The Vietnam War – 42 years Ago

*L* You're making it hard for me to argue with you.... I agree with you on the M-16 - I used to call it the plastic imitation toy gun. I like the M-14, but I think the FN-FAL would have been the best pick... even if it did field strip like a Swiss watch. I'm sure this argument has been going on for over 50 years though, so we probably won't resolve it here.

 

Interesting, There are some who say Laos became a side show after 1962, but I don’t buy that. The difference between Laos and Vietnam, one was covert and the other overt. There was more bombing done in Laos than in South Vietnam North Vietnam put together.

What I wonder more than what JFK would have done or your scenario which is a good one is what would Eisenhower have done with Southeast Asia. Having read around 15 bio’s of IKE and numerous books on Southeast Asia during the 50’s I think he would have had us go to war in Laos, not necessarily Vietnam. He sent in the White Star teams, he added troops and planes in Thailand and build what was know as the Friendship Highway in Thailand from Korat up to Udorn for U.S. military supply use.

Also he twice as I mentioned kept us out of Vietnam. To IKE Laos was important, Vietnam no so much. I had the feeling he would have fought in Laos, perhaps not in Vietnam. IKE had stated Laos was an North Vietnam invasion more than a civil war. In fact there were more North Vietnamese troops in Laos than Pathet Lao troops. IKE also viewed Vietnam as more of a civil war than an invasion.

Remember the 1954 Geneva Accords created a divided Vietnam with elections scheduled for 1956 which Diem scuttled. There is the possibility if IKE could keep Laos free, he may have let South Vietnam fall to Uncle Ho. Speculation on my part, but from what I read, speculation that needs to be thought about. IKE actually had more U.S. troops in Laos than in Vietnam. That changed when JFK became president.

There are a lot of what ifs when it comes to Vietnam. But my trust would first go to Eisenhower, then JFK. If no 22nd amendment or if JFK had lived, history certainly would have been different.

 

Geopolitics, if we removed NATO missiles from Turkey, the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba. That was the agreement made and was kept a secret from the American people for over twenty years. Even today with all of the revisionist history being taught, many Americans are unaware of the agreement that was made. Many think Krushev blinked but he did not. He got exactly what he wanted, removing NATO missiles from Turkey.

But we did come awful close to a nuclear exchange, real close.

Funny, Bobby Kennedy during the early 60's was a big time hawk and anti communist. He had the talk but not the walk. I think Bobby was always scared of starting WW lll.

Then in the late 60's he did a complete 180 and became a dove. One has to wonder if it was just a political move to get elected as POTUS in 1968 ?

 

I don't think Eisenhower would have run again in 1960, even if a third term was an option... he was 70 years old, had had a stroke and a heart attack and I think he was pretty played out by the end. I think a third term, with all of the stresses and strains it promised, would have done him in. But since we're assuming, let's assume he was in good physical shape... I'm not sure how you separate Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia for that matter - what you do in any of those areas is going to affect what happens in all of the others. And it doesn't stop there... the more you do in Laos, the more you draw Thailand into the mix as well. And you can go even farther afield... what about Indonesia? At the time, Sukarno was cozying up to the Chinese and making trouble in Malaysia and Netherlands New Guinea. People make jokes about the Domino Theory today... but those who do forget about the situation as it stood at the time.

So, to say the least, it was a complicated situation. The 1962 Geneva Accords cauterized the situation somewhat by removing the threat of pulling in Thailand. Truth be told, I have no idea if Eisenhower could have or would have pulled off something similar... maybe he could have if John Foster Dulles had still been around, but I don't think Christian Herter would have been up to the task. As far as cauterizing South Vietnam from being involved in any Laotian conflict, I just can't see how that happens. If you neutralize South Vietnam, you pretty much lose your reason for being in Laos in the first place, don't you?

 

The FN-FAL was an excellent battle rifle. But the first time I got my hands on one I noticed that the FN-FAL wasn't as well balanced as the M-14.

 

Maybe so.... but it handled full auto far better than the M-14. If you're going semi-auto, I'd go M-14, full auto, it's definitely got to be the FN-FAL.

 

Was he a complete dove in '68, though? Or just where it came to Vietnam? I think maybe he just came to the realization that there just was no way to win in Vietnam unless the Vietnamese got their act together and after 3 years of US direct involvement they showed no signs of getting their act together. Maybe RFK just decided there were better ways to get out of hole than to keep digging?

 

Suggesting that the problem in Vietnam was that the locals didn't have their act together is crude jingoistic nonsense.

We installed ineffective puppet governments, and you want to blame Vietnam for not having their act together?

We funded a significant percent of the French war in Vietnam, and that was pretty much pure colonialism and led into our effort which may have sounded different to us, but I doubt it felt different to Vietnamese.

Vietnam needed land reform, and we blocked all effort to solve that serious problem.

etc.

 

What was RFK calling for ? How the (*)(*)(*)(*) were we suppose to be able to withdraw from Vietnam ? There were a few Democrats back then who actually called for the U.S. military to surrender on the battlefield to the NVA.

Nixon got it right in 73, to bad he didn't do it in 69.

 

Land reform would have involved taking land from the Catholics and giving it to the Buddhists - if anyone was blocking this, it was Diem. To truly do land reform you would have had to dump Diem and replace him with a strong Buddhist leader. You tell me... who was the strong Buddhist leader?

 

I think RFK would have offered the North Vietnamese a cease-fire in place and then withdrew US forces, which is essentially the deal Nixon got after 4 years of teeth-pulling. He probably would have been out of Vietnam by 1970 and Saigon probably would have fallen in 1972 instead of 1975.

 

Yeah, interesting reflection. Bobby was a hawk, especially when dealing with Castro during JFK's time. You're right also on Khrushchev not blinking. One and probably the main reason he, Khrushchev took his big gamble in Cuba was our missiles in Turkey. I suppose you could say both sides won this one.

Perhaps RFK's move from Hawk to dove might have been the influence of LBJ which he hated. But the whole Democratic party pretty much made that move outside of the defense originated southern democrats. Strange because in the 50's a lot of the Republicans were isolationist and the Democrats foreign interventionist.

 

The deal Nixon made was if North Vietnam were to violate the treaty and resume it's war in the RVN that the U.S. would resume bombing North Vietnam big time. That was the deal.

When the last American troops left Vietnam in 73 every province in the RVN was left in complete control of ARVAN forces.

Then you had Watergate. The "New Left" was gaining control of the Democrat party and were out of control in Congress. Slew of legislation was being passed from the War Powers Act to making it illegal to ever drop a bomb on North Vietnam or the RVN and then cutting off all military aid to the RVN. President Ford tried to stop such legislation knowing that the Democrats were signing the death warrant for the RVN.

The North Vietnamese saw what was happening and even tested the U.S.A. by attacking from Cambodia into the RVN just to see what America would do. There was no response from America so North Vietnam prepared to invade the RVN from across the 17th parallel with armor formations, the rest is history.

Question is, if there was never a Watergate, would there still be a Republic of South Vietnam today ?

 

I think LBJ disliked and didn't trust RFK just as much. When LBJ was sworn in as POTUS he kept most of JFK's Harvard buddies aboard including McNamara except for RFK.

Even LBJ hadn't refused to run for reelection in 1968, RFK was still going to run against LBJ.

 

I see it the same way.

 

You're joking, right? Are you seriously saying that there were no NVA or VC forces in South Vietnam when the Paris Peace Agreement was signed?!? Do you really think the war was over and the South had won?

Let's see... if there were no Watergate and Nixon were still President in 1975, would he have resumed bombing? I really don't know. I know he said he would have, but Nixon said a lot of things I don't really take at face value. When the US left, they gave so much aid to the South Vietnamese that I think at one point South Vietnam had the world's sixth-largest Air Force. Think about that for a moment. Let's see... You've got the US, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and probably China...that's the top 5. Number 6 is South Vietnam. That's nuts. Especially considering the country folded like a house of cards in about 3 weeks. That's about as long as Poland lasted against Germany in WW2.

So maybe Nixon bombed, maybe he wouldn't have. What difference would it have made?

You know how there could have been a Republic of South Vietnam today? There could have been one if somewhere along the way they had found their own version of South Korea's Park Chung-hee - someone who was willing to step up to the plate and who had the force of personality to knock some heads together and get things done. That's the kind of personality you need in a situation like that... that's why Vietnam failed and that's why Iraq is failing - they need to find a President Park.

 

I think it would have been academic anyway - Humphrey had the nomination locked up by the time RFK was shot.

 

October Agreement

US withdrawal of forces within two months.
Cease-fire in South Vietnam and an end to US bombing twenty-four hours after signing the agreement.
US respect to Vietnam in agreement with the Geneva Accords of 1954.
US replacement of South Vietnam military equipment on a piece-by-piece basis.
US aid to North Vietnam.
Self-determination of South Vietnam.
No coalition government instead a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord [NCRC] to act as an intermediary between the parties.
Cease-fires and troop withdrawals from Laos and Cambodia.
Formation of the International Commission of Control and Supervision [ICCS] to monitor the implementation of the agreement...


Kissinger asked for a one-week recess to see whether Saigon could be brought around to accept the agreement. On November 29, Special Advisor to President Thieu, Nguyen Phu Duc, met with President Nixon to explain why this agreement was no more acceptable than the October 12 agreement. Duc explained that President Thieu would not sign any agreement unless it included some "reference to North Vietnamese withdrawal" of all troops from South Vietnam.9 Up until that point neither the October draft nor the November draft had included language about North Vietnamese withdrawal. Both drafts left that issue to be resolved by the Vietnamese. Frustrated by the intransigence of Saigon, the Nixon administration undertook another review of its approach to the Paris negotiations. At a meeting the next day with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Nixon signaled that he was worried that some hawks at home were not supportive of his efforts in Paris. He assured the Joint Chiefs that he wanted very drastic military plans to use in the event that Hanoi broke any future agreement. In that case, he wanted to go "all out" with a "massive" retaliation against Hanoi....


On December 26, North Vietnam agreed to resume the talks on January 2. President Nixon stopped bombing above the 20th parallel on December 29. Kissinger and Tho reconvened on January 8 and had a significant breakthrough the next day, President Nixon's birthday. Tho agreed to go back to the agreement of November 25 and he compromised on the language describing the DMZ. In addition, Hanoi agreed that the cease-fire would start in Laos fifteen days after the cease-fire in Vietnam instead of thirty. Kissinger called President Nixon to extend birthday wishes and to tell him about the major developments. The talks concluded on January 13 with the final agreement looking similar to the November 25 agreement. The US was able to get the language on the DMZ strengthened to include language about civilian movement across the line. Although not reflected in the agreement in writing, the US and North Vietnam compromised on the size of the ICCS, with the final number being closer to the US demands. There were also some minor technical and translations changes.

Despite these new compromises, Thieu still refused to sign any agreement that left enemy troops in his country. This time, however, Washington was not prepared to allow Saigon to veto an agreement. In an Oval Office conversation on January 3, 1973, Nixon lamented that the South Vietnamese leader "was living in a dream world," while Kissinger described him as "demented."21 On January 17, President Nixon fired off a letter to Thieu telling him he had "two essential choices: to continue a course, which would be dramatic but short-sighted, of seeking to block the Agreement; or to use the Agreement constructively."22 Thieu finally submitted to US pressures on January 21, without receiving any additional changes to the agreement. Washington did, however, restate its commitment to vigorously enforce the agreement. On January 27, twenty-eight years after America first became involved in the affairs of Vietnam, the agreement was officially signed and America's longest war ended.

Twenty-seven months after the agreement was signed, in April 1975, North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam and established a communist regime throughout the united country...

http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/exhibits/decbomb/introduction.html

 

You might be correct. From what I remember RFK's biggest supporters were teenagers, hippies and young adults who weren't old enough to vote or too stoned to vote. The voting age was still 21.

 

Actually, I think that was more McCarthy's core constituency - Kennedy's was more establishment anti-war.

As far as what Nixon would have done in '75, unless he was willing to start turning the place into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot, I don't think bombing would have made much of a difference to the final outcome. If airpower alone could have turned the tide, I would have figured the world's sixth-largest air force would have had an impact, don't you?

 

But it was American air power that was responsible for ending the war. The mining of Haiphong Harbor ended all maritime traffic into North Vietnam. If you remember that Soviet merchant ships were trapped and couldn't leave the harbor or could any more merchant ships enter the harbor with war materials. The only materials that could enter North Vietnam was by rail and the B-52's knocked out all of those railroad bridges. North Vietnam was becoming isolated from the world.

 

I don't believe that was our question to answer. They had a serious problem and we were requiring that there be no solution - that's not satisfactory. And, if Diem ended up failing to meet the basic needs of his country, then another direction was necessary for that, too.

Given that Buddhist monks were immolating themselves in protest of what we were supporting, I'd say they were pretty dedicated to change from what we were imposing.

 

Be that as it may, Nixon would have been barred from intervening without first securing Congressional approval by the terms of the Case-Church Amendment. There is no way he would have gotten Congressional approval to go back into Vietnam in 1975.

 

Okay... but what change? We both agree that Diem had to go... the question is who replaces him? Who was out there to take the reins of power and do what needed to be done to bring the country together and keep the Viet Cong from taking over?

It's one thing to say change is needed, but it's another thing entirely to actually implement that change.

 

I think the only answer to Vietnam is to see what has happened there since the US departure. After the initial stages of reunification with all the slaughtering and reprisals, it has turned into a somewhat middle-of-the-road nation between Communism and capitalism.

Perhaps it has simply turned into what a country with its cultural heritage was meant to be.