Eric Margolis: Damn it's Nam

Vietnam—We Must Have Been Absent That Day


Vietnam in 1965 had been the subject of a massive misinformation campaign, telling us that we were helping a struggling democracy. LBJ had assured us in the ’64 campaign that he was not going to send American boys to fight a war that should be fought by Asians. The Marines arriving in Vietnam in March 1965 were there to protect the big airbase at Da Nang. Big battles in the Ia Drang Valley wouldn’t take place until that September. The “gradual” buildup had been going on for months, but we wanted to believe it was a short-term affair as we left BHS.

Big increases in draft calls coincided with a well-orchestrated campaign to “back our boys in Vietnam." As more males were caught up in the big green machine, more people began to notice, but the constant drumbeat of “patriotic” propaganda maintained substantial support from a concerned but misinformed public. The steadily increasing casualties were countered by rosy reports from the military. General Westmoreland saw “light at the end of the tunnel” late in 1967, but he continued to request additional troops as the big green draft machine rolled along.

Khe Sanh dominated the attention of both civilian and military leaders in January 1968. LBJ told his generals he didn’t want “any more damned Dien Bien Phus.” Westmoreland devoted most of his energy to supporting the Marines dug into the mountains at Khe Sanh, while the VC and NVA quietly prepared for an offensive in all the major cities of South Vietnam Early on the morning of January 30, 1968, they launched attacks which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese—VC, NVA, and civilians—as well as 1,500 Americans.

The Tet Offensive revealed the VC and NVA for what they were: vicious, murderous, and stupid. Their brilliant strategists had calculated that the people of South Vietnam would react to this massive slaughter by rising up and defeating the Americans. Truth was, of course, that the South Vietnamese didn’t particularly care for anyone destroying their cities and killing them by the thousands. Their hatred for the Americans became matched by a hatred of the VC and NVA. At the same time, American firepower had temporarily destroyed much of the VC/NVA military strength in the South. So their grand strategy was a disaster for everyone in Vietnam.

Many in the U.S. were blindsided by both the scope and ferocity of the offensive. Having been told that the enemy was being ground down, we were confronted with clear evidence that we had not defeated anyone. At that point the public wasn’t much interested in the fact that we killed 20 Vietnamese for every American death. LBJ and the military had lied to us about the war. We had been willing to accept a few deaths a week, but they weren’t supposed to be able to kill 1,500 Americans in a week.

LBJ, the consummate political charlatan, apparently could no longer continue his self-deception about the war. He continued his public deceit, proclaiming that he wouldn’t “cut and run”, but he clearly knew he wasn’t going to win the hearts and minds of anyone. To his everlasting shame, he allowed the military to continue its bloody campaign, even to the point of sharply increased military operations which resulted in the deaths of an additional 22,000 Americans and many more thousands of Vietnamese in 1968 alone. In a final act of political cowardice, he withdrew from the presidential campaign at the end of March, making the incredibly cynical statement that he could not engage in politics while troops were in the field. At the same time, he demanded (and got) continued political loyalty to his failed policy from his administration. Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign was fatally wounded by his shameful support of the war until the summer of 1968.

Waiting in the wings, of course, ready to take advantage of the political vacuum, was one Richard Milhous Nixon—the peace candidate. His orders to the military were simple: keep up the pressure—meaning keep the war going while I demonstrate my international greatness with secret negotiations. American casualties actually increased in the first months after Nixon was inaugurated in 1969, as the number of troops in-country hit their peak of 550,000 in April. Nixon kept us at war until January 27, 1973—four years and seven days after his inauguration as the peace candidate. Nearly 20,000 Americans and untold thousands of Vietnamese died under his administration. He willfully tore the country apart. He was reelected in a landslide in 1972.

The Class of ’65 lost Jim Travis and Billy Bishop. The country lost a whole lot.

And we apparently didn’t learn a damned thing.