Korea and only 24,511 had died in the bloody Second World War. With the Army, Air Force, and Navy losses the death total was over 54,000 health young men, 70% had volunteered to fight.

The Communists staged a huge battle at the end of January 1968 over the Vietnamese Tet Holiday. They attacked everywhere at the same time and where roundly defeated. They where killed in such large numbers that if Johnson had had the courage to bomb the north relentlessly, and ruthlessly, the war could have ended instead he cut back the bombing and the communist had a chance to rebuild. It was the fear of China becoming involved as they had in Korea that held back the U.S. Government.

Lyndon Johnson realized to late that his advisors and generals had talked him into an unwinable war. He was responsible for the escalation yet he took the cowards way out and refused to run for a second term as President; this gave the problem to Richard Nixon when he was elected in 1968. He promised to bring the troops home and make an honorable peace.

One of Nixon’s biggest mistakes was giving to much power to Dr. Henry Kissinger. Kissinger opened up China and today the Chinese economy is going to bring the United States to economic ruin; thanks to Kissinger and Nixon, and all the other greedy people. Kissinger also was the person negotiating with the North Vietnamese communists. Nixon started to slowly bring home the U. S. Troops and turn the war over to the South Vietnamese. If they would have fought things might have turned out differently however their leadership and generals would not fight, although their troops would die. The United States gave them all the weapons they need just as Russia and China gave to the North and the South had something the North never had and that was an Air Force. Hundreds of helicopters, jet fighters, and flocks of B52s were dropping ton after ton of bombs.

The communists had started as a small group fighting with homemade weapons but as Nixon pulled our troops out the North was sending more and more powerful equipment along with trained solders from the North’s Army. They where winning battles now and although the South’s young men where dying their leadership by in large still would not fight.

In January 1973 at Paris Kissinger agreed to commit the United States to removing all of our forces leaving the South to defend itself. War protests at home and the upcoming elections caused our leaders to sell out the South Vietnamese and waste all the money and lives we had spent. A cynic would say that the lives where from a class of people that the rich and powerful do not care about and the billions that had been spent had enriched a lot of people.

On April 30^th 1975 the communist stormed into Saigon and the South Vietnamese people where forced to become Commies. The United States did nothing.

Allowing the Communist to forcibly take over a free people was bad enough yet today our government has made friends with North Vietnam and goes Kissei Kissei to make more money for the rich.

It was the final realization of the way our corrupt leadership deals with these situations that turned me into an antiwar person. I would never recommend that anyone go to war for any government because they do not have the ability to do it right. The young people are used as cannon fodder and the people in leadership positions use war to make their friends rich. It is all power politics and the people always lose.

Marlin Creasote 2008AD