The Xenophile Historian

1954 to 1975

	America's Mandarin
	The Three-Sided War in Laos
	Escalation
	Vietnamization and the Cambodian Diversion
	The Phony Peace
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In Vietnam the US wanted a government that was both respectable and anticommunist. But true nationalists outside the ranks of the Viet Minh were hard to find in 1954. Many had been killed by the communists or the French; others withdrew from politics or emigrated from Vietnam altogether. Into this vacuum stepped Ngo Dinh Diem, and Americans saw him as the savior Vietnam needed.

At first Diem had a lot of personal qualities in his favor. He came from an upper-class family, giving him an air of sophistication that appealed to many important Americans, including Senator John F. Kennedy. He was a certified patriot who had never collaborated with either the French or the Japanese. He also hated the communists, who killed one of his brothers and forced him to live abroad from 1950 to 1954. Last but not least, he was a pious Roman Catholic; his eldest brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, was the Archbishop of Hue. Catholic Vietnamese, who made up a tenth of the population, looked to Diem for leadership and protection; he responded by trusting few others.

In 1954 Bao Dai appointed Diem prime minister of South Vietnam, hoping that his presence would keep American aid flowing into the country. For a year the playboy and the puritan made an odd couple. Bao Dai thought he was using Ngo Dinh Diem, but the tail was strong enough to wag the dog. In 1955 Diem rigged an election to give himself a 98.2% approval rating; then he deposed Bao Dai and declared South Vietnam a republic with himself as president. Next he had a showdown with his rivals in Saigon. With the help of the armed forces he crushed the Binh Xuyen gang and brought the militant Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects into line. Finally he sent troops out into the countryside to root out any communists that might still be there. As Diem brought stability and security, he gained the praise and admiration of American officials, who hailed him as the "miracle man" of Asia. At this stage he was at the peak of his career; afterwards his many failings would cause him to make grave errors, with violent consequences.

The first error was probably unavoidable, in view of the circumstances. The 1954 Geneva accords had promised elections to reunify Vietnam by July 1956. Diem, with US approval, never allowed the elections to be held. He had his reasons. The population of North Vietnam was somewhat larger than that of the south, and like Diem, Ho Chi Minh knew how to stuff ballot boxes. Diem had no control over the voting that took place north of the 17th parallel, so a nationwide vote would have favored the communists. His decision may have been sound, but it was the spark that touched off the Second Indochina War. In 1957 communist guerrillas started sneaking across the DMZ, where they recruited followers among Diem's opponents and oppressed peasants. Then they opened up a campaign of terrorism against members of the Saigon regime. Three years later North Vietnam organized them into the National Liberation Front. Saigon called the guerrillas the Viet Cong, meaning Vietnamese Communists, and the name stuck.

In his presidential palace, Diem tried to minimize the threat. He did not want to offend his American patrons by letting them know the problem was greater than they thought it was. Likewise, his subordinates swept the bad news under the rug because they were afraid of reporting it openly. Had Diem been a popular leader, he might have gained the upper hand against the Viet Cong eventually. But only friends, relatives and Catholics gave their unquestioned support; instead of seeking the goodwill of the rest, he lorded over them like an emperor, refusing to give them a voice in government or even to meet with them (for example, he only made trips outside of Saigon when his American advisors told him it was good politics to do so). As the military situation deteriorated, he turned for guidance to his half-mad brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and to Nhu's beautiful, venomous wife.⁽¹⁾ When foreign correspondents came calling he would meet with them for five or six hours, leaving other visitors and the country's problems waiting outside. During those interviews he gave marathon monologues on "personalism," an authoritarian ideology he invented that emphasized submission to the head of state as the solution to every problem. It was an unappealing philosophy that few people could even understand. Communist propaganda played on Diem's foreign dependency by linking Diem's name to that of America with a hyphen. Yet there was no way South Vietnam could rid itself of the Americans without losing the vital support that was needed more with each passing day.

In Washington, President Eisenhower tried to ignore Vietnam. His successor, Kennedy, sent military advisors, and then increased their numbers steadily. In 1961 400 US troops arrived to operate helicopters; one year later there were 11,200 US servicemen in Vietnam; by the end of 1963 there were 15,000. Despite the increased assistance, victory was no closer than it had been before. But there could be no turning back now. America had announced in no uncertain terms that it would stop the spread of communism, and now was committed to do that, no matter what the cost. Withdrawal was unthinkable--it would cost the US too much prestige--and no American president wanted to be responsible for losing a war. Already Americans were getting involved in firefights between South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, but it was rarely reported in the news; the casualty counts were too low for the average American to care anyway.

Diem tried to cut off the Viet Cong's base of support by moving the peasants into fortified settlements called "strategic hamlets." The idea had worked against communist guerrillas in Malaya a few years earlier, but it was too badly planned to work here. The peasants resented having to walk long distances to their fields and ancestral burial grounds. The money promised to them when they moved often disappeared into the pockets of corrupt officials, as well as money earmarked for seed, fertilizer, irrigation, medical care, education, and sometimes even weapons. Frequently the hamlets were thrown together in such a slapdash fashion that Viet Cong agents remained inside, acting as informers for their comrades. The long-term result of the program was that it drove many neutral peasants into the arms of the Viet Cong.

The end of Ngo Dinh Diem came when he alienated both the Buddhists and the military. On May 8, 1963, Buddhists assembled in Hue to celebrate the 2,527th birthday of Buddha, and a local Catholic official prohibited them from flying their multicolored flag. Only a week earlier Catholics had waved blue and white papal banners to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ordination of Ngo Dinh Thuc. The Buddhists protested against this form of discrimination, and in the demonstration that followed, government troops opened fire, killing a woman and eight children. While Diem tried to blame the trouble on the communists, the Buddhists organized an opposition party. One month later they burst a bombshell. A monk in Saigon drenched his robes with gasoline and burned himself to death, his hands fixed in an attitude of prayer. A photo of the immolation appeared on the front pages of newspapers everywhere the next day, shocking the world and turning international opinion against the Diem regime.

As more monks went up in flames, Washington decided that Diem was a political liability that had to be replaced if South Vietnam was not going to be lost to communism. Before this time there had been two attempts on Diem's life by members of the military, both failing because the other troops stayed loyal to the president. On the third attempt the anti-Diem generals got almost all of the armed forces on their side; the US ambassador and a CIA agent gave them the signal to go ahead by hinting that US aid would not stop should the coup succeed. On November 1 the army attacked the presidential palace. Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu went into hiding for a day, then gave themselves up in return for safe conduct out of the country. They boarded an armored car that was provided for the journey. Exactly what happened next is uncertain, but both of them were dead from gunshot wounds when the car arrived at staff headquarters. Three weeks later Kennedy was also assassinated. With new governments running both the US and South Vietnam, a new phase in the Vietnam War was about to begin.

The Three-Sided War in Laos

At this point a second Geneva conference was held to resolve the situation in Laos. All sides agreed that Laos should be a neutral state, with a coalition government that included all factions. Souvanna Phouma became the prime minister again, with Souvanouvong and Phoumi as his deputies. This system lasted for two years, and collapsed when the neutralists split. The neutralists with left-wing sympathies switched their allegiance to the Pathet Lao, while those remaining, including Souvanna, joined forces with the rightists. War resumed, and this time it was tied to the conflict being fought next door in Vietnam.

With North Vietnamese help, the Pathet Lao were increasingly successful. They took over the strategic Plain of Jars and large portions of the countryside, leaving only the Mekong valley and the two capitals (Luang Prabang and Vientiane) firmly in government hands. North Vietnam constructed a network of jungle paths in the east, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and they became the main supply line for communist forces in South Vietnam. On the government side, Thai mercenaries and Hmong tribesmen, trained and financed by the US, were involved in the fighting. American planes flew bombing missions over Pathet Lao territory daily. In 1971 South Vietnam made an unsuccessful invasion to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. By this time all sides were tired of a conflict that went on and on, with no clear victory in sight for anybody. A cease-fire was signed in the fall of 1973, and one more coalition government was established.⁽²⁾

Escalation

The new US president, Lyndon B. Johnson, realized that just sending aid to Saigon was not enough; America would have to get directly involved in the fighting to save a country that could not save itself. In August 1964 North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired on a destroyer cruising in the Gulf of Tonkin. Following this incident LBJ asked Congress for, and got, a blank check to act in Southeast Asia as he saw fit. He started by launching bombing raids against North Vietnam; in March 1965 the first US marines came ashore at Danang.

The first American combat troops were too few to turn back the communists, so by the end of 1965 their numbers were increased to 200,000. American economic power came to South Vietnam as well. Overnight Saigon and the sleepy towns along the coast became bustling centers of activity as navy and air bases were built. Saigon was flooded with every luxury or necessity the troops could ask for, including guns and ammo, oil, spare parts, sports clothes, cameras, radios, tape recorders, soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, and, of course, condoms. Every form of weapon in the American arsenal, except nuclear warheads, was brought over for field testing. Ho Chi Minh had once described his war against the French as a struggle between "grasshoppers and elephants"; now he was a germ facing Godzilla.

1. The enemy was not an obvious villain. The Viet Cong rarely wore uniforms; their ranks included women and even children.⁽³⁾ Any civilian could be an enemy, and before long many Americans wondered if they were fighting on the right side. Americans also found it hard to hate the enemy completely because Ho Chi Minh looked like an Oriental Santa Claus, rather than an inhuman monster like Stalin or Hitler.

2. The war was not a conventional conflict, with shifting front lines and armies on the move. Progress here was not measured in territory gained but in the number of casualties inflicted. Time and time again Americans would chase the Viet Cong away from one spot, only to find the Viet Cong back after the Americans had moved elsewhere. In a war without frontiers, the Americans lived under constant danger, no matter where they were.

3. Heat, disease, leeches, and fiendish Viet Cong traps; in the jungle these put as many men out of action as the actual firefights did.

4. The ineffectiveness of bombing. For most of the time between 1965 and 1968, and twice in 1972, American B-52s flew daily bombing missions over North Vietnam. Ultimately North Vietnam would get pounded with triple the bomb tonnage that was dropped everywhere during World War II. But there are few targets worth hitting in a pre-industrial country, and casualties were limited; civilians were protected by putting them in underground tunnels or by moving them out to the countryside. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was also bombed, but the Viet Cong carried so little gear that their entire force could keep fighting even if only 15 tons of supplies got to them daily. Whatever could not be manufactured locally was generously given by both Russia and China. Targets that could have done real harm if hit, like the heavily populated residential neighborhoods of Hanoi, were carefully avoided; LBJ thought if he hit North Vietnam too hard, it would trigger Chinese or Russian intervention, and that would be the beginning of World War III. The US never attempted an offensive strategy--like an invasion of North Vietnam to topple Ho Chi Minh's government--for the same reason.

5. The role of the US press. At first the media supported the war effort, but soon many editors were having second thoughts. In 1967 LIFE Magazine brought the reality of the war home to readers by printing names and high school photos of the 250 young Americans killed in a single week. The television news programs also showed a point of view that was not pro-American, by interviewing North Vietnamese/Viet Cong leaders and by showing pictures of wounded Americans and atrocities committed against civilians, like the notorious My Lai massacre. The actual effect of all this on American morale has been debated ever since.

"It says something about this war that the great picture of the Tet Offensive was Eddie Adam's photograph of a South Vietnamese general shooting a man with his arms tied behind his back, that the most memorable quotation was Peter Arnett's damning epigram from Ben Tre, 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it' and that the only Pulitzer Prize specifically awarded for reporting an event of the Tet [sic] offensive was given two years later to Seymour M. Hersh, who never set foot in Vietnam, for exposing the U.S. Army massacre of more than a hundred civilians at My Lai."⁽⁴⁾

6. America underestimated the breaking point of the communists, and overestimated its own. The Vietnamese had fought wars that lasted for centuries, and the Communist Party provided the discipline and coercion needed to withstand the war with America. America, on the other hand, had never fought a war that lasted this long, and it did not have the willpower to fight an unpopular war for generations. It has been said that the Americans won every battle in Vietnam, but they lost the war in America.

When the Americans did not win a decisive victory, it was reasoned that more force was needed, so more men, more bombs, and more equipment were shipped in. But the enemy was just as capable of moving in reinforcements, a move which forced the US to make an even larger commitment just to maintain the present situation. This process of escalation continued until 1969.

In January 1968 the communists launched an astonishing wave of attacks on Tet, the Vietnamese New Year's Day. Because both sides had agreed to a truce for that day, the Americans and South Vietnamese were taken completely by surprise. The previous year had seen several American victories, causing the Americans to believe that the Viet Cong were too beaten to stage an attack. Instead, Viet Cong guerrillas went on a rampage in every city, and even the US embassy was attacked. When the US and South Vietnam struck back, it was with unprecedented fury. The fiercest battle was fought over Hue, which communist units held for 25 days, committing ghastly atrocities while they were there.

The purpose of the Tet offensive was to win the war while Ho Chi Minh was alive (he died of old age a year later). From a military standpoint, it was a failure; the communists gained almost no territory and suffered frightful casualties. The victory they won was a psychological one. American morale was broken, and now the main desire of the US was not to win, but to get out. As opposition to the war mounted, the Johnson administration crumbled, and Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election by promising to end the war. Peace talks between American and North Vietnamese diplomats were already in progress by the time he took office.

Vietnamization and the Cambodian Diversion

1970 was a bad year for everybody. The Viet Cong were badly mauled by the Tet offensive, ARVN, and a CIA operation called the Phoenix program, which had killed or captured thousands of them. The North Vietnamese defense minister, Vo Nguyen Giap, replaced the losses by bringing in northern regulars, changing a guerrilla war into a more conventional conflict. But America and South Vietnam did not profit from these setbacks. In fact, antiwar sentiment in the US was greater than ever, forcing Nixon to make the troop withdrawals ahead of schedule. The peace talks were getting nowhere in Paris. And then there was Cambodia.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the mercurial Cambodian ruler, played a dangerous game for 17 years to keep his country neutral. At first in the 1950s he bid for American protection. But America had stronger ties with Cambodia's historical foes, Thailand and South Vietnam. Because of that, he gradually shifted toward China and broke the American connection completely. Now he expected the communists to prevail in Vietnam, so he allowed them to build bases and extend the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia; he also counted on China to keep the Vietnamese from violating his sovereignty. Then late in 1967 he reversed his decision again, by telling US officials he would grant them right of "hot pursuit" against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in Cambodia--as long as no Cambodians were harmed. Sihanouk's flip-flop behavior made him enemies on both the right and the left. The right included a small pro-democracy, pro-US group called the Khmer Serei (Free Khmer), the army, and many who simply wanted a share of the merchandise America was dumping on Bangkok and Saigon. On the left were Cambodian students, many of them educated abroad, who resented Sihanouk's intolerance of radical dissent. A group of them formed a communist party called the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer); in 1969 they started a civil war in the remote areas of the country. As the economy deteriorated in the late 1960s, due to bad planning, Sihanouk lost the support of everybody but the peasants, who still saw him as a god-king.

Washington had long regarded Sihanouk as a royal pain in the neck. It is uncertain whether the US was involved in his ouster, but US intelligence services certainly knew what was going on. It came in March 1970 when Sihanouk went to France for medical treatment. The two men who ran Cambodia in his absence, General Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, ordered the Vietnamese communists out of the country, and soon the Cambodian people were running amok, rioting and killing any Vietnamese they could find, in an explosion of ethnic hatred. Before Sihanouk could return, Lon Nol deposed the prince, declared himself president, and renamed Cambodia the "Khmer Republic." Sihanouk moved to China, joined his former enemies, the Khmer Rouge, and became their figurehead leader.

In April Lon Nol broadcast a desperate appeal for aid against the communists. America already had a plan to intervene. Within a week a force of 20,000 Americans and South Vietnamese were in Cambodia, going after the communist bases there. The invasion did not last long--massive anti-war protests that threatened to tear the US apart made sure of that--and once it was over the Khmer Rouge went on the offensive, capturing the eastern half of Cambodia within months. Now the Nixon administration found itself supporting a corrupt regime in Phnom Penh as well as in Saigon. American bombers pounded the Khmer Rouge until August 1973, when the bombing missions were discovered and ordered stopped by the US Congress. By that time nearly 80% of the country was controlled by the Khmer Rouge, and all of Cambodia's cities, including Phnom Penh, were under siege. Since nobody tried to make a peaceful settlement, a Khmer Rouge victory was only a matter of time.

Nixon had promised to "end the war and win the peace." But during his first term in office he seemed to go in the opposite direction, spreading the war to every corner of Indochina. Peace finally came during his second term, but it was peace on the terms of the communists.

The Phony Peace

At the same time, the United States was improving relations with China and the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War kept getting in the way of the agreements they were signing, so Washington, Moscow and Beijing all looked for ways to make the war go away.

The peace talks had been stuck for years on issues that neither side would compromise on, like whether the North Vietnamese should withdraw to their side of the DMZ, the role of Thieu and the Viet Cong in the postwar government, etc. Now the major powers increased pressure on both Hanoi and Saigon for a diplomatic solution. China and the USSR refused North Vietnamese requests for more aid, and the US threatened to cut off aid to Thieu unless he made peace as well. The real breakthrough came when both sides agreed to a partial settlement; in effect what they said was, "Just stop the fighting now and we'll take care of the rest later."

The cease-fire agreement, signed in Paris on January 27, 1973, had serious flaws from the start. First of all the North Vietnamese were permitted to keep 145,000 troops in South Vietnam. Neither side tried very hard to keep the peace, and violations of the agreement occurred daily, growing into major battles by 1974. US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong reached its peak just a month before the cease-fire was signed, leading some to believe the communists were forced to sign an agreement they didn't really want. Most of all, it was the same sort of partial solution that had hindered the 1954 Geneva accord; once a military solution was reached, a political solution was expected to come and bring about real peace, and when it did not come, a renewal of the war became inevitable. And when the conflict did begin again, America was out of the game. North Vietnam's premier, Pham Van Dong, stated that only American troops could keep the north from winning, and, he joked, "They won't come back even if we offered them candy."

Hanoi expected the war to go on at least until 1976. Hence, when an experimental thrust in December 1974 captured a provincial capital only about 75 miles from Saigon, the success amazed even the communists. A second attack in March 1975 took another provinical capital, Ban Me Thuot in the central highlands, and the whole South Vietnamese defense collapsed. As the ARVN retreated to the coast, they were joined by more than a million refugees, and the retreat became a rout. Hue and Danang were surrounded and captured, and the North Vietnamese advanced southward, taking the rest of the coastal cities one by one. Only at Xuan Loc, 35 miles northeast of Saigon, could the ARVN put up any resistance; there in mid-April it made its last stand.

President Thieu resigned and went abroad with a fortune in gold, and he was followed by the Americans, who hastily closed the US embassy and bases before they left. About 130,000 lucky Vietnamese refugees managed to get out with the Americans, beginning the exodus of "boat people" that continued for a generation. On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered Saigon and knocked down the gates of the presidential palace; the government surrendered, and the victors promptly renamed the southern capital Ho Chi Minh City. The war which had cost 58,000 American lives, 1.3 million Vietnamese lives (both soldiers and civilians), and $189 billion in US dollars was finally over.

The end of the war in Vietnam also brought about an end to the wars in Cambodia and Laos. Two weeks before the fall of Saigon, the long siege of Phnom Penh ended. Like Thieu, Lon Nol went into self-imposed exile, leaving the rest of his government to surrender to the Khmer Rouge. In Laos, the 1973 cease-fire looked like it would become a permanent peace, but when they heard the news from Cambodia and Vietnam, the rightists in the Laotian cabinet lost their confidence, quit, and fled the country. The Pathet Lao moved into Vientiane and took over without firing a shot. In December the last king, Savang Vatthana, was deposed, and the country was declared a people's republic. The Pathet Lao leader, Prince Souvanouvong, was uncommonly merciful to his defeated enemies, since they were in fact his relatives. Former prime minister Souvanna Phouma and the king were both allowed to serve as senior advisors, once they had learned communist ways. The Cambodian people were not so lucky; for them the worst part of their ordeal was yet to come.

2. The Laotian cabinet now had five communist, five rightist, and two royalist members.

3. American evangelist Mike Warnke served as a marine in Vietnam for three years, and tells the story of how he was handing out candy bars to Vietnamese kids, one of the nicer things anyone can do in a war zone. One boy who couldn't have been older than twelve took a candy bar, ran into his house, came out with a pistol and shot him! Warnke wasn't seriously hurt, since he was wearing a bulletproof vest, but the impact knocked him out of the jeep he was standing in. The first thing he thought of as he hit the ground was, "If you don't like Hershey with almonds, say so!"

4. Oberdorfer, Don, Tet!; The Turning Point in the Vietnam War, New York, Johns Hopkins University press, 1971, pg. 332.

© Copyright 2000 Charles Kimball