Vietnam War Errors

by David Nuttle

During WWII, Viet leader Ho Chi Minh and his Viet forces were armed & trained by a few U. S. Army officers assigned to OSS, the precursor of CIA. Ho had agreed that his forces would help to defeat the Japanese occupation troops in return POTUS Truman agreed the quid pro quo was U. S. agreement not to assist the French regain control of Vietnam after the Japanese were defeated. I knew a member of this OSS team, Col. Lou C., and he believed Ho was actually more of a nationalist than communist. Ho wanted to have a Vietnam free of foreign influence or control. After the Japanese were defeated, the French pressured POTUS Truman for U. S. help in re-colonization of Vietnam. Truman "caved" to intense arm-twisting by the French and helped the French do what he promised Ho the U. S. would not do. POTUS thus made a friend into an enemy.

French re-colonization forces were soon defeated at Dien Bien Phu and a peace treaty was used to divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel with Ho and his communists taking control of the north. The U. S. backed Ngo Dien Diem was allowed to form a new democratic government to take control of the south. Many problems soon handicapped Diem since he was a devout Catholic seeking to control a mostly Buddhist population. Moreover, he only trusted his Viet Catholic friends and appointed them to direct his government and a newly formed military, ARVN. Most of those so appointed were incompetent and/or corrupt. Diem allowed officials of his government to keep 10 percent of whatever came through their offices. Commanders of ARVN were allowed to take pay of "ghost troops," about 40 percent of most units, as a service reward for deposit in the Commander's Swiss bank accounts. Few Commanders of ARVN had combat experience and failed to develop effective counterintelligence to prevent an effective communist intelligence system from knowing their every move in advance.

Given all of Diem's known failures, POTUS JFK refused to send U. S. regular forces to South Vietnam and authorized use of U. S. Special Forces to train and arm the Viet population as well as Montagnard tribes there. This was a Village Defense effort I helped to start and direct as detailed in a book entitled "Vietnam's High Ground," by J. P. Harris. I was an advisor to a

COIN (Counterinsurgency) Group POTUS JFK organized to help him decide Vietnam policy.

I was at a COIN meeting when JFK refused a third request to send our regular army troops to S. Vietnam due to all of Diem's errors. Moreover, S. Viets & Montagnards were repeatedly defeating Viet Cong and PAVN (N. Viet) armed forces. JFK believed the Vietnam conflict was mostly a civil war and continuation of a prior Viet civil war, with no real benefit to known communist efforts to convert other nations to communism.

After JFK's assassination, POTUS LBJ rejected to advice from the COIN Group and favored a quick defeat of communist Viet forces using as many U. S. troops as needed as well as conventional warfare tactics. LBJ admitted he hoped for such a quick victory as a "political feather" in his cap. Knowing of Diem and his governments many weaknesses, LBJ elected to only rely on expanding numbers of U. S. troops to gain victory. To direct said efforts, two conventional U. S. Army Generals, Wm. Westmoreland and Wm. Rosson were assigned.

The Generals had no unconventional warfare of jungle warfare training or experience. They quickly increased the numbers of regular military forces while directing Special forces to abandon Viet and Montagnard villages to construct and defend forts on the SVN-Laos border. This action let the communists gain control of the population in S. Vietnam while using the new forts for target practice by PAVN (N. Viet) forces coming south. Our military assumed artillery fire and aerial bombing would be a big advantage for the U. S. This was a false assumption since the communist forces had gone underground.

POTUS LBJ and his SecDef. Robert McNamara made many policy errors. The Vietnam War was not well justified to the American population. Our troops were poorly trained in jungle warfare and some troops in early days of the conflict had no such training. McNamara made the decision that our victory would be quick, if our troops killed 10 Viet communists for each one of our soldiers lost. In reality, the Viets engaged in over 2,000 years of war against many

neighbors and were psychologically prepared for heavy losses. The Viets had large families expecting to suffer loss of one or more children in combat. Since our forces knew very little about jungle warfare, our military commanders decided that the jungle was an enemy. Our Agent Orange aerial spraying to kill the jungle destroyed the environment, eliminated most wildlife, and harmed many non-combatants as well as creating long-term health problems for our troops exposed to Agent Orange. The dioxin contamination in this herbicide caused the parents exposed to Agent Orange to have what is known a dioxin-babies with many horrific genetic defects.

As a result of all the above policy "blunders," the U. S. lost the Vietnam War. We did not learn from our policy mistakes and the same types of errors continue. POTUS JFK acted to improve our critical policy formulation with his COIN Group. Our Presidents following him have generally lacked this wisdom or were too arrogant to take significant and valid advice from others. Sad!!!