ALIANZAS TECNOLÓGICAS A NIVEL INTERNACIONAL

“Godzilla never drew that kind of fire.” - Michael Herr, Dispatches

To Harry Kinnard, only one mission warranted consideration after the Ia Drang battles. The 1st Cavalry Division had to pursue the enemy, find him, and destroy him. Historically, pursuits ranked among the most coveted of all cavalry missions and Kinnard strained to further test the mobility and striking power of his new airmobile division. He did not have to wait long. As 1966 opened, Westmoreland ordered the 1st Cavalry toward the Bong Son Plain in Binh Dinh province. Bong Son long had been a Vietcong stronghold and MACV wanted to break up guerrilla bases near the local villages. MACV’s orders for the operation, code-named Masher, directed Kinnard to “locate and destroy VC/NVA units; enhance the security of GVN

installations in Bong Son; and to lay the ground work for restoration of GVN control of the population and resources of the rich coastal plain area.”1 Like so many missions in 1966,

however, the American units participating in Masher focused narrowly on locating and destroying the enemy. Even the code-name seemed likely to yield an aggressive mindset among U.S.

soldiers. (President Johnson bristled at the choice, forcing Westmoreland to rename the operation White Wing.) Kinnard concerned himself little with political niceties. On 25 January, the 1st Cavalry launched out of its base at An Khe and flew towards Binh Dinh province.2

1 _{On Kinnard’s desire to receive a “mission to go find the enemy and fight him,” see Strange Ground:} Americans in Vietnam, 1945-1975, An Oral History, ed. Harry Maurer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), 143. 1st Cavalry’s mission from “Combat After Action Report” (RCS MACV J3/32), 28 April 1966, Folder 18, Box 1, Operation Masher/Operation White Wing Collection, TTUVA.

For the next six weeks, the 1st Cavalry Division fought intense skirmishes and firefights with local VC units and regiments from the North Vietnam Army’s 3rd Division. By the metrics established at Ia Drang only two months prior, Masher/White Wing was a huge success. The airmobile division had operated continuously for 41 consecutive days and had killed 1,342 of the enemy. The 3rd Brigade, now commanded by Colonel Hal Moore, achieved an astonishing kill ratio of 40:1. The numbers, though, hid some now familiar problems. Moore noted in his after action report that throughout the operation “significant portions of the enemy forces made good their escape from the area of contact during hours of darkness.”3 Kinnard’s superior, Major General Stanley Larsen, told an astonished news correspondent that neither he nor the local ARVN commander had enough troops to spare for follow-on pacification efforts. No one in the American command seemed fazed by the fifteen hamlets destroyed in the fighting or by the high number of civilian casualties. Asked if the Vietcong might infiltrate into the area as soon as U.S. troops left, Moore responded “It’s possible, if the government doesn’t really succeed in taking over the valley.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government never did succeed and when the 1st Cavalry moved on from Binh Dinh, the VC moved back in.4

2 _{On Masher/White Wing, see John Prados, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,} 1995), 111-112 ; Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), 580-583; and John M. Carland, Stemming the Tide: May 1965 to October 1966 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2000), 202-215. The operation included forces from the 1st Cavalry, ARVN, the Republic of Korea, and the U.S. Marines.

3 _{“Combat After Action Report,” Headquarters, 3}rd _{Brigade, 1}st _{Cavalry Division, Operation Masher/White} Wing folder, RG 472, NARA, ps. 10-11. Division KIA numbers from Combat AAR, Folder 18, Box 1, Operation Masher/Operation White Wing Collection, TTUVA, p. 23. Kinnard estimated another 1,746 enemy killed and 1,348 wounded during Masher/White Wing. On the airmobile division’s staying power, see Shelby L. Stanton, Anatomy of a Division: The 1st Cav in Vietnam (Novato, Ca.: Presidio, 1987), 77 and J.D. Coleman, ed., Memoirs of the First Team: Vietnam, August 1965-December 1969 (Tokyo: Dia Nippon Printing Company, 1970), 32. Stanton argued the division’s “record of battlefield success was evident by Viet Cong avoidance of the unit wherever possible.”

4

On Larsen’s views on pacification, see Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, 584. On hamlets destroyed, civilian casualties, and the enemy returning, see Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 163-164. Moore quoted in Kuno Knoebl, Victor Charlie: The Face of War in Viet- Nam, trans. Abe Farbstein (New York, Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), 219. On the refugee problem created by Masher/White Wing, see Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 58-59. On adverse affects of this operation on the pacification program, see Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War:

The planning, conduct, and assessment of Operation Masher/White Wing typified U.S. Army operations in 1966. Search and destroy operations dominated MACV thinking throughout the year. From Westmoreland’s perspective, there was good reason for this approach. The political-military problem of countering the southern insurgency fell into a logical, sequential pattern. U.S. forces first had to secure the population before local villagers would begin siding with the government. In the final days of 1965 Westmoreland explained to both the press and his commanders the importance of the South Vietnamese people in deciding which side they wanted to support. “When they chose to support the government this would be the most significant development and would probably designate the turn of the tide.”5 By launching sustained attacks against Vietcong strongholds the Americans would provide the necessary security behind which Saigon could pursue pacification. Through these “spoiling attacks” Westmoreland hoped to keep the enemy off balance and provide time for the GVN to achieve an acceptable level of political stability.6 Only then would the South Vietnamese turn their backs on the Vietcong insurgents.

With a total military strength now over 180,000 troops, Westmoreland felt he possessed the tools necessary to launch these large-scale attacks. During 1966 alone, MACV conducted eighteen major operations each producing at least 500 enemy dead. Counting enemy killed in action served as an increasingly dominant indicator for measuring progress towards

Westmoreland’s strategic objectives. While MACV concentrated on military operations to entice the enemy to battle, commanders in the field evaluated their progress and effectiveness using body counts. It seemed a highly rational means of meeting Westmoreland’s guidance. U.S. News and World Report found that many officers shared their commander’s belief that security

Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV, July 1965-January 1968 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994), 189.

5

General Westmoreland’s History Notes, 31 December 1965, History File 20 Dec 65-29 Jan 66, Folder 3, Reel 6, WCWP. Westmoreland’s guidance in “COMUSMACV Conference with FFORCEV Commanders and II Corps Advisors,” 30 December 1965, ibid. On search and destroy operations dominating friendly actions, see MACV Monthly Evaluation Report, February 1966, MHI, p. 2.

6

“The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1960-1968, Part II” (hereafter cited as JCS History), JCSHO, 33-1.

preceded pacification. “The feeling of U.S. officers,” it reported in early March, “is that Red guerrilla action at village level can be brought under control if main-force units of the

Communists are eliminated in operations such as White Wing.”7 Search and destroy operations thus would dominate U.S. actions in 1966, causing body counts, at least for a time, to dominate MACV’s evaluation and reporting systems.

Perhaps inevitably, problems arose in using body counts as a measure of army effectiveness. Soldiers trained in conventional tactics, attracted by laurels won in defeating a battlefield enemy, concentrated on the military aspects of counterinsurgency. The political fight fell increasingly to the wayside. While army officers professed their commitment to the “other war” of pacification, they still felt a need to show tangible results in security operations by killing the enemy. Pressures to demonstrate progress created incentives for commanders to overestimate enemy kills. Worse, few officers in MACV related the body count metric to the larger goals of political stability and governmental control. In such a complex environment as South Vietnam, simple statistics of enemy dead were meaningless unless placed in some larger political-military context. Westmoreland, however, remained certain that defeating enemy main force units ranked as MACV’s highest priority for 1966. Others were not so sure.

A Debate on Strategy

The week before Kinnard launched Operation Masher, a committee of staff members from MACV, Pacific Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff met in Honolulu to discuss planning for the coming year. The conference of over 400 staff officers preceded presidential sessions which began on 7 February. Lyndon Johnson, eager to stress the non-military aspects of the war while in Hawaii, intended to mobilize support for social reconstruction programs for the

7 _{“Turn for Better Seen in War’s Fortunes,” U.S. News & World Report, 7 March 1966, 33. On eighteen} operations in 1966 with over 500 enemy dead, see Dave Richard Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet: U.S.- Vietnam in Perspective (San Rafael, Ca.: Presidio Press, 1978), 120. Troop strength from News Release, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), 4 January 1966, Mil Opns Oct-Dec 65 folder, Box 248, OSDHO. See also Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1772-1991 (Jefferson, N.C., London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1995), 75.

South Vietnamese people. Popular apathy towards the GVN persisted in the countryside and the American mission felt Nguyen Cao Ky’s government was making little progress in pacification. While Johnson emphasized that he would not relax the American military effort, during the conference he concentrated on social, political, and economic reforms.8 Such a focus seemed appropriate for countering the insurgency in South Vietnam, as well as for silencing critics back home who felt the U.S. was committing too much attention to the military side of the struggle. For three days, the American and South Vietnamese delegations discussed the “other war” of pacification. As the conference concluded, Johnson and Ky declared jointly “their determination in defense against aggression, their dedication to the hopes of all the people of South Vietnam, and their commitment to the search for just and stable peace.”9

Despite the president’s commitment to the pacification effort, Westmoreland concerned himself mostly with the military planning sessions. COMUSMACV regarded protection of the government, people, and his own growing logistics bases as the most important tasks for early 1966. At Honolulu, he hoped to validate his strategic concept with Secretary of Defense McNamara while receiving further guidance for the coming year. Westmoreland also believed pacification efforts important, but they could only come after achieving security. As he told the press corps at Honolulu, “Essential to any pacification campaign is destruction or at least

8

On planning conference, see Carland, Stemming the Tide, 155-157. On Johnson “anxious to show in every possible way our concern for peaceful development and progress of SVN and our emphasis on non-military measures,” see Telegram from Department of State to Embassy in Vietnam, FRUS, 1964-1968, IV: 14. On Ky not making progress, see memorandum from NCS Staff to Bundy, ibid., 26-29. On Johnson’s focus during the conference, see “The New Realism,” Time, 18 February 1966, 19.

9 _{On discussion of the “other war” during Honolulu, see “Presidential Decisions: The Honolulu}

Conference, February 6-8, 1966,” Folder 2, Box 4, Larry Berman Collection, TTUVA, ps. 5, 19-20. See also Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 491-492. “The Declaration of Honolulu” in Public Papers of the Presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson, Book I— January 1 to June 30, 1966 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), 153-155. For how MACV portrayed “The Stakes in Vietnam,” see “Ready Reference Facts on South Vietnam,” Box 3, Joseph A. McChristian Papers, MHI. The pamphlet explained the wider significance of the war, at least in the eyes of the Johnson administration, by noting “Security of U.S. and rest of Free World is involved, not only that of Southeast Asia, because communists are testing techniques, tactics in South Vietnam.”

nullification of the well armed main force troop formations.”10 The Joint Chiefs and Pacific Command shared this sequential view of counterinsurgency, as did a number of contemporary writings on insurgency warfare. Even the army’s doctrine stressed the primary importance of ensuring internal security. So while Johnson pushed the “other war” at Honolulu, Westmoreland remained steadfast to his three-phased strategy developed in late 1965. McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk endorsed MACV’s position, and American strategy for the coming year solidified as the conference came to a close. The subsequent strategic document would have a lasting impact for the course and conduct of the Vietnam War.11

On 8 February, Westmoreland received a formal memorandum titled “1966 Program to Increase the Effectiveness of Military Operations and Anticipated Results Thereof.” The document laid out troop increases for the year—one of Westmoreland’s goals in the early Honolulu sessions—before discussing an expansion of American offensive actions. Relying on statistical data that had become a mainstay in MACV reporting, McNamara and Rusk’s

memorandum outlined Westmoreland’s goals for 1966. He would increase the population living in secure areas by ten percent, increase critical roads and railroads for use by twenty percent, and increase the destruction of VC and PAVN base areas by thirty percent. Ensuring the president’s directives were not ignored, MACV was to increase the pacified population by 235,000 and ensure the defense of political and population centers under government control. To

10

Press Conference, 6 February 1966, Folder 4, Reel 6, WCWP. Westmoreland told the MACV

Information Officer’s Conference in late 1965 that “we’re here…to assist the Vietnamese and work with them in killing VC.” See 8 November 1965 speech, Folder 2, History File, Reel 6, WCWP. On protection of government and people, see U.S. Grant Sharp and William C. Westmoreland, Report on the War in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 113.

11 _{On JCS and PACOM views, see Sharp to JCS, 12 January 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, IV: 47 and} “Command History, 1966,” HQ, USMACV, Entry MACJ03, Box 3, RG 472, NARA, p. 339. On internal security, see Department of the Army, Field Manual 31-16, Counterguerrilla Operations, March 1967, 29. On contemporary views of security and pacification, see “Isolating the Guerrilla,” Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Evaluation and Research Organization, February 1966), 17.

Westmoreland, the final goal ranked of highest priority. It directed MACV to “attrite, by year’s end, VC/PAVN forces at a rate as high as their capability to put men in the field.”12

Westmoreland thus arrived at and departed from the February Honolulu Conference convinced his first mission was to defeat North Vietnamese and Vietcong units in the field. Only then could pacification missions begin in earnest. MACV spent most of its attention and

resources in 1966 on military operations not because it was snubbing presidential guidance. Rather, Westmoreland believed the war would be long and that rural reconstruction programs had to be established on a stable, secure foundation. (Few policymakers in Washington disagreed that military and pacification efforts went hand in hand in South Vietnam.) As Westmoreland began operations aimed at enemy attrition, the body count gained prominence in MACV’s progress reports, minimizing the president’s emphasis on rural development. Measurements on roads, secured population centers, and civic action programs seemed of secondary importance. MACV continued computing statistics in these areas as before, but an informal hierarchy began to develop among the army’s metrics. Only body counts could ascertain when MACV had reached the rate when U.S. forces were killing more enemy than could be put into the field. Reaching this “crossover point” became the principal military goal for the next two years.13

12 _{“1966 Program to Increase the Effectiveness of Military Operations and Anticipated Results Thereof,” 8} February 1966, Incl. 6, Folder 4, Reel 6, WCWP. See also FRUS, 1964-1968, IV: 216-219 and Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History: 1946-1975 (Novato, Ca.: Presidio, 1988), 358-359. On the interrelationship between building and fighting, see Time, 7 January 1966, 19-20. Westmoreland was chosen as Time’s Man of the Year in this issue.

13 _{On Westmoreland’s views on a long war and pacification in South Vietnam, see Alex Campbell, “‘Our’} War, ‘Their’ Peace: Who Wants What in South Vietnam?” The New Republic Vol. 154, No. 12 (19 March 1966): 19-21. See also The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part IV, 182-183 for pacification discussions in the U.S. Embassy. Perhaps indicative of the mindset in MACV, Westmoreland noted that his staff was working on a system to measure progress towards the goals developed at Honolulu. “Since the President had referred to ‘counting the coon skins on the wall’, we are going to call this system ‘Project Coon Skin.’” General Westmoreland’s Historical Briefing, 8 Mar 1966, Folder 4, Reel 6, WCWP. Sir Robert Thompson believed MACV’s conventional approach to the war was due in large part to its conventional organization. Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York, Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1966), 60.

For Westmoreland, measuring attrition of the enemy through body counts was not an end unto itself but a means of providing for population security. Believing the communists had moved to the final, conventional phase of revolutionary warfare, COMUSMACV argued later he could not ignore regular NVA units by concentrating solely on Vietcong guerrillas. Westmoreland employed a simple analogy to explain this dual threat. Political subversives and guerrillas, “termites,” had been persistently eating away at the foundation of South Vietnam’s house. At a distance hid main force units, “bully boys,” waiting to pounce with crowbars to tear down the weakened building. Only by keeping the bully boys away could allied forces eliminate the termites. In essence, Westmoreland expected to build a screen of American forces behind which ARVN could undertake pacification missions. Much of this rationale relied upon appraisals of ARVN’s limited effectiveness against enemy main force units. Americans could use their

advantages in mobility and firepower to clear and secure. ARVN and regional and popular forces then gradually would assume responsibility for holding cleared areas. Successful operations like Masher/White Wing, which produced high body counts among the bully boys, appeared to confirm Westmoreland’s logic.14

Not everyone in Johnson’s administration agreed with MACV’s commitment to reaching the attrition crossover point. Throughout 1966, numerous advisers encouraged higher

prioritization on pacification efforts. Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance reported in April that “the civil reconstruction program is lagging [behind] the military effort.” In May Robert Komer, a special assistant to the President on pacification, argued forcefully that Ambassador Lodge “must be told to insist on a better balance between military and civil needs.” Even McNamara reported to Johnson in September that “progress in pacification has been

14

On bully boys and termites, see William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, N.Y.: