Vietnam in HD - History Channel

The History Channel ran this six hour production this week. I was in what should properly be called the Second Indochina War.  I was there for two years.  I was not a REMF.  To some extent I am still there. 

I salute my brothers, those of us still around.  This film is a beginning of justice, but just a beginning.

The single most obvious deficiency in the production was any mention at all of the massive and persistent COIN effort waged at various levels of intensity for ten years.

Another was the early fatal political decision by the United States to accept French re-colonization of Indochina after WW2.  The USS through OSS had a good relationship with the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh.  the Japanese had dispossessed France of governance in SE Asia.  A French expeditionary force had to be landed to suppress Ho's government.  The Truman Administration accepted that in the interest of assembling a coalition in Europe to face the USSR, then engaged in taking over eastern Europe.  From that error all else followed.

Oh, yes, if you run into me.  Don't thank for my service.  pl

Comments

[Matthew]

But I will thank you for your blog.

[William R. Cumming]

PL! Hope to see this one. And as to the first and second Indochina wars--what perceptions of the first one did JFK and his minions--best and brightest--have of that recolonization effort?

And how well studied in the Staff and Command Schools and War colleges of the USA was the battle of Dien Bien Phu?

[turcopolier]

WRC

They thought it failed because it was re-colonization and was badly under-resourced. As a result when we took over from the French we did a number of stupid things trying not to be colonisers. an example, the GVN offered us oerational control overtheir forces in the early '60s and we refused in the fear that we would be thought "naughty." As a result we never really controlled their forces. everything was negotiated with the RVN and VNAF, every god damned day. DBP. Nothing like that happened to us. in the war. If they massed really large forces against us they would be torn to pieces by air. They could mass against small places like Song Be in Phuoc Long Province in 1969, but only if attention was distracted elsewhere. On the other hand the RVN could not stand up to them without us. LAMSON 719 in 1971 wa a oerfect example. pl

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Another was the early fatal political decision by the United States to accept French re-colonization of Indochina after WW2.

From the history of this that I've read, this was apparently was the "least bad" of the choices available at the time. Metropolitan France was in turmoil and its then communist-controlled unions appeared to be following Moscow's drummer. The concern was that if the decision went the other way the wobbly French government would fall and the Red Menace would gain control.

[Pirouz]

Lost my favorite cousin (USMC '66-'68) to PTSD related injuries incurred during the Vietnam War.

A better documentary: Battlefield Vietnam. Episodes uploaded onto YouTube: Episode 1 (of 12) Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa1U2z9GTr8

[Medicine Man]

How might have the US used its fledgling relationship with Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh? Supported Ho's government and tried to drive a wedge in the Communist block? With the advantage of hindsight it seems like such a thing may have been possible, given the divisions between the Stalinist and Maoist countries, but I don't really know enough about the era to speculate myself.

[turcopolier]

MM

Someone said that we decided to green light France on re-occupation because it was "the best of a group of bad outcomes." I would argue that the two Indochina wars were by far the worst possible outcome and the French re-occupation and american support for that led directly to the two wars. as to whether or not we could "work with" a communistg state, i would invite you to consider our long relationship with Yugoslavia. pl

[Mj]

FYI

Gregory A. Daddis (Author)

No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War

"Daddis shows how the US Army, which confronted an unfamiliar enemy and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, adopted a massive, and eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to track the progress of military operations that ranged from pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. The Army's monthly "Measurement of Progress" reports covered innumerable aspects of the fighting in Vietnam-force ratios, Vietcong/North Vietnamese Army incidents, tactical air sorties, weapons losses, security of base areas and roads, population control, area control, and hamlet defenses. Concentrating more on data collection and less on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success may actually have hindered the army's ability to evaluate the true outcome of the fight at hand--a roadblock that Daddis believes significantly contributed to the many failures that American forces suffered in Vietnam. "

[turcopolier]

mj

That would be impressive except that "US Army Vietnam" was just a records keeper in VN for COIN/CORDS. The operational headquarters was MACV, the joint headquarters. pl

[highlander]

An additional fatal error occurred when rich boy turned diplomat, Averell Harriman led the effort to decree Laos as a neutral country. And that provided the North Vietnamese with logistical access to all of South Vietnam, and gave the Communist a safe sanctuary at the same time.

[Carl O.]

I saw pieces of this last night.

You forgot to mention that the British held Vietnam, at least the southern portion of it, on behalf of the French using the Japanese occupying troops before they were repatriated. They did this until the French could arrive with sufficient occupying forces of their own. Talk about a crime.

[turcopolier]

Carl O

Yes, and still the French had to fight to hold the cities in the immediate post-war period pl

[Mj]

Aha, I just got the book and am interested to read it but it is so recent I thought you'd like the reference.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

I remember “Dien Bien Phu” first as a 10 year old kid playing war games in the School Yard.

I agree it was a mistake to re-colonize Vietnam. By tagging Americas as invaders who would reestablish French Indochina, the Vietnamese Communists assured their ultimate victory.

There had to have been significant political pressure to reestablish all those old colonial businesses. But most important, among the Elites, there was significant fear of communism; enough to send in the troops across the world to Korea and twice into Indochina and elsewhere.

Now that communism is long gone except the ruling elite in China & Vietnam, there are rising protests across the world against the corruption of unfettered capitalism that was held in check for a while after WWII due to fear of a communist revolution:
http://www.truth-out.org/protest-planet-how-neoliberal-shell-game-created-age-activism/1320950783

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks PL and others!

[Charles I]

I won't be able to watch this soon, but did you ever see French director Pierre Schoendoerffer's "The Anderson Platoon" documentary? A b&w Restrepo, but set in hell, on patrol in the mire rather than stranded in the valley outpost.

From IMDB: "The director, a French veteran of the Indochina war (La 317e Section), returned to follow a platoon of American soldiers for six weeks at the height of fighting in Vietnam in 1966. The documentary discusses the background and fate of the soldiers and emphasizes how much American culture pervades the soldiers' behaviors in the midst of jungle life and fighting."

Mighty cultural differences between your soldiers of now and then of course.

TAP a bleak experience devoid of bathos, full of tougher kids than I ever was. What a waste, surely we should start training 40 year olds and making them fight - I'm 53, too decrepit to survive training. Pat, or anyone else, if you have seen the film is it representative.

[dilbert dogbert]

Did Ho say this? "It is better to eat French shit for a hundred years than china's for a thousand." If a true Ho saying then we did not have to wedge anything, the wedge was there already. The VN vs China border war kicked the props from the "domino" idea.