Vietnam: Looking Back - At The Facts

[JAD_333]

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution set out the very basis for a limited war. No grand & dramatic decalarations of war, no invasion of the North. That was not just chance - after Korea Johnson was uncertain that he could get support for a lengthy or bloody war. That was one of the keys to understanding why he fought the war he did.

Well, you'll get an argument from politicians on that score. They'll say Johnson didn't want a declaration of war because it would have upset his sweeping domestic agenda--the War on Poverty, Civil Rights...etc. I was a document page in the House of Reps and watched from the floor of the House the vote of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Bill. It was a powerful moment, and it gathered momentum quickly. Can you imagine what a declaration of war later that year would have done to Johnson's hopes, at least in his mind. Also, there was the need to signal to our Cold War adversaries that we knew the game and how far each could go before triggering a world war.

Wrong. Support dropped steadily over time. There are a lot of good reasons to see Tet as a 'turning point', but it only led to a slight acceleration in an existing trend. As long as the war continued & Americans kept dying the numbers were going to keep sliding (as they had in Korea).

Wrong? I said support waned after Tet. I didn't speak of before Tet, but yes it was less before than immediately after the Tonkin Resolution. Tet was a 'turning point". I remember the flood of media reports as if it was yesterday, and their slant was all wrong. It was not the military setback they portrayed and that fact emerged within days. I heard and saw it all on TV, radio and the papers. But it didn't make much difference. The public was tiring of the war, all the faster because of the spreading anti-war movement. War over there and "war" at home was just too much for the general public.

You can use books to make your arguments, but I was there in person, watching, taking no sides, but frustrated that we could, but didn't take the fight to the North. And a lot of people felt that way. Crudely put, pro-war
people were saying, "either sh*t or get off the pot." When that didn't happen, the silent majority became allied with activist protesters, and public opinion went negative.

As for the 'media lost the war', a popular myth (especially among conservatives) that doesn't gel with reality.

The aegis of the war lost it. No declaration of war. That meant no control over the media or anti-war activists. One could posit that, therefore, the media lost it. But that would be true in any war where the media is allowed to roam the battlefield at will taking images of slices of the war and reporting them back home with little attention to the larger picture. Pictures of mayhem, mangled bodies, and bombs going off do not whet the appetite of the public for war. Such is how the media inadvertently shapes public opinion. They are in the business of selling pictures.

The extent the media affects the outcome in any conflict is never certain, but it must be substantial or the combatants wouldn't try so hard to influence or control it. It is easier to fight a distant war when the public sees it in the abstract. When they see it in reality, katie bar the door.

[Chogy]

but frustrated that we could, but didn't take the fight to the North. And a lot of people felt that way.

This to me is the great oddity of Vietnam, that we had soldiers and airmen ready and willing, and the leadership waffled. ROE approached the "insane" threshold, especially in regards to the air war. "See that freighter? It is loaded with enemy war material. Don't touch it." Or, "That star of David will be an active SA-2 site in two weeks. It'll kill your friends. But hands off, because there might be foreign workers there."

Hundreds of books have been written. The retrospective view is baffling. How, why, could our civilian leadership have conducted that war as they did? Everyone remembers Desert Storm. Vietnam was a hovering ghost. "When we go to war, we will accept nothing less than victory. Our troops will have all that they need to accomplish the mission." with all implying both materiel, AND appropriate ROE, with a clear and unambiguous mission.

[JAD_333]

How, why, could our civilian leadership have conducted that war as they did?

It seems to me we have to think Cold War. All during the cold war we fought proxy wars with the USSR. There seems to have been a tacit understanding that if one side came too close to the other's home territory, it could trigger a more serious confrontation resulting in a nuclear exchange. Had we gone into N. Vietnam, we would have mopped up the NVA easily, but what of the thousands of Chinese military in N Vietnam supporting the NVA? Say we chased them back into China. Now we'd be occupying territory right on the Chinese border. This would have been a considered a major strategic threat by the Chinese and by their principal ally, the USSR. Look at the map. Consider also how we reacted to Soviet missiles in Cuba and a communist-backed regime in Grenada.

[Officer of Engineers]

This was also the time that Moscow asked the US to back their invasion of China.

[JAD_333]

This was also the time that Moscow asked the US to back their invasion of China.

Interesting. Have you a source where I can learn more about this?

[Officer of Engineers]

I've posted here a link once describing a Statement Dept conversation with the Soviet Embassy. Let me look for that. The other source was Nixon's Memoirs in which he detailed a conversation with Leonid Brezhnev about attacking China.

[astralis]

JAD,

for your reading pleasure:

Electronic Briefing Books

i think col yu may be referring to this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...ino.sov.10.pdf

and this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...ino.sov.16.pdf

[Stitch]

It seems to me we have to think Cold War. All during the cold war we fought proxy wars with the USSR. There seems to have been a tacit understanding that if one side came too close to the other's home territory, it could trigger a more serious confrontation resulting in a nuclear exchange. Had we gone into N. Vietnam, we would have mopped up the NVA easily, but what of the thousands of Chinese military in N Vietnam supporting the NVA? Say we chased them back into China. Now we'd be occupying territory right on the Chinese border. This would have been a considered a major strategic threat by the Chinese and by their principal ally, the USSR. Look at the map. Consider also how we reacted to Soviet missiles in Cuba and a communist-backed regime in Grenada.

That's exactly what happened in Korea in 1950; we got too close to the border, and the Chinese didn't like that. Our plans were to stop short of the Chinese/Korean border, but the Chinese had no way of knowing that, so they attacked. We came very close to going nuclear at that point, especially since MacArthur was pushing to use nukes against Chinese forces in direct violation of Truman's orders. There are even unsubstantiated rumors that there were several Mk. IV nuclear devices pre-positioned in Japan for possible use against China.

[JAD_333]

JAD,

for your reading pleasure:

Electronic Briefing Books

i think col yu may be referring to this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...ino.sov.10.pdf

and this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...ino.sov.16.pdf

Interesting stuff. Tanks much for the links. I see what OoE was talking about.

I had no idea that the Soviets sent out feelers--pretty explicit ones--to find out what we would do if they took out China's nuclear forces. A couple of observations, however, as it pertains to the thread at hand: The year of the feeler was 1969, and Nixon was president and trying to end the war in Vietnam. So, it doesn't really serve to argue against the supposition that Johnson, 5 years before, was retrained in asking for a declaration of war and/or opted for a limited war so as not to risk a provoking a larger war with the Chinese and Russians acting as allies, or just the Chinese, which would be bad enough, recalling Korea.

The second message is kind of amusing. The Soviet general, speaking of Sino-Soviet border clashes, mentions that Chinese guards bit Soviet guards. After speculating on the possibility that the clashes would escalate into war between the USSR and China and how the USSR would nuke a Chinese invasion, he assumes the US would back the Soviet Union. He then says nostalgically that it would be "nice" to have the Soviet Union and the US fighting together "once again". lol...

I must admit I like the Russian character. If you come across a 1950 NY Times bestselling book called Comes the Comrade by Alexandra Orme, check it out. It's an amusing, sometimes tragic, firsthand account of a little slice of the Soviet army's liberation of Hungry from Nazi Germany. It nails how Russians of every class level think and act.

[JAD_333]

That's exactly what happened in Korea in 1950; we got too close to the border, and the Chinese didn't like that. Our plans were to stop short of the Chinese/Korean border, but the Chinese had no way of knowing that, so they attacked. We came very close to going nuclear at that point, especially since MacArthur was pushing to use nukes against Chinese forces in direct violation of Truman's orders. There are even unsubstantiated rumors that there were several Mk. IV nuclear devices pre-positioned in Japan for possible use against China.

Stitch:

There are other accounts of why the Chinese attacked. The principal one being that they came in to pull N.Korea's fat out of the bacon. The dear one attacked the south over China's objections. But once the war began, China wasn't about to let UN/US forces consolidate its gains in the north.

No doubt the Chinese calculated the nuclear risks and concluded that US political leadership would not use nukes so soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also at that time the USSR and China were tight and the Soviets by then possessed nukes.

The best authority around here on the subject is OoE. If he's of a mind he'll weigh in.

[Officer of Engineers]

The best authority around here on the subject is OoE. If he's of a mind he'll weigh in.

I am of the mind that Mao had decided to intervene in the Korean War before Kim marched south. There is no way for 2 Armies to perform that well in hostile territory chasing an American army without a hell of a lot of prep work.

But that is not pertinent to this thread.

The issue is this, would the Americans met WWIII had they marched north against Hanoi? American strategic thinkers thought yes, even despite the Sino-Soviet clashes.

The fact was that Hanoi was on her last legs. Chinese troops were being withdrawn in anticipation of a war between China and the USSR. There was only one line left and when the Americans destroyed it in LINEBACKERS I & II, there were no replacements.

The simple fact was that Moscow was willing to make a deal. The Americans can take Hanoi if the Soviets were allowed to take Peking.

[JAD_333]

Stitch:

There are even unsubstantiated rumors that there were several Mk. IV nuclear devices pre-positioned in Japan for possible use against China.

The only part of that which may be unsubstantiated is that they were in Japan. They were out there somewhere...probably Okinawa.

We came very close to using the bomb, even to the point of making practice runs over various targets with dummy bombs. Truman even signed but did not execute an order to use them. The sticking point was geopolitical concerns. Using the bomb against China might convince the USSR that the US was too involved in Asia to meet an all out Soviet move on W. Europe. China would certainly have asked Russia to move on W Europe to force the US to pull forces from Korea...so the thinking went in some circles.

[astralis]

col yu,

I am of the mind that Mao had decided to intervene in the Korean War before Kim marched south.

to hijack the thread just a little bit more-- i wonder how mao would have intervened had kim rolled all the way south and the US stayed out. it seems to me he had contigency plans if kim -couldn't- roll all the way down, and it just so happened to work out that way.

moreover, i wonder what would have happened were the allies just a little bit more successful and pushed north faster, say by a few months. that would have thrown chinese planning a loop.

[Albany Rifles]

JAD,

Reference LBJ and 1964 and 1965 asking for a full war declaration.

Don't look at Viet Nam in isolation.

Johnson was dealing with:

1) His own election
2) The entire civil rights movement passing and staying afloat
3) Khruschev being deposed
4) Greece and Turkey fighting over Cyprus
5) Pakistan and India starting the fighting over Kashmir which led to the 1965 Indo-**** War
6) Multiple wars of liberation in Africa and the intervention in the Congo
7) A lot of unrest in Latin America which led ot US troops going into the Dominican in 1965
8) The Watts Riots and the entire Great Society legislation
9) The PRC explodes a nuke

I know you are well aware of all of this....and I ma not trying to be a bigger jerk than I normally am.

Its just with all of this I don't think a full declaration of war would have passed without his domestic agenda being damaged and the need to work the other issues around the world.

[Officer of Engineers]

col yu,



to hijack the thread just a little bit more-- i wonder how mao would have intervened had kim rolled all the way south and the US stayed out. it seems to me he had contigency plans if kim -couldn't- roll all the way down, and it just so happened to work out that way.

moreover, i wonder what would have happened were the allies just a little bit more successful and pushed north faster, say by a few months. that would have thrown chinese planning a loop.

Eric,

I had to think this through, not easy but here is my answer.

The ONLY scenario that would negate Mao`s intervention was a non-US involvement. The November Kilos could not have asked for a better collapse of the Sierra Kilos. However, by whatever measure you want to implement, the November Kilo infantry could not reach the Pusan Perimeter any earlier than they did and by that time, there was no way for the November Kilos to breach that line. In fact, they were beaten back.

As for marching north, the Chinese action was a desperation one. They had hoped to stablized the lines. They were NOT looking at a complete collapse. Else, there would have been better preparations to keep the 4 guns divisions up with the infantry.