Early in December of 1968, new in-country, I witnessed an American soldier, unprovoked, push a middle-aged Vietnamese man off his bicycle. As a nineteen-year-old kid, with only a high school education, I understood the implications of such a senseless, mean and stupid act. Such actions create enemies, resentment and ill will, the kind of ignorance that is not only wrong-headed, but contributed to the enmity of the Vietnamese towards the Americans thrust into their midst.
The incident occurred before I’d treated my first casualty, experienced my first firefight, or been anywhere near a VC mortar or rocket landing in a compound. Dressed in a pair of slacks, white shirt and tie, the Vietnamese man was simply going about his life in his own country. I was enraged by the arrogance it took for my fellow soldier to act out whatever resentment he was feeling in the moment, and for knowing there would be little chance of any disciplinary action for his behavior. The payback would be a cumulative resistance to our presence by the Vietnamese, the above incident a microcosm of the broader macrocosm of our actions in the way we waged war in Vietnam. And also, of the dismissive and superior attitudes we exhibited towards the South Vietnamese who were our allies.
How did I instinctively know this as a naive nineteen-year-old who had never before been out of his own country? I was not without ethnocentric notions of my own at that age, but they didn’t include seeing the Vietnamese as inferior. I was fascinated by their culture from the beginning. So how is it the powerful men in charge of making policy pursued practices that were counterproductive to the stated goals of helping the Vietnamese achieve a stable democracy? Blinded by their impressive backgrounds and accomplishments in life, leaders like Robert McNamara and William Westmoreland were not used to failing. It showed in their inability to adjust their decision making during the Vietnam War.
***
The Road Not Taken by Max Boot answers those questions. It is an impressive work of scholarship. In documented detail the author methodically explores the many ways American involvement in Vietnam took a misguided approach to the war. From the numbers of civilians killed, to the blunt force use of American firepower, the macrocosm of the incident related above. Neither was an isolated event. The individual lacking the simple insight to see a human being on a bicycle, morphed into a callous disregard for the numbers of civilian war casualties, whose deaths were not seen as important enough to alter American conduct in the war.
I did not expect to find Max Boot’s book as impressive as I did. I approached the work with an open mind but anticipated a revised history of the war. Instead, his documented details rang true with so much of what I experienced on the ground in Vietnam. The author’s thoroughness in deciphering the decision making behind the war, including the personalities of the powerful men responsible for them, exhibited a sensitivity rare for one who was not involved directly with the war. As a veteran who still seeks understanding of how and why the war took on the dimensions that it did, I appreciate such a detailed work of scholarship.
***
Max Boot weaves his exploration of the war around the biography of the controversial American counterinsurgency expert, Edward Lansdale. Widely considered to have had a positive effect on influencing Philippine democracy in the 1950’s, Lansdale attempts a similar outcome in Vietnam. Factors bureaucratic, geographical and cultural prevent widespread acceptance of his attempts to shape policy.
Lansdale believed in democracy, and that it was possible in Asia. The basic principles set out in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were ideals that “would have far more appeal in Asia than either colonialism or communism—and could help cement alliances between the United States and Third World peoples struggling for self-rule.”
Post WWII insurgencies emerged throughout Asia after the suffering endured during and after the war. Movements in China, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya, Korea, Thailand, and Indochina pushed for changes to existing rule. U.S. foreign policy, influenced by the “domino theory,” viewed Indochina as critical in containing the march of communism in the region. So, when the French strove to retain their last colony—Vietnam—the U.S. decided to support them. The Americans bankrolled the French military presence in their fight against the communist insurgents. With the Vietminh victorious in the prolonged battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, France decided to disengage from Vietnam. U.S. military advisers expanded their presence, attempting to keep the communists from prevailing. The Geneva Accords of the same year divided Vietnam at the 17th Parallel. The north, under communist rule, and the south, which the U.S. supported with the goal of establishing a stable democracy.
I’d like to expand on a particular point. Max Boot states that there was an anti-French bias “prevalent among Americans in Vietnam. They thought they had little to learn from the French, who had failed to win their war against the Vietminh. Little did they suspect that they would soon repeat and even exceed most of their forerunner’s mistakes.”
In my view, by supporting the French militarily, the U.S. was seen as the new colonialist by many Vietnamese. They had been there before with foreign invaders. Historically, the Chinese had attempted to dominate them, the French had arrived as colonialists, and the Japanese in WWII. And while the Americans viewed themselves as bringing democracy to the country, the Vietnamese saw a new foreigner arriving to tell them what to do in their own country. Especially when our arrogance mimicked the French.
Combined with the inability and unwillingness of so many American officials to establish a rapport with the Vietnamese, to the point where few bothered to learn their language or even familiarize themselves with their culture, the arrogance was palpable. From the attitudes of the highest officials, to the behavior of the soldier pushing the man off his bicycle, these attitudes permeated American presence in Vietnam.
William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964-68, and so instrumental in conducting a war of attrition (the body counts), made a stunning public admission of his views in the 1974 film documentary, Hearts and Minds.
“The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important.”
After the war, Robert McNamara, so influential as Secretary of Defense in shaping American Vietnam policy admitted: “I had never visited Indochina, nor did I understand its history, language, culture or values.”
Edward Lansdale advocated policies that would win “hearts and minds” over to the American side. Every bit the Cold Warrior and American patriot, he did see genuine attempts at reforms and civic actions that improved the lives of the Vietnamese as the way to achieving a solid democracy. He also recognized how damaging to American interests an overbearing presence would be. American firepower killed civilians as well as communists. Chemical defoliants ruined parts of a beautiful country and destroyed crops in a poor land. Generals continued to push for more American troops and firepower. In a telling quote, Boot discusses the approach advocated by President Johnson’s senior military assistant, General Clifton, just prior to the 1965 commitment of American combat troops into South Vietnam.
“Clifton…defended the use of ‘heavy weapons’ as being necessary to defeat North Vietnamese regulars, even at the cost of inflicting civilian casualties. And he dismissed calls for more civic action: ‘Our advisers have as their primary mission stabilizing the insurgency and protecting their own lives. I am afraid that the civic action effort will have to come later or be performed by a separate group of people.’”
I have often wondered how many enemies our firepower created with the numbers of civilian war casualties. Clifton, in dismissing their effect on the Vietnamese people, exhibited the same callousness and ignorance as Westmoreland. With the arrival of combat troops in 1965, the CWC’s became a permanent and irreversible result and any civic action projects were dwarfed by comparison. Dead bodies piled up for all sides. American troop numbers peaked at 536,000, and before Westmoreland’s command ended, he’d requested 200,000 more (denied by President Johnson).
***
Max Boot provides a sobering analysis of the American decision to withdraw their backing of Ngo Dinh Diem, who came to power in June of 1954. Often associated with South Vietnamese corruption already in place, the author makes a compelling case that the U.S. made a huge mistake in encouraging the coup that removed and assassinated him in early November of 1963 (in a horrible irony, three weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination).
Diem had many flaws, and a bookish and shy personality prevented any charisma that would have benefited him and the country. Scholarly and elitist, and steeped in Confucianism, he was also a devout Catholic and staunch nationalist. Lansdale, who genuinely liked Diem, and developed a strong rapport with him, believed the strong influence of his brother, Nhu, had a negative impact on the man and his leadership. Diem’s brother accrued power and had an authoritarian streak, leading to both of their downfalls.
Within two days of his death, however, the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, who had strongly advocated Diem’s removal, cabled Washington that “the Generals are quarreling among themselves over the division of power and if they cannot come to an agreement within the next day, then the (Vietnamese) Marines who actually led the coup against the regime would lead a countercoup.”
By February of 1965 (fifteen months later), ten governments had been formed. Any hope of civilian rule evaporated with the original coup as the military gained control of the government. Corruption increased and amidst the squabbling and instability, the progress Diem had made over nine years quickly disintegrated. On March 9, American combat troops arrived. In Boot’s view, “the rulers who succeeded Diem shared his shortcomings while lacking his strengths…”
“William Colby, a former CIA director and station chief in Saigon, was later to call Diem’s overthrow ‘the worst mistake of the Vietnam War,’ a judgement shared by both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.”
Max Boot does not argue that the Vietnam War could have been won if other roads were taken. He does have this to say about Lansdale’s counterinsurgency tactics not being adopted in any serious way.
“South Vietnam might not have survived even if Lansdale had enjoyed more success in implementing his agenda; North Vietnam would have been a tough and determined adversary under any circumstances, with more will to win than the United States had. But at the very least the war’s loss would have been less painful all around if Lansdale’s advice had been heeded. He had never wanted to see half a million American troops thrashing around Vietnam, suffering and inflicting heavy casualties. His approach, successful or not, would have been more humane and less costly.”
My own take draws on experiences from my tour. In adopting the arrogant and superior attitudes we exhibited, we were no better or different than the French to most Vietnamese. Once we unleashed the firepower of a superpower on a poor country, we created even more enemies as we went. These factors alone made any semblance of “winning” unlikely. Any analysis of the casualty rates show that we inflicted heavy losses on the NVA and VC many times our own. Winning most of the battles did not translate into winning the war. Our own society was ripping apart at the seams with disagreements over a war that kept sending young Americans halfway around the world to fight, 58,000 never to return.
As to the argument that we somehow didn’t fight to win because we didn’t pound Vietnam back to the stone age. Really? The U.S. dropped more tonnage on Vietnam than it used in WWII. And by a lot. Seven million tons of bombs were used in Vietnam by American forces, one thousand pounds for every man, woman and child in Vietnam. Two million tons were used by the U.S. during WWII.
Invading North Vietnam would have almost certainly brought China into the fight like it did in Korea, escalating the conflict even more. Three hundred thousand Chinese troops were already in North Vietnam building roads and manning anti-aircraft batteries. The bombing campaigns over North Vietnam caused outrage in much of the world, and also among Americans at home. I remember extremely low morale in the Army by the time I was discharged in 1970. Escalating the war even further was simply unrealistic.
By the Tet offensive in January of 1968 Americans were tiring of the war. Militarily, it was a blow to the communist forces. Their hoped-for popular uprising never materialized. Psychologically, it was a turning point in the war because too many Americans were losing faith in their leaders, who had told them too many times that the U.S. had turned a corner in Vietnam. Trust had eroded and hundreds of young men were still dying each week in the war.
American veterans often spoke derisively of ARVN troops, our South Vietnamese allies, and some do to this day. Their losses are estimated at 250,000 dead, more than four soldiers killed for every one of ours. I’m uncomfortable using statistics this way when every life lost sets off a wave of grief, American or Vietnamese. To argue for even more killing than already existed in the war through a more aggressive use of American firepower ignores the already obscene totals. And the fact that Americans were increasingly turning against the war the longer it lasted. North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong losses were around one million. The civilian toll even higher.
Lansdale consistently argued that the United States had to offer more than dead communist soldiers for democracy to take hold in Vietnam. Lives of the Vietnamese had to improve. That never happened in any widespread or consistent way. Maybe it never was a realistic possibility. In attempts to prevent communism from prevailing, military solutions dominated the decision making. From the start, American leadership in the war failed, from the Presidency, Congress, and the highest echelons of the U.S. Military. Max Boot, in painful detail, examines the factors that led to that failure.