ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 24 SEPTEMBER 1966

RIPPLE SALVO… #207… AFTER VIETNAM…   but first…

Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED SEVEN of a daily history lesson that matters– the Air War called Rolling Thunder…

24 SEPTEMBER 1966… PAGE ONE OF THE HOMETOWN NEWS…NEW YORK TIMES… A great Saturday for some football… Army v. Holy Cross…

Page 1: “Hanoi And Peking Reject U.S. Plan For Stopping Vietnam War”…”North Vietnam rejected yesterday as ‘another U.S. peace swindle’ the latest American proposals for ending the Vietnamese war. Communist China issued a similar rejection today. The Peking regime’ said the proposals put forth by Arthur Goldberg, the United States delegate to the United Nations, were ‘another peace swindle in collaboration with Soviet revisionism.’ It said that ‘the United Nations has no right to deal with the Vietnam problem.’ North Vietnam, also in a broadcast monitored here (Tokyo), said the United States was trying to ‘cover up its scheme to expand and prolong aggression in South Vietnam and to stay and maintain troops there. North Vietnam’s reaction to Ambassador Goldberg’s speech: ‘ U.S. head delegate Arthur Goldberg again tried to fool public opinion with his proposals for peaceful negotiations on the Vietnam problem. Goldberg tried to get the United Nations to interfere in the Vietnamese issue so the United states will be able to continue its aggression.’ The North Vietnamese response also said: ‘that in the face of the ever stronger condemnation of the world peoples of the bombing of North Vietnam Mr. Goldberg had hypocritically said the United States was prepared to order a cessation of the bombing: ‘It said that this promise was followed by a slanderous statement aimed at whitewashing the U.S. aggression a reference to the United States proviso that such a step would be taken only if Hanoi agreed to make a corresponding reduction in its war effort.”… Page 1: “Gromyko Rebuffs Plan”…” ‘The US proposal to deescalate the fighting and arrange for withdrawals of forces of both sides,’ Mr. Gromyko said, ‘give no signs testifying to the seriousness of the intention of Washington to seek for a settlement of this problem and to stop the aggression against the Vietnamese people. The aggressor has come to Vietnam. The aggressor should leave Vietnam.”…

Page 1: “President Urges Governors Join Inflation Fight”…”President Johnson called on state and local governments today to join the fight against inflation by delaying the sales of bonds for new highways, schools and other construction that is supported by Federal grants and loans. In the first of a series of meetings the President received seven Governors at the White House to explain his efforts to cut spending and to persuade them to follow suit. One of the guests, Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, came away with the impression that an increase in income taxes next year was almost certain if the costs of the war in Vietnam continue to rise at the present rate. Mr. Scranton promised to cooperate in curbing new expenses, but doubted the savings could offset war costs.”… Page 1: “President Signs Minimum Wage Bill”…”With evident personal and political satisfaction, President Johnson today signed a new law that will raise the minimum wage to $1.60 an hour in 1968. Recalling his own New Deal battles for the first minimum wage of $.25 an hour in 1938, President Johnson remarked:’Our new wage law, in my judgment, will bring a larger piece of this country’s prosperity and a greater share of personal dignity to millions of our workers, their wives and their children. And for me–that’s what being President is all about.’…”…

Page 1: “U.S. Voices Regret On Cambodia Raid”…”The United States expressed regret today for an loss of life or property that occurred as a result of what Cambodia has charged was a raid by two U.S. helicopters last Wednesday. The State Department release was intended to forestall any serious new flare-up in the already strained relations between the United States and Cambodia.”… Page 1 “McNamara Says 7,000 Warheads In NATO’s Forces” …”Secretary McNamara told a North Atlantic Treaty Organization working party today that the United States now has 7,000 nuclear warheads in inventory for NATO forces in Europe. This he said is an increase of more than 100-per cent since 1961. He made the announcement he said, to counter ‘absolutely unfounded’ rumors that the United States was considering a reduction in nuclear weapons in NATO forces.”…

24 September 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized)… Vietnam: Hanoi yesterday rejected a request by the International control commission to allow one of its teams to resume patrol activities in the Northeastern sector of the Demilitarized Zone… North Vietnam: Road watchers near the Mu Gia Pass have reported that truck movements between North Vietnam and Laos have increased markedly in recent weeks. The rate of individual truck traffic alone–to say nothing of convoys–is double that of preceding months.

24 SEPTEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…NYT (25 Sept reporting 24 Sept Ops)…Page 1: “B-52s Again Bomb Targets In The North”..”United States B-52 Strato-fortresses again bombed North Vietnam for the fifth time today. The bombers struck at infiltration routes and truck parks just north of the DMZ. It was the third straight day the B-52s from Guam had been employed against North Vietnam…The B-52s were first used in the Mu Gia Pass on April 12 and 27.”…Page 8: “Smaller American fighter-bombers struck several times within the border zone yesterday. Ranging over North Vietnam during the day the American planes flew 108 multi-plane attack missions. For the third straight day Navy pilots struck at the railroad yards and fuel dumps near the coastal city of Thanh Hoa. They were said to have saturated the railroad yards with 250, 500 and 1,000-pound bombs, leaving 25 boxcars and six warehouses destroyed and several hundred feet of railroad tracks torn up. Air Force pilots destroyed 16 cargo ships along the coast five miles north of Donghoi and set fire to supplies on the shore when they dropped drums of napalm.”…”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 24 September 1966…  ooohrah…

RIPPLE SALVO… #207… “AFTER VIETNAM”…  In 1961 Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC, retired, published his translation of Mao Tse-tung’s “On Guerrilla Warfare.” Mao’s book on war fighting became available to America’s strategic thinkers and tactical leaders just in time for it to make a difference in how the United States approached and countered the guerrillas warriors of the world, starting in South Vietnam. The General was a warrior — he was awarded the Navy Cross during the Guadalcanal campaign — who could, and did, write. After he retired, and while he was earning his Ph.D in Chinese military history at Oxford University, he translated and published Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” and Mao’s “On Guerrilla War.”

General Griffith broke the code and he put the Chinese Communist playbook in our general’s hands in time for our misadventure in Vietnam. The same playbook that had been in use by General Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh in fighting with the Japanese, the French and the United States. And with the gospel according to Mao, General Griffith alerted all that there was an alternative to conventional and nuclear warfare, and had been for centuries, that was extraordinarily suitable for a small nation to survive and compete effectively in a war with a bigger, more powerful nation. Giap put Mao’s wisdom to work for Ho Chi Minh and we all know the rest of the story.

In May 1977 General Griffith updated his 1961 edition and among those updates is the following observation… I quote:

“After Vietnam”…

Faced with the loss of tens of thousands of lives; with more than a quarter of a million wounded; with the waste of above $35 billion, and with rising resentment against continued prosecution of a war many deemed unjustified and immoral, and more deemed politically unnecessary, the United States finally withdrew from Vietnam.

It has been said, and I think correctly, that a nation learns only from its defeats, and if we have learned something from our tragic involvement in Vietnam, that bloody experience may discourage us from further costly adventures in remote areas that have no relationship to our vital national security interests.

Had we studied Mao Tse-tung’s corpus on revolutionary war, of which his Ye Chi Chan is an important part, we might have hesitated before making the commitment we did.

Other revolutionary wars threaten. They will be fought in Africa and eventually, most probably, in South and Central America as well. For the next fifty years we will be living in an era dominated by such wars. Let us hope those who control the destinies of our country are fully aware of the implications of revolutionary war, and will weigh fateful decisions with more knowledge and objectivity than did their predecessors in our high offices.    …unquote… 

Source: “Mao Tse-tung: On Guerrilla Warfare,” Introduction and Translation by Samuel B. Griffith II, Brigadier General, USMC, Collector’s Edition, Eason Press, 1996.

Mao’s wisdom remains central to the strategies and tactics currently being employed on three fronts: (1) by communist guerrillas the world over, (2) the Islamic radical terrorists the world over, and (3) on the streets of the United States presented in another form–Saul D. Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” Mao ‘s rules for guerrillas is intended to direct the struggle between a band of revolutionaries and a dominant adversary. Alinsky’s “Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals” is a guide for “Have-nots” to defeat “Haves.” (Rebelling against the establishment). I wonder if “Homeland Security” has made the link?…

Lest we forget…           Bear               ………  –30–  ……….