Vietnam: The Big War and the Vietnam

Syndrome

Lsn 23

ID & SIG

• Abrams, Cambodia, Cronkite, Johnson, Operation Junction City, Kent State, search and destroy, Tet Offensive, Vietnam Syndrome, Vietnamization

Search and Destroy

• North Vietnamese– Settled in for protracted

struggle– Retreated to sanctuaries– Fought only when it was to

their advantage to do so– Targeted US will and South

Vietnamese weakness

• US– Concentrated on large-scale

search and destroy missions against enemy base areas

– “To find and smash each [enemy base camp], one by one, is an essential task, a prime object in conclusively successful campaigning.” (DA Pam 4525-2, 1967)

– Often meant massive bombing followed by ground troops surrounding the area and helicopter-borne troops flying it to clear it

Search and Destroy

• Search and destroy operations were designed to “find, fix, flush, and finish” the enemy

• They came to represent the US trying to fight the “Big War” with large units stomping through the jungle trying to find illusive small guerrilla groups who would fight only on their own terms

Search and Destroy: Junction City

• Feb 22 to May 14, 1967• Largest operation in

Vietnam to date• Primary mission was to

search for and then destroy the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army installations

Junction City: Phase 1

• Phase I began on 22 February with five U.S. brigades forming a horseshoe shaped cordon in the western half of War Zone C. – 25th Division would block on

the west along the Cambodian border

– 1st Infantry Division (with the 173rd Brigade attached) would block along the border on the north and on the east along Provincial Route 4

Junction City: Phase 1

• One task force of the 173rd Bde conducted an airborne assault and two other battalions assaulted by helicopter to seal off the Cambodian border

Junction City: Phase 1

• On D plus 1 a brigade of the 25th Division and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (attached to the 25th), which had positioned themselves on the southern edge of the horseshoe the previous day, attacked north into the horseshoe.

• The horseshoe forces conducted search and destroy operations in their areas.

Junction City: Phase 1

• Simultaneous with the search, a Special Forces and Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp near Prek Klok was established for future interdiction of enemy supply and infiltration routes in War Zone C.

An airstrip capable of handling C-130's would be constructed at the camp and a second similar airfield would be constructed in the vicinity of Katum. These facilities would facilitate future operations in the area.

Junction City: Phase 1

• During the operation, particular attention was devoted to searching suspected locations of the political and military elements of the Central Office of South Vietnam.

• A thorough interrogation of all persons apprehended was conducted.

Stars and Stripes photograph of a 1st Infantry Div soldier in the entrance of a tunnel leading to a VC headquarters during Operation Junction City.

Junction City: Phase 2

• During Phase 2, II Field Force elements focused their attention on the eastern portion of War Zone C, conducting search and destroy operations against COSVN, Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese forces and installations.

– The Saigon River was bridged at its intersection with Route 246 west of An Loc.

– At that site the Special Forces and Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp with an airstrip for C-130s was built.

Junction City: Phase 3

• In Phase 3, Junction City was reduced to a brigade-size operation in the vicinity of Tay Ninh city in the southern portion of War Zone C

• The operational control for this phase was passed from II Field Force to the 25th Infantry Division

CPT George Joulwan shows LTC Alexander Haig radios and other material found during Operation Junction City

Junction City: Results

• North Vietnamese– 2,728 enemy killed and 34 prisoners taken. – 139 Chieu Hoi ralliers and 65 detainees– 100 crew-served weapons, 491 individual weapons,

and thousands of rounds of ammunition, grenades, and mines captured

– More than 5,000 bunkers and military structures were destroyed

– Over 810 tons of rice and nearly 40 tons of other food-stuffs such as salt and dried fish were uncovered

– Nearly one-half million pages of assorted documents were taken

Junction City: Results

• US– 282 killed and 1,576

wounded– 3 tanks, 21 armored

personnel carriers, 12 trucks, 4 helicopters, 5 howitzers, and 2 quad-.50 machine guns and carriers destroyed

• But the objective of destroying the COSVN forces was not met

Reasons for COSVN Escape

• The proximity of a privileged sanctuary to the reported locations of COSVN and Headquarters, 9th VC Division.

• The extreme difficulty of establishing a seal with sufficient troop density to deny infiltration routes to VC units thoroughly familiar with the dense jungle terrain.

• The difficulty of gaining complete surprise, as a result of extensive repositioning of troops and logistical support prior to D-Day, in spite of the efforts devoted to deception measures.– Major General John Hay, CG 1st Infantry Division

Junction City

• The official Army history concludes “JUNCTION CITY convinced the enemy command that continuing to base main force units in close proximity to the key population areas would be increasingly foolhardy. From that time on the enemy made increasing use of Cambodian sanctuaries for his bases, hospitals, training centers, and supply depots….A turning point in the war had been reached.”– Vietnam Studies: Cedar Falls-

Junction City: A Turning Point, Rogers, 1989.

President Nixon during a press conference on operations in Cambodia in 1970.

Tet Offensive

• On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese escalated to Phase III, the War of Movement

• Attack gained surprise by coinciding with the Vietnamese lunar new year holiday

• Designed to foster antigovernment uprisings against the South Vietnamese

Tet Offensive

• 84,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attacked 36 of 43 provincial capitals, 5 of 6 autonomous cities, 34 of 242 district capitals, and at least 50 hamlets

Reasons for North Vietnam’s Lack of

Tactical Success in Tet • By attacking everywhere, the North Vietnamese had superior strength nowhere (violation of mass)

• Inflexible Viet Cong command and control system could not respond to late announcements of timings and objectives from the North Vietnamese Army (unity of command)

• North Vietnamese wrongly assumed South Vietnamese were on the verge of a general uprising (objective)

Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the director of the South

Vietnamese national police executing a VC prisoner in Saigon

during Tet

Reasons for the U.S. Tactical

Success in Tet • Technology gave the US a strategic mobility that allowed it to respond to multiple threats (maneuver)

• When the North Vietnamese came out and fought en masse in a traditional war of movement, the US could bring to bear its overwhelming firepower in a strategy of annihilation (mass)

Helicopters gave the US the ability to cover all types of terrain,

maneuver over large areas, react quickly to enemy attacks, reinforce embattled units, and conduct raids

into enemy territory

Back to Insurgency Phase II • Previously complacent South Vietnamese population was for the first time made to feel involved in the war effort

• Local insurgency movement suffered a devastating loss when it surfaced to assume leadership of a general uprising that never materialized

• Clandestine shadow government, years in the building, was largely destroyed

• Tactical military defeat for North Vietnam

• By coming into the open, the enemy had exposed itself to massive American firepower and lost 137,000 killed in the first nine months of 1968

• Allowed US to practice “the American way of war”

Overall Results of Tet • Tactical defeat for North Vietnam

• North Vietnamese 32,000 killed and 6,000 captured

• US and South Vietnamese 4,000 killed

• But a strategic victory

• “I thought we were winning this war!” (Walter Cronkite)

• Dramatic shift in public opinion in US

Returning from Vietnam after Tet, Walter Cronkite reported, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a

stalemate” and then urged the government to open negotiations with

the North Vietnamese.

Domestic Issues

Societal Changes

Country Joe McDonald at

Woodstock, 1969

Martin Luther King delivers his “I have a

dream” speech in 1963Gloria Steinem

helped found Ms magazine in 1971

War Protests

President Johnson

President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to tape sent by Captain Charles Robb from Vietnam,

July 31, 1968.

Democratic delegates protest the Johnson Administration’s policies

in Vietnam at the 1968 Democratic National Convention

in Chicago.

President Nixon• Richard Nixon was elected

president in 1968 campaigning for “peace with honor”

• Under Nixon the process of “Vietnamization”– the gradual transfer of primary responsibility of the war to the South Vietnamese that Johnson had begun on a small scale after Tet– was accelerated

• Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, his impeachment, and resignation hamstrung his ability to influence peace negotiations through sustained offensive operations

Nixon was succeeded by Gerald Ford. By this point the US was traumatized by

war-weariness and economic recession. Ford had almost no maneuver room to help the South

Vietnamese.

My Lai• On March 16, 1968, an

infantry company entered the village of My Lai

• They found no insurgents but, being psychologically prepared for battle and poorly disciplined, they proceeded to kill between 347 and 504 mostly old men, women, and children

• Word of the massacre did not reach the American public until November 1969 when it then fueled national outrage and further undermined support for the war

Cambodia

• On April 29, 1970, South Vietnamese troops entered the “Parrot’s Beak” which extends into South Vietnam to within 30 miles of Saigon

• Three days later American and South Vietnamese forces entered the “Fish Hook,” another promontory further north

Cambodia

• President Nixon limited the depth of US penetrations to 21 miles and specified that all US forces had to be out of Cambodia within 60 days– In all 31,000 US and 43,000 South Vietnamese troops

entered Cambodia• The operation was a tactical and operational success

– Many communists fled from their sanctuaries and were denied the use of the important port at Sihanoukville

– More than 11,000 North Vietnamese were killed compared to only 337 American deaths

• However, it sparked anti-war protests in the US

Kent State and Jackson State

Four students were killed and nine wounded at Kent State on May 4, 1970 and two students were killed at Jackson

State during protests against a number of issues to include US operations in Cambodia

Defeat• The US concluded a

peace agreement with the North Vietnamese in 1973, but the South Vietnamese continued fighting until April 30, 1975 when the North Vietnamese captured Saigon

• Throughout the 1970s and 1980s “boat people” fled Vietnam– Some 823,000 found

refuge in the US

Americans and South Vietnamese who had worked for the US are

evacuated from Saigon

Legacy and Lessons

Legacy and Lessons

• Sophisticated weaponry and conventional forces have limits in “low intensity conflict”

• The restrictive rules of engagement (ROEs) and political considerations of limited war hamper military operations

• Domestic support is critical• You can win the battles and lose the war• “Vietnam syndrome” effects military and diplomatic

operations until finally exorcised by Desert Storm. – We’ll take about that in the Lesson 38.

Carl von Clausewitz (review from Lsn 2)

• Used a trinitarian analysis consisting of (1) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity; (2) the play of chance and probability; and (3) war’s element of subordination to rational policy – Often loosely expressed

as “the people, the military, and the government” government military

people

Vietnam and Clausewitz’s Trinity

People Military Govt

US

North Vietnam

Vietnam and Clausewitz’s Trinity

People Military Govt

US Diminishing support

Conventional and attrition strategy

Limited war

North Vietnam

Long-term commitment

Guerrilla and exhaustion strategy

Total war

Vietnam Today

• Vietnam remains communist

• However, since 2001, it has committed to economic liberalization and is trying to modernize the economy and to produce more competitive, export-driven industries

• An April 28, 2005 article in the Economist was aptly titled “America Lost, Capitalism Won”

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