major escalation in our commitment. He raised the number of American military personnel in Vietnam to over 16,000 and permitted them to go into combat. In 1965, President Johnson ordered air strikes against North Vietnam and sent additional American combat troops to fight in South Vietnam. After four years of steadily deepening involvement, the number of American servicemen in Vietnam reached nearly 550,000. By the end of 1968, the war had cost the United States over 31,000 lives, and Americans were being killed at a rate of 300 a week. Yet we were no closer to victory than we had been a decade before.
Our critical error was to ignore one of the iron laws of war: Never go in without knowing how you are going to get out. Successive American administrations upped our commitment by incrementsâfirst in aid, then in noncombat advisers, and finally in combat soldiersâwithout having clearly in mind how these increases would achieve our goals. Policymakersbased their decisions on what was needed to prevent defeat rather than what it would take to reach victory.
Several fatal flaws plagued American policy in Vietnam from 1960 through 1968. We failed to understand that the war was an invasion from North Vietnam, not an insurgency in South Vietnam. We failed to prevent North Vietnam from establishing a key supply route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos and Cambodia. We failed to foresee the consequences of our backing the military coup that overthrew South Vietnamâs most capable leader, President Diem, and that ushered in years of debilitating political instability. We failed to tailor our military tactics to the political circumstances of the war. We failed to understand the determination of our enemy and what it would take to defeat him. We failed to explain the war to the American people and mobilize them behind it.
Our goals were noble in Vietnam. But a just cause is not a substitute for strategy. We were morally right in trying to help South Vietnam defend itself, but we made crucial errors in how we went about it.
â¢Â â¢Â â¢
The first rule of war is that one must know the enemy and understand his strategy and tactics. The second is that one must adopt strategy and tactics suited to the circumstances of the war. In the early years of the Vietnam War, North Vietnam conducted an invasion of South Vietnam that was cloaked as an indigenous insurgency. The United States mistook the nature of the war, choosing to fight against the insurgency instead of the invasion, and in the early 1960s compounded this error with three others. By the mid-1960s, American forces found themselves fighting the wrong kind of war with the wrong kinds of tactics.
The North Vietnamese invasion that began in late 1959 proved Hanoiâs leaders had learned a lesson from the Korean War. North Koreaâs blatant invasion across the border had given the United States clear justification to intervene and had enabled President Truman to rally the American people andour United Nations allies to the defense of South Korea. North Vietnam therefore shrewdly camouflaged its invasion to look like a civil war. But in fact the Vietnam War was the Korean War with jungles.
Hanoiâs invasion came under and around the border instead of over it. By 1963, North Vietnam had infiltrated more than 15,000 troops or advisers into the South, most of them southerners trained by the Communists in the North. Subsequently, the infiltration became predominantly northern. North Vietnam sensed that victory might be at hand and consequently stepped up the attack. It sent 12,000 troops in 1964, 36,000 in 1965, 92,000 in 1966, and 101,000 in 1967. After the Tet Offensive in early 1968, the fighting was conducted almost exclusively by the North Vietnamese Army.
Hanoi also had a fifth column in South Vietnam. Ho had ordered thousands of Communist Viet Minh to stay in the South after the 1954 partition in anticipation of his push to conquer the whole
Our critical error was to ignore one of the iron laws of war: Never go in without knowing how you are going to get out. Successive American administrations upped our commitment by incrementsâfirst in aid, then in noncombat advisers, and finally in combat soldiersâwithout having clearly in mind how these increases would achieve our goals. Policymakersbased their decisions on what was needed to prevent defeat rather than what it would take to reach victory.
Several fatal flaws plagued American policy in Vietnam from 1960 through 1968. We failed to understand that the war was an invasion from North Vietnam, not an insurgency in South Vietnam. We failed to prevent North Vietnam from establishing a key supply route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos and Cambodia. We failed to foresee the consequences of our backing the military coup that overthrew South Vietnamâs most capable leader, President Diem, and that ushered in years of debilitating political instability. We failed to tailor our military tactics to the political circumstances of the war. We failed to understand the determination of our enemy and what it would take to defeat him. We failed to explain the war to the American people and mobilize them behind it.
Our goals were noble in Vietnam. But a just cause is not a substitute for strategy. We were morally right in trying to help South Vietnam defend itself, but we made crucial errors in how we went about it.
â¢Â â¢Â â¢
The first rule of war is that one must know the enemy and understand his strategy and tactics. The second is that one must adopt strategy and tactics suited to the circumstances of the war. In the early years of the Vietnam War, North Vietnam conducted an invasion of South Vietnam that was cloaked as an indigenous insurgency. The United States mistook the nature of the war, choosing to fight against the insurgency instead of the invasion, and in the early 1960s compounded this error with three others. By the mid-1960s, American forces found themselves fighting the wrong kind of war with the wrong kinds of tactics.
The North Vietnamese invasion that began in late 1959 proved Hanoiâs leaders had learned a lesson from the Korean War. North Koreaâs blatant invasion across the border had given the United States clear justification to intervene and had enabled President Truman to rally the American people andour United Nations allies to the defense of South Korea. North Vietnam therefore shrewdly camouflaged its invasion to look like a civil war. But in fact the Vietnam War was the Korean War with jungles.
Hanoiâs invasion came under and around the border instead of over it. By 1963, North Vietnam had infiltrated more than 15,000 troops or advisers into the South, most of them southerners trained by the Communists in the North. Subsequently, the infiltration became predominantly northern. North Vietnam sensed that victory might be at hand and consequently stepped up the attack. It sent 12,000 troops in 1964, 36,000 in 1965, 92,000 in 1966, and 101,000 in 1967. After the Tet Offensive in early 1968, the fighting was conducted almost exclusively by the North Vietnamese Army.
Hanoi also had a fifth column in South Vietnam. Ho had ordered thousands of Communist Viet Minh to stay in the South after the 1954 partition in anticipation of his push to conquer the whole
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