RIPPLE SALVO…#118… PART TWO… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN of a review of Operation Rolling Thunder…half a century ago…
26 JUNE 1966…ON THE HOME FRONT…New York Times… A sunny, humid Sunday in the city…
Page 1: “Ky Regime Begins Drive To Control Assembly”… ” The governing junta Generals has embarked on a determined campaign designed to insure that it 2will control or at least dominate, the constitutional assembly to be chosen by elections on September 11. Phase I of the campaign has been completed by promulgation of an election law that, in the opinion of disinterested analysts, is weighted in favor of the generals. Phase II is quietly underway behind the scenes. It seeks a loose temporary alliance that will help the junta to win election of assembly delegates favorable to it. The generals do not plan to run for election themselves, informed sources said today. But they hope that in the two weeks remaining before the filing deadline of July 11 they can put together pro-government slates opposing militant Buddhists in as many provinces as possible.”… Page 1:”Titantic Struggle Seen In Red China”…”The continuing purges in Communist China are viewed by experienced observers here as outward signs of a titanic struggle among rival men and policies in Peking. The nature of the struggle so far has persuaded a number of students of Chinese affairs that it is not only identifies most of the potential successors of Mao Tse-tung, but also much more than that. They sense a gigantic clash between moderates and zealots over economic, military and even nuclear policies. Chairman Mao, despite his single public appearance in recent months, is thought to have lost control of the situation. The unpredictable pattern of the purge, which is said to have caught even experienced Chinese officials off guard, suggest that Chairman Mao has been either manipulated by various combinations of his subordinates or reduced to part-time leadership by illness…
Page 1: “Meredith Leads the March On Eve of Rally in Jackson”… “James H. Meredith, the Negro who started the civil rights march through Mississippi, took over his leadership again today after a dispute clouded preparation for tomorrows entry into Jackson. A rally will be held after the marchers arrive angry that marchers had hiked to Tougalo College on the outskirts of Jackson without him yesterday, Mr. Meredith inexplicably returned to Canton, 20 miles away and retraced the march today in a show of harmony that made Mr. Meredith the march leader and soothed over the controversy…Both predicted that thousands will join in tomorrow for the last eight miles of the journey that Dr. King and other civil rights leaders carried after Mr. Meredith was wounded on June 6, the second day of this projected march to spur voter registration… Page 1 : “U.S. 7th Army in West Germany Is Feeling Impact of War in Vietnam”…”The impact has fallen mostly on the troop strengths of the 7th Army. From headquarters here in Stuttgart to an infantry company taking Ranger training…there is not a unit that has not lost significant personnel since the beginning of this year. The losses are being felt throughout the Army. “The Vietnam War is unquestionably skimming the cream off this Seventh Army,” said one field grade officer…
Page 7: “US Unit Fighting In Jungle 3rd Day”… American Infantrymen battled North Vietnamese troops for the 3rd day in dense jungles in the central highlands near the Cambodian border and reported 90 enemy killed in the fight. The action this week has been part of a sweep begun May 10 by elements of the 20th Infantry Division about 35 miles southwest of Pleiku…Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist press agency in Hanoi reported that Vietcong guerrillas had killed more than 300 American and South Vietnamese troops in two days of fierce fighting in South Vietnam…
26 June 1966…there are no CIA PRESIDENT’s DAILY BRIEFING notes for this date…
26 June 1966…ROLLING THUNDER OPERATIONS… NYT (27 June reporting ops for 26 June) Page: 10…”In North Vietnam United States Navy A-4 Skyhawks touched off a large explosion with 500-pound bombs that destroyed five large storage buildings, several cargo barges and a dock. The pilots said they saw a column of thick gray-black smoke climb to 6000-feet over the target eight miles northwest of Vinh. Four other Skyhawks dodged a surface-to-air missile 50-miles southwest of Thanh Hoa, then attacked the site from which the missile had been launched. No battle damage report.” There were no aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on this date…. oohrah….
RIPPLE SALVO… #118… “Lessons From A War”…Part Two… Part ONE is on record as Ripple Salvo #117, Rolling Thunder Remembered for 25 June 1966…
Tonight I complete the posting of a 1983 essay by Frances FitzGerald, titled, “Lessons From A War,” wherein the author offers some answers to the question, “How does America avoid future Vietnams?… Part One provided at least a dozen lessons from our Vietnam War experience… Part Two continues…I quote Fitzgerald ….
There is a corollary to ( “…if you embark on a war of duration, you must have the support of your people.” see Part One.), too, provided by North Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap–one that would be of some service to the guerrillas of Central America–that is, there’s a difference between a guerrilla and a people’s war. Guerrillas can separate themselves from the people, just as government can, but in that case they will remain guerrillas forever.
There’s a lesson–quite a number of lessons, I think–that Lyndon Johnson would have for us, certainly for other politicians. One of them is, do not generalize from the experiences in East Texas. Some people are not interested in pork-barrel politics. And do not promise to eliminate poverty, ignorance, and disease when you yourself are invincibly ignorant as to the causes of the other two.
Johnson has another lesson for future presidents, and that is, do not let your line agencies write their report cards. If the CIA is running an operation, believe the Pentagon, and vice versa. If you do not do that, you will run into what I call Robert Komer’s general theory of relativity. Komer was the head of the “pacification” operation, and in 1967 he told us journalists when we asked what progress was being made: “Of course, we’re making progress. We’re always making progress. It’s just sometimes the other side makes progress faster than we do.”
Then, of course, there’s a lesson from Senator Wayne Morse, who was one of the two senators who opposed the Tonkin Gulf resolution–and this is a lesson for other congressmen–and that is, quite simply, don’t take anything they tell you on faith, not “ma’s apple pie” and not “reasons of national security.” I think you’d have another smaller lesson, and that is, most of you congress people should not go to war zones if you oppose the administration’s policy, because most of you are not as clever as the local officials and they will make you look like a fool.
The CIA in Vietnam certainly had some lessons for us successors–certainly lessons that were not observed by its successors in Iran–and one is, simply, to get good intelligence, you cannot be too closely involved with a client government, particularly if you are trying to save it from its internal enemies. For in that case, you will not be using it, it will be using you.
General William Westmoreland has, I think, a linguistic lesson to teach us. He used language in an extraordinary fashion many times during the war. But the lesson that comes to my mind is this: If there is a verb “to attrit,” it is almost certainly reflexive.
There is also a rather serous lesson from President Lyndon Johnson has for future presidents, and that is, if you choose generals and cabinet members who will not resign for reasons of honor, then you in the end may have to.
There are many lessons learned from Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, but to select one of them, perhaps even at random: Do not say the credibility of the United States depends on continuing American support for a war that you are just about to lose. Your allies may believe you.
There are series of lessons that the American press corps learned in Vietnam, and the first one is that any official who talks about “credibility” is almost certainly lying.
There’s also another lesson, a rather philosophical one, which they learned from Kissinger and Nixon, and that is, there is a difference between what people know, what they think, what they believe, what they tell you, and what they do. These are separate categories, and you should not assume there is any communication between them.
A lesson that may be parochial to the press but nonetheless important is, do not write about land reform, even in the unlikely circumstance that you’ve grown up on a farm. It’s too complicated. To talk of land reform is to talk of the economy as a whole.
Finally, journalists do not lose wars. They can’t win them. And no more can they stop them. They represent public opinion more than they would like to imagine. Or in other words, a free country gets the free press it deserves.
The peace movement–what does it have to tell its successors? First, that it’s not un-American or unpatriotic to oppose one’s government, even when it’s carrying on a war, even when it has fielded American troops. Secondly, that it’s not necessary for a movement to have a single charismatic leader–a leader may be assassinated or he may be discredited, and then the movement will break apart. A movement may be mindless from time to time, but it will be more resilient. Popular protests are often more popular than electoral campaigns. Not everything in this country is done through the ballot box. On the other hand, movements which have only one issue may eventually fade away.
What do the veterans have to tell us? What do they have to tell future soldiers. First, that killing and risking one’s life demands moral seriousness. Soldiers must ask the purpose, and if they do not do it sooner, they’ll have to later, and it’ll be far more painful then.
What the Vietnam veterans have taught the rest of us is this: we simply cannot write off our losses, declare failure, and get on with the matter, close the subject, because the young men we have sent to fight our wars for us will not forget. They will become our conscience. They will insist that there is responsibility.
What have the Vietnamese taught us? they have taught us a number of things. First, that there is nothing more precious than independence and freedom. Secondly, that life is not a series of problems with solutions. there are irreconcilable conflicts, without solutions and without any possibility of compromise.
Most important for this conference certainly, and for all of us in general, is that the past is not simply for historians. Strength and endurance come from having a connection with one’s own history. The past and the future are balanced in the present, and you have one only to the extent you have the other. You can have control over your future only to the extent that you are deeply and firmly attached to your own history.
With that, your Humble Host encourages you to come up with your own list of “Lessons from the War” to pass on to your, our successors. If you lived it, or have studied it, and concluded that from that experience and/or study you have learned valued lessons, that becomes wisdom that deserves to be passed on. I invite you to use this website to publish your list of lessons from the war that you feel are instructive for our successors. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” wrote Plato. Task yourself to contribute a “helpful hint or two” on waging war… What do you have to tell future warriors? Future politicians? Your progeny?… for the record and for your conscience…post and share your wisdom…
Lest we forget…. Bear