HISTORY AND HINDSIGHT: LESSONS FROM VIETNAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490012-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490012-0
History and Hindsight:
Lessons From Vietnam
ON PA*&E
NEW YORK TIMES
30 April, 1985
By Late 1964 Many Knew
South Vietnam Was Losing
By CHARLES MOHR
Sped-1 to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, April 29 - For a
month the public has been immersed in
a flood of retrospection and introspec-
tion about the Vietnam War, which
ended 10 years ago Tuesday. The out-
pouring indicates that many people are
at least as interested in revising history
as understanding it.
It has been a time for recalling bat-
tles but also for refighting them ver-
bally as some try to apply the lessons of
Vietnam to still unsettled ideological
disputes and to current political contro-
rversies, notably in Central America.
The conflicting interpretations and
re-interpretations of America's last
major war may be especially bewilder-
ing to those who were born after the
start of the United States' direct in-
volvement in Vietnam or those who
were very young at the time. Both pub-
lic opinion sampling by polltakers and
empirical evidence indicate that the
origins, rationales and purposes of the
i American experience in Vietnam, and
the conduct of American officials and
soldiers, are obscure to many people.
But some of the main outlines of what
a retired general has called "the one
clear failure" in American military
history are clear.
The war was, of course, a vast-
human tragedy and contributed di-
rectly to nearly immeasurable suffer-
ing after it ended. It is clearly signifi-
cant to recall the postwar genocide in
neighboring Cambodia, punitive re-
pression by the victorious Vietnamese
Communists and the sad saga of refu-
gees from all three countries - Viet-
nam; Cambodia and Laos - that once
i were French Indochina.
The memoirs of all informed Amer-
ican military and civil officials agree
that by late 1964 the proxy war was
being lost. A major reason was the in-
filtration of South Vietnam by ever-
growing numbers of regular North
Vietnamese troops. The initially mild
escalation of American effort was
being matched by the North Vietnam-
ese, and it would never end.
Faced with the clear possibility of
defeat, President Johnson reluctantly
supplemented combat support of the
South with United States soldiers,
with the bombing of North Vietnam
and with attempts to curb the flow of
men and materiel into the South:
Many senior Johnson Administra-
tion officials said air power could be
made to persuade North Vietnam to
cease fighting. Some argued that Ho
Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese lead-
er, would choose to protect his indus-
trial base rather than continue the
war.
Subsequent Central Intelligence
A encv analysis concluded that even
e great weig t o m s ro p ,
whit 1 id very stgmt_cant dams e,
never seriously slowed the flow of
itf%TFo5w the Chinese joined in the
Korean War in 1950's, American offi-
cials tailored the pressure on North
Vietnam to prevent a possible recur-
rence.
The American troops first sent to
South Vietnam, as well as air crews
operating from Thailand and ships of
the Seventh Fleet in the South China
Sea, were well-trained and aggres-
sive. Morale remained high for sev-
eral years. The combat units were
concentrated in the nothern three
quarters of South Vietnam, leaving.
responsibility for the fertile, populous
Mekong Delta mostly to the South
Vietnamese.
The author of this article, who re-
ports on military affairs from the
Washington bureau of The Times,
was a correspondent in Indochina for
five years.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490012-0