Lessons of Vietnam Forgotten

Afganistan is now the United State's longest war, and surpasses in duration the Soviet's intervention there from 1980-1989.

What ever happened to the Powell Doctrine of never repeating the mistakes of a quagmire like Vietnam? The problem is that the current generation of officers were too young to serve there, and have not studied it. At the time I was growing up in San Antonio, and most of my friends' fathers were serving there. Some didn't come back. Some came back badly injured. They didn't claim to know why we were there in the first place; they were just doing their duties.

Vietnam happened like this.

The Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II was very brutal, with horrific reprisals, so the only people who were willing to put up an armed resistance were crazed revolutionaries who didn't care about the consequences of their actions - they were the pro-Stalinist Viet Minh. When the Japanese lost the war it was the Viet Minh who were credited as heros by the Vietnamese people for their actions in defeating the Japanese there. To gain public support, the Viet Minh, led by a zealous communist fanatic [Ho Chi Minh] portrayed themselves as a nationalist movement. Although they were nationalists they were Stalinists first, and wished to impose a tyrannical Soviet-style system. When the Japanese left the French colonials returned, and the Viet Minh fought them vicously. The Geneva Conference of 1954 ended that war, and partitioned the country into North and South areas. There were to be free elections held in 1956 to decide who would rule the entire country. The United States became the principal guarantor of these accords.

The United States realized that if the elections were held as promised that the Viet Minh would win. It was also realized that such would be the last elections the country would ever have, and that it would thereafter become a Stalinist-style state with no freedom of political activity at all. Therefore the promise of elections was reneged upon, and the U.S. with it's south Vietnamese client, Presiden Diem, began assassinating communists organizers in the south wherever they could be found. When this violence [replacing the promised electoral process] ensued, the mass of Vietnamese people turned against the U.S. and Diem and began a guerilla insurgancy in the south, the National Liberation Front, which was derisively referred to by the U.S. as the "Viet Cong."

Against the widely popular National Liberation Front, the U.S. client of Diem and his cronies were a gang of corrupt, venal crooks who had no respect or legitimacy from anyone living there. With U.S. approval a military coup removed him from power, but the military had no more legitimacy among the people than Diem had. There were nothing but military coups and counter-coups all during the war, with different elements of the military jocking for power, usually so they could control business concessions and crime rackets. Naturally they were not up to fighting the communists on the battlefield, and their terrible performance led the U.S. to replace their role with U.S forces.

However, the army the U.S. deployed was largely one of conscripts, servicemen who were lacking in morale, and with tactics and weapons poorly suited for their counter-insurgency task. Consequently, the U.S. relied increasingly on airpower and bombing both in the south and the north, which only further made the U.S. and their clients very unpopular. Efforts at pacification and civil aid were useless against this widespread public hatred of the U.S. and it's miltary junta government in Saigon.

Against this how could the U.S. win?

It didn't.

Are the same factors now at work in Afghanistan? Some yes, others not so much. But so far it's been nine years and nothing has improved.

If you're relying on the date of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (1964) as the start and the Paris Peace Accords (1973) as the end, then you're right about the length of the war. But that's a naive view. The US military involvement in Vietnam began in 1950 with the establishment of a small group of advisors administering US military aid to the French. When the French pulled out in 1954 with the partition of Vietnam into North and South as a result of the Geneva Conference, the US started supplying military personnel to train the Vietnamese army. From 1955 to 1960, the number grew from 750 to 1,500. From 1960 on troop escalation and military involvement began to ramp up. It reached 3,200 by 1961 and 16,000 by 1963. This doesn't include the participation of offshore naval air support from 1960-1964. If you believe that no American either took fire or fired a weapon offensively during that period, you have an unusually high level of trust and belief in the truthfulness of the American military during the Cold War. And just because Nixon ceased offensive operations in 1973, we still had troops on the ground and at sea in harm's way until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Do you remember that picture of the last chopper out of Saigon taking off from the roof of the US embassy? It wasn't an ARVN chopper, kiddo. American military involvement in Vietnam lasted a good 25 years and there were uniformed troops on the ground for 20 years.

Abbie Hoffman: Tell us a little bit about the war, man.
Forrest Gump: The war in Vietnam?
Abbie Hoffman: [to audience] War in Viet-Fucking-Nam!

"Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"
--Vizzini just before he drops dead in "The Princess Bride"

The usual metaphor for war in Afghanistan is Hell; British learned it a century ago, Soviets learned it a quarter century ago. No outsider has had a good time making war in Afghanistan since Genghis Khan, it's just not a good idea.

The guys on the ground there are some of the most effective human beings you will ever meet. Give them time and they will get the job done. The worst thing we can do is let them sacrifice their time, their friends, their time with their families, and their lives and not see it through.

Carl you are right. US combat operatins in Vietnam, and Laos for that matter, went on covertly well before the official commencement of operations in 1964. Thanks for the chonology.

Takeshi Miike I have great respect for the US forces now in Afghanistan, but my concern is that no level of competence or motivation can solve the challenges there, as was the case in Vietnam. I believe that Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs all believed that there was little hope of success in Vietnam as early as 1967. Yet the Joint Chiefs continued to fight indefinitely because having lost friends there they didn't want to surrender the field to the malevolant communists enemy. I understand their feelings. But it takes more than will and determination to prevail in these conflicts. It takes a set of circumstances which will ultimately make for success, and I'm afraid that may always be lacking in Afghanistan.

What happened in Vietnam is that in order to save it from communism the US sought to deny them their own self-determination, and that's why it failed. The reason why the people in Afghanistan consented to rule by the Taliban in the 1990s isn't because they liked their draconian lifestyle. It's because only the Taliban could restore law and order there. If the US cannot establish a government in Afghanistan which has more legitimacy among the people than the present one, the mission may fail.

TAE,
I served in the Army as an officer and most of my classmates are either in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the pentagon as COLs now. You bring up good points but they are surface analogies that are covered day one in CGSC, War College and any number of military schools. I would counter that most of the officers think of nothing else but this issue. It is their reason for being. I would strongly suggest that they have forgotten nothing from Vietnam. Further, they have studied every aspect of that war (along with a hundred others) and have drawn very different conclusions. That is why Petraeus has framed this war, as Bush did, as a war on radical Islam. Afghanistan is a theater of operations in the totality of the struggle. Further, it is easy to say "we can't win" but hard to actually win. But most feel we can. What I would counter with is a) we didn't pick this fight w. Afghanistan (would you have liked sanctions on the days after 9/11) and b) we need to look at ourselves and the constraints we put on our military. The constraints in this engagement are stunning in detail. It says more about our complacency in the West than our abilities.

One last point,

Sorry, hit post accidently.
One last point, our military has a long history of winning the unwinnable. I would suggest reading petraeus' book. He points out that history strongly supports insurgencies slmost always fail. We remember the victories but when you analyze the real statistics, insurgencies are really difficult to win

The guys on the ground there are some of the most effective human beings you will ever meet. Give them time and they will get the job done. The worst thing we can do is let them sacrifice their time, their friends, their time with their families, and their lives and not see it through. Originally Posted by Takeshi Miike

Oh, man. A buddy of mine who was over there sent me a link about our soldiers; http://blogs.myspace.com/johnringo1508, scroll down to 11/29/8.

"Current everyday conventional boring 'leg infantry' units exceed the PT levels and training levels of most Special Forces during the Vietnam War. They exceed both of those as well as IQ and educational levels of: Waffen SS, WWII Rangers, WWII Airborne and British 'Commando' units during WWII. Their per-unit combat-functionality is essentially unmeasurable because it has to be compared to something and there's nothing comparable in industrial period combat history."

The troops did not loose in Nam the politicians did, just like they are doing in Afghanistan. Also, as for morale in Nam, just look at what we were up against over there, political interference and here at home with the dope head hippies and antiwar freaks!

Boss1,

No additional amount of military effort would have changed the outcome given that every Vietnamese with an opinion was pro-communist, even if they were not revealing such 'till needed. My favorite book on this is Maj. John Plaster's on the Studies and Observations Group [SOG]. This elite unit had the clandestine job of operating in Laos and Cambodia. They had 100% casualties. They had no idea why they were continually been waxed. After the war it turned out that all their operations were being turned over to the communists by their agents within the South Vietnamese military, which was also the South Vietnamese government. Actually all U.S. military operations were turned over to the enemy in this way. The U.S. had no idea at the time that they had no real allies there, only people pretending to be so. This is of course why in 1975 when the communists rolled into the south the South Vietnamese army simply dissolved in front of them. The situation in Afghanistan today is similar.

ChrisS,

My graduate degree was in Defense Studies from one of the University programs in Cambridge, Mass., in which at least a third of the students were Acedemy graduates. I think such programs are vital because the Services' schools are necessarily distorted to serve their institutional missions. I have read Petraeus' book, and unfortunately it is the product of a technocrat serving the interests of his institution, not that of a real scholar. It would have been criticized severly if it would have been subjected to peer review at a place like M.I.T. In particular, it's pointless to state that most insurgencies fail if in fact you're facing the circumstances in which insurgencie never fail. Remember...in Iraq it was not the "surge" which prevented a destaster there. It was the U.S. "surrendering" to the Sunnis, and giving them de-facto amnesty, so they could form an alliance with them against the Iraqi Taliban. It was this political act, not any of Petraeus' military efforts, that prevented desaster. It was a terrible thing to do given that the Sunnis had killed so many American soldiers.

The only important question in Afghanistan is whether what the U.S. is facing is like Che Guevera in Cuba [where 90% of the people were behind him] or like Che Guevera in Bolivia [where less than 1% of the people were behind him]. I submit that Afghanistan today falls somewhere in between, but closer to the Cuban situation than the Bolivian one.

I worked in Pakistan from 1983 to 1986 in support of the anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan [something I regret deeply however]. The U.S. today faces the same situation there that the Russians did. The Tabibs [what the west erroneously calls the "Taliban"] are supported by the Pakistani power structure, as well as substantial public opinion and covert government action from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others. This will always be the case. This is a treacherous game in which the Pakistanis are pretending to be the U.S. allies when they are not. And no amount of friction within Pakistan versus their own "militants" changes this. What the U.S. considers "militacy" or "extreme" opinions in muslim countries is actually considered common opinion there, and U.S. media, politicians, technicracts and soldiers will always miscalculate so long as they believe otherwise.

In Vietnam American soldiers thought they were fighting for democracy there, and had no idea that it was the United States that had prevented elections because the communists would have won. Similarly American soldiers in Afghanistan have no notion that the Pakistani and Saudi governments are clandestinely supporting the Taliban. This is of course the reason why Osama bin-Ladin has never been produced, and never will be. The same applies to Mullah Omar for that matter. The Pakistanis only produce who they have to, in phoney "raids" to keep up appearances.

American public opinion concluded that the mission in Vietnam was not worth the cost when year after year American casualties were going up instead of down. Nine years into the Afghan thing this is also the case. The initial success of driving the Talibs out of power from Kabul was one thing, but if the government there now is too venal to defend itself then we cannot accomplish that for them, anymore than we could in Vietnam.

After South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975 no one in the U.S. was harmed in any way by it. Life went on here completely undisturbed. If the U.S. left Afghanistan tomorrow it would be exactly the same. The American's dying and sacrificing in both situations do so because of their beliefs, but it's not actually going to benefit anyone living here. I submit their beliefs are based on doctrine and ideologies formulated to support the mission they've been given. It is all terribly tragic, but that's they way war has always been.

There are numerous differences between America's prolonged involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It is almost like trying to compare apples to oranges. The most significant being an attack on American soil precipitated our invovlement in Afghanistan. That certainly was not the case with Vietnam.

Truthfully our involvement in Iraq is much more similar to Vietnam than Afghan. In any event, the number of American casualties was far greater in Vietnam than the combined casualties of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

". . .The problem is that the current generation of officers were too young to serve there, and have not studied it. . ." Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

". . .I would counter that most of the officers think of nothing else but this issue. It is their reason for being. I would strongly suggest that they have forgotten nothing from Vietnam. . ." Originally Posted by ChrisS

Chris and TAE, very good points. I was kind of wondering if it isn't so much the officers that refuse to learn from Vietnam as much as it is the politicians on both sides of the aisles that are making some of the same mistakes.

What seems haunting is that the caves of Afghanistan sure do seem similar to the tunnels of Vietnam providing the opponent the ability to move very quickly back and forth from unit, platoon, and battalion strength making it very difficult to rely on any intelligence and logistics whatsoever.

I know some of the military minds have asked repeatedly for the authorization to bomb the tar out of the cave systems, like we should have been permitted to do in Vietnam, before boots ever hit the ground, but that tends to make politicians a bit queasy. If the war is worth fighting, then we need to commit fully to it, not play footsie with folks that are pretty much used to repelling large occupying forces. If we are not committed to it, we should pull out, not engage in a trickling supply of resources and manpower that is beholden to fickle politics.

It sure seems like it is the tiger on the elephant's back all over again.

Vietnam war was fought not to prevent the overrun of the country, but purely to protect the "Golden Triangle." It was a conflict about drugs and nothing but drugs. Everything else was a "wag the dog" deflection of the public eye.