violence, and that according to the specific situation and present requirements of the revolution the line of using violence is using the strength of the masses and relying principally on the political forces of the masses, in combination with armed forces to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the situation, in order to overthrow the rule of the imperialists and colonialists and set up a revolutionary regime of the people.â
By September, large-scale infiltration of Communist guerrillas into South Vietnam had started, the total topping 4,000 in less than two years. Most of these troops were southerners who had moved north in 1954. But the identity of the prime mover was never in doubt. As North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap declared in January 1960, âThe North has become a large rear echelon for our army.â With the North serving as the rear, where else could the front be but in the South?
Thus, if wars begin in the minds of men, the Vietnam War began in the mind of Ho Chi Minh. For thirty years he had relentlessly pursued his goal of uniting Vietnam under his totalitarian rule. His undying dream was an unending nightmare for millions of Vietnamese. He had expected the French to turn Vietnam over to him through the March 6,1946, agreement. He had expected the Soviet Union and Communist China to deliver it to him over the conference table in Geneva in 1954. He had expected South Vietnam to fall into his hands after a brief interval under President Diem. He probably even hoped to win South Vietnam through an election on reunification that would have been a patent sham.
In 1959, after all these had failed, Hanoi went to war.
W HY AND H OW W E W ENT I NTO V IETNAM
Never in history has so much power been used so ineffectively as in the war in Vietnam.
Seldom has one country enjoyed a superiority in arms greater than the United States held over North Vietnam in 1959. The war pitted a nuclear superpower with a gross national product of $500 billion, armed forces numbering over 1 million, and a population of 180 million against a minor military power with a GNP of less than $2 billion, an army of 250,000, and a population of less than 16 million. On paper it looked like a hopeless mismatch. But warsâand particularly guerrilla warsâare not fought on paper.
North Vietnam held one decisive advantage over the United States: Its leaders had a limitless capacity for barbarity and tenacity. They resorted to any tactics, no matter how cruel or immoral, and were willing to fight indefinitely, no matter how much suffering resulted. American leaders, quite properly, were constrained by morality, and the American people eventually would tire of the burdens of war. Our enemy could never defeat us; he could only make us quit.
Those who opposed our involvement in the war relentlessly pressed one question onto the national debate: Why are we inVietnam? Of all the questions asked during those years, none had an answer more simple or apparent. The United States intervened in the Vietnam War to prevent North Vietnam from imposing its totalitarian government on South Vietnam through military conquest, both because a Communist victory would lead to massive human suffering for the people of Vietnam and because it would damage American strategic interests and pose a threat to our allies and friends in other non-Communist nations.
To understand what went wrong in Vietnam, the critical question is not why we were in Vietnam but how we got into Vietnam. In 1950, President Truman gave France $10 million in financial aid to support its war against the Communist Viet Minh. By 1960, President Eisenhower had stationed 685 noncombat advisers in South Vietnam and had given its government $2 billion in aid. But our commitment remained clearly limited, contingent on whether the South Vietnamese government undertook needed reforms and represented the true nationalist aspirations of its people.
President Kennedy made the first
By September, large-scale infiltration of Communist guerrillas into South Vietnam had started, the total topping 4,000 in less than two years. Most of these troops were southerners who had moved north in 1954. But the identity of the prime mover was never in doubt. As North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap declared in January 1960, âThe North has become a large rear echelon for our army.â With the North serving as the rear, where else could the front be but in the South?
Thus, if wars begin in the minds of men, the Vietnam War began in the mind of Ho Chi Minh. For thirty years he had relentlessly pursued his goal of uniting Vietnam under his totalitarian rule. His undying dream was an unending nightmare for millions of Vietnamese. He had expected the French to turn Vietnam over to him through the March 6,1946, agreement. He had expected the Soviet Union and Communist China to deliver it to him over the conference table in Geneva in 1954. He had expected South Vietnam to fall into his hands after a brief interval under President Diem. He probably even hoped to win South Vietnam through an election on reunification that would have been a patent sham.
In 1959, after all these had failed, Hanoi went to war.
W HY AND H OW W E W ENT I NTO V IETNAM
Never in history has so much power been used so ineffectively as in the war in Vietnam.
Seldom has one country enjoyed a superiority in arms greater than the United States held over North Vietnam in 1959. The war pitted a nuclear superpower with a gross national product of $500 billion, armed forces numbering over 1 million, and a population of 180 million against a minor military power with a GNP of less than $2 billion, an army of 250,000, and a population of less than 16 million. On paper it looked like a hopeless mismatch. But warsâand particularly guerrilla warsâare not fought on paper.
North Vietnam held one decisive advantage over the United States: Its leaders had a limitless capacity for barbarity and tenacity. They resorted to any tactics, no matter how cruel or immoral, and were willing to fight indefinitely, no matter how much suffering resulted. American leaders, quite properly, were constrained by morality, and the American people eventually would tire of the burdens of war. Our enemy could never defeat us; he could only make us quit.
Those who opposed our involvement in the war relentlessly pressed one question onto the national debate: Why are we inVietnam? Of all the questions asked during those years, none had an answer more simple or apparent. The United States intervened in the Vietnam War to prevent North Vietnam from imposing its totalitarian government on South Vietnam through military conquest, both because a Communist victory would lead to massive human suffering for the people of Vietnam and because it would damage American strategic interests and pose a threat to our allies and friends in other non-Communist nations.
To understand what went wrong in Vietnam, the critical question is not why we were in Vietnam but how we got into Vietnam. In 1950, President Truman gave France $10 million in financial aid to support its war against the Communist Viet Minh. By 1960, President Eisenhower had stationed 685 noncombat advisers in South Vietnam and had given its government $2 billion in aid. But our commitment remained clearly limited, contingent on whether the South Vietnamese government undertook needed reforms and represented the true nationalist aspirations of its people.
President Kennedy made the first
Similar Books
