David Hackworth
Tom Abbott
wrote:
Sorry to take so long to reply to this, Ralph. I have to be in the
right mood.
> Colonel Hackworth and Vietnam
>
>Colonel David Hackworth has given me permission to post
>his short essay on Vietnam. When I read it a few days ago I was
>stunned by the similarity of our experiences and our conclusions
>about the Vietnam war. He from the military perspective and me from
>the CIA's.
>
>Below I present the words of this very honorable man.
>
>Ralph McGehee
>http://www.members.tripod.com/CIABASE/index.html
>
>
> How the Vietnam War Affected Me
>
> By David Hackworth
>
>The Vietnam War scarred me more severely than any of the eight Purple
>Hearts I'd received during almost eight years of combat. Up to Vietnam, I'd
>always been a Don Quixote-like idealist who believed that those who served
>our country as professional military officers did so only from the point of
>view of DUTY, HONOR, AND COUNTRY. But during Vietnam I finally got a look
>inside the inner circle of the Army's top brass -- and witnessed corruption
>and evil so great it broke my heart and arc-lighted my belief system.
I would take issue with Mr. Hackworth's painting every military
officer in South Vietnam as corrupt and evil. As with every
occupation and human endeavor, there are good people and bad people
involved. If one sees a few bad apples, and extrapolate from that
that all apples are bad, then they have reached an incorrect
conclusion. Nothing is that simple.
>
>In Vietnam, I also discovered that most of those at the top were concerned
>only with themselves, and few senior leaders understood the nature of the
>war or had a clue about the impossible mission with which they had tasked
>their soldiers.
It would be understandable that the generals in South Vietnam did
not understand the nature of the job they were given, other than in
very general terms, because their leaders in Washington were also
unsure of what course of action to take. You can't expect the
subordinants to understand the mission if their superiors do not
understand it themselves. American forces were directed to
essentially provide a defensive holding action while the leaders in
Washington figured out what to do. It's not the fighting force's
fault the leadership in Washington never figured out, in over ten
years of trying, what they really wanted to accomplish.
> Most generals and colonels were there only to get combat
>command assignments and the right glory medals that would punch their
>ticket. Few cared about their men or the mission, most cared only about
>clawing their way up the promotion ladder.
You disparge a lot of good men with your broadbrush smear.
> All but the brain-dead among
>them knew that it was a bad, unwinnable war that had no military objective;
Well, count me among the braindead then, because I did not consider
the Vietnam war unwinnable, and it did have a military objective: to
stop communism from dominating the world; and, as was stated in the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (I'll paraphrase) that U.S. forces were to
secure South Vietnam and to bring about a situation where the South
Vietnamese would be able to take over their own defense. Both
missions were accomplished. One before South Vietnam fell, and one
after.
>yet not one serving general stood tall and told the American people this
>truth. Instead, they just went-along-to-get-along, lining up our young men
>to become the pulverized filler for bodybags.
The generals as far as I know, did not think the war unwinnable if
given sufficient resources, so I see no reason for them to proclaim to
the American public that it was unwinnable. They left that to
Hackworth and a very few other such "experts."
>
>After observing this obscenity first-hand in the trenches of Vietnam for
>almost five years, I told the American people -- while in uniform and from
>Vietnam -- that the war was not winnable, they were being lied to and we
>should get out now. This act caused a General William Westmoreland-led
>counter-attack to destroy my credibility. The generals and their
>synchophants employed every dirty trick in their slimey attempt to silence
>me (for details, see About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, Simon
>& Schuster 1989). They had to prove that I was wrong and they were right,
>and in so doing they violated every principle that makes America a free
>land.
Well, that's your view of it.
>
>Disgusted with the US Army and disillusioned with my country, which my
>forefathers had settled in 1622, I went to Australia in self-exile.
Yeah, I remember. I'll be polite and not say what I thought of your
actions.
> There,
>I made a new life and tried to forget Vietnam, but I couldn't shake that
>nightmare. It wouldn't go away not only because of bad dreams but also
>because Westmoreland and his followers launched a deceptive campaign of
>disinformation to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War. Their propaganda
>insisted that we lost the war not because of their poor leadership, but
>because of: THE PEACENIKS, THE COMMIE PRESS AND THE WEAK-KNEED POLITICIANS.
>They started the lie: "We won all the battles, but THEY lost the war."
The American military *did* win all the battles, then turned the
defense of South Vietnam over to the South Vietnamese and went home.
Two years later, *after* the American military forces were *long
gone,* North Vietnam launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. The
cowardly Congress of the United States (dominated by Democrats, BTW)
would not allow American forces to be put back into South Vietnam, not
even B-52 bombers, which could have devastated the massed heavy armor
and troops of the North Vietnamese attacking forces (wouldn't we have
loved this opportunity while we were still incountry!!) and given the
South Vietnamese a fighting chance.
So there were no military forces anywhere near South Vietnam when it
fell to North Vietnam, and the civilian leadership of the U.S. refused
to assist South Vietnam at its most dire moment, so who lost the war,
the American military, or the civilian leadership of the United
States? It should be obvious, but if it is not, let me put it another
way: it is not fair to accuse the American mililtary of being
defeated in a war that took place 10,000 miles from the nearest
American combat forces.
>
>I knew this was a lie, and this lie is what caused me to write About Face
>so that present and future generations would know and learn from the truth.
>Since About Face was published and I began my new career as a defense
>reporter, I sadly discovered that most of today's senior military leaders'
>values are frighteningly similar to these generals of the Vietnam era who
>sold their men and their country down the bloody drain. Most of the present
>crop of senior leadership are all into ME, ME, ME -- which explains the
>Somalias, Haitis, and Bosnias (for more details see Hazardous Duty, William
>Morrow 1996).
Let's see: All the American military officers are untruthful about
the Vietnam war, and even the defense reporters are "frighteningly"
similar to the military officers in their opinions. Now this means
one of two things: either all the military officers and the other
defense writers are correct in their interpretation of what happened
in Vietnam, or you are correct. The numbers are not in your favor.
>
>For most of the 2.5 million Americans who fought there, Vietnam was a bad
>trip. For me, it became the launching pad of the journey I'm still on today
>-- to do everything in my power not to let that sort of bloodbath happen
>again.
That is something worthy of pursuit, since many mistakes *were* made
in Vietnam.
>
>Vietnam gave me a new mission: To speak the truth and not let my children
>or your children or our country be doomed to repeat the horror, the waste
>and the futility of Vietnam.
Well, the Soviet Union fell in 1989, because of economic collapse,
which was principally caused by their large military expenditures, in
their efforts to take over the world. U.S. forces tied down communist
forces in Southeast Asia for over 10 years and made them pay dearly
for their aggression. Indian and Thailand and the rest of the free
Southeast Asian countries thank us for providing the wall between them
and the agressive communist forces seeking to dominate the whole area.
The Vietnam war was not pretty, but it did have enormous positive
effects for the world, even as it took our best young people.
Consider the look of the world had the U.S. allowed the Soviet Union
and its puppet regimes to go unchallenged anywhere in the world.
>
>Thus began my crusade to wake up the American people.
>
>David Hackworth Home Page 1998.
>
Now, Hackworth and Ralph have both said the Vietnam war was
unwinnable because they thought the South Vietnamese people actually
favored the North Vietnamese communists and Viet Cong to the South
Vietnamese government and their ally the United States. They would
have us think that no matter how many enemy we killed, there would be
an endless supply of new recruits from South Vietnam ready to throw
off the American "oppressors."
Not so, and easily proved.
For example: The 1968 Tet offensive. The Communists launched
the nation-wide Tet offensive fully expecting the South Vietnamese
people to rise up and throw off their oppressors, the Americans. The
North Vietnamese actually believed their own propoganda!! (so we
shouldn't fault Ralph too much for believing it, too)
Well, the South Vietnamese DID NOT rise up against the Americans,
instead they rose up against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, and
in the ensuing battles, the Viet Cong lost an estimated 40,000 killed,
and the North Vietnamese suffered similar causualties. The communist
Viet Cong forces were so decimated they were never an effective
fighting force for the rest of the war. So any contention that the
South Vietnamese felt enslaved by their government, or the Americans
is false. The South Vietnamese knew who their enemy was: the
communists.
Similarly, when the final battle for South Vietnam erupted in 1975,
and the South Vietnamese finally lost heart and gave up the battle,
and turned and ran, the South Vietnamese people did not go running to
the North Vietnamese and hail them as their liberators, but just the
opposite: they ran away from the North Vietnamese just as fast as they
could go.
Both of these "votes" by the South Vietnamese were real and
expressed their true feelings about the situation. There was no
popular, unbeatable resistance to American forces in South Vietnam,
which would have caused the Vietnam war to be unwinnable, as Ralph and
Hackworth claim, and the South Vietnamese people's actions prove it
beyond a shadow of a doubt. Every time they were given the choice
they opted for the American side.
TA
Chris E. Turney
fortune during the war ?? Who bought radio stations, ranches and all
kinds of holdings. What happened at that time to a fat social security
fund ??
rmcg...@igc.org
many unsupported statements -- if you wish a better picture of what
was going on I could recommend a number of books but I believe your
mind is set -- so there is no point in listing them.
Ralph McGehee
http://www.members.tripod.com/CIABASE/index.html
In article <36b96927...@news.supernews.com>,
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Tom Abbott
>This really does not deserve a serious reply as it contains
>many unsupported statements -- if you wish a better picture of what
>was going on I could recommend a number of books but I believe your
>mind is set -- so there is no point in listing them.
Ralph, I've read a large number of books on this and related
subjects (I may even have your book), and I think I have a fair grasp
of the situation. I also served two tours of duty in South Vietnam.
Now, you can claim that the South Vietnamese were seething to break
free from their American "oppressors," but this cannot be true if,
when given the opportunity, the South Vietnamese chose the Americans
over the North Vietnamses communists, as they did during the Tet 1968
offensive, and again when South Vietnam fell to the communists in
1975.
My mind is not set in stone, and I am willing to listen to
arguments, but so far, the only "arguments" I've seen are really
personal opinions, which require me to take someone's word that it is
true. I need hard, confirmable numbers or something other than
opinion in order to change my mind.
TA
rmcg...@igc.org
were extant during that war. You might read Gettleman(s), Young, Marylyn
VIETNAM AND AMERICA: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF THE
VIETNAM WAR. Desite that title I believe that Marylyn Young's
The VIETNAM WARS is the better book.
or read the "Communist propagandist's" book Wilfred Burchett:
THE INSIDE STORY OF THE GUERRILA WAR. These are just a few. I admit
I have moved away from readings on the war of late -- the hundreds of
books are impossible to keep up. The Pentagon Papers shed a little light
but are so bureaucratic you have to read with a skeptical mind and
an intense interest.
Ralph McGehee
http://www.members.tripod.com/CIABASE/index.html
In article <36bc65a0...@news.supernews.com>,
tab...@intellex.com
>Other than the literally hundreds of documents re "People's War," that
>were extant during that war. You might read Gettleman(s), Young, Marylyn
>VIETNAM AND AMERICA: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF THE
> VIETNAM WAR. Desite that title I believe that Marylyn Young's
>The VIETNAM WARS is the better book.
>or read the "Communist propagandist's" book Wilfred Burchett:
>THE INSIDE STORY OF THE GUERRILA WAR. These are just a few. I admit
>I have moved away from readings on the war of late -- the hundreds of
>books are impossible to keep up. The Pentagon Papers shed a little light
>but are so bureaucratic you have to read with a skeptical mind and
>an intense interest.
>
>Ralph McGehee
>http://www.members.tripod.com/CIABASE/index.html
>
>
>
Well, Ralph, correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading your website,
and from the other authors you mention, my understanding of the gist
of your argument is that there was a popular movement among the South
Vietnamese people that wanted to overthrow their South Vietnamese
government and the Americans who supported it, and wanted to unite
with North Vietnam, into one country.
Your premise is that this movement was so strong and so widespread
among the South Vietnamese people that even if the United States had
stayed in South Vietnam for 50 years, this resistance would continue
and the U.S. could never overcome this opposition, therefore, the
Vietnam war was unwinnable.
You and the others make some good arguments, but reality has shown
that they were just theories which turned out not to be true, and this
is very easy to demostrate.
One case in point: The 1968 Tet Offensive. In Feb. 1968, the North
Vietnamese and the communist Viet Cong of South Vietnam launched a
nationwide attack in South Vietnam. They attacked every district and
province capital in South Vietnam during the Tet holidays, when most
South Vietnamese soldiers were home celebrating the holidays with
their families (the Americans were on semi-alert at their bases).
Their attacks were successful initially, but were quickly defeated and
routed with heavy casualties on their side.
The South Vietnamese communists, called the Viet Cong, had been in
hiding in South Vietnam for many years, carrying on guerrilla
activity, while keeping their identities secret. During the Tet
offensive, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong thought that as soon
as they attacked, the South Vietnamese people would rise up and join
them, and together they would oust the South Vietnamese government and
the Americans and would reunify the country, so the Viet Cong decided
to show themselves publicly for the first time, since they thought
there would be no need to hide after the great battle was over.
But it didn't work out that way. Instead, the South Vietnamese
population resisted the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese attackers
and repudiated the North Vietnamese claim that this was a "people's
war" and a "war of independence." The South Vietnamese wanted nothing
to do with communism and North Vietnam, and made it perfectly clear in
their actions during Tet. They could have joined the North
Vietnamese. They chose of their own free will not to do so, and
repulsed the North Vietnamese attacks.
Another indication that the South Vietnamese population did not
contain a large number of people wanting to overthrow the South
Vietnamese government and the Americans is that during the Tet
offensive, the Viet Cong communists lost 40,000 killed, and the Viet
Cong was never able to refill their ranks from the South Vietnamese
population. The North Vietnamese ended up sending North Vietnamese
troops south to take their places.
The Viet Cong lost 40,000 killed during Tet, and could not even
recruit enough from the local South Vietnamese population to replace
this number. So there weren't even 40,000 South Vietnamese left who
wanted to join the communists against the South Vietnamese govenment
and the Americans, and that, out of a population of about 20 million.
If you can't recruit 40,000 out of a population of 20 million then you
are not very popular.
Another example: In 1975, when North Vietnam made its final attack
and overwhelmed the South Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese did not
welcome the North Vietnamese as liberators, instead they ran away just
as fast as they could. Nothing speaks more eloquently to the
sentiments of the population of South Vietnam than this vote with
their feet. They wanted no part of communism or North Vietnam.
Anyone who would assert that there was some kind of popular resistance
to Americans in South Vietnam which would make military action
useless, must explain these actions of the South Vietnamese people.
And the explanation looks pretty clear to me: the South Vietnamese
preferred the Americans, to the North Vietnamese. Widespread popular
resistance to the American presence in South Vietnam is a myth.
TA
Tom Abbott
>Other than the literally hundreds of documents re "People's War," that
>were extant during that war. You might read Gettleman(s), Young, Marylyn
>VIETNAM AND AMERICA: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF THE
> VIETNAM WAR. Desite that title I believe that Marylyn Young's
>The VIETNAM WARS is the better book.
>or read the "Communist propagandist's" book Wilfred Burchett:
>THE INSIDE STORY OF THE GUERRILA WAR. These are just a few. I admit
>I have moved away from readings on the war of late -- the hundreds of
>books are impossible to keep up. The Pentagon Papers shed a little light
>but are so bureaucratic you have to read with a skeptical mind and
>an intense interest.
>
>Ralph McGehee
>http://www.members.tripod.com/CIABASE/index.html
>
>
>
Well, Ralph, correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading your website,
rmcg...@igc.org
A good indication of the loyalty of the majority of the South Vietnamese
was the fact that over a period of months the VC could carry materials
and equipment undiscovered and launch a surprise attack. The U.S. and
the SVNese government had tens-of-thousands in their security and military
forces yet no one saw this coming?? History's greatest intel failure.
Yes if I were a Vietnamese living in the towns and cities when Tet broke
out -- when death was everywhere -- I would have opted to pause and
not reveal my preferences -- look what happened in Hue.
Another arugment is that one or two million Vietnamese left and came
to the U.S. How many million did not?
I cannot re-argue this over and over -- check my web site for
further info.
Ralph McGehee
http://come.to/CIABASE
In article <36be2462...@news1.newscene.com>,
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Tom Abbott
>
>
>A good indication of the loyalty of the majority of the South Vietnamese
>was the fact that over a period of months the VC could carry materials
>and equipment undiscovered and launch a surprise attack.
Well, most of the countryside they were carrying supplies through
did not have South Vietnamese civilians living there. They had been
evacuated to safer areas of the country.
> The U.S. and
>the SVNese government had tens-of-thousands in their security and military
>forces yet no one saw this coming??
General Westmoreland knew the North Vietnamese were up to something,
they just did not know the exact day of the attack.
> History's greatest intel failure.
I wouldn't say that. The Americans were on alert even though the
communists had always observed the Tet ceasefire in the past. Seeing
as how the attacks were defeated in a matter of days, with a few
exceptions such as the battle for Hue, which took a few weeks to clean
out, the "surprise" attack was not very effective.
Of course, you would have thought the United States had been
decisively defeated if all you had to go on were news reports from
American reporters. They actually managed to turn one of the greatest
American victories in the Vietnam war into a percieved defeat of
equally great proportion. The pen is mightier than the sword, no
doubt about it.
>
>Yes if I were a Vietnamese living in the towns and cities when Tet broke
>out -- when death was everywhere -- I would have opted to pause and
>not reveal my preferences -- look what happened in Hue.
Yeah, looked what happened: the communists came into Hue (a
beautiful city, with a Catholic church full of bullet and shell holes,
and a huge statue of Christ standing in front of it, unscathed ) and
rounded up all the South Vietnamese they could find and took them out
and executed them. This is one very good reason the South Vietnamese
wanted no part of North Vietnam's communism: the SOB's were
bloodthirsty killers.
>
>Another arugment is that one or two million Vietnamese left and came
>to the U.S. How many million did not?
How many were given the choice?
>
>I cannot re-argue this over and over -- check my web site for
>further info.
>
>Ralph McGehee
>http://come.to/CIABASE
>
>
Well, while I'm doing that, check out this news item from the
associated press about how the South Vietnamese community in America
thinks about someone hanging up a picture of North Vietnam's leader Ho
Chi Minh. It seems the Vietnamese still don't want anything to do
with communism. Would you, given its track record?
Found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Ho-Poster.html
February 11, 1999
Ho Chi Minh Poster Man Attacked
Filed at 2:17 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
WESTMINSTER, Calif. (AP) -- A Vietnamese shopkeeper who won the right
to display a poster of Ho Chi Minh in his store window faced hundreds
of angry protesters and landed in the hospital after being struck in
the face.
Truong Van Tran's wall-sized poster of the late communist leader
outraged many in Little Saigon, home to 200,000 Vietnamese-Americans.
Some fled South Vietnam in 1975 after it fell to communist North
Vietnam, and others left nearly a decade later when they were freed
from prison camps.
An Orange County court on Wednesday held that Tran, 37, could display
the poster, which protesters compared to hanging a portrait of Adolf
Hitler in a Jewish neighborhood.
``Mr. Tran's display is undisputedly offensive and engenders hatred,''
said Judge Barbara Tam Nomoto Schumann. ``However, these symbols are
part of political speech which Mr. Tran has a right to express even if
the context of that expression is offensive.''
Tran was on his way to re-hang the display when he was struck by a
protester outside his Hi Tek video store. He fell to the ground and
was taken to a hospital, where he complained of chest pain and
remained overnight for observation. He was in fair condition this
morning.
It was the second time Tran was attacked during a protest over his
display. On Jan. 18, he was struck on the head but not seriously
injured. He declined to file a complaint.
For a week after Tran first put up the poster, hundreds of protesters
picketed the store, the mall's landlord sent him an eviction notice
and the store was shut down.
Tran, who arrived in the United States in 1980, told television crews
earlier in the day that he is not a communist and does not support the
communist leadership in Vietnam.
``Communists killed my brother,'' Tran told KCBS-TV.
``I lost my country and I lost my family because of this regime. I
don't want any symbolism of communism in Little Saigon,'' said Bich
Nguien. ``He has a right to freedom of speech, but he can't take
advantage of the refugee community.''
TA