Who Owns the Vietnam War?
Found this at The Belmont Club. Arthur Herman at Commentarymagazine.com. . . the press had presented the Tet offensive as a stunning Communist success and a signal that there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The suddenness of the attack had caught not only the American military by surprise, but also the American media. After the war, one of their own, the Washington Post’s Saigon bureau chief Peter Braestrup, documented exactly how the major media proceeded to turn the reality of American victory into an image of American and South Vietnamese defeat.1 Basing themselves on that image, Walter Cronkite and others clearly felt they now had definitive grounds for mistrusting their government’s word and for concluding that, just as the antiwar movement had declared, victory in Vietnam was not and never had been a possibility.
Others went beyond this conclusion. In March 1969, the executive producer of ABC News told his Saigon bureau: “I think the time has come to shift our focus from the battlefield . . . to themes and stories under the general heading, ‘We are on our way out of Vietnam.’” One of those “stories” would be the massacre at My Lai, which took place in the aftermath of Tet but became a news event only a year later. The steady coverage of isolated but sensational episodes like My Lai, deaths by “friendly fire,” and the like had the effect of convincing many Americans that such extraordinary occurrences reflected the ordinary situation on the ground and were destroying their country’s moral standing. Seizing the opportunity, a weakened Hanoi tried to turn it to its advantage. As Mark Woodruff writes in Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army (1999), Hanoi “increasingly shifted its [own] efforts toward the American media and the antiwar movement and soon sought American casualties as [its] main objective.” Indirectly, then, the press’s willful misreading of the meaning of Tet and its harping on the idea that “we are on our way out” would increase the cost of the war in American blood.
<snip by SWCAdmin>
It generally seems to take about a generation and half for the truth to come out. Associated Press, Reuters, CNN et al tried to Tet us in Iraq. Didn't work so well this time.
Read your Parameters piece. Thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shek
This discussion is not intended to ignore or discount the influence of
detractors in the media—especially in the global media age—who willfully
misreport with the intent of undermining war policy and sowing doubt in the
domestic populace. Intuitively one recognizes in such media reports a corrosive
effect on national morale and public support for a war that is difficult to
measure or counter.
Having spent 12 of 14 pages not discussing tthe influence of detractors in the media, Darley finally got to the point I want made.
What hostile media gets out in print hours or days after the event becomes the narrative that stands for decades until disinterested, objective historians analyze declassified information and publish what really happened for the benefit of the small audience who still cares after such a long time.
Hammond should be required reading at Service Schools
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shek
Norfolk,
Hammond's piece is up on JSTOR if you have access to it. In his piece, he specifically refers to this re:Vietnam, and cites Daniel Hallin's The Uncensored War, which states that post-Tet, coverage between for and against the war nearly balanced, with for the war maintaining a slim lead (prior to Tet, pro coverage dominated over coverage against the war 6:1). Of the coverage against the war, half of it came from government officials, while only 16% came from reporters or commentators themselves. Between this and some other evidence that he explores, his conclusion was not that the press was leading, but that it was following.
Shek,
I've just finished reading the Hammond piece from JSTOR, and I must say that I am rather surprised, but convincingly so, by what he had to report. I must admit quite a measure of ignorance on my part hitherto, but Hammond stripped away many layers of prejudice and obfuscation to lay bare how things really worked. Most interesting (and only now do I even clue into it) was that the shift in how the media reported upon the war resulted more from the changing views of the government officials that served as the media's sources than from any other factor. When the government officials began to have doubts or to change their mind about policy or strategy, that not surprisingly affected the reporters they were talking to. Well, talk about finally seeing something that's been staring you straight in the face. Superb piece.
All that corroborates what I said, the media isn't
(and wasn't) nearly as important as they think they are -- though they do influence political junkies and politicians to a slight extent.
It also illustrates that the faint of heart or the opposed in an Administration can have a moderately significant adverse impact...
Also note that the articles confirm my contention that the American public is not overly concerned with casualties; they (and apparently the Brits) want success, dilly dallying is rejected ... :D
"Westmoreland was Right" in Vietnam
This is the title for a new article on Westmoreland and Vietnam by Army Historian Dale Andrade in the just released issue of Small Wars and Insurgencies. Pasted below is the abstract to the article along with an additional paragraph. Andrade's bigger point is that if we as the United States Army aspire to be a learning organization, a good place to start is by understanding the past; specifically Vietnam and then move to a better understanding of the flawed lessons that we have dervived from that war along with myths in order to get at the truth.
Quote:
More than thirty years after the fall of Saigon, historians still argue about the lessons of the Vietnam War. Most fall into two schools of thought: those who believe that the United States failed to apply enough pressure - military and political - to the Communist government in Hanoi, and those who argue that the Americans failed to use an appropriate counterinsurgency strategy in South Vietnam. Both arguments have merit, but both ignore the Communist strategy, and the result is a skewed picture of what sort of enemy the United States actually faced in Vietnam. The reality is that the United States rarely held the initiative in Vietnam. Hanoi began a conventional troop build up in South Vietnam beginning in the early 1960s, and by the time of the US ground force intervention in 1965 the allies already faced a large and potent conventional Communist army in the South. Simply employing a 'classic' counterinsurgency strategy would have been fatal from the beginning. Despite this fact, the US military has tended to embrace flawed historical analysis to explain our failure, often concluding that there was a 'strategic choice' in Vietnam - a right way to fight and a wrong way. Most blame General William C. Westmoreland as choosing the wrong way and argue that if he had eschewed a big unit 'search and destroy' strategy, the war might have turned out differently. However, this article argues that this is untrue. Westmoreland could not have done much differently than he actually did given the realities on the ground. The flawed interpretations of the Vietnam War are not only bad history, but they also lead military and political policymakers to bad decisions in current counterinsurgency strategy. As the US military finds itself embroiled in unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it needs clear lessons from America's longest counterinsurgency campaign - the Vietnam War.
An opinionated No and Yes...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Cavguy
...Therefore, Westmorland was right to do 'search and destroy', and his 'search and destroy' ops enabled Abrams to focus on pacification.
Not really; nor did Tet and the general VC (the very few left) and NVA (lots and lots of them replacing those killed) toll allow it as some postulate; Abrams simply changed the emphasis as Palmer had been urging all along. Westmoreland could have done it two years earlier; he chose not to do so.
Quote:
...My personal experience in Ramadi and Tal Afar suggest that it is not sequential but somewhat parallel, or at least intersecting curves - you have to do both LOO's (security and development) simultaneously. You never get real security without development/pacification and you can never do effective development without a minimum level of security that interdicts enemy freedom of movement.
Exactly.
1st ID Lessons Learned 1 May - 31 July 1966
1st Infantry Division Operational Report-Lessons Learned (1 May - 31 July 1966)
Quote:
During the period covered by the previous Operational Report-Lessons Learned (1 Jan - 30 Apr 66), the 1st Infantry Division began to conduct major operations outside the assigned tactical areas of responsibility (TAOR) to extend U.S. and GVI influence into previously uncontested areas. The period covered by this report was marked by even deeper penetrations into areas considered as VC dominated territory. Operations were characterized by rapid reaction to Intelligence information and deployment of the bulk of division forces over vast areas of the ll Corps Tactical Zone. There has been a significant increase in the integration of ARVN combat forces into 1st Infantry Division operations. The division initiated its first major pacification operation and results to date have been very encouraging. Operations wore also conducted within base camp TAORs to locate and destroy remaining VC forces aad installations. Three main Force Viet Corg regiments were engaged in five major battles and in each the enemy forces wore decisively defeated. The elite 272d VC Regiment was engaged in battle on two separate occasions, one of which occurred on the 49th Anniversary of the formation of the Big Red One, 3 July 1917.....
MACV Combat Experiences 5-69
MACV Combat Experiences 5-69, 5 Jan 70
Quote:
This particular issue deals with experiences of Regional and Popular Forces (RF/PF). As part of its territorial security and pacification mission, the RF/PF play an important role in the preemption of enemy preparations for major attacks. In preparing for battle, the enemy customarily uses reconnaissance parties and small groups who prepare food and ammunition caches and build or dig command posts, aid stations and similar installations. During the battle he employs couriers, aid men and ammunition and food resupply porters. During withdrawals he employs other small groups to link and support his major units. His dependence on these techniques of employment of individuals and small groups makes him vulnerable to a programmed coverage of the countryside by RF and PF units. This can be done by the RF becoming heavily engaged in aggressive patrolling and night ambushes. Such actions can preempt surpris- attacks on populated areas and installations. Because of their knowledge of the people and the local area, the PF can be an invaluable asset in preventing acts of terrorism and sabotage by identifying infiltrators into populated areas and by simply being alert to and reporting unusual incidents. MACV Combat Experiences 5-69 highlights a few problems of the RF/PF, describes their great worth in the effort to curb aggression and hopefully will better prepare all recipients of this document to assist the RF/PF in performing their extremely valuable functions.
Winning hearts and minds in Vietnam
While the BBC's pre-existing bias is well-documented, this is still worth reading.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7698055.stm
The singer and soldier Hershel Gober returned to Vietnam in 1969 as a company commander, and knew even then that the war was lost.
He told his men that he did not want any John Waynes in his outfit. He was wounded and sent home.
Many years later, he became acting secretary for veterans' affairs in the Clinton administration. He changed his mind about this war and others; he opposed the war in Iraq.
He believes that in Vietnam the Americans lost not only the war but the opportunity to learn from it.
"Sometimes I think we didn't learn a damn thing from Vietnam," he says, "We didn't learn enough".
Winning hearts and minds anywhere is a myth...
That's the myth that needs to be dispelled and that's a lesson we did not learn in Viet Nam. People will act in their perceived self interest and they will follow their heart -- but they will not let you win that heart. Nor do you need to...
The reason he thinks we didn't learn a thing or enough is 'cause we have foolishly allowed DoD simply because of the money they get and the global presence they have (both of which are necessary but not wisely employed) to assume the de facto lead in our foreign policy. That transcends Viet Nam which was simply a symptom, not the problem.
Congress is mostly to blame; they, after all, are the ones that overfund (for campaign contribution and vote reasons) and micromanage (because they're ignorant) DoD and underfund and do not adequately supervise State (or the Intel community, another story. Both again due to ignorance...).
Gobel, by the way, was slow, took him until '69 to get real. I -- and others -- were saying in '66 that we were going to spend $50B, get 100K US troops killed and give Uncle Ho ten airfields. In the event, we reversed the math, Ho died and the number of airfields rose to 15 or 16...
Winning hearts and minds is a myth
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ken White
That's the myth that needs to be dispelled and that's a lesson we did not learn in Viet Nam. .
Dam straight. We need to drop this Hearts and Minds BS once and for all. Templer said that the conflict in Malaya would be won in the "hearts and minds" or the Malayan people. Eventually enough people felt in their hearts and knew in their minds, they could never eject the British by military means. Same deal in Northern Ireland.
Personally, I think anyone who bands about the the words hearts and minds, has the credibility of someone who says "Cho Cho train" when discussing public transport. We need to stop using these words. They are no longer useful.
Semantics is the root of all evil - again
as I said on another thread.:eek:
What do we call this kind of war - LIC, OOTW, COIN, SASO, MOOTW, CT, or the other hundred names? Each has its partisans and its critics and both have good reasons for their positions. Templar coined a phrase that had real utility at the time but was more simplistic than what the Brits actually did. In fact, they won the hearts and minds of the Malay majority by promising and granting independence, which allowed them to to go after the Chinese insurgents. One might argue that the Brits followed a pop centric strategy toward the non-insurgent population (including many if not most of the Chinese) with the necessary enemy centric components against the insurgents. Thus, perhaps, the term to replace "hearts and minds" when describing a Small Wars or COIN strategy might be Pop Centric. Of course, its critics will attack it on semantic grounds as well.:wry:
Cheers
JohnT
Replace "Hearts & Minds" with?
I'd suggest, on a quick thought, that loyalty is a suitable replacement word.
"Hearts & Minds" creeps into UK CT, sometimes in official documents and is quite inappropriate.
davidbfpo
Not only semantics but misperceptions...
Actually, in Malaya the British -- correctly -- first went after the CTs and removed their ability to terrorize minds; then they terrorized the Malays and the Chinese civilians not playing CT by virtually eliminating Civil Rights and moving the majority of them into 'New Villages.' There was no winning of hearts and the minds involved were coerced, not coaxed.
The 'hearts and minds' tag line was introduced but the iron fist behind that velvet glove was what 'won' the COIN war. About 40K Commonwealth Troops and over half that number of British and Malay Police plus the concentration camps that were the New Villages fighting a max of 6-8K CTs and killing well over half of them from 1951 until late 1956 swung it -- hearts and minds were little if any involved.
The Malays were the people who wanted independence. Yet they were not involved in the insurgency to almost any extent. The Chinese were making money so mostly, they weren't big on independence. Few of them followed the CT line.
Chin Peng just used 'independence' as an excuse and in an attempt to replace impending, promised and on schedule independent but majority Malay rule with a Communist government headed by Chinese. Thus to say that the British won Malay hearts and minds when the Chinese were the insurgents is an obvious misnomer
The British and Malays then offered an amnesty to the CTs -- and a pretty sweeping one at that --and by late '56, the insurgency was pretty well whipped. Independence, proposed and effectively promised in 1948 at the formation of the Federation of Malaya and to be effective in 10 years finally came on 31 Aug 57, a year early but Malaysia as it exists today wasn't really formed until 1963.
I said it before and I'll say it again:
""Winning hearts and minds anywhere is a myth...That's the myth that needs to be dispelled and that's a lesson we did not learn in Viet Nam.""
""People will act in their perceived self interest and they will follow their heart -- but they will not let you win that heart. Nor do you need to...""
That opinion by me does not of course preclude others from using whatever terminology they wish. Even if they are wrong. ;) Nor does that opinion obviate COIN techniques as espoused by most; it merely suggests that the effort be viewed realistically and not through idealistic prisms that can distort actions. That's the semantics part of it...
Words are important.
Interdicting Ho Chi Minh trail Vietnam
Around 1968 the US stopped trying to deter the North Vietnamese from infiltrating the south by bombing the north. Instead they implemented a plan where they dropped thousands and thousands of sensors on the Ho Chi Minh trail in order to detect when the North Vietnamese were sending supplies and personnel south along the trail. When movement was detected this information was sent to patrolling F-4s who bombed the heck out of the area where the movement was detected. Ultimately the whole plan was a failure as it didn't do a whole lot to prevent the NV from infiltrating the south. Instead of providing a specific alternative possibility wherein the US could have better interdicted the movement south along the trail, I'm curious if anyone can provide a scenario where the US could have better interdicted the movement south. Could the sensor-shooter loop have been better implemented? Could some other plan have better worked? Was McNamara just too enthusiastic about throwing something hi-tech at the problem? Any thoughts? What are the implications of this situation for today?