Three years ago, the United States gave up its defense of freedom and constitutional democracy for the people of Afghanistan. Forty-nine years ago, the American defense of the South Vietnamese people ended in defeat.
What is wrong with us that we can’t win “small wars”?
The Antiwar movement preached that we could never win in Vietnam and so shouted loudly that we should get out of Vietnam “NOW!”, chanting “Hey, hey LBJ, how many boys did you kill today?” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win!”
And yes, American generals and war planners struggled to find a formula for victory in Vietnam. On the one hand, Secretary of Defense McNamara believed that if the U.S. fought a “war of big battalions”, we could attrit invading North Vietnamese army units and so drive Hanoi to cease its aggression. On the other hand, a different strategy was needed to contest control of South Vietnam’s 2,000 rural villages. That effort was called “the Other War” and was mostly assigned to South Vietnamese nationalist forces in villages and districts. By 1967 neither defensive effort seemed to be working well.
General Westmoreland then focused on a third strategy: cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail running from North Vietnam south through Laos into South Vietnam. Rather than wait for North Vietnamese troops to arrive in South Vietnam and fight them there, Westmoreland proposed preventing them from ever entering the battlefield. This, he argued, would prevent Hanoi from destabilizing South Vietnam no matter how much it wanted to conquer that independent national community.
In small wars access to a sanctuary provides a way to victory for the insurgent. Today in its war against Israel, Hamas has sanctuary-like support in Iran allowing it to prolong its warfighting capability from year to year.
Could Westmoreland’s proposal to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail have won the Vietnam War for South Vietnam and the United States?
We now know that Hanoi sent into South Vietnam more than 976,849 of its soldiers from 1959 through 1975. Most of them died in combat. Thus, if that flow of men and supplies had been turned off, most likely South Vietnam would have survived as a free country.
With support from American Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, General William Westmoreland recommended to President Lyndon Johnson that American forces should carry the fight to the invading North Vietnamese inside Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh trail providing reinforcements and supplies to Hanoi’s army units inside South Vietnam.
President Johnson did not approve this recommendation. Only bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail was permitted. It was ineffective in stopping the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam.
According to Bui Tin, President Johnson’s refusal was a strategic mistake. If Johnson had approved General Westmoreland’s request, Bui Tin said, the United States would have won the Vietnam War. That victory in Vietnam would have prevented 50 years of anguish and self-doubt from degrading American pride and self-confidence.
Bui Tin (1927-2018) had been very close to Hanoi’s famous General Vo Nguyen Giap, serving on the general staff of North Vietnam’s army. Also, he had been deputy editor of the People’s Daily newspaper. He had known the inside thinking of Vietnam’s Communist leaders for decades before he left them for exile in Paris in 1990. Bui Tin wrote Following Ho Chi Minh and From Enemy to Friend about his life.
I first met Bui Tin in Paris after he had parted ways with the Vietnamese Communist Party. He had been welcomed by a circle of my Vietnamese Nationalist friends associated with the Tan Dai Viet Party, who introduced me to him.
When he came to America a few years later, Bui Tin asked me to introduce him to General Westmoreland, his former enemy. In 1983, General Westmoreland had asked me to advise him on his anti-defamation lawsuit against Mike Wallace and CBS. We had got along well so I was comfortable calling him “Westy” to my friends.
General Westmoreland agreed to meet Bui Tin. The three of us then met for lunch at the Three Sisters Vietnamese restaurant at the Eden Mall in Fairfax, Virginia. As we sat down with Bui Tin across from me and Westy to my left, I saw that Bui Tin was bursting with something to say. Somewhat nervous, he sat down very quickly. Then I sat down. General Westmoreland, an older man slower in pulling out his chair, was then starting to lower himself into a sitting position.
Already seated, Bui Tin blurted out in Vietnamese: “General, if President Johnson had accepted your recommendation to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail, you would have won the Vietnam War.”
I translated from Vietnamese pretty much word for word.
General Westmoreland was stunned. He lost his balance and almost fell. He turned inward. His face tightened. His eyes lost focus on us.
I could see in his face emotions of shock mixed with intellectual realization of the historic importance of what he had just heard – he had been right all along; that he could have won the Vietnam war and saved his country much agony and himself from much criticism and rejection. He was processing dramatic information one thought and feeling at a time. He did not know what to say.
He put his hands on the table to support his weight as he continued to sit down. Once seated he was silent. Bui Tin and I just sat there. I too was stunned by Bui Tin’s revelation and sad and bitter on learning the truth as it had been known to Hanoi but not by us.
I vaguely recall that after an awkward minute or so I shifted the conversation to pleasantries.
The rest of the lunch conversation was of great interest to me as I translated for Bui Tin and Westy, as they went back and forth as respectful colleagues discussing the pluses and minuses of each side’s efforts during the war. They parted relaxed and impressed with each other.
Stephen B. Young is the Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism (CRT). Young was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He served as an Assistant Dean at the Harvard Law School and as the third Dean of the Hamline University School of Law. His new book is Kissinger's Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War.
