Centerfield

Good points Jon. On a thread at SF I did point out that both strategy in Viet Nam (bombing of Cambodia) and our withdrawal played a part in the death that followed. The Khmer Rouge found added support by our tactics and withdrawal, but it would be unfair to say other nations did not help play a big role.

One must question the strategy Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy followed. Ho Chi Min might have made a better negotiating partner than the mess that followed. History showed he was more a nationalist than a Commie......LOL.

it would be unfair to say other nations did not help play a big role.

ROFLMAO. A big role indeed. I'm sure China and the USSR had just absolutely nothing to do with it. Really. All those munitions were actually manufactured in the back room of Uncle Ho's Bait & Tackle. Those pasty-white observers with the Russian accents were from central casting, and the Mao books in the red-star brigade came with the surplus Chinese unifroms.

Did US withdrawal allow too many deaths and sentencings to reeducation camps? Yes. Though, it's also true that many of these had oppressed and done evil to their people.

Would that be the "It's OK that millions died and nearly as many were forcibly 're-educated' and tortured and starved, and millions more fled the country, because they were evil and deserved it" form of rationalization?

Please note: It was not the withdrawal of US troops that did that. The SV government continued for two more years without ANY US troops. It was the complete and total withdrawal of ALL material military and monetary assistance that signaled the NV and Khmer Rouge that South Vietnam and Cambodia could be overrun, and the US would just stand back and ignore it. We confirmed this to them by ignoring the seizure of Phuoc Long and the Campaign 275 assault on the Central Highlands, providing no help at all despite our massive air presence in the region.

The Vietcong were indeed wiped out as a coherent fighting force during Tet. Remnants remained, but they were just that, remnants. Post-Tet the ranks of VC were filled with NV regulars, not SV natives, and it became in practice a branch of the NV Army. Tet was a military failure for the VC and NV, but a political failure for the SV and US in the media.

But there remains a great desire to claim the conventional wisdom of the left re: Vietnam as reality, and that CW is that America must be blamed for everything. Except, of course, for the predictable result of abandoning SE Asia to communism.

And as I have pointed out over and over and over again, how you get to a position of decision is totally irrelevant. You must make those decisions on current actions based on current situations, and you must take into account the predictable results and outcomes of those actions, and you are utterly responsible for those results and outcomes. The practice of ranting and pointing fingers at past events as excusing current actions, however true or false the representation of past events, is merely a way of evading and disclaiming reponsibility for the predictable results and outcomes of a current decision. Juvenile rationalization, at best.

Base current actions on current situations??? What a totally radical idea! Next, no doubt, you will be suggesting that individuals are responsible for their own actions.

No wonder the far left is horrified by moderates. If this kind of thinking caught on, they'd have nobody else to blame for the entirely predictable consequences of their ideologies.

Thank you Tully for a reasonably accurate summary of the situation in the final years of the Republic of Vietnam (RV). Some things to add. During the years that the RV stood after the withdrawal of US ground troops (US air support remained in the interim), the RV Army (ARV) repelled at least one major NV invasion. During NV's eventually successful invasion after the USAF withdrawal and withdrawal of funding to ARV, the ARV took to rationing ammunition. Some soldiers supplemented their materiel rations out of their own salaries, some lack of motivation to those of you who believe that the RV did not believe in the fight.

Maxtrue: On a thread at SF I did point out that both strategy in Viet Nam (bombing of Cambodia)

It would help to start with what we aimed to accomplish by bombing in Cambodian territory. After Gen. Abrams took over command of the war, he shifted emphasis to fighting VC and NV whereever they could be found, which was usually only where it was advantageous to them to fight, to interdicting NV logistics and protecting RV population. NV logistics was based on moving materiel either from Haiphong through NV, Laos and Cambodia to predetermined points of need in RV for both NV and VC forces or from Sihanoukville, Cambodia through Cambodia to the same. As operations along the Ho Chi Minh trail progressed, the situatation for NV became that to get 1 ton of materiel to RV would take sending either 10 tons through the Ho Chi Minh trail or 1 ton through Sihanoukville. After the Cambodian government stopped cooperating with NV, the option of Sihanoukville disappeared, forcing all materiel to go along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Also, any NV forces participating in any invasion of RV would go through Laos and Cambodia because it would allow them to get close to their targets in RV in territory that the opposition held off limits to itself for political reasons. The bombing in Cambodia was meant to counter that. It was not bombing of Cambodia, but bombing of NV forces located in Cambodia.

For more information, check out Lewis Sorley's book A Better War.

Yep. As I asked earlier over at SF, why were we bombing those regions of Cambodia in the first place? Just to anger innocent villagers? No. We were bombing NV bases and supply trains that were located in Cambodia. The people in those areas were already under the sway of the NV and the KR.

The North Vietnamese themselves fully acknowledge that their decision to invade hinged entirely on our response to the test invasions. They knew that no full-scale invasion was possible in the face of US air support (their massed forces and heavy equipment would have been annihilated moving down the few available routes in columns) and was chancy enough just facing the ARVN with US military aid still coming in. When we cut off military aid they started positioning forces. When we did not provide air support in response to the test invasions of Phuoc Long and Campaign 275, they invaded in full. And because we had quit supplying arms and ammunition, the ARVN were unable to hold them off.

The Khmer Rouge takeover was planned in conjunction with the NV and the Chinese, and occured simultaneously. The events are inseperable.

Tully grumbled:
Would that be the "It's OK that millions died and nearly as many were forcibly 're-educated' and tortured and starved, and millions more fled the country, because they were evil and deserved it" form of rationalization?

...except, that's not what the quote you chose says, does it?

Post-Tet the ranks of VC were filled with NV regulars, not SV natives,

The original article author wrote that the "insurgency was dead by 1971." Since that would require the death or retreat from the field of EVERY VC, that seems unlikely somehow. I doubt that EVERY VC was wiped out in Tet, just maybe mostish.

IMHO, the withdrawal was the right thing to do because it's what most of the people of Vietnam wanted. They were uninterested in taking the continuing consequences of a war on behalf of a government that governed worse than North Vietnam's and had less legitimacy.

Tell me, post-colonialism, what's the point of a DEMOCRACY keeping an autocracy against that people's will?

Yes, the North Vietnamese govt purged the South horribly following the win. But the only reason the South Vietnamese didn't do the same was opportunity. South Vietnam certainly hurt and killed plenty of its own people. The numbers of dead I've read about following the fall of South Vietnam range more like in the hundreds of thousands, which still is a horror, mind you, but more like a normal autocratic purge. Feel free to supply better sources; that's something I haven't looked at too closely.

Mind you, in Nixon's shoes, I would've told South Vietnam to hold free elections or face losing US support. But given the Congress' more limited options of either paying or not paying, I think it was the right thing to do.

Except, of course, for the predictable result of abandoning SE Asia to communism.

Look, the issue isn't standing up to communism, but not being stupid when we did. We stood up to communism STUPIDLY in Vietnam, and saw Communism expand vastly in the region. The regional expansion stopped when we stopped being stupid and left Vietnam. Hmm....

Whoopsie! Must READ before posting. The last para is obviously wrong. I meant to say, Communism stopped expanding in the region after '75. The regions we'd been fighting stupidly in certainly fell. I think the Cold War would've gone worse if we'd stayed in that place where we were holding their faces to the mud.

Scott noted:
During the years that the RV stood after the withdrawal of US ground troops (US air support remained in the interim), the RV Army (ARV) repelled at least one major NV invasion.

...sort of. The million-man ARV

lost half a province to a 20,000-man strong probing attack. Even WITH massive air superiority and support. Look, yeah, over the years, they must've won one or two battles, just by luck. Even the Lions sometimes win. But mostly, they lost, and were seen by the zillions of observers famously present not to care too much about winning.

During NV's eventually successful invasion after the USAF withdrawal and withdrawal of funding to ARV, the ARV took to rationing ammunition. Some soldiers supplemented their materiel rations out of their own salaries, some lack of motivation to those of you who believe that the RV did not believe in the fight

...or does it mean they didn't trust their gummint to give 'em enough ammo to save their asses, or maybe the right ammo for their best gun? Or any ammo for any gun they have (shades of Russia)? It's hard to interpret. There was certainly a private market for ammo around the Russian Army in WWI, which didn't make nearly enough, and misdepatched alot of what they had. History shows that THEY sure didn't care about their government.

They didn't HAVE the ammo to distribute, Jon. We wouldn't send it. Congress cut it off. Capisce? We were the only real source for .223 at the time, and they were armed with OUR weapons.

Yes, the native insurgency was pretty much dead, and no, that doesn't require the death of every insurgent, just of the organizational capacities. NV regulars and commandos took the place of the VC. And they were coming in from Cambodia, where they held the eastern half of that nation with some help from the Khmer Rouge.

I translated your quote as "But some of the millions who died or were forcibly re-educated deserved it." Feel free to say how that's a misrepresentation. And the Cambodian and NV invasions were inextricably linked and coordinated--you cannot separate them by number of deaths to claim one is not linked to the other. Though if you feel the death of 165K minimum SV and the forcible "re-education" of a couple of million others (many of whom died in the camps) is less reprehensible merely by scale, feel free.

It doesn't change the basic calculus--we abandonded the people of SE Asia. Millions of them died because we did, and millions more were brutally repressed. Our bad. We own it. Many would like to shuffle that responsibility off on others, and disclaim the role of the anti-war left in bringing it about. Many particularly want to do so NOW because of the object lesson it provides in assessing current calls to abandon the people of Iraq.

Nope. We broke it, we bought it, we're responsbile, and advocating a withdrawal with such predictable consequences means accepting the responsibility for those consequences. Regardless of how we got where we are, we are where we are, and any choice on how to proceed must begin from there, not from some finger-pointing "It's not my fault we're there so it won't be my fault if we do as I advocate and mega-lives of non-Americans are wiped out as a result."

Communism quit expanding in the region because the Chinese and Soviets had achieved everything they could hope to in the region, and moved their attentions elsewhere in response to other factors. But in that one year, 1975, Soviet-backed and Chinese-backed Communist forces took over South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. We abandoned them, and they fell.

Check a map. Myanmar was already in the hands of a brutal military regime (nominally socialist) and had been for over a decade, Thailand still had our support and a strong national army to boot, and Malaysia is not all that invadable. Doesn't leave a whole lot else in the region to expand into. The Chinese-backed Burma Communist Party attempted to add Myanmar to the list in late 1974, but were beaten back (again) by government forces.

the Cambodian and NV invasions were inextricably linked and coordinated--you cannot separate them by number of deaths to claim one is not linked to the other. . . . we abandonded the people of SE Asia. Millions of them died because we did, and millions more were brutally repressed.

To reasonably hold the US responsible for the Rouge, you have to explain a likely causal path by which the US keeping S Vietnam alive could've stopped the Khmer Rouge. Except, for years, the US was bombing Cambodia, and yet that sure didn't stop the Rouge from gaining significant strength during those years (the civil war ran from '68-'75). Please explain.

We broke it, we bought it, we're responsbile,

True. Just as we're responsible for repressing the South Vietnamese people during the war. You still haven't explained why that was OK, nor why the terrible strategic position involved in Vietnam was acceptable or desirable.

Check a map. [list of 'impossible to converts' elided].

How likely did people think Cambodia and Laos were to go Commie before the Vietnam War?

Jon,

Other than our gradual drawdown, additional bombing targets and eventual withdrawal, do you know anything about what changed about our military efforts following the change of command in Vietnam in 1968?

Look, yeah, over the years, they must've won one or two battles, just by luck.

Except that that was the only invasion that the North attempted during the time between the US ground withdrawal and complete US withdrawal. By that measure, the ARV had a perfect record while on its own on the ground and receiving US air support.

But mostly, they lost, and were seen by the zillions of observers famously present not to care too much about winning.

They lost because they did not have the economy to support an industrialized military on their own. The fact that zillions of observers thought that they did not care about winning says more about the groupthink of the observers than about the ARV's efforts. It says nothing about what would have happened if the ARV had sufficient materiel and air support.

IMHO, the withdrawal was the right thing to do because it's what most of the people of Vietnam wanted.

Any evidence for your assertion??

They were uninterested in taking the continuing consequences of a war on behalf of a government that governed worse than North Vietnam's and had less legitimacy.

Familiar with the Hué Massacre?

But the only reason the South Vietnamese didn't do the same was opportunity. South Vietnam certainly hurt and killed plenty of its own people.

Are you familiar with the amnesty programs that were part of CORDS?

Mind you, in Nixon's shoes, I would've told South Vietnam to hold free elections or face losing US support.

Like the election that Thieu held in the 1970's. It is true that no one bothered to oppose Thieu in that election, but is there any evidence that that was due to coercion? Given the North's reaction to opposition, it is preposterous to call any election under their auspices free.

But given the Congress' more limited options of either paying or not paying, I think it was the right thing to do.

I'd agree that Congress should have the power to something other than saying "yes" or "no" through appropriations, but to say "yes but..." ie. attach strings to its authorization. However, those strings should not come in the form of people who think they know how to run a war (this applies to civilians in both the legislature and executive as well as uniformed officers) issuing diktats (like leaving enemy forces alone whenever they're outside of the theater of operations, even if they are preparing to attack) to people who actually do.

Look, the issue isn't standing up to communism, but not being stupid when we did. We stood up to communism STUPIDLY in Vietnam, and saw Communism expand vastly in the region.

We did stand up stupidly, for three years under Gen. Westmoreland. Westmoreland's strategy of attriting the forces of an enemy that could afford to lose 10 for every loss of ours had no chance to succeed, and the tactics supporting that strategy were responsible for most of the horrors people have come to associate with Vietnam, like destroying the village to save it. However, following Abrams' assumption of command, the strategy shifted to limiting the Communists ability to terrorize the population and attacking NV's logistics. The former was addressed by the CORDS program which ultimately destroyed the VC and VCI and an indiginous fighting organization. The latter consisted of locating the hiding spots for NVs weapons caches and attacking NVs supply lines in Laos and Cambodia.

Like the election that Thieu held in the 1970's. It is true that no one bothered to oppose Thieu in that election, but is there any evidence that that was due to coercion?

Er, how shall I say this. There's rather alot of evidence that Thieu was a dictator and he learned from the North about the value of having fake or questionable elections.

Protesters, political opposition, and rifraff who couldn't pay bribes were jailed harshly and tortured (confirming link). From the article:

"Thieu's purge ... has been so massive that even the government may not know how many prisoners it has or how many of them can be rightly classified as political. Besides 58,000 prisoners of war (including 11,200 North Vietnamese), 80,000 South Vietnamese political prisoners are in jail, according to South Vietnamese sources. U.S. observers estimate that there are perhaps 90,000 people in prison all together, including not only political prisoners but also P.O.W.s and common criminals."

The local press was censored and harassed, despite a constitutional provision against press censorship. Thieu had, indeed, learned from North Vietnam about propaganda. SO much freer than N. Vietnam, hehe. Nope, no freedom or democracy there. OK, fewer people stashed away than than N Vietnam, oh, boy.

Are you familiar with the amnesty programs that were part of CORDS?

Nope, never heard of it. The links were stale and unresponding. So, what was it?

Given the North's reaction to opposition, it is preposterous to call any election under their auspices free.

Only the election that selected Ho Chi Minh in the first place was free. That's all I claimed, and that's more than the South, supported by the democratic nations, ever did. I'm sure that was no reassurance to those in N Vietnamese labor camps, but it sure made great anti-American propaganda, laden the more because, let's face it - Ho Chi Minh was clearly an epter autocrat than our choices, from performance.

They lost because they did not have the economy to support an industrialized military on their own.

But, I didn't claim S Vietnam would've fallen even if we'd stayed. I wrote that it was right to leave because we were propping up an inept, repressive regime, and becauase it was a bad strategic position. I brought up the observed low performance, as evidence that, if the people of South Vietnam didn't think it was worth fighting for, maybe there was a reason. ARV's ineptness was going on long BEFORE we left.

The fact that zillions of observers thought that they did not care about winning says more about the groupthink of the observers than about the ARV's efforts.

I'm keeping my trust in the bulk of primary sources, where I rather think it should belong as a default. Feel free to get down and dirty and give us some real examples of said groupthink, and I'll take another look. I still think a million-man army with air superiority shoulda done better against 20k. For all we know, the North might've been working on putting together a bigger effort when the US Linebacker op brought them back looking for peace three months later.

Notice that the bulk of *on-the-ground* Iraqi observers and Iraqi blogs DO think most Iraqis care about the Iraqi government. Maybe because it isn't oppressive and really does care about its voters. Doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.

We did stand up stupidly, for three years under Gen. Westmoreland.

Agreed here. Yeah, attacking infrastructure was smarter, except that I think the bombing of Cambodia and Laos probably brought rather a lot of collateral damage - the two gummints going Commie. I mean, I know when the bombed the WTC, *I* was annoyed. When they bomb Israel, Israelis get annoyed. When Irael bombed Lebanon indiscriminately, Lebanese got annoyed. Bombing Cambodia and Laos probably annoyed them. It was supposed to be a SECRET bombing campaign, but I mean, really, what's secret about B-52s flying overhead and dropping lots of big bombs? I think that maybe, just maybe, bombs make lots of sound and noise. Only in DC.

And it was still a bad overall strategic situation. There was still lots of jungle unsuited for tanks or easy sight from aircraft. We were still a democracy propping an a dictatorship against the only man elected fairly in Vietnam's history,

Jon, if you don't do the homework to know the detailed history involved, I'm not gonna type it all out for you. Cambodia and Laos were both also supported by the US. They were also cut off from all US aid at the same time as South Vietnam. Both nations were also targeted by China or the USSR and NV for invasion for years using surrogate "native" communist orgs, just as Myanmar was. Laos was taken over by the Pathet Lao backed by NV and the USSR--indeed, the Pathet Lao were little more than an extension of the NV army. Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge, backed by NV and China. Remember the domino theory? It was correct--and had we not remained in Thailand, it and Myanmar would have been overrun as well. Without Thailand, Myanmar is not nearly as invadable. Check that map.

To reasonably hold the US responsible for the Rouge, you have to explain a likely causal path by which the US keeping S Vietnam alive could've stopped the Khmer Rouge.

No, I don't, and that's a dead straw man. I can only repeat this so many ways when you refuse to acknowledge what I'm saying: We cut off all military aid and support to the region. That included the nascent Lon Nol government. And the royalist government of Laos. They ran out of ammunition, just as SV did. And when we demonstrated we would NOT assist with material and air support, they fell. The previous government under King-Father Sihanouk had been embracing the Chinese and the North Vietnamese for YEARS. That's why they were there to be bombed in the first place--he let them in.

Most of the populace in Cambodia who helped the Khmer Rouge against the Lon Nol government thought they were fighting for the restoration of Sihanouk. They were suckered. And they paid for it with their lives.

I've just been reading up on Cambodia - it was alot more complicated than my memory had it, of course. I'll answer you tomorrow - must sleep now.

OK, before getting back to the arguing, I want to make it clear that I have alot of respect for most people who served or helped the armed forces in Vietnam. My feeling is that 90% did their best under foolishly conceived orders.

Enough of that harmony gunk, now. LBJ AND Nixon WERE *&^ FOOLS!

And now we return to the regularly scheduled Cambodia argument.

The previous government under King-Father Sihanouk had been embracing the Chinese and the North Vietnamese for YEARS. That's why they were there to be bombed in the first place--he let them in.

OK, now I understand this. Prince Sihanouk seems like a poster child to me of why monarchy is bad. He started off pretty good, getting his country free of France, and getting a good American military and other aid package to keep his country afloat. But the Prince, as all executives do, grew more paranoid and corrupt in office, until he grew too paranoid to keep the US military aid going. Of course, he probably really WAS plotted against by the CIA, but more like at the end than the spots where he thought it was happening.

So, in fact, some people DID, including Sihanouk, see Cambodia as in danger of going Communist. I was wrong.

Note, Sihanouk said Kissinger blew him off several times and refused to talk to him about patching the relationship. Why? Yeah, there's a good chance he would've fluffed the try by being too paranoid about it, but shouldn't Kissinger at least have talked to him?

No, I don't, and that's a dead straw man. I can only repeat this so many ways when you refuse to acknowledge what I'm saying: We cut off all military aid and support to the region. That included the nascent Lon Nol government.

Whoops! I didn't realize that.

But you still haven't demonstrated the causal connection. You need to show evidence that Lop Nol was making serious progress against the Communists.

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