Tuesday, May 5, 2015

45th anniversary post






Happy Cinco De Mayo! 

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the day I stepped off the Freedom Bird at Travis Air Force Base ...


... to be welcomed home by screaming hippies, shouting "Baby killer!".

I was going to go back and tell them I didn't kill any babies,

But the MP's that were escorting us past them, wouldn't allow me to go over to the fence. Hmm, I wonder why?


After 418 days in the land of the big bivouac[i], a ton of MP's escort those of us Sp-4 and below, from the tarmac to the front door of an EM club or some sort of bar. As I recall it was conveniently located near several forms of public transportation.

My first thought was, “What do we need MP’s for? Who is going to be stupid enough to attack a planeload of soldiers fresh back from the War?”

Later I realized they weren’t there for our protection, they were there to protect the hippies.

So then I go into the EM club, order a drink and I get carded ... I am 19.

“Are you kidding[ii] me?” I shouted. “I just got home from Vietnam, and I can’t have a [iii] drink?”

The poor bartender, who probably had to put up with the same thing several times a day ... every day ... was sympathetic ... but

“Hey, I understand man,” he stated, shrugging his shoulders. “Hell, I agree with you. But, there’s nothin’ I can do about it. I don’t want to get fired.”

So, several of us who were under 21 went back outside looking for a safe place to smoke a doob. The MP’s were gone by then, so that wasn’t too hard to find.

A military bus to the airport and a quick flight down to The City,[iv] a taxi to Union Square to feed the mind & a really freaky bus trip to Salinas to visit some graves that I never managed to find. I did find myself at my ex-fiancé’s house. Not sure why I went there ... perhaps to flash my wedding ring in her face. But she wasn’t home.

I did find out that my social skills had deteriorated. I don’t know how long I sat staring at the wall. Somewhere along the line, John, her father, drove me to the Greyhound Bus depot. Probably didn’t say 5 words the whole time I was there. I never did see him again after that.

Mom was ecstatic to see me home and then sorry again to see me dash off to Kansas. My wife[v] was already there at the time. I ended up being stationed there at Ft. Riley, even though I put in for Ft. Ord ... typical.

A lot of the combat veterans with time left in the service were being sent to Riley. Their primary purpose was to fill out a Division sized ready reaction force to defend Europe in the event of heavy NATO action there, i.e. a Soviet attack.

Our unspoken mission was to train 90-day wonders before they were sent to Vietnam. We did a lot of bivouac & war games. We often taught these LT’s some hard lessons.

One time our then-current 2nd Louie was shouting orders that although technically by-the-book correct, would never be done in actual combat.

The seasoned veteran sergeants argued with him, but he insisted we would do it his way. So we marched right up the middle of this wide open valley with thick forests of trees half way down the hill on each side. About half way thru the valley we looked at each other,

“Man, if there were any real enemy[vi] around we would already be dead”.

“No kidding man."

"We are dead.”

“We should just start dropping as we walk.”

Looking around at each other, everyone began grinning ... then one by one we fell to the ground, playing dead. Next, groups of 4 or 5 fell until the entire platoon was lying there (including 3 of the Noncoms).

“Get up off the ground, you idiots,” LT screamed. “What the [vii] are you doing?”

“No can do, sir,” came an unknown voice. “We’re all dead.”

“What?”

“That’s right, sir.” One of the ‘dead’ NCOs stated, as he jumped to his feet, dusting off his uniform before saluting the LT. “You walked us into an ambush, sir. We are all dead.”

One by one, then by two’s and three’s, the “dead” rise, dusting themselves off, and then sauntering off toward the platoon’s camp area.

“Form up the platoon”

“This is the platoon, sir,” Sarge said. The Platoon Sargent, sporting two stars on his CIB, rigidly controlled the corner of his mouth to prevent a laugh from slipping out. All of the NCOs standing around him fought back their own laughter, as well. “The rest of the men are all dead, sir.” The Noncoms made no attempt to form up the platoon.

I won’t explore LT’s reaction as we all went back to camp ... but the response to LT’s reaction was shouted over someone’s shoulder as the platoon walked off.

“What are you going to do, sir? Send us to Vietnam?”


[i] Well, minus a quick trip home to square away an unexpected bundle & about 2 1/2 months between a hospital in Yokohama and recovery in Camp Zama.
[ii] I don’t think “kidding” was the word I used at the time.
[iii] Expletive deleted.
[iv] San Francisco
[v] Long since ex
[vi] Derogatory name deleted
[vii] Expletive deleted

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Credibility Gap Part 3: Other Factors


Credibility Gap Part 3: Other Factors

Another factor that contributed to the credibility gap was President Kennedy’s relaxing of the “official military censorship of World War II and Korea in favor of managed news”[i]. Kennedy was concerned about negative press over censorship.


His caution backfired as a press corps that was used to a certain amount of wartime censorship got a taste of freedom, so to speak. When the Saigon government maintained the censorship that Kennedy lifted, it angered the press corps.

This was about the time when WWII correspondents were retiring and a new guard of young reporters entered the stage lacking experience with the military censorship.

I mentioned before that the old guard knew it could cost lives to reveal sensitive information so they were trusted to hear classified information and were able to comprehend and formulate informed opinions about the war in the context of the big picture.

In an attempt to get a scoop, some young reporters released enough information to get people killed. So the young guard with no tolerance for military censorship, gradually (and in some instances very rapidly) found the information gateways becoming clogged with misinformation and doubletalk.
 
Another communications nightmare was that the new guard was not trained in military strategy[ii]. Therefore they were confused by military jargon and often dismissed what they were being told as political doubletalk. Sometimes the doubletalk was doubletalk, and sometimes it was military or political jargon that was not understood.

The US military leaders were also aware that information that showed up on the international wire services was accessed by North Vietnam and available to the Vietcong as well.

So Kennedy’s “managing news” meant information about ongoing operations became scarce and non-committal. ... Causing the press to distrust more and write negatively about it. ... Causing the government spokespersons to tighten up even more & sometimes lie ... angering the reporters who ...

... “mistrusted the press releases, (that) while often valid, were extrapolated from ‘double check and confirm’ to reject without confirmation simply because the report came from the government[iii]

Well, you get where this is going, a circle of mistrust and bad feelings spiraling out of control.

But if that’s not bad enough, the press, failing to get information they needed from official sources, went to sources that often had one-sided or incomplete information. Skewed conclusions were drawn.

Subjective reporting and editing replaced the objectivity that is required by the social contract between the press and the people.

The reporters that were looking for the sensational stories of death and destruction, ignored the stories about the many good things that were happening:

Major General James C. Smith recalls that “a reporter followed him around for several days ... but his series was never printed because it was too complimentary”[iv]. 


The politicians made mistakes with the press as well. Cosmos states, “By deliberately understating the scale and costs of the U.S. commitment in July 1965, President Johnson made inevitable an erosion of congressional and public trust in his administration as the conflict went on”[v].

Politicians felt the press made mistakes too. “The war was reported battle by battle,” Nixon counseled. “But little or no sense of the underlying purpose of the fighting was conveyed. Eventually this contributed to the impression that we were fighting in military and moral quicksand, rather than toward an important and worthwhile objective”[vi].

An example of this is found in the coverage of Hamburger Hill. The media never bothers to mention the millions of tons of weapons and supplies that were captured and destroyed when Hamburger Hill was taken. They don't mention that the loss of these supplies delayed the next communist offensive by 7-8 months.

Nor do they mention that the deep underground 2000 lb-bomb-proof storage bunkers along with their contents were destroyed before abandoning the Hill. These bunkers could not be blown by B-52s.

They also failed to mention that destroying these underground storage bunkers & their contents was the main objective of operation. The bunkers were very labor intensive to build & rebuild. The enemy troops that were employed rebuilding the bunker had to be diverted from some other purpose. Again, significantly hindering the communist war effort.

A high enemy body count was the gravy for the operation, not the objective. The weapons supply depot had to be taken by ground pounders.

Why abandon the base once it was taken? To keep the base may have created another Khe Sanh. Strategists calculated it was less costly to abandon and retake the hill later, if it became necessary, than to spend the effort to hold the hill. It was quite possible the enemy would rebuild elsewhere land we would be holding the hill for nothing.


It is not wise to let your enemy know what your strategies are. Yet, this simple truth escaped the Vietnam press corps. They complained there was no strategy, but they could not understand that the military would not reveal their strategy to the press because they did not want it given to the enemy.

It’s Wartime Security 101. How could they not know that if the revealed critical strategic information it could cause American and Allied casualties?

The Pentagon Papers didn’t help matters much either.

So bottom line the media didn’t trust the government and the government didn’t trust the media. The problems created by the Credibility Gap have ripples that are felt even today.

Please email questions and comments to VietnamWarMyths@gmail.com









[i] Tallman, G., & McKerns, J. (2000). Press Mess: David Halberstam, the Buddhist Crisis, and U.S. Policy in Vietnam, 1963. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 2(3), 109-153. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete database, p. 116.
[ii] Lawrence, John (2002). The Cat From Hue. New York: Public Affairs, p. 51; (Even the greenest rookie in the Army would know the answer to the question he poses); p. 388 (He doesn’t understand a principle as simple as reinforcements filling the ranks of the dead in the destroyed unit. JL is one example of ignorance being a wedge in the communication process. A combination of these various wedges led to the Credibility Gap).
[iii] Tallman, G., & McKerns, J. (2000). Press Mess: David Halberstam, the Buddhist Crisis, and U.S. Policy in Vietnam, 1963. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 2(3), 109-153, p. 116.
[iv] Kinnard, D., (,2001, pp. 445-456). Vietnam Reconsidered: An attitudinal Survey of U.S. Army General Officers. Unknown periodical. Op articles > 543316generalssurveyed.pdf p. 451.
[v] Cosmos, G. A., (2006). MACV: The Joint Command in the years of escalation, 1962-1967, (United States Army in Vietnam). Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, p. 245.
[vi] Nixon, R. M. (1978), The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. Grosset and Dunlap, New York, p. 350.

Friday, January 2, 2015

Nationalism Vs. Communism: A Rebuttal


I am going to break from the credibility gap today to answer the following comment posted on YouTube. Normally I hesitate to respond to commentators who fail to cite their sources, however, it is time to set the record straight.

The following was directed at me (I lined thru it so you know I did not write this:


"+@VietnamWarMyths You don't know what you are talking about.
South Vietnamese nationalism is precisely what you were fighting to crush. The Viet Minh nationalists fought the French, then the Japanese, the French again, and then the United States after the US installed its dictatorship in the South which attacked the nationalists.
It was the Vietnamese nationalists who were fighting for the liberation and independence of South Vietnam from the US and its installed military juntas.
The idea that a defenseless third world country in Indochina was going to take over the world is simply ludicrous."

I am not sure where you got the (ludicrous) idea that I said North Vietnam was trying to take over the world, but let’s clarify that right off the bat.

The Vietnam War (American War from the Vietnamese point of view) was one of dozens of “wars of liberation” the Soviet and Chinese leaders were attempting to use to take over the world[i]. As I said in my first comment, the Soviet Communists and Chinese Communists were trying to take over the world.

That clarified, I will now respond to the issues from the beginning:

“You don't know what you are talking about.”

I have spent decades studying the Vietnam War. 3 years of that time was spent in full-time graduate level academic research, studying original & secondary source documents from the North Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Vietcong, the Australians, the Americans including both government, media and antiwar sources. I have hundreds of pages of notes collected from this research. The index alone for those notes is fifteen pages long. Also note that I cite my sources.

"South Vietnamese nationalism is precisely what you were fighting to crush. The Viet Minh nationalists fought the French, then the Japanese, the French again, and then the United States after the US installed its dictatorship in the South which attacked the nationalists."

You are right about the French, and about the Japanese, more or less. Your level of accuracy fails miserably after that.

It was North Vietnam that was trying to, and succeeded in crushing South Vietnamese nationalism. Note that South Vietnam no longer exists as a nation. We, Americans, did not crush it, the North Vietnamese did. We were trying to protect South Vietnam from communist aggression & forced unification under communist rule.

The peoples of North and South Vietnam were two very different peoples. The southerners did not want to be dominated by or unified with the North.

If you don’t believe that, ask these descendants of South Vietnamese nationals still lamenting the loss of their county due to communist aggression http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ff-south-vietnamese-flag-20141228-story.html 

Next, I will call your attention to the organizational documents of the National Liberation Front (NLF or political arm of the Vietcong) known as the Manifesto and Program of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam[ii]. The South Vietnamese did not create this document; the North Vietnamese created it. Observe the second paragraph opens with the statement, “Our compatriots in South Vietnam[iii]” (RVN). This is one of many indicators that show that the South Vietnamese did not create the Vietcong.

The Vietcong (VC) was a puppet organization created by the Communists in North Vietnam (DVR). After the non-communist government in the South surrendered, the Northern government took control of South Vietnam away from the Vietcong (by this time the NLF had morphed into the Provisional Revolutionary Government or PRG) leadership, systematically squeezing the Southerners out of the government until the North controlled the entire nation. Truong Nhu Tang, the Vietcong Minister of Justice, while discussing the aftermath of the fall of Saigon stated,

Truong Nhu Tang
“My administrators began claiming that they had to carry out orders from their superiors in the Northern government rather than the directives they received from us. ... My guests (Northern leaders) succeeded in conveying to me the fundamentality of the North’s resolve to control the Provisional Government ... I had no illusions about what was happening, and I knew that neither I nor my colleagues would be in office long”[iv].

Even though President Diem may have been repressive, very few South Vietnamese chose to escape to the north, because they knew Diem was less oppressive than the Ho regime. Those that did migrate north were primarily Communists.

However, when the DVR was forming in the mid 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens voted against communism with their feet. They chose to leave the north because they were quite aware of the repressive controls imposed by the Communists in the north. The South Vietnamese did not want a communist government!

"The US and its installed military juntas."

A Constitutional Assembly of 118 men and women was elected by 85% of the people, in spite of the fact that “communist guerrillas attacked voters, polling places and even candidates. One of those who was elected was murdered by the Vietcong immediately after the election”[v].
Nguyen Cao Ky

Through early 1967 the South Vietnamese Constitutional Assembly and the South Vietnamese Directorate met in Saigon and drafted a constitution[vi]. This was a combined effort of their military and civilian officials, not Westmoreland, not Taylor, not Johnson.

Diem’s eventual successor, President Thieu was elected in a nationwide election where over 75% of the population turned out to vote in spite of continued Communist reprisals against anyone who voted[vii]. That’s a higher percentage turnout than any election in the history of the United States and we don’t risk death for voting. The Vietnamese people installed President Thieu, not the US.

This is evidence of two things: First, by 1967 the Vietcong did not control the hearts and minds of the people. Second, in most instances, the Vietcong did not have the capability to carry out their threats because the elections were held with large turnouts in spite of those threats. If the VC had the capability they would have closed down the polls.

Premier Ky stated, “The Vietcong positioned themselves as liberators ... (However) after Tet it was plain that the Vietcong were mistaken, that as much as people found fault with their government, they did not want to live under communism”[viii].

By the middle of 1968 the Vietcong were so unpopular among the South Vietnamese that 70% of the VC ranks were filled with Northern conscripts[ix], and many of the remaining 30% were teenagers stolen from their villages.

After returning to III Corps from the hospital in Japan, I was a guard on the Dau Tiang bridge platoon for about a month. We had daily contact with the villagers in Dau Taing. On three occasions, against regulations, we hid teenagers from the village (two of which were 12-year old boys) on the bridge because the VC were in the village drafting these kids for their army. I repeat the VC were kidnapping children to fight!

If the VC were as popular as the media claimed they were, they would have no need to draft anyone, they would have plenty of volunteers.

"It was the Vietnamese nationalists who were fighting for the liberation and independence of South Vietnam from the US."

Now, you may have gotten the mistaken idea that the VC were fighting for Vietnamese nationalism because many of the rank and file VC, who were Southerners by birth or ancestry believed the same thing. They, like you were duped by communist propaganda.

Truong Nhu Tang, the VC Minister of Justice, himself a former communist, admits, that under direction from the northern honchos, they specifically did not mention communism to the rank and file VC members because if they had, most would have deserted because they were anti-communist. This does not mean that the VC were in fact fighting for “nationalism”.

While it is true that they believed they were fighting to remove foreign invaders from their land, they were unwittingly fighting for forced unification under communist rule. The claim, that the US was a foreign invader, was, after all, a main point in the communist Dich Van propaganda program. 

Speaking of Vietcong training for the Southerners, Truong stated, "As a general rule there was no political indoctrination; Marxist subjects, for example were never touched on. ... Northern troops ... (received) a steady infusion of Marxist precepts and class analysis. Had we attempted similar indoctrination of the Southern peasant guerrillas, they would have considered it worse torture than the regime could possibly devise for them"[x]

Many of the higher echelon of the VC leadership were well aware that the organization was a communist organization, but they also took great pains to ensure that the rank and file Southerners did not know this fact[xi]. Because all the previous foreign occupiers were colonialists, it was easy to dupe Southern nationalists into believing the Americans were colonialists as well.

The Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) were the true South Vietnamese nationalists. The VC only thought they were. All the Vietcong’s efforts only succeeded in costing them their county to communist aggression. Those that did not die in the struggle paid an unexpected price when they found their sovereignty stolen from them by the Northern invaders[xii].


[i] See Domino Theory below.
[ii] Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai (1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, pp. 319-322.
[iii] Ibid, p. 319.
[iv] Ibid, pp. 266-267, parentheses added.
[v] Cao Ky, N., Wolf, M. J., (2002). Buddha’s Child: My fight to save Vietnam. New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 231.
[vi] Ibid., p. 232.
[vii] Ibid., p.  
[viii] Cao Ky, N., Wolf, M. J., (2002). Buddha’s Child: My fight to save Vietnam. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 283-284.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai (1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, pp. 164-166.
[xi] Ibid., p. 164.
[xii] Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai (1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers