CHAPTER 1

THE ARMY'S COUNTERINSURGENCYWAR IN VIETNAM

THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM is one of the most well documented and hotlydebated events in the history of the United States. The literature on the war isvast, the historiography strongly contested, the debate never ending. NancyTucker argues that Vietnam is "the never-ending war," with the conflict's reverberationsbeing felt long after the end of hostilities.

As John Prados has observed, study of the war has been somewhat atomized,with relatively few grand, overarching works that attempt to tell the storyof America's lost war in a single narrative. That atomization diffuses possible"lessons" of the Vietnam War and enables the fashioning of multiple alternative"usable" narratives of the war. In revisionist strands of the literature thereis a sense that, if only the particular aspect under discussion had been givenmore attention, then things might have been different and there might havebeen a "better war." Indeed, some revisionist scholars argue that there was abetter war the United States had in fact won before the vital domino of publicopinion gave way. This contention that victory was possible if only somethinghad been done differently has wide repercussions, not only for the historiographyof the war but for the lessons that policy makers and strategists draw fromit. If the war had been winnable, then arguments about the need to avoid futureinterventions would lose some of their force, and the Vietnam syndromewould cease to be a key point of concern for policy makers. In short, a "betterwar" would make military intervention palatable again.

Nowhere is this tendency to offer history as a lesson more prevalent thanin the historiography of the US counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. GaryHess has divided those who argue that the United States could have prevailedin Vietnam into two groups. There are the "Clausewitzians," who contendthat a less restrained policy, such as increased bombing of North Vietnamor the invasion of Laos, Cambodia, or even North Vietnam, could have ledto victory, and there are the "hearts and minders," who believe that betterexecution of counterinsurgency in South Vietnam could have won the war.The question of whether a better counterinsurgency campaign was possibleis at the heart of the tension between those who see Vietnam as "the unwinnablewar" and those who perceive a "better war." That tension was a point ofconflict throughout the post-Vietnam era, and an improved understanding ofthe Army's counterinsurgency war in Vietnam can help us better understandthe context in which the various factions within the Army constructed theirlessons of Vietnam.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ARMY'SCOUNTERINSURGENCY WAR IN VIETNAM

The "hearts and minds" revisionist critique of the war argues that had theArmy embraced counterinsurgency theory more fully, then a different resultwould have been possible. Proponents of this view, such as Larry Cable,Guenter Lewy, Andrew Krepinevich, and John Nagl, argue that the Army simplydidn't understand counterinsurgency and adhered to an "army concept"and doctrine centered on air mobility and massive use of firepower. GeneralWilliam Westmoreland pursued a costly strategy of attrition and ignoredthe promises of pacification. For these critics, Westmoreland's opposition tothe Marine Corps Combined Action Program, which used joint American-Vietnameseplatoons to provide long-term security for hamlets, was a glaringmissed opportunity. His focus on destroying the People's Army of Vietnam(PAVN) and National Liberation Front (NLF) "main force" units in the unpopulatedhighlands rather than securing the Vietnamese population betrayedan adherence to an Army strategic culture that was deeply unsuited tothe war in Vietnam.

Westmoreland also has his defenders. Dale Andrade, Andrew Birtle, JohnM. Carland, and Graham Cosmas have all argued that the "hearts and minds"school is both overly sanguine about the chances of success for a strategy thatfocused on securing the population of South Vietnam and underplays the sophisticationof Westmoreland's understanding of the situation in Vietnam.They frequently cite Westmoreland's description in his memoirs of a "two-handed"strategy, where one (American) hand would keep the PAVN mainforce units at bay while the other (South Vietnamese) hand would pacify thecountryside and secure the rural population from the NLF threat. Further,they argue that the number of American troops needed to pacify South Vietnamwould have dwarfed even the 536,000 that eventually deployed there. Inthose circumstances, Westmoreland was correct to use US forces to "stemthe tide" and let the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) focus onpacification.

The most comprehensive critique of "hearts and minds" revisionism hasnot come from those who focus on issues of strategy but rather those whostudy the implementation of pacification at the tactical level. Province-levelstudies, such as those by David Elliott, Jeffrey Race, James Trullinger, andEric Bergerud, have been particularly effective in illustrating just how deepthe problems with pacification efforts were. These studies all show a resilientNLF, an ineffectual and illegitimate South Vietnamese government, and a USmilitary that was unable to effect change, despite concerted attempts to carryout pacification. Bergerud describes how the 25th Infantry Division in HauNghia province employed many of the principles of classic counterinsurgencydoctrine yet was unable to make any inroads into the NLF's control of theprovince. When reading province-level analyses, it is hard to avoid the conclusionthat the NLF was far more deeply embedded into rural South Vietnamesesociety than the South Vietnamese government was and that US efforts atpacification were bound to fail.

A key point of contention between the two schools is the extent to whichUS pacification efforts improved as the war wore on. Central to this is the statusof an internal Army report: Program for the Pacification and Long-TermDevelopment of South Vietnam (or PROVN). PROVN was a 1966 study commissionedby Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson to reappraise thesituation in Vietnam. PROVN identified deep, structural problems with thepacification effort and argued that "the critical actions are those that occur atthe village, district and provincial levels. This is where the war must be fought;this is where that war and the object which lies beyond it must be won." Some"hearts and minds" scholars, such as John Nagl and Andrew Krepinevich,argue that PROVN represented both a comprehensive critique of Westmoreland'sstrategy and a viable counterinsurgency strategy that could have wonthe war. More recent scholarship by Dale Andrade and Andrew Birtle haspointed out that while PROVN was critical of some aspects of the war and arguedthat the United States should reorganize its pacification efforts and pushharder for Government of Vietnam (GVN) reform, it also firmly endorsedWestmoreland's strategy of attrition and the US forces' focus on the main unitwar in the highlands. According to Birtle and Andrade, while the documentcriticized elements of US performance, it was nowhere near the transformative,revolutionary document that "better war" advocates claimed. In fact itendorsed the central points of Westmoreland's approach and supported hisconventional campaign.

After PROVN, there was a reorganization of the pacification effort and anew organization, Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support(or CORDS), that placed all civilian and military pacification activities undera civilian—Robert W. Komer—and then made the head of CORDS deputycommander of MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam). This newagency would centrally plan all pacification activities and replace the chaosof multiple programs from multiple agencies. Further, in 1967, the CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA), together with Army Special Forces and the SouthVietnamese government, launched the Phoenix Program, a controversial operationto target the "Viet Cong infrastructure," the political and support apparatusof the NLF in the villages, and to disrupt it by killing or capturingNLF cadre. These initiatives, together with the replacement of Westmorelandwith General Creighton Abrams, were, some revisionists claim, a sign of long-overdueprogress in the war. As Lloyd Gardner has noted, the "hearts andminds" revisionists claim that "when General Westmoreland was replaced, abetter war was fought and the light at the end of the tunnel [was] relit." It isthis alleged rekindling of the "light at the end of the tunnel" that we must concernourselves with, for although the orthodox historiography has stronglycriticized any contention that the war was winnable, much of that criticismrevolves around the strategic choices that Westmoreland faced or the viabilityof the PROVN report. The contention that General Abrams fought a "betterwar," one primarily made by Lewis Sorley, garnered very favorable coverage attimes in the postwar era, and the claim deserves closer examination.

THE BETTER WAR? ABRAMS'S STRATEGY

Abrams took over as commander, US Military Assistance Command Vietnam,in June 1968. Abrams, with his often-rumpled appearance, ever-presentcigar, and abrupt manner, was a stark contrast to his predecessor, GeneralWilliam Westmoreland, the one-time superintendent of West Point. He wasalso more popular among journalists, so much so that the New York Times ranan article declaring that "General Abrams deserves a better war." It is fromthis article that the "better war" narrative derives its name. Abrams, so thenarrative goes, was responsible for a dramatic turnaround in US fortunes byfinally implementing a strategy that emphasized securing the population ofSouth Vietnam from attack rather than chasing after the wraithlike NorthVietnamese Army in the unpopulated highland jungles near the Cambodianborder. This school of thought, which strongly challenges the orthodoxview of Vietnam as an unmitigated failure, takes advantage of the fact thatthe Vietnam historiography has overwhelmingly focused on the pre-1968 era,before Abrams took over. This "better war" narrative was at the core of theversion of "Vietnam" advanced by counterinsurgency advocates in the wakeof the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and is therefore central to postwar contentionsover the lessons.

Certainly, Abrams made some significant changes on taking command.Rather than pursue Westmoreland's strategy of attrition, he preferred to emphasizehis "One War" concept—that there was not one war against enemymain forces units, one war to pacify the countryside, and one war in the airagainst North Vietnam, but that all these operations were deeply intertwinedand would be treated as such in future. Abrams explained,

We preach it as "one war," just one war ... we mean the province chief and thedistrict chief, the RF [Regional Forces] and the PF [Popular Forces] and theProvincial Reconnaissance Units and the Police. Everybody in here has gotto work together ... the Americans shouldn't do anything, really, in the wayof operating that the district advisor isn't in on, doesn't know about ... this isreally a complex environment to work in.

The three-month-long Accelerated Pacification Campaign, launched in November1968, was the epitome of this "one war" concept. Known to the USmilitary as the APC, its objective was to reestablish the South Vietnamesegovernment's (or GVN) presence in the countryside in the wake of the TetOffensive through a three-month special effort. Conceptually, there was littlenew to the APC. It employed the same pacification tools as previous campaigns:emphasis on the use of Regional Forces and Popular Forces (RF/PF)to secure hamlets, the establishment of a part-time militia (the People's Self-DefenseForce/PSDF) to provide extra personnel, the Chieu Hoi (or OpenArms) program for encouraging NLF desertions, and the nascent Phuong Hoang/Phoenixprogram for targeting the NLF infrastructure (political cadresand supporters) in the hamlets. What was new was the firm support of theUS Army in executing it. Abrams was not only instrumental in securing Vietnamesebacking of the plan, but he also directed that population security bethe primary operational objective for US and Vietnamese forces over the threemonths of the campaign.

Territorial security was the centerpiece of the APC, and it is worth noting,as some critics do, the emphasis on the coercive elements of counterinsurgency,rather than the "hearts and minds" aspects of doctrine that had beenemphasized by counterinsurgency advocates earlier in the 1960s. A briefermade the point explicit when he noted, "There's no question that pacificationis either 90 percent or 10 percent security, depending on which expert you talkto. But there isn't any expert in the world that will doubt that it's the first 10 percentor the first 90 percent. You just can't conduct pacification in the face ofan NVA [North Vietnamese Army] division." Without security, a necessarybut not sufficient condition, development work and good governance programswould be impossible. As Robert Komer explained, the objective wasto quickly spread a thin "security blanket" over the countryside, which heargued would "achieve greater results more quickly by seeking to expand adiluted form of government control while destroying enemy forces and infrastructurethan by seeking a high degree of security and efficient administration."The focus therefore would not be on improving GVN governance buton gaining as much territory as possible in advance of any possible cease-fire.

On its own terms, the APC was a major success. US and RVNAF forcesmoved into and secured over a thousand hamlets, the number of Hoi Chanh(NLF deserters under the Chieu Hoi program) greatly exceeded the plan's goal,and the number of hamlets rated "secure" under the Hamlet Evaluation Survey(HES) jumped from 70 percent to 86 percent between November 1968 andJune 1969. The APC set the pattern for future operations: The GVN's CentralPacification and Development Council developed a comprehensive and ambitiousPacification and Development Plan for 1969 while Abrams—althoughnever explicitly disavowing Westmoreland's attrition strategy—placed heavyemphasis on population security in his 1969 Combined Campaign Plan. Notonly did the planning follow the pattern of the APC, but so did the results,at least for a time: The period from 1969 through1971 marked the high pointof GVN control over the countryside, with HES indications showing almosttotal control over the countryside by mid-1971.

The statistics that measured control were not uncontroversial. RichardHunt notes the problems that creep in when such data become an end inthemselves: "Rather than merely being a means to identify trends and collectuniform data on the countryside, HES became, in the absence of anyother clear and universally accepted standard, one of the principal yardsticksof progress and inferentially a measure of individual performance." If thishappened, then HES figures were just as liable to be inflated as the notorious"body count" was earlier in the war. William Colby—head of the pacificationeffort—though generally supportive of HES as an indicator of trends, offeredthe important qualifier: "Some of the statistics, though, we thought were fairlysoft, to put it mildly." As noted in a July 1969 talk by Brian Jenkins at theRAND Corporation, the focus on statistics, accurate or otherwise, was oftencounterproductive:

Frequently, increases in the amount of our own military efforts are measuredand this is called progress. On this basis, if twice as many bombs per monthare dropped in 1969 as were dropped per month in 1967, we are doing better.The same with leaflets, battalion days of operations, and so on. If we ignore thescores and statistics, as the enemy seems to have done, then we are left witha different question: what is different about Vietnam today from two or threeyears ago and what is still the same? I have had to ask myself that question frequently.What impresses me is the remarkable degree to which things remainthe same [emphasis in the original].