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Conservative agitator
David Horowitz's controversial new nationwide ad campaign, "An
Open Letter to the Anti-War' Demonstrators: Think Twice Before
You Bring The War Home", denounces the anti-Vietnam War protest
movement as "treason" and tells us that it was he and other
protesters who were responsible for the US defeat. The ad, which
has run in the student newspapers at UCLA, Berkeley, Yale and a
dozen other universities, says "blood...is on the hands of the
anti-war activists who...gave the victory to the Communists" and
scolds and stigmatizes the many college students who have
participated in "peace" protests held over the past few weeks.
The ad is part of an
attempt to use the Vietnam experience as a way to stop Americans
from asking questions about US military intervention at a time
when there are a lot of legitimate questions to ask. It is an
attempt to brand dissenters as enemy-sympathizing "Fifth
Columnists" (Horowitz's term, from his website) though I have no
doubt that even the most vocal protesters abhor September 11's
despicable slaughter of American civilians.
Beyond this,
Horowitz's ad campaign is simply a bad history lesson, because
the Vietnam War was lost not at home due to student
demonstrators but instead on the battlefields of Vietnam, due to
the bravery and almost fanatical dedication of America's
enemies. According to US General Maxwell Taylor:
"The ability of the
Viet Cong [communist guerillas] to continuously rebuild their
units and to make good their losses in one of the mysteries of
the guerrilla war...not only do the Vietcong units have the
recuperative power of the phoenix [a mythical bird always
capable of re-birthing itself out of the ashes of its dead body]
but they have an amazing ability to maintain morale."
In Bloods, an account
of black Vietnam veterans' experiences, one former Marine
explained:
"The enemy would do
anything to win. You had to respect that. They believed in a
cause. They had the support of the Vietnamese people. That's the
key thing that we Americans don't understand yet."
John Jacobs, a medic
who served in Vietnam in 1967-1968, believes the "war protesters
caused our defeat" theory insults American soldiers and
diminishes the military difficulties they faced. He says:
"Whatever one thinks
of their cause, the Viet Cong showed tremendous dedication and
courage. It was obvious that most of the Vietnamese people saw
us as the enemy."
According to scholar
John Mueller, the military losses accepted by the Vietnamese
communists, both the National Liberation Front (NLF, generally
known in the US as "Viet Cong") and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA),
were
"virtually unprecedented in history." In fact, even the Japanese
army of World War II (including kamikaze pilots), which has
always been seen as the best example of military fanaticism,
pales in comparison. The NLF and NVA took causalities at twice
the rate of the Japanese army, for eight years running.
By contrast, America's
South Vietnamese allies, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN),
though lavishly armed by the US, were never a reliable fighting
force. Often disparaged as "puppet troops", the ARVN were
frequently
the butt of American soldiers' jokes, such as "Want to buy an
ARVN rifle? It's a good deal--it's never been fired and has only
been dropped once." After the US pullout, the ARVN were soon
overwhelmed and defeated by the NVA, who then captured billions
of dollars in US military equipment.
Placed in the
impossible position of fighting to "defend" a hostile population
while forced to commit countless atrocities against civilians
caught in the middle, the morale of the average American draftee
collapsed as the war went on. The first reported occurrence of
mass mutiny took place on August 24, 1968 when, after four days
of failed assaults on an NVA bunker, the 60 men remaining in
Alpha company refused to fight, despite the fact that they knew
that the standard punishment for mutiny was the firing squad.
Mutinies soon because so common that the Pentagon brass assigned
them the gentler name of "combat refusals."
At the same time, the
"fragging" (killing by fragmentation weapon) of American
officers who put soldiers' lives at risk by seeking out the
enemy became so common that many officers refused to allow their
troops to carry grenades. Desertion and instances of AWOL
(Absence Without Leave) skyrocketed during the war's later
years, and the Pentagon estimates that 500,000 soldiers either
were AWOL at some point or outright deserted during the Vietnam
War.
The idea that the
Americans lost because they weren't trying to win is simply
false. The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all of the
combatants in W.W.II dropped on each other combined. The
US--with 10 times the population of communist North Vietnam and
infinitely more national wealth--used 60% of its total infantry
and Marines, 50% of its strategic air force, and over 10 million
tons of bombs.
Of course, the NLF and
NVA never beat the US Army in a major battle but, wisely, this
was never their strategy. Instead, they sought to make the war
so costly for us that we would be unwilling to pay the price and
would leave--the same strategy they had used to defeat France
during the First Indochina War (1946-1954).
Before the war
Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh said, "In this war you
will kill 10 of us for every one of you we kill, but in the end
it is you who will tire of it." As it turned out, the ratio was
closer to 20 to 1, but let's give the devil his due. Like it or
not, the Vietnamese Communists won not because of antiwar
protesters, but because their soldiers were willing to do
whatever they had to do to win.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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