Vietnam & After

A mentality difference

Reading Gibson's book brought me to a quotation that I found to be profoundly unique and insightful. The quotation read:

   "We had to destroy the town to save it."

As I saw this line, I thought about it for a while. How special, how insightful. For Americans, destruction and chaos is not Way of life. We believe in the individual and that every single American life matters. Yet across the globe many see i life differently. To the Vietcong, it was not one man, it was the group, the unit, the cause of the country. The Viet's did not see the individual like we did. When looking at this quotatyion above, I am provoked to think that the Vietcong felt no sympathy  for rolling over a town, burning it to the ground or slaughtering those in the way. For the Cong, its different. These things (burning, destruction, killing) are the pathway to a new era, a era of equality and national freedom. So the title of this bog was chosen for a purpose. Our mentalities are much different, if not polar opposites. I think perhaps if both sides understood each other better, a lot more could have been accomplished.

easier than the SATs

If you need a C to pass, then why not give it to yourself?  In the Accelerated Pacification Program, implemented after Tet, the government wanted to grade support in the Hamlets.  But as Robert Boettcher notes:

    "Well this was a fraud.  It was a paper exercise in the first place and everyone knew that the higher-ups at the regional and Saigon levels wanted positive reports."

Similarly, if you are handed a good grade without putting in the hard work, then it is all only a short-term ego-stroke.  What happens when you get a job based on those grades but don't have the knowledge expected of you?  You will not be affective at your tasks and not produce valuable outcomes.  

In Vietnam, numbers were continually fudged and they were really only cheating their own policy.  I don't think there was malicious intent, afterall, everyone likes good grades.  And there were some 'A students' like John Vann who understood the failures of the approaches taken. 

Strange Ground

"Maybe I was being unfair, because there were many things reorted about the Americans and SOuth Vietnamese that were never reported about th VC and NVA. The NVA would attack small hamlets at night. They'd just kill, watonly kill. One example really hit me because I was there on the day before the attack. I was playing with a couple of little children, about three or four years old......I got there the next morning at about eight o'clock and the very same little kids I was playing with were dead. A hand here, a leg there. Mothers shot up. It was like a massacre."

    When I began reading the packet, I thought it would be another reading. As I got into it I was more emotional. The stories these people tell, the information they give and all the vivid details they provide reallly hit home. I knew the wars were bad and children were among those attacked without question but to read the details and have the image in your head is unbelieveable. I have a four year old brother and all I could think about reading this section was him and how I would feel if I saw him dead and in pieces. Watching the movies, it seems as if the fighters have no emotion or any feelings while doing it. There is no remorse or no second thought, not that it should be like that but to turn around and read this makes you see the troubles and their true feelings. I once wanted to be in the army but I dont think I could ever do the killings they did and live with myself.

Downgrading The Hamlets

    John Peterkin was an experienced military officer who was designated to serve a full 18 month tour of Vietnam in 1968.  He had previously served in Korea then served in the reserves. As Peterkin made his way to Vietnam he was designated to train district senior advisor's.  He would also be responsible for the reporting of the status of various hamlets that were supposedly serving as military outposts.  What he discovered was that many of the South Vietnamese were on many occasions, abandoning their posts for most of the night only to return the next day to make it appear that this was actually a functional unit.  The U.S was grading these hamlets based partially on population.  John Peterkin discovered that a particular hamlet which looked to hold no more than 60 or 70 people was marked to hold over 800.

"Chief, look, if they stack bodies ten high they couldn't
have that many people in the hamlet.  I've been
there. It's impossible.  I don't mind you adding on
a few bodies here and there because i know
you don't get enough money, but gimme a break."

    Peterkin in my opinion was often very cynical in his views of submitting reports.  He knew very well what the higher up wanted to hear.  He realized that it would reflect poorly upon himself if he started to downgrade the level of security in his area.  He changed a few hamlets from a B to a D.  He states that he really should have given them an E being as they were basically non functional, however did not due to the reaction he would get from his boss.  Peterkin realized that he wasn't going to stay in the military much longer, so, basically, he did not care.  When issues were brought up to his superiors, they knew well about them, however to achieve promotion they had to cook the books.  This passage outlines a major problem with the philosophies of military officers during Vietnam.

Pacification

    Robert Boettcher was member of the CORDS program which is short for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support. CORDS was a key component in the process of pacification which was wining over the people of South Vietnam. His job was to go around the hamlets with Vietnamese officials and find out how pro-Viet Cong or how pro-government the civilians where.  All of this was done to complete a computer test that graded differnt categories such as local government, overall security, health facilities exc. For each question you marked an answer on a scantron like paper. Boettecher said " It was a fraud. It was a paper exercise." Everyone was aware of the what the higher ups-wanted to hear and see. Giving a hamlet a C was mearly a joke, it didn't mean that the hamlet met the true standards of a C it could simply mean that an American official or two were actively involved. No matter what the grade, it was clear to the men there that maybe the government had power in the day but the Viet Cong owned the night.  Everything that was giving to the higher up and eventually the American people were put into a " favorable light." Once the report  reached the next step, it could be changed even more. If two hamlets were close to each other and one was a C and the other a B, there was a good chance that both would just be considered Bs. In response to the TET Offensive they issued a accelerated pacification program known as the APP. The APP were highly paid and highly unmotivated.  Boettecher was given a new job as the director of the Field Operations Division, his job was to handle elections, training of the local officials, the RD cadre and the people's self defense force. He worked with the famous Vann whose complaints about how Vietnam was run later tunrned into policy as he explained the need for a better and more progressive pacification program. The Americans gave the PSFD thousands of m16s which were distributive. All of this done was to fill an exquation so that you could say, X number of people in a province and X number of people are in the PSDF. The people didn't receive any special training just given powerful guns that were to be stored away unless they needed them.  Another thing that was based upon an equation like method were the elections. They had numbered goals for evyerhing that didn't really prove or mean anything significant. The people in charge knew the had a responsibility in making sure the elections were successful and that peole came out. So they made sure they did. Does that count as a free election? Something the people eagerly wanted? Maybe not, but it was something the American people back home wanted to see, so when their demands grew larger, elections were pushed harder. Bob, like many others were skeptical about Vietnam seeing all the corruption that was going on. The lies gave false reports that represented the US winning a war but in reality they weren't. His opinion changed when he saw that there could actually be change in Vietnam. The An Gian province was an extremely safe and secure province that the VC never went to. It was a place run by the Hoa Hao, which is a " social,political, economic, and religious sect, is also very anti-Communist. They weree a true team who if they saw a VC someone would go immediately tell a commander and the VC would be dead shortly after. The place was highly developed economically, and it proved that the Vietnamese could be capable of doing things. The An Gian was the perfect example and idealistically what every person hoping and fighting for change in Vietnam wanted to see all over. This example proved that the war could be won. There were was hope, but that the US ran out of time. With the false reports, the crash programs and things being done to quickly and ineffectively all hurt the cause of Vietnam. The goals weree to change everything in a short amount of time, build a representative government, economic development exc exc. Basically to transform a whole country with a time restraint and already failed projects. The American people were no longer for the war, so America had lost the war. The goals could not be met.

Strange Ground for John Peterkin

Reading John Peterkin’s first hand account of being a senior adviser was very insightful. He explained his duties and what was going on in Vietnam at this time. The United States had set up Province Senior Advisors or PSA’s to basically monitor villages in Vietnam and judge whither they were fully functioning safe villages or if the village was a target of the VC. John began to tell of some of the corruption that we had talked about in class, things such as over counting body’s and not using United States money for what it was intended for.

These villages he was assigned to watch over were for the most part good villages with good people, but of course, no one ever truly knew where the VC were, so an attack at anytime to any village could happen. It would happen more so if a PSA was staying at that village, or if the village was given officials. That PSA or official would become a target of the VC and make that village more dangerous. This lead to some Vietnamese officials actually leaving their village at night in fear of an attack, and then retuning during the daytime.

The big thing here is that for a village to receive money from the United States government, it had to be a fully functioning village with some sort of officials etc. This was important because the village also had to be graded, and this grade would determine how much they got, so when officials were leaving the village during the night in fear it really weakened the village. Peterkin dealt with one of these villages’ first hand and explained,

“I beat them there. When I got to the office, it was bone-dry. Nobody there. I waited for them. So I said, looking, you gotta make up your minds. If this is going to be a functioning village, someone has to stay here. Otherwise I’m gonna have to downgrade it.”

Peterkin’s whole summary of his stint in Vietnam shows us how corrupt some things could be. He was a former police officer and felt the need to mostly go by the book, so I believe his accounts are fairly true, he doesn’t show any one sidedness. In Vietnam during war time, a lot of army officials wanted to move up in rank quickly and thus over counted body counts. The Vietnamese villages on the other hand wanted the money from the United States so they, or at least their appointed officials would try and beat the system to continue getting the money. Peterkin saw this and would have no problem downgrading a village that either was not performing well, or simply wasn’t there anymore. 

Hearts and Minds

    

Pacification?" We wanted to accomplish a hell of alot in a short time.  Build representative government.  Effective administration.  Economic Development.  And Millitary security.  All at the same time, and while the country was under attack day and night.  That's a large order, it really is.  And it was just too much"

Today, decades after our withdrawal from Vietnam, it may be constructive to look back and ask if the U.S. military ever discovered the elements of a strategy in South Vietnam that, given the proper circumstances, might have achieved American objectives. Had those elements and circumstances existed how could they have been combined into a strategy that could have served American objectives at an acceptable cost? In retrospect, that is, how could we have won?

Although the CORDS and CAP programs were not without their flaws, they were the only truly effective strategy which produced substantive results in the counterinsurgency war. But this success too was fleeting. As villages and hamlets became free-fire zones and peasant populations were forced to become refugees, the CORDS Program became the de facto instrument which validated our attrition strategy, causing Pacification to effectively become hostage to Attrition. tribute

Loving a Soldier Long Time

During the Vietnam War, many of the civilians were mistreated in unimagineable ways. From being burned, to being shot  by the military without hesitance, there seemed to have been endless ways in torturing people to force vital information or for sheer and cruel entertainment.

Women and children were no exception to the torture that took place during the Vietnam War.  Gibson's "The Perfect War," mentions in Chapter 7 how children could easily lose their innocense for the sake of being able to help provide for their family  If you thought reading about the hardships of a teenage boot-shiner/orphan was sad (i.e. Alger's "Ragged Dick), imagine coming across small children yelling and cursing at you for not chosing them to shine your boots? As for the women, their choices were limited as to how to help support their families.  If they were not killed after being raped by several men, there would be another disastrous path waiting for them to come across - prostitution.

Full Metal Jacket Prostitute Scene

Movies such as "Full Metal Jacket" display the desperation of women in need of feeding their families. Whether some worked in brothels, bars, or as live ins, aka a "house-mouse", the prices for their sexual services varied.  The economic situation in Vietnam left many to lead a life of corruption, so much that according to Gibson, there were 200,000 Vietnamese Prostitutes by 1975.  Nevermind seeing a number as high as 200,000 enrolled in college, or working jobs that were legal  One of the oldest crimes in history took place in Vietnam for the longest, with a terrifying number to go along. 

Even though many may have laughed at the Asian actress' broken English and crass approach to the American soldiers in "Full Metal Jacket", but imagine how an actual Vietnamese prostitute felt at the end of her "work" day? It's hard to imagine that she would wake up the next day looking forward to repeating the dirty routine all over again.  The life of a prostitute in Vietnam was no where near glamourous.  A prostitute was lucky if she even made it to the next day, because everytime she encountered a man, she risked losing her life.  For some men, it was easier to kill the "call-girl" than to pay the fifteen dollars she had charged for her services. 

Komer Recalls Tet's Impact

"At Tet they infiltrated right through our porous lines and attacked some forty cities.  They abandoned the countryside where they were doing really well, and boy did they get creamed in the cities.  For once the enemy we could not find in the jungle, ... by knowing our every move, for once we could find them."

The Tet offensive was the major turning point in the Vietnam War.  The Tet Offensive helped inform the United States citizens of what was really happening in this war.  Most public opinion was against the war.  United States citizens thought America was winning the war at the beginning of 1968, but when the Communist forces were able to muster such a large force against U.S. troops, General Westmoreland, the commander in charge of the Vietnam War, requested an additional 206,000 U.S. troops. Americans began asking the question, "Why do we need so many more troops if we are winning the war?" In addition, battle scenes and TV images of casualties were shown on the nightly news and finally,CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America", said the war should end. The costs of continuing were too high. This forced President Lyndon Johnson to announce that he would not be running for another term as president setting the stage for the eventual withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

The lack of communication within our government according to Komer was quite plentiful.  He wraps it up pretty clearly, "we are in deep trouble and that's why we need more men-not to insure victory but to stave off defeat." How insane that our government allowed this to happen.  Instead of ensuring victory we lost thousands of men in the process.

Pacification- "The New Hype!"

The main goal in Vietnam was to end Communists and the spread of it to other countries. But not everyone in Vietnam was categorizied as "100% Soldiers". They did not enlist to just carry a gun. They wanted to help and make a difference. One story is how a young man was drafted. The main reason why he was drafted was because he was young, single and spoke French.

"We were supposed to be helping rebuild schools and clinics, improve seeds and fertilizers, to make village life better. One of the projects that was probably more successful was repairing the temples which, more often than not, had been destroyed by the Viet Cong." (Christian Appy, Patriots, page 77)

Some military officials weren't cut out for the war. They had big hearts and wanted to help create a civilization for the Vietnamese. Changing a person for the better could mean a world of difference.