The Cold War (50 page)

And in Korea?

Korea—let me just make some parenthetical remarks. The Korean War has not been studied and analyzed, and there is more to be learned from that war than from any of the three. There are so many lessons to be learned.

Give me one or two of the most important lessons.

We didn't have a national objective. When the North Koreans came down in 1950, the policy makers in Washington did not face up to what the objective was. Was it to restore South Korea, along the 38th Parallel? Or was it to defeat North Korea? Or was it to go to the Yalu, which they did, and it was a terrible mistake. They could have given MacArthur firm instructions: You will destroy the enemy south of the 38th Parallel. If that had been done, I am not sure that the Chinese ever would have come in. This was our first experience with limited war, and our policy makers blew it. The Korean War only lasted three years; if it had lasted five, you would have had the same public reaction as you did with Vietnam.

How old was the average soldier in Korea? He couldn't have been as young as the one in Vietnam.

Oh, no, I think I can make a fairly reasonable guess, it was probably twentythree, twenty-four years of age. In Vietnam we threw a terrible burden, under very difficult circumstances, on soldiers who were even younger—as I've said, less than nineteen.

What was our objective in Vietnam?

It was not to conquer Vietnam. It was to get the Communists off the backs of the people who wanted to live in a non-Communist state. The objective was made clear by the National Security Council. Now, you hear time and again
that there was no strategy. That is an erroneous statement. One can say that it was not the optimal strategy, and I would agree with that. But there was a strategy. That was to bring the North Vietnamese to the conference table, as we had done in Korea. It was not to unify the two Vietnams, it was not to defeat the enemy as we had done in World War II. Now, one can criticize the tactics involved, and that airpower was not used by Johnson in 1968, as it might have been. If he had done what Nixon did four years later, they would have come to the conference table and we would have been in a position of strength.

Are you referring to the Christmas bombing in 1972?

Yes. Have you ever heard of a man named John Colvin? Several years ago, John Colvin wrote a piece for
The Washington Quarterly.
Colvin was the British consul in Hanoi in 1966 and 1967. He was in constant contact with many of the senior leaders in Hanoi. And in this article, he stated that at the end of '67, Hanoi's morale was so low that the leadership was on the verge of capitulation—by virtue of the damage done by our air strikes. Our planes would bomb a bridge, and they would work every night for a week to repair it. We would take a photograph of it, and then the next day we'd drop it again. This was beginning to wear on them, and Colvin thought they were on the verge of capitulation. But the interesting thing is that you saw no visibility in our media about efforts being made to bring the North Vietnamese to the conference table. After their defeat in the Tet Offensive, I thought there was really a good chance of that.

What about the Tet Offensive? In these past twenty years, have you had any new thoughts about Tet?

No new ones, but some earlier ideas have been reinforced. When Tet hit, we knew they were going to attack. We didn't know how massive that attack would be, but we knew it would be in multiple places. At that time, I put a cable in to Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp, Jr., the U.S. Pacific commander, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying, in effect, that the enemy has changed his strategy and we should reevaluate our own. I felt that if we had done that, if the bombing campaign had been stepped up then, that the outcome of the war could have been different.

The Tet Offensive was a terrible gamble by the enemy, and they were crushed. After that defeat, I think there was a really good chance of bringing them to the conference table. But public opinion was disgusted with a war that was dragging on and on. The president later told me that he didn't have the
votes. Johnson counted the votes; most politicians do. But I object to saying that was the point when the war was lost. That was the point when it became evident that America was not going to make good its commitment to the Vietnamese.

Tet was our last chance. We had thrown away all our trump cards when we finally got them to the negotiating table in Paris. Their big trump card was the POWs. We didn't have any trump cards because we were already withdrawing our troops. We'd even sanctioned letting their troops remain on South Vietnamese soil.

Hypothetically, if you could sit down with any of your opposing NVA commanders, who would it be and what would you ask?

At that time, General Giap was the commander of the NVA forces, and I think I would ask him why they launched the Tet Offensive. They proceeded to fight our type of war—and where did they get the impression that there would be a public uprising? That the South Vietnamese would flow to their ranks? That Tet would be a success, militarily? I would also be very curious to know how they knew that we were not going to cross the Laotian and Cambodian borders. Did they get that from the Russians?

Was consideration ever given to using nuclear weapons in Vietnam?

We had no tactical weapons in South Vietnam, but if we needed them, they could have been flown in. This was my thought process: It was conceivable that a situation would arise when the president, through the chain of command, would ask me if it would be feasible to use a tactical nuclear weapon. After I had that thought, I talked to Admiral Sharp. We agreed it was conceivable, not probable, that we could be asked about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. Both of us knew what was available. We decided that we would study the options. For example: Under what circumstances could a tactical nuclear weapon be used? What type of weapon would be appropriate? How would it be delivered? What would be the influence of factors like weather patterns, etc.? When LBJ heard about the study group, he said, “Knock it off.” It was rather ironical. We were doing the study so we could have answers in case he asked. I wasn't disposed to recommend it. But you can't make a decision unless you do a study.

In your autobiography, you write, “I later learned that President Johnson and his advisors did not want to get the American people stirred up, because there was a
fear that the hawks would get the upper hand, and possibly provoke a confronta
tion with China or Russia.” Do you still believe that?

I did at the time I wrote the book. In view of Red China's conduct since that time, I'd be inclined to back off. What they didn't appreciate was the historical animosity between the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Whether the Vietnamese would have invited the Chinese to come in, I don't know. The last time the Chinese came down, they stayed for a thousand years.

Does Vietnam ever get to you?

I had three cases of amebic dysentery. [Laughs.] I never let Vietnam get to me. The psychological pressures on a commander are there; you can't escape them. But frankly, I don't have any strong sense of pressures as I look back, even though I was putting in sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

Has your country ever let you down?

Well, I don't think so, except— Let me put it this way. I was a little surprised that the government didn't in some way come to my rescue after that hatchet job by CBS. [The CBS documentary
The Uncounted Enemy
alleged that Westmoreland manipulated enemy troop strength figures.] That was a disillusioning experience for me.

Philosophically and psychologically, they were in staunch support, but from the practical standpoint, there wasn't anything they could do.

What do you mean?

The government picking up the legal tab of a private individual.

There is one solution that has come to me that did not occur to me at the time. This is interesting, and you're the first person I've ever mentioned this to. In retrospect, there was another course of action I could have taken. As a retired officer, I could have demanded that the Department of the Army try me for doing what CBS said that I had done. That would have put the burden of proof on CBS in a court-martial atmosphere, where there would be a jury of officers. It would be a military tribunal with officers who knew what the war was all about. You can't get a civilian jury that understands something as technical as intelligence on the battlefield, the chain of command, the responsibility of a commander.

Can someone ask for that and get it?

Well, theoretically, I think so, but practically, I don't know. But it is something that rather intrigues me. CBS would have looked like fools after it was over. It would have cost me a lot less money, too.

How was the money raised?

By a not-for-profit foundation.

Did it actually cost you anything?

Oh, yes, about sixty thousand dollars.

That's a lot of money.

It was tax-exempt. But not peanuts.

Doesn't it take courage to do what you've done during the last ten or fifteen years?

I don't think of it as courage. Facts are facts.

I always ask veterans if they dream about the war after it's over. Do you have Vietnam dreams?

Not that I can recall. In most of my dreams, I'm dreaming that I lost my baggage, or the keys to my car.

JAMES WARREN

Nineteen sixty-eight was one of those years marked by its tumult, a historic year probably, a turning point possibly. Did the New Order of youth take over, with long-lasting results? Did an older, more conservative one reassert itself in the end? Vietnam, the war that seemed eternal, underlay everything that year: the American cities that went up in flames, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the student riots in Paris, the “occupation” of Columbia University that began almost festively and ended in a riot, more riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Prague Spring put down by Soviet tanks in August—and, finally, almost as an afterthought, the election of Richard M. Nixon, as the buds of tomorrow were abruptly pinched off. For the nations of the non-Communist world, 1968 had been a terrible interval, one that must have given the prolegarchs of Moscow and Beijing immense satisfaction.

Fittingly enough, the year began with an event that became a national obsession for Americans that winter: the North Vietnamese siege of the combat base at Khe Sanh. It was, as James Warren points out, “the longest and most dramatic battle in America's longest war.” Sensing what seemed to be the importance of Khe Sanh, print and TV journalists, photographers, and film crews descended on the menaced outpost. There were so many that they were allowed to stay only a day or so at most. Roughly one quarter of all TV reports that winter dealt with the plight of the marines at the beleaguered outpost. Then the media swarms returned to Saigon to write speculations on whether or not Khe Sanh would turn into an American Dien Bien Phu. President Johnson was haunted by the same fear. He commissioned a three-dimensional terrain model for the windowless White House basement chamber known as the
Situation Room. In the words of
Washington Post
reporter Don Oberdorfer, LBJ “insisted on a formal paper from the Joint Chiefs, ‘signed in blood,’ as he put it, that Khe Sanh could be held.” The president didn't want a major military catastrophe on his watch. The Khe Sanh malady was contagious, from the top down. The American public caught it. The siege—and the Communist Tet Offensive that began on January 30 at the beginning of the South Vietnamese lunar new year—put paid once and for all any optimistic visions of the war.

Warren's account deals with the many questions of Khe Sanh, some of which are still unanswered and may not be until the archives of the former North Vietnam are fully opened. Was the Dien Bien Phu comparison truly apt? Had General Westmoreland concentrated too many men— over 50 percent of all U.S. maneuver battalions—in the northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, close to the 17th Parallel boundary? Was Khe Sanh merely a Communist ruse designed to distract Westmoreland from the countrywide Tet Offensive? Was he correct in calling Khe Sanh his proudest moment, as he did in the interview with Laura Palmer? Why did holding the base seem so important that he even considered dropping tactical nuclear bombs on the area held by two North Vietnamese divisions? (“Although I established a small secret group to study the subject,” Westmoreland wrote in 1976, “Washington so feared that some word of it might reach the press that I was told to desist.”) Tactical nukes or no, did he manage to turn Khe Sanh into a death trap for the North Vietnamese—partly because they, too, gave in to the same obsession that gripped the Americans? And why was the base eventually, and so unceremoniously, abandoned? Some may ask why this backwater was even contested. Who really won? And, in the end, did it matter?

JAMES WARREN, a New York editor, is the author of
Portrait of a Tragedy: America and the Vietnam War
(with Harry G. Summers) and
Cold War: The American Crusade Against World Communism, 1945–1991
.

I
T WAS A SERIOUS PROBLEM
, and it required a quick response: A team from the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion had been patrolling north of Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB), the westernmost U.S. Marine outpost along the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam. On January 17, 1968, the recon team was moving slowly and quietly along one of the many gnarled ridges that made up Hill 881 North when they were ambushed by soldiers of the Vietnam People's Army—regular troops of what is popularly known in the United States as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

Within just a few seconds, the team commander and his radio operator were dead. The six other Americans, all wounded, pulled back from the NVA firing positions as fast as they could and called the commanding officer of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, Captain Bill Dabney, whose command post was on Hill 881 South. The team was in big trouble. As luck would have it, Captain Dabney had a platoon from his company based on the very same hill. It was quickly dispatched to attempt a rescue. With the help of helicopters from the combat base, Lieutenant Thomas Brindley's 3rd Platoon managed to pull off the rescue with great aplomb. But in the excitement of the action, the rescuers left behind a radio and the sheets of radio codes called shackle cards.