-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.vietvet.org/jeffviet.htm <A HREF="http://www.vietvet.org/jeffviet.htm">How the U.S. Got Involved In Vietnam </A> --[1]-- "How the U.S. Got Involved In Vietnam" By Jeff Drake ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE This article was written by me about two years ago and was, for me, extremely cathartic. I have not had a war nightmare since I wrote it, and I used to get a good one every couple of months or so for the past twenty years. Perhaps it was not so much the writing of the article I found so helpful, as the actual research I did prior to writing it (and I did a lot of research). So much of the "insanity" I experienced during the war now makes a terrible kind of sense. I want to share the knowledge I have found - regarding how the U.S. initially got involved in Vietnam - with other veterans. Maybe someone else will start to understand the incredible contradictions they experienced. Jeff Drake ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HOW THE U.S. GOT INVOLVED IN VIETNAM Introduction This article tries to answer a special question... how did the US get involved in Vietnam? Though the question is an old one, it should still hold some interest, for the facts behind US involvement in Vietnam paint a very different history than the popular one taught in our schools, or the history of the war which is currently being rewritten to match the public's highly emotional memories of the Kennedy "Camelot" years. You may debate whether someone's intention was one thing or another, but the historical record speaks for itself. The information contained in this article did not come from unreliable sources. Much of it is contained within our government's own prehistory of the war which it fought so hard to keep from the American public - the documents which later became known as the Pentagon Papers. When one delves into the Pentagon Papers it becomes immediately clear why the government wanted them kept secret, for they expose the many lies that our government generated in order to get the American people strongly behind the war effort. Yet, the importance of these documents goes beyond their intrinsic historical value since they establish a precedence of governmental deceit that would be practiced again and again. The media, however, continues to ignore the contents of these documents when discussing Vietnam either in print or on the tube. And herein lies the danger - for history that is hidden or unreported, or ignored because it is unpopular, is destined to be repeated. Just ask the people of Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq and Somalia. The Vietnam War, like any other war, was extremely ugly. But unlike other wars, there were many soldiers involved in the fighting who opposed it. There was also a tremendous cross-section of the American public that came to oppose it - not on the grounds that we were going to lose - but on the grounds that it was immoral and just plain wrong. This gathering of people from all walks of life and economic backgrounds together in cities all across the country to oppose immoral governmental foreign policy was, whether you agreed with it or not, a fantastic exercise of real democracy, and may well have been the most blatant exercise of democracy to occur in this century. Later, this type of democratic activity would be referred to by the Trilateral Commission as a "crisis of democracy," and decried by President's Reagan and Bush as the "Vietnam syndrome" - as if public opposition to war and corrupt foreign policy was somehow sick or deranged behavior, to be avoided or somehow "cured". As a soldier who initially supported the war effort full-heartedly and later came to oppose it, I, like many others, couldn't make sense of the military policy I was being ordered to carry out. Many of the troops rebelled against being treated as cannon fodder; others rebelled against the wanton destruction and murder that we were asked to carry out; but none of us soldiers in the field had a real understanding of why we were in Vietnam. We were told that we were there to stop the communist menace. We were also told that we were there because the South Vietnamese asked us to save them from this same communist menace. But what we experienced didn't add up to what we were being told. For twenty years I held the South Vietnamese soldier (ARVN) in contempt because I couldn't understand why so many of the ARVN's I saw obviously had no interest in fighting "their" war - the one they asked us to participate in. What I have learned through my research prior to writing this article has completely altered my perception of the Vietnam war and hence my understanding of this particular issue. Part of my overall misunderstanding was indeed correct. That is, many ARVNs did not want to have anything to do with fighting the Viet Cong. What was incorrect, however, was my belief that the South Vietnamese people had asked us to help them win the war. This request had not come from the South Vietnamese people, it had come from the South Vietnamese government, whose existence was due solely to American support and interests. The ARVNs, many under the age of 17, had no choice in fighting and were often sympathetic to the cause of the Viet Cong. Knowing the truth, I now feel little resentment towards the ARVNs I saw who were unwilling to fight, only sympathy. We, Americans and ARVNs, were all unwitting cogs in the same terrible war machine. Back home our government was busy proving that "disinformation" works. Although technically illegal when used against the American public by our own intelligence agencies, it was used continually through most of the Vietnam war to keep Congress towing the party line and the American public at bay. The disinformation campaigns and associated covert activities that were perpetrated over and over again to prevent a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam conflict are well documented, but like the Pentagon Papers, ignored in media discussions and most documentaries about the Vietnam war. In-depth media analysis on the subject of how the US got involved initially in Vietnam is almost nonexistent. This paper is not an effort to paint the North Vietnamese as heroes and the US as villains. In the jungle, it was hunt or be hunted. Reduced to animal behavior, soldiers on both sides reacted accordingly. Nor is this about guilt or accusations. I know that the blood I have on my hands will never wash clean. This is an effort to set the record straight, to enlighten, to do what I can to make a difference. There is more to the US involvement in Vietnam than we have ever been allowed to think or know. The war has continuously been presented to the American public as "insane" and "crazy", due in part to veterans like myself, who had no other words to describe our experiences. So labeled, people are discouraged from seeking the truth about the war. It is also easy to put aside a critical analysis when faced with the images of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, or Oliver Stone's movie, Platoon. But to do so is wrong. We owe it to the future generations of young men and women who will be called on to fight and die in foreign lands, to not give up on the truth so easily. Be warned, the history disclosed in this article may not be the history you want to hear. The chances are high that you may not feel that it is in your interest to read my ramblings about how the US got involved in Vietnam. But here I would beg to differ. Already, the same type of arrogant mistakes the US made in Vietnam have been made again, costing the lives of thousands more innocent victims. I believe that it is imperative that more people understand how the US got involved in Vietnam so that we do not continue to repeat it. There is right now as I write this, a movement underway to bury and/or rewrite the past with regard to US intervention in Vietnam (and the rest of the 60's as far as that goes). It has been going on for some time, with a recent resurgence connected to the myth-building activities surrounding President John Kennedy. We would be remiss not to realize that there are people in positions of power in this country who would like the American public to forget the past, people who would like to take advantage of our forgetfulness. We owe it to the veterans of Vietnam, both Vietnamese and American, to make sure Vietnam doesn't happen again. Our government has a vested interest in not publicizing the truth about Vietnam, for the lies and misunderstandings about Vietnam give the government the support it needs to continue waging the economic war against Vietnam, a war we have already won. We cannot wait for the truth about Vietnam to be handed to us on a silver platter. We need to seek out the facts, and when we find them - understand them, expose them, spread them around. And it is the facts that I would like to share with you... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE BEGINNING Surprisingly, the story behind this paper doesn't begin in Vietnam. It began last spring in Washington, DC. It was an absolutely beautiful day to be visiting the nations' Capital. Warm sunshine washing over the huge white buildings; people bustling about with their necks craned upwards stretching to see the decorative architecture; blankets spread on the grass with kids begging for more pop, while their moms and dads try to rest their aching feet. My wife and I were resting our feet also. We had just ran the gauntlet of names at the Vietnam Memorial. Tired from a day of touring, we parked our butts on the topmost step of the Lincoln Memorial. Staring out across the grounds, the Washington Monument stood at attention, gleaming in its sun-bleached uniform. Struck dumb by my experience at the Memorial and my inability to remember the names of my dead friends, I just stared at the corner of the Vietnam Memorial that was visible from where I sat. Over and over I kept thinking, "How could we let this happen? There are 50,000 names on that wall. How could this happen? What did they die for?" Between my questions, I flashed back twentysome years as the nearby sound of a helicopter dragged me into the past... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Screaming down Vietnam's Highway One in a convoy, draped over the side of the Deuce-and-a-half truck, I watch in fascination as the picture-postcard scenery zips past. Rice patties and farm land as far as you can see. Periodically, the picturesque view is accented with Water Buffaloes pulling ancient farm equipment, while behind them a small figure in black pajamas struggles knee-deep in the mud and water to keep up. The villages we drive past are typical, and usually of little interest - except for today. As we push down the highway we notice thick black smoke coming up on our left, closer and closer. This village doesn't look any different than any other, except for the fires and smoke, and the fact that overhead circle several Army gunships. The alleyways between the huts are littered with bodies, some still burning. The machine-gun fire comes in intense bursts and everywhere there are men, women and children running, trying to escape. They fall to the ground in slow motion. None of them are armed. As we pass the scene, I imagine that I can hear their screams. I am imagining it, aren't I? The soldiers I am with cheer and wave from the back of our truck...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My reverie is broken by the sound of a jet overhead, it's plume providing a patriotic backdrop to the Washington Monument. Haunted by the fresh memory, I fight back the tears. Again, I wonder about the 50,000 American dead, and for the first time I allow myself to think about the 2,000,000+ Vietnamese dead. How did it all begin? I promise myself then and there that I am going to seek a full understanding of the war and how it all got started. This article is the result of my efforts at fulfilling my promise. For twenty years I have treated my Vietnam experience like a bad love affair - on again, off again. Sometimes embracing it with a fierce passion, other times attempting to distance myself from it but failing miserably. Often seeking to understand it, but being too close, too involved to see clearly - and in the end returning to it once again, hat in hand, to start over. In hope of a reconciliation, I have taken the time to do quite a bit of research on the subject of Vietnam, with a specific interest in answering the following questions: Why did the US get involved in Vietnam? Vietnam is thousands of miles away from the US. It was a backwards little country, almost primitive in comparison. What possible interest did the US have in such a place? The public was told from the very beginning that we had to stop the communist menace in Vietnam or other countries would follow suit; that we had to defend the democratic South Vietnamese government against the gathering Red hordes. Was that really true? Did our leaders really believe that? Who were the Vietcong? What was North Vietnam all about? I went through 19 months in Vietnam thinking that the Vietcong constituted an "uprising" against a democratically elected government; that the Vietcong were essentially some kind of insurgency, a group of "upstarts" and troublemakers, indoctrinated by the North to cause trouble in the South. Everyone I knew believed the same thing. Were we right? Repeatedly, US soldiers complained about the inability to determine friend from foe. Farmer or cab driver by day, guerrilla by night. We soldiers knew that the towns and hamlets were literally crawling with what we called, "Vietcong sympathizers," but that just seemed to be one more "crazy" thing about Vietnam. We were too busy with the day-to-day affairs of the war to worry about inconsistencies between what we were told and what we knew to be true. Besides, we weren't supposed to think about what we were doing. But who were the Vietcong? And why did they fight so hard for so little? Why were we lied to? With the release of the Pentagon Papers, which the government had fought so hard against, the truth about Vietnam could begin to be known. In the Pentagon Papers, all the details about the planning of the war, the scheming, the misguided reasoning, are laid bare. Memos and meeting notes are compiled for your perusal. A solid foundation for understanding our involvement in Vietnam can be found in those pages. Did our government lie to us about Vietnam? Most certainly. Why? Many believe that Russia was behind the North Vietnamese "invasion." But did you know that in the beginning of the war there was never any evidence connecting Russia with North Vietnamese military actions in the South? And as for the "invasion," there were never any confirmed sightings of North Vietnamese regular forces in South Vietnam until 1965, a full eleven years after the start of our involvement in the Vietnam war. So who were we fighting all this time? Who were we supporting and why? Who were we saving Vietnam from? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A HISTORY OF HOW THE U.S. GOT INVOLVED IN VIETNAM Indochina Vietnam, as most everyone knows, is a country that has been no stranger to war. Many in fact, chalk up our own involvement in Vietnam as just another war in a long progression of warfare that has been Vietnam's history, as if the wars that have occurred there are somehow due to the "nature" of the Vietnamese, or just part of the existence of Southeast Asia. To be sure, warfare has been a mainstay of the Vietnamese for many years, but to assume that warfare is just a natural part of existence for the Vietnamese, like the monsoon season, and therefore look no further for the causes of these wars, does the Vietnamese a great injustice, borders on racism and in fact, denies history. To fully understand US involvement in Vietnam in a proper context, you need to go back into Vietnam's past, way, way back... Vietnam has China for its Northern border, and extends in an "S" shape all the way to the tip of the peninsula. On it's western borders are the countries of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. There are rich delta areas in both the north and south of the country, and have been described as two rice baskets suspended on the ends of a peasant's carrying pole, for these two areas produce almost all of Vietnam's rice. Although these two regions only make up a quarter of Vietnam's total area, up to the early 1960's they supported almost all of the five-sixth's of the population of ethnic Vietnamese. Vietnam is a melting-pot. In the northern delta area, a hilly and mountainous region, are several groups of Tai who speak languages closer to Thai and Laos than to Vietnamese. The hill and plateau areas of Central Vietnam have other, distinctly non-Vietnamese groups. These people were originally displaced from the more fertile coastal regions by the Vietnamese as they pushed south centuries ago, from their original home in the northern Red River delta. These people, together with some Tai tribes in the North, and some smaller non-Vietnamese groups scattered throughout the interior, constitute what the French termed the Montagnards - mountain people living almost exclusively in the mountains and plateau areas that make up three-quarters of the country. (The Montagnard are a people I knew and had tremendous respect for during my two tours in Vietnam.) In the southern part of the peninsula, south of the Mekong delta, reside around 700,000 Cambodians, in a district that used to belong to the Kingdom of Cambodia. In a ddition, during the early 1960's, there were over a million Chinese in Vietnam, living mostly in the South, especially around Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City) and Cholon. Vietnam's close proximity to China naturally led to very close political and cultural ties between the two countries. Even as early as 221 B.C., the Chinese sent garrisons to the northern Red River delta area of Vietnam. In fact, a combined Sino-Vietnamese kingdom existed there from 207 B.C. until 111 B.C. The Vietnamese were influenced considerably by the Chinese, absorbing Confucian social and political values in addition to a hierarchical system of Mandarin bureaucracy which included a civil service examination system and the study of Chinese classics. Similar to experience in China, the Mandarin-style of administration adopted by the Vietnamese was ill suited to cope with rapid change and eventually led to problems. Although the Vietnamese obviously admired many facets of Chinese society, enough of their own culture remained active to build up resentment to Chinese rule and mount a revolt. And in 939 the Vietnamese won their freedom from the Chinese.(1) Later in the 13th century they would again fight off the invasion of Kublai Khan, and would continually repel subsequent efforts of the Chinese to regain control up through the 15th century.(2) For many centuries, the Vietnamese effort to win and stay free from the Chinese would form the basis of their own brand of nationalism. The ethnic Vietnamese originally lived only in the northern part of the country. Their efforts to move south were barred by an Indonesian kingdom called Champa. The Vietnamese defeated this kingdom in 1471, but it would be the 17th century before the Vietnamese would push as far as the Mekong River delta. (The Vietnamese occupation of the southern part of the country was still underway in the 18th and 19th century, when the French arrived.) In the 17th and 18th centuries, Vietnam was ruled from the northern cities of Hanoi and Hue. It was difficult for the government located in Hue to govern the southern part of the country, but they finally managed it by the first half of the 19th century. Unfortunately, this brief period of north-south unification was brought to an end by the French. Enter: The French No strangers to world-affairs, the Vietnamese rulers watched as China was defeated by the French and the British. In an effort to avoid a similar fate, Vietnamese governors attempted to keep out Western influence and commerce by repressing the French missionaries already entrenched in Vietnam. Unfortunately, this was all the pretext the French needed to launch an attack against Vietnam (ever eager to expand their colonies). In 1857, the French attacked the Vietnamese city of Tourane (now called Da Nang), and soon followed this up with the capture of Saigon in 1859. By 1867, the French had completely conquered the southernmost part of Vietnam (then called Cochin China) and made it a French colony. In 1883, the French moved against the remainder of the Vietnamese state and subsequently took over the remainder of the south (then called Annam) and the north (then called Tonkin). The Vietnamese struggled to regain their freedom and fought the French with armed resistance until 1917. French rule was very authoritarian and concentrated in the cities (the Montagnards located in the hills were left relatively undisturbed by the French), and by 1930 there were as many French civil servants in Vietnam as British civil servants in India where the population was 12 times as large. The French left the Vietnamese economy much as it was... predominantly agrarian, with the peasantry constituting 80 percent of the population. The southernmost part of the country, Cochin China, was by far the most profitable of the three districts of the country (North, Central and South Vietnam) and therefore the place where the French put all of their money. The reason the south was so profitable was that most of the usable land was in this southern part of the country and owned by either the French or the Vietnamese aristocracy. The majority of the Vietnamese population worked either as laborers or tenant farmers, but they were all heavily taxed. Even with the heavy taxes, Vietnam was a financial debacle for the French government, as most of the profits of their plunder went into the pockets of French investors with good connections to the French Parliament. Although a few things such as communications, public health, and flood control, improved under the French occupation, there was one thing the French were not going to improve for the Vietnamese - their educational system. Granted, there were a few schools that some lucky Vietnamese could attend, but these educated Vietnamese were then discriminated against by the French and were refused jobs in the civil service or with French businesses. This blatant racism outraged the Vietnamese and created an atmosphere of resentment which contributed to the development of a Vietnamese-nationalist movement.(3) This movement would get unsolicited assistance from an unlikely source - the First World War. Over 1,000,000 Vietnamese fought for the French. Exposed to new politica l ideals and returning to a colonial occupation of their own country (by a ruler that many of them had fought and died for), resulted in some rightfully sour attitudes. Many of these troops sought out and joined the Vietnamese nationalist movement focused on overthrowing the French. The Vietnamese made some sincere efforts at changing the colonial government, but all ended in frustration. Nationalists who attempted to change things through legal political activity soon found themselves in jail or worse. And as more and more Vietnamese turned to the nationalist movement, the French repression became more and more severe. Eventually, the only method left to the nationalists for being effective was to go "underground." In the 1920's, the first underground nationalist party was formed. Called the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, it was patterned after the Chinese Nationalist Party (known as the Kuomintang). It had one major objective: overthrowing the French. Needless to say, the French weren't too keen on this idea and as soon as they found out about it they stomped this organization out of existence. Its leaders fled to China. Afterwards, the underground struggle for sovereignty and against colonialism was taken up by different clandestine communist organizations. (In 1930, three such groups would shed their disagreements and form a union called the Indochinese Communist Party, under a man named... Ho Chi Minh - then referred by his followers as (Nguyen the Patriot(4)) Ho Chi Minh To get a good understanding of Vietnam's political climate prior to US involvement requires some knowledge of Ho Chi Minh. No one personified the Vietnamese nationalist movement more than Ho. Ho was born in 1892 in the northern part of Vietnam. His father, a Mandarin official, had his life shortened by the French, who shot him down for anti-French activities. In 1911 at the age of 19, Ho left Vietnam on a French merchant ship.(5) He lived in London for a while, working as an assistant chef at the Carleton Hotel.(6) According to one of Ho's closest associates, Ho lived in the United States, in Harlem, for a short period of time. (Later, while living in Moscow, Ho wrote a pamphlet called "The Black Race," which was highly critical of American and European racial practices.(7)) Ho returned to France in 1917 or 1918 and worked as a photographers assistant. Soon, he became involved in the political activity of the Vietnamese community in France. Eventually he got some political articles published and joined the French Socialist Party. (The majority of this party, including Ho, would later break off and form the French Communist Party in 1920.(8)) Ho became the Party's specialist on colonial affairs and was sent as a delegate to Moscow for the Peasant's International meeting, representing the French colonial territories. Ho was well received and got promoted to the Soviet Comintern. He then became involved with Russian assistance to the Chinese Kuomintang. (Try and remember that this was an interesting period in history, when Russians, communists and non-communists alike, all worked together for common causes.) In 1925, while in Canton China, Ho Chi Minh shaped the Vietnamese refugees living there into what became known as the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, the precursor to the Vietname se Communist Party. When the Chinese Kuomintang fell into disarray and split into the communists and Chiang Kai-shek's followers, Ho was forced to leave Canton and went to Moscow, where he stayed until 1928.(9) Ho then traveled to Siam (Thailand) and arrived in Hong Kong in 1930, when he reconciled the differences of the three competing communist groups and formed the Vietnamese Communist Party (later renamed the Indochinese Communist Party). Party headquarters was set up in Haiphong, a northern part of Vietnam. In 1931, Ho was arrested by the British in Hong Kong and spent the next eighteen months in jail. After his release, Ho went to Shanghai, China, and then returned to Russia.(10) While Ho was busy in Hong Kong, from May 1930 to September 1931, the Vietnamese farmers were also busy, and participated in several revolts against the French, especially in Ho's native province. Members of Ho's recently established Vietnamese Communist Party lent their assistance to the farmer revolutionaries by offering leadership, and were quite successful. Several of the peasant rebels would later rise to prominence as Ho's lieutenants later on - Pham Vong Dong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Truong Chinh. These three got arrested along with a number of other communists and non-communist revolutionaries as the French brutally put down the resistance. During the 1930s, several thousand political prisoners were held in Vietnamese jails and penal settlements. By the time World War II began, despite intense pressure from the French, the communists still controlled the best organized and strongest anti-French underground groups. Being an effective nationalist organization, they naturally attracted a large number of people who were not communist, but shared the desire to rid their country of the French. This was the beginning of a fusion of communism and nationalism that would later develop much further during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam and the nine-year effort by the French to destroy the Vietnamese independence forces. The Japanese Occupation As World War II warmed up and the Japanese moved into Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (living in China) moved to China's southern border, just north of Tonkin.(11) The Japanese occupation of Vietnam meant that Chiang Kai-shek and his generals had an important objective in common with Ho Chi Minh and his communist organization -- the undermining of the newly established Japanese power on China's southern flank. Following the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, the Japanese served a number of ultimatums to the French in Indochina. The French made numerous appeals to the Allies, but were unsuccessful, and eventually the French gave in to the Japanese. In their settlement, the Japanese recognized French authority in Indochina and left the French in charge of local administration and security functions. In return, the French gave the Japanese the right of passage through Indochina, as well as control over local military facilities and the country's economic resources. Not a bad deal... for the Japanese. Unlike other Japanese occupations, where the Japanese often offered the promise of independence in return for cooperation, the Japanese depended on the French administrative structure already in place. This meant that Vietnamese nationalists were not offered independence and still were relegated to seeking out underground organizations for support. The communists, with the most developed organization, fit the bill. And since Ho and his followers were strongly emphasizing nationalism over communism, they attracted a large number of non-communists. In fact, had Ho been closely associated with Chinese communism, the Vietnamese fear of a possible reassertion of Chinese domination might have worked against him and weakened his chances of attracting non-communists. However, since his communist development had happened in Russia, Ho was regarded as more pro-Russian than pro-Chinese. Plus, he had established himself as a Vietnamese leader well before the rise to power of Mao Tse Tung. For Ho, Vietnam came before any ideology.(12) All these factors worked to his favor. What was left of the Indochinese Communist Party met with Ho in May of 1941 in South China, near the border of Tonkin. Here they established the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (Vietnamese Independence League), or the Vietminh, as it was generally called. (The Vietminh was a strongly nationalist party, led primarily by the Indochinese Communist party, but attempted to attract Vietnamese patriots of all political hues in a common struggle against the French. The Vietminh would become the principal vehicle of Vietnamese nationalism in the thirteen-year struggle that ended in France's defeat and the Geneva conference of 1954.) By the end of 1943, small groups of Vietminh commandos were penetrating into Tonkin, led by Vo Nguyen Giap,(13) the future strategist of Dienbienphu and eventual Commander in Chief of the armies of North Vietnam. By 1945, the Vietminh controlled wide regions of the northernmost provinces and had engaged the full attention of most of the Japanese 21st Division.(14) Being the only recognized force of some strength opposing the Japanese, the Vietminh received support from the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services). In return, the Vietminh helped rescue downed pilots and provided important intelligence information to OSS agents. A number of OSS officers voiced their admiration for the Vietminh and helped convince OSS leaders to back the Vietminh's struggle for independence.(15) The Vietnamese fully expected American support due to Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter, which emphasized self-determination for all peoples -- not merely Europeans. In addition, the Vietnamese listened to broadcasts from the US Office of War Information, which often cited US support for colonial peoples struggling for their freedom. In 1945, with an Allied victory apparent, the Japanese interned French troops and civil servants, and assumed the positions of authority they had previously left to the French. They also made some feeble attempts to establish a Vietnamese nationalist government, including offering a nominal grant of independence in order to secure some Vietnamese support. The Japanese appointed Bao Dai to head this "independent" state. Bao Dai had previously been the French-controlled emperor of the southern part of Vietnam. The Japanese didn't have much time or inclination to build support for Bao Dai which meant he was incredibly weak. With the French officials and troops locked up, the Japanese were unable to control the countryside and the Vietminh moved closer to Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh, apparently anticipating the fall of the Japanese, was prepared to strike when it occurred. Two days after the surrender of the Japanese to the Allies, pro-Vietminh elements in Hanoi staged an uprising. The next day, the Vietminh forces entered Hanoi and seized the city without resistance. A few days later, Bao Dai abdicated, turning over the Great Seal to the Vietminh and unabashedly offering to serve in Ho's government. On August 29, the Vietminh formed a "Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam," with its capital in Hanoi. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh formally proclaimed Vietnam's in dependence.(16) Meanwhile, Vietminh forces in the south moved to consolidate control over the area that was known as Cochin China. They sometimes used clumsy methods in this effort and sometimes were overly harsh. As a result, the Vietminh alienated several important groups. A prewar opponent, the Trotskyite communists resisted and were repressed by the Vietminh. Religious sects such as the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hoa blamed the Vietminh for the deaths of several leaders and were antagonized towards the Vietminh. These were important losses for the Vietminh because of these groups' well organized and clearly defined territorial bases and the fact that they had been trained and given arms by the Japanese. The French would later take advantage of this hostility by paying the sects' leaders subsidies to not support the Vietminh. Ho's other lieutenants showed better judgment and had a great deal of success with the population. Ho's primary interest was in gaining nationalist support for his organization. His nationalist desire was bigger than his desire to court communist support, and in November 1943, Ho disbanded the Indochinese Communist Party. Communists and procommunists retained key-positions in the government, but non-communists were given sufficient scope to insure their continued support. Soon, Ho Chi Minh gained the support and admiration of both communists and non-communists alike as their outstanding leader in Vietnam's struggle against the French, and as a symbol of the new Vietnamese nationalism. France and the Vietminh As Japan faced defeat at the hands of the Allies, the Vietminh looked forward to Allied support in any future struggle against French colonialism. After all, the Vietminh had given valuable support to the Allies, and Ho expected support and recognition for his newly-established government, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in turn. A statement to this effect was even included in his government's Declaration of Independence, established on September 2, 1945, which stated: "We are convinced that the Allied nations... will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Viet Nam." [Note that it is no accident that Ho would mention his expectation of US support in their Declaration of Independence. After all, Ho was a big fan of the United States. Ho reportedly had a picture of George Washington on his wall, and kept a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk. The actual Vietnamese Declaration of Independence begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."(17) Americans were looked up to by the Vietnamese.] But France had other ideas. The French postwar government immediately undertook steps to regain control over Vietnam. The United States and Russia were apparently too interested in maintaining good relations with France (and dividing up the world) than supporting self-determination in Vietnam. Allied plans for postwar Vietnam became clear with the Potsdam Agreement in July 1945. This Agreement stipulated that British forces were to occupy the southern half of Vietnam, up to the 16th parallel. Chiang Kai-shek's forces were to take the country north of the 16th parallel. Under Potsdam, these forces were restricted to "the round-up and disarming of the Japanese, and the Recovery of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees." However, the actual behavior of the Allied occupation went way beyond this limited assignment. The Commander of the British occupation forces, Major-General Douglas Gracey, exceeded both the limits of the Potsdam Agreement and his superior, Admiral Mountebatten, who had specifically told him to confine his troops (British and Indian) to the "tasks which had been set." Gracey, with few troops of his own, relied upon the Japanese forces (he was supposed to be disarming) to control Saigon and the surrounding areas and keep the Vietminh forces at bay. Gracey also rearmed the 5,000 newly released French troops and permitted them to launch a coup d'etat on September 23, by which the French (once again) seized control of the Saigon government from the Vietminh. Combined British-Indian and Japanese forces joined in battle against the Vietminh until the French could take over. By this time, Gracey had enabled the French to take over several other districts, and eliminate the new Vietminh administration. By December 1945, French forces in the British occupation zone of the South had reached approximately 50,000, and General Gracey prepared to withdraw, having fulfilled what he regarded as his mission(18) (and having satisfied his own imperialistic tendencies). The Kuomintang army occupying the North also deviated from the Potsdam Agreement, but in a different way. Their forces of over 180,000 (far more than was required) showed more interest in looting the countryside than rounding up the Japanese. Yet, the Chinese recognized Ho's regime in Hanoi as the de facto government and allowed it to function with considerable freedom, although they had replaced some Vietminh administrators with their own in Northern Tonkin. But the weight of the Chinese occupation (both politically and economically) was enough to force the Vietminh into accepting some of France's demands in order to secure the evacuation of Chiang Kai-shek's forces from the northern part of the country. On February 28th, 1946, Chiang agreed to withdraw his forces within three months. With the British and the Chinese finally gone, the Vietminh came under direct pressure from the French. By this time it was obvious that Ho Chi Minh would be receiving no aid from either the US or Russia. Indeed, from Ho's perspective he had been abandoned by the international community and left alone to deal with France. Economic disaster, spurred by the Chinese occupational forces, and starvation due to Allied bombing of Northern damns, strengthened France's position. On March 6th, 1946, Ho Chi Minh felt compelled to reach a compromise with the French. Essentially, Ho was forced to make the maximum concessions possible short of forfeiting his dominant position within the Vietnamese nationalist movement. It took everything Ho could do to quell the dissatisfaction of other various nationalist groups with this agreement. [Note that during 1945 to 1946, Ho Chi Minh had written at least eight letters to Truman and the State Department, asking for America's help in winning Vietnam's independence from the French. Ho wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that the four powers (US, USSR, China and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations. This was a remarkable repeat of history, for in 1919 following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, to gain America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living condition for the colonial subjects of French Indochina. This plea was also ignored and no admission was even made that the US had even received the letters.(19)] Under the 1946 agreement, France could (once again) reintroduce 15,000 troops into the Northern part of the country in order to relieve the few remaining Chinese occupation forces. The understanding was that every year, 3000 French troops would then withdraw, until by 1951 none would remain. In return for this concession, France recognized Ho's Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free state, having its own government, parliament, army and treasury, forming part of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union." The French also agreed to stand by the results of a referendum in Cochin China (South Vietnam) which would decide whether Cochin China would reunite with the central and northern regions of the country. Although this agreement resulted in an uneasy truce, it was soon made obvious that France had no intention of allowing Cochin China to unite with the rest of Vietnam. (Remember, that Cochin China is where France had made all of its investments and was making all of its profits). Thumbing their noses at the Vietminh, on June 1, 1946, the French set up a separate government in Cochin China and recognized it as a "free Republic." This move, together with France's recognition of North Vietnam only as a free republic within a French Union, clearly indicated that France intended to regain control of all of Vietnam. Ho had unfortunately entered into an armistice with France on the basis of promises that the French never intended to be fulfilled. During the summer of 1946, further negotiations between the French and the Vietnamese broke down and relations between them worsened rapidly, aggravated by small incidents. This tension peaked on November 23, when the French bombed Haiphong and killed at least 6,000 Vietnamese.(20) The outraged Vietminh retaliated with coordinated attacks against the French in Hanoi, which touched off major hostilities. These events marked the beginning of a war that would soon spread throughout Vietnam. The War with the French For the next eight years the French fought the Vietminh. The French, due to their superior fire power continued to control the cities, but the Vietminh controlled the countryside, and more and more of it as time went by. Question: Why did the French, who were losing money on Vietnam, continue to pour more money, time and effort into keeping it? After all, as early as 1950, the French military expenditure in Vietnam surpassed the total of all French investments in Vietnam, and although a few investors made enormous profits, they were not influential enough to determine French foreign policy. So why throw more good money down a hole? Answer: The official attitude in Paris toward Indochina had more to do with the psychological and political factors of the French imperialist ideology than economic reasons. Take a look. France had already experienced a major defeat in World War II. Most Frenchmen would have considered having one of their colonies throw them out on their ear as a further loss of national dignity. They also feared that if the Vietnamese won independence from them, restive nationalists in their other colonies such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia would be inspired to follow their example. By the end of 1947, the increase in popularity of Ho Chi Minh throughout all of Vietnam convinced the French that they would not defeat the Vietminh by pure military means. The French therefore attempted to establish an indigenous Vietnamese regime to compete with the Vietminh. Although France would pull the strings, they wanted this group to have enough of an appearance of independence to attract substantial nationalist support away from the Vietminh. So, the French chose Bao Dai, the former emperor of Annan (and Japanese favorite son). After much bargaining, Bao Dai agreed on the condition that all of Vietnam would be "independent... within the French Union." Additional negotiations concluded with the Elysee Agreements of March 1949, although the French didn't get around to ratifying these agreements until January 29, 1950. Under the Elysee Agreements, no real independence would be granted the Vietnamese, only a limited autonomy. France would retain actual control of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. These countries could all have their own armies, but in time of war France was given the right to take control and could use its army as it wished. In fact, so many controls were given to the French under this agreement that the new State of Vietnam was completely under French control. The result was that Bao Dai's government didn't have enough of an air of independence to attract many nationalists. The Vietnamese, being no dummies, knew that Bao Dai was under France's orders and therefore his rule meant French rule. This left the Vietnamese with a narrow band of choices: either the French or the Vietminh. This soon grew even narrower as the French, in a bungled effort to damage the Vietminh, started labeling everyone who opposed Bao Dai as "communist." For more and more of the people, the name "communist" soon came to mean something good , something patriotic, representing nationalism and opposition to the French. (One can't help but wonder if the French weren't hoping to attract American attention by appealing to our communist-threat paranoia). Meanwhile, the French military was failing miserably even though they had, by the end of 1949, poured $1.5 billion into the war effort. The Vietminh had the initiative and were destined to win even though they had inferior arms. This was due to their vast support and popularity, something the French could never muster (and the US military could never recognize or admit publicly). It wasn't until 1949 that the US showed any interest in Indochina. Up to this time, Washington was more interested in maintaining France's cooperation with the European defense alliances and major US support for the French did not come until mid-1949, when the Communists took over China. Later, when Chinese troops entered Korea, the US disposition to aid the French grew even more and Washington became adamantly opposed to any French-negotiated end to the war that would leave the Vietminh in power and the Chinese free to concentrate on their Korean border. A policy to contain the Chinese occupied the Truman administration and Paris endeavored with some success to convince Washington that the French campaign in Vietnam helped sustain that policy.(21) In 1952, the US exerted strong pressure on France to reject peace feelers extended by the Vietminh, and a French delegation scheduled to meet with the Vietminh in Burma was hastily recalled. (Bernard Fall, a renowned French scholar on Indochina, believed that the canceled negotiations "could perhaps have brought about a cease-fire on a far more acceptable basis" for the French "than the one obtained two years in the shadow of a crushing military defeat."(22) To strengthen its policy (and provide some substance to its paranoia), Washington assigned its intelligence services the task of demonstrating that Ho Chi Min was a puppet of Moscow or Peiping (either would do). However, despite diligent efforts, Vietnam was the only country they couldn't find evidence of "Kremlin-directed conspiracy," which made it kind of an "anomaly." Nor could any links with China be detected. So the intelligence service concluded that Moscow considered the Vietminh to be "sufficiently loyal to be trusted to determine their day-to-day policy without supervision." Thus, in a twisted-logic sort of way, the Vietminh's lack of contact with US enemies somehow proved the vast designs of the Evil Empire.(23) Truman linked his decision to send troops to Korea with increased arms shipments to the French in Indochina and assistance to Nationalist China in Formosa. In addition, France's position in Vietnam was now being described to the American public in terms of the Free World stance against communist expansionism, and Washington ceased to perceive the war in Vietnam as strictly a colonial conflict. Now linked to the Cold War, Vietnam was regarded as an area of strategic importance to the US. The Communist victory in China led Washington to exhibit less circumspection in assessing the nature of the political struggle in Vietnam. Anticommunist-fever preempted everything else. Although Washington had never considered Bao Dai capable of delivering national support for his movement, by mid-1949, the Truman Administration began to depict him as a staunch patriot, capable of standing up to Ho Chi Min and worthy of American respect and aid. Seven months before the Elysee Agreements had been ratified, the US indicated its support of the Bao Dai regime. On February 7, 1950, a week after the ratification, the US extended diplomatic recognition to Bao Dai's government. Military support also started. American bombers, military advisors and technicians by the hundreds were to follow. From 1950 to 1954, authorized US aid had reached $1.4 billion and constituted 78 percent of the French budget for the war.(24) The extensive written history of the American role in Indochina produced by the Defense Department, which later became known as the Pentagon Papers, concluded that the decision to provide aid to France "directly involved" the US in Vietnam and "set" the course for future American policy.(25) Only after it became clear that the Agreements were going to be ratified and that the international community was going to rally behind Bao Dai, did Ho request diplomatic recognition from Peking and Moscow. They responded promptly. The Cold War had now officially entered the Vietminh-French dispute. The significant aid that followed as a show of support for Bao Dai helped make the Vietnamese somewhat cynical about US protestations of its commitment to national self-determination and political freedom. The French insisted that all aid money flow to Bao Dai through France. Still representing Bao Dai to the American public as a popular figure with a sizable following, Washington continued to spin the French-Vietnamese war in a positive light, basing their information on unreliable French communiqus almost up to the very eve of Dienbienphu and publicly stating that the Vietminh's defeat was imminent. Due to Ho's being a communist, Congress and the American public were more susceptible to believing the myth about Bao Dai and less inclined to question the huge US aid commitment to France's war effort. What must be remembered here is that for anyone to claim that Ho Chi Minh's primary interest was the promotion and spread of communism is to deny his entire life's work. It is a lie, pure and simple. And the people at the topmost echelon of our government who were spreading this lie knew better. Despite France's own imminent defeat, the US kept up the pressure to make sure that France would not negotiate a settlement. The US used the threat of ending the tremendous US aid to encourage French compliance. (This prompted a French newspaper to comment that "the Indochina War has become France's number one dollar-earning export.")(26) By mid-1953, France had lost her authority over all but a small portion of the country to the Vietminh. In September, France, with strong US encouragement, tried one last military effort to achieve a position of strength for their negotiations with the Vietminh. This offensive soon evolved into a series of French military reverses and the loss of more territory to the Vietminh. The CIA airline, CAT, helped the French airlift 16,000 men into a fortified base the French had established in the north, called Dienbienphu. When the garrison was later surrounded and cut off by the Vietminh, CAT pilots, flying US Air Force C-119's, often through heavy anti-aircraft fire, delivered supplies to the French forces. In April 1954, when the French military defeat was obvious and negotiations were scheduled at Geneva, the National Security Council urged President Eisenhower to "inform Paris that French acquiescence in a Communist takeover of Indochina would bear on its status as one of the Big Three" and that "US aid to France would automatically cease."(27) A Council paper recommended that "It be US policy to accept nothing short of a military victory in Indo-China" and that the US "actively oppose any negotiated settlements in Indo-China at Geneva." The Council stated further that, if necessary, the US should consider continuing the war without French participation.(28) The Eisenhower Administration had, of course, been considering the use of American combat troops in Vietnam for some time. Apparently this move was not made only because of uncertainty about Congressional approval and the fact that every other country had refused to send even a token force to the area, as they had done in Korea, thus removing the appearance of a purely American operation.(29) "We are confronted by an unfortunate fact," lamented Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a 1954 cabinet meeting. "Most of the countries of the world do not share our view that Communist control of any government anywhere is in itself a danger and a threat."(30) The Eisenhower Administration realized that "This need was particularly acute because there was no incontrovertible evidence of overt Red Chinese participation in the Indochinese conflict. Thwarted, Eisenhower refused to send the troops. Dienbienphu turned out to be the biggest battle of the war and ended in the French garrison being overrun. The whole world now realized that France's military power in Vietnam had suffered a significant defeat. Back home, Washington was buzzing with the fallout from the news. In May, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Radford, sent a memorandum to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson which stated that "The employment of atomic weapons is contemplated in the event that such course appears militarily advantageous."(31) General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's director of intelligence, put it more poetically when he advocated the use of atomic bombs to create "a belt of scorched earth across the avenues of communism to block the Asiatic hordes."(32) By this time, two American aircraft carriers equipped with atomic weapons had been ordered into the Gulf of Tonkin, in the north of Vietnam, and Dulles is said to have offered his French counterpart, Georges Bidault, atomic bombs to save Dienbienphu. Bidault was obliged to point out to Dulles that the use of atomic weapons in such close conflict would destroy the French troops as well as the Vietminh.(33) --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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