"Vietnam ki kahani, ek ghaddar ki zubani" Vietnam War

[grey boy 2]

Viet Nam War Overview



The Second Indochina War, 1954-1975, grew out of the long conflict between France and Vietnam. In July 1954, after one hundred years of colonial rule, France was forced to leave Vietnam. Communist forces under the direction of General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated the allied French troops at Dien Bien Phu, a remote mountain outpost in the northwest corner of Vietnam. This decisive battle convinced the French that they could no longer maintain their Indochinese colonies and Paris quickly sued for peace. As the two sides came together to discuss the terms of the peace in Geneva, Switzerland, international events were already shaping the future of Indochina.

The Geneva Peace Accords
The Geneva Peace Accords, signed by France and Viet Nam in the summer of 1954, reflected the strains of the international Cold War. Drawn up in the shadow of the Korean War, the Geneva agreement was an awkward peace for all sides. Because of outside pressures brought to bear by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva conference agreed to the temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel. The Communist superpowers feared that a provocative peace would anger France and its powerful ally, the United States. Moscow and Peking did not want to risk another confrontation with the West so soon after Korea. Furthermore, the Communists believed they were better organized to take southern Vietnam by political action alone, a prediction that did not come to pass.

According to the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The division at the seventeenth parallel would vanish with the elections. The United States and many anti-Communists did not support the Accords. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles thought that the political protocols of the Accords gave too much power to the Vietnamese Communists. He was not going to allow the Communists to take southern Vietnam without a fight. Instead, Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported the creation of a counter-revolutionary alternative south of the seventeenth parallel. The United States supported this effort at nation-building through a series of multi-lateral agreements that created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).


South Viet Nam Under Ngo Dinh Diem
The SEATO Treaty provided for the mutual defense of all signatories, including the newly-created and U.S.-supported, Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), or South Vietnam. In 1956, Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anti-Communist figure from the South, won a controversial election that made him president of South Vietnam. From his first days in power, Diem faced stiff opposition from his opponents. He urged the United States to support his counter-revolutionary alternative, claiming that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), or North Vietnam, wanted to take South Vietnam by force. In late 1957, with American aid, Diem began to counterattack. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested thousands. In 1959, Diem passed a series of acts known as Law 10/59 that made it legal to hold someone in jail if they were a suspected Communist without bringing formal charges.

From the moment he took power, Diem faced enormous difficulties. Students, intellectuals, Buddhists and others joined the Communists in opposition to Diem's rule. The more these forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police, the more he tried to control their protests. The president maintained that South Vietnam was a peace-loving democracy and that the Communists were out to destroy his new country.

The Kennedy administration seemed split on how peaceful or democratic the Diem regime really was. Some Kennedy advisers believed Diem had not instituted enough social and economic reforms to remain a viable leader in South Vietnam. Others argued that Diem was the "best of a bad lot." As the White House met to decide the future of its Vietnam policy, a change in strategy took place at the highest levels of the Communist Party.

From 1956-1960, the Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country through political means alone. Accepting the Soviet Union's model of political struggle, the Communist Party tried unsuccessfully to cause Diem's collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure. After Diem's success against Communist cells in the South, however, southern Communistsconvinced the Party to adopt more violent tactics to guarantee Diem's downfall. At the Fifteenth Party Plenum in January 1959, the Communist Party finally approved the use of revolutionary violence to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem's government. In May 1959, and again in September 1960, the Party confirmed its use of revolutionary violence and the combination of the political and armed struggle movements. The result was the creation of a broad-based united front to help mobilize southerners in opposition to the Saigon government.

The National Liberation Front
The united front had long and historic roots in Vietnam. Used earlier in the century by the Communists to mobilize anti-French forces, the united front brought together Communists and non-Communists in an umbrella organization that had limited, but important goals. On December 20, 1960, the Party' s new united front, the National Liberation Front (NLF), was born. Anyone could join this front as long as they opposed Ngo Dinh Diem. Many non-Communists who did join the Front may not have realized that the Party would ultimately dissolve the NLF and limit non-Communist representation in a unified government.

The character of the NLF and its relationship to the Communists in Hanoi has caused considerable debate among scholars, anti-war activists, and policy makers. From the birth of the NLF in 1960, government officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi directed the NLF's violent attacks against the Saigon government. In a series of government "white papers," Washington insiders denounced the NLF, claiming that it was merely a puppet of Hanoi. The NLF, in contrast, argued that it was autonomous and independent of the Communists in Hanoi and that it was made up mostly of non-Communists. Many anti-war activists supported the NLF's claims. Washington continued to discredit the NLF, however, calling it the "Viet Cong," a derogatory and slang term meaning Vietnamese Communist.

December 1961 White Paper
In 1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in South Vietnam and to assess future American aid requirements. The report, now known as the "December 1961 White Paper," argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid, and the introduction of large-scale American advisers to help stabilize Diem's government and crush the NLF. As Kennedy weighed the merits of these recommendations, some of his other advisers urged the president to withdraw from Vietnam altogether, claiming that it was a "dead-end alley."

In typical Kennedy fashion, the president chose a middle route. Instead of a large-scale military buildup as the white paper had called for or an immediate withdrawal, Kennedy sought a limited partnership with Diem. The United States would increase the level of its military involvement in South Vietnam through more machinery and advisers, but would not intervene whole-scale with troops. This arrangement was problematic from the start, and soon reports from Vietnam indicated that the NLF was increasing its control in the countryside. To counteract the NLF's success , Washington and Saigon launched an ambitious and deadly military effort in the rural areas. Called the Strategic Hamlet Program, the new counterinsurgency plan rounded up villagers and placed them in hamlets constructed by South Vietnamese soldiers. The idea was to isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of support. This plan was based on the British experience in Malaya, but conditions in South Vietnam were distinct, and the strategic hamlet concept produced limited results. According to interviews conducted by U. S. advisers in the field, the strategic hamlet program had a negative impact on relations between peasants and the Saigon government. In the past, many rural Vietnamese viewed Diem as a distant annoyance, but the strategic hamlet program brought government policies to the countryside. Many villagers resented being forced off of their ancestral farm land, and some have suggested that the failure of the strategic hamlet concept actually increased cadre ranks in the NLF.

Military Coup
By the summer of 1963, because of NLF successes and its own failures, it was clear that Diem's government was on the verge of political collapse. Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had raided the Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam, claiming that they had harbored the Communists that were creating the political instability. The result was a massive protest on the streets of Saigon that led one Buddhist monk to self-immolation. The picture of the monk engulfed in flames made world headlines and caused considerable consternation in Washington. By late September, the Buddhist protest had created such dislocation in the South that the Kennedy administration supported a general's coup. In 1963, some of Diem's own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to overthrow Diem. With Washington's tacit approval, on November 1, 1963, Diem and his brother were captured and later assassinated. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was murdered on the streets of Dallas.

At the time of the Kennedy and Diem assassinations, there were 16,000 American military advisers in Vietnam. The Kennedy administration had managed to run the war from Washington without the large-scale introduction of combat troops. The continuing political problems in Saigon, however, convinced the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, that more aggressive action was needed. Perhaps Johnson was more prone to military intervention or maybe events in Vietnam had forced the president's hand to more direct action. In any event, after suspected Communist attacks on two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Johnson administration argued for expansive war powers for the president.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 2, 1964, in response to American and South Vietnamese espionage along its coast, North Vietnam launched a local and controlled attack against an American ship on call in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack was supposed to have taken place on August 4, although Vo Nguyen Giap the DRV's leading military figure at the time and Johnson's Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara have recently concluded that no second attack ever took place. In any event, the Johnson administration used the August 4 attack to secure a Congressional resolution that gave the president broad war powers. The resolution, now known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed both the House and Senate with only two dissenting votes (Senators Morse of Oregon and Gruening of Alaska). The Resolution was followed by limited reprisal air attacks against North Vietnam.

Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1964, the Johnson administration debated the correct strategy in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the air war over the DRV quickly to help stabilize the new Saigon government. The civilians in the Pentagon wanted to apply gradual pressure with limited and selective bombings. Only Undersecretary of State George Ball dissented, claiming that Johnson's Vietnam policy was too provocative for its limited expected results. In early 1965, the NLF attacked NLF attacked two U.S. army installations in South Vietnam, and as a result, Johnson ordered the sustained bombing missions over North Vietnam that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had long advocated.

The bombing missions, known as OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER, and the introduction of American combat troops in March 1965, caused the Communist Party to reassess its own war strategy. From 1960 through late 1964, the Party believed it could win a military victory in the South "in a relative short period of time." This overly optimistic prediction was based on a limited war scenario in South Vietnam, and not on the introduction of U.S. combat troops. With the new American military commitment, however, the Party moved to a protracted war strategy. The idea was to get the United States bogged down in a war that it could not win militarily and create unfavorable conditions for political victory. The Communist Party believed that it would prevail in a protracted war because the United States had no clearly defined strategy, and therefore, the country would eventually tire of the war and demand a negotiated settlement. By late 1965, Hanoi's more realistic predictions were based on a military stalemate and a protracted war strategy.

The War In America


One of the greatest ironies in a war rich in ironies was that Washington had also moved toward a limited war in Vietnam. The Johnson administration wanted to fight this war in "cold bloodcold blood." This meant that America would go to war in Vietnam with the precision of a surgeon with little noticeable impact on domestic culture. A limited war called for confined mobilization of resources, material and human, and caused little disruption in everyday life in America. With the advent of the Cold War and an increase in nuclear weapons, a limited war made sense to many strategic thinkers in and out of Washington. Of course, these goals were never met. The Vietnam War did have a major impact on everyday life in America and the Johnson administration was forced to consider the domestic consequences of its decisions everyday. Eventually, there simply were not enough volunteers to continue to fight a protracted war and the government instituted a draft. As the deaths mounted and Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration was met with the full weight of American anti-war sentiments. Protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities at first, but by 1968 every corner of the country seemed to have felt the war's impact. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents in the anti-war movement was the police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hundreds of thousands of people came to Chicago in August 1968 to protest American intervention in Vietnam and the leaders of the Democratic Party who continued to prosecute the war.

The Tet Offensive
By 1968, things had gone from bad to worse for the Johnson administration. In late January, the DRV and the NLF launched coordinated attacks against the major southern cities. These attacks, known in the west as the Tet Offensive, were designed to "break the aggressive will" of the Johnson administration and force Washington to the bargaining table. The Communist Party believed that the American people were growing war-weary and that Hanoi could humiliate Johnson and force a peace upon him. Most of Hanoi's predications about the Tet Offensive proved elusive. Communist forces suffered tremendous casualties in the South and the massacre of thousands of non-Communists in Hue during the Tet Offensive created ill-will among many of Hanoi's supporters. Furthermore, several leading southern Generals thought the plans for the Tet Offensive were too risky and this created a strain in relations between northern and southern Communists. In any event, in late March 1968, a disgraced Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the Democratic Party's re-nomination for president and hinted that he would go to the bargaining table with the Communists to end the war.

The Nixon Years
Johnson engaged the Vietnamese in secret negotiations in the spring of 1968 in Parisand soon it was made public that Americans and Vietnamese were meeting to discuss an end to the long and costly war. Despite the progress in Paris, the Democratic Party could not rescue the presidency from Republican challenger Richard Nixonwho claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.

Nixon's secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization" an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while increasing the air war over North Vietnam and relying more on the ARVN for ground attacks. The Nixon years also saw the expansion of the war into neighboring Laos and Cambodia, as the White House tried desperately to route out Communist sanctuaries and supply routes. The intense bombing campaigns and intervention in Cambodia in late April 1970 sparked intense campus protests all across America. At Kent State in Ohio, four students were killed by National Guardsmen who were called out to preserve order on campus after days of anti-Nixon protest. Shock waves crossed the nation as students at Jackson State in Mississippi were also shot and killed for political reasons, prompting one mother to cry, "they are killing our babies in Vietnam and in our own backyard."

The expanded air war did not deter the Communist Party, however, and it continued to make hard demands in Paris. Nixon's Vietnamization plan temporarily quieted domestic critics, but his continued reliance on an expanded air war to provide cover for an American retreat angered U.S. citizens. By the early fall 1972, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and DRV representatives Xuan Thuy and Le Duc Tho had hammered out a preliminary peace draft. Washington and Hanoi assumed that its southern allies would naturally accept any agreement drawn up in Paris, but this was not to pass. The new leaders in Saigon, especially president Nguyen van Thieu and vice president Nguyen Cao Ky rejected the Kissinger-Tho peace draft, demanding that no concessions be made. The NLF too rejected many of the provisions of the draft. The conflict intensified in December 1972, when the Nixon administration unleashed a series of deadly bombing raids against targets in North Vietnam's largest cities, Hanoi and Haiphong. These attacks, now known as the Christmas bombings, brought immediate condemnation from the international community and forced the Nixon administration to reconsider its tactics and negotiation strategy.

The Paris Peace Agreement
In early January 1973, the Nixon White House convinced the Thieu-Ky regime in Saigon that they would not abandon South Vietnam if they signed onto the peace accord. Likewise, Hanoi convinced leaders of the NLF that all southern political prisoners would be released shortly after the peace accord was signed. On January 23, therefore, the final draft was initialed, ending open hostilities between the United States and the DRV. The The Paris Peace Agreement did not end the conflict in Vietnam, however, as the Thieu-Ky regime continued to battle Communist forces. From March 1973 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried desperately to save South Vietnam from political and military collapse. The end finally came, however, as DRV tanks rolled south along National Highway One. On the morning of April 30, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, ending the Second Indochina War.

 

[gambit]

Kid...You are so predictable. You have probably destroyed any chance of a rational discussion interested readers might have about this issue by flooding the discussion with copy/paste jobs. Just like the other guy, you ain't gots the brains for this issue.

 

[grey boy 2]

The 1966 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam HistoryNet

The end of French colonial rule in Indochina marked the beginning of the American effort to create a separate and strong state in Vietnam. The purpose of this nation building was to thwart Communist expansion. The United States would measure success by the Vietnamese government’s ability to incorporate all elements of society into the new state. The Saigon regime repeatedly experienced great difficulty in commanding the allegiance of South Vietnam’s Buddhists, and in 1966 a serious clash erupted between Buddhists in central Vietnam and the Saigon government.

In 1954, with U.S. support, Ngo Dinh Diem became head of the new nation of South Vietnam. Under Diem, Catholics were appointed to positions of power at all levels of government and generally enjoyed advantages throughout South Vietnamese society. The Buddhists, who constituted a majority of Vietnamese, resented the preferential treatment given to the small Catholic minority. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed a growth in Buddhist institutions in the South, both secular and religious. The desire to gain influence in proportion to their numbers led to the emergence of a Buddhist community with a high level of political and social consciousness. Although they did not take part directly, Buddhist opposition to the Saigon regime was partly responsible for the November 2, 1963, coup that overthrew and killed Diem.

After Diem, South Vietnamese elites were unable to formulate a government that could muster any sort of traction. It was not for lack of trying; coup followed coup until mid-1965, when VNAF General Nguyen Cao Ky and ARVN General Nguyen Van Thieu took charge as premier and president, respectively. Ky’s support centered on the generals who were in charge of South Vietnam’s four military regions, or corps. Due to the special circumstances of the war emergency, these men had political as well as military authority. Corps commanders ruled as virtual warlords and were well positioned to exert influence on the central government in Saigon. The corps commanders supported Ky in his political aspirations. They knew Ky was acceptable to their American patrons, and that he would work to continue to ensure the flow of military assistance from the United States with (they hoped) minimal interference in their regional authority. I Corps, in the northernmost portion of South Vietnam, was farthest from Saigon, and possessed two of the three largest and most important cities in South Vietnam.

Premier Ky was convinced that the Buddhist leaders were traitors who wanted to overthrow his government. (In his memoirs he threatened to kill every Buddhist leader before leaving office if they tried to overthrow him.) He welcomed a showdown with them. According to Ky, Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi, commander of the I Corps, was a ‘born intriguer’ who had ‘left-wing inclinations.’ For siding with the Buddhists, Ky relieved Thi of command on March 10, 1966, precipitating a major political crisis.

General Thi, a devout Buddhist and an effective combat officer, had been popular in I Corps. Thi governed with even more independence than the other corps commanders. He had the support of Buddhists in the area and did nothing to oppose their political goals, which included an end to the fighting and a negotiated settlement with the Communist National Liberation Front. Ky and Thieu regarded him as a threat. U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Army General William Westmoreland and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara all supported the Ky-Thieu regime and opposed Thi, whom they considered too soft on communism. The Americans hoped to facilitate Thi’s departure from the South Vietnamese political scene by offering him a good living in the United States and an education for his children. Given this formidable opposition, Thi’s future in South Vietnam looked bleak. He did, however, have one important ally: Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt, who commanded U.S. forces in I Corps and was senior adviser to South Vietnamese military forces in the region.

The ARVN was much more provincial than the U.S. Army, especially the ARVN’s regional forces. Walt considered Thi an exceptional military leader who commanded the ‘deep-rooted’ loyalty of his soldiers. This potent combination — political support from the Buddhists and military support from the ARVN — allowed Thi to resist American pressure to just fade away. According to the official history of U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam operations in 1966, ‘The removal of General Thi caused an immediate shock wave throughout I Corps.’

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Da Nang and other northern cities. They formed an organization called the Military-Civilian Struggle Committee to support Thi and express opposition to the Saigon government. That organization, known as the ‘Struggle Movement,’ quickly spread. Some of its supporters took over a radio station in Da Nang and made antigovernment broadcasts. University students in Hue joined the movement. A general strike was called that lasted for a few days. The stakes were raised when the Struggle Movement claimed authority over the armed forces of Quang Nam province, which included Da Nang and its important military facilities. Buddhists in Hue took over the local radio station and joined the Struggle Movement in opposition to the Saigon government. By the end of March the situation had worsened. General Thi slipped back into I Corps where he was met by enthusiastic crowds in both Da Nang and Hue. The movement became anti-American as well as anti-Saigon government, and it increased in influence until most of I Corps was operating independently of central Vietnamese government control.Washington became alarmed. Saigon decided to act. On April 3, Ky held a news conference in which he proclaimed Da Nang to be in the hands of Communists and vowed to launch an operation to regain control. The following night, Ky dispatched three battalions of South Vietnamese marines (VNMC) to Da Nang on U.S. military aircraft. The Vietnamese marines stayed at the Da Nang airbase and made no attempt to retake control of the city from rebel forces. General Walt was in a difficult position, caught between Vietnamese marines loyal to the Saigon government and Vietnamese army forces that supported the anti-Ky Struggle Movement.

On April 9 the situation became more ominous. Pro-Struggle Movement ARVN Colonel Dam Quang Yeu dispatched a convoy of infantry, armor and artillery from Hoi An toward Da Nang. The commander of the 3rd Marine Division, Maj. Gen. Wood Kyle, ordered the 9th Marine Regiment to block Route 1 in order to stop the convoy. A Marine platoon from Foxtrot Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines (2/9th), supported by two Ontos antitank vehicles, stalled a 2 1/2-ton truck on the bridge and took up positions on the northern side. A flight of VNAF attack planes buzzed the U.S. Marine position. His progress blocked, Colonel Yeu aimed his 155mm howitzers at the airfield. Walt dispatched Marine Colonel John R. Chaisson to the bridge site. Chaisson warned Yeu not to proceed any farther. To reinforce this point, a flight of Marine Vought F-8E attack aircraft, loaded with rockets and bombs, circled overhead. Walt further ordered the Marines to aim 155mm and 8-inch guns at the ARVN position.

Yeu told Chaisson that he was a friend of the U.S. Marines but that (according to U.S. Marines in Vietnam: An Expanding War, 1966, by Jack Shulimson): ‘he had come to fight the Saigon government troops who threatened the local people. He had come to lay down his own life if necessary….’ The Vietnamese uncased and fused shells for their big guns. Chaisson warned Yeu that his unit faced annihilation if they fired on his Marines, then returned to his waiting helicopter and left. Gradually tension eased. Over the next few days the Da Nang and Hue radio stations returned to government control. The VNMC force returned to Saigon while ARVN forces in I Corps resumed operations against the Viet Cong. General Thi publicly disassociated himself from the Struggle Movement.

It was only a lull in the storm, however. Premier Ky feared the Buddhists would take control of the entire central region and declare the territory autonomous. Without telling either President Thieu or the Americans, Ky ordered his chief of staff, General Cao Van Vien, to lead a force back to Da Nang. On May 15, loyal Vietnamese marines and airborne forces flew from Saigon to Da Nang. Landing at dawn, they immediately moved into the city and seized the local ARVN headquarters. American leaders in Washington called General Walt to find out what was happening. According to Ky, Walt was ‘furious at an assault without warning on what he regarded as his territory.’ Ky ordered an airplane to fly over the positions of the pro-Buddhist army forces and drop a message threatening them with destruction if they fired on his forces. Walt, in his memoirs, makes no mention of being furious. Rather, he describes having been frantic to find out what was going on, glad that the Viet Cong were quiet, and grateful that American troops had not yet become involved. Again, Walt was caught in the middle. The new I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Ton That Dinh, had the support of most ARVN forces in the region. Like Walt, Dinh was caught by surprise when Ky’s forces arrived. Dinh sought asylum at U.S. Marine headquarters in order to avoid arrest.

Later that morning two VNAF aircraft strafed ARVN units near U.S. Marine positions north of Da Nang. Fearing bloodshed, Walt asked the South Vietnamese government to withdraw its forces from Da Nang. On May 16, Ky rejected that request and replaced Dinh with another general, Huynh Van Cao, a Catholic, as I Corps commander. On May 17, General Cao flew to Hue to visit an ARVN division headquarters. A hostile crowd broke into the division compound as Cao prepared to depart for Da Nang. As the helicopter lifted off the ground, an ARVN lieutenant hit it with two pistol rounds. In response, the U.S. Army door gunner fired a burst that killed the ARVN lieutenant and wounded two ARVN soldiers. Struggle Movement supporters condemned the Americans for this interference in Vietnamese internal affairs.

 

[grey boy 2]

Mid-1954: Ngo Dinh Diem Returns to Head South Vietnamese Government, US Aims Propaganda Campaign at North

Mid-1954: Ngo Dinh Diem Returns to Head South Vietnamese Government, US Aims Propaganda Campaign at North Ngo Dinh Diem returns from exile in the US to head the South Vietnamese government. The CIA office in Saigon, under the leadership of Colonel Edward Lansdale, conducts a propaganda campaign aimed at creating the perception that North Vietnam is plagued with massive civil unrest and disorder while there is stability in South Vietnam and widespread popular support for its newly installed leader. [Herring, 1986, pp. 44; Pilger, 1986, pp. 192]

“Paramilitary groups infiltrated across the demilitarized zone on sabotage missions, attempting to destroy the government’s printing presses and pouring contaminants into the engines of buses to demobilize the transportation systems. The teams also
carried ‘psywar’ operations to embarrass the Vietminh regime and encourage emigration to the South. They distributed fake leaflets announcing the harsh methods the government was prepared to take and even hired astrologers to predict hard times in the north and good times in the south.” [Herring, 1986, pp. 44] “[Landale’s team] stimulated North Vietnamese Catholics and the Catholic armies deserted by the French to flee south.

SMM teams promised Catholic Vietnamese assistance and new opportunities if they would emigrate. To help them make up their minds, the teams circulated leaflets falsely attributed to the Viet Minh telling what was expected of citizens under the new government. The day following distribution of the leaflets, refugee registration tripled. The teams spread horror stories of Chinese Communist regiments raping Vietnamese girls and taking reprisals against villages.

This confirmed fears of Chinese occupation under the Viet Minh. The teams distributed other pamphlets showing the circumference of destruction around Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities should the United States decide to use atomic weapons. To those it induced to flee over the 300-day period the CIA provided free transportation on its airline, Civil Air Transport, and on ships of the US Navy. Nearly a million North Vietnamese were scared and lured into moving to the South.”

 

[grey boy 2]

VN Wars: 1954-1961

The reasons for the "Fall of South Vietnam"

What the Viet Minh had not counted on was the extent to which the US would be able to change the situation between 1954 and 1956. The US representative at the Geneva Conference had indicated pretty clearly that the US did not like the Accords and did not feel obliged to obey them. After the conference, the US immediately began building up the strength of the State of Vietnam. Under a new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, this government soon showed remarkable vigor. Diem did not have much administrative experience, but at least he was known to be a patriot; he had not collaborated with the French during the previous eight years of warfare.

When Diem acquired the title of Prime Minister in 1954, it carried no real power. However, during the following months he showed great decisiveness, he had the power of the American dollar behind him, and he had considerable luck. By May of 1955 he at least had full control of his capital city, Saigon; within a few months he controlled most of South Vietnam.

Diem announced, with American approval, that he was not going to carry out national elections as called for by the Geneva Accords. He refused even to hold a conference with the Viet Minh to discuss nationwide elections. Instead he renamed the State of Vietnam as the Republic of Vietnam, and held separate elections in South Vietnam to choose the government of the Republic of Vietnam. These elections had no international supervision, and there was not even a pretence of honesty in the counting of the votes. (In Saigon, which had about 450,000 registered voters, the official vote tally said that there had been about 600,000 votes cast for Diem.) Diem declared that he had gotten more than 98% of the votes, and that he was now President of the Republic of Vietnam.

Thus there came to be two governments in Vietnam. In the North was the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with its capital at Hanoi, a Communist regime headed by Ho Chi Minh. In the South was the Republic of Vietnam, with its capital at Saigon, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem.

It is not really accurate to think of these as a North Vietnamese government and a South Vietnamese government. Each of them was made up of a mixture of North and South Vietnamese; the Prime Minister of the Communist government in the North, for instance, was a native of South Vietnam. Each of these governments said that Vietnam was basically one nation, not two. (The United States liked to say that South Vietnam should be an independent nation, separate from the North, but Ngo Dinh Diem did not agree.) Each of the two Vietnamese governments considered itself the legitimate government of all of Vietnam.

One might have expected that when the deadline of July 1956 had passed, and elections had still not been held to reunify Vietnam, the Viet Minh would have marched south to reunify the country by force. However, the Viet Minh were not in a position to do this; they had done an astonishingly bad job of ruling North Vietnam during the two years since the Geneva Conference.

The Communist leaders decided in 1953 and 1954 to end the policy of compromising issues of class conflict that they had followed for most of the war, and launch a really radical campaign to take land away from the landlords and give it to the peasants. This would be of considerable benefit to the peasants, many of whom were desperately poor. It was also intended to be politically beneficial to the Communists both because it would win peasant gratitude and because it would destroy the economic power of the landlord class, a class with a natural hostility to Communism. At the same time the landlords' land was being redistributed, landlords and agents of the landlords were supposed to be weeded out of the Communist Party and revolutionary organizations associated with it. Unfortunately for the Communists, they carried out these programs in a remarkably paranoid and unrealistic fashion. Poorly trained cadres were indoctrinated with stories of the fiendish cleverness of the landlords and counter-revolutionaries, and then sent out to the countryside. Many of them became suspicious of everyone; they saw enemies everywhere. Thousands of loyal Communists were falsely accused of being anti-Communist, expelled from revolutionary organizations, and even imprisoned. Tens of thousands of peasants were wrongly classified as landlords. (See Land Reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level, by Edwin E. Moise.)

In the middle of 1956 the Communist leadership in Hanoi was just realizing the disastrous results of its errors, and starting to clean up the mess it had made. It had no attention to spare for events in the South. The chaos in North Vietnam was so bad, in fact, and the Viet Minh had lost so much of its popularity there, that some US officials began to regret that the US had so strongly opposed carrying out the elections called for by the Geneva Accords. They thought that if elections had been held in 1956 the Viet Minh might not have won after all. By this time, however, it was much too late. The US was firmly committed to a policy of sabotaging the Geneva Accords and trying to make South Vietnam an independent country.

Ngo Dinh Diem had about four years (1955-59) in which he was able to rule South Vietnam without serious interference from the Communists. Unfortunately for him, he did not make good use of this opportunity. For one thing, he established a dictatorship centering on himself and his family rather than trying to win the support of the mass population. The refugees who had taken advantage of the Geneva Accords to move from North to South Vietnam in 1954 and 1955 were generally enthusiastic about Diem, but the native South Vietnamese were not.

The officials of the Republic of Vietnam were not particularly competent, and not particularly honest. Few of them even shared Diem's record as a patriot; most had sided with the French in the war of 1946-54.

Diem's government generally sided with the landlords against the peasants. This was especially important in the area southwest of Saigon, the Mekong Delta, where most of the land was owned by quite wealthy absentee landlords. Many villages had been controlled by the Viet Minh up to 1954; in those villages, the peasants had gotten accustomed to paying little or no rent. In 1955 and 1956, when Diem's government in Saigon established its control over such villages, the landlords resumed collection of rent. The usual level was about 25% of the crop. After a short time Diem's American advisors persuaded him to carry out a land reform program to win greater peasant support, but even in theory Diem's program was not as generous toward the peasants as the program the Viet Minh had carried out up to 1954, and in practice Diem's officials did not always carry out the land reform program properly. This inspired much peasant resentment.

Finally, Diem made what may have been a mistake by hunting down and attacking people in the countryside who had supported the Viet Minh during the war. These people had lost much of their faith in the Viet Minh; some felt it had betrayed and abandoned them between 1954 and 1956. They might have been willing to forget politics if the government had been willing to let them alone. However, when Diem's police began arresting them, often beating and killing them, they began to think of resistance.

By the late 1950's, Diem's government had become so corrupt and brutal that many South Vietnamese were eager to overthrow it. However, the natural leadership for any armed uprising was the Viet Minh leadership, and most of the South Vietnamese who had held important positions in the Viet Minh had gone to North Vietnam after the Geneva Accords. From 1956 to early 1959, the Viet Minh leaders allowed their followers in the South to assassinate a few officials of the Saigon government, but they were firmly forbidden to go beyond this and launch a guerrilla war to overthrow the government. The excuse the Viet Minh leaders in Hanoi gave for this policy was that the Saigon government was cutting its own throat by making enemies in the countryside, and that nobody should interfere with it while it was doing so. In fact, the main reason may have been that the authorities in North Vietnam could not afford to get involved in South Vietnamese problems until they had finished cleaning up the mess they had made in North Vietnam from 1954 to 1956.

By 1959, the brutality and corruption of the Saigon government had made it so many enemies that much of the South Vietnamese countryside was ripe for revolt. The Communist leaders in Hanoi had finished repairing the damage they had done to their political organizations in North Vietnam in 1955-56, and they decided it was time to do something about the situation in the South. Hanoi gave permission for Communists and Communist sympathizers in the South to start a guerrilla war against the Saigon government, and South Vietnamese Communists who had gone North in 1954 and 1955 started filtering southward again.

Guerrilla warfare began to break out around the beginning of 1960. Diem's army, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), was badly trained and badly led; its leaders did not have much enthusiasm for fighting. The number of officials assassinated by the guerrillas increased dramatically; thousands of officials fled from the countryside into the cities for fear of being assassinated. The guerrillas quickly won control in large areas of the South Vietnamese countryside. At the end of 1960 the National Liberation Front (NLF) was established to lead the guerrilla war against Diem. The NLF was under Communist leadership, but many non-Communists who hated the Saigon government also joined the NLF.

In the early years of the war, 1961 to 1963, the basic makeup of the two sides was as follows:

On the side of the NLF guerrillas, the people who are often referred to as the "Viet Cong", the actual fighting men were South Vietnamese. Some had spent several years in the North; others had never been outside of South Vietnam. Behind these men stood a political organization, the NLF, which was also made up of South Vietnamese. Behind the NLF stood the Communist leadership in Hanoi, which was in ultimate control of the guerrilla war. This Communist leadership was a mixture of North and South Vietnamese. The guerrillas manufactured some crude weapons and ammunition in the jungle, captured some from the ARVN, and got some from North Vietnam. (The men, equipment, and supplies infiltrated from the North to the South went partly by small boats along the coast and partly by land along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which led from North Vietnam through Laos to South Vietnam.)

On the side of the Saigon government, the fighting men were mostly South Vietnamese, but a substantial minority of them were North Vietnamese who had come south in 1954-55, and some were Americans. Behind these fighting men were two governments: the Republic of Vietnam, whose officials and leaders were partly South and partly North Vietnamese, and the United States Government. Virtually all weapons and equipment came from the United States; shipments of weapons into South Vietnam from the United States were tremendously greater than shipments from North Vietnam to the South.

One of the great advantages of the NLF was that in most areas of the South Vietnamese countryside, the peasants regarded the NLF as a more local organization, a more purely South Vietnamese organization, than the Saigon government. This was natural. The Saigon government used foreigners in combat; the NLF did not. The Saigon government had large numbers of North Vietnamese among its combat troops; the NLF did not. The Saigon government obtained virtually all its guns and ammunition from external sources; the NLF obtained a significant portion of its guns and ammunition within South Vietnam. Many of the people who set policy for the NLF were North Vietnamese, but the same was true of the Saigon government. In any case, the only NLF officials that the peasants ever met were South Vietnamese; the northerners in the Communist apparatus stayed far away from the actual areas of warfare. The Saigon government, on the other hand, actually used large numbers of North Vietnamese, conspicuous by their regional accents and sometimes by their lack of sympathy for the problems of southern peasants, as tax collectors and provincial administrators in the countryside of South Vietnam.

Communist propaganda generally protrayed the war in South Vietnam as a struggle by the people of South Vietnam, and portrayed the NLF and the Communists as the leaders chosen by the South Vietnamese people in their struggle. In short, NLF propaganda painted a picture of almost perfect unity between the NLF and the South Vietnamese people. The NLF often claimed, in fact, simply to be struggling for democracy against the dictatorship of Saigon. These claims were of course outrageously exaggerated; the guerrillas did not always have the voluntary cooperation of the peasants, and often used brutal coercion to get their way. However, the fact that these claims were not totally true, or even close to totally true, does not mean that we can afford to ignore them.

If even a tenth of what the Communists said about the close and intimate relationship between themselves and the South Vietnamese peasants had been true, that would have been enough to have an important effect on the military situation, and in fact much more than a tenth of it was true. In most of South Vietnam the NLF had genuine roots in the villages; it had a much closer relationship with the people than the Saigon Government did. One of the main reasons that the guerrillas were so much more effective than the ARVN soldiers, man for man, was that during military operations the guerrillas could generally count on more cooperation from local civilians than the ARVN could.

 

[qsaark]

You are nothing but this loser's stooge. Open your eyes, man. The fact that he labeled me a 'traitor' is a clear sign that he is interested in only personal insults and you are accommodating him.

Right now you are acting as a big time looser; continuously dodging the question and avoiding telling your side of story. You always wanted to tell your side of the story, when given an option in form of this thread, you are backing off. Anyway what else is expected from you who can only complaint and call people names but cant do anything else. And really what is there left to do for you, defending un-defendable perhaps?

 

[Nemesis]

There is nothing to discuss. America got a bloody nose for their imperialist ambitions in Vietnam. They wanted to impose a capitalist government on a people that didnt want it, and paid a price.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

Gambit!

You have started personal attacks on me!

 

[gambit]

Gambit!

You have started personal attacks on me!

Calling you a 'stooge' at this point is not a personal attack but is the truth.

If I ever had any criticisms against Pakistan, I confined it against the government. I stayed out of Pakistani internal politics, leaving that issue to Pakistanis members here. I made no comments critical of Pakistani culture, people, institutions, etc...etc...Only on the government, which is legitimate. In short, I remain outside of the Pakistani virtual borders.

This loser, for no justifiable reasons, somehow made himself representative of Viet Nam and the people and made a personal insult against me, calling me a 'traitor', as if he really understood the history of the conflict and the people to qualified himself to label me that way. He then instructed you to start this discussion with the same insult. You obeyed. What are you then if not but a 'stooge' to him?

 

[gambit]

There is nothing to discuss. America got a bloody nose for their imperialist ambitions in Vietnam. They wanted to impose a capitalist government on a people that didnt want it, and paid a price.

So enlightening...Not. India's history would give me ample resources to equally simplistic, no?

 

[grey boy 2]

An Account of the My Lai Courts-Martial

An Introduction to the My Lai Courts-Martial
By Doug Linder

Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians-- old men, women, children-- in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.

U. S. military officials suspected Quang Ngai Province, more than any other province in South Viet Nam, as being a Viet Cong stronghold. The U. S. targeted the province for the first major U.S. combat operation of the war. Military officials declared the province a "free-fire zone" and subjected it to frequent bombing missions and artillery attacks. By the end of 1967, most of the dwellings in the province had been destroyed and nearly 140,000 civilians left homeless. Not surprisingly, the native population of Quang Ngai Province distrusted Americans. Children hissed at soldiers. Adults kept quiet.

Two hours of instruction on the rights of prisoners and a wallet-sized card "The Enemy is in Your Hands" seemed to have little impact on American soldiers fighting in Quang Ngai. Military leaders encouraged and rewarded kills in an effort to produce impressive body counts that could be reported to Saigon as an indication of progress. GIs joked that "anything that's dead and isn't white is a VC" for body count purposes. Angered by a local population that said nothing about the VC's whereabouts, soldiers took to calling natives "gooks."

Charlie Company came to Viet Nam in December, 1967. It located in Quang Ngai Province in January, 1968, as one of the three companies in Task Force Barker, an ad hoc unit headed by Lt. Col. Frank Barker, Jr. Its mission was to pressure the VC in an area of the province known as "Pinkville." Charlie Company's commanding officer was Ernest Medina, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican-American from New Mexico who was popular with his soldiers. One of his platoon leaders was twenty-four-year-old William Calley. Charlie Company soldiers expressed amazement that Calley was thought by anyone to be officer material. One described Calley as"a kid trying to play war." [LINK TO CHAIN OF COMMAND DIAGRAM] Calley's utter lack of respect for the indigenous population was apparent to all in the company. According to one soldier, "if they wanted to do something wrong, it was alright with Calley." The soldiers of Charlie Company, like most combat soldiers in Viet Nam, scored low on military exams. Few combat soldiers had education beyond high school.
Seymour Hersh wrote that by March of 1968 "many in the company had given in to an easy pattern of violence." Soldiers systematically beat unarmed civilians. Some civilians were murdered. Whole villages were burned. Wells were poisoned. Rapes were common.

On March 14, a small squad from "C" Company ran into a booby trap, killing a popular sergeant, blinding one GI and wounding several others. The following evening, when a funeral service was held for the killed sergeant, soldiers had revenge on their mind. After the service, Captain Medina rose to give the soldiers a pep talk and discuss the next morning's mission. Medina told them that the VC's crack 48th Battalion was in the vicinity of a hamlet known as My Lai 4, which would be the target of a large-scale assault by the company. The soldiers' mission would be to engage the 48th Battalion and to destroy the village of My Lai. By 7 a.m., Medina said, the women and children would be out of the hamlet and all they could expect to encounter would be the enemy. The soldiers were to explode brick homes, set fire to thatch homes, shoot livestock, poison wells, and destroy the enemy. The seventy-five or so American soldiers would be supported in their assault by gunship pilots.

Medina later said that his objective that night was to "fire them up and get them ready to go in there; I did not give any instructions as to what to do with women and children in the village." Although some soldiers agreed with that recollection of Medina's, others clearly thought that he had ordered them to kill every person in My Lai 4. Perhaps his orders were intentionally vague. What seems likely is that Medina intentionally gave the impression that everyone in My Lai would be their enemy.

At 7:22 a.m. on March 16, nine helicopters lifted off for the flight to My Lai 4. By the time the helicopters carrying members of Charlie Company landed in a rice paddy about 140 yards south of My Lai, the area had been peppered with small arms fire from assault helicopters. Whatever VC might have been in the vicinity of My Lai had most likely left by the time the first soldiers climbed out of their helicopters. The assault plan called for Lt. Calley's first platoon and Lt. Stephen Brooks' second platoon to sweep into the village, while a third platoon, Medina, and the headquarters unit would be held in reserve and follow the first two platoons in after the area was more-or-less secured. Above the ground, the action would be monitored at the 1,000-foot level by Lt. Col. Barker and at the 2,500-foot level by Oran Henderson, commander of the 11th Brigade, both flying counterclockwise around the battle scene in helicopters.

My Lai village had about 700 residents. They lived in either red-brick homes or thatch-covered huts. A deep drainage ditch marked the eastern boundary of the village. Directly south of the residential area was an open plaza area used for holding village meetings. To the north and west of the village was dense foliage [MAP].

By 8 a.m., Calley's platoon had crossed the plaza on the town's southern edge and entered the village. They encountered families cooking rice in front of their homes. The men began their usual search-and-destroy task of pulling people from homes, interrogating them, and searching for VC. Soon the killing began. The first victim was a man stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Then a middle-aged man was picked up, thrown down a well, and a grenade lobbed in after him. A group of fifteen to twenty mostly older women were gathered around a temple, kneeling and praying. They were all executed with shots to the back of their heads. Eighty or so villagers were taken from their homes and herded to the plaza area. As many cried "No VC! No VC!", Calley told soldier Paul Meadlo, "You know what I want you to do with them". When Calley returned ten minutes later and found the Vietnamese still gathered in the plaza he reportedly said to Meadlo, "Haven't you got rid of them yet? I want them dead. Waste them." Meadlo and Calley began firing into the group from a distance of ten to fifteen feet. The few that survived did so because they were covered by the bodies of those less fortunate.

What Captain Medina knew of these war crimes is not certain. It was a chaotic operation. Gary Garfolo said, "I could hear shooting all the time. Medina was running back and forth everywhere. This wasn't no organized deal." Medina would later testify that he didn't enter the village until 10 a.m., after most of the shooting had stopped, and did not personally witness a single civilian being killed. Others put Medina in the village closer to 9 a.m., and close to the scene of many of the murders as they were happening.
As the third platoon moved into My Lai, it was followed by army photographer Ronald Haeberle, there to document what was supposed to be a significant encounter with a crack enemy battalion. Haeberle took many pictures [HAEBERLE PHOTOS]. He said he saw about thirty different GIs kill about 100 civilians. Once Haeberle focused his camera on a young child about five feet away, but before he could get his picture the kid was blown away. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl.

An army helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson arrived in the My Lai vicinity about 9 a.m. Thompson noticed dead and dying civilians all over the village. Thompson repeatedly saw young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range. Thompson, furious at what he saw, reported the wanton killings to brigade headquarters [THOMPSON'S STORY].

Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. One who followed Calley's order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.) Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.

Hugh Thompson, by now almost frantic, saw bodies in the ditch, including a few people who were still alive. He landed his helicopter and told Calley to hold his men there while he evacuated the civilians. (One account reports Thompson told his helicopter crew chief to "open up on the Americans" if they fired at the civilians, but Thompson later said he did not remember having done so.) He put himself between Calley's men and the Vietnamese. When a rescue helicopter landed, Thompson had the nine civilians, including five children, flown to the nearest army hospital. Later, Thompson was to land again and rescue a baby still clinging to her dead mother.

By 11 a.m., when Medina called for a lunch break, the killing was nearly over. By noon, "My Lai was no more": its buildings were destroyed and its people dead or dying. Soldiers later said they didn't remember seeing "one military-age male in the entire place". By night, the VC had returned to bury the dead. What few villagers survived and weren't already communists, became communists. Twenty months later army investigators would discover three mass graves containing the bodies of about 500 villagers.

The cover-up of the My Lai massacre began almost as soon as the killing ended. Official army reports of the operation proclaimed a great victory: 128 enemy dead, only one American casualty (one soldier intentionally shot himself in the foot). The army knew better. Hugh Thompson had filed a complaint, alleging numerous war crimes involving murders of civilians. According to one of Thompson's crew members, "Thompson was so pissed he wanted to turn in his wings". An order issued by Major Calhoun to Captain Medina to return to My Lai to do a body count was countermanded by Major General Samuel Koster, who asked Medina how many civilians has been killed. "Twenty to twenty-eight," was his answer. The next day Colonel Henderson informed Medina that an informal investigation of the My Lai incident was underway-- and most likely gave the Captain "a good ***-chewing" as well. Henderson interviewed a number of GIs, then pronounced himself "satisfied" by their answers. No attempt was made to interview surviving Vietnamese. In late April, Henderson submitted a written report indicating that about twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed in My Lai. Meanwhile, Michael Bernhart, a Charlie Company GI severely troubled by what he witnessed at My Lai discussed with other GIs his plan to write a letter about the incident to his congressman. Medina, after learning of Bernhart's intentions, confronted him and told him how unwise such an action, in his opinion, would be.

If not for the determined efforts of a twenty-two-year-old ex-GI from Phoenix, Ronald Ridenhour, what happened on March 16, 1968 at My Lai 4 may never have come to the attention of the American people. Ridenhour served in a reconnaissance unit in Duc Pho, where he heard five eyewitness accounts of the My Lai massacre. He began his own investigation, traveling to Americal headquarters to confirm that Charlie Company had in fact been in My Lai on the date reported by his witnesses. Ridenhour was shocked by what he learned [RIDENHOUR'S STORY]. When he was discharged in December, 1968, Ridenhour said "I wanted to get those people. I wanted to reveal what they did. My God, when I first came home, I would tell my friends about this and cry-literally cry." In March, 1969, Ridenhour composed a letter detailing what he had heard about the My Lai massacre[LINK TO LETTER]and sent it to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous members of Congress. Most recipients simply ignored the letter, but a few, most notably Representative Morris Udall, aggressively pushed for a full investigation of Ridenhour's allegations.

By late April, General Westmoreland, Army Chief of Staff, had turned the case over to the Inspector General for investigation. Over the next few months, dozens of witnesses were interviewed. It became apparent to all connected with the investigation that war crimes had been committed. In June, 1969, William Calley was flown back from Viet Nam to appear in a line-up for identification by Hugh Thompson. By August, the matter was in the hands of the army's Criminal Investigation Division for a determination as to whether criminal charges should be filed against Calley and other massacre participants. On September 5, formal charges, included six specifications of premeditated murder, were filed against Calley.
Calley hired as his attorney George Latimer, a Salt Lake City lawyer with considerable military experience, having served on the Military Court of Appeals. Latimer pronounced himself impressed with Calley. "You couldn't find a nicer boy," he said, adding that if Calley was guilty of anything it was only following orders "a bit too diligently."

Meanwhile, the issue of the My Lai massacre had gotten the attention of President Nixon. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird briefed Nixon at his San Clemente retreat. The White House proceeded with caution, sensing the potential of the incident to embarrass the military and undermine the war effort. The President characterized what happened at My Lai as an unfortunate aberration, as "an isolated incident."

In November, 1969, the American public began to learn the details of what happened at My Lai 4. The massacre was the cover story in both Time and Newsweek. CBS ran a Mike Wallace interview with Paul Meadlo. Seymour Hersh published in depth accounts based on his own extensive interviews. Life magazine published Haeberle's graphic photographs.

Reaction to the reports of the massacre varied. Some politicians, such as House Armed Services Subcommittee Chair L. Mendel Rivers maintained that there was no massacre and that reports to the contrary were merely attempts to build opposition to the Viet Nam war. Others called for an open, independent inquiry. The Administration took a middle course, deciding on a closed-door investigation by the Pentagon, headed by William Peers, a blunt three-star general.

For four months the Peers Panel interviewed 398 witnesses, ranging from General Koster to the GIs of Charlie Company. Over 20,000 pages of testimony were taken. The Peers Report criticized the actions of both officers and enlisted men. The report recommended action against dozens of men for rape, murder, or participation in the cover-up.

III.

The Army's Criminal Investigation Division continued its separate investigation. Most of the enlisted men who committed war crimes were no longer members of the military, and thus immune from prosecution by court-martial. A 1955 Supreme Court decision, Toth vs Quarles, held that military courts cannot try former members of the armed services "no matter how intimate the connection between the offense and the concerns of military discipline." Decisions were made to prosecute a total of twenty-five officers and enlisted men, including General Koster, Colonel Oran Henderson, Captain Medina. In the end, however, only few would be tried and only one, William Calley, would be found guilty. The top officer charged, General Samuel Koster, who failed to report known civilian casualties and conducted a clearly inadequate investigation was, according to General Peers, the beneficiary of a whitewash, having charges against him dropped and receiving only a letter of censure and reduction in rank. Colonel Henderson was found not guilty on all charges after a trial by court martial. Peers again expressed his disapproval, writing "I cannot agree with the verdict. If his actions are judged as acceptable standards for an officer in his position, the Army is indeed in deep trouble."

Captain Ernest Medina faced charges of murdering 102 Vienamese civilians. The charges were based on the prosecution's theory of command responsibility: Medina, as the officer in charge of Charlie Company should be accountable for the actions of his men. If Medina knew that a massacre was taking place and did nothing to stop it, he should be found guilty of murder. (Medina was originally charged also with dereliction of duty for participating in the coverup, but the offense was dropped because the statute of limitations had run.) Medina was subjected to a lie-detector test which tended to show he responded truthfully when he said that he did not intentionally suggest to his men that they kill unarmed civilians. The same test, however, tended to to show that his contention that he first heard of the killing of unarmed civilians about 10 to 10:30 A.M. was not truthful, and that he in fact knew non-combattants were being killed sometime between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M., when there would still have been time to prevent many civilian deaths. The prosecution, led by Major William Eckhardt, was unable, however, to get the damaging lie-detector evidence admitted. Medina's lawyer, flamboyant defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, conducted a highly successful defense, forcing the prosecution to drop key witnesses and keeping damaging evidence, such as Ronald Haeberle's photographs, from the jury. After fifty-seven minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Medina on all charges. (Months later, when a perjury prosecution was no longer possible, Medina admitted that he had suppressed evidence and lied to the brigade commander about the number of civilians killed.)

The strongest government case was that against Lt. William Calley. On November 12, 1970, in a small courthouse in Fort Benning, Georgia, young Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel stood to deliver his opening statement: "I want you to know My Lai 4. I will try to put you there." Captain Daniel told the jury of six military officers the shocking story of Calley's role in My Lai's tragedy: his machine-gunning of people in the plaza area south of the hamlet; his orders to men to execute men, women, and children in the eastern drainage ditch; his butt-stroking with his rifle of an old man; his grabbing of a small child and his throwing of the child into the ditch, then shooting him at point-blank range. Daniel told the jury that at the close of evidence he would ask them to "in the name of justice" convict the accused of all charges.

Daniel built the prosecution's case methodically. For days, the grisly evidence accumulated without a single witness directly placing Calley at the scene of a shooting. One of the early witnesses was Ronald Haeberle, the army photographer whose pictures brought home the horror of My Lai [TESTIMONY OF HAEBERLE]. Another was Hugh Thompson, My Lai's hero. Defense attorney Latimer's handling on cross of Haeberle, Thompson, and other witnesses led many courtroom observers to conclude that his glowing reputation was undeserved. His questioning of Haeberle, whose credibility was largely irrelevant, was pointless. His attempt to question Thompson's heroism "failed utterly," according to Richard Hammer, author of The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley.

In the second week of the trial Daniel began to call his more incriminating witnesses. Robert Maples, a machine gunner in the first platoon, testified that he saw Calley near the eastern drainage ditch, firing at the people below. Maples said that Calley asked him to use his machine gun on the Vietnamese in the ditch, but that he refused [TESTIMONY OF MAPLES]. Dennis Conti provided equally damning evidence. Conti testified that he was ordered to round up people, mostly women and children, and bring them back to Calley on the trail south of the hamlet. Calley, Conti said, told us to make them "squat down and bunch up so they couldn't get up and run." Minutes later Calley and Paul Meadlo "fired directly into the people. There were burst and shots for two minutes. The people screamed and yelled and fell." Conti said that Meadlo "broke down" and began crying [TESTIMONY OF CONTI].

The prosecution's final witness was its most anticipated witness. Paul Meadlo had been promised immunity from military prosecution in return for his testimony in the Calley case, but when he was called earlier in the trial, Meadlo had refused to answer questions about March 16, 1968, claiming his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself. Daniel called Meadlo to the stand for a second time, and the ex-GI, who had lost a foot to a mine shortly after the massacre, limped to the stand in his green short-sleeve shirt and green pants. Judge Kennedy warned Meadlo that if he refused to answer questions, two U. S. marshals would take him into custody. Meadlo said he would testify. He told the jury that Calley had left him with a large group of mostly women and children south of the hamlet saying, "You know what to do with them, Meadlo." Meadlo thought Calley meant he should guard the people, which he did. Meadlo told the jury what happened when Calley returned a few minutes later:

He said, "How come they're not dead?" I said, I didn't know we were supposed to kill them." He said, I want them
dead." He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started shooting into the people -- the Viet Cong -- shooting automatic. He was
beside me. He burned four or five magazines. I burned off a few, about three. I helped shoot ‘em.
Q: What were the people doing after you shot them?
A: They were lying down.
Q: Why were they lying down?
A: They was mortally wounded.
Q: How were you feeling at that time?
A: I was mortally upset, scared, because of the briefing we had the day before.
Q: Were you crying?
A: I imagine I was....

Daniel then asked Meadlo about the massacre at the eastern drainage ditch, and in the same almost emotionless voice, Meadlo recounted the story, telling the jury that Calley fired from 250 to 300 bullets into the ditch. One exchange was remarkable:

Q: What were the children in the ditch doing?
A: I don't know.
Q: Were the babies in their mother's arms?
A: I guess so.
Q: And the babies moved to attack?
A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance.
Q: Had they made any move to attack?
A: No.

At the end of Meadlo's testimony, Aubrey Daniel rested the for the prosecution [MEADLO'S TESTIMONY].

The defense strategy had two main thrusts. One was to suggest that the stress of combat, the fear of being in an area thought to be thick with the enemy, sufficiently impaired Calley's thinking that he should not be found guilty of premeditated murder for his killing of civilians. Latimer relied on New York psychiatrist Albert LaVerne to advance this defense argument [LAVERNE TESTIMONY]. The second argument of the defense was that Calley was merely following orders: that Captain Ernest Medina had ordered that civilians found in My Lai 4 be killed and was the real villain in the tragedy.

On February 23, 1971, William Calley took the stand. He told the jury he couldn't remember a single army class on the Geneva Convention, but that he did know he could be court-martialed for refusing to obey an order. He testified that Medina had said the night before that there would be no civilians in My Lai, only the enemy. He said that while he was in the village, Medina called and asked why he hadn't "wasted" the civilians yet. He admitted to firing into a ditch full of Vietnamese, but claimed that others were already firing into the ditch when he arrived. Calley said, "I felt then--and I still do-- that I acted as directed, I carried out my orders, and I did not feel wrong in doing so" [CALLEY TESTIMONY].

Ernest Medina was called as a witness of the court. Medina directly contradicted Calley's testimony. Medina said he was asked at the briefing on March 15 whether "we kill women and children," and-- looking straight at Calley behind the defense table--he said to the GIs "No, you do not kill women and children...Use common sense." At the close of his testimony, Medina saluted Judge Kennedy, then marched past Calley's table without glancing at him [MEDINA TESTIMONY].

It was time for summations. George Latimer for the defense argued that Medina was lying about not giving the order to kill civilians, that Medina knew perfectly well what was going on in the village, and now he and the army were trying to make Calley a scapegoat[LATIMER SUMMATION]. Aubrey Daniel for the prosecution asked the jury who will speak for the children of My Lai. He pointed out that Calley as a U. S. officer took an oath not to kill innocent women and children, and told the jury it is "the conscience of the United States Army"[DANIEL SUMMATION].

After thirteen days of deliberations, the longest in U. S. court-martial history, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of premeditated murder on all specifications. After hearing pleas on the issue of punishment, jury head Colonel Clifford Ford pronounced Calley's sentence: "To be confined at hard labor for the length of your natural life; to be dismissed from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances."

IV.

Opinion polls showed that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of the verdict in the Calley case [OPINION POLLS]. President Nixon ordered Calley removed from the stockade (after spending a single weekend there) and placed under house arrest. He announced that he would review the whole decision. Nixon's action prompted Aubrey Daniel to write a long and angry letter in which he told the President that "the greatest tragedy of all will be if political expediency dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons" [AUBREY LETTER]. On November 9, 1974, the Secretary of the Army announced that William Calley would be paroled. In 1976, Calley married. In August 2009, while speaking at a Kiwanis meeting in his hometown of Columbus, Georgia, 66-year-old Calley offered a public apology for his role at My Lai: "Not a day goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day at My Lai. I am very sorry."


My Lai mattered. Two weeks after the Calley verdict was announced, the Harris Poll reported for the first time that a majority of Americans opposed the war in Viet Nam. The My Lai episode caused the military to re-evaluate its training with respect to the handling of noncombatants. Commanders sent troops in the Desert Storm operation into battle with the words, "No My Lais-- you hear?"

 

[westwind]

"you ain't gots the brain to talk to me about Vietnam."
"you ain't gots the brains for this issue"

what is the difference between "brain" and "brains" in these two sentences.
can anyone tell me if the above two sentences are correct or not? i just cant understand the grammar of them.
thanks

 

[grey boy 2]

"you ain't gots the brain to talk to me about Vietnam."
"you ain't gots the brains for this issue"

what is the difference between "brain" and "brains" in these two sentences.
can anyone tell me if the above two sentences are correct or not? i just cant understand the grammar of them.
thanks

Buddy, only a South Vietnamese will be qualify to answer your

question on this thread, but my "guess" will be that is some

Vietnamese English.

 

[gambit]

"you ain't gots the brain to talk to me about Vietnam."
"you ain't gots the brains for this issue"

what is the difference between "brain" and "brains" in these two sentences.
can anyone tell me if the above two sentences are correct or not? i just cant understand the grammar of them.
thanks

My bad...English is my 3rd language. I have never made fun of anyone's English grammar, so pay no mind to the cheap shot about mine. It says much about the individuals' maturity.

 

[S-2]

Gambit's content is generally quite solid. He's careful about facts, knows his corner of military aviation well, and is solidly grounded in the history of his native-born country-Vietnam as well as other elements of military history.

If you wish to conduct ad hominem attacks based on the use of english, please direct them at me. English is MY native language and I'm certainly vulnerable from time to time. I've great admiration for those here from other native tongues and their use of english. There's no call to attack him on such.

Thanks.