Why We Fought & Why We Would Do it Again
Against a backdrop of political mismanagement and social angst, history has failed to respect those who gave their all to the war in Vietnam.
By James Webb
Forty years ago, Asia was at a vital crossroads, moving into an uncertain future
dominated by three different historical trends. The first involved the aftermath
of the carnage and destruction of World War II, which left scars on every
country in the region and dramatically changed Japan’s role in East Asian
affairs. The second was the sudden, regionwide end of European colonialism,
which created governmental vacuums in every second-tier country except Thailand
and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines. The third was the emergence of
communism as a powerful tool of expansionism by military force, its doctrine and
strategies emanating principally from the birthplace of the Communist
International: the Soviet Union.
Europe’s withdrawal from the region dramatically played into the hands of
communist revolutionary movements, especially in the wake of the communist
takeover of China in 1949. Unlike in Europe, these countries had never known
Western-style democracy. In 1950, the partitioned country of Korea exploded into
war when the communist North invaded South Korea, with the Chinese Army joining
the effort six months later. Communist insurgencies erupted throughout
Indochina. In Malaysia, the British led a 10-year anti-guerrilla campaign
against China-backed revolutionaries. A similar insurgency in Indonesia brought
about a communist coup attempt, also sponsored by the Chinese, which was put
down in 1965.
The situation inside Vietnam was the most complicated. First, for a variety of
reasons the French had not withdrawn from their long-term colony after World War
II, making it easy for insurgents to rally the nationalistic Vietnamese to their
side. Second, the charismatic, Soviet-trained communist leader Ho Chi Minh had
quickly consolidated his anti-French power base just after the war by
assassinating the leadership of competing political groups that were both
anti-French and anti-communist. Third, once the Korean War armistice was signed
in 1953, the Chinese had shifted large amounts of sophisticated weaponry to Ho
Chi Minh’s army. The Viet Minh’s sudden acquisition of larger-caliber weapons
and field artillery such as the 105-millimeter Howitzer abruptly changed the
nature of the war and contributed heavily to the French humiliation at Dien Bien
Phu.
Fourth, further war became inevitable when U.S.-led backers of the incipient
South Vietnamese democracy called off a 1956 election agreed upon after Vietnam
was divided in 1954. In geopolitical terms, this failure to go forward with
elections was prudent, since it was clear a totalitarian state had emerged in
the north. President Eisenhower’s frequently quoted admonition that Ho Chi Minh
would get 75 percent of the vote was not predicated on the communist leader’s
popularity but on the impossibility of getting a fair vote in
communist-controlled North Vietnam. But in propaganda terms, it solidified Ho
Chi Minh’s standing and in many eyes justified the renewed warfare he would
begin in the south two years later.
In 1958, the communists unleashed a terrorist campaign in the south. Within two
years, their northern-trained squads were assassinating an average of 11
government officials a day. President Kennedy referred to this campaign in 1961
when he decided to increase the number of American soldiers operating inside
South Vietnam. “We have talked about and read stories of 7,000 to 15,000
guerrillas operating in Vietnam, killing 2,000 civil officers a year and 2,000
police officers a year – 4,000 total,” Kennedy said. “How we fight that kind of
problem, which is going to be with us all through this decade, seems to me to be
one of the great problems now before the United States.”
Among the local populace, the communist assassination squads were the “stick,”
threatening to kill anyone who officially affiliated with the South Vietnamese
government. Along with the assassination squads came the “carrot,” a highly
trained political cadre that also infiltrated South Vietnam from the north. The
cadre helped the people prepare defenses in their villages, took rice from
farmers as taxes and recruited Viet Cong soldiers from the local young
population. Spreading out into key areas – such as those provinces just below
the demilitarized zone, those bordering Laos and Cambodia, and those with future
access routes to key cities – the communists gained strong footholds.
The communists began spreading out from their enclaves, fighting on three levels
simultaneously. First, they continued their terror campaign, assassinating local
leaders, police officers, teachers and others who declared support for the South
Vietnamese government. Second, they waged an effective small-unit guerrilla war
that was designed to disrupt commerce, destroy morale and clasp local
communities to their cause. And finally, beginning in late 1964, they introduced
conventional forces from the north, capable of facing, if not defeating, main
force infantry units – including the Americans – on the battlefield. Their
gamble was that once the United States began fighting on a larger scale – as it
did in March 1965 – its people would not support a long war of attrition. As Ho
Chi Minh famously put it, “For every one of yours we kill, you will kill 10 of
ours. But in the end it is you who will grow tired.”
Ho Chi Minh was right. The infamous “body counts” were continuously disparaged
by the media and the antiwar movement. Hanoi removed the doubt in 1995, when on
the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon officials admitted having lost 1.1
million combat soldiers dead, with another 300,000 “still missing.”
Communist losses of 1.4 million dead compared to America’s losses of 58,000 and
South Vietnam’s 245,000 stands as stark evidence that eliminates many myths
about the war. The communists, and particularly the North Vietnamese, were
excellent and determined soldiers. But the “wily, elusive guerrillas” that the
media loved to portray were not exclusively wily, elusive or even guerrillas
when one considers that their combat deaths were four times those of their
enemies, combined. And an American military that located itself halfway around
the world to take on a determined enemy on the terrain of the enemy’s choosing
was hardly the incompetent, demoralized and confused force that so many antiwar
professors, journalists and filmmakers love to portray.
Why Did We Fight? The United States recognized South Vietnam as a political
entity separate from North Vietnam, just as it recognized West Germany as
separate from communist-controlled East Germany and just as it continues to
recognize South Korea from communist-controlled North Korea. As signatories of
the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, we pledged to defend South Vietnam from
external aggression. South Vietnam was invaded by the north, just as certainly,
although with more sophistication, as South Korea was invaded by North Korea.
The extent to which the North Vietnamese, as well as antiwar Americans, went to
deny this reality by pretending the war was fought only by Viet Cong soldiers
from the south is, historically, one of the clearest examples of their
disingenuous conduct. At one point during the war, 15 of North Vietnam’s 16
combat divisions were in the south.
How Did We Fight? The Vietnam War varied year by year and region by region, our
military’s posture unavoidably mirroring political events in the United States.
Too often in today’s America we are left with the images burned into a weary
nation’s consciousness at the very end of the war, when massive social problems
had been visited on an army that was demoralized, sitting in defensive
cantonments and simply waiting to be withdrawn. While reflecting America’s final
months in Vietnam, they hardly tell the story of the years of effort and
battlefield success that preceded them.
Little recognition has been given in this country of how brutal the war was for
those who fought it on the ground and how well our military performed. Dropped
onto the enemy’s terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America’s citizen-soldiers
performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those
who believe the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider
the enormous casualties to which the communists now admit. And those who believe
that it was a “dirty little war” where the bombs did all the work might
contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever
fought. Five times as many Marines died in Vietnam as in World War I, three
times as many as in Korea. And the Marines suffered more total casualties,
killed and wounded, in Vietnam than in all of World War II.
Another allegation was that our soldiers were over-decorated during the Vietnam
War. James Fallows says in his book “National Defense” that by 1971, we had
given out almost 1.3 million medals for bravery in Vietnam, as opposed to some
1.7 million for all of World War II. Others have repeated the figure, including
the British historian Richard Holmes in his book “Acts of War.” This comparison
is incorrect for a number of reasons. First, these totals included air medals,
rarely awarded for bravery. We awarded more than 1 million air medals to Army
soldiers during Vietnam. Air medals were almost always given on a points basis
for missions flown, and it was not unusual to see a helicopter pilot with 40 air
medals because of the nature of his job.
If we compare the top three actual gallantry awards, the Army awarded:
* 289 Medals of Honor in World War II and 155 in Vietnam.
* 4,434 Distinguished Service Crosses in World War II and 846 in
Vietnam.
* 73,651 Silver Stars in World War II against 21,630 in Vietnam.
* The Marine Corps, which lost 103,000 killed or wounded out of some
400,000 sent to Vietnam, awarded 47 Medals of Honor (34
posthumously), 362 Navy Crosses (139 posthumously) and 2,592
Silver Stars.
Second, although the Army awarded another 1.3 million “meritorious” Bronze Stars
and Army Commendation Medals in Vietnam, this was hardly unique. After World War
II, Army Regulation 600-45 authorized every soldier who had received either a
Combat Infantryman’s Badge or a Combat Medical Badge to also be awarded a
meritorious Bronze Star. The Army has no data regarding how many soldiers
received Bronze Stars through this blanket procedure.
Atrocities? We made errors, although nowhere on the scale alleged by those who
have a stake in disparaging our effort. Fighting a well-trained enemy who seeks
cover in highly contested populated areas where civilians often assist the other
side is the most difficult form of warfare. The most important distinction is
that the deliberate killing of innocent civilians was a crime in the U.S.
military. We held ourselves accountable for My Lai. And yet we are still waiting
for the communists to take responsibility for the thousands of civilians
deliberately killed by their political cadre as a matter of policy. A good place
for them to start holding their own forces accountable would be Hue, where
during the 1968 Tet Offensive more than 2,000 locals were systematically
executed during the brief communist takeover of the city.
What Went Wrong? Beyond the battlefield, just about everything one might
imagine.
The war was begun, and fought, without clear political goals. Its battlefield
complexities were never fully understood by those who were judging, and
commenting upon, American performance. As a rifle platoon and company commander
in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of Da Nang, on any given day my Marines could
be fighting three different wars: one against terrorism, one against guerrillas
and one against conventional forces. The implications of these challenges, as
well as our successes in dealing with them, never seemed to penetrate an
American populace inundated by negative press stories filed by reporters,
particularly television journalists, who had no clue about the real tempo of the
war. And one of the most under-reported revelations after the war ended was that
several top reporters were compromised while in Vietnam, by communist agents who
had managed to gain employment as their assistants, thus shaping in a large way
their reporting.
Most importantly, Vietnam became an undeclared war fought against the background
of a highly organized dissent movement at home. Few Americans who grew up after
the war know that a large part of this dissent movement was already in place
before the Vietnam War began. Many who wished for revolutionary changes in
America had pushed for them through the vehicles of groups such as the
ban-the-bomb movement in the 1950s and the civil-rights movement of the early
and mid-1960s. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the infamous
antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society was created at the University of
Michigan through the Port Huron Statement in 1962 – three full years before
American ground troops landed at Da Nang. The SDS hoped to bring revolution to
America through the issue of race. They and other extremist groups soon found
more fertile soil on the issue of the war.
Former communist colonel Bui Tin, a highly placed propaganda officer during the
war, recently published a memoir in which he specifically admitted a truth that
was assumed by American fighting men for years. The Hanoi government assumed
from the beginning that the United States would never prevail in Vietnam so long
as the dissent movement, which they called “the Rear Front,” was successful at
home. Many top leaders of this movement coordinated efforts directly with
Vietnamese communist officials in Hanoi. Such coordination often included
visiting the North Vietnamese capital – for instance, during the planning stages
for the October 1967 march on the Pentagon – a few weeks before the siege of Khe
Sanh kicked into high gear and a few months before the Tet Offensive.
The majority of the American people never truly bought the antiwar movement’s
logic. While it is correct to say many wearied of an ineffective national
strategy as the war dragged on, they never stopped supporting the actual goals
for which the United States and South Vietnam fought. As late as September 1972,
a Harris survey indicated overwhelming support for continued bombing of North
Vietnam – 55 percent to 32 percent – and for mining North Vietnamese harbors –
64 percent to 22 percent. By a margin of 74 percent to 11 percent, those polled
also agreed that “it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control
of the communists.”
Was It Worth It? On a human level, the war brought tragedy to hundreds of
thousands of American homes through death, disabling wounds and psychological
scars. Many other Vietnam veterans were stigmatized by their own peers as a
classic Greek tragedy played out before the nation’s eyes. Those who did not go,
particularly among the nation’s elites, were often threatened by the acts of
those who did and as a consequence inverted the usual syllogism of service. If I
did not go to a war because I believed it was immoral, what does it say about
someone who did? If someone who fought is perceived as having been honorable,
what does that say about someone who was asked to and could have but did not?
Vietnam veterans, most of whom entered the military just after leaving high
school, had their educational and professional lives interrupted during their
most formative years. In many parts of the country and in many professional
arenas, their having served their country was a negative when it came to
admission into universities or being hired for jobs. The fact that the
overwhelming majority of those who served were able to persist and make
successful lives for themselves and their families is strong testament to the
quality of Americans who actually did step forward and serve.
On a national level, and in the eyes of history, the answer is easier. One can
gain an appreciation for what we attempted to achieve in Vietnam by examining
the aftermath of the communist victory in 1975. A gruesome holocaust took place
in Cambodia, the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. Two
million Vietnamese fled their country – mostly by boat. Thousands lost their
lives in the process. This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam’s long and
frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam, a million of the south’s best young
leaders were sent to re-education camps; more than 50,000 perished while
imprisoned, and others remained captives for as long as 18 years. An apartheid
system was put into place that punished those who had been loyal to the United
States, as well as their families, in matters of education, employment and
housing. The Soviet Union made Vietnam a client state until its own demise,
pumping billions of dollars into the country and keeping extensive naval and air
bases at Cam Ranh Bay. In fact, communist Vietnam did not truly start opening up
to the outside world until the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Would I Do It Again? Others are welcome to disagree, but on this I have no
doubt. Like almost every Marine I have ever met, my strongest regret is that
perhaps I could have done more. But no other experience in my life has been more
important than the challenge of leading Marines during those extraordinarily
difficult times. Nor am I alone in this feeling. The most accurate poll of the
attitudes of those who served in Vietnam – Harris, 1980 – showed that 91 percent
were glad they’d served their country, and 74 percent enjoyed their time in the
service. Additionally, 89 percent agreed that “our troops were asked to fight in
a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”
On that final question, history will surely be kinder to those who fought than
to those who directed – or opposed – the war.
Reprint with permission of James Webb. His website is at: http://www.jameswebb.com
James Webb served as a rifle platoon and company commander with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam. A former secretary of the Navy, he is the author of “Fields of Fire” and “Lost Soldiers.” He also was the creator and executive producer of the film “Rules of Engagement.”