The Making of a Quagmire by David Halberstam

Author:David Halberstam
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461666509
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Even in Kien Hoa Province the Vietcong forged a remarkable record. During a long period of time in 1962 and early 1963, when they were laying low militarily, they had steadily and successfully built up shadow governments in the villages and hamlets of this province, and recruited peasants. An American officer in Kien Hoa told me that between April and June 1963 the guerrillas were able to recruit two thousand men, and to form and equip two new battalions of six hundred men each, besides expanding to full strength the single battalion which had previously operated in the province.

Thus, the strategic hamlet program never really affected the Vietcong’s ability to handle the population, for it never separated the guerrillas from the source of their greatest strength: young men.

The Vietcong approach to the program as a whole was extremely clever and once again showed their understanding of the nature of the war. The Americans and the Government had hoped that the hamlet concept would force the Vietcong to attack the people; this would enrage the population and encourage them to defend themselves against the guerrillas; at the very least it was thought that it would turn the peasants against the enemy and put them on the side of the Government.

But it did not work out that way. The Vietcong were not hungry, and they did not need to prey off the villagers. Since they were usually local Southerners, often from the region in which they were bivouacked, they knew the area well—and they had infiltrated the hamlets. When they attacked, they attacked only the symbols of the Government: the armory or command post of the hamlet, the hamlet chief or the youth leaders (who were particularly hated because they were Nhu’s men). They rarely harmed the population, and so the people of a village, who saw that the Government had not kept its promises and could not protect them, often sided with the Vietcong after a raid.

■ ■ ■

With Vann gone, the pressure on his successors in dealing with the press was enormous in June and July; knowledgeable American advisers would often just turn away from reporters when asked about conditions. As the situation deteriorated in an atmosphere of military secrecy during these months, we became dependent on lower-echelon officers for first-hand observations, and on American civilian officials connected with the hamlet program—the latter being under less pressure to conform than their military counterparts.

During those two summer months we watched the Vietcong winning by default in the Delta. A year after the American buildup of weaponry and personnel had reached its peak, it was clear that the Government had lost the initiative, that the enemy had benefited more from the weapons than we had, that his capacity had increased more than the ARVN’s the past year, and that with the failure of the Government civic program the guerrillas’ tactical position was also superior.

The implications of all this were extremely serious. The American buildup, which had been prompted by a deteriorating situation

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.