The article only scratches the surface of the needed destruction of myths about the war, carefully constructed by the left during it and afterward, and embraced as excuses by many not on the left since. Blame is happily laddled out hither and yon with precious little regard for facts or plausibility. Any theory that puts the blame somewhere besides the sensitive point - that we abandoned them for essentially domestic reasons - is bound to be peddled by someone.
Take for instance the idea that we couldn't defeat guerillas with conventional warfare means, that the war was lost because it was fought with our hands tied. The problem is, the guerillas did not win, they lost. After Tet the VC were a spent force. They were capable of only low level actions, and required more and more stiffening by NVA regulars, who carried the war in the second half of US ground involvement. The much maligned Westermoreland attrition strategy beat the guerillas.
Or take the idea that sanctuary was the critical issue, forwarded by quite respectable figures like General Moore. The idea that the US lost because it refused to employ hot pursuit into Laos and Cambodia has one minor problem - we did not refrain from fighting in Laos and Cambodia. We not only bombed in them on a large scale, and sent in LRPs and special ops, Nixon also later on authorized incursions into Cambodia with ground troops, specifically to remove the NVA hope that this factor alone would let them win. Which was militarily successful. It brought domestic political heat from the left precisely because it threatened a northern victory in the war, which they had already decided was their only acceptable outcome. (NLF is gonna win, remember?)
Or take the idea that domestic public opinion would not put up with even the modest casualties we took, and that therefore the strategy was doomed even with its military attrition success. The idea here is that attrition may be militarily useful but it is expensive and time consuming, and expense and time destroy popular support, and without them defeat follows, and therefore attrition never works politically even when it is militarily successful. This view is peddled by maneuverist strategists in particular, who are dead set against attrition methods for tangential reasons.
The problem is, public support for the war did not evaporate. In case everybody forgot, McGovern lost in a landslide. It was not the country that split over the war, it was the democratic party. Johnson was indeed politically destroyed by the war, because his own party split wide open over support or opposition to the war. But the result was his party lost power. Nixon's strategy of Vietnamization was perfectly workable on the military side (precisely because attrition had already defeated the VC, and the south could be backed by US airpower against conventional attack), and popular domestically. Nixon pulled out the ground troops, ended the draft, and was fully supported by the American people. The anti-war left was livid about Nixon precisely because he had basically succeeded in defeating the NLF and in keeping the support of the American people while doing so.
In 1972, when the NVA attacked across the border, US airpower destroyed their massed forces. You have to bunch up to fight conventionally, and they did not have guerilla forces sufficient to threaten anything left in the south. The NVA hoped that with US ground forces already gone, teh ARVN would be pushovers and could be defeated in an all-out conventional invasion. But US airpower remained, and defeated the attempt. Bombing of the north further showed that the costs of continuing such attempts indefinitely would be unacceptably high for the North.
The Vietnam war was not lost in 1965 we we got into it. Nothing was lost then. The war was not lost in 1968 with the Tet Offensive - only Johnson's presidency and the internal unity of the democratic party was lost then. The country, the US, the war - they were fine. The result of the loss of the Johnson presidency and the dem's splitting was simply that Republicans took over. Revisionist Dems portray that as implying "inevitable" defeat, because they equate themselves with the country. But that is a self serving delusion. The war was not won with the opposition to Nixon, or with withdrawl of US ground forces. The ARVN were strong enough to hold with US airpower to help, still.
No, the war was only lost between 1973 and 1975. It was lost when the Nixon presidency, not the Johnson presidency, was destroyed. It was lost when the post Watergate congress outlawed continued support of the ARVN by US airpower. Then it took a large scale conventional invasion, with armor, to defeat the ARVN. Would were not "rotten" or unwilling to fight - they fought longer than anybody else. They were simply defeated by masses of Russian-supplied armor, when we would no longer counter-balance and trump that Russian support with our airpower.
The reason we refused to do so - after our ground forces were gone, so no Americans boys were dying in foreign rice paddies - after the draft had been ended, so no young people were being hauled off to war - after the civil rights movement had succeeded - after McGovern's pure peacenik platform had been smashed in a landslide - was entirely that the US congress and the democratic party controlling it hated the war in Vietnam, hated Nixon's successes there, hated the loss of power they had experienced since splitting over the issue in 1968, hated the US military they had been opposing more and more openly throughout the Nixon years, and due to Watergate had the power to act on these hatreds.
Nixon's stupidity and criminality in the Watergate scandal destroyed his presidency, not the war in Vietnam. But the triumph of his domestic opponents as a result of that scandal is the only thing that doomed South Vietnam. And only because they freely chose to sell out South Vietnam, as a pure choice, because they had come to hate everything involved in standing by the side of the South Vietnamese. They had convinced themselves the war was immoral and that we were on the wrong side of it, or wrong to fight it, and that the NLF *ought* to win. And win they did, because of that conviction. But not because such convictions won popular support when openly presented as policy, in the form of McGovern's candidacy in 1972.
We flat sold them out, or rather changed our minds about wanting South Vietnam to remain independent. It was our fault. The war was winnable, and largely won, when we threw away 8 years of effort, blood, and treasure - freely.
Notice how in all the other versions and dodges, the critical period and the decisions made during it are never in the limelight? Are always presented as some inevitable aftermath? Explanations are allowed to discuss the decisions of 1964, or 65-67, or 68, or even 69-73. Some may even tag Watergate, or admit that 68 wasn't the turning point for the country (as opposed to the Dems), or know that 72 was still a success. But never is the focus on the free choices made *after* Watergate by the congress between Nixon's resignation and the 1975 invasion. That, however, is when and where and by whom the war was decided. It wasn't really even the war that was decided, it was the policy.
We flat gave up, because we did not believe in the goal anymore. Freely, and long after it involved any high cost in blood or treasure. The decision was not coerced. And those who decided this for us - those responsible for that decision - will accept any narrative about the war *except* that true one.
From someone who fought and bled in that hellhole...
JD