No More Vietnams
By Lewis Sorley

In the three decades since America abandoned its South Vietnamese allies, it has become common to compare subsequent U.S. wars to what supposedly befell us in Southeast Asia. Dire warnings of “another Vietnam” are a particular favorite tactic of those who aim to block further use of U.S. military forces abroad. But the war in Vietnam did not have to turn out as it did. Victory was within our grasp.

 

And while it is always an admirable goal to learn lessons from history, comparisons of current circumstances with earlier experiences are useless if they rest on inaccurate understandings of either the contemporary or the historical events. My view as an historian of the Vietnam War is that most of today’s invocations of Vietnam as a yardstick are faulty. The reason? They are built on false impressions of what really happened to the United States in that country—and why.

 

WINNING IN VIETNAM

 

Popular characterizations of the Vietnam War portray the period of major American involvement as a uniform whole. The conflict’s early years—which were fraught with multiple problems and miscalculations—are usually presented as emblematic of the whole episode. In truth, however, the Vietnam story is one of dramatic improvement over time.

 

Major deployment of U.S. ground forces began in the spring of 1965 under General William Westmoreland. He envisioned a war of attrition in which “search and destroy” operations would locate the enemy and bring him to decisive engagement. Large-scale operations involving multiple battalions and sometimes even divisions were regularly launched in the deep jungles of Vietnam’s border regions, with the goal of inflicting as many casualties as possible on enemy forces. “Body count” thus became the measure of merit.

 

Unfortunately the enemy had the ability to control his losses—by breaking contact and withdrawing across national borders into sanctuaries where our forces were not permitted to pursue. Nonetheless, the Westmoreland strategy did succeed on its own terms. Huge casualties were inflicted on Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces. But the enemy did not cease his aggression. Instead, he simply poured more and more manpower into the fight.

 

Westmoreland’s single-minded concentration on the war of attrition had the unfortunate side effect of pushing other aspects of counterinsurgency to the sidelines, like local pacification and the rooting out of covert fighters who used terror and coercion to dominate South Vietnam’s rural population. “Westmoreland’s interest always lay in the big-unit war,” said his senior intelligence officer. “Pacification bored him.”

 

Meanwhile, in response to repeated requests for more troops by Westmoreland, American forces were built up to a high of 543,400 men on the ground. In the process, the South Vietnamese

Army was pushed out of the way. Development of local forces to a point where they could take over more and more of the conduct of the war was thus long delayed. While enemy fighters were armed with the latest weaponry from communist arsenals, the South Vietnamese had to make do with cast-off American weapons of World War II vintage.

 

In 1968, General Creighton Abrams took command of U.S. forces in Vietnam. “The tactics changed within 15 minutes,” affirmed General Fred Weyand, who served under both Abrams and Westmoreland. No longer would the U.S. fight a war of attrition. Instead of counting enemy bodies, Abrams focused on providing security to the people of South Vietnam. “In the whole picture of the war,” Abrams told a group of ambassadors, “the battles don’t really mean much.”

 

Instead, he believed, the key was to work closely with U.S. diplomats and the Vietnamese leadership to weld combat operations, pacification, and improvement of the South Vietnamese armed forces into one unified effort. During his four-year tenure, Abrams stressed “clear and hold” operations in which the “hold” was provided by greatly expanded local forces with upgraded weapons and training. Hundreds of small day and night patrols and ambushes replaced large-unit sweeps as the typical combat operation. There was also an emphasis on seizing pre-positioned arms caches—the enemy’s “logistics nose,” as Abrams put it—to weaken enemy offensives.

 

Meanwhile, an increasingly effective South Vietnamese government held a series of free elections, trained village chiefs after they were voted in, and implemented a dramatic program of land reform. Four million civilians were armed and organized into a self-defense force. The economy was boosted with currency reforms and the introduction of “miracle rice.” Continued efforts were made to painstakingly root out enemy infrastructure, and pacify the countryside. Significantly, these advances were achieved despite progressive withdrawal of U.S. ground forces.

 

SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY

 

A demanding test came when the communists launched their 1972 Easter Offensive. This was not a guerilla operation, but a conventional invasion from North Vietnam by the equivalent of 20 divisions of regular soldiers. With crucially important help from U.S. air and naval forces, the South Vietnamese fought valiantly and threw back the assault. Such massive casualties were inflicted on the North Vietnamese that it was three years before they could again mount a significant offensive.

 

This led to the Paris Accords, signed in January 1973, which theoretically ended the fighting in Vietnam. As part of the Accords, the United States made several key commitments to its South Vietnamese allies. First, should the North Vietnamese violate the Accords, America would reintroduce air and naval combat forces to punish the violators. Second, should renewed fighting erupt, South Vietnamese losses of major combat systems (tanks, artillery pieces, aircraft) would be replaced on a one-for one basis. And third, the U.S. would continue to provide South Vietnam with robust financial support.

 

In the years that followed, North Vietnam received greatly increased support from its Chinese and Russian patrons. Yet America defaulted on all three of its commitments. Predictably, South Vietnam was overwhelmed. A cable from the CIA station chief in Saigon put it succinctly: “Ultimate outcome hardly in doubt, because South Vietnam cannot survive without U.S.

military aid as long as North Vietnam’s war-making capacity is unimpaired and supported by Soviet Union and China.”

 

No comparison of Vietnam to Iraq will be very instructive unless two important realities are honestly acknowledged: 1) The U.S. had an enormous amount of success in Vietnam during

the later years of our involvement there. And, 2) it was forces in our own country that undermined and ultimately squandered the successes achieved.

 

Public support for the war in Vietnam remained high for a number of years, but eventually waned sufficiently to collapse the war effort. Paradoxically, the nation’s determination crumbled just in the later years when a far more effective war was being waged. Our successes, however, were not being reported to the public by the major media.

 

By this time, many reporters and other elites had become disenchanted with the war. Anti-war protestors had grabbed significant media support and political influence. Successive administrations in Washington, meanwhile, proved inept at illustrating the war’s successes and making the case for its continued prosecution to a successful end. The result, as described in my book A Better War, was that our collapsing national will forfeited the victory.

 

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN IRAQ AND VIETNAM

 

In addition to this fundamental point that the Vietnam fight was eventually lost at home, not on the battlefield, any comparison of Iraq to Vietnam must acknowledge a host of important similarities and differences between the two wars. Among the key similarities are these:

 

-Objective. In each case, U.S. forces fought to protect or free a local population from domination by despots hostile to freedom and American interests.

 

-Methods. In both wars, the key tasks turned out to be rooting out enemy strongholds, building up indigenous forces to take over the fight, enlisting the people in their own defense, and repairing roads, power grids, and water and fuel supplies. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, interdicting fighters infiltrating from neighboring territories is an important and difficult mission.

 

-Impatience on the home front. Even after competent leadership came to the fore, it took a number of years to achieve our objectives in Vietnam. By that time, some elements in Congress long hostile to the effort had gained dominance. By their votes in the House and Senate they threw away what our soldiers and commanders achieved on the ground. As General Westmoreland put it, “the United States in the end abandoned South Vietnam. There is no other true way to put it.”

 

Whether we will be haunted by a similar end in Iraq is not yet clear. American forces remained in Europe and Korea for decades after the conclusion of those wars. Our people accepted that it was beyond the capability of our allies in the region to defend themselves against threats from the Soviet Union without our help, and they were willing to make sacrifices to maintain U.S. security and international peace.

 

The verdict of history is that it remains very much in our interest to commit forces to preserve freedom and stability in parts of the world where we have expended blood and treasure to quell aggression. In that light it seems most unwise that some now advocate specific dates for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. To avoid a Vietnam replay, we should insist that the situation on the ground be the determining factor in our pullout, not national impatience for some specific date of closure.

 

THE EVEN MORE IMPORTANT DISSIMILARITIES

 

-Scope of the operation. With only around 150,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, today’s war is far smaller than Vietnam (with over half a million servicemen in the field, at its peak). In terms of casualties, the disparity is even greater: In more than a decade of Vietnam action, America lost nearly 46,000 lives to combat action, and another 10,000 to other causes. To date, some 2,000 have been killed in action in Iraq over three years. The current conflict also lacks the agonizing concern that pervaded the Vietnam era for hundreds of Americans held as prisoners of war.

 

-Relevance. It was hard for some Americans to see the relevance of the Vietnam War to our nation’s security, despite the Cold War context. With the war against terrorism already having included one horrific episode on American soil, it is easier for Americans to grasp the importance of combating Middle Eastern extremists.

 

-International context. During the Vietnam War, fear that the neighboring Chinese army would intervene if the U.S. were too aggressive was a constant inhibitor. No such great power hovers next to Iraq to complicate American warfighting there.

 

-Composition of our military. Our armed forces today are composed entirely of volunteers, in contrast with the Vietnam era when a third of those in military service were draftees, and

World War II when two thirds were drafted. Commanders describe the young men and women now serving as among the bravest, smartest, and most self-sacrificing ever to wear the uniform.

 

Possibly as a result of the absence of a draft, even people opposing the war have thus far not overtly applied their hostility to the armed forces prosecuting it. This is a dramatic contrast with the Vietnam era.

 

Another difference: Lyndon Johnson refused to call up the military reserves during Vietnam, with extremely negative results. Skills and experience that reservists, especially at the junior officer and noncommissioned officer levels, could have provided had to be replaced by newly inducted soldiers. Today, on the other hand, reserve forces are performing many essential tasks in Iraq with impressive skill.

 

-Diversity of information. The American public received most of its information (or misinformation) about the Vietnam War from the major media organs. Television coverage on the three big networks was particularly influential, and also particularly deficient. TV told Americans little about improvements in pacification, in the competence of indigenous forces, or the economic aspects of the conflict. Neither the Johnson nor Nixon administrations were effective in explaining the war to the American people, and enlisting their long-term support for seeing it through. Those who opposed the war were able to dominate the public dialogue.

 

During the Iraq war, however, the establishment media no longer enjoy total dominance. New cable channels have brought alternate perspectives. Large numbers of Web sites provide independent information and opinion on the war, and choices in interpretation. Soldiers on the ground can use cell phones and computers to communicate with home, so first-person accounts rocket around the Internet.

 

It is now possible for the public to get unfiltered battlefield reports directly from commanders at the scene. The televised news conference in which Colonel H. R. McMaster reported on a successful operation to root out enemy forces in the Iraqi town of Tal Afar, for instance, contrasted starkly with an issue of Time magazine on the racks in the same part of 2005 with the cover headline: “Is It Too Late to Win the War?”

 

WHAT VIETNAM TELLS US ABOUT WINNING IN IRAQ

 

The successful later years of the war in Vietnam are instructive for the current war in Iraq. By uniting military, diplomatic, and economic pressure, and building up an effective elected indigenous government, we finally turned the tide in Vietnam. But this required concerted effort over a number of years. Infrastructure had to be rebuilt to support a viable economy. The new government’s leaders had to be trained both in specific tasks and in a concept of public service. Effective and motivated armed forces had to be built up in similar fashion. Permanent local security had to be provided by the populace itself.

 

We eventually recognized in Vietnam that military missions needed to be transferred to Vietnamese forces. Emphasis was placed on rooting out covert hostile elements embedded in the population. A critical part of this was intelligence and interdiction of infiltrators—things best done (by far) by the local nationals themselves.

 

But defending our values in a hostile world— yesterday in Vietnam, today in Iraq and other terror centers—demands patience, fortitude, and a willingness to sacrifice. “The progress in Iraq is not going to be linear,” Colonel McMaster observed in his recent press briefing. As in any complex and hazardous undertaking, there will be setbacks and disappointments on the way to eventual success. In Vietnam, Americans did not show the necessary staying power, and so we failed. It remains to be seen whether we can summon the endurance necessary to win the Iraq fight.

 

When General Abrams shifted the emphasis in Vietnam to securing life for the South Vietnamese, and helping them take over their own defense, one aide aptly pointed out that “both sides are finally fighting the same war.” He meant that the U.S. and the communists alike were battling for the support of the people of South Vietnam. And that was indeed the central struggle.

 

But there turned out to be one other critical element, and that was the struggle to influence the American people’s outlook on the value of the war, the progress within it, and the worthiness of public support for the effort. In this area, the enemy triumphed, leading to our abandonment of South Vietnam and its rapid subjugation. In winning the battle for U.S. public opinion, our foes gained what they had not been able to accomplish on the battlefield—and the heroism, sacrifice, and achievements of our armed forces were ultimately squandered.

 

So some things we left undone during the Vietnam War are once again vital. Foremost is making the case—to the American public and the world community—for the absolute necessity of successfully prosecuting the current campaign, even over an extended period of time, and for the morality and practicality of the global war on terror. This case must be made not episodically or haphazardly, but in a sustained and credible manner.

 

Today’s threat from Middle Eastern terror is grave. A U.S. military failure in Iraq could be catastrophic. Our troops are performing valiantly and to good effect. Now let’s hope we can summon up a domestic political will worthy of the men and women who have once again gone to war at our behest. We owe it to them, as we did to the valiant men who fought the war in Vietnam.

 

 

Lewis Sorley is the author of A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam.