Why Vietnam?
What Went Wrong?


The United States' involvement in Vietnam appears to me to have been a thirty-year series of errors. Errors were made at all levels, from the President all the way down to the individual soldier. Errors were made in both civilian and military sectors. Errors were made in communication, understanding, assumptions, policy, attitudes, strategy, tactics, and behavior.

It started in 1945 with President Truman. He chose to ignore Ho Chi Minh's numerous requests for U.S. support. We decided, instead, to support France in its effort to re-colonize Indochina. This decision was made for reasons which had nothing at all to do with Vietnam.

In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to agree to the Geneva Accords which provided that Vietnam would hold elections in 1956 to choose their own form of government. In 1956, fearing that the majority of the Vietnamese people would choose communism, we persuaded the Saigon government to not participate in any such free elections.

This country's recovery from the McCarthy era of "red baiting" was slow, which resulted in a great reluctance on the part of our political leaders to do or say anything which might make them appear to be too soft on communism.

The United States was unable to recognize that not all communists were pawns of Moscow or, later, Beijing. President Eisenhower's "Domino Theory" was the rule of the day and governed our policy. This theory, however, was later shown to be wide of the mark.

Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy supported a corrupt Saigon government under Ngo Dinh Diem, who persecuted and alienated the majority of Vietnam's people and used the best part of his military to protect himself from his own subjects. President Johnson refused to be the first U.S. President to lose a war. Richard Nixon undermined the 1968 peace talks in order to further his chance of election to the presidency. Presidents Johnson and Nixon's bombing of North Vietnam, while highly destructive, was virtually pointless.

The mostly successful efforts of Averell Harriman and William Sullivan to keep U.S. troops from crossing the border into Laos, in order to honor the treaty Harriman had helped to formulate, gave the North Vietnamese a distinct advantage in building and using the Ho Chi Minh Trail and numerous sanctuaries. North Vietnam was also a party to that treaty, and they, too, were precluded from having a military presence in Laos.

Threats and gradually increasing pressure had worked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so our civilian leadership assumed it would work in Vietnam. They failed to recognize that our adversaries in Vietnam were quite different and altogether differently motivated. The civilian leadership felt that military experience was not a good basis for recommendation and would not listen to the military leadership. Any advisor who gave Lyndon Johnson advice contrary to his preformed opinions (including Vice President Humphrey) was noticeably absent in future meetings. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were chosen for their malleability and support for Johnson's opinions.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's fondness for numbers, General William Westmoreland's "War of Attrition," and the reliance on "body counts" (often fabricated) as a measure of progress added to the error. Over 58,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives in the American Vietnamese War as did perhaps as many as 225,000 South Vietnamese military. This compares to an estimated 900,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military deaths. There were also over 1,000,000 Vietnamese civilian lives lost, North and South combined. Our numbers games didn't work.

By early 1965, Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara had determined that the American war in Vietnam had very little chance of success. Their objective at that time changed from "maintaining a free and independent South Vietnam" to "avoiding humiliation for the United States." After this realization, they began the buildup of U.S. ground troops. Up to this point, American combat deaths in Vietnam were under 500.

"Strategic Hamlets", indiscriminant airstrikes and artillery fire, support of prostitution and the black market, and the killing of farmers' livestock for sport served only to drive the people to the other side. The massacre at My Lai and other lesser known atrocities had predictable results.


"The end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitath drear: A Fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East."
                      - Rudyard Kipling


For anyone wanting to know more about how the United States became involved in Vietnam and what went wrong, I wholeheartedly recommend the following books:

  • American Tragedy - David Kaiser
  • Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy - Robert S. McNamara, James Blight, Robert Brigham, Thomas Biersteker, and COL Herbert Schandler
  • The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon - Anthony Summers
  • The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam
  • The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War - John Prados
  • A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam - Neil Sheehan (A MUST Read)
  • Dereliction of Duty - H. R. McMaster (A MUST Read)
  • Fire in the Lake - Frances FitzGerald
  • The Hidden History of the Vietnam War - John Prados (A MUST Read)
  • In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam - Robert S. McNamara
  • Once Upon a Distant War - William Prochnau (A MUST Read)
  • The Quiet American - Graham Greene
  • The Real War - Jonathan Schell
  • The Secret War Against Hanoi - Richard H. Shultz, Jr.
  • The Ugly American - William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick
  • Vietnam: A History - Stanley Karnow (If you only read one, make it this one.)
  • The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 - Marilyn B. Young


Return to Jim's Home Page
1