Fire in the Lake (77 page)

  
7
. The story that follows comes from “Interviews Concerning the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” RAND Corporation File AG-545.

  
8
. Ibid., pp. 3–4, 9–10.

  
9
. Ibid., p. 10.

10
. See W. P. Davison, “Some Observations on Viet Cong Operations in the Villages,” and Pike,
Viet Cong,
pp. 166–194, for further information on the activities or the Liberation Associations.

11
. Davison, “Some Observations,” pp. 149–153.

12
. Samuel L. Popkin, “The Myth of the Village,” p. 86.

13
. A recent example of this process occurred in the early spring of 1971. General Do Cao Tri, the energetic commander of the Saigon government's operations in Cambodia, died in a helicopter accident. Even though Tri had left battle plans for the operation, his successor was unable to put the operation back together again for several months.

14
. See Pike,
Viet Cong,
pp. 210–232, for a more detailed description of the NLF command structure.

15
. This fact is admitted by most American analysts of the subject, but none draw the conclusion that power thereby devolved upon the lower echelons. Only Jeffrey Race makes this argument effectively, in “How They Won.”

16
. Conley,
Communist Insurgent Infrastructure,
pp. 321–322.

17
. Davison, “Some Observations,” p. 49.

The Making of a Revolutionary

  
1
. “Interviews Concerning the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” RAND Corporation File AG-572, pp. 6–8.

  
2
. Wilfred G. Burchett,
Vietnam Will Win!,
pp. 35–39.

  
3
. “Interviews,” RAND Corporation File AG-121, p. 15.

  
4
. Ibid., File G-7, p. 14.

Q. What did you do between operations?

A. Between operations we have cultural training. Those who do not know how to read and write learn to read and write. The Front is very serious about that. It wants to raise the level of education of its members. Not like the GVN soldiers between operations; they go out and drink, gamble or do other nonsense things. Besides cultural training, there is also military training for those with less experience. Sometimes the soldiers go into the villages and make friends with the villagers.

  
5
. “Interviews,” RAND Corporation File AG-121, p. 58.

  
6
. Ibid., File AG-68, p. 4.

  
7
. Ibid., File AG-121, p. 59.

  
8
. Michael Charles Conley,
The Communist Insurgent Infrastructure in South Vietnam,
p. 332.

  
9
. “Interviews,” RAND Corporation File AG-572, p. 30.

10
. Conley,
Communist Insurgent Infrastructure,
p. 350.

11
. Ibid., p. 331.

12
. Susan Sontag,
Trip to Hanoi,
pp. 16–18. See also Mary McCarthy,
Hanoi.

13
. Conley,
Communist Insurgent Infrastructure,
pp. 330–331.

Marxism-Leninism in the Vietnamese Landscape

  
1
. Whether because of the intellectual influence of Marxism or the political influence of Marxist parties themselves, many Vietnamese of the 1960's used Marxist terminology even though they did not belong to the NLF.

  
2
. Ho Chi Minh,
Ho Chi Minh on Revolution,
p. 6.

  
3
. Ho Chi Minh quotes this doctrine in an article reprinted in
Pravda
on Lenin in 1955. Ibid., p. 257.

  
4
. See John T. McAlister, Jr., and Paul Mus,
The Vietnamese and Their Revolution,
chapter 8 (“The Marxist World View and Revolutions in Modernizing Countries”) for further discussion.

  
5
. “Interviews Concerning the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” RAND Corporation File FD-2A, p. 5.

  
6
. Truong Chinh,
President Ho Chin Minh,
p. 73.

  
7
. Douglas Pike,
Viet Cong,
p. 381. Pike also notes that Vietnamese Communism was “characterized by great moralism and was far more moral than ideological” (p. 379). See also J. J. Zasloff, “Political Motivation of the Viet Cong and the Vietminh Regroupees,” pp. 115–118.

  
8
. I. Milton Sacks, “Marxism in Viet-Nam,” in
Marxism in Southeast Asia,
ed. Frank N. Trager, pp. 128–129. Sacks discusses the program of the Trotskyites.

  
9
. McAlister and Mus,
Vietnamese and Their Revolution,
chapter 7 (“Marxism and Traditionalism in Vietnam”). On this issue Ho Chi Minh's own party, in alliance with the Soviet Comintern, had differed with the Trotskyites (of which there was an articulate group in Saigon) as far back as the 1930's. The Trotskyites insisted on a proletarian revolution; the Indochinese Communist Party looked for an alliance with the peasants and the national bourgeoisie. (See Sacks, “Marxism,” in
Marxism in Southeast Asia,
ed. Trager, pp. 102–170, for further details of this ideological debate.) In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh's agents in the south assassinated six Trotskyite leaders and effectively destroyed that party in Vietnam. Just what influence the Trotskyites might have had had they survived remains unknown, but, as McAlister notes (
Vietnam: Origins of the Revolution,
p. 208), the fact that Ho was able to eliminate them so easily indicates that their party, like all the other urban political parties, had no mass base and no strong organizational structure. The suspicion is that the Trotskyites were just another group of urban intellectuals who in the last analysis depended upon France.

10
. See Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
pp. 121–126, for a discussion of the dependence of the colonial proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

11
. Ho Chi Minh,
Ho Chi Minh,
p. 341.

12
. The North Vietnamese newspapers,
Nhan Dan,
printed severe critiques of Party programs — so severe, in fact, that American analysts, comparing it with other Communist newspapers, tended to overestimate the seriousness of the political or economic difficulty it discussed. The paper did not, of course, represent an independent editorial position, but rather the Party's critique of itself.

13
. Ho Chi Minh,
Ho Chi Minh,
pp. 340–341.

5: Mise en scène

  
1
. Marcus G. Raskin and Bernard B. Fall, eds.,
The Viet-Nam Reader,
p. 347.

  
2
.
New York Times,
7 February 1966.

6: Politicians and Generals

one

  
1
. Jean Lacouture,
Vietnam: Between Two Truces,
pp. 99–102.

  
2
. Robert Shaplen,
The Lost Revolution,
p. 206.

  
3
. Lacouture,
Vietnam,
p. 122, gives this atmosphere.

  
4
. Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
p. 122ff., gives an excellent description of this class.

  
5
. David Wurfel, “The Saigon Political Elite,” p. 530. “An analysis of forty ministers in six cabinets since 1962 indicates that little more than one-third had all their advanced training in Vietnam.”

  
6
. Fanon,
Wretched of the Earth,
pp. 37–38.

  
7
. The southern Catholics leaned towards the support of the anti-Communist regimes, but they were not so intransigent as to support the war indefinitely at the expense of the entire southern population. In January 1968, just before the Tet offensive, the archdiocese of Saigon issued a statement calling for peace and a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. The northerners tended to be more politically “reliable.” At least until 1970 the military regimes could count on the refugee settlements around Saigon to provide truckloads of demonstrators for them on command.

  
8
. The Catholic organizations were the only ones whose numbers could be estimated with any degree of accuracy. In the summer of 1967,
Time
magazine spoke of Tri Quang's one million followers. But there the editors had performed a statistical miracle equivalent to that of determining the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin. (What kind of pin? is the first objection.)

  
9
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
p. 247. The Americans suspected Tri Quang because of his Communist-inspired methods (his propaganda techniques, according to Shaplen) but they themselves were to hire former Viet Minh officers to head all of their various pacification programs.

10
. Lacouture,
Vietnam,
p. 121.

11
. McNamara report to President Johnson on the Vietnam situation, 21 December 1963, in Neil Sheehan et al.,
The Pentagon Papers,
pp. 271–274.

12
. George McTurnan Kahin and John W. Lewis,
The United States in Vietnam,
p. 152.

13
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
pp. 232–234.

14
. Ibid., pp. 227–234.

15
. Lacouture,
Vietnam,
p. 121.

16
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
p. 228.

17
. But of course they did not. The coup against Diem was conceived by a civilian, the shrewd security officer, Dr. Tran Kim Tuyen, and made possible by the self-immolations of several others.

18
. George Carver, “The Real Revolution in South Vietnam,” p. 404.

19
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
p. 228.

two

  
1
. Marcus G. Raskin and Bernard B. Fall, eds.,
The Viet-Nam Reader,
p. 201.

  
2
. Richard Critchfield,
The Long Charade,
p. 96.

  
3
. Raskin and Fall,
Viet-Nam Reader,
p. 200.

  
4
. Robert Shaplen,
The Lost Revolution,
p. 246.

  
5
. Ibid., p. 270.

  
6
. Ibid., p. 277.

  
7
. Jean Lacouture,
Vietnam: Between Two Truces,
p. 135.

  
8
. Ibid., pp. 136–137.

  
9
. Excerpts from Saigon airgram to the State Department, 24 December 1964, in Neil Sheehan et al.,
The Pentagon Papers,
pp. 379–381. Taylor may not even have been sure to whom he was speaking. He asked at one point who the spokesman for the group was.

10
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
pp. 297–301.

11
. A later example of this same mechanical logic was General Ky's behavior during the Cambodian invasion in 1970. Very much excited by the idea of ARVN troops going into someone else's country, Ky asked to head the expedition. When Thieu allowed him to conduct the negotiations but refused him a military role, Ky began to give quiet support to the disabled veterans' and students' protest against it. (
New York Times,
12 June 1970.)

12
. Shaplen,
Lost Revolution,
pp. 342–346.

13
. William C. Westmoreland,
Report on the War in Vietnam,
p. 98.

7:
The United States Enters the War

  
1
. Neil Sheehan et al.,
The Pentagon Papers,
p. 257.

  
2
. Ibid., pp. 307, 313–314. 323.

  
3
. Ibid., pp. 341–343.

  
4
. Ibid., pp. 382–386, and Daniel Ellsberg, “Escalating in a Quagmire.”

  
5
. Ibid., pp. 462–474.

  
6
. William C. Westmoreland,
Report on the War in Vietnam,
p. 100.

  
7
. Ibid. From Westmoreland's account it is impossible to discover what form this “concerted effort” actually took.

  
8
. Ibid. MACV estimated that thirty-five thousand enemy troops were killed that year.

  
9
. Blair Clark, “Westmoreland Appraised,” pp. 96–101.

10
. Westmoreland apparently did not realize how attached these ARVN divisions were to their own territories — his sense of scale being somewhat different to that of the Vietnamese. In fact the Twenty-fifth did not recover from its displacement. Years later the ARVN commander-in-chief, General Cao Van Vien, was to call it, “not only the worst division in the-Vietnamese army, but the worst division in any army in the world.”

11
. Sheehan,
Pentagon Papers,
p. 391.

12
.
The Vietnam Hearings,
p. 183.

8: The Buddhist Crisis

  
1
.
Time
magazine, 18 February 1966.

  
2
. Zorthian had assumed that Ky had chosen to fire Thi because he was the strongest of the corps commanders. After Thi was fired, so the logic went, he could get rid of the other corrupt officers more easily. The theory, however, depended on what was meant by “strong.” Thi's honesty and devotion to duty had made him popular with many of the officers and civil servants in his own corps area, but it had at the same time isolated him from Saigon and the rest of the country. The other three corps commanders, by contrast, presided like huge spiders over a countrywide network of intrigue and corruption. An attack on one of them would have meant an attack on all of them.

  
3
.
New York Times,
5 April 1966.

  
4
. Takashi Oka, “Buddhism as a Political Force. No. 5: Danang and Afterwards,” P. 3.

  
5
.
New York Times,
9 April 1966.

  
6
. Ibid., 14 April 1966.

  
7
. Richard Critchfield,
The Long Charade,
p. 64.

  
8
. Ibid., p. 293.

  
9
. That the Americans had carefully kept their troops out of Hue only increased the contrast between it and Saigon, it and all other Vietnamese cities.