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I once heard it said that most mainstream histories of the Vietnam war don’t cover the post ’68 period very in depth or even at all in some cases. The reason proffered for this is that because after ’68 we were actually winning militarily and politically, so the predominantly Left historians don’t want to give America in general or Nixon in particular any credit for actually accomplishing something and almost winning a war they wanted to see us lose for a lot of reasons. Thoughts?
I think you have most of it right. The political situation in South Vietnam was very unstable before 1968 and we were really messed up for backing Diem and his family as well as fighting the Vietcong on top of the NVA.
After January of 1968, the Vietcong were not a viable fighting force on the ground and the spy network that they had in place was almost wiped out by the Phoenix program. When Diem was overthrown and the Thiew’s new goverment installed, corruption was still there, but not as rampant and officers within the ARVN were no longer appointed because they had family connections, but were promoted according to their performance on the battlefield.
Also after 1968, the war shifted from a guerilla war by mostly Vietcong units, to a major ground war against the NVA. Our armed forces are much better suited to this type of warfare and we satarted to whupass.
During the Christmas bombing campaign of 1972, the North Vietnamese POL supplies were destroyed as well as nearly all of their anti-aircraft defenses. The North Vietnamese Goverment actually discussed an UNCONDITIONAL surrender to the U.S., but decided against it knowing we would call another halt to the bombing in order to negotiate. If the bombing had continued another 72 hours, the Goverment of North Vietnam would have capitulated and the war would have been won. The bombing damaged the infrastructure so badly that the food distribution system in the north basically shut down due to lack of fuel and the blowing of nearly all the bridges. Even the North Vietnamese Goverment admitted that many people around Hanoi starved that winter, and that a humanitarian crisis was narrowly avoided. Thats how close we came. Several key leaders of the north admitted this to the world in interviews on French Television in the mid 1970’s.
Is it any wonder that the left has less to say about a period of the war when we were starting to win against a visible opponent? Is it any wonder that the leftist media never tells the public that the bombing they railed against nearly defeated the enemy? If there is one thing you can count on with the left, it is that they will omit anything that goes against their agenda.
I’ll have to admit, that until reading Skydiver’s post, I never realized we were that close to victory. I always thought that we just settled in to the status quo and were searching for a way out of the war to save face. I wonder if the Nixon Administration even knew how close were actually were. Do you think we would have stepped up our bombing campaign had we known? Was Operation Rolling Thunder that effective? If what you say is true, Skydiver, that makes me even more bitter about that war. 😡
Yep, all true. Gen. Giap spilled the beans on French tv. Parts of the interview were also shown in the documentary “Vietnam, the 10,000 day war” shown on PBS in the early 1980’s. Gen. Giap recounted his defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu as well as the battles against the U.S. at Hue and Khe Sahn. Guess which part of the French interview was NOT part of the “10,000 day war” documentary?
Gen. Giap and Minister Van Thiew squelched the discussion within the Parliment, but it does point out how badly we hurt the north while the libs and anti war protesters were screaming that babies were being killed by the bombing. Unrestricted bombing of the north as well as Laos and Cambodia would have shut down the Ho Chi Mihn trail and totally disabled North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war. The reasons that we did’nt were twofold. We had promised Thailand that we would not use bases in that country (Khorat, Nakhon Pathom and Utapao) to bomb Vietnam, and remember Thailand had signed treaties within ASEAN. Second, the Paris peace accords prohibited U.S. involvement in Cambodia and Laos.
If only we knew then what we know now?
