Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
by Christian G. Appy
Post War Era
Military & Foreign Policy
Thesis:
Specific examples/evidence that supports the
thesis:
Interviews with US policy makers showed that they had no real understanding of what the Vietnamese were fighting for and why they seemed to have no breaking point. They believed there was some magic number of casualties and once they accomplished that, the Vietnamese would surrender. This was not the case.
The brutality of the acts of war range from, soldiers wearing scalps, to annihilating villages, to chemical ware fare with agent orange. Veterans still carry remorse over their actions against innocents.
Summary:
What does this tell us about Military & Foreign Policy in the Post War Era?
Military leadership during the Vietnam War was lacking. Policy makers and in country leaders had no clue what the Vietnamese were fighting for. They believed it would be an easy short-lived conflict and they never seemed to determine when enough was enough. US civilians were willing to send some troops but as the war escalated patience and acceptance from the American people dwindled, as soldier deaths increased and journalists began getting the stories out of what was really going on, protesters emerged in the largest antiwar movement we've ever had.
What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?
General Thoughts:
Excerpts from Book Reviews:
My Highlighted Passages:
One coastal target in the north was identified by Saigon intelligence as a rest and recuperation center for Viet Cong cadre, but the Vietnamese PT skipper said, “No, that’s a leper hospital.” My intelligence said it was a communist R and R center so that was that. We sent a team in there firing as they went, and they killed a lot of people. It turned out to be a leper hospital just as the Vietnamese officer had predicted. When the team got back I’ll never forget the look the skipper gave me. His eyes said everything. He pointed at me and said, “Hospital.” That really did a great deal of damage to our credibility.399
Our hope early on in Vietnam was to win the hearts and minds of the people, but that hope was destroyed by the South Vietnamese government’s failure to gain the people’s allegiance and by Westmoreland’s strategy of search-and-destroy.460
You simply pile on and crush ’em. That was Westmoreland’s approach in Vietnam. There was no subtlety. His idea was to go after people and kill them in great number.463
However, one of the basic problems was that the North Vietnamese had an almost bottomless pit of people with the determination to outlast the Americans. And they were able to engage us on terms favorable to themselves. They would inflict casualties and then disappear.466
Their strategic aim was to wear us down until the American public turned against the war. It worked. People thought, we keep taking terrible casualties and we’re not seeing any benefit.468
Some Americans claim that Hanoi ordered the attack to provoke the United States into these actions; that we did it specifically to kill Americans and planned to do so on a day when [U.S. National Security Adviser] McGeorge Bundy was in Saigon and [Soviet Premier] Alexei Kosygin was in Hanoi. I have never understood why the U.S. government regarded this attack as provocative. It was just a normal battle, part of a long-term dry-season offensive in the Highlands.499
We had such heated discussions about how to fight. Should we be on the offensive or defensive? It was a very hard question. Fighting the U.S. wasn’t easy. We had to rely on our creativity.518
I remember putting the stethoscope in my ears to listen to his pulse. I glanced at my watch and it was almost eleven o’clock. That’s all I can remember.716
Later my friends told me that we were hit by a bomb from a B-52. There were six of us in that room—myself, two male nurses, and three patients. I718
When I got home, I think everybody, including myself, was sick of the war. We abhorred it. It was not only cruel, it was absurd.727
We had guys whose morale was so damaged as a result of returning to the States after their first tour that they volunteered to come back. They could simply not stand to read the paper or watch the television. I couldn’t believe the newspaper clippings my family was sending me after the Tet Offensive2173
I had to tell these boys that had just served their country to get out of their country’s uniform as soon as they could. If they weren’t wearing their uniform then maybe they wouldn’t be targeted by the protesters. disappointed. I had grown up with World War II movies and everybody had a band or something to welcome them home. An ungrateful nation let some twenty-three-year-old stewardess welcome these guys home.2500
“We all have very serious misgivings about the direction of the war. We don’t want to be piling up American boys like cordwood fighting endless Asian troops. We feel that we can bring this war to a quick conclusion by using overwhelming naval and air power.2738
The assumption was that the North Vietnamese would sue for peace if we increased the level of punishment.2742
“So you’re going to cut them off, keep them from being reinforced, and then you’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age.2743
Air force chief McConnell said,
“Well, that’s not exactly it, but you’ve got to punish them.
“Do you fully support these ideas?
Both generals said they totally agreed
“You goddamn fucking assholes. You’re trying to get me to start World War III with your idiotic bullshit—your ‘military wisdom.
“You dumb shit. Do you expect me to believe that kind of crap? I’ve got the weight of the Free World on my shoulders and you want me to start World War III?
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to give me an answer. Imagine that you’re me—that you’re the president of the United States—and five incompetents come into your office and try to talk you into starting World War III. Then let’s see what kind of guts you have with the whole damn world to worry about. What would you do?
“Mr. President, we’ve obviously upset you.The understatement of the year.There are many things about the presidency only one human being can understand. You, Mr. President, are that human being. With that thought in mind, I cannot take your place, think your thoughts, know all you know, and tell you what I would do if I were you. I can’t do it, Mr. President. No man can honestly do it. It’s got to be your decision and yours alone. The risk is just too high. How can you fucking assholes ignore what China might do? You have just contaminated my office, you filthy shitheads. Get the hell out of here right now.2763
I think Johnson had already made up his mind long before they got there and was using his most forceful way to kill the plan. When I got back into the car with Admiral McDonald, he said,2767
“Never in my entire life did I ever expect to be put through something as horrible as what you just watched from the president of the United States to his five senior military advisers.2769
He was just destroyed. For three or four days they seriously considered a mass resignation—all of them. I think the reason they didn’t was that we were at war and they did not want to be labeled traitors who quit in the face of the enemy.2769
have low tolerance for Vietnam vets who blame everything that’s happened to them in the last thirty years on the twelve months they spent over there. The fact of the matter is that7108
ninety-five percent of vets are normal, functioning, completely well-adjusted people just like everybody else.7109
We also made a distinction between the ordinary solders who carried out orders and the policy makers who initiated the war.7181
wrote, but there was no way to know if he was still alive. In many cases people received letters saying everything was okay when, in fact, the writer had already been killed. So receiving a letter was a mixed blessing. At first you were so happy, but then you looked at the date it was written and started to worry all over again. I was separated from my husband for ten years and he was separated from our two children for thirteen.7187
Dissent was expressed from every quarter. Two hundred and fifty State Department employees signed a letter of protest and several of Kissinger’s top aides resigned in opposition to the policy.8220
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