[CTRL] [9] Viet Nam - Epilogue--Beyond Incompetence

[Kris Millegan]

 -Caveat Lector-

from:
http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.36/pageone.html
<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.36/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City
Times - Volume 3 Issue 36</A>
-----
Laissez Faire City  Times
September 13, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 36
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
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Viet Nam

Part 9: Epilogue--Beyond Incompetence

by Robert L. Kocher


Dialogues on the internet produce confrontations and hatreds as strong
as anywhere in the world. Occasional loss of temper and desire to gloat
or antagonize reveal historically illuminating information. What follows
is part of a site posting from a political adversary who, as a member of
the U. S. Navy, worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Southeast
Asia Contingency Unit in the late 60s and early 70s:

...I worked in a Top Secret job during the day and three of us - myself,
one LTJG and an Air Force Captain - organized activities protesting
against the war at night. When we had to, we would call in sick or take
leave to protest the war during the day... My friends and I protested -
took the tear gas - got beaten - and called every authority figure we
could find every name under the sun. We spit in their faces and pissed
on their boots...Some of us even waved Viet Cong flags...Our tactics
finally worked.

Protest is a euphemism for what they were doing. He bragged that as part
of their tactics they secretly turned over Top Secret aerial photographs
to the New York Post and the New York Times. Thirty years later he's
aligned with the environmental movement and declares man to be an
infection of the earth. He also believes communism was, and is, the best
system for development of China.

A focused anger brings tunnel-visioned blindness that excludes all else.
He and his accomplices knowingly did everything possible to promote a
communist victory in the Viet Nam war. He is completely unconcerned, in
fact takes satisfaction, that millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians were
killed by the communists and the combined actions of people like him.
They were responsible for the deaths and maiming of thousands of
American service men.

He and those like him were far from rarities in the military or
government. There developed a distinct widespread sociopolitical
subculture, that was on the verge of becoming chic, and that seriously
affected the security, performance, and reliability of the military. If
you were a service man on the front line, your own people thousands of
miles away were trying to get you killed. Many, if not most, of the
people involved in those attempts have not changed to this day.

The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was marked by a series of
well-planned large-scale riots that those of us who were alive at that
time will never forget. This marked the beginning of large scale
demonstrations, rioting, and bombings throughout the country for
succeeding years.

The Descent Into Madness Under Nixon

America was teetering on the verge of violent revolution in a carnival
of hatred that would undermine or prevent prosecution of the war and, if
possible, insure a communist victory in an atmosphere of celebration.
Into this inherited condition, and what would be the perhaps the most
difficult presidency in the history of the country, came a somewhat
fatigued President Richard Nixon who had an uncharismatic, unimaginative
defensive withdrawn personality that left him a defenseless pleading
target for the sadistic pathological hatred of the time.

The allotted time for military success had been used up by the bungling
during the previous eight years. The American domestic radical left had
come out of the closet and was a powerful open oppositional force. It
would be an uphill, eventually a nearly impossible, domestic battle to
employ the type of effort in Viet Nam that should have been employed
five or seven years earlier. Furthermore, the communists had been
allowed, if not encouraged, to take command over people and territory in
Viet Nam to the point of procuring an advantageous military position
requiring that any successful American military effort would need to be
increased substantially over what would have been required earlier. That
would necessitate understanding and cooperation that Nixon would not be
given.

For practical purposes Nixon, to salvage Viet Nam, would be required to
start from the beginning, to forge a new basis of confrontation and a
new war, but with an entrapped, demoralized, worn-down 500,000 man
American military against a confident enemy now well emplaced in an
advanced position, with open rebellion, subversion, or support of the
enemy at home, and or cooperation. There would be constant domestic
attempts from all sides to prevent him from doing it. It was a hole
10-feet deep to climb out of.

Nixon was elected president, but the political left had become so
powerful that he, and the people who elected him, had a progressively
diminishing voice in the direction of the country. The voice was coming
from, and through, TV sets. The election was effectively circumvented by
the left. The political left, operating through a subversive media,
formed and operated their own virtual-government through censorship,
propaganda, and through TV-based coordination of protest demonstrations,
the leftist movement, and mobs. A leftist virtual reality was
synthesized that recognized and legitimized the leftist movement while
displacing the elected voice and functioning of the presidency. For
practical purposes the election of Richard Nixon and the tens of
millions of people who voted for him were not recognized as legitimate
on the national stage beyond being intolerable intrusions and symbols
that had usurped the rightful government and served as rallying points
for the organizing of hatred.

The Nixon presidency was a period of descent into total madness in this
country.

Had Nixon the communication ability and strength of a Ronald Reagan, he
might have circumvented the media and taken America back. But Nixon was
too withdrawn and defeated of personality. Neither did he understand the
political enemy. Nixon was a conflicted tormented personality in which a
desperately held attempt at idealism failed to accept the cynical nature
of the political left in America. (Nixon broke two major rules in life.
The first rule is to never attempt to appeal to conscience, decency, or
mercy from sadists and psychopaths. It becomes a sign of weakness that
will signal them to eat you alive and laugh about it. The second rule is
the psychoanalytic rule to never begin in the middle by accepting
someone else's messed-up premises. Go back and trace from the reality of
the beginning.)

Nixon kept looking for an integrity in his opponents and hoping for a
fair shake that he would never obtain. He alternated between periods of
idealism to frustrated rage when the actions of the real world and the
machinations of the political left refuted that idealism. Nixon was a
little like the perennial sucker at a rigged poker game who complains at
the deals as if the people dealing cards off the bottom of a marked deck
really cared, or weren't ridiculing him when he was out of the room for
his refusal to believe it was happening. He wouldn't believe life was
that way. Nixon was the perfect sucker who kept waiting in vain for an
even break from his tormentors on the basis of conscience and integrity.
(Reagan, on the other hand, was the kind of character who believed in
his own conscience and observations, and looked at others for what they
were. Bring in a marked deck and deal off the bottom with Reagan and he
would raise an eyebrow, press his lips together in anger, call you on
it, and demand to use his deck. For Reagan, calling them like he saw
them and integrity took precedence over being liked.)

The Watergate Tapes

There is conjecture as to why Nixon didn't simply destroy the White
House Watergate tapes and laugh it off. If he had done so, there would
have been no incontrovertable evidence against him in the Watergate mess
and he never would have had to leave the presidency. Kennedy could do
it. Johnson could do it. The Clintons can lie and make legal records
disappear or appear at convenience, while laughingly accusing people of
viciousness and bizarre conspiracies for catching them at it. But Nixon
couldn't burn the tapes. Why? Most of the answer was in personal
conflict. He wasn't coldly cynical enough, or hard enough, to burn the
tapes. It conflicted with his streak of morality. Nixon's moral nature
ultimately betrayed him in his inept attempts to play the part of the
 tough villain.

Jack Kennedy could send quarter million dollar bags of money to mob
figures to fix a presidential election, then lie during the campaign and
laugh it off; or Lyndon Johnson could falsify Texas elections, and
that's what American national politics had become, but Nixon would never
be good at it. Neither would he be forgiven. Nixon was not tough or
realistic enough to be in politics, or to aggressively confront the
political left.

Nixon was also poorly served by some of those around him. In my opinion
Henry Kissinger was too passive or passionless and, in a continuation of
the atmosphere of the Johnson period, never adequately and forcefully
stated the American case before the American people. Without the force
of the American people behind the war, which Lyndon Johnson and McNamara
purposely discouraged or failed to develop, and Kissinger never
encouraged, all basis for serious long term determination—as well as
support for serious, competent, aggressive military action that was the
only potential force that could be used as leverage in negotiations with
the communists—was absent. Before Kissinger could negotiate from
strength rather than merely brokering defeatism with the communists—he
needed to negotiate some spirit, support, and backbone into the American
people. Kissinger seemed too willing to broker the foreseeable loss of
Viet Nam and interpret it as peace.

The discouragement of public support and the absence of moral argument
justifying the war had been part of the scene for so long that it had
become an unconsciously accepted premise and condition. Neither Nixon
nor Kissinger corrected that condition. Nixon was a little like the
beaten down psychoanalytic patient whose reasoning and attempts to save
himself starts in middle of having assumed pathological premises without
challenging the fundamental conditions or arguments pressed upon him by
those trying to perpetuate and worsen his condition to exploit him. In
electing Nixon, America was desperately seeking an almost psychoanalytic
public spokesman who would begin by making fundamental observations,
then going to fundamental premises and presenting the truth that would
refute the political left. The failure to do this was the dominant
failure of the Nixon presidency that led to all else—including the
personal collapse of Richard Nixon. This was to continue until Reagan
later made the directly simple and joyously-received observation that
Russia was an evil empire.

Instead of getting what they hoped would be a strong clarifying
psychoanalyst in the election of Nixon, America found itself having had
elected the beaten-down patient.

Kaiser Bill Went Up the Hill
To Take a Look at France

Podhoretz gives Lansdale’s analysis:

General Edward Lansdale puts the point more sharply: "This small clique,
the Politburo [in Hanoi] brought ruin and tragedy to millions in
Vietnam. Yet we never tried to arouse feelings among the Vietnamese or
among Americans or among others in the world against this small clique
of leaders--as we did against the Kaiser in World War I and again
against Hitler in World War II. For some baffling reason, we accepted
the self-portrait of Ho Chi Minh as a benevolent old 'uncle' who was
fond of children--and of other Politburo members as speakers for the
people they did not permit to have opinions. So we let their claims to
leadership go unchallenged while their people suffered and died..." [1]

Disastrously for America, and for Viet Nam, it didn't change with the
election of Nixon, and it didn't change with Kissinger. It betrayed the
need by the American people to hear the truth. The American people were
left stranded and isolated by the president they elected.

As I read this I am struck by the idea that Nixon and America would have
done far better if Nixon had stood and supported those who elected him
rather than tried to appease his critics. He nearly broke those who
supported him and was ridiculed, and ultimately broken, by his critics.

There are times when achieving unity between opposing sides is
impossible. There was a substantial group of people in America who had
grown powerful, and whose only intention effectively amounted to
destruction of the country. Those who voted for Richard Nixon didn't do
so to build cooperation with, or consideration of, or respect for, those
people in any degree, but to rather to expose and strongly reject them
and confront them. National unity acquired though appeasing them in any
way was the last thing that was wanted or, or that the country needed.
What was needed from Nixon was a clarification and expression of the
indignation and position of the people who elected him. Period. The
radical political left had lost the election and should not have been
consulted or appeased regarding anything.

Nixon gave the left a respect or credibility that isolated his
supporters and moved the country toward a spirit of depressed
resignation which continued until Reagan and has been reimposed under
the Clintons.

Under this array of conditions the Viet Nam War was lost at that point.
Had there been a way to achieve military victory in three months, there
was by then so much critically unopposed domestic support for the
communists that there probably would have been uncontested rioting in
the streets.

The Tet Offensive

Without the destructive influences of the Kennedy-Johnson
administrations, and with the exit of McNamara, the war could progress.
It began to do so.

On the morning of January 29, 1968, virtually every significant
government and military institution in South Viet Nam, including the
U.S. Embassy, was subjected to full scale military attack by the South
Vietnamese communists aided by the Viet Cong, or perhaps pushed by North
Vietnamese regular army insurgents. Since the period was the Asian Lunar
New Year, called Tet in that area of the world, the attack is
historically known as the Tet Offensive.

The Tet offensive was intended to accomplish three objectives.

1) It was argued by the communists that in response to the chance
created by political and military destabilization in the South due to
the Tet attack that the general population in the South would
spontaneously rise up and joyously support the communists, overthrowing
the South Vietnamese government and expelling the American presence.

2) It may have been a ploy on the part of the North to both employ the
southern Viet Cong and destroy or weaken them while inflicting massive
casualties upon South Vietnamese and the American military. The southern
Viet Cong had been expendable, hopeless dupes in the revolution from the
beginning. While this was supposed to be a people's war, there had never
been any intention to give the Viet Cong, or any of the other southern
communists, any voice, position, or authority in the supposed eventual
communist government of the people. They were used in the war, then
excluded or expunged from everything. After the revolution, none of them
held any positions of representation and many of them were probably
killed. There will never be a full accounting.

The people's revolution was a strictly a northern operation to subjugate
the south from the beginning, whether the Viet Cong understood it or
not. The southern Viet Cong were temporarily useful for doing the
difficult brutal preparatory work necessary for southern political
destabilization, for wearing down American domestic support, and for
preparing a vacuum such that a large scale conventional invasion and
subsequent occupation could take place unopposed with serious reduction
in the number of Northern casualties. The communists in the South were
to do the work and pay the price, while the leaders in the North planned
to exclude them and take the spoils.

3) Most importantly, Ho Chi Minh and his associates were in the war for
the long term, and any military operations were determined by strategic
political considerations. They were highly aware of the deteriorating
political condition in America and the rise in power of the political
left with its support for his cause. Any action that would contribute to
further American domestic instability while simultaneously supporting
the political left in America, would win in the long term. This was the
theater of operations where the war would be won. A stinging military
attack would do just that, even if it were militarily disastrous for the
communist side. But, again, the communist leadership was unconcerned
about transient military losses, as they were ultimately protected by
the McNamara doctrine of only showing them that they couldn't win, and
they could continue unthreatened by the loss of tens of thousands of
other people's lives.

The popular uprising to support the communists never came close to
occurring. The ordinary people in South Viet Nam had no enthusiasm for
communism. While demonstrating an outward appearance of military
strength, the attack was suicidal. The Viet Cong and other communist
forces were mauled, lost tens of thousands of their most experienced
people, and were forced to quit in short order—but after serious cost in
American and South Vietnamese lives. Thence forth, for this reason, and
others to be discussed, the communists no longer had the capacity to
attempt such an operation from within the South.

However, the third part of the plan was highly successful. The American
public was shocked at the attack. Written and TV descriptions promoted
negative interpretations and shocking images. The view was that the
invincible ever-strengthening communists had won an easy and defining
stunning military victory. Indeed, from the pictures and accounts over
TV, it was made to look that way.

William Colby had been disgusted and exasperated with the conduct of the
Viet Nam war. He had been stationed in Washington as chief of the CIA's
operations in the Far East. He arranged to take leave from the CIA
without pay and headed for South Viet Nam as a member of the Agency for
International Development. There he went to work with Robert Komer who
was serious about establishing a pacification program in Viet Nam where
he was to work until Colby's leaving in 1971.

Komer was a dynamic former CIA analyst who was smart, aggressive, and
would rock the boat. He had been on the White House National Security
staff. Lyndon Johnson sent Komer to Viet Nam with the command rank of
ambassador. Komer was probably the first competent civilian of broad,
top-level command rank sent to deal with the Viet Nam situation by
Kennedy or Johnson.

Arming the People

To make a long story short, Komer, Colby, and a former army Lt. Colonel,
John Paul Vann, armed and trained the local villagers so they could
protect themselves and even act aggressively, thus correcting the
deficiency Colby had noted years earlier (as previously mentioned in
this series). What they created was called "The People's Self-Defense
Force." In the next three years, 500,000 small arms were distributed to
the villagers and rural defense units. By mid 1969 it was breaking the
back of the Viet Cong and guerrilla regular army units from the North,
who formerly had unopposed access to the villages for purposes of
terrorism and extorting forced cooperation, food, and other supplies.
The Viet Cong thence had to avoid the villages and lost power over broad
areas. It should have been done years earlier. If it had, the Viet Cong
would have collapsed and there would not have been a Viet Nam war as we
know it.

Secondly, an effective intelligence effort was developed to identify and
track the Viet Cong or regular army insurgents from the North, putting
them on the defensive. There was now nowhere for them to hide or go. A
noose was tightening around their necks.

Nixon also hit Cambodia in 1970. According to Colby:

The communists' use of Cambodian border areas as sanctuaries for their
supplies, headquarters, logistics, and replacement processing centers
was well known. What was less well known was the fact that these
activities went on in parts of Cambodia that were almost empty of
people, rather like the frontier regions of the

Canadian and Alaskan Yukon. When the Americans decided that these
Vietnamese Communist concentrations had to be attacked and concealed the
"violation of Cambodian sovereignty" over the areas in question to so,
the uproar in the United States at this "illegality" was enormous. But
Sihanouk's (the Cambodian leader) reaction at the time, and later was
not to protest this action by the Americans against their enemies in an
area in which the North Vietnamese had already preempted Cambodian
sovereignty and in which few, if any, Cambodians resided. On the
contrary, Sihanouk in fact even welcomed it as a way to eject the North
Vietnamese from Cambodian territory. [2]

The political left in America was furious and waged protests in the
streets and in the media, putting an end to it.

By 1971 much of South Viet Nam was free from internal communist threat
and one could drive along the back roads, even at night, with little
fear of being bothered. Under the concept of Vietnamization, American
troops were being sent home as internal areas of South Viet Nam were
secured and people became capable of defending themselves at the village
level.

At this point the war in Viet Nam was taking a new turn. The days when
small bands of indigenous Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regular
guerrillas had control over the countryside were over. They would be
repelled from the villages and tracked down with nowhere to go. The
communists turned to the remaining option of large scale attack from
outside the borders by mass conventional warfare without any serious
effort, reliance, or support on the level of the then nearly neutralized
internal small unit guerrilla action.

The Easter Offensive

In 1972 there was an Easter offensive by the North. In Colby's words:

In place of 1968's nationwide assault by hundreds of small guerrilla
units against the urban centers of South Vietnam, the 1972 attack
consisted of a regular military assault by many North Vietnamese
divisions, with their supporting artillery and armored units moving
across the borders of South Vietnam from their bases in North Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia... Almost nothing in the way of guerrilla assaults
occurred in the interior of the country, in the populated areas of the
delta, or in the coastal regions. [3]

American ground forces had been almost completely evacuated at that
time, leaving the fighting to the South Vietnamese. To everyone's
surprise, the South Vietnamese ground army had grown tough and soundly
defeated the North Viet Nam regulars, repelling the invasion. However,
they did it with support in the form of American supplies, and necessary
air support such as B-52s and tactical fighter-bombers. The South won a
stunning victory and the Northern armies limped back to their borders to
regroup. At that point it was shown that the South Vietnamese military
could more than hold their own on the ground as a dedicated effective
fighting unit.

But the war was not over yet, and was to be fought in a different area
of the world. On returning to the U.S., Colby found America in a state
of massive internal turmoil and an open support of the communists that
would ultimately lose the war. He was surprised to find "many antiwar
leaders actually believed that a North Vietnamese victory would be the
best possible outcome." [4] In most cases this was a euphemism politely
expressing the fact that they were actively and knowingly working for
the communist side.

The war became a waiting game while Soviet and Chinese continued to ship
massive amounts of military aid into the North and the North developed a
highly mechanized army of invasion while waiting for leftist subversion
to crush resistance in America. There were no serious attempts by the
North, in the safety of Hanoi and watching its war being won on the
streets and in the media of America, to enter into serious peace
negotiations.

The Christmas Bombing

Nixon moved in a stroke that should have been undertaken years before:

The situation was opened up only by a forceful thrust against both
Vietnamese parties. The North Vietnamese were subjected to a powerful
bombing attack at Christmas 1972 at President Nixon's express order to
make it clear to them that the attack was different from the delicately
applied, gradual bombing campaigns that had characterized the 1960s.
It's force, despite the hysterical opposition aroused among the antiwar
factions in the United States, was both precise and effective.... [5]

THAT, was the one thing the North Vietnamese leaders didn't want. It has
been my observation over the last 35 years that leftist theoreticians,
organizers, and leaders are inherent cowards who can survive only when
insulated from hard reality and response. They will threaten to kill
people and conduct bloody revolutions without remorse, as long as they
are not the ones doing the fighting or being killed. But, when they are
the ones put into the ring, they rapidly become whining children
complaining at what's happening. (The other characteristic is that if
you show any mercy and let them up off the ground, they will turn around
and kill you, then laugh about it.) The Northern Vietnamese leadership
was no different. Suddenly, they wanted nothing to do with war and
headed for the negotiation table.

Podhoretz examines the situation:

As against Szulc, Herz believes that the bombing probably did have the
intended effect upon the Vietnamese: Certainly they seemed eager to come
to terms after the bombing, an eagerness they had conspicuously failed
to display before.... As an invitation to resume serious negotiations,
the bombing was not a subtle move; it was not a militarily effective
move; it was certainly not a popular move; but it appears to have been a
diplomatically effective one." (60) Sir Robert Thompson is much more
emphatic: "In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those
B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over!...
They would have taken any terms. And that is why, of course, you
actually got a peace agreement in January, which you had not been able
to get in October. (61)" [6]

Thompson was absolutely correct. The Hanoi bombing was in accordance
with the military principles stated in Part 8 of this series. It brought
the reality of war to Hanoi and the communists wanted no part of it. Two
more weeks of bombing serious targets would have crushed Hanoi
completely and ended the war on American and South Vietnamese terms. Had
it been done years earlier, as it should have, it would have saved tens
of thousands of American and South Vietnamese lives.

Manufactured Hysteria

However, the real war was now being conducted in America with the
radical left being given an exclusive and ready forum. An action that
would have been a cause for celebration in America in 1960, and should
have been viewed similarly in 1973 was nearly unanimously viewed quite
the opposite in the public media and in portions of the political arena.
Continuing with the next paragraph of Podhoretz:

One thing about the bombing is certain, however: practically all the
comment it elicited in the United States was wrong. We have already seen
that the casualties and civilian damage were amazingly light (about
1,500 killed, according to Hanoi's own figures as against 35,000 in
Dresden and 84,000 in Tokyo during World War II with which it was
compared, and fewer than the North Vietnamese themselves had just killed
by their artillery bombardment of An Loc). Yet Senator George McGovern
in an interview on NBC called it "the most murderous aerial bombardment
in the history of the world," "the most immoral action that this nation
has ever committed in its national history," and "a policy of
mass-murder that's being carried on in the name of the American people."

Senator Harold Hughes concurred: "It is unbelievable savagery that we
have unleashed on this holy season; the only thing I can compare it with
is the savagery of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Anthony Lewis of the New
York Times added his note to the temperate chorus, characterizing the
bombing not only as "a crime against humanity" but "the most terrible
destruction in the history of man." [7]

And so on through the Washington Post, several more Senators, etc.
Having lived through the period, the above description doesn't come
close to the presented unanimity of condemnation and manufactured
hysteria in the media, with protest demonstrations and riots waiting in
the wings.

Nixon, eternally and progressively depressed and immobilized by the
failure of the radical left to conform to his idealistic view that
somewhere they must surely employ at least some small degree of personal
integrity, conscience, or rationality, failed to make the necessary
spirited defense and counter-attack against the psychotically dishonest
and distorted assertions. Neither did the droning Henry Kissinger. Once
again, the American people were left isolated, unsupported, betrayed,
and faced with an uncontested unified inundation of radical leftist
propaganda.

Killing: the Left-Wing Franchise

There was a distinct double standard. Killing people is viewed as a
self-conferred exclusice left wing franchise. While Hanoi would kill,
and had killed, 1,500 South Vietnamese people in an hour in the name of
abstract idealism, the deaths of 1,500 in the North in an effort to
prevent Hanoi's wanton killing of more groups of 1,500 South Vietnamese
in more hours was interpreted as an unacceptable crime against humanity.
Hanoi had, on repeated occasion, wiped out entire medium sized cities in
the North and had been eagerly willing to kill 15,000 of its own
civilians or military on a moment's notice without conscience when it
furthered their cause in any way. But, defending one's self against
communist terrorism was, and still is, declared a crime against humanity
 by American leftists. Hanoi could, of course, have stopped or precluded
the bombing by coming to the conference table with seriousness and
turning away from their attempts at invasion of the south.

While Hanoi wouldn't last through another two weeks of bombing, America
could find itself in a violent confrontation with the political left on
its streets after a another week if the bombing continued, given the
over-tolerance toward the left and its coordination, if not
encouragement, in the liberal media.

If the bombing had continued and the domestic confrontation in America
had occurred and were crushed, it would have been the best thing that
could have happened at least with respect to the war. The war would have
been decisively and permanently won in Viet Nam. Another war that has
continued for nearly 30 years in America—and has moved into endgame of
being lost with the triumphant ascendancy of the Clintons—would also
have been won. But Nixon didn't have the clarity of vision to understand
it, or didn't have the personal courage and determination to see it
through. In place of defiantly rejecting leftist criticism, he pulled
back from winning the war.

The Colby quote several paragraphs above [5] contains the words, "both
Vienamese parties" that is important. America, which the South
Vietnamese, having not forgotten the assassination of Diem, had
absolutely sound reason to distrust, had been attempting to force an
agreement on the South that the South knew would have lethal
consequences, so that America could end its domestic pressure from the
left.

When the communists seriously returned to negotiations, Kissinger all
too quickly and willingly made a negotiated settlement with the North
that was unfavorable to the Americans, an obvious death sentence upon
the South Vietnamese, and which everyone knew North Viet Nam had
absolutely no intention of honoring after a convenient interval.

It has been asserted that Nixon retreated from continuing another week
of bombing that would have won the war in order to win the 72 election.
Regardless of who believed it, including perhaps even Nixon, the premise
of the argument was flawed. The rioters outside the convention in 1968
were to move inside the convention in 1972 to take over the Democratic
Party as delegates. They were determined to support McGovern and were
permanently committed. The people who voted for Nixon in the 1972
presidential election were permanently polarized from the McGovern
radical left and were equally determined and locked in. The election was
set in concrete and little would change it's outcome. If Nixon had
continued bombing and gone on to panic and force Hanoi to total capitu
lation, it would have been been a joyous occasion for those who had had
first elected him to do exactly that, and who would have reelected him
in celebration. But Nixon seemed to lose that fundamental reality under
the pressures of the situation—and possibly under the influence of poor
advice. Had he not lost that reality, the history of the last 35 years
would have been entirely different.

Follow the Money

In June 1973 the Congress and Senate prohibited use of any funds being
used for military activities in S. E. Asia, effective in August. The
communists immediately began to move and prepare themselves to disregard
the terms of any agreements. By 1974 the North would have a massive
force emplaced on the South Vietnamese borders. In January of 1975 the
North would initiate a serious attack on a northern South Vietnamese
province to see what would happen. America said and did nothing.
Realizing that the South had been completely betrayed and that the North
now had implicit permission, Hanoi poured a massive

concentrated force of 289,000 troops into the area with hundreds of
Soviet and Chinese supplied modern tanks, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft
weaponry and other equipment. In terms of manpower and firepower, it
exceeded Patton's Army and the D-day invasion at Normandy, and without
the restrictions and confinements of the beaches or heavy emplacements.
Without American tactical air support and resupply, there was no hope
the South Vietnamese could hold up for more than a few days. They faced
a massive moving wall of tanks in tightly-packed formation nearly tread
to tread, and personnel shoulder to shoulder, and in depth. Even an
entire American army would buckle under this degree of attack without
massive, and that means massive, air support and logistics.

Paradoxically, the type of concentrated totally-committed assault
employed by the communists was exactly the kind of confrontation
American commanders had been hoping for, and prepared for, during the
previous 14 years of the war. It was the American forte. If it had been
allowed to happen, a four-hour attack with B 52s and tactical air
strikes would have obliterated at least one-third of the communist army
and disorganized the reminder in panic, allowing the South Vietnamese to
finish the job on the ground. The entire communist army was, in fact,
extended, employing tactics that were suicidal in terms of modern
air-supported warfare, entrapped, and completely vulnerable in
concentrated areas on the ground with no possibility of effecting a
retreat should the American military have struck with air support and
resupplied the South Vietnamese. For the second time in two years, the
war could be easily won, in this case within a day or so, and so
decisively that the North would have absolutely no military capability
remaining and would have become either a military non-entity, or would
have collapsed internally from lack of military structure to suppress
its population. But the communists weren't worried about it because they
had been assurred it wouldn't happen.

Instead, due to the actions of the American political left having
effectively worked through Congress and elsewhere, the South Vietnamese
army was deliberately allowed to be trampled and slaughtered, to a
satisfaction and smirking which is still evident in the distorted
accounts of the war to this day. Subsequently, an estimated 25 percent
of the population of Cambodia and of the remaining population of South
Viet Nam was slaughtered—without a hint of concern expressed by the
political left in America or elsewhere. This accomplished what every
misanthrope—what all the second rate mentalities who wanted to
demonstrate how brilliant or important they were and wanted to show
their behinds—had been trying to do for 15 years after beginning to see
how much they could get away with at the Bay of Pigs.

With the completion of that communist victory and the subsequent further
slaughter, the leftists had their way and, as my previously quoted (in
the first paragraph of this article) left-wing internet political
adversary who, to this day, proudly proclaims, "Our tactics finally
worked."

It was the culmination of a 15 year long deliberate betrayal of the
American military and of the people in Southeast Asia resulting in a
holocaust equal to, or exceeding, what was done to the Jews by the
Nazis. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese in America don't have the
political, economic, or media power of the Jews in America, so there is
no one to develop consciousness of the event or keep it alive. Almost
nobody gives a damn or even knows what happened.

My suspicion is that William Colby was coming to the same conclusions as
those you will have read here, and was on the verge of becoming
outspoken when he died.

Lessons

What is there to be learned from all this?

First, the Viet Nam war was easily winable, and with one tenth the loss
of life that was incurred. The war was in the palm of America's hand
from the beginning. Diem never should have been assassinated. The
observations about increasing the ability of the villagers to protect
themselves that Colby noted as a junior CIA officer and were later
implemented highly successfully by Komer, Colby, and Vann in the very
late 60s, should have been instituted in 62 or 63. Had that been done,
the Viet Cong would have been destroyed, as they later were. The bombing
of serious targets in the North, which later occurred under Nixon, would
have ended the war in the mid-60s when North Vietnamese regular
regiments were known to be infiltrating into the South. Another week of
bombing should have won in 1972. The entire Northern military
establishment should have been destroyed in hours in 1975 with no
American casualties. Colby knew it and could barely control his
exasperation until his death. That's why his book was titled Lost
Victory. Any competent military analyst knows the same.

It required 15 years of incompetence and deliberate subversion to yield
the triumphant proof the political left was looking for and trying to
engineer. What was supposedly proven was that the ideas of socialism and
communism were so great and overwhelming that not even the most powerful
army in the world could suppress them or stop their spread. That is
supposedly why America and the South Vietnamese lost the war. That's the
conclusion we are sold today.

The truth is not only different from that conclusion, but is, on the
contrary, the complete opposite. The people in S.E. Asia rejected and
fled from the communists at every opportunity. The Northern leadership
was able to continue the war not because of indominable spirit, but
because they were systematically protected. The supposed triumph of
communism required an American-backed assassination of a popular and
critical South Vietnamese president. It required systematic perversion
or subversion of military science, tactics, and strategy. It required
betrayal of the South at times when a minuscule amount of effort and
support would have permanently crushed the North. There is no evidence
of how brilliant socialist theory was the pertinent element, except
perhaps on the part of Americans in critical positions who were
determined, and allowed, to openly weaken the American and South
Vietnamese effort.

The so-called indominable spirit of communism which had been forced upon
the people of South East Asia would not have lasted a week without
systematic protection and support from critical elements in the United
States.

We must be more serious in determining who or what we elect to the
presidency of the United States. In saying this, I realize that is a
useless statement. I'm either preaching to the choir, or saying
something beyond many people's understanding. But, electing the wrong
person as president can get you killed or destroy the county. Every
Democrat elected in the last 40 years has been monstrously destructive
to America. Clearly, Jack Kennedy, while a superficially attractive and
entertaining, but essentially contentless, figure—ready-made and slickly
packaged for the developing two-dimensional television age—should never
have been in the presidency or any other position demanding depth and
seriousness. Lyndon Johnson should have been in jail.

The Handsome Killer

It's a fact that, in a theater of the unreal, the American people voted
the visibly incompetent presidents into office who got them, or their
sons, or their friends, killed; or systematically lost a war. Women
liked Jack Kennedy and sent him to office because they thought he was
cute. Cute and getting hot to trot isn't what it's about. There is no
easy solution to improving the political process in America. Perhaps
there should be a third party with elected people of quality on a
central committee to cull the country over for high quality leadership,
reviewing potential leadership, and presenting or certifying the top of
the grading process for party primary voter consideration.

Perhaps America has degenerated to the point were its people are no
longer capable of self-government, and the country will destroy itself
accordingly.

American government is not to be used as a high visibility polo ground
for useless descendants of decaying wealthy family dynasties, who have
marginal ability and who are looking for other things to do that provide
an illusion of their importance and usefulness, as well as easy and
prestigious position in life. Averell Harriman should have stayed in the
railroad business instead of organizing the effort to get Diem
assassinated. His lordship Henry Cabot Lodge was disastrous as
Ambassador to Viet Nam. None of the Kennedys has worked seriously for 70
years or done anything but continue to breed like flies and coast
through life as a mindless infestation of government.

Neither is American government to be used as an amusement park and
playground for pampered, pompous, alienated academics and
pseudo-intellectuals. Kennedy's best and brightest turned out to be
immature self-impressed, spoiled children who were the most hopeless and
incompetent. They had a genius for destroying everything they touched
while claiming the disastrous consequences were the result of a
complexity of situation that only people of their highly developed
mentality could understand, and that somehow made not destroying
everything impossible from the beginning. Destruction somehow became a
demonstration of superior intellect. This half-assed self-certified
brilliance gave us in rapid intellectually exhilarating succession, the
betrayal at the Bay of Pigs, weakening of the NATO alliance,
strengthening of Castro, demoralization of the American military,
assassination of a foreign ally, international mistrust of American
policy, buildup of the political left in America nearly to the point of
internal revolution, and continuing slow loss of what should have been
an easily won war—to the point of near-unsalvageability and eventual
catastrophe. This is only a partial list. That group was followed by a
forceless, dismally brilliant Doctor Henry Kissinger who rode the
inertia of what had been done without properly challenging any of it or
presenting alternatives, and who went on to permanently validate and
solidify the mess in a destructive agreement with the North Vietnamese
that immobilized and isolated the South—while assuring the North
eventual absolute military license with unlimited Soviet and Chinese
aid. Lesser uncultivated minds couldn't have accomplished all this. This
required advanced education and the title of "intellectual" There is
something about graduating from the upper levels, or holding positions
in, liberal universities that, with few exceptions, confers a twisted
mentality that becomes the kiss of death to anyone who contacts it.

America is being run from by a contrived left-wing virtual reality
vomited from national TV networks that deal in censorship and propaganda
in attempts to overturn the culture, or overturn the elected government
when it suits them. Somehow this must be ended.

It is apparent that the historical infiltration of the radical left into
American institutions and the subversion of the American higher
educational system into a corrupt tool of the leftist movement was
ultimately successful. The Viet Nam war was well on the way to being
lost in the 1930s.

The radical left in America has become so powerful that it can throw
elections and create or prevent wars, or engineer ways of destructive
attrition.

The Drunk Was Right

The irritating, obnoxious, theatrical, and sometimes drunken Joe
McCarthy was essentially correct in his assertions about the radical
left and communists many years ago.

Nothing was necessarily what it has seemed to be. The following
Associate Press story came over the Internet sites on August 20:

Castro offered LBJ help in '64 Campaign

by the Associated Press

. . .Castro also invited Johnson to continue a U.S.-Cuban dialogue that
Kennedy had initiated in the months before his assassination.

Castro's comments are contained in a series of once-secret 1960s
documents on U.S.-Cuban relations that were obtained by Peter Kornbluh,
a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at
George Washington University.

The Castro message, dated Feb. 12, 1964, was given verbally by Castro to
Lisa Howard of ABC News in Havana for delivery to

Johnson.

Castro, who then held the title of prime minister, asked Howard to
"Please tell President Johnson that I earnestly desire his election to
the presidency in November ... though that appears assured. ....
Seriously, I have observed how Republicans use Cuba as a weapon against
the Democrats. So tell President Johnson to let me know what I can do."

He suggested that his offer remain secret lest it become useful to the
Republicans. It was a time when the conservative wing of the party was
poised to seize power after long years of dominance by moderates.

That summer, the GOP nominated one of those conservative rebels, Sen.
Barry Goldwater of Arizona, to run against Johnson in the 1964
presidential election.

Castro continued: "If the president feels it necessary during the
campaign to make bellicose statements about Cuba or even to take

hostile action, if he will inform me unofficially that a specific action
is required because of domestic political considerations, I shall
understand and not take any serious retaliatory action."

The distinguished ABC correspondent didn't believe this critical piece
of information was important enough to report as news and was
cooperative in keeping the American public wrongly or poorly informed.

Had there been any public knowledge of this communication and that any
of this were going on, there would have been riots in the streets and
Goldwater would have become president. This messages implies that a
limited military action or blockade would be tolerated or welcomed if it
created a false image of confrontation, underneath which furtherance of
Castro's communism could be secretly arranged. Castro wanted and needed
Kennedy, and he wanted and needed the same agreeable relationship with
Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater's threat to expose and end this charade had to
be stopped at any cost. What was happening was perceived and stated by
various groups at the time, but the latter were promptly dismissed as
raving, psychotic right-wing extremists.

As was examined earlier in this series, the action to remove Castro at
the Bay of Pigs was purposely sabotaged and betrayed by the Kennedy
administration. To what extent the somewhat lost Kennedy, who was
dominated by his advisors, knew or played a part in it is subject to
speculation and may never be known.

It is quite reasonable to suspect that the Cuban blockade and crisis was
an act enabling the communist world to actually move in the opposite
direction of appearances in an earlier manipulation parallel to that
contained in the Castro message. Certainly, the communists benefited
greatly from the actions of the Kennedy administration. From the message
delivered to Johnson from Castro, we can see the obscuring umbrella of
the so-called Cuban crisis and the blockade would have been tolerated or
welcomed to produce the finally obtained benefits for Castro and the
communist world. What formerly would have been viewed as right-wing
paranoia was becoming a serious possibility.

The Puzzle of McNamara

The most, in one sense, puzzling and yet central character of the Viet
Nam war was Robert McNamara. Certainly, he created a destructive
condition that would be extremely difficult to remedy. McNamara was
given far too much power by weak and intellectually deficient presidents
who were easily overly-impressed by him as a consequence of that
deficiency. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a
room with a perpetual-college-sophomore Kennedy detached from the
seriousness of the presidency, or a corrupt, half-witted, loudmouthed
Lyndon Johnson more appropriately suited to shoveling manure in a Texas
corral, McNamara was king.

McNamara's brilliance was over-sold. His writing and pattern of thought
would not survive the critical atmosphere of men of intellectual and
personal stature. I find his references to his education and his
quotations of various books and readings superficially impressive
(although they would be looked upon as gauche and isolated from
sequential depth among higher orders of company), but often a diverting
substitute for hard content and disciplined logical and analytical
processes. McNamara was not stupid, but beyond the carefully cultivated
and paraded window dressing, he was far from brilliant. He had the good
fortune to be dealing with people of lesser ability or fluency than
himself who became intrigued by him. This was true even at Ford Motor
where he was the first among the few that were educated and there was a
lack of strong family heirs to run the business.

I have to ascribe to McNamara a modicum of intelligence to the point
where he should have been basically functional. Yet, he made decisions
or assertions that should have been clearly viewed as destructive or
subversive from within his level of functioning. He had the threshold
level of intellect to be capable of knowing what he was doing, and the
effects it obviously should have been expected to have. I would consider
McNamara dangerous to a degree that could not be forgiven or explained
within his level of intellectual limitation.

I would characterize McNamara as grossly immature. He had some kind of
KC135 tanker or cargo airplane that he demanded to be used as travel as
part of an austerity program for the military or some such nonsense. It
had no windows. On fact-finding missions he'd herd senior staff into
this noisy contraption where there weren't even windows to see out of.
People would be

claustrophobic and beat to death when they arrived, then need to make
evaluations or decisions that would affect hundreds of thousands of
lives. This was strictly bush league childishness. It was a state of
mind unsuitable for someone in McNamara's position of responsibility.
While this mentality contributed to his decisions, it did not explain
everything.

Immaturity seemed to be an over-riding characteristic throughout the
Kennedy administration. Reading descriptions of their activities
provides the impression of hearing little kids who were allowed to run a
country, but were completely out of their depth. The administration
suffered from a profound lack of serious responsible adult real men, and
this carried into the Johnson administration.

No matter how I shake the dice, they continue to come up saying
McNamara's decisions were so consistently degrading that McNamara almost
had to have been working for the other side, or against the best
interests of this country as I conceive of them. Nothing else explains
the consistent totality of his decisions as adequately as that
explanation. Whether it was the result of committed political
conviction, or by some sort of internal sadistic personality quirk that
made him destructive, or was the result of some internal quirk that in
turn committed him politically is unknown. But the more I study
McNamara's conduct, the more I am forced to the conclusion that he was
seriously working against America's best interests and working in favor
of the socialist-communist axis. There was nothing clever or subtle or
hidden or brilliant about it. It was defiantly obvious to the point of
outrage.

Robert McNamara was the first Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton can go before a
formal judicial proceeding and laugh in obvious defiant ridicule, while
denying knowing what the definitions of "sex" and "is" are. McNamara
went about the business of methodically destroying the American military
and undermining efforts to win, even survive, a war in a statement of
defiant ridicule and a proof of supposed superior intellect demonstrated
by the inability of others to stop him.

The question is, Why wasn't he stopped? Part of the answer was that he
was faced with weak unintelligent presidents of doubtful and conflicted
motivation that he could either intimidate or manipulate. A second part
of the answer is that he had the support of people possessing a
narcissistic culture of superiority and vindictive derisive ridicule,
who were in critical or powerful positions (particularly in the media),
who were of similar mentality, and who enjoyed or participated in the
process vicariously. A third part of the answer was that he was
proceeding in the destructive direction many people, including the
radical left, wanted to see America go, and who were willing to support
him in this process. A fourth part of the answer is that there was a
gentleman's code in national politics and high office that forbade
directly accusing people of deliberately working toward destruction of
the country. It's considered bad form characteristic of the lower
classes.

Lastly, McNamara was doing the unbelievable. Even though it was obvious,
people were forbidden to believe it. Things like that don't happen in
America. Many people would think there must be something wrong with them
rather than accept the obvious fact that such a thing was possible or
could be happening. It's a little like being married to a spouse abuser.
People don't accept it as true because it is only rumored to happen
elsewhere or in movies, not in your own family. It would classify one as
a right-wing nut case to believe such unbelievable craziness.

The Socialist Virus

America has long since been infected with a rotten core, one result of
which was the American defeat.

The real danger is not the communists. The formal communist party in
America has been dead and a subject of ridicule for 45 years. Their work
was done, quite successfully, and they had evolved into an empty,
easily-ridiculed willing decoy. The seeds were planted when the radical
left took over the higher educational system in this country by the
middle 30s. That established a self-perpetuating system such that the
formal communist party became tangential and irrelevant 20 years later.
The real danger became, and is, the unaffiliated descendants of the
communists who, like the students of the 60s, were told they were very
middle of the road, and believed it, and would laugh in your face if you
asked them if they were communists, or like the McNamaras who believed
they were superior, intelligent, and sophisticated.

What was established many years ago was the equivalent of a computer
virus. The program could be anything, but one which reproduces itself
under a different name. The people infected with it don't understand
they are infected, but are motivated by a purpose laid down before they
were born. They have no idea what they are.

The communist party in the United States has been obsolete for 35 years
as a result of the self-replicating system the radical left emplaced in
the educational system more than 60 years ago. As nearly as I can
determine by attitude polls, voting patterns, and espoused
sociopolitical theoretical formulations, 35 percent of the American
population believes in nearly everything the communists once believed
without being members of, or ever had direct contact with, the communist
party. Another 20 percent believe in half of it or aren't sure what they
believe. Still another 20 percent are desperately striving to maintain
their equilibrium in an increasingly left wing world.

It is clear that an America that had been strategically and
ideologically infiltrated fell into the hands of two incompetent and
unworthy presidents. It is equally clear that those presidents were
surrounded by top level advisors who were, at the very best, lacking in
personal maturity and seriously lacking in competence. My first and
continuing impression is that there was, at the highest levels of
government, an ideological allegiance to a more distant vision such that
the realities of the moment were looked upon as of passing and
comparatively diminished importance. That vision was not intrinsically
incompatible with, indeed was a gradually evolved hybrid of, the enemy's
ideology. Therefore, that enemy and ideology where not seriously
confronted with any sense of priority, and tens of thousands of American
service people were sent to their deaths accordingly.

Particularly in instances when there is need to confront leftist
influences, the cry has been "no more Viet Nams" as if we allowed
ourselves to become bogged down in an unwinnable war. The truth was, the
war was easily winnable. The cry should be, "no more playboy and/or
incompetent presidents". No more incompetent showpiece secretaries of
defense. No more making military and foreign policy a playground where
inexperienced and oppositional-defiant neurotic self-proclaimed
intellectuals can show their behinds. The cry should be to remove the
rotten subversive core in America and get down to the serious adult
business of the truth and our own survival.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes

[1] Norman Podhoretz, Why We Were in Viet Nam, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1982, p 108.

[2] William Eagan Colby, with James McCargar, Lost Victory, Contemporary
Books, Chicago, 1989, p. 202.

[3] Ibid., p. 319.

[4] Ibid., p. 337.

[5] Ibid., p. 341.

[6] Podhoretz, p. 156. References cited:

60. Martin F. Herz, The Prestige Press and The Christmas Bombing, 1972.
Washington, D. C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1980, p. 2.

61. Sir Robert Thompson, in W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizzell,
ed., The Lessons of Vietnam, New York: Crane, Russak & Co. 1977, p. 105.


[7] See note 6.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other References

Edward Lansdale in W. Scott Thompson & Donaldson D. Frizzell, eds., The
Lessons of Vietnam, Crane, Russak & Co., 1977. Also Guenther Lewy,
America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, 1978.

Guenter Lewey, America in Vietnam, New York, Oxford University Press,
1978

Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: the Tragedy and
Lessons of Vietnam, Times Books, New York, 1995

Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, Praeger Publishers,
New York, 1966

Major H. von Dach Bern, Swiss Army, Total Resistance, Panther
Publications, Box 369, Boulder, Colorado, 1965



------------------------------------------------------------------------


Robert L. Kocher is the author of "The American Mind in Denial," as well
as many other articles. He is an engineer working in the area of
solid-state physics, and has done graduate study in clinical psychology.
His email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-30-

from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 36, September 13, 1999
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris

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