Article answering nine questions about the Vietnam War

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Title: Article answering nine questions about the Vietnam War
Description: Original title: "refelections." Article by Keever answering nine questions about the Vietnam War for Parade
AI Usage Disclosure: Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
Transcript: --------------------
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Beverly Ann Deepe
38 To Tarh
Saigon, Vietnam
October 27, 19677
reflections--page 1
SAIGON, SOUTH VIETNAM
The editors of Parade requested me--a correspondent in Vietnam for
the past five years to write an article expressing my personal
impressions on the war in this crisis-land,
I was to pose the ten most
I
significant questions I could think of and then provide the answers.
objected. The number ten is distinctly unlucky in Vietnam. Often, I
hear Vietnamese street urchins hurl the worst of insults at American
official"You No. 10"--when no coins are dropped into their begging tins.
Even the Vietnamese Army bowed to this cultural amenity by changing the
numerical designation of its 10th Infantry Division to Number 18.
But, why not nine questions find answers? Nine is very lucky number
in Vietnam, based on some intricate, but common form of gambling. I
noted the new Vietnamese Constitution was deliberately drafted with nine
chapters. The membership of the elected drafting assembly was 117 (the
digits totalling nine), which has lead one Vietnamese newspaper to label
it "the village of the nine stupidities"
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Deepe
Reflections-page 2
Succe
The two Vietnamese generals who ran for and won the Presendéntial
election sucessfuly maneuvered so they could acquire the favorable ticket
no. 9. *x*m* A Vietnamese car license plate, in which the digits total
nine, is espicially prized and costs an additional 5,000 piastres (50)
as an under-the counter bribe to the issuing authorities.
Thus, feeling more inclined to observe then to ignore this
Vietnamese good-luck omen, I submit the following nine Deepe reflections
on Vietnam without the common masquerade of Journalistic objectivity.
1. Are the Allies winning or losing the war?
Losing. America is in the midst of losing her first major war
the
in history. She is losing more efficiently now than at any time since
American ground troops were committed here in early 1965. The tide
has not turned-but at least there is now a tide to turn, unlike
perilous near-defeat in 1964. The Americans are presently heading for
stalemate far but for a dead end. There is ourrently no light at the end
of the tunnel; one is not even assured there's a hole at the end of the
tunnel. The weight of the U.S. position currently is "Don't rock the
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boat, yet the boat is not only rocking-it is sinking.
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Deepe
Reflections--page 3
Military figures showing the Allies winning the shooting war are r
released simply because they are the only ones that show it; other
significant figures are not released, including those on the crucial
non-shooting war. The Vietnamese anti-Communist's military and non-
military sectors are deteroriating faster than the Communists are being
weakened on the battlefield. The Allies are fighting a conventional-
styled war of annhiliation, in which the classical objective is to kill
the enemy destroy his bases. The Communists, however, are fighting an
un-conventional war of attrition, in which politics, economics, propaganda,
psychology and wophobia as well as bullets are inter-woven to erode the
allies will to resist.
Wers.
In short, the Communist and the Allies are fighting two different
The Americans have computerized the minute of their war of
annhiliation without comprehending the deadly substance of the Communist
war of attrition.
2.
What about negotiations with the Communists side to end the war in
South Vietnam?
Any negotiations now or in the next several years ate a camouflaged,
slow-motion Allied surrender. No anti-Communist political, military or
social institutions are strong enought, even if unified, to withstand
the organizational and ideological momentum of the Communists if they
allowed into a coalition government. Negotiations are not so much a means
to end shooting war they are to shift the vehicule of warfare almost
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Deepe
Reflections--page 4
3. Is the war already lost or is the losing trend reversible?
I don't think the war should be conceded lost until it is lost.
but
And, it is not lost yet. America is now the underdog in this war,
it has been the underdog initially in almost every war it ever fought.
"Wars have been won against greater olds then this," one Vietnam expert
reminded me recently.
But, victory will require radical changes by the American and
Vietnamese officialdom inside the South. Currently, the war is over-mili-
tarized, over-conventionalized, over-Americanized, over-Washingtonized-and
the results are all over-propagandized.
I reject virtually all the "solutions" being espoused publically in
Washington-by the hawks and by the doves, by its oppasitismist. the
Republica ns and by the Democrats, by the Administration and by its
oppositionists. I reject retreat as well as escalation, negotiation as
well as forward and backward strategies, enclaves and out-claves, more or
less bombing. I believe these fragmented, sugary, quick-fix theories have
deceived the American public and insulted their intelligence.
Much of the American debate has contered on the policy of bombing
North Vietnam; I view this debate as an Occidental tempest in an Oriental
tenoup. The bombing of the North is not even a half-solution to the
empt problems in the South. I has become a second, separate problem,
orbitting as a satellite to confuse the Vietnam war without touching the
dom-earth realities in the Cauth
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Deepe
Reflections--page
The American air-advocates have miscalculated the effectiveness of
airpower in ending the war; the American political leadership has
swallowed its own propaganda in believing the problems of the South
spring predominantly and exclusively from North Vietnamese aggression.
One must remember that South Vietnam is the battleground where the war
will be won or lost; the homegrown problems of the South--shooting and non-
shooting--are the ones that must be solved. These solutions can not be
found without American military power in the South, yet, paradoxically,
military power alone can not YG solve them. The war in the South is
neither confusing nor inscrutable.
But it is inordinately complex.
4. What are the consequences of an American defeat in Vietnam?
Once Vietnam is lost, Communism is half-way to India and once India
is lost, America is a second-rate power.
The battle of Vietnam involves more than Vietnam; it is the test of
American in 1967 through the 1970's. Vietnam is the visible symbolic
contest between the Western way of life and Communism.
Vietnam did not
create the bitter confrontation between America and the Communist world;
Vietnam is simply the flashpoint of that continuous cold-war confrontation.
If America loses in Vietnam, it will lose millions and millions of minds
all over the world. The battle for India and South America r will be
lost before it is ever started. The Mao-ist version of Communism will
have sucessfully negated or neutralized the power of the most powerful
nation in history
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Deepe
Reflections-page 6
An American defeat in Vietnam before China has developed her nuclear
umbrella would tend to catapult Asia into the Communist orbit. The civil
upheaval within China has not impeded her ability to build a sophisticated
nuclear delivery system. By the mid-1970's, China will probably have
developed the nuclear-equipped ICBM's capable of obliterating New York
and Washington. While China may not decide to atomize America, what
about Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul and the Indian sub-continent?
This question, now a sub-current within the Vietnam problem, is
already being asked by Asians-yet all the non-Communist power in
Asia can not provide the answer.
5. Why is America fighting in Vietnam in the first place?
I view most of the official explanation as so fragmented and
inarticulate as to be unsatisfactory; none of these have captured this
momentous pivot point in history. So, through the years I have asked
this same question-of Americans, Asians, Europeans, Vietnamese in and
out of the government. Only one person I interviewed foresaw the immense
global and historical importance of this wer. The answer of this
Western diplomat was so filled with eloquence and perpective, I'll
take the liberty of quoting him at length.
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Reflections--page 7
"The world is posed with a new problem--the problem of the emerging
nations. Three decades ago, there only six nations in the wordd worth
worring about; the embassies of the world could be couted on two hands.
Until 1940, no one worried about the United States--it was a bresh
revolting ex-colony on the other side of the Atlantic. Thon, all too
suddenly, in 1945, the world blossomed into scores of new nations,
each fumbling like a new baby bereft of its nanny. They sould have
stayed in the nursery longer. But, the departure of the colonial powers
have created a voum.
"Which way will they follow-the west or Communion?
"These new nations are rife with the idea or Communism. They are poor
ially poor
essentially poor--and by themselves have no means or hope of ever reaching
my significant standard of living. It's plain they're wide open to the
Communist doctrine--sixxii cloaked in xenophobia, taking from the heves
and giving to the have-nots. They can't be a capitalist nations because
they have no ospital. Thus, this post-war world is a battle and the
emerging nations the battleground.
"The United States has a blend of self-interest and altruistic
motives in defending Vietnam. America really believes Communism
deprives the weaker nations, is oppressive and brings miss. Communism
is the modern tyrant of Genghis Exk Khan and Hitler and Amerion has
always been against the tyrant. It doesn't take the political cenuis
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Deepe
Reflections-page 8
"So, America must fight it out and she will receive little in return
in the short range. As one bitter American here reminded me recently
"Never have so manydone so much for so little thanks :
"But, one must remember, on the broad canvas of history, there
are repositories of wealth and knowledge which one nation gives to the
whole world. The Greeks had it, the Chinese, the Romans, the British
and now the Americans. These repositories are not simply gold in Fort
Knox, but the enormous human wealth in the shape of genuis, ingenuity
and production; they are the will to work and the will to produce.
"Every great power has had its own special genuis, but it had to
out-going. A nation that looked only inward stagnated and died. Rome's
special gift to the world made Britain a better place to live in 400 B. C.
than in the Victoria era. Now, if America chooses to defend only her own
shores and hide behind her nuclear cobwebs, Communism will sweep onward
The world will bereturned to the Dark Ages.
"The Communists have developed a new technique to seize power
called revolutionary warfare or "wars of liberation;" the United States
is only nation with the power to stop them. Vietnam is as good a pries
placex as any to stop them and the 1960's as good a time. So, American
must give and fight or stagnate and idie."
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Deepe
Reflections-page 9
6.. What is Communist revolutionary warfare?
One military officer described it as "that unholy trinity of subversion,
terrorism and guerrilla warfare". Another source explained, "Revolutionary
warfare is the way nations and continents will be conquered in the
future. We're settling down in our military staff colleges still studying
conventional and atomic warfare. We must study them because they are still
possibilities, but they are not as predictable end probable as
revolutionary wars. They are being fought under our feet, around our
ears and over our heads every day in every corner of the world."
A third source explained: "Revolutionary warfare is beautiful because
it is so delicate; it is subtle and invisible; it is scientific; it's
damnably horrible because it depends on the distortion of facts and
subversion of the mind."
The corporate being of revolutionary warfare is the mine and the body-
the mind is covert subversion and the body is the armed guerrilla. The
guerrilla can not be born without the economic-and social injustices
and the corruption of political power; the clandestine subversion
precedes the over subversion and then, after percolation and fermentation
galvanizes the guerrilla movement. In Vietnam now, the armed Communists
are beginning to be manageable, but the real problem is the grid system
in which they move.
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Deepe
Reflections--page 10
" Communist revolutionary warfare is the most vital factor in your
life and mine--except for the Bomb and the Pill," one American explained.
"And not one American within 10,000 miles of Vietnam knows that."
The Bomb, the population explostion and Communist revolutionary w
warfare the three predominating, entangled treuds shaping the future
of the emerging nations. The harribia horrific finalty of the Bomb has
forced the growth of a low-cost, low-intensity type warfare, more
political than military, which the Communists have codified and institu-
tionalized. America can win a nuclear war," one officer explained,
"but having won it, it would take fifty generations to rebuild the world.
The Bomb is such an obstruction, it has renderned nuclear warfare
virtually impractical-and the war around that obstacle is the shadow,
twilight wars of revolution."
The population explosion in the underdeveloped world, which the affluent
West will be cocooned against for another century, is also reinforcing
the Communist shadow wars. The dooming problem of a semi-global,
illiterat illiterate Third World is intensifying not only the battle
between the haves. the have-nots, but also between the have-gots vs
AN
the can-gets. The Pill, introduced by the West, is simply an amnesty for
the un-born, but not an emancipation for the emaciated. In short, the
tramp of time is marching towards the Communist bond.
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Deepe
Reflections-page 11
7. What mistakes have America made in Vietnam?
" Aside from ignoring Vietnam, America has made every mistake in the
book," one vietnam expert explained. "But Americe can still win. The
Communists have made mistakes too."
Since it is easier to read history backwards, I would list these
American mistakes more for the benefit of the future rather than the scolding
the past.
First, the over-ridingofficial American rationale for involvement
in Vietnam is essentially to stop the tide of Communist aggression, which
This is a defensive and negative strategic
is in American self-interest.
posture. To project the idea of the Communists simply as the "badnicks"
without offering a visible alternative of why America is the "goodnick"
is a dismal advertisement for the hungry millions of the emerging
nations.
American must be pro-something.
Second, the American public, intelligenska and leadership can
visualize global or world wars of their past experience; these were
essentially one-dimensionam wars. But, pall have failed to grasp the
totality of the war within tiny Vietnam; thisis a two dimension war.
The second dimensionat-the heart-of the war is the Vietnamese people
a fact the Communists recognized long ago by calling it a "people's war".
The people furnish the guerrillas with the nourishment--food, intelligence
information, sampens, beds, which enables the movement to gain mamentum.
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Deepe
Reflections-page 12
The Communist have devised a powerful recipe of warfare blending
in proper portions of politics, economics, military attacks, terrorism
and persuasion. This formula to seize power has been codified and primer-
ized in much the same way and the a housewife's recipe for angel food
cake. Now this recipe is being pre-package for export.
5/
But, the American are trying to bake their cake with one ingredient,
such as flour, or more accurately gunpowder, without blending in enough
of the other ingredients in the correct measure. In short, the American
approach lacks integration, which tragically epitomizes to Asians the
sickness within America itself. Almost daily American newspaper coverage
reflects this unbalanced approach to the war. The Washington versions
of the whether this is a political war, demanding political solutions,
or a military war demanding military solutions, are both in error. It
is a total war, in which each aspect must be in perpective. In its root
form-long by-passed in Vietnam by now--the genesis of the war was essen-
tially economic. It was a basic conflict between the have vs. the have-
nots, with the political-social structure simply cementing this inequity
through the centuries. In this sense, the American ideal of pure capitalism
and free enterprise is woefully behind the times. For, it means econo-
mically that only "al minority rules a 99% minority."
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Deepe
Reflections-page 13
The most crucial mistakes were made, in my judgment, in the Eisenhower
and Kennedy years, when the American failure in Vietnam was to concentrate
on building armies rather than administrations, to build urban industries
in the cities rather than to improve the lot of the rural peasants.
Through 1961, only four per cent of American economic aid was devoted to
the rural economy, where 85 per cent of the population gained their
subsistence. It was easy for the Communists to try to implement Mao's
strategy og seizing the countryside to encircle the cities. America has
provided an abundance of dollars for Vietnam, but little common sense.
Third, on the military side, the American military advisory establishment
in Vietnam since 1954 has built the wrong kind of Army--a conventional
non-political army designed to stave off a korean-styled invasion.
At the birth of the Communist-inspired guerrilla movement, the Vietnamese
government wanted provincial militia to fight a counter-insurgency war--which
it did not get until it was too late.
Since the American builup of ground forces in 1965, the Vietnamese
army has gone from bad to worse; the American military command has used
American troops to fill the vacum, without insisting on a re-birth of
Vietnamese military discipline and aggresssiveness and dire punishment
for those officers and men engaged in the mushrooming corruption.
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Deepe
Reflections--page 14
I hold American commander General William C. Wesmoreland responsible
for this failure. In my view, he has so failed in advising the
Vietnamese armed forces he should be immediately removed and placed in
an innoculous post. America can not afford to give him the luxury of
ma king these same mistakes in a future Vietnam.
Fourth, ont
the non-military side, the American troop build-up in
1965, has brought in its wake the most horrific wave of corruption is so
widespread and flagrant that old-timers here compare it with that of
Victory
Chiang Kai-shek's regime, which lead to the vicotry of the Communists
in China. Obviously, the Vietnamese discovered corruption long before
the advent of the Americans, but the Americans are simply financing it--and
thus, in part, their own defeat.
8. Is the DMZ Barrier a solution to any of the key problems of Vietnam?
No. To me, "the McNamara line" is one of the wackiest, yet most
ingenous proposals to hit Vietnam for a long time. It illustrates the
maple proper equipment being strung out like Christmas tree lights-but
De fo
in the wrong place. By stretching
16
it along the DMZ, the line is not
defending the Vietnamese people who are the trees; it is not defending
the Vietnamese people who are the quintessence of the conflict.
The McNamara line" illustrates the imbalanced approach to the war;
it recognizes only the military aspect of the problem--and the North
Vietnamese aspect of that military problem. Moreover, American policymakers
will be freed with emant 2.
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Deepe
Reflections--page 15
9. What can be done?
As long as the Communist side refuses to negotiate, America and her
allies have two alternatives: victory or defeat. The impending defeat
which the Allies are sliding into must be reserved with a fresh, ordely,
dynamic and intergrated approach to the war. This new approach for the
war in South Vietnam involves first a re-think and re-do of the means to
establish security. Once that is done, as one expert explained, "the
Allies must setia demonstrate they can give the peasants and workers
a better deal than the Communists. There's nothing the Allies can't
do that they do--and do it ten times better and fifty times faster. The
tragedy now is nothing of visible substance is being done."
But, how to establish security is the pivotal question. With more
than a million Allied soldiers under arms, not one square inch of South
Vietnam is safe and secure-and that includes the new American Embassy
and General Westmoreland's plushnew headquarters, called Pentagon East.
The Revolutionary Development program, designed to bring security and good
workd to the villagers, is already fizzling woefully.
I believe one way tp establish security is for Mr. McNamara's
electronic barrier to be strung, not along the DMZ, but between the
foothills and huge rice plains along the northern half of the country
in order to defend the population. This would form an impenetrable barrier
fortified with counter-artillery batteries, to seal out the Communist
main force units, which thousands of Americans have died fighting--but
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Deepe
Reflections-page 16
In front of this barrier, two-man American teams, equiped with
highly sensitive, people-smiffing gear (already in Vietnam) should become
the guerrilla, not to fight the Communist units, but simply to sight them
for air and artillery bombardements. This approach is directly in which
American units roamed through the jungles to find Communists where they
held their bunkered positions and other advantages. In short, I believe
Westmoreland's forward strategy has consistently been haywire and has
carried the war sideways, if not backwards.
Once this electronic barrier is established in lightingng fashion
American military power would be used-not to engage the enemy main
force-but to protect the Vietnamese people and to allow positive programs
to flourish. The genuis and government, the law and order, the fruits
of economic equality and political justice must be visibly demonstrated
to the Vietnamese people, if only in one small area of the country. The
difficulty with the American democratic system is that it has never been
codified.
Illiterate peasants and wealthy Vietnamese war profiteers, not
having lived or seen democracy, haven't the least notion of what it is
Washington says they're fighting for. The Allies must outclass the
Communists in positive, pure appeal--in performance, not in propaganda
and promises. The jungles must be cut down and chewed up (machines to do
this are now in Vietnam) to open up new land s-sort of a Vietnamese Homestead
Act of 1967.
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Deepe
Reflections-page 17
Low-cost housing must be built for the urban workers--with ownership
rights and installment payments administered by an honest government.
Rice cooperatives should be organized in which peasant farmers, rather
than Chinese typhoons, receive the monetary gain; television, which the
Saigon government has organized to entertain and indoctrinate the urbain
rich, can be used to educate the illiterate in the countryside. Systematic
changes must be made in the nepotiem, corruption and inequities of the
Vietnamese government, which is causing to become not dictatorial
authoritarians, but "an amiable, aimless anarchy."
This new approach is not really news; many have advocated similar
plans in the past. New is simply the last chance to do it.
The
American and South Vietnamese dreams, hopes, strategies, prestige and
futures are now so inter-twined that the war to both is a matter of
survival of the same magnitude as the Battle of Britain in World War II.
The masterful speeches of Churchill during that battle were made before
the majority of the American G.I.'s now fighting in Vietnam were born. But,
because they were the last eloquent words defending and defining Western
survival, they may be as appropriate today as when he spoke them.
I is words, appropriate for the American officialdom:
"It is no use saying we are doing our best. You have to succeed
in doing what is necessary."
For the American political oppositonists: "If you open a quarrel
between the mast and the present. we shall find that we have lost
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Deepe
Reflections-page 18
For the American public: "If we can stand up...all may be free and
the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But
if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including
all that we have known, inakuting and cared for, will sink into the Abyss
of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to aur duties
and so bear ourselves, that if...(we) last for a thousand years, men
will say, "This was their finest hour.
-30-
Date: 1967, Oct. 27
Subject: Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Peace; Strategy; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Location: Saigon, South Vietnam
Coordinates: 10.8231; 106.6297
Size: 20 x 26 cm
Container: B66, F4
Format: dispatches
Collection Number: MS 363
Collection Title: Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
Creator: Keever, Beverly Deepe
Collector: Keever, Beverly Deepe
Copyright Information: These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
Publisher: Archives & Special Collections
Language: English