Operation Rolling Thunder

[XBe02Drvr]

But in the military you don't have the option of another job of your choice.
The superior you just pissed off is going to make that choice, and you're probably not going to like it.

Amen, brother. That's why the step from TraDevMan 2nd Class to PFC (Proud F___ing Civilian) is a promotion!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[mikewint]

Counterinsurgency actually began in Vietnam during the Indochina War (1946-1954). The French created military-civilian teams, which performed civil functions in conjunction with military operations aimed at establishing French control over areas dominated by the communist Viet Minh. These efforts were unfortunately undermined, by French unwillingness to give the non-communist Vietnamese real independence—the prime political goal motivating all Vietnamese.

After the Geneva Accords were signed, Ngo Dinh Diem emerged as the person who finally achieved complete independence, overthrowing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing the Republic of Vietnam. This gained him widespread popular support. In addition a reformed South Vietnamese army had a positive set of civic action–oriented attitudes toward the civilian population. These reforms earned the South popular support while defeating sectarian insurgencies, and began to wean villagers' allegiance away from the Viet Minh.

Once firmly in power, however, Diem became more dictatorial favoring the Catholic minority and alienating the Buddhist majority. Diem's mistakes were compounded by the US decision to take the Vietnamese Army entirely out of the internal security role it had played and convert it into a conventional regular army—trained, organized into corps and divisions, and equipped to confront an overt North Vietnamese invasion along WWII lines.

A poorly trained, inadequately equipped Civil Guard took over rural security, supported under the U.S. aid program by a Michigan State University contract team consisting mainly of retired U.S. police officials as advisers. The United States did not support the Diem government's effort to reach the rural population by sending civilian civic action teams into the villages until it was too late.

In 1961, the Kennedy administration decided to take a stand in Vietnam against further communist expansion in Asia. The Kennedy strongly favored counterinsurgency but the military defined this as a traditional military combat approach with an overlay of Special Forces. Whereas Kennedy saw it as an effort to address the security, political and economic sides of the conflict where it mattered most—at the village level. American military advisers were inserted at all Vietnamese army levels down to the provinces. CIA efforts supported irregular defense forces among the mountain tribes.

In 1962, USAID became involved in counterinsurgency, the Saigon aid mission was reorganized, with a new special office called Rural Affairs that assigned representatives to each province. The South Vietnamese had begun their own counterinsurgency approach, the Strategic Hamlet Program, a self-defense, self-government effort focused on the smallest rural settlement, the hamlet. After some initial progress, the program was failing as villagers were forcibly relocated from homes and lands they had held for generations into poorly built, poorly equipped, and poorly supplied government camps.

While U.S. provincial military advisers strongly supported the local self-development and self-defense program, at upper echelons MACV focused on conventional warfare. The Vietnamese army was advised to undertake large unit sweeps, which often turned up empty-handed as Viet Cong units melted away. This mistake was compounded by the overuse of airpower to attack villages and by blind artillery fire into predetermined areas thought to harbor Viet Cong. The VC would occupy a village long enough to attract government attention then escape into the jungle just before the bombardments. Every dead villager created more volunteers for the VC.

Essentially the war was being fought on two different levels. One was local, through the hamlet program aimed at protecting and winning over the civilian population. At most regular Vietnamese army unit levels, however, the main objective was to win the war by killing Viet Cong (with insufficient concern about the adverse effects of such tactics on the civilian population).

Whatever progress was being made came to a crashing halt on Nov. 1, 1963, when President Diem was ousted and killed. The generals leading the coup were opposed to continuing the hamlet program. Almost all province chiefs, good and bad, were replaced; and most paramilitary units providing outside-the-hamlet security were disbanded. When the junta finally agreed to continue the hamlet effort under a different name, another coup occurred. The new coup leader, General Nguyen Khanh seemed to be fully in charge, and U.S. officials believed that the war would suddenly be prosecuted with renewed focus and energy.

Instead, Khanh's attempts at one-man-rule backfired; political chaos ensued, and military cohesion declined. The absence of an acceptable Vietnamese political way forward undermined everything else, not the least the effort to counter the insurgency. Compounding the confusion, a new USAID mission director decided that much of the Rural Affairs program was wrong. He abolished the joint provincial committees and returned decision-making to Saigon. Just when direct funding of counterinsurgency at the provincial level was most needed, it was largely cut off by our own actions.

There was a refocus on counterinsurgency after Henry Cabot Lodge returned as ambassador in mid-1965, but it received mainly lip service from General William Westmoreland, the MACV commander.

As a result Each agency ran its own counterinsurgency program until the end of 1966, when a combined civilian effort was attempted. Called the Office of Civil Operations and directed by Deputy Ambassador William Porter, it too failed. Finally, after a pitched interagency battle in Washington in which President Johnson's special assistant for Vietnam, Robert Komer, prevailed, U.S. counterinsurgency was put directly under MACV.

In late 1967, for the first time, American support for Vietnamese counterinsurgency became a fully integrated military and civilian effort. On the political front the newest Vietnamese government under Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and then President Nguyen Van Thieu consolidated itself, it was reorganized to give prime importance and support to counterinsurgency.

Then came Tet. The 1968 Viet Cong Tet Offensive, which undermined American public support for the war, opened the way counterinsurgency success. Generally regarded in the United States as a victory for the North, the offensive was actually a spectacular setback in the insurgents' ability to continue controlling the Vietnamese countryside. They lost most of their best political cadre and fighting units in Tet and significant segments of the population mobilized against them. The nature of American military leadership also changed with the June 1968 replacement of General Westmoreland by General Creighton Abrams, who strongly supported counterinsurgency.

The new counterinsurgency initiative included an intelligence and armed action program directed at the local Viet Cong infrastructure. Originated by the South Vietnamese, it became known as "Phoenix." Armed provincial teams conducted raids against the local insurgency to remove its members from the battlefield by capture, if possible to gain intelligence. While excesses did occur, the program acquired a bad reputation in the United States based largely on unsubstantiated congressional testimony. North Vietnamese comments after the war would give considerable credit to Phoenix for causing local Viet Cong political and military cadre leaders to move to neighboring Cambodia.

 

[fubar57]

Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Lessons for Today | The Foreign Service Journal - April 2015

 

[Zipper730]

The one shining example of military-political planning and action that got it right. But that was overseas, not domestic to the US.

Vietnam was overseas too. Was there any other function in the US Army that functioned or could adopt OMGUS like functions?

There were many in the service who knew and understood, but they were voices in the wilderness, not to be heard over the roar of the heavies.

And the heavies were the big army, big bomber kind of guys? At least in WWII, the President was good enough a student of history to understand what had to be done, and could throw his weight around to make it happen.

Besides, most of those in the know were in the special ops community, the "ugly stepchild", the "snake eaters", the "filthy, nasty, not fit to be seen in polite society" types who were an embarrassment to "civilized" soldiers.

I didn't know they were viewed that way. The way I'd have seen it is, war is ugly, sure I guess there's a natural interest in not just killing but wearing spiffy uniforms and looking fabulous (in a non homosexual kind of way) doing it -- and good manners seems to help make killing look better too.

Didn't the Marines have COIN expertise? I'm not sure if anybody answered this before...

Also there was General Landsdale, post 1963 he served in intelligence circles. He seemed fairly level headed in handling these matters.

Counterinsurgency actually began in Vietnam during the Indochina War (1946-1954). The French created military-civilian teams, which performed civil functions in conjunction with military operations aimed at establishing French control over areas dominated by the communist Viet Minh. These efforts were unfortunately undermined, by French unwillingness to give the non-communist Vietnamese real independence—the prime political goal motivating all Vietnamese.

After the Geneva Accords were signed, Ngo Dinh Diem emerged as the person who finally achieved complete independence, overthrowing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing the Republic of Vietnam. This gained him widespread popular support. In addition a reformed South Vietnamese army had a positive set of civic action–oriented attitudes toward the civilian population. These reforms earned the South popular support while defeating sectarian insurgencies, and began to wean villagers' allegiance away from the Viet Minh.

Once firmly in power, however, Diem became more dictatorial favoring the Catholic minority and alienating the Buddhist majority. Diem's mistakes were compounded by the US decision to take the Vietnamese Army entirely out of the internal security role it had played and convert it into a conventional regular army—trained, organized into corps and divisions, and equipped to confront an overt North Vietnamese invasion along WWII lines.

I guess we just assumed we knew better than the ARVN did.

A poorly trained, inadequately equipped Civil Guard took over rural security, supported under the U.S. aid program by a Michigan State University contract team consisting mainly of retired U.S. police officials as advisers.

I assume they either needed the ARVN to do what it did before we got in, or a far tougher guard than they got?

In 1961, the Kennedy administration decided to take a stand in Vietnam against further communist expansion in Asia. The Kennedy strongly favored counterinsurgency but the military defined this as a traditional military combat approach with an overlay of Special Forces. Whereas Kennedy saw it as an effort to address the security, political and economic sides of the conflict where it mattered most—at the village level. American military advisers were inserted at all Vietnamese army levels down to the provinces. CIA efforts supported irregular defense forces among the mountain tribes. . . . Essentially the war was being fought on two different levels. One was local, through the hamlet program aimed at protecting and winning over the civilian population. At most regular Vietnamese army unit levels, however, the main objective was to win the war by killing Viet Cong (with insufficient concern about the adverse effects of such tactics on the civilian population)

Which alienated us...

Whatever progress was being made came to a crashing halt on Nov. 1, 1963, when President Diem was ousted and killed. The generals leading the coup were opposed to continuing the hamlet program. Almost all province chiefs, good and bad, were replaced; and most paramilitary units providing outside-the-hamlet security were disbanded.

And this had to do with the Vietnamese decisions?

When the junta finally agreed to continue the hamlet effort under a different name, another coup occurred.

It must have felt like every force in the Universe was getting in our way...

 

[XBe02Drvr]

At least in WWII, the President was good enough a student of history to understand what had to be done, and could throw his weight around to make it happen.

LBJ was not even a patch on FDR's sleeve. And RMN, "tricky dick", was a snake.

Didn't the Marines have COIN expertise?

Yes, somewhere down in the weeds some of them did. But again, it wasn't a matter of expertise, it was a matter of clout. Remember, the Corps is not its own master; it's a subsidiary of the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon. We squids used to joke that the jarheads were useful for guarding the gate, taking out the trash, and any other dirty jobs the CO saw fit to assign, like bivouacking out along the perimeter fence to keep the hippies from infiltrating. "Some of them can be nice guys, some of my best friends are jarheads, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one."
Cheers,
Wes

 

[mikewint]

we knew better than the ARVN did.

Indeed as it has been pointed out multiple times the US was THE SuperPower with every lethal whizbang ever invented and were itching to use them in the real world against a real enemy. A bunch of ragtag rice farmers had absolutely NO chance against the awesome power that the US could bring to bear. The US was fighting the Second World War all over again.
Counterinsurgency just does not have the flash and panache that Jets, bombs, rockets, arty, etc. have. Victory, if it comes is slow and totally non-spectacular

 

[Zipper730]

Replace Westmoreland, who?? And with whom ??
I don't think you realize how far up in the chain of command Westmoreland was.

From what I remember once a person makes 1 star, there's no minimum interval between promotions. So, while the President would have to give the order: You could take any General that knows his shit, bump him up over all the others and put him in charge, in theory.

I'm not sure if anybody in office had the cajones to do that (I'm almost certain it would ruffle a few feathers).

LBJ was not even a patch on FDR's sleeve. And RMN, "tricky dick", was a snake.

Well, snakes are actually quite effective sometimes. They are often difficult to detect, under the radar; they rarely strike unless they can assure victory and; their bite usually kills.

Okay, maybe that's a bit overboard...

Yes, somewhere down in the weeds some of them did. But again, it wasn't a matter of expertise, it was a matter of clout. Remember, the Corps is not its own master; it's a subsidiary of the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon.

Actually the USAF might have been the most rigid when it came to doctrine. The USN was more traditional when it came to that shellback thing with crossing the equator, and some silly superstitious stuff, but they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases (no offense to anybody who served in the USAF, and if you served in the USAAF, don't worry -- you were part of the Army back then).

Indeed

So, it was a matter of complete hubris on the part of our country?

US was THE SuperPower with every lethal whizbang ever invented and were itching to use them in the real world against a real enemy.

And yet, we lost to a bunch of ragtag rice farmers. Back in the 1770's the British probably felt the same way about us, and we won through a combination of proper battles, dirty fighting, and a bit of both at times.

Counterinsurgency just does not have the flash and panache that Jets, bombs, rockets, arty, etc. have. Victory, if it comes is slow and totally non-spectacular

Yeah but counter-insurgency that includes jets, bombs, rockets, and artillery does bring some flash and panache (j/k).

 

[mikewint]

So, it was a matter of complete hubris on the part of our country?
And yet, we lost to a bunch of ragtag rice farmers. Back in the 1770's the British probably felt the same way about us, and we won through a combination of proper battles, dirty fighting, and a bit of both at times.
Yeah but counter-insurgency that includes jets, bombs, rockets, and artillery does bring some flash and panache (j/k).

Geo Wash fought the British in almost exactly the same way as the VC/NVA fought us. Geo knew that he did not have to beat the British he just had to survive. Only after 1778 when he had French Military and Naval support did he actually seek decisive battles with the British. His defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown was only possible because the Continental Army had been bolstered by 7800 French troops and the French Fleet had attacked and driven off the British fleet

Small units handle local counterinsurgency operations more effectively than do large forces. These small units are usually company sized, operating within a community or group of communities. When these companies become associated with a particular community over a period of time, they gain the trust of the villagers and thus can develop the intelligence necessary to identify and destroy the insurgents.
But the American way of war generally has been to substitute firepower for manpower. As a result, US forces have frequently resorted to firepower in the form of artillery or air any time they make contact. This creates two negatives in a counterinsurgency. First, massive firepower causes collateral damage, thereby frequently driving the locals into the arms of the insurgents. Second, it allows insurgents to break contact after having inflicted casualties on friendly forces. Insurgent forces when located must be attacked with ground forces to gain and maintain contact in order to completely destroy the insurgent force. This requires that the counterinsurgency force must be larger than the insurgent force. The unit that makes the initial contact with the insurgent force requires rapid augmentation to maintain pressure against the fleeing force, envelop it, and destroy it. Company commanders have to be able to call in ready reserve units at any time to accomplish the encirclement. Insurgent forces cannot be allowed to slip away just to reform and attack again at a future date taking vengeance on the village that informed on them.
.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

The USN was more traditional when it came to that shellback thing with crossing the equator, and some silly superstitious stuff, but they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases

The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.

 

[Zipper730]

The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.

I was talking about the Vietnam era USN

 

[XBe02Drvr]

the American way of war generally has been to substitute firepower for manpower

That's why I began having doubts about a favorable outcome in Vietnam right after the Tonkin Gulf incident and the influx of large numbers of US conventional troops, though I was still in high school.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon.

they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases.

The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.

I was talking about the Vietnam era USN

Well I was in the Vietnam era USN, and I can tell you it needed to adapt a lot more than it actually did.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[Zipper730]

Well I was in the Vietnam era USN, and I can tell you it needed to adapt a lot more than it actually did.

Probably true, but compared to the USAF, they were adapting at a considerable rate -- the USAF was quite sluggish.

 

[Zipper730]

Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?

How could LBJ, who DIDN'T know his shit, hope to recognize a general who did? This counter insurgency shit was like rocket science: who knew? Well, there's always those mealy mouth, egg head academics who claim to know, but they're all half commie, so how can you believe them? Guess I'll just have to trust my generals. They're convincing my man Bobby Mac that there's progress, and he's the expert, so who am I to doubt it?
Cheers,
Wes

 

[tyrodtom]

Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?

Have you ever worked for any company with more than 10 people ??
That would work just as well in the military, as it would work in any civilian corporation, ie, not too well.
Like taking the new bag boy in a grocery store, and suddenly putting him over people who've worked there for 10 years.

Why would Johnson see the need to replace Westmoreland ?
Until the Tet of 68, Johnson thought the war was going fine, he believed most of the reports coming from his chosen sources

 

[michael rauls]

I have a couple thoughts/ impressions on Vietnam to throw out there for comment by those obviously alot more knowledgeable on the subject than I.
One, durring the Easter offensive in I believe 73 after we had mostly pulled out the North invaded the South and the South prevailed with only some air cover from us in pretty short order. Only after most all aid to the South had been cut off by Congress was the North able to prevail in 75. This seems to suggest that the South was militarily viable from 73 on at at least had the aid and aircover been continued which if true would be a real tragedy as it would mean that the war had for all practical purposes been won and and we just threw it away for whatever political reasons and all those lives were just wasted.
Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.
Thoughts anyone?

 

[tyrodtom]

I have a couple thoughts/ impressions on Vietnam to throw out there for comment by those obviously alot more knowledgeable on the subject than I.
One, durring the Easter offensive in I believe 73 after we had mostly pulled out the North invaded the South and the South prevailed with only some air cover from us in pretty short order. Only after most all aid to the South had been cut off by Congress was the North able to prevail in 75. This seems to suggest that the South was militarily viable from 73 on at at least had the aid and aircover been continued which if true would be a real tragedy as it would mean that the war had for all practical purposes been won and and we just threw it away for whatever political reasons and all those lives were just wasted.
Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.
Thoughts anyone?

In 1973, SVN didn't prevail with just some aircover by the US, they prevailed with massive air cover by the US.
Sure I guess the South could have been saved, for awhile, if we committed massive resources to bomb NVN into a temporary halt, where they'd have to halt to rebuild their own part of Vietnam.

But how long would that last ?
Would SVN use the time to reform their government ? I don't think so, and without that reform they, and the US, if we kept backing them,, would be facing the same insurgency again in a few years .

 

[mikewint]

The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March of that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972, the biggest campaign of the war, the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. During this offensive ARVN forces had relied almost entirely on American air support.

IMHO, if the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972.
But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the US withdrew almost all support for ARVN forces and the results were devastating for the south. The triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later: President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight "a poor man's war."

Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support.

 

[Zipper730]

How could LBJ, who DIDN'T know his shit, hope to recognize a general who did?

That's a good point -- he didn't seem very good at that sort of thing. He also seemed to lack advisors he trusted who would be able to tell him such things.

Did he know anything about General Landsdale, or knew anybody who did realize he had a level-headed approach?

This counter insurgency shit was like rocket science: who knew? Well, there's always those mealy mouth, egg head academics who claim to know, but they're all half commie, so how can you believe them? Guess I'll just have to trust my generals. They're convincing my man Bobby Mac that there's progress, and he's the expert, so who am I to doubt it?

I think there was also a distrust in some of the Generals, particularly those in the US Air Force: Some might have been seen as dangerously unhinged, and almost eager to take the situation to full blown total war and expand the war right into China and possibly the USSR.

Have you ever worked for any company with more than 10 people?

Yep

Like taking the new bag boy in a grocery store, and suddenly putting him over people who've worked there for 10 years.

That's not a very precise analogy, most BG's would have been in the service at least 25 years, so they'd probably be quite experienced.

Why would Johnson see the need to replace Westmoreland? Until the Tet of 68, Johnson thought the war was going fine, he believed most of the reports coming from his chosen sources

And the war became unpopular around 1968. I'm guessing his "chosen sources" told him just what he wanted to hear, right?

Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.

Like set all the cities in NVN on fire?

Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield.

That is something interesting...