Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam (25 page)

As the United States and North Vietnam crept step by step toward direct military confrontation, Giap had already developed a remarkably prescient critique of his American adversaries and their dilemma. In
The South Vietnam People Will Win
(1964), he exhibited a particularly shrewd appreciation of the United States’ strengths and weaknesses as it waged its “special war” in the early 1960s, well before the deployment of American ground forces. “Militarily speaking,” wrote the commander in chief of PAVN in 1964,

 . . . their army is superior to ours in effectiveness, modern weapons, and mobility. All their temporary strong points must be studied carefully, especially when solving questions regarding operations and campaigns. However, it is certain that all these strong points cannot make up for their most basic weak points in morale and politics, which are inherent in an enemy of the people, in a counter-revolutionary army. But in the south of our country, these weak points are all the more serious owing to the weakness of the southern reactionary forces [i.e., the ARVN]. . . . In a revolutionary war, the people’s political superiority will be translated into a material force capable of turning the tables on the enemy, overcoming all difficulties and handicaps to defeat . . . an enemy who is at first several times stronger.
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Giap understood very early in the game what the major players in America’s strategy failed to grasp until 1968—that a South Vietnamese government and society sustained by American power was by definition mired in “contradictions,” the Marxist-Leninist term for internal tensions and problems that render a regime dysfunctional, at odds with itself. Again writing in 1964, Giap pointed to “two fundamental contradictions:
one
between our southern people and the aggressive imperialists [the Americans] and their henchmen;
the other
is the contradiction between the peasants, and feudal landlordism.”
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The regime’s strategic hamlet program, designed to provide security and freedom, in fact amounted to little more than a “huge system of prisons.”
²⁶
Without the support of the people, it was bound to fail. By 1965, it had done so.

So, too, America’s relationship with its “ally” in Saigon was marred by contradiction and dysfunction. Hindsight confirms the wisdom of Giap’s claim that the “internal contradictions between the U.S. imperialists and their henchmen grew so sharp that in late 1963 and early in 1964, the U.S. imperialists had to stage two coups d’état aimed at switching horses in
midstream and salvaging the situation.”
²⁷
Of course, neither of the coups could have happened without American complicity, a fact that went far to confirm that the United States was indeed a neocolonial power. The Americans, Giap continued, claim the Republic of Vietnam is an independent and sovereign state “because they want to overshadow the fundamental contradictions between our people and the aggressive imperialists, and to create conditions for the puppet administration hidden behind the false pattern of nation and sovereignty to deceive the masses and win over them.”
²⁸

Throughout 1964, the forces of the Revolution made startling progress. By year’s end total troop strength in the South reached approximately 170,000, including 50 main-force battalions. Senior American officials looked on with dismay as ARVN forces were outclassed by PLAF units of inferior size and mobility. ARVN casualties jumped from 1,000 a month early in the year to 3,000 in December. Even when the Communists took heavy casualties from ARVN supporting arms, ARVN infantry invariably lacked the aggressiveness to close in on its enemy with fire and maneuver tactics. Most PLAF casualties were inflicted by artillery and airpower, not in direct combat with ARVN infantrymen. American advisers also noted the resilience of the PLAF units. Even after sustaining heavy casualties, they were able to bounce back quickly and launch new attacks, often in locations distant from the initial engagements, and at times and places of their own choosing.

In December 1964, while the Johnson administration engaged in tortuous debate over how to respond to the looming crisis in South Vietnam, the PLAF launched powerful attacks throughout Vietnam. Forty miles south of Saigon the largest Communist operation of the war to date unfolded around the “secure” village of Binh Gia. Two reinforced battalions of PLAF troops took on seven ARVN battalions. In a series of carefully planned lightning attacks, the Communists isolated and then shredded several South Vietnamese units, ambushed forces sent in for relief, and then quickly retired in good order to hidden base areas where the ARVN forces dared not follow.

On January 2, 1965, the PLAF reemerged near Binh Gia and ambushed two companies of elite ARVN rangers supported by tanks, inflicting very heavy casualties. All told, 200 ARVN troops died around Bing Gia, along with five US advisers. In a comment that would be echoed hundreds of times by other American professional soldiers, a US officer on the scene at Binh Gia remarked, “The Vietcong fought magnificently, as well as any
infantry anywhere. But the big question for me is how its troops, a thousand or more of them, could wander around the countryside so close to Saigon without being detected. That tells [us] something about this war. You can only beat the other guy if you isolate him from the population.”
²⁹

Meanwhile, Johnson’s senior advisers were split on the issue of what the United States should do. Walt Rostow urged the president to send in combat troops immediately to show Hanoi that the United States was “prepared to face down any form of escalation.”
³⁰
George Ball feared that direct American intervention would “set in train a series of events leading, at the end of the road, to the direct intervention of China and nuclear war.”
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Ball wisely believed that, in the long run, the United States couldn’t substitute its own presence for an effective South Vietnamese government. Maxwell Taylor, who served as ambassador to South Vietnam from 1964 to 1965, also believed that the key to defeating the insurgency ultimately lay in the emergence of a stable government in Saigon. Without it, American aid was only a “spinning wheel unable to transmit impulsion” to the ARVN’s struggle in the field. But Taylor quickly added, “It is impossible to foresee a stable and effective government under any name in anything like the near future. . . . We sense the mounting feeling of war weariness and hopelessness that pervade South Vietnam . . . there is chronic discouragement.”
³²

Despite the penumbra of skepticism about Vietnam in Washington, the American crusade had its own curious momentum. Too much had been invested by late 1964 to give up the ship. Already, thousands of federal bureaucrats and experts from scores of different non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were busy at work upgrading Vietnam’s underdeveloped infrastructure, economy, and government, but the massive effort was fraught with interagency quarreling and lacked coordination. Relationships between “can do” American officials and wary South Vietnamese were already strained by misunderstanding and mistrust. For the time being Johnson waffled. He would not seek a political settlement through negotiation, nor would he seek to inflict a devastating military defeat on the insurgency.

By early 1964, the administration had formed a contingency plan for obtaining a congressional resolution to take direct action in the event of North Vietnamese “provocation.” It was tacitly understood, rather cynically, that such a “provocation” could be announced whenever it suited Johnson’s convenience. A graduated response to the provocation was envisaged, beginning with air attacks against North Vietnam, and progressing,
if need be, to the deployment of American ground forces. In early August the administration found its pretext for direct attacks against Hanoi when North Vietnamese patrol boats fired torpedoes at US destroyers, the North Vietnamese captains believing, not unreasonably, that the destroyers were part of a South Vietnamese commando raid then taking place on the coast in the vicinity of the American vessels. Johnson immediately ordered US fighters to attack targets inside North Vietnam.

A few days later, on August 7, 1964, after deceptively presenting the incident as an unprovoked attack, Johnson obtained from Congress the Tonkin Gulf Resolution granting him wide authority “to take all necessary measures” to defend US forces in Southeast Asia. The resolution served as the legal basis for the deployment of American forces in Vietnam for the rest of the war. Johnson was heard to remark that the resolution gave him an open checkbook to take action. “It’s like my grandmother’s nightshirt,” Johnson quipped. “It covers everything.”
³³

Giap and the rest of the senior leadership in Hanoi responded with alacrity to the attack, reading it correctly as a signal of American intention to shift the conflict in South Vietnam from a “special war” waged by the South Vietnamese with American support to a “limited war” fought directly by the American military forces. In September, several PAVN regiments already trained for operations in South Vietnam began their trek down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Senior General Nguyen Chi Thanh was sent south to COSVN to take command of operations on behalf of Giap and the rest of the Politburo.

In early February 1965, a daring PLAF raid on a helicopter base at Pleiku resulted in eight American deaths and more than one hundred servicemen wounded. Johnson ordered another retaliatory air strike, prompting yet more Communist attacks. In early March Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder, a program of gradually intensifying air attacks against North Vietnam that was designed to halt the flow of supplies and troops into the South. On March 8, 1965, two battalions of US Marines landed on a tranquil beach in Danang. The first American ground troops had arrived, ostensibly only to protect the giant airbase near the city; but within days, the Marines were engaged in offensive combat against PLAF forces. The United States was at war against Communist forces in South Vietnam.

As the Marines landed, the Communists braced themselves for what was by far the greatest challenge to the realization of their dream: war against the military forces of the United States of America. It was, to say the
least, a sobering prospect, this business of taking on a superpower, a nation with almost unlimited military assets. Yet Giap and his colleagues on the Central Committee faced the challenge without fear, even with a kind of steely confidence. Their commitment to success had never been stronger. Defeat was not an option. Despite the deepening American commitment to South Vietnam, they could look back with pride on political and military developments in the south since 1954. Hundreds of millions of dollars, sophisticated weapons and military equipment, special forces advisers—none of it had strengthened the legitimacy or effectiveness of the South Vietnamese government. In 1962, Vice President Johnson had spoken of Ngo Dinh Diem as “the Churchill of the decade.”
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But as events proved, Diem was no more a Churchill than were any of the handful of officers who formed the military junta that replaced him in power. No question about it, the Americans operated in Vietnam under serious political vulnerabilities despite their military power. No question, too, thus far in the game, despite the comparative weakness of its hand, Hanoi had played its cards far better than its Western adversary had.

The challenge for Giap—the challenge for Hanoi—was now to find a way to exploit their adversaries’ political vulnerabilities while making the enormous sacrifices of doing battle with the most formidable military force in world history.

8

PEOPLE’S WAR AGAINST THE UNITED STATES: THE ESCALATION PHASE: 1965–1967

As the National Liberation Front (NLF) for South Vietnam appeared to be on the verge of winning the “special war” against the wobbly Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in late 1964 and early 1965, the men in the White House and the Pentagon were in crisis mode, working assiduously to develop a coherent strategy for an Americanized war. By June 1965, after weighing the comparative merits of adopting counterinsurgency or conventional warfare doctrine to shape strategy, Washington opted for the latter, all the while paying lip service to incorporating elements of the former. Vietnam would be fought according to a “search and destroy” strategy as outlined by General William Westmoreland. That strategy would be implemented as follows. Highly mobile US ground forces, supported
by air power and artillery, would “find, fix, and destroy” the main-force Communist units, eventually inflicting casualties in sufficient numbers to prevent Hanoi from replenishing and rebuilding its divisions in the south through infiltration of fresh North Vietnamese units or individual replacements for the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). Westmoreland anticipated that this critical “crossover point” would take perhaps eighteen months to reach. Thus, the primary goal of Westmoreland’s strategy was not to seize and hold the villages, but to destroy the Communists’ military capabilities in the South. In military parlance, Westmoreland was to pursue a strategy of “attrition.” Only after destroying Giap’s main-force units would US and ARVN forces seek to crush once and for all the Communists’ political infrastructure in the villages and the small guerrilla units that protected that infrastructure.

The campaign plan called for US ground troops to blunt the insurgency’s momentum in three key strategic areas by year’s end, as those forces expanded to 175,000 troops. A Marine division would be deployed in the five northern provinces, designated as I Corps tactical zone—one of four such zones in South Vietnam, running north to south. The Marines were tasked with protecting the DMZ, and establishing three large coastal enclaves at Danang, Phu Bai, and Chu Lai on the highly populous coast. Here they would engage in search-and-destroy operations in the tactical zone where Communist forces were strongest.

The US army would assume the defense of the Central Highlands, where People’s Army of Vietnam General Nguyen Chi Thanh had already begun to mass troops in preparation for an offensive thrust to the east along Route 19 from Pleiku all the way to Qui Nhon on the coast, with a view to cutting South Vietnam in half. To the north and west of Saigon, additional US Army divisions would be deployed in the vicinity of large, well-fortified liberated zones, where PLAF forces were already so strong that many ARVN commanders dared not venture for fear of annihilation.