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Gulf of Tonkin incident not the real start -Reassessing the causes
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George Bitsoli
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Aug 02, 2009 08:54 PDT
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All of the Dominoes did not fall, thanks to the Honorable efforts and
sacrifices of our Forces....
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Reassessing the causes
Gulf of Tonkin incident not the real start
By Robert F. Turner | Sunday, August 2, 2009
Today marks the 45th anniversary of a 1964 attack by North Vietnamese P-4
torpedo boats upon the American destroyer USS Maddox in international waters
in the Gulf of Tonkin. The incident remains shrouded by confusion and
misinformation and continues to be misperceived by many as the reason
America went to war in Vietnam. Today may be a useful time to set the record
straight.
First, contrary to popular belief, the Aug. 2 attack definitely did occur.
No less an authority than Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap -- North Vietnam's defense
minister at the time -- admitted so in a 1995 meeting with former U.S.
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara.
Nor is there a scintilla of evidence that President Johnson sought to
provoke North Vietnam so he could take America to war. On the contrary, Mr.
Johnson's focus was on his domestic Great Society programs. His primary
concern about Vietnam was that the war not be lost on his watch. Indeed, he
was under considerable pressure from Congress and public opinion to respond
more firmly to growing communist aggression in South Vietnam.
There remains uncertainty about why the Aug. 2 attack occurred -- Hanoi may
have associated the presence of the Maddox off its coast with a series of
covert CIA naval operations far to the south and involving South Vietnamese
assets. If so, that clearly was not the intention of the Johnson
administration or the U.S. military.
It now seems clear that reports of a second attack, on Aug. 4, 1964, were
mistaken -- largely a product of "freak weather effects on radar and
overeager sonarmen," as the ship's skipper would conclude later. It also
seems clear that there was a midlevel "coverup" at the National Security
Agency when it was discovered that communications intercepts on Aug. 4 had
been mistranslated -- which may have contributed to the confusion about a
second attack.
One of the greatest myths of the Vietnam War is that America went to war
because of the reported "incidents" in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August
1964. It is true that on Aug. 7 Congress enacted a statute by a combined
vote of 504-2 (99.6 percent approval) that Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright, in answer to a question from
another senator during the floor debate, agreed would authorize the
president to "use such force as could lead into war." But the resolution
noted that "these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign
of aggression that the communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging
against its neighbors," and it authorized the president "to take all
necessary measures, including the use of armed force, to assist any ...
protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting
assistance in defense of its freedom."
Those "protocol states" were South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- countries
we had solemnly pledged to defend by treaty and that the president had been
authorized to defend by an almost unanimous Congress. Yet when President
Nixon sent U.S. forces across the Cambodian border in 1970 to attack North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply areas, congressional liberals and "peace"
activists insisted there was no legal authority to use force in Cambodia.
It was not until May 1984 that Hanoi publicly confirmed the decision that
really started the Vietnam War. A cover story in the English-language
monthly Vietnam Courier detailed the "absolute secret" decision made by the
Lao Dong Party on May 19, 1959 -- more than five years before the Gulf of
Tonkin incident -- to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending tens of
thousands of troops and countless tons of military equipment into South
Vietnam to overthrow its government. It was to stop the communist takeover
of South Vietnam by force that America went to war, just as we did in 1950
to protect South Korea.
By preventing a communist military victory in South Vietnam for more than a
decade, we bought time for Thailand, Indonesia and other potential targets
to become stronger. While we were doing that, China -- which in 1965 had
been supporting guerrilla movements in Indochina, Thailand, Indonesia, the
Philippines and as far away as Mozambique in Africa -- went through an
internal upheaval called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. By 1971,
China was no longer in the business of exporting revolution. Had America
walked away from Indochina in 1965, things might have worked out very
differently.
Many scholars today argue that under Gen. Creighton Abrams Jr. the war in
South Vietnam had been virtually won by the spring offensive of 1972, when
South Vietnamese forces held their own against all Hanoi could throw against
them with only American air power for support. The Viet Cong already had
been destroyed as an effective fighting force in South Vietnam, with all
major battles being fought by uniformed North Vietnamese regulars.
But Congress and the American people were tired of the war, and in May 1973,
Congress enacted a new law making it illegal for the president to spend
money for U.S. combat operations anywhere in Indochina.
America threw in the towel and, in the eyes of many experts, snatched defeat
from the jaws of victory. Hanoi sent virtually its entire army behind
columns of Soviet-made tanks to conquer its neighbors, and in the first
three years after the communist victory, more people were killed in
Indochina than had died in combat during the previous 14 years.
The Yale University Cambodia Genocide Project estimated that in tiny
Cambodia alone, 1.8 million human beings -- more than 20 percent of the
country's population -- were slaughtered by the communist victors.
Was going to war in Vietnam a wise decision in retrospect? Was it worth the
price? Honest people differ. But one thing the Vietnam War clearly was not.
It was not a consequence of a minor little misunderstanding in the Gulf of
Tonkin 45 years ago today.
Robert F. Turner has taught undergraduate and graduate seminars on the
Vietnam War at the University of Virginia for many years. He wrote the 1975
book "Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development." He served twice in
Vietnam as an Army officer.
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/02/reassessing-the-causes/
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Video... Click Here ....
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7223462422195110030&ei=m6R1SquMFYearwKWi-HHCg&q=Media+vietnam+war
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Additionally confirmed via other sources, was that the Western anti-war
Movements and Groups were being supported
and many directed from Soviet Moscow.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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[Three carrier-based naval air officers contemplate an unauthorized bombing
raid on Hanoi.]
"Hell, maybe if you don't get the leaders, you might get Jane Fonda or
Ramsey Clark."....
"If I had that kind of luck, I'd have won the Irish Sweepstakes by now and
be married to the Playmate of the Year."
--- Stephen Coonts, Flight of the Intruder, 1986
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