I'm baaaaack. I won't use Mark Twain's line about not being dead. I've just been distracted. So, sue me (no, I'd better not say that. I today's litigious society someone just might). Okay, so get upset and never come back. What? You've never read my blog? Oh.
So, by 1959 some of the Viet Minh troops that had returned to the North after the Geneva Agreements had started oozing back into the South. Communist-led uprisings in 1959 in the Mekong Delta and Centra Highlands captured some areas from free into Communist control.
In 1961 the increasing insurgency by the Viet Minh in the South Vietnamese countryside brought President John F. Kennedy to decide to increase US support for the South. Both economic and military aid was provided and the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was formed in Feb. 1962. The South Vietnamese government, with US assistance, started the "strategic hamlet" program, which was to consolidate 14,000 villages into 11,000 self-contained secure hamlets. The intent was to isolate the guerrillas from the people, or in Maoist terminology, the fish from the sea in which they swim. The program tried to do too much, too soon, and the hamlets were poorly defended by poorly trained locals, and support by Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units was inadequate. 8,000 hamlets wer established, but only about 1,500 were viable.
In 1961 al communist armed units in the South were unified into a single People's Liberation Armed Force (PLAF) .
Diem grew more and more unpopular as his regime became more repressive. on May 8, 1963 ARVN troops opened fire on demonstrators protesting the regime's oppression of Budhist monks. In June a Budhist monk committed suicide by self-immolation, and by the end of the year six more had.
Kennedy's administration told the South Vietnamese military leaders that they would be willing to suppor a military-led government, and a coup in early November resulted in Diem being assassinated.
Vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the Presidency after Kennedy was assassinated November 22, 1963, and decided to increase support for the embattled government of General Duong Van Minh. Vietnamese Communist Party officials hoped an escalation of the war would result in the same kind of compromise as the US had agreed to in Korea, and thought a quick increase in the tempo of the war would lead to this. The USSR and Communist China were also part of the calculation, and when Moscow disagreed with the escalation but Beijing agreed, Moscow's influence and support diminished, while China's increased.
Now let's just jump ahead to the Tet Offensive. Yep, I know what you are thinking. "Can that old Retired Curmudgeon have anything new to say about THAT?" Well, not exactly new, but reletively unheard. There's a book out titled "Unheralded Victory" by Mark W. Woodruff. He went to the original sources and found that we actually WON that war! The Tet Offensive broke the back of the Viet Cong, almost totally wiping them out. Any activity from that time on identified as "Viet Cong" was actually PAVN troops not in uniform. Of course, they didn't have the support of the locals like the real VC had, and weren't very successful.
The TRUTH about the Vietnam War is being hidden by all those college students who were protesting US involvement. They now have the mid- to top-level positions in almost all the media and are refusing to let any other point of view out. For example, the US lost 58,000+ killed in the war. The North lost 1,200,000! Reported by AFP in 1995. You can google it. The much-maligned Vietnamization program worked. US ground troops were withdrawn following the Paris Peace Accords.
By the Paris Peace Accords in (signed January 27, 1973) the North was whupped. The cumulative effect of the defeats on the ground in the South, along with increased bombing in the North, had brought them to the negotiating table.
Once US ground troops were gone the PAVN was convinced South Vietnam would roll over under attack. A major attack was launched across the DMZ. Tanks, artillery, APCs, regular army troops, but oops, the South defeated them.
So, they got their sugar daddies (USSR and CHINA) to rebuild, restock, reorganize and retrain their army and waited for another opportunity. The Democrats elected an anti-Vietnam War Congress in 1974 and the North invaded in in early January 1975. The Paris Peace Accords permitted both the USSR and US to provide $1 billion annually in aid, which, of course, the USSR exceeded. The anti-war Congress passed a law cutting off US aid to the South. President Ford vetoed it, and Congress over-rode his veto. Without aid, without hope, the ARVN collapsed and the North finally defeated the South.
More next time.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Congratulations to the Winners!
Many people are saying the 2006 election was a repudiation of President Bush and Iraq and/or a backlash against a group of Republican Senators and Representatives who had turned their backs on what the Republican Party says are its core beliefs and/or a disgusted reaction to excesses ranging from Jack Abrahamoff and Duke Cunningham and/or a revulsion to Rep. Foley's emails and text messages to teen male Congressional Pages. Some say all of the above.
I'm not writing this to rehash all the self-inflicted political wounds by the Republicans that gave many conservative voters an excuse to stay home and not vote, and some conservatives and many moderates an excuse to vote Democratic. Nor am I going to give any space to the talking points about all the troubles we will have because the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. You can read as much of that as you want (and a whole lot more, too) on thousands of blogs covering the spectrum from extreme Left to extreme Right.
I'm here to give some of what former radio personality Paul Harvey called "the rest of the story." Some of what so many in the media and blogs either don't know or don't want to bring to peoples' attention - background.
This doesn't start with the 2006 Mid-Term Election, nor the 2004 Presidential Election. We have to go back well before that, long before the 2000 Presidential Election, Gulf War I, the break-up of the Soviet Union and fall of the Berlin Wall. Back, much farther back, long before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. I believe we have to go back to the end of the 1930s, World War II and the 1950s and '60s to find the seeds that have grown into the situation we have now.
Following World War II many colonial powers attempted to regain control of the colonies that had been captured by the Japanese. One of these was France, which tried to reinstate the status quo ante in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
That French Indochinese status quo ante began with missionaries and traders arriving in the early 16th century. By the end of 1884 the French had achieved complete control of Viet Nam. Of course this control didn't stop Vietnamese resistance to that control and was more complete in the cities than the countryside. The resistance continued, waxing and waning, through World War I (and beyond). A key player from soon after World War I was Ho Chi Minh, who was born in May 1890, learned navigation in Saigon in 1911 and worked as a kitchen helper on a French ship until after WWI.
In 1919 he was in Paris, France and tried to meet with American President Woodrow Wilson (who was in Paris for the Versailles Peace Conference) to present a proposal for Vietnamese independence. He was turned away (not surprising, considering the generally held opinion about "white man's burden") and the resistance simmered through the depression of the 1930s. With the start of World War II the Japanese conquered Indochina, driving out the French. It quickly became apparent to the locals that the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" only provided for prosperity to the Japanese, so the resistance turned from welcoming the Japanese to fighting them. Ho Chi Minh was one of the many Indochinese who fought in the guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation. Even a relative backwater as Vietnam received too many Japanese troops to make it anything besides a guerrilla war.
After the defeat of Japan the Indochinese wanted the French to stay away and let them be independent. After all, the French had either evacuated Indochina or been taken captive by the Japanese. They hadn't stuck around and defended the locals from the Japanese, so why should they expect to be welcomed back after the Japanese left? They wanted independence, figuring they couldn't do any worse for themselves. The French , on the other hand, wanted to regain and maintain control of Indochina.
On August 16, 1945 the Viet Minh National Congress ratified the decision of the Indochinese Communist Party's Central Committee and began a general uprising. Knowledge of the Japanese surrender caused the local Japanese commander to surrender his forces to the Indochinese Communist Party on August 17 in Hanoi. The French moved quickly to try and retake Indochina, with US Government support of the French claims, as well as material support but no troops.
The French Navy bombarded Haiphong in November 1946 and by April 1947 full scale war was being fought in northern Vietnam between the French and the Communist Viet Minh. In the south the Viet Minh stuck to their anti-religious belief structure and executed some religious leaders, eliminating the possibility of an alliance with the religious groups against the French.
Action in the north quickly established a pattern with the Viet Minh controlling more and more of the countryside while the French maintained control of urban areas. In 1948 the French tried to mollify the locals and gave what they called "independence" to all Vietnam, then proved just how independent they really were by including the new nation as one of the "associated states" within the French Union. Few in Vietnam took this seriously and many nationalists left the country rather than be seen, even incorrectly, as supporting the French. The United States recognized the Associated State of Vietnam in early 1950, followed a few days later by Communist Chinese recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
The French and Viet Minh repeatedly clashed over control of the Vietnam-China border area, with the French also seeking to eliminate Viet Minh activity in northern Laos. In November 1953 the French occupied Dien Bien Phu, a strategic town in northern Vietnam near the Laotian border.
In February 1954 a plan was announced for a peace conference to settle both the Korean and Indochinese conflicts, to be held in Geneva starting in April. Ho Chi Minh and his leading general Vo Nguyen Giap, whose official title was Minister of the Interior, decided to "make a statement" by capturing Dien Bien Phu while the peace conference was in session. The siege began on March 13 and the French garrison surrendered on May 7. Peace talks that achieved something began May 8 and a cease fire and final declaration were completed in July, establishing a demarcation line roughly following the 17th parallel. Viet Minh forces were to move to the north of that line and French to the south.
A 300 day period was established giving civilians free movement between north and south, and over 1,000,000 north Vietnamese civilians fled the north and the rule of the Communist Viet Minh for democracy, weak and corrupt as it was, in the south. The final declaration also called for national elections in July 1956 and maintained that the demarcation line was provisional and would not in any way be considered a political territorial border. Just more agreed terms for the Communists to ignore. So by the end of the 300 day period for every Vietnamese to decide which form of government looked to be better, over 1,000,000 north Vietnamese civilians voted with their feet and fled the north and the rule of the Communist Viet Minh for South Vietnam, while only a relative handful of Communists left the south for the "workers' paradise" in the north.
The president of South Vietnam was Bao Dai, with Ngo Dinh Diem Prime Minister. In September 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to Prime Minister Diem, promising US assistance to help South Vietnam remain non-Communist. Only 9 1/2 years after the Japanese surrender that ended World War II President Eisenhower sent the first military advisors to South Vietnam in February 1955. I'm certain this was at the very least several years earlier than most people realize.
And that's more than enough for the first bite of the apple. Soon (I hope) we'll go past the end of Eisenhower's presidency and get to the really good stuff.
I'm not writing this to rehash all the self-inflicted political wounds by the Republicans that gave many conservative voters an excuse to stay home and not vote, and some conservatives and many moderates an excuse to vote Democratic. Nor am I going to give any space to the talking points about all the troubles we will have because the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. You can read as much of that as you want (and a whole lot more, too) on thousands of blogs covering the spectrum from extreme Left to extreme Right.
I'm here to give some of what former radio personality Paul Harvey called "the rest of the story." Some of what so many in the media and blogs either don't know or don't want to bring to peoples' attention - background.
This doesn't start with the 2006 Mid-Term Election, nor the 2004 Presidential Election. We have to go back well before that, long before the 2000 Presidential Election, Gulf War I, the break-up of the Soviet Union and fall of the Berlin Wall. Back, much farther back, long before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. I believe we have to go back to the end of the 1930s, World War II and the 1950s and '60s to find the seeds that have grown into the situation we have now.
Following World War II many colonial powers attempted to regain control of the colonies that had been captured by the Japanese. One of these was France, which tried to reinstate the status quo ante in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
That French Indochinese status quo ante began with missionaries and traders arriving in the early 16th century. By the end of 1884 the French had achieved complete control of Viet Nam. Of course this control didn't stop Vietnamese resistance to that control and was more complete in the cities than the countryside. The resistance continued, waxing and waning, through World War I (and beyond). A key player from soon after World War I was Ho Chi Minh, who was born in May 1890, learned navigation in Saigon in 1911 and worked as a kitchen helper on a French ship until after WWI.
In 1919 he was in Paris, France and tried to meet with American President Woodrow Wilson (who was in Paris for the Versailles Peace Conference) to present a proposal for Vietnamese independence. He was turned away (not surprising, considering the generally held opinion about "white man's burden") and the resistance simmered through the depression of the 1930s. With the start of World War II the Japanese conquered Indochina, driving out the French. It quickly became apparent to the locals that the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" only provided for prosperity to the Japanese, so the resistance turned from welcoming the Japanese to fighting them. Ho Chi Minh was one of the many Indochinese who fought in the guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation. Even a relative backwater as Vietnam received too many Japanese troops to make it anything besides a guerrilla war.
After the defeat of Japan the Indochinese wanted the French to stay away and let them be independent. After all, the French had either evacuated Indochina or been taken captive by the Japanese. They hadn't stuck around and defended the locals from the Japanese, so why should they expect to be welcomed back after the Japanese left? They wanted independence, figuring they couldn't do any worse for themselves. The French , on the other hand, wanted to regain and maintain control of Indochina.
On August 16, 1945 the Viet Minh National Congress ratified the decision of the Indochinese Communist Party's Central Committee and began a general uprising. Knowledge of the Japanese surrender caused the local Japanese commander to surrender his forces to the Indochinese Communist Party on August 17 in Hanoi. The French moved quickly to try and retake Indochina, with US Government support of the French claims, as well as material support but no troops.
The French Navy bombarded Haiphong in November 1946 and by April 1947 full scale war was being fought in northern Vietnam between the French and the Communist Viet Minh. In the south the Viet Minh stuck to their anti-religious belief structure and executed some religious leaders, eliminating the possibility of an alliance with the religious groups against the French.
Action in the north quickly established a pattern with the Viet Minh controlling more and more of the countryside while the French maintained control of urban areas. In 1948 the French tried to mollify the locals and gave what they called "independence" to all Vietnam, then proved just how independent they really were by including the new nation as one of the "associated states" within the French Union. Few in Vietnam took this seriously and many nationalists left the country rather than be seen, even incorrectly, as supporting the French. The United States recognized the Associated State of Vietnam in early 1950, followed a few days later by Communist Chinese recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
The French and Viet Minh repeatedly clashed over control of the Vietnam-China border area, with the French also seeking to eliminate Viet Minh activity in northern Laos. In November 1953 the French occupied Dien Bien Phu, a strategic town in northern Vietnam near the Laotian border.
In February 1954 a plan was announced for a peace conference to settle both the Korean and Indochinese conflicts, to be held in Geneva starting in April. Ho Chi Minh and his leading general Vo Nguyen Giap, whose official title was Minister of the Interior, decided to "make a statement" by capturing Dien Bien Phu while the peace conference was in session. The siege began on March 13 and the French garrison surrendered on May 7. Peace talks that achieved something began May 8 and a cease fire and final declaration were completed in July, establishing a demarcation line roughly following the 17th parallel. Viet Minh forces were to move to the north of that line and French to the south.
A 300 day period was established giving civilians free movement between north and south, and over 1,000,000 north Vietnamese civilians fled the north and the rule of the Communist Viet Minh for democracy, weak and corrupt as it was, in the south. The final declaration also called for national elections in July 1956 and maintained that the demarcation line was provisional and would not in any way be considered a political territorial border. Just more agreed terms for the Communists to ignore. So by the end of the 300 day period for every Vietnamese to decide which form of government looked to be better, over 1,000,000 north Vietnamese civilians voted with their feet and fled the north and the rule of the Communist Viet Minh for South Vietnam, while only a relative handful of Communists left the south for the "workers' paradise" in the north.
The president of South Vietnam was Bao Dai, with Ngo Dinh Diem Prime Minister. In September 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to Prime Minister Diem, promising US assistance to help South Vietnam remain non-Communist. Only 9 1/2 years after the Japanese surrender that ended World War II President Eisenhower sent the first military advisors to South Vietnam in February 1955. I'm certain this was at the very least several years earlier than most people realize.
And that's more than enough for the first bite of the apple. Soon (I hope) we'll go past the end of Eisenhower's presidency and get to the really good stuff.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
So this is how everyone started.....
Hello, everyone (anyone?). Why did I start this blog? I've read a lot of blogs, and posted comments on several. I came to the conclusion I'd get my own blog, a place where I could talk more often and longer, though maybe not any more understandably, than my comments on other blogs. What do I intend to say? I could say anything about anything, but that's not why I'm doing this. I'm opinionated, and here you can expect to read my opinions about a wide variety of subjects. I hope I'm going to strike a balance between posts on things I like and that interest me, but at least at first I'll probably use this wobbly soapbox to expound on what frustrates, bugs and disturbs me.
How often will I post? When I have something to say. I don't guarantee I'll post every day, maybe several times in one day and then not again for several (or more) days. Think of this as a combination of safety valve, to let off steam, and journal, to record thoughts, ideas, concerns, goals, hopes, etc. I don't know how long I'll keep this up; who knows, maybe I'll get addicted and post a lot more than I now expect. Time will tell.
How often will I post? When I have something to say. I don't guarantee I'll post every day, maybe several times in one day and then not again for several (or more) days. Think of this as a combination of safety valve, to let off steam, and journal, to record thoughts, ideas, concerns, goals, hopes, etc. I don't know how long I'll keep this up; who knows, maybe I'll get addicted and post a lot more than I now expect. Time will tell.
Oh, and the title? Well, I'm retired, and sometimes I've been called a curmudgeon, sometimes worse. I guess the one thing that brought me to the point of having my own blog was my frustration with the local newspaper's letters to the editor column and policies. No person will have a letter printed more than once every 30 days, and letters must be no more than 200 words. I know they get a lot more than they print and I've had letters printed over a dozen times in the past 15 or so years, so I guess I shouldn't gripe, but I am. Here, it's different, at least for me. I get to decide the topic, the timing and the length, and no one else gets to tell me they won't publish my letter, for whatever reason they decide.
I'm not saying you should stop by every day, and you might read a post or two and decide to never drop by again. I get to choose what and when I post and you get to choose when (and if) you want to see it. Blogging just might be one of the last truly free choices we have (hurray for freedom!).
Retired Curmudgeon
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