RIPPLE SALVO… #906… AND A NEW YORK TIMES READER WRITES: “TO THE EDITOR: The ruthless Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which has shocked the world will no doubt be exploited both by the Johnson Administration and the Republican nominee as proving how right the United States has been to resist Communism in Vietnam. Actually, the tragedy of Czechoslovakia proves precisely the opposite. It shows how our involvement in Vietnam has caused us to take our eyes off the really critical areas in the world and how it has paralyzed our ability to act where our vital interests are at stake. Our ill-advised involvement in Vietnam has prevented us from directing our attention to the two really dangerous areas of confrontation with the Soviet Union. It has prevented us from seeking an agreement for a mutual military withdrawal from Central Europe and for a general European security agreement which might have created a climate in which the thaw in the Communist imperium might have peacefully developed. Our misadventure in Vietnam has also prevented us from cooperating with the Soviet Union in halting the supply of arms to the turbulent Middle East. Detente in Europe and the Middle East should have been the twin objective of American policy ever since the dual crises of 1956, when both East and West were flagrantly guilty of violating international law. It is to be hoped that the indefensible Soviet action in Czechoslovakia will not confuse Americans as to the true nature of the issue before them in this election year. That issue remains the ending oof the senseless war in Vietnam and the freeing of America’s energies and resources for the works of peace at home and abroad.”…James P. Warburg, Greenwich, Conn, Aug.21, 1968… More below… but first…
GOOD MORNING…Day NINE HUNDRED SIX of a stream of daily posts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam war with specific recognition and remembrance of the bold and brave contributions of the warriors of Operation Rolling Thunder who alone carried the war to the heart of North Vietnam…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Tuesday, 27 August 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “DUCLAP COSTS FOE HUNDREDS OF DEAD–North Vietnamese Retreat Leaving Ravaged Scene After Three-Day Siege”… “A North Vietnamese assault force retreated from the Duclap area under a heavy barrage of allied firepower today after having failed to take the installations. The attackers left hundreds of their dead and a badly ravaged landscape behind them. During the siege, 643 enemy soldiers were killed and more than 200 weapons were captured. ‘They fought us in spurts for three days and four nights,’ said Sgt. James M. Alward, who helped defend the United States Special Forces camp at Duclap, the enemy’s chief target in this mountainous area near the Cambodian border. ‘There were two occasions when I definitely thought they had us,’ added Master Sgt. Tet Boody, bearded and groggy after more than 72 hours without sleep. ‘It looked bad. It definitely did.’ At noon today, the scene at the well fortified camp supported Sergeant Boody’s words. There was hardly a sandbag that had not been shredded of singed by the enemy’s 81-mm mortar shells and B-40 rocket grenades. Bodies of enemy soldiers dangled by the score from the barbed wire perimeter. The smell of death was everywhere. More than 25 bodies of allied soldiers were stacked up in green plastic bags awaiting an airlift to Banmethuot, about 30 miles to the northeast. Dozens had already been sent out this morning and yesterday.”… NO MAJOR ATTACKS ON CITIES… Since heavy clashes broke out more than a week ago the enemy has refrained from major ground attacks on South Vietnam’s most important cities. There has been one rocket shelling of Saigon and a light thrust near the huge United States air base at Danang. Several smaller cities have been struck, but the enemy forces have been promptly pushed back…”…6,000 KILLED IN EIGHT DAYS… Allied commanders reported today that more than 6,000 enemy soldiers have been killed in the last eight days of bitter fighting, which was still continuing in the I Corps area, the northernmost provinces of South Vietnam.”…
PEACE TALKS: Page 1: “HANOI AIDES URGE U.S. PUBLIC FOR CHANGE”… “A few hours before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a North Vietnamese spokesman–Nguyen Thanh Le– made a new appeal today for American critics of the war to press for changes in United States policy. But he sidestepped a question whether Hanoi would find acceptable the proposals of Democratic dove for the immediate cessation of American air Attacks on North Vietnam to be followed by mutual withdrawal from South Vietnam.”… A State Department, Office of the Historian, Historical Document, a telephone conversation between the President and Senator Dirksen at 11:15 on 27 August 1968 is worth a read as the Senator asks the President how the peace talks are going… Read at:
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d341
Page 1: “CONVENTION IS ON–TED KENNEDY REBUFF DRAFT MOVEMENT–Unit Rule Ended–Move to Back Senator Kennedy Seems To Have Base in California”… Page 1: “GOV TOM CONNALLY SLATE WINS FLOOR FIGHT–Humphrey forces Gain Ove Rivals By Seating of Texas Regulars”… Page 1: “VIETNAM PLANK SUPPORTS JOHNSON ON WAR POLICIES”… Page 1: “PRAGUE LEADERS HOME–COMPROMISE AGREEMENT WITH MOSCOW REPORTED–Withdrawal Seen–Slow Soviet Pullout Is Likely–Dubcek May Keep Post”… Page 3: “TENSION IN PRAGUE SLOWLY SUBSIDES–City Returns To Normal–Tanks Ignored”… Page 4: “Poland Wants Bloc Troops On Czech-German Line”… Page 6: “YUGOSLAVIA BOLSTERS DEFENSES AGAINST A SOVIET INTERVENTION”… Page 7: “RUMANIA SOFTENS ATTACKS ON SOVIETS–Shift Follows talk Between Ceausescu And Russia”… Page 8: “SOVIET DIPLOMACY SEEMS DAMAGED–Blow To Policy On Nonaligned World Is Discerned”… Page 11: “BRITISH LEADERS ASSAIL INVASION–Parliament Speeches Recall Munich Crisis of 1938″…
Page 29: “300 POLICE USE TEAR GAS TO BREAK YOUNG MILITANTS BARRICADE IN CHICAGO PARK–Shouting Youths Oppose Curfew–Incident Follows March On Loop By Dissenters Angry Over Leaders Arrest”… Page 33: “STUDENT SURVEY SHOWS 35,911 STUDENTS STAGED 221 PROTESTS NATIONWIDE LAST YEAR.”…
27 AUGUST 1968…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…. New York Times (28 Aug reporting 27 Aug ops)… Page 10: “In the air war over North Vietnam, American pilots flew 107 missions over the panhandle, or southern area, yesterday. Navy pilots of the aircraft carrier Hancock focused on highway and river traffic at points between Vinh and Dong Hoi. ‘There wa a fantastic number of trucks on the highways–more than I have seen in a long time,’ said a [pilot, Lieutenant Commander Walter H. Kieffel, of West Covina, California. ‘But by the tme we finished there only remained a bunch of fires.’… “.. Page 10: “JET DOWNED IN ACCIDENT”… “A United States Navy F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber was shot down by accident on August 17 by an air-to-air missile from another Navy F-4 while the two planes were pursuing three MiG interceptors… “… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) there were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 27 August 1968…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON THE FOUR 27 AUGUST DATES OF THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965, 1966, 1967, and 1968… NONE… oohrah….
RIPPLE SALVO… #906… On 21 August 1968 the NYT 8-column, banner headline read: “CZECHOSLOVAKIA INVADED BY THE RUSSIANS AND FOUR OTHER WARSAW PACT FORCES”… Lower on page 1 a headline: “JOHNSON SUMMONS U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL.”… and on page 44 an editorial:
SOVIET INVASION…
“Last night’s invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Soviet Union and its allies is a brutal retrogression to the suppressionist spirit that forced Hungary to heel in 1956. The cynicism of the Kremlin move, made in violation of the most elementary canons of international law, is underlined by the barefaced hypocrisy of the Tass claim that the invasion was made at the request of the Czechoslovak Government and Communist party leaders. The careful and long preparation that preceded the move is shown by the rapidity with which Soviet tanks arrived in Prague and surrounded the headquarters of the Czechoslovakia Communist party. Once again the world has been given depressing proof of how little value there is to Soviet words about respect for the sovereignty of nations, and about the right of the people of all states–even the smallest–to decide their own fate without outside interference.
“The dominant forces in the Kremlin are still too terrified of all forms of dissent to permit any growth of genuine democracy inside the Soviet bloc. The sympathies of all Americans will be with the Czechoslovaks in this period of trial, but the ability of the United States to do anything beyond diplomatic protest is gravely limited by its over-involvement in the morass of Vietnam. In any event, this latest challenge to freedom must be met by all the nations of the world through the instrument of the United Nations. This may prove its supreme test.”…
IMHO… This is another unlearned lesson from the “morass of Vietnam.” Even when the United States was the “most powerful nation in the world” in 1968, we were out of POSITION with our POWER deployed on the wrong side of the world. In addition, our citizens were in no mood to show the RESOLVE required to DETER the Soviet Union from squelching freedom in Eastern Europe. POWER, POSITION and RESOLVE are the absolute hard requirements to DETER bad behavior and punish it if it can’t be altered by peaceful persuasion.
Jump ahead to 2014. American POWER was bogged down in the morass of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our forces were out of POSITION. At home, we were a divided and pre-occupied nation devoid of interest in another war. Our reservoir of RESOLVE, will to win, was dry. Putin took our measure and annexed Crimea in March 2014 with the same guile and purpose the Soviets displayed in 1956 in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia 1968. Unfortunately, TODAY we remain out of position, with forces worn and ragged after 17 years of fighting losing causes, and a citizenry with little, if any, interest in projecting power and fighting another war. Our President inherited a can of worms in 2016. The question in 2018 is whether our adversaries will wait for a rearming and upgrading of our forces, a withdrawal from the quagmires that have drained our energy and resources for nearly two decades, and for a reversal of the growing disunity of our people. We are asking for trouble. Just as we were in the summer of 1968… That’s my opinion…what’s yours?… Can I quote you?…
Lest we forget… Bear…