1968 Tet Offensive - U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum

Richyrich03867 · #1 (**permalink**) 02-20-2008

As it is the 40th Anniversary of the well-coordinated and unanticipated attack by PAVN regulars and VC guerillas across the Republic of Vietnam, seems time for a debate.

The conventional wisdom IMO is that while the offensive was a failure in terms of acheiving its military objectives (US/ARVN troops turned back and decimated all of the attacks within a few weeks, the longest holdout in the city of Hue) and also resulting in massive losses (about 45,000 PAVN/VC KIA; the VC never recovered from this loss) it had the unintended result of turning American public opinion against the war and our continued military presence there, since it contradicted the White House/Pentagon's line that the situation on the ground was well under control and improving all the time. The networks broadcast scenese of heavy fighting in Hue, the US Embassy grounds under attack, The US Marines under seige and heavily outnumbered at Khe Sanh, and ulitmately the atrocity of 300+ civilians being rounded up and murdered savagely by US Army troops at My Lai. Anyone care to debate the subject?

42 Regular · #2 (**permalink**) 02-20-2008

Only to point out that the Viet Cong murdered 800,000 South Vietnamese civilians in the provinces they temporarily gained control of. These were executions not battle casualties.

goober · #3 (**permalink**) 02-20-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

Only to point out that the Viet Cong murdered 800,000 South Vietnamese civilians in the provinces they temporarily gained control of. These were executions not battle casualties.

The horror, the horror................
I think you better check that number

Richyrich03867 · #4 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

42 Regular I believe the number in Hue was about 3500 but 800K sounds very unrealistic. They would have had no time to fight because they would have been so busy executing civilians if this was the case. I think 5,000 or so would be a safe estimate.

42 Regular · #5 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

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Originally Posted by Richyrich03867

42 Regular I believe the number in Hue was about 3500 but 800K sounds very unrealistic. They would have had no time to fight because they would have been so busy executing civilians if this was the case. I think 5,000 or so would be a safe estimate.

Not cities , entire provinces

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Only to point out that the Viet Cong murdered 800,000 South Vietnamese civilians in the provinces they temporarily gained control of. These were executions not battle casualties.

Perhaps I should have been more clear.
The Viet Cong murdered tens of thousands of South Vietnamese before the US ever stepped in, this was why the proposed referendum on reunification of North and South could not be brought to a vote to begin with.
Wherever the Viet Cong gained even temporary control they massacred all who showed the slightest opposition.
Genocidal campaigns against the Montagnard continue to this day, though now the Viet Cong themselves don't really exist, they were pretty much wiped out by the North Vietnamese when their usefullness had ended.

I'll check the best estimates to be sure, 800,000 is of course an estimate. Vietnamese Government records show far lower all around casualty figures than Western sources.

Imperator · #6 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

they surged us, and in effect set the framework for winning.......not that it should have wound up that way..but public opinion, became a powerful driver.......Giap knew it and said so. He also admitted that the vaunted uprising of the south he predicted, never occurred.....

42 Regular · #7 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

To be more clear
I was answering this statement at the end of the thread starter.

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The US Marines under seige and heavily outnumbered at Khe Sanh, and ulitmately the atrocity of 300+ civilians being rounded up and murdered savagely by US Army troops at My Lai. Anyone care to debate the subject?
__________________

to which I replied

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Only to point out that the Viet Cong murdered 800,000 South Vietnamese civilians in the provinces they temporarily gained control of. These were executions not battle casualties.

Estimates are that over one third of all South Vietnamese civilian casualties were the direct result of Viet Cong murder squads. Lowest estimate of South Vietnamese Civilian casualties that I've seen are two million.
The official counts do not cover the period before the US intervened in force and tell little after 1972.

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By conservative estimates, Viet Cong death squads assassinated 37,000 civilians in South Vietnam; the real figure was far higher since only a small fraction of the murders were recorded before 1967 and the data only extend to 1972. Viet Cong terrorists also waged a campaign of mass murder against civilian hamlets and refugee camps; at the height of the war, nearly a third of all civilian deaths were the result of deliberate Viet Cong atrocities.[9]

The North Vietnamese conquerers were no less zealous in executing any they considered to be unreliable.
The instance of so-called Land Reform for example.

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North Vietnam announced that 30% of the victims were innocent and that 15,000 were executed by mistake, implying 50,000 massacred. Reports from North Vietnamese defectors indicated that 50,000 were massacred. A Hungarian diplomat was told by an official source that 60,000 had been massacred. A French leftist working in North Vietnam wrote that 100,000 had been slaughtered. The total death toll would have been several times higher since the families of those executed were starved to death under the policy of “isolation.”

300 dead at My Lai is a tragedy, one that will be brought up on a regular basis whenever the US is involved in any military action anywhere on earth, the Viet Cong atrocities are lost to history as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

AdrienXII · #8 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

300 dead at My Lai is a tragedy, one that will be brought up on a regular basis whenever the US is involved in any military action anywhere on earth, the Viet Cong atrocities are lost to history as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Well, that's true. But so were the results of the Phoenix Program. Some historians claim 50 thousand victims. And this was no "incident" as in My Lai, this was carefully planned and executed.

42 Regular · #9 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Some historians claim 50 thousand victims.

And some "Historians" still use "the DaVinci code" as a reference book.

Its notable that the present Communist Government of Vietnam disagrees with anti-US sources on major issues of the Vietnam War, especially in casualty figures, and are more likely to admit to wrong doing on their part than Propagandists like Ward Churchill or Noam Chompsky.

The targets

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Background
In South Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s there was a secret network, which the U.S. intelligence services called the Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI). This network provided the political direction and control of the Front's (and North Vietnam's) war within the villages and hamlets of the south.

By 1967 this network numbered somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 members throughout South Vietnam. Almost every village had a cell made up of a Communist Party secretary; a finance and supply unit; and information and culture, social welfare, and proselytizing sections to gain recruits from among the civilian population. The members reported up the chain of command, which, in turn, took orders from the Lao Dong Party Central Committee in North Vietnam. A preferred NLF tactic was to kill carefully selected government officials in order to drive the Saigon regime out of the region.[1]

The VCI laid down caches of food and equipment for regular force troops coming from border sanctuaries; it provided guides and intelligence for the People's Army of Vietnam; it conscripted personnel to serve in local force (militias) and main force mobile combat units of the NLF, and levied taxes to facilitate the administration of a rudimentary civil government.

In areas loyal to the Saigon government, protection against the North Vietnamese forces, or even NLF guerrillas, was often compromised because elected village chiefs were assassinated, terrorist bombings took place, or supporters of the government would be executed. During 1969, for example, over 6,000 South Vietnamese citizens were killed (over 1,200 in selective assassinations) and 15,000 wounded. Among the dead were some 90 village chiefs, 240 hamlet chiefs and officials.

And the program's goals

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[edit] History of the program
In 1967 all pacification efforts had come under the authority of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, or CORDS. CORDS had many different programs within it, including the creation of a peasant milita which by 1971 had a strength of about 500,000.[1]

As early as 1964 the CIA used counterterror teams to seek out and destroy NLF cadre hiding in the villages. In 1967, as part of CORDS, the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX) was created. The purpose of the organization centered on gathering information on the VCI. It was renamed Phoenix later in the same year. The South Vietnamese program was called Phụng Hoàng (or Phượng Hoàng), after a mythical bird that appeared as a sign of prosperity and luck. The 1968 Tet offensive showed the importance of the Viet Cong infrastructure, and the Communist-led military setback made it easier for the new program to be implemented. By 1970 there were 704 U.S. Phoenix advisers throughout South Vietnam.[1]

Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, although certain aspects continued until the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.[2]

[edit] Operations
The chief aspect of the program was the collection of intelligence information. VCI members would then be neutralized (captured, converted, or killed). Emphasis for the enforcement of the operation was placed on local government militia and police forces, rather than the military, as the main operational arm of the program.[1]

Neutralization was not arbitrary but took place under special laws that allowed the arrest and prosecution of suspected communists, but only within the legal system. Moreover, to avoid abuses such as phony accusations for personal reasons, or to rein in overzealous officials who might not be diligent enough in pursuing evidence before making arrests, the laws required three separate sources of evidence to convict any individual targeted for neutralization. If a suspected VCI was found guilty, he or she could be held in prison for two years, with renewable two-year sentences totaling up to six years.[1]

According to MACV Directive 381-41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the VCI with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI."

Heavy-handed operations—such as random cordons and searches, large-scale and lengthy detentions of innocent civilians, and excessive use of firepower—had a negative effect on the civilian population. It was also acknowledged that capturing VCI was more important than killing them.[2] (In practice it was often easier to kill them than to capture them alive.)

Phoenix Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Considering that the targets were the worst of the worst its no wonder so many preferred death to being brought to justice.
Still many more were captured than killed.

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According to one view, Phoenix was a clear success. Between 1968 and 1972 Phoenix neutralized 81,740 NLF members, of whom 26,369 were killed. This was a large section taken out of the VCI, and between 1969 and 1971 the program was quite successful in destroying the infrastructure in many important areas. By 1970, Communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government’s pacification program and specifically targeted Phoenix officials. The NLF also imposed quotas. In 1970, for example, Communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their assassins to “kill 400 persons” deemed to be government “tyrant[s]” and to “annihilate” anyone involved with the pacification program. Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix. In the end, it was a direct conventional North Vietnamese military invasion, not the guerrilla insurgents, that defeated the South Vietnamese.[1]

AdrienXII · #10 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

And some "Historians" still use "the DaVinci code" as a reference book.

Um. What are you disputing? The existence of the Phoenix Program, or the 50k figure?

42 Regular · #11 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdrienXII

Um. What are you disputing? The existence of the Phoenix Program, or the 50k figure?

Just pointing out that theres very little objectivity or scholarship in the field these days.

Ward Churchill and Noam Chompsky are prime examples.

AdrienXII · #12 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

Just pointing out that theres very little objectivity or scholarship in the field these days.

Ward Churchill and Noam Chompsky are prime examples.

Are you calling him Chompsky on purpose? Any program that results in the deaths of between 26,369 and 81,740 civilians is an assassination program. The regime of South Vietnam was perfectly vicious and it was the right and the duty of the Vietnamese to help overthrow it. You can never turn the facts that the US supported that regime in the name of the War against Communism and aided and abetted unspeakable acts, into honorable or just actions, no matter how much objectivity and scholarship you devote to the subject. The exactions committed by the Vietcong are in no way relevant, no more than those committed by the FLN excuse the murders and torture committed by the French Army in Algeria.

42 Regular · #13 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdrienXII

Are you calling him Chompsky on purpose? Any program that results in the deaths of between 26,369 and 81,740 civilians is an assassination program.

The Viet Cong cadre were vicious criminal murderers and their accomplices, engaged in armed innsurection against the Government and people of South Vietnam.
Had the program been an "Assassination Program" none of the targets would have been brought in alive.
As it is

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Phoenix neutralized 81,740 NLF members, of whom 26,369 were killed.

Shows at remarkable restraint was the rule. VC were usually heavily armed and very willing to fight.

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the laws required three separate sources of evidence to convict any individual targeted for neutralization. If a suspected VCI was found guilty, he or she could be held in prison for two years, with renewable two-year sentences totaling up to six years.[1]

Neutralized did not necessarily mean killed.

I see from your follow up remarks that you're a Ward Churchill fan to the bone.
I'd suspected as much from the 50,000 victims claim, which he uses in his Anti-US screeds.

Do you have "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn on your book shelf?

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Are you calling him Chompsky on purpose?

Actually Chumpsky would be more descriptive.

AdrienXII · #14 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008

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Originally Posted by 42 Regular

The Viet Cong cadre were vicious criminal murderers and their accomplices, engaged in armed innsurection against the Government and people of South Vietnam.

I'm sorry, but that's preposterous. Diem was a dictator with all the morals of a shark. Made Saddam Hussein look like a choirboy. The junta after the coup did not even bother with the pretense of legitimacy. The people of South Vietnam would have gotten rid of Diem had the US not propped him up. By what right did the US inflict a murderous piece of shit like him on them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

Had the program been an "Assassination Program" none of the targets would have been brought in alive.
As it is
...
Shows at remarkable restraint was the rule. VC were usually heavily armed and very willing to fight.
...
Neutralized did not necessarily mean killed.

Of course it does. What, you think they went to prison? I'd be surprised if they were even granted a trial. There's an interesting quote in your Wiki article, by the way. Here it is:

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"The problem was, how do you find the people on the blacklist? It's not like you had their address and telephone number. The normal procedure would be to go into a village and just grab someone and say, 'Where's Nguyen so-and-so?' Half the time the people were so afraid they would say anything. Then a Phoenix team would take the informant, put a sandbag over his head, poke out two holes so he could see, put commo wire around his neck like a long leash, and walk him through the village and say, 'When we go by Nguyen's house scratch your head.' Then that night Phoenix would come back, knock on the door, and say, 'April Fool, motherfucker.' Whoever answered the door would get wasted. As far as they were concerned whoever answered was a Communist, including family members. Sometimes they'd come back to camp with ears to prove that they killed people."

- Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto, intelligence-liaison officer for the Phoenix Program for 2 months in 1968 and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross. Wounded 3 times, he is the highest-decorated Japanese-American veteran of the Vietnam War. He has served as president of the Japanese American Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee and as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 42 Regular

I see from your follow up remarks that you're a Ward Churchill fan to the bone.
I'd suspected as much from the 50,000 victims claim, which he uses in his Anti-US screeds.

Do you have "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn on your book shelf?

No, sorry. I don't know either of them, by the way. His claim seems fair and balanced to me, however. At no time was South Vietnam under anything resembling even vaguely the rule of the law.

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Originally Posted by 42 Regular

Actually Chumpsky would be more descriptive.

Call him whatever you like, it's no skin off my nose.

goober · #15 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008

As in any modern war, most civilian deaths could be attributed to air and artillery attacks, the majority of civilian deaths were caused by US forces.
This was a case of installing a dictator, because the results of a free and fair election would not be to the liking of the US.
And it proved to be a terrible tragedy for all involved, just like Iraq.

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