The HMA GUY Journal

One of the saddest legacies of the Vietnam War is the cruel misperception that the American fighting men there did not measure up to their predecessors in World War II and Korea. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This article is an excerpt from a piece written by by Colonel Harry G. Summers and originally published in the Summer 1998 issue of Vietnam Magazine. Their comments remain as thought-provoking as they were more than a decade ago. Parts of the original piece were interviews with General Frederick C. Weyand, U.S. Army (ret.).

That the Vietnam War was one of the most complex wars in our history was little understood at the time, and it is even less understood today. Many still believe, for example, that the war was lost to black-pajama-clad VC guerrillas, armed only with primitive weapons and revolutionary fervor.

Their attitudes evidently fixed in the early 1960s, when the VC were at their height, such critics fail to appreciate - as the North Vietnamese now freely admit - that the VC guerrillas were virtually annihilated during their abortive 1968 Tet Offensive, and from that time on the war was primarily an North Vietnamese regular army affair. It was a NVA 22-division, cross-border blitzkrieg, supported by tanks, missiles and heavy artillery--not VC guerrillas--that finally overwhelmed South Vietnam in the spring of 1975.

Then there is the notion that the war was lost because of the failure of American arms. Again, there is little realization that American ground combat forces began to withdraw from Vietnam in 1969 - not because of enemy pressure but because of political decisions made in Washington. By the end of 1971, most of the Army and Marine combat divisions had left, and in August 1972 the last American ground-combat unit, the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, departed Vietnam. With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in March 1973 (more than two years before the fall of Saigon), all remaining American naval, air and logistics support forces were withdrawn.

The 1975 North Vietnamese spring offensive, which finally conquered South Vietnam, did not defeat the American military for the simple reason that by that time there was no American military there to defeat. Not only had American forces been withdrawn years earlier, Congress had categorically and unequivocally prohibited their re - intervention.

But America's fighting forces did not fail us. "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," I told my North Vietnamese counterpart during negotiations in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon. He pondered that remark a moment and then replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

Interview with GEN Weyand

Vietnam Magazine (VN): If you had to pick one thing that disturbs you most about the Vietnam War, what would that be?

Weyand: What particularly haunts me, what I think is one of the saddest legacies of the Vietnam War, is the cruel misperception that the American fighting men there did not measure up to their predecessors in World War II and Korea. Nothing could be further from the truth.

VN You mentioned the local school sponsored by American soldiers. The common perception is that American forces in Vietnam did more to abuse the local population than it did to assist them.

Weyand: I guess that during my five years in Vietnam I paid more than a thousand visits to U.S. units in the field. And in almost every case they would begin their briefing with an account of what they had been doing to help the villagers in their area--medical team visits; help to local churches, schools and orphanages; road building, construction assistance and the like. For every terrible aberration like My Lai, there were thousands of acts of charity and compassion. Yet you would never know that from what was reported here at home.

VN Although the American people may be unaware of those facts, the South Vietnamese people certainly know the truth. When Marine veteran Bill Broyles returned to Vietnam in 1984, he found an enormous reservoir of goodwill toward Americans. So perhaps we planted some seeds there that may someday take root. And speaking of the way things were reported here at home, one of the worst cases has to be the news coverage of the VC's Tet Offensive of 1968. You commanded II Field Force then and have been credited with frustrating the VC's plans to capture Saigon. Did you have advance warning of the attack?

Weyand: Not as such. We did know that something was coming, but our intelligence was not good enough to pinpoint exactly what they were up to. And as a former Intelligence officer, I have to admit that lack of proper intelligence has been a grievous inadequacy in our military forces for years. In Korea I'd get orders to attack at 0500, but not a word about what was out there. In fact, I don't believe I ever went into battle knowing what I was going to run into. To the armchair analysts years after the event, everything looks neat, orderly and predic-table. But that's certainly not the case at the time. Anyway, our radio intercepts began picking up the movement of units toward Saigon, which caused us to cancel a major multidivision operation we had planned to launch in the northern part of III Corps, about 100 miles north of Saigon. That really proved to be a stroke of good fortune, for if those units had gone north, the VC would have had a field day in Saigon.

VN What other actions did you take?

Weyand: On the basis of this sketchy intelligence I did reposition some units and moved the forces into blocking positions covering the approaches to Saigon. Although all II Field Force units were put on full alert several hours before the VC launched their attack, we really had no precise information on exactly where they would strike. We certainly didn't know they'd get inside the U.S. Embassy grounds in the heart of Saigon. Although that made for some sensational news photos, from a military viewpoint it really didn't do them much good. Seizing a position and holding it are two different things. And the VC were unable to hold. They were repulsed everywhere with staggering losses--so much so that, as the North Vietnamese now freely admit, they ceased to be an effective fighting force. The last seven years of the war--from 1968 to 1975--were almost exclusively a North Vietnamese regular army affair.

VN How did the VC fail?

Weyand: I think the VC made two major mistakes. First, by attacking everywhere at once, they fragmented their forces and laid themselves open to defeat in detail. Second, and most important, they believed their own propaganda and thought there would be a "great general uprising" wherein the South Vietnamese people would flock to their banner. There was a great general uprising all right, but it was against them rather than for them. The vast majority of the South Vietnamese people wanted nothing to do with the VC. During the entire course of the war there were never any mass defections by the South Vietnamese. But it is interesting to note that in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, more than 150,000 VC deserters came over to our side.

VN But that's not the way it was reported here at home. The news media--and especially the television news media--portrayed it as a major defeat. President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said that when the CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite came out against the war, he knew that it was all over and decided not to run for re-election.

Weyand: I can understand the initial reporting. After all the glowing reports that the war was about to wind down, the Tet Offensive came as a terrible shock. But the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 was also a terrible shock. Like the VC's Tet Offensive, it was a desperate gamble to win the war in a single stroke. And it, too, initially provoked some sensationalist headlines as the U.S. forces reeled back and entire units surrendered to the enemy.

VN I think you're saying that unlike the Battle of the Bulge, with Tet the initial impression became the accepted wisdom. But there were some balanced accounts. It was Peter Braestrup, once the Saigon bureau chief for The Washington Post, who exposed such shoddy reporting in his book, The Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. It was Vietnam war correspondent Don Oberdorfer who wrote Tet: The Turning Point of the Vietnam War, which also set the record straight. And it was another former war correspondent, Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, who got the VC to admit how badly they had been mauled.
Weyand: True. But unfortunately those books were written long after the event, and long after the damage had been done.

VN Your comment about public opinion raises another issue. Several years ago Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger laid out six preconditions for the commitment of U.S. military forces to combat abroad. One of the most controversial was his conviction that there must be some reasonable assurance of public and congressional support. Do you agree with that assessment?

Weyand: I think he had it exactly right, and the Vietnam War proved his point. In 1976, in a message to the Army, I laid out some of my observations on the Vietnam War. "Vietnam was a reaffirmation of the peculiar relationship between the American Army and the American people," I said. "The American Army really is a people's army in the sense that it belongs to the American people, who take a jealous and proprietary interest in its involvement. When the Army is committed, the American people are committed; when the American people lose their commitment, it is futile to try to keep the Army committed." When the American people lost their commitment after the Tet Offensive of 1986, for all intents and purposes the war was lost. I think President Nixon realized that fact, and that's why soon after he entered office he ordered a gradual withdrawal of American combat forces and the "Vietnamization" of the war.

VN Why did they lose their commitment? Was it just because of the perceived defeat in Tet?

Weyand: No, it was much more than that. Tet was just the final straw. The fundamental reason, as you pointed out in your book On Strategy, was the lack of clear-cut and understandable political and military objectives. That was true from top to bottom. When Clark Clifford took over as secretary of defense after Tet 1968, he found that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had no concept of victory and no plan to end the war. And that was the case in Saigon as well.

VN It's now 15 years since all American combat forces were withdrawn from Vietnam. Do you see an improvement in public attitudes toward Vietnam veterans?

Weyand: As I said earlier, America should have been proud of them from the start, for they were a remarkable group of young men and women. Now they're finally beginning to get their due, and it's gratifying to see the increased public recognition of the dedication, bravery and compassion the overwhelming majority of these men and women displayed while they were serving in Vietnam.

Paul Riddell replied -

Hey, I've seen that reporter mentality before (I worked for a year at a local weekly newspaper, and understood how the "write what you know" philosophy encourages so many weekly newspaper writers to write about porn and terminal alcoholism), but the main consideration isn't so much the writer's bias but the simple fact that the anti-missile laser doesn't work. Sorry, but computer simulations aren't the same thing as actual tests, the whole thing is starting to smell like that famed "tachyon weapon" that Norman Spinrad reported on back nearly twenty years ago.

To Which I took Issue -

To take issue with Mr. Riddell - the ABL does work. One has only to read recent articles in Aviation Week to see that.

Unfortunately, to use the simulation analogy is to not understand the what and whyfors one does simulations. True, simulations and emulations are not true tests. They are not designed to be. They are designed to present a variant or portion of design, not the complete design, based on an intended use.

However, the Government has determined that simulations are more cost effective than actually building something then having it not work. Case in point is the Future Combat System for the Army. FCS is being completely design/re-designed in a simulations environment before a single piece of hardware is bought. While this process still costs billions of taxpayer dollars, the process actully saves billions later on. Because if you build something in a simulations environment, then build emulators, and then build prototypes, the finished product is just that. Finished. And certainly saves the taxpayer from wankish statements such as it doesn't work.

Note: The Norman Spinrad comment was based on a story he told regarding the period of time he worked on the "Star Wars" program. He made a joke which some Government functionaries took seriously. As much as I admire Mr. Spinrads's writing, for one to repeat such a waggish story for effect; i.e. look how much smarter I am then these weasely and stupid bureaucrats, is intellectually bankrupt.

This article was originally posted as a response to Paul Riddell's article at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sclerotic_rings/457928.html .

This article qouted an article that appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/May/19/ln/ln25a.html .

Paul,

As much as I have admired your writing over the years, I believe you have fallen into the logic trap that many people fall into; i.e. "Whatever the Government (particularly this one) does is wrong." Once you fall into that trap, taking articles such as the one written in the Honolulu Advertiser at face value becomes easy and without criticism.

Normally, I skim articles such as those in the Honolulu Advertiser without so much of a murmur. The reporters are not scientists and have not one scintilla of an idea of what they are writing about. They see Government spending and immediately think, "Big budget. Must be those stupid Government idiots. Better write article telling world." It seems that those Government idiots have produced things that went well; things like the F-22, C-17, B-52 (now 32 years old and still flying). And, regardless of what some have written, the Space Shuttle. The various Shuttles have had hundreds of successful missions. The accidents that happened were not because of design, but of bad decisions of people who were not scientists. In any case, all these program went "over budget."

Now, back to the matter at hand. This article was so filled with egrecious errors of fact as to make reciting them tedious and without purpose. Just to cherry pick some of the errors, I would start with the period of the program. Airborne Laser (ABL) has been a twenty year program, not an eight year program. The current contract phase is for eight years. Is it costing $3.1 billion? Yea, so? When dealing with Congress, money is requested, allocated, then spent. You request 3.1, you get 2.

Leaving money for a moment, what is being requesting, contrary to the article, is not more money to bring anything "up to spec," but allocation funds to complete the contract phase. Simply put, Congress never allocated the complete contract value.

I have been in the defense business, on both sides of the Government/Contractor fence, a very long time and have seen a lot of strange things. However, the one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the inherent stupidity and general shortsightedness of your average reporter. The reporter shows up on your front porch, "Tell me the truth." You tell him the truth and he goes and writes what he damn well wanted to in the first place.

Geez, it is enough to make a grown man wanna cry.

Okay, let me start out by writing that I enjoy The History Channel. Or, as some call it, the Nazi channel, the war channel, or the hysterical channel. Well, my darling wife calls it by that last title. In any case, I prefer the somewhat long winded discussions to the latest offerings of say, Charmed or Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. I did really enjoy the short lived series Firefly, but that is for another time. Each to his own, I suppose.

One of the shows on The History Channel is R. Lee Ermey’s Mail Call (http://www.rleeermey.net/1index.php). Interesting show – if it were not for the fact that every single one of his questions came from the original Hollywood Military Advisor Chat Board on The Hollywoodnetwork. A little history of mine own – about four years ago I sent letters to Craig Haffner and Donna Lusitana of Greystone Communications. It seems the Greystone produces Mail Call as well as the majority of footage for A&E/The History Channel shows. My mail was nothing more than a letter advertising my services as a military advisor and directing them to my site and chat board. It was not a prospectus for a new show.

When Mail Call first appeared, I tuned in because I was curious. When the first question posed to Ermey was how do landmines work, I thought I have read this before. When the next question had to do tanks, I thought wait one minute. I went to my chat board and there they all were in order. Curious, that.

Instead of asking me whether I wanted anything to do with the show, Haffner and Lusitana just used all the questions that appeared on my chat board. Nothing I can do about the situation as the chat board was copy written by The Hollywnetwork and not by me. Oh well, such is life in Holyweird.

By the way, I am not bashing R. Lee Ermey. While I have never met the man, I am told he easy going, but very professional retired Marine. He has done well with the show and has showed the ability to popularize and make interesting some rather boring topics. Who I am bashing are the idjits at Greystone who took an idea I had pitched to and had accepted by The Hollywoodnetwork and made their own show without consulting the guy who came up with the idea. Hoo –Rah. Carry On.

On Sunday, 22 Feb 04, Mark Townsend and Paul Harris published an article in The Guardian newspaper. The subject was Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us. Basically, the article states that there is this secret Pentagon report (no it’s not) that says the world is going to hell in a hand basket all because of global warming. The authors go one to imply that, “we knew that all along.” However, Messrs Townsend and Harris do go on to tell the readers that they have not read the report. They are merely passing on information they have learned through “sources.” Pardon me gentlemen, but that’s not what the report said. Besides, do you often report on second hand sources without confirmation?

Without going into depth regarding the facts surrounding the terms “global warming,” suffice it to say that the Pentagon commissions many reports each year. Just because the report is commissioned and written has little to do with its contents or conclusions. Many of these reports are “what if” documents. The “what if” becomes an intended use for a larger study or war game. The intended use is then de – constructed into use cases for closer studies.

Supposedly, this report was commissioned by noted defense consultant Andrew Marshall. Townsend and Harris go on to state that Marshall has had considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

My research into Marshall is that he is one the leading lights of the new military transformation using net centric communications and information flow as its center point. His intent is to make the military lighter, faster, and able to control the battlefield through informational over watch. A good idea of the current Administration can get the services to get on the bandwagon.

I return to my initial point. Be careful how you draw conclusions from study papers. Just because a paper is published that describes how the U.S. would respond in the event of a nuclear war does not indicate that our Government endorses nuclear war.

The articles are at these sites http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153530,00.html and http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153547,00.html.

Excerpt of article published in Suite 101 – Military Movies on January 18, 1999

Is It Hollywood or Is It History?

That is the question that is most often asked by Sander Vanocur in MOVIES IN HISTORY on The History Channel. This last week or so, he has been showing excerpts from THE THIN RED LINE along with interviews from actual participants of the Battle of Guadalcanal. The two interviewees, Ken Hoser, USA, and William Schumacher, USMC, both came to the conclusion that THE THIN RED LINE was 60% history and 40% Hollywood.

As a rule, I watch war films with a jaundiced eye. I have been the recipient of attempts on my person by belligerent forces and have a sense of what goes on in combat. At least, I think I do. I don't think any person who has experienced combat can accurately describe their experience. I am also not particularly involved in nit - picking esoterica out of movies. That is, I really don't look for the wrist watches in SPARTACUS. However, if I see things in the movie or TV show as egregious as a soldier in WWII wearing Vietnam era web gear, ranks turned upside down, or a soldier of WWII wearing a VN service ribbon I get a little upset.

To return to Hollywood and history, Hollywood is in the business of purveying fantasy to a buying public. If you want to see what war was really like, watch a documentary such as THE WORLD AT WAR. However, I am saying that whatever you see of war movies is going to be, by movie making's very nature, historically inaccurate. It is incumbent on the producers, directors, costume designers, art directors, whatever, to lessen those historical inaccuracies to least degree possible.

Thanks for joining this page. Several years ago, I was asked by the Hollywood Network through Carlos D'Abreau to host a chat board to answer questions of a military nature for those working in the motion picture and television industries. Some time after that I was asked to join the paid editorial staff of e-magazine Suite 101.

In the subsequent years, Suite 101 dropped paying its editors and as a consequence I stopped writing for them. The Hollywood Network stopped sponsoring the various chat boards that once dispensed considerable, accurate, and well written advice to the motion picture and television industries.

It is here at LiveJournal that I have a place to mix the two rather disparate skills - writing and answering military questions - in one place. Every day or so, I will post a short article on the media and the military, or the military and the military, or the movies and the military, and try to get some feedback.

Let's try to make this an active site.

So have at it.