The Feud That Sank Saigon

I recall Nguyen Cao Ky saying ,
"I regret that I have but one country to give for my life."

Thanks should be given to those college students on campuses across the country who demonstrated vehemently against the deadly and criminal fiasco that was the Vietnam War and to those in the press and inside the corridors of government who, at great risk, sought and revealed the truth about this despicable and fruitless and sad undertaking.

How can we not see the parallels in this article and the debacles politically (and militarily) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maliki v. Sunni tribal leaders, Karzai v. warlords/Taliban, Sunnis v. Shia. So what did the U.S. learn from Vietnam: absolutely nuthin', say it again... The problem is that 'we can't handle the truth' of our rampant and constant mistakes through interfering militarily and politically in other nations. However, the real winners are the pols and the now infamous and metastasizing military/industrial complex-BIG winners!

All this seems plausible but where does it get one? Thieu ended on top of a hopelessly corrupt unsustainable puppet regime whose sole selling point was that it was anti-communist. Nixon undermined the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 by offering Thieu a better deal than Johnson was going to give. The level of violence increased and Nixon with Watergate hanging over his head cut the same deal that Johnson offered the North. Of course with hidden strings attached that the US would lend air support the South if North violated the treaty. By 1975 the North crushed the South and the US Congress washed its hands of Thieu's regime.

For a short period of time in the early 2000s, I became acquainted with General and Mrs. Ky. In fact, I played several rounds of golf with them, both of whom were avid golfers. The irony to the Vietnam War to me was that later in that decade, General Ky returned to Vietnam as a representative of an American golf resort developer. Capitalism and war had come full circle…

Two thirds of the South Vietnamese could not have cared less about either one of these guys. They were focuses on preparing and transporting the rice crop to market each year without getting caught in the crossfire between the Viet Cong/NVA and the Saigon government.

I'll give you an example: In the second half of my tour, in 1969, Thieu paid a visit to Cao Lanh, which was (and remains, albeit under a different name) the provincial capital. We were at first puzzled by the number deuce-and-a-half army trucks thundering into the countryside and into the hamlets. Then we realized they were loading the villagers onto the trucks (not voluntarily) and transporting them into town. They were handed national flags, and then martialed into lines along the city streets by officers in shades screaming into bullhorns. Thieu arrived by chopper and they waved their flags as he proceeded to the province chief's palace. They disbursed after he left a couple,of hours later.

We watched this entire charade from our jeep, shaking our heads. Later on I asked a young woman who worked in our compound what she thought of President Thieu. I don't know who that is, she said. Your president? You don't know your president? I then asked, what about Nguyen Cao Ky? Oh yes, she said, and she produced a comic book from her satchel. It was a story about the dashing Ky and his glamorous wife, fighting the Commies and making Vietnam safe for democracy.

So much for the Saigon government.

Both generals were collaborating with an invading and occupying power, us. Which is why they were never going to be popular and those who march in a fifth column are rarely morally upstanding so the drug trafficking and lives of crime on both sides come as no surprise.

But the story has a happy ending. I was a regular visitor to HCM City till a few years ago and am happy to report that young Vietnamese admire America and the dream of students there is admission to a US school (the sky's the limit for parents to pay to for their kids to be coached for the various exams they need to pass in order to qualify for US scholarships).

I've learned not to get excited about NYT history opinions. They are never connected to current events, save publication of a book. No surprise, here, then that repackaging his dissertation as a book is the stated reason for Sean Fear's fellowship at Dartmouth. I suppose a NYT's op-ed will help achieve that goal.

(http://dickey.dartmouth.edu/people/sean-fear)

Very interesting to read yesterday's Vietnam disastrous war with today's recent failures in the Middle East. Surely this detailed report of the backstory of the politics of Vietnam reminds us that then, like today, intel very sketchy. Along with the vying generasls, Ky and Thieu, LBJ had his own devils with which to deal; Westmoreland, McNamara, the Dulles brothers who brought their own brand of religious righteousness from their upbringing by Presbyterian missionaries in China, and all other exigencies of tremendous failures of understanding exacerabated when might is equated with right. I lost one friend in the war, a gung-ho husband/father who re-enlisted thrice and lost his life the third time. The military does not need more men or materiel unless in the service of superior knowledge of the enemy before war is waged.

i appreciate your research Sean. Vietnam has many lessons to teach this country(US) and vice versa.

"But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed
And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost."

Thus Alexander Pope. Oh how wretched human history is sometimes--these two powerful men grappling with each other--getting a grip on each others throats . . . . . .

. . . . .and the enemy was at the gates. The Republic of South Vietnam, tottering--rent by factions within, assailed by powerful and implacable enemies from without--scorned and eventually abandoned by its one faithful ally . . . .

. . . .an ally that lost 58,000 men trying to preserve it. . . . .

. . . .where is that Republic now? That tragic war! What a waste!

Oh, good. Time to fight a 50 year old war again!!! Just like we did last week!!!!

A truth of the war in Vietnam is that soldiers of the U.S., its allies, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, as well as tens of thousands of civilians, were dying ostensibly to stop the spread of communism.

But another truth of the war is that the explanation was in a sense a lie. The war was in its heart a power struggle of personalities and abnormal, extreme psychologies, in which, as in a chess match, ordinary soldiers and civilians were pawns.

When I was in the war from April 1969 to June 1970 I watched and learned as an RTO to company commanders as we interacted with ARVN units, and tried to work with villagers, district chiefs and village chiefs. By the time I came home I'd begun to understand.

By the time I returned to Vietnam with my wife on a vacation in February 2000 I'd read much that had been written about that war. The subjects of this column are known to me, and their social conflicts. When my wife and I sat down with an old former police captain in a village my company had operated in he told us the war was between the Catholics who had fled from the north and resented the Buddhists of the south and the capitalists of the south who resented those who had moved in from the north, and communists fighting among themselves.

I think often of the men in my unit who died, and friends who died in other units, and the many wounded those many years ago and it's still depressing. Because men, largely, couldn't learn to get along and solve disagreements. What a sin.

I wonder about the corrosive effect of Nixon's Chennault spoiler gambit. The political calculation to "throw a monkey wrench" in Johnson's 68 peace initiative with the beligerent factions.

Could a peace deal or detente have been reached is a great unknown.

I remember the '67 elections. I remember the Johnson administration had been making a big deal for years that the war was all about getting S. Vietnam to have elections and now they had and wasn't that just great. We were there to protect democracy. Being young and naive, I bought that. I also remember the next spring ('68) reading a little tiny blurb in the newspaper just casually mentioning that Thieu had arrested and jailed the guy who came in 2nd in the election (running on a peace platform of negotiating w the VC) on what even then struck me as a trumped up charge.
The opponent was Truong Dinh Dzu (here's a notice of his sentencing in Sept http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1967/09/16/page/21/article/viet-runne... but he was arrested in May)
To me at the time, that was as if Johnson had had Goldwater arrested after the '64 election. It opened my eyes for the first time to the snake oil we were being sold (and have been ever since) that American intervention was all about protecting democracy. Thieu was no more a democrat (little d) than Ho Chi Minh---probably less so. Yet 10s of thousands of Americans and millions of SE Asians died to put him, and men like him, in power. Baloney.

I went to Vietnam in 1971 as a 1LT in Military Police Battalion. The American combat troops had largely been withdrawn. The Vietnamese army had primary responsibility for combat operations against the NVA and VC. Our bases were periodically attacked and rocketed. The roads were mined and dangerous.
In 1972 there was a massive invasion by North Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought valiantly. With American air power the invasion was stopped. American antiwar efforts saw American airpower withdrawn while the NVA was supplied by China and Russia.
I have been reading Vietnam by Christopher Gorsha. It is an incredibly eye opening book. I was so ignorant. The complex internal divisions in Vietnam between the North, Central and Southern Regions basically meant there were three countries, two of which were anticommunist.
It is difficult to imagine a military victory by America given the social and political complexity. South Vietnam did not have the geography of Korea with the 38th Parallel. An invasion of North Vietnam? So the South collapses in 1975. The Russians won that war in the Cold War and then became enmeshed in Afghanistan. The American liberals saw the South consigned to communism and hell.
So what did I understand at the time? Not much. The definition of "winning" had changed as evidenced by the quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria. What did our generals learn? Not much.
Western Democracies did prevail in the Cold War.

This is a good series.
I was there, as a protester stateside and in Vietnam as an officer of Marines.
The younger folks who care about Vietnam at all are too often idiot Republicans who claim it was a war to protect democracy there, and we should have fought harder. Not that any of them would ever consider serving in the military. I hope some of them read this for a little reality therapy but my hopes are not high.

Wonderfully insightful article, very well researched and written. However, if one chooses to use big words in Dickensian fashion, it's best to use them correctly. "Arriviste" is a noun, thus it shouldn't be used to modify the adjective "arrogant" -- that should be the job of an adverb. That sentence, in the 8th paragraph, should have gone something like, "An arrogant arriviste . . ." Either way, it's almost redundant, but the alliteration is lovely, granted. Just sayin' . . .

For those without a reasonably understanding and appreciation of Vietnam's history, the essay's title is misleading. The sinking of Saigon was preordained in 1956 when President Eisenhower dishorored the Geneva Agreement to hold a national election to unify North and South Vietnam. What happened in South Vietnam - the military coups, the rivalries between various military factions, the political chaos, the distrust of civilians toward installed governments, the social instablity - was to be expected when there was a newly created weak state and power vacum engineered by a super power. It happended in South Vietnam and in other newly independent former colonies. The US, for all its military and economic might, was poorly equipped to deal with the expected chaos. For the current analogy, look no further than Iraq and Afghnnistan.
After all these years, despite numerous essays, books and studies, lessons are not being learned because politicians and generals aided by shallow historians though that they could avoid repeating history.

We will never succeed in the long run by attempting to prop up with military force governments or movements that are corrupt, illegitimate or otherwise incapable of retaining the hearts and minds of their own citizens. It is a fool's errand to try.

The more damning action is that taken by Nixon to scuttle the peace talks on the eve of OUR 1968 elections. This was done to swing the election to Nixon and it worked.

All of this is documented and even on tape. As many of you know, Johnson lamented at the time on a phone call to Senator Everett Dirksen that this was treason. Dirksen, a republican, could only mutter agreement with that assessment.

Seems republicans cannot help themselves - from Harding to Nixon to Trump (with a stop at Reagan and W!) They are traitors.

Cao KY ended up running a liquor store in Orange County California. It's amazing how few Vietnamese are living here in France, their former colonial power. Many more repatriated to America after the 1975 debacle in Saigon.

As an expat American, I'm impressed how most European countries have avoided protracted wars after learning their lesson from WW II. Too bad the United States hasn't learned the same lesson!

brilliant piece- mandatory radio g for millennials..we yuppies are reading the end of the line and soon lessons of Viet name war will be forgotten. Most america ns thought we were doing he right thing, we failed to grasp the complexity city of a the culture of a very foreign land, etc...and we are of cost repeating the same mistakes in the middle east. President obamas greatest attribute, somewhat of a paradox given his huge self confidence as a political personality, was his recognition any us president would be in over their head in the middle east cauldron. At any level, the truly brightest people know what they dont know. To me this si what distinguishes the truly great POTUS like FDR, Lincoln and Washington, Eisenhower, from the pretenders, including TR, jefferson...Reagan in this metric would fall somewhere in between as would JFK. Its called judgment and maturity I reckon.

This is very important reading, especially now. The existence of legitimate governance can slip away quickly. We are foolish if we believe autocrats and corrupt leaders are not, or cannot, within our midst ready to sacrifice the rule of law and concept of consent of the governed for their own success, financially and politically.

Divisions in 1967?

In the spring of 1966 my USMC reconnaissance unit was put on stand by to get prepared to go onto Danang and do battle with the ARVNs. The army of south Vietnam.

Google General Walt on the Danang bridge. Talk about a brave man. He pretty much ended the dust up that could have torn that country apart right there on that brdge.

One large group of svn fighting and standing off against another large group of svn spread over the Danang area.

Did we care we were now going to fight south VN troops as opposed to the NVA and VC?

Not at all. It made no difference at all who we fought. I was just happy we were not going to do it in the jungle. This was before tet.

We never did get deployed. But we were ready.

The war in Vietnam began as a nationalist revolutionary war against French colonialism then Japanese occupation before returning to give the French their just moral reward at Dien Ben Phu. There was supposed to be an election. But America knew that Ho Chi Minh would win, so there was no election. Ho Chi Minh would have won an election against these two military political dwarves.

Vietnam was no puppet of China nor the Soviet Union. Vietnamese nationalism devolved into a civil war that America lost. The Trung sisters are icons of Vietnamese nationalism and patriotism. So are Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap.

The conflict between Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu did not "sink Saigon". What sunk Saigon was not just the corruption of these two, but that the U.S. supported Saigon regime was on the wrong side of history in a war for independence.

Hmmm, interesting story, well-told, and yet.... The narrative joins the long-held account that we-did-so-much-for-those-people-but-they-were-too-corrupt-to-embrace-democracy..... Expand the time frame. Why did the US get involved, at all, in the first place? Our anti-communism allied us a little to close with the French imperialist vision. Look where we are now, over 700 bases all over the world, no colonies, but pretty much a worldwide military presence. When we started going in the advice was already there: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." We ignored it. Read McNamara's belated conversion.
So, interesting story to read. But hardly a central picture of what went wrong in Vietnam.

"failure to transcend the politics of clientelism and competing big personalities. "
For a moment I thought this referred to the 2016 Presidential Election...

You miss the most important point. While Ky and Thieu stood for the military and the US, no one stood for the people except Ho (despite his flaws.) And there was no real democracy. Just US invasion.

The American military could defeat the NVA on the battlefield. The American military could contain the NLF, and defeat them militarily when they massed forces, as in the Tet Offensive. The American military could not create a government in Saigon that would be supported by the people of the southern part of Vietnam.

Hence, the "folly" of the American war in Vietnam, as described by Barbara Tuchman in "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam."

I liked the factual history, but was unpersuaded by the conclusion of the essay.

The article ends by lamenting the failure of South Vietnam's political system to evolve in response to the demands placed upon it. However, that view focuses attention entirely upon the Vietnamese, as though Americans were not close at hand. A vast amount of graft and in-fighting was provoked among Vietnamese politicians and citizens by the sudden influx of American dollars. And with foreign advisers whispering in the ears of compliant Vietnamese warlords, civilian politicians never had a chance of succeeding.

The author also seems to forget how much war strains democratic institutions and practices, even in long-established democracies. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the US Civil War. More recently, wars have been the occasion for man other anti-democratic activities: secret NSA wiretaps, drone attacks, torture, intentional misrepresentations (Gulf of Tonkin, claims that Saddam possessed WMD's), Japanese citizens were held in camps during WW2, etc.

It appears to me that US policy makers were guilty of treating the Vietnamese people as a means toward an end -- the delay or defeat of global Communism. That points to a problem with American, not Vietnamese, democratic institutions. (That was what American protesters believed at the time, too.)

What a bunch of slimebags, throughout this sad epic, in NV, SV, and the Pentagon. Five young men from my tiny country high school died in this fiasco.

I used to read the New York Times and comfortingly thought that I was reading unbiased and thoroughly researched events. But with your current pieces on the Philippines, I would like to get more information from others as I believe your recent articles were very bad. There is that overnight journalist, who consorted with known goons in my city, and took them as reliable sources, condemning the President. Then, there was your op-ed piece by Mr. Syjuco, also very critical of President Duterte's leadership. Mr. Syjuco's parents, both of them, are being investigated now fow for graft and corruption. Could we have expected an "unbiased opinion?"

Well-researched and well-written piece. What happened to Thieu after the fall of Saigon? Didn't he seek refuge in London on a flight with suitcases filled with American gold bullions?

It seems like the divisions in South Vietnam mirrored the divisions in America under President Johnson.

This is great reading. Even better when you've been to HCMC.

"In June, an American helicopter gunship patrolling Saigon’s Chinatown fired an errant rocket". Le sigh.

Of course the elections were not perfect - there was a war going on. Strange how you never mention the elections not going on in North Vietnam at the same time - that's because a Communist dictatorship never had them and still doesn't.