1960 to 1965 -- People's War

... guerrillas have to live among the people. Guerrillas can't survive unless the people hide them. Mao Tse-tung has a thesis that goes something like this -- guerrillas hide among the population as the fish hide in the sea. This is a very true adage. (General Earl Wheeler, Army Chief of Staff, House Armed Services Committee testimony, January 27, 1964.)

In Vietnam, only the Communists represent revolution and social change … 'the Communists ... remain the only Vietnamese still capable of rallying millions of their countrymen to sacrifice and hardship in the name of the nation and the only group not dependent on foreign bayonets for survival. (Neil Sheehan, New York Times.)

The creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), which the U.S. Government calls "Viet Cong," marked a turning point in the war. It greatly raised the organizational level of the south Vietnamese people's fight. It allowed a fuller expression of the initiative of the people -- a full-blown People's War developed. The NLF. is led mainly by communists, members of the People's Revolutionary Party of south Vietnam, (P.R.P.) which is very closely linked to the communist party of the DRV.. The PRP's understanding of People's War, as described by anti-Communists in the quotes above, allowed them to play an important role in building the NLF. Unfortunately nationalism and other weaknesses have turned the PRP's role around completely. So while in the period from '60 to ' 65 the PRP and' NLF played a role in mobilizing the masses, relying on their experience and their initiative to smash the hell out of the U.S. government, now, in fact, these organizations are pushing for a deal with the U.S. which can only -- has already -- set back the Vietnamese people's struggle..

Douglas -Pike, a thoroughly anti-communist U.S. security agent in Saigon, described the early history of the NLF in his book Viet Cong.

The NLF was, according to Pike, a broad coalition whose purpose was:

To engage as many Vietnamese as possible -- but in any case the vast majority -- in a revolt against the state. This was to be accomplished by organizing the population, or to be more precise, the rural 85 percent of the population, into manageable units to conduct the revolt. The rural Vietnamese was not regarded simply as a pawn in a power struggle but as the active element in the thrust. He was the thrust. (Douglas Pike, Viet Cong; page 84.)

The NLF rapidly became a mass organization that reached into virtually every village in the country. The basic political unit of the NLF was the village- association There were various types: For the farmer, for example, the Farmers' Liberation Association meant: land reform; for the village women the Women's Liberation Association meant status and more equal rights with men. (Pike, page 166)

Pike, who is usually pretty bewildered by the mass character of the NLF, understates the situation. In fact, one of the crucial revolutionary acts of the NLF in this early period was the tremendous political involvement of women. This went far beyond mere formal political rights, and even formal equal rights weren't granted by Saigon. It meant that millions of Vietnamese women were entering the class struggle as active participants.

This was only one of the tremendously liberating aspects of this People's War. There was also the tremendous involvement of the mountain tribesmen, The Vietnamese rulers had always taught the peasants to look with contempt on these "lowly savages" -- this racist attitude could then be used to prevent unity against the rulers. The NLF did an excellent job of organizing these people, who became one of the mainstays of the war against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam.

During the early years of the NLF:

... military activity, even guerrilla military activity, formed a relatively small percentage of the day-to-day work … much … time was devoted to training and indoctrination work, agit-prop and other propaganda activities among the general population, or in what was called economic production--mainly production of food. (Pike, p. 238.)

The reason? The NLF's objective at that time was :

not the killing of ARVN ("Army of the Republic of Vietnam" -- the U.S.-controlled, puppet Army) soldiers, not the occupation of real estate, not the preparation for great pitched battles … but organization in depth of the rural population to restructure the social order of the village and train the villagers to control (sic! to organize!) themselves. (Pike, pp. 111, 238.)

This organizational and agitational phase referred to as the "struggle movement." The NLF was building a vast base in the "sea of the people."

… it is important to understand the essentially political rather than military nature of the NLF's activities in the first period … virtually all effort was focused on the struggle movement, and the various acts of the violence program were designed to support that program, as, for example, the assassination of the Village chief. (Pike, p. 156;)

Indeed, terror was highly selective:

… chiefly directed at total elimination, of the GVN (i.e., U.S./Saigon) apparatus in the village ... the killing of individuals was done with great specificity, as, for example, pinning note to the shirtfront of an assassinated government official, explaining the crimes he had committed ... (in fact) the NLF theoreticians considered terror to be the weapon of the weak, the desperate, or the ineffectual guerrilla leader. (Pike, pp. 250-51, our emphasis.)

Pike notes that:

almost all Vietnamese … were of the firm opinion that as the result of Vietminh and then NLF activity, particularly in areas long under their control, deep, significant, and fundamental change had occurred in the social order ... the liberated area was characterized by a greater sense of equalitarianism, greater social mobility with individual merit counting for more and family for less, and a greater awareness of strata, class consciousness, or social solidarity. (Pike, pp. 372-73.)

SPECIAL WAR

Shortly after his inauguration, President Kennedy set up a Vietnam task force, to review the crumbling U.S. position. He saw that Diem was falling fast. Only escalation could delay an NLF victory. Economist Eugene Stanley and General Maxwell Taylor worked out the Stanley-Taylor plan of "special war" as a solution. Adopted in '61, its main points were

1. To set up 18,000 "strategic hamlet" concentration camps, to include 2/3 of the population.

2. To increase all "south Vietnamese" armed forces and place them under much more direct control by a greater number of U.S. "advisers."

Thus "special war" was an attempt to isolate the population behind barbed wire and then force U.S.-controlled "natives" to wipe put the "native revolution. "

"Strategic hamlet" -- the name itself was a filthy lie. "Strategic hamlet" meant that the ARVN was ordered to destroy peasant homes, burn their rice, kill their water buffalo, herd them into camps surrounded by barbed wire and stakes -- OFTEN POINTING INWARD -- to prevent escape. Hitler had nothing over the U.S. government, Even the New York Times admitted:

… the hamlet program aroused deep popular resentment ... tens of thousands of peasants were forced to leave their homes and build new ones surrounded by barbed wire barricades. Communist propaganda focused effectively on the most objectionable aspects of the program, calling the hamlets concentration camps ... This charge, according to U.S. officials, was all too accurate in many instances. (New York Times, 12/3/63.)

The introduction of "special war" -- the increase in U.S. "advisers" controlling the ARVN, the tremendous increase in Diem's army, the introduction of helicopters in huge numbers, and the "strategic hamlet" program -- "special war" produced an apparent respite for Diem and the U.S. in mid- '62. But, actually, "special war" only isolated U.S./Diem EVEN MORE from the people. The NLF dug in even deeper. In '63, U.S./Diem was routed throughout the crucial Mekong Delta. In mid-'63, New York Times reporter Dave Halberstam wrote that "it was clear that the government had lost the initiative." (Making of a Quagmire, pp. 189-190. )

Finally, desperate, with the crisis once again upon it, the U.S. government dumped Diem in 1963. They had him and his closest aides slaughtered quickly and replaced. Diem was not killed, as U.S. officials pretend, because they discovered he was a vicious tyrant. U.S. officials had planned most of his police and army actions in the first place. His problem was that he had failed.

In '64, the NLF, pressing the offensive, freed vast areas. It wiped out most of ARVN's strategic reserves. An official U.S. report released April 1, 1964 admitted that 42 per cent of south Vietnam's villages were under NLF control, with the rest "contested." The ARVN desertion rate was disastrous. (This is not surprising. Most ARVN troops were poor peasants or workers who often respected the NLF and virtually always opposed U.S. imperialism.)

"Special war" had failed.

A lot of people think the "mad-man," Lyndon B. Johnson, is personally responsible for the escalation of the war that brought huge numbers of U.S. troops in and started the bombing of the DRV. This is nonsense. First of all, "special war" was just as vicious a strategy as the escalation adopted in 1965. LBJ only escalated because special war had failed. Second, although the first sharp escalation was the bombing of the DRV, following the famous Tonkin. Bay incident in August 1964, in fact, plans for escalation were all worked out under President Kennedy, the great liberal.

War against the communists already has erupted over the borders of south Vietnam in hit-and-run guerrilla raids and infiltration moves as far north as China … 50,000 elite south Vietnamese troops are-being trained to take the offensive in over-the-border strikes. Last fall (i.e., 1964) when U.S. officials decided that it was impossible to win the war by confining it inside south Vietnamese borders; they began an expanded program of training the special guerrilla forces-at secret bases. (Aviation, 4/6/64) (our emphasis.)

Georges Chaffard, the French correspondent, wrote that intelligence, counter-espionage, and sabotage missions against the DRV had been going on since at least 1957. And, he said, they picked up in '61, when Kennedy sought to "disorganize the economic and military potential of the north." (Le Monde, 8/9/64.

Not that LBJ was any good, to be sure, Except-he has plenty of company. And that includes JFK.

A lot of people were fooled by Kennedy because he talked nice. That reminds us of Lindsay, Lord Mayor of New York. Some people are fooled by him, because he comes on very friendly. This reveals the nature of the "dove." Thus Lindsay spoke at a demonstration called by the Mobilization Committee in 1968, a "peace" demonstration and this convinced some that he's not so bad. But on that very day he sent his tactical police to attack the Columbia students who had taken a building to protest the presence of the Institute for Defense Analysis on campus and Columbia's racist, anti-working class expansion program.

Next section: 1965 To 1968 -- U.S. Rulers Invade

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