The 25-Year War

America's Military Role in Vietnam

Bruce Palmer

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780813115139
• eBook ISBN: 9780813146423
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

An American army general presents an insider's history of the Vietnam War with "a tough, dispassionate, common-sense analysis" of what went wrong ( Baltimore Sun).
 
On April 30, 1975, Saigon and the government of South Vietnam fell to the communist regime of North Vietnam, ending twenty-five years of struggle for American military forces. This is the story of what went wrong there militarily, and why. General Bruce Palmer experienced the Vietnam War in the field and in the highest command echelons. America's most serious error, he believes, was committing its armed forces to a war in which neither political nor military goals were ever fully articulated by our civilian leaders.
 
Our armed forces, lacking clear objectives, failed to develop an appropriate strategy, instead relinquishing the offensive to Hanoi. Yet an achievable strategy could have been devised, Palmer believes. Moreover, our South Vietnamese allies could have been bolstered by appropriate aid but were instead overwhelmed by the massive American military presence. Compounding these errors were the flawed civilian and military chains of command. The result was defeat for America and disaster for South Vietnam.
 
"Perhaps the best single account of the Vietnam War by a military man." — Baltimore Sun

PART I

American Involvement in Vietnam

1

1963-1967: The JCS and Vietnam

The period 1963–65 was one of the most tumultuous times for the United States in all its history, for these years saw American military power committed to a war in Indochina which was to divide Americans to a degree unprecedented since the Civil War a hundred years before. Two presidents served during these years—John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

In examining this critical period, this chapter will focus on the role of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. To place their role in the proper context it is important to understand the nature and organization of the JCS and the unified command system, as well as the parameters of the statutory duties of the JCS. Obviously the personalities and styles of top civilian and military leaders in Washington and abroad had significant influence on how the chiefs carried out their responsibilities.

The JCS as a corporate entity was not formally organized until after World War II, although an informal U.S. organization did exist, and a combined mechanism for the overall coordination of U.S. and British military activities, known as the Combined Chiefs of Staff, came into being during the war. After a long national debate, the National Security Act of 1947 created a Department of Defense under a secretary of defense, to include the JCS with a separate staff called the Joint Staff. The act created a loose confederation of the military services, each continuing to be organized and administered under its own secretary, and an overall secretary of defense with his own secretariat. (Only the secretary of defense, however, was made a member of the cabinet, and the service secretaries were downgraded.) Thus the services were not integrated but were unified only in the sense that they were placed under a single overall head.

This fact remains pertinent to date. Among other things, it means that only the service staffs possess the technical expertise in all matters affecting their respective services—force structure, logistic support, detailed knowledge of their ships, aircraft, and weapons systems, and so forth. This means that the Joint Staff cannot possibly duplicate the knowhow existing in each service staff. This is why it is essential that the service staffs participate in the joint process functioning under the JCS.

Since 1947 more and more authority has been centralized under the secretary of defense, whose staff has been expanded and strengthened. Likewise the central role of the chairman of the JCS (CJCS) has been clarified and formalized, while the Joint Staff has been expanded in size. These changes were articulated in amendments to the original act, the last of which (1958) also made a significant change in the chain of command extending from the president as commander-in-chief. Before 1958 the chain of command extended from the president to the secretary of defense and then to the unified commands through the JCS and the executive agent system. At that time the JCS designated a service chief to act as their executive agent for each of the unified commands. The chief of staff, U.S. Army, performed that function during the Korean War and provided the link between the JCS and the unified commander whose area included the Korean theater of war. This commander was known then as the commander-in-chief, Far Eastern Command—CINCFE. The Korean War was the last one fought under the executive agent system.

The Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 abolished the executive agent arrangement and in effect took the JCS out of the chain of command, charging the chiefs instead with assisting the secretary of defense in directing the unified commanders. The chiefs, however, were expected to supervise the unified commanders, if not to command them. Orders to the unified commanders from the JCS are issued under the authority and in the name of the secretary of defense. Vietnam was the first war conducted under the provisions of this statute. The soundness of the present command arrangements and recent proposals to reform the JCS organization will be examined later in this book.

As the principal military advisers to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, the JCS have specific statutory responsibilities, including strategic planning and the strategic direction of the armed forces, joint logistic planning, and reviewing the major materiel and personnel requirements of the armed forces. The chiefs also establish unified commands in various strategic areas of the world to control the operations of assigned U.S. forces from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

The Kennedy national security team that came to power in January 1961 was a strong one. The constant and courageous Dean Rusk was secretary of state, and the cool, unflappable Robert Strange McNamara was secretary of defense. Recognizing the increasing scope and pace of U.S. involvement in world events and the interlocking complexity of foreign, defense, and economic policy, the president at the outset had decided to build a strong National Security Council staff in the White House under the presidential assistant for NSC affairs, the brilliant and able McGeorge Bundy. Assisted initially by another bright star from the academic world, W.W. Rostow, until he left in December 1961 to head the State Department’s policy planning staff, Bundy served under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He was succeeded on 1 April 1966 by Rostow, who served for the rest of Johnson’s term.

Although neither the director of Central Intelligence nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a statutory member of the National Security Council, they are nevertheless statutory advisers to the NSC and are essential players in that organization. Allen W. Dulles overlapped with the incoming Kennedy administration until he was succeeded by John A. McCone as director of Central Intelligence in November 1961. General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, U.S. Army, then chairman of the JCS, likewise continued to serve under the new administration until Kennedy replaced him on 1 October 1962 with General Maxwell D. Taylor, another former Army chief of staff. Taylor initially had served as a special assistant to the president, but this had proved to be a little awkward because it gave the president two equally senior military advisers.

President Kennedy expected his secretaries of state and defense, as well as his other cabinet members, to run their own departments as they saw fit, but he wanted independent advice from his NSC staff, analyzing the various factors and views involved and laying out the options for presidential consideration. This became Bundy’s major role (and later Rostow’s), and each performed it well, in the process setting the precedent and tradition of a strong and influential presidential assistant in the national security arena. Fortunately both Rusk and McNamara possessed more than average self-discipline and got along together extremely well. McNamara, moreover, readily recognized the primacy of State in shaping international policy, although in the Pentagon, McNamara reigned supreme.

My personal involvement in Vietnam matters began in September 1963 when I joined then Lieutenant General Harold K. Johnson, deputy chief of staff for operations (DCSOPS), Army, as his number two man. During the next twenty months I had a ringside seat at the deliberations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and gained new insights into civil-military relations at the seat of government. During my apprenticeship in JCS affairs the chairman was General Taylor and the service chief lineup was General Earle G. Wheeler, Army; Admiral David L. McDonald, Navy; General Curtis E. LeMay, Air Force; and General Wallace M. Greene, Marine Corps.

In the late 1950s, when Taylor was the army chief during the Eisenhower administration, I served in his office as the deputy secretary of the General Staff and made several official trips overseas with him. (The secretary of the General Staff at the time, then Major General William C. Westmoreland, coordinated the activities of the army staff and in effect was chief of staff to the Army Chief.) General Taylor was an impressive figure, known as an intellectual, a soldier statesman, and a talented linguist. But it was an unhappy period for Taylor, who did not see eye-to-eye with the commander-in-chief or the other military chiefs as to the proper role of the Army. After he left the Army, Taylor laid out his deep misgivings about the national military establishment in a highly critical book, The Uncertain Trumpet,¹ which caught the attention of many prominent people, including John F. Kennedy. Particularly intense and somewhat aloof during this period, Taylor appeared to those who did not know him as cold, humorless, and unbending. But he had another side—he could be friendly, a genial host, and a witty conversationalist with a well developed sense of humor. For many people, however, these more endearing qualities were not revealed until after he retired from public life at the end of Johnson’s presidency.

In any event, Kennedy’s military chiefs were a lively group, each chief having strong views of his own and not bashful about voicing them. The handsome, steely-eyed Taylor, a Kansan, was incisive and forceful and made a formidable chairman. Wheeler, a personable and suave Washingtonian (D.C.), was unusually articulate and especially effective in finding middle ground when the chiefs seemed to be deadlocked over an issue. The quiet, gentlemanly McDonald, from Nebraska, grizzled from many years of sea duty, was a thoughtful, serious man who spoke sparingly but with authority. LeMay, a big, cigar-chewing midwesterner from Ohio, was often arrogant and rude in manner, talking loudly (partly no doubt because of hearing difficulties) with an abrasive voice that could whine like a turbine engine. The courteous, poker-faced Greene was sometimes quite professorial in his approach, which had earned him the nickname of “Schoolboy Greene.”

Taylor, however, was clearly the dominant figure within the JCS. Having just served in the White House as a close personal adviser to the president, he had become in effect the number one military adviser to the Kennedy administration. Thus when Kennedy brought him out of retirement to be the chairman, Taylor possessed far more clout than the average CJCS. At the same time, having become closely associated with the inner political-military thinking of the administration, Taylor’s objectivity and independence of mind had to be somewhat compromised, which may explain why he sometimes appeared, at least to me, to be ambivalent on the basic issues of Vietnam.

The JCS conference room, the “Gold Room,” is commonly called the “Tank,” probably in reference to its lack of windows. Maps of various regions of the world are displayed on two walls, a screen for projecting slides and a large board showing the expected location of each chief for months ahead take up the third wall, and a clock adorns the fourth wall. Two podiums are available for briefers, as well as chairs for staff action officers whom the chiefs might want to call on for additional details. But the dominant feature is a large, highly polished, rectangular mahogany table which takes up most of the space.

The JCS seating arrangement has the chairman in the center of the long axis of the table with his back to the clock. The Air Force chief sits to the right of the chairman, and the director of the Joint Staff is on the chairman’s left. Across the table the Army chief sits facing the director, and the chief of Naval Operations faces the Air Force chief. The commandant of the Marine Corps sits at one of the short ends of the table between the Air Force and Navy chiefs, while the secretary of the Joint Staff (the note-taker and drafter of conference minutes) holds down the other end. Each operations deputy (deputy chief of staff for operations) sits alongside his chief, while the assistant to the chairman sits behind his principal.

This traditional seating arrangement resulted in a special problem for this particular group of chiefs. Both Taylor and LeMay were somewhat hard of hearing in one ear, and as fate would decree, their weak ears were side by side. According to his aides Taylor was quite adept at reading lips, but LeMay lacked this talent and the consequences were unpredictable. Since both men were quick-tempered and short on patience, the discussions could be lively, and there was rarely a dull JCS meeting.

The normal attendance at a JCS meeting consists of the chairman, the service chiefs with their respective operations deputies, and the director of the Joint Staff, a three-star position normally rotated every three years among the services. Each chief is expected to handle the subject at hand with no assistance other than from his operations deputy. As the principal assistant to the service chief of staff in carrying out his statutory duties as a member of the JCS, the service operations deputy is the focal point of the service staff for all joint matters (that is, subjects involving more than one service) and must be knowledgeable about whatever questions are addressed by the JCS.

In addition to attending the regular three-times-a-week JCS meetings with their four-star bosses, the director of the Joint Staff and the service operations deputies meet as a group several times a week. Known as the “Operations Deputies,” this group of five three-star officers, chaired by the director, handle less critical or noncontroversial matters that do not require the attention of the chiefs. In effect, the group functions as a sort of junior JCS.

In October 1963, only a few weeks after I joined the Army staff in the Pentagon, a disturbing episode occurred which gave an inkling of the quicksands that lay ahead for the United States in Vietnam. An Army friend of mine, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, called on me in my office. About ten years earlier he had served under me in Germany, and I knew him to be tough, mentally and physically, but with a short-fused temper that was hard to handle. Vann shocked me when he said that he was about to resign. He had returned in June from a tour in the upper Mekong Delta of South Vietnam as adviser to the commander of the 7th ARVN Division and had been engaged in a running fight with his superiors as to the true situation in this southernmost region of the country. General Paul D. Harkins, the U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, who had assumed command of the brand new Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in February 1962, had reprimanded Vann for conduct bordering on insubordination and had recommended that he not be debriefed, that is, consulted about his experiences and views, after he left Vietnam. On his own, Vann had persisted in talking to anyone who would listen and by July 1963 had impressed enough people in the upper civilian and military circles (including Lieutenant General H.K. Johnson) of the Department of Defense to get himself on the agenda of a JCS meeting, only to be cancelled at the last minute at the direction of General Taylor.

Discouraged and frustrated, Vann resigned from the Army shortly thereafter and vowed to return to Vietnam in a civilian capacity to continue the fight against the Viet Cong for as long as it would take. But it was over a year before he was permitted to return, in early 1965 to work for the Agency for International Development, because senior American officials in Vietnam opposed the fiery Vann’s presence. When Vann did return he was assigned to the province of Hau Nghia just west of Saigon and contiguous to the Cambodian border, an area demanding priority attention because it was infested with Viet Cong, yet close enough so that the U.S. mission in Saigon could keep an eye on him. Vann soon became a legendary figure, admired and respected throughout Vietnam, although he was very hard on people and was not universally liked. The country was his consuming passion until his death in a helicopter crash near Kontum in June 1972. His death came as no surprise to those who knew him well, for he was fearless, defying the enemy day and night, and the Viet Cong had a price on his head. Vann understood the political nature of the conflict and probably knew Vietnam better than any other American of his day.

The thrust of Vann’s allegations in the summer of 1963 was that the 7th ARVN Division was conducting operations against areas believed to be free of Viet Cong. This tactic inflated Vietnamese and MACV statistics on offensive operations conducted by ARVN troops and held down friendly casualties. Vann was convinced that Harkins was being duped by the South Vietnamese.² Taylor and McNamara, however, not only supported Harkins’s rosy view of the situation, but in October 1963 predicted success against the Viet Cong by the end of 1965 if the political controversy surrounding President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, could be resolved.³ It is almost impossible to resist the conclusion that Taylor and McNamara were playing U.S. presidential politics—the 1964 elections were only a year away. Obviously the Kennedy team had decided how it wanted to handle Southeast Asia, was confident at the time that its plans and actions would be successful, and did not want mavericks like Vann rocking the boat. Nevertheless, I thought that it was a mistake to deny the JCS a sharply different view of Vietnam. Indeed, the incident left me deeply disappointed with Messieurs Mc-Namara, Taylor, and Harkins.

A few weeks after Vann’s trip to Washington, on 1 November 1963, President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Nhu, were assassinated in Saigon. In the United States there was much speculation, some in the press, as to what had transpired behind the scenes. But it was clear that the U.S. administration had actively supported the coup, not necessarily wanting or expecting Diem to be murdered, but wanting him out of power. Later I learned that the State Department, led by the Under Secretary, had been the core of the anti-Diem faction in the U.S. policymaking community that in the end prevailed despite the fact that the secretary of state, secretary of defense, the JCS, and the MACV commander supported Diem, for whom there was no viable successor in sight. In Saigon, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (in place only a few weeks before the coup), using CIA officers to contact Vietnamese officials in an attempt to conceal the U.S. hand, played a lone game, taking counsel only with himself.⁴

Although the coup was executed successfully, it turned out to be a disaster of the first magnitude. According to Taylor, President Kennedy was stunned by the news and bitterly regretted President Diem’s death.⁵ Certainly the coup was an important cause of the costly prolongation of the war into the 1970s. It also presented perhaps the last opportunity for the United States to assess the situation coldbloodedly and to opt gracefully out of its commitments in Vietnam. But that was not to be.

Diem’s downfall was a great morale boost to North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, who took the offensive, politically and militarily, to exploit the removal of their mortal enemy. In South Vietnam the Diem-Ngu political organization, including the secret security and intelligence services, disintegrated, and it did not take the Viet Cong long to dismantle Diem’s vaunted strategic hamlet program. After the coup it was discovered that the security situation in South Vietnam was far worse than thought. In the Delta the Viet Cong was not being compressed into smaller base areas but was lying low and in reality gaining strength. A large proportion of government attacks had been launched against non-targets, and U.S.-Vietnamese statistics on strategic hamlets and villages reported as being under government control had been greatly exaggerated.⁶ (John Vann’s views on the situation in the Delta ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Prologue: 1950-1963
• Part I: American Involvement in Vietnam
• Part II: Assessment
• Notes
• Glossary of Acronyms
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations