Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[Mike in Hilo]

My two cents. This was, after all, the third world--and as far as third world governments and armies are concerned, Thieu's was almost certainly above average--just not good enough to beat the odds without some ongoing US help. Both army and gov't had been around for decades, unlike the Iraqi army. The ministries and their provincial branches were competent (well educated engineers, agronomists, public health officials, etc., etc...). And Thieu could not have made territorial forces and land reform the priorities that he did without "getting it." The problem was far less one of incompetence than lack of political will (as it relates to acommodation with the enemy) and the related issue of corruption. And this last failing was CORDS's greatest fault, as most of the "old timers" will agree--That is, we never tackled corruption to the extent we could have (yes, we did get some province chiefs tranferred). But no doubt US relief at finding militarily competent officers to deal with constrained us from using our leverage to the fullest extent to combat this systemic problem.

Legitimacy was in VN a function of the people's confidence in the ability of the government to prevail. In 1970 VN, the government that had legitimacy in the eyes of the people was the USG! Not the NLF or Communist Party for sure...And they believed, correctly in the event, that the GVN would fold under PAVN pressure after we left. (As the Vietnamese peasants were wont to tell me in their GI English, "[When] GI go home, VC come in."

Unquestionably, the pre-WW II French regime had legitimacy. When the communists started subversion in the North Vietnamese countryside in the1930's, they knew that no villager would dare take up arms against a Frenchman. So they began by getting villagers to sully their hands first, by having them participate in "peoples' executions" of Vietnamese village elders.

Re US civilians in VN--They were in fact all over the place. And why not? Other than Tet, Saigon was quite safe. I'm reminded of the USAID woman assigned to Saigon who did a TDY in Jamaica--She was so relieved to get back to Saigon because she found crime-ridden Kingston so dangerous. US military advisers in civilan GVN ministries?--Not during my tenure, and, I believe, not ever.

Cheers,
Mike.

[tequila]

My two cents. This was, after all, the third world--and as far as third world governments and armies are concerned, Thieu's was almost certainly above average--just not good enough to beat the odds without some ongoing US help. Both army and gov't had been around for decades, unlike the Iraqi army. The ministries and their provincial branches were competent (well educated engineers, agronomists, public health officials, etc., etc...). And Thieu could not have made territorial forces and land reform the priorities that he did without "getting it." The problem was far less one of incompetence than lack of political will (as it relates to acommodation with the enemy) and the related issue of corruption.

But how truly competent was it really compared to the NLF and DRV? An example would be Thieu's land-reform program. While better executed than the travesty that occurred under Diem, which ended up disenfranchising farmers, how was it anything but a pale imitation of what the Front had already done in its "liberated" zones?

Legitimacy was in VN a function of the people's confidence in the ability of the government to prevail. In 1970 VN, the government that had legitimacy in the eyes of the people was the USG! Not the NLF or Communist Party for sure...And they believed, correctly in the event, that the GVN would fold under PAVN pressure after we left. (As the Vietnamese peasants were wont to tell me in their GI English, "[When] GI go home, VC come in."

So would you assess GVN as never having real legitimacy in the eyes of the South Vietnamese population?

Unquestionably, the pre-WW II French regime had legitimacy. When the communists started subversion in the North Vietnamese countryside in the1930's, they knew that no villager would dare take up arms against a Frenchman. So they began by getting villagers to sully their hands first, by having them participate in "peoples' executions" of Vietnamese village elders.

How true is this? The De Tham resistance went on for almost 30 years before being finally suppressed in 1913. French "legitimacy" must have been rather thin on the ground given their utter failure to defeat the Viet Minh or regain control of the countryside after 1950.

Also, how successful were Diem's programs once the NLF was formed and started hitting back rather than accomodating, that is by 1962, when VC main forces had acheived the ability to mass for battalion-sized attacks on ARVN bases? How truly successful were the Strategic Hamlets, given the incompetence of the Diem administration in the countryside and the inability of the Civil Guard to face down the rural guerrillas, as well as the fact that the man running them and the previously disastrous "agroville" program was a VC agent?

[Mike in Hilo]

Good questions.

1) French: Even after the 30's insurrection, pre-war French strength in all of Indochina was only 70K, acording to Fall, Street without Joy. As you know, the deux-ex-machina of Japanese occupation knocked the hell out of French rule in VN. At war's end, the Japanese commander disobeyed orders and, instead of awaiting the coming allied forces, surrendered men--and all their weapons--to the Viet Minh. Three months later the temporary Nationalist Chinese occupation force for the North arrived and liberally sold weponry to the VM. The Party had been organizing in the populated areas with discreet assistance from the Kempeitai even as Ho's forces were guiding downed US air crews to safety through the northern mountains. Meanwhile, France was on the ropes. The "real" France had just lost the war, 685K military and civilian KIA, including 66K civilian victims of allied bombing! (Fall again). Communists were the largest political party in France, with almost daily rioting, and because of Red political pressure instead of relying on French conscripts, the expeditionary force to VN was heavily North and West African. (But lots of Vietnamese did step up.) True, a multi-province chunk of Central VN coast (where most US casualties would later be incurred) was never reoccupied by the French....But these weaknesses considered, it may be remarkable that the French did, after all, manage to fight the VM to a sustainable (for France) stalemate....until 1950 when the Chinese Communist victory resulted in French loss of the border forts and ensured Viet Minh access to a friendly neighbor.

2) GVN land reform a pale imitation: No. In fact, this was a robust land reform that blanketed the rice lands and was well received. Exception: those few villages where residual VCI influence was such that cadre were able to organize sharecroppers to refuse the land titles. The program was competently and fairly administered. Importantly, most sharecropper rice land was in the Delta and, pre-land reform, the Delta was already the most secure region in the country. Absent security, the necessary surveys could not have been undertaken. The problem with land reform was not that it was too little. Rather, it was too late. By 1971, the nature of the war and of the VC message had changed. The message was now peace at any cost to end the suffering., no longer land. The reform may have been largely irrelevant.

3) Strategic Hamlets: Captured Communist docs. were clear in complaining that the program kept them from their population base, seemingly contradicting US sources saying that ill treatment of participating villagers generated many new insurgents. Large swaths of Delta were in fact cordoned off, thereby draining the swamp....The problems with the program were (a) excessive rate at which new hamlets were added, and (b) decidedly non-strategic-based decisions on where to locate the hamlets.

4) Legitimacy: In 1968, shortly after hard core Ben Tre, in Kien Hoa Province, was cleared, interviewed villagers said that "the government" (=chanh-phu in Viet.) had suffered a great defeat. They referred to the VC as the government! From my arrival in VN in 1971 to the end, no way could you have found Vietnamese who would have referred to VC/NLF as the government. But most Vietnamese plainly believed that we ran the country. Given a colonial history, an abundance of white faces in GVN offices, and VC propaganda as well, ths was an easy thought pattern to fall into. CORDS was supposed to foster a transferrence of such confidence--however misplaced--from the US to the GVN. We never succeeded! Now, once our forces left (Feb73), it became clear to all and sundry that we were not their government. And the GVN did control (to varying degrees) over 90% of the people. (The liberated zone from near Muc Hoa (Delta) to Khe Sanh near the DMZ was largely unpopulated.) And they did govern, and people were reasonably obedient. So, can you have legitimacy by default? Or else my definition of legitimacy was too high a bar and I should have settled for a more modest "a government that is seen to govern." The people knew this was just a hiatus before communism, but most clearly feared and loathed the "night riders" and the conscripts did fight--not for Thieu but to stave off the feared, violent hordes (backlash effect of terrorism).

5) Diem. I wasn't there then, but strongly suspect that he gradually acquired legitimacy. But perhaps in some rural areas, never. Take a look at Fall's papers about '50s VN available on line (look first in the SWJ Library). On a map, he plots a ring around Saigon of wholesale village chief asasinations beginning in 1956 and accellerating dramatically each year. The VC preparing for the upcoming war. Kitson's "subversion" stage. No dip at all during the alleged hiatus when the GVN oppressive apparatus was allegedly working and the enemy quiescent. Suspect the quiescence and "successful supression" was largely VC propaganda, echoed by Karnow et al. ("The North finally responded to distress calls from the southern cadre"--fosters the impression that the insurgency was not a preplanned northern driven enterprise.) The patient enemy campaign bore fruit when the villages were sufficiently controlled and organized to receive and support the main force units (Yes, took them till 1962.) Also see Duncanson, and Ellen Hammer, who contends that stay-at-home cadre called the shots in rural hamlets right from the end of the war in 1954. Clearly, there were some villages where Diem never attained legitimacy.

6) Counterintel issues/penetration and enemy agent recruitment/cryptocommunists in high places: When you mentioned the Agroville guy, you hit upon a grave and debilitating problem. Anecdotes are legion, from the French 40's to the end, and in instances reached strategic import. The issue is obviously linked to the accommodation/political will problems.

7) GVN vs DRV: For securing their base, controlling their people and marshalling them to fight you can't beat a totalitarian regime. And certain classical COIN population and food control/rationing measures seem openly immitative of communist TTPs. Now, economically, the South Vietnamese living standard would have been unbelievably extravagant by DRV standards, even after the bubble burst when the US military departed.

Cheers,
Mike