Page 48 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)
“Well, it illustrates that the NVA can plan and coordinate. They hit the embassy to show we are vulnerable. It revealed the popular support for the VC, and it highlighted their courage,” Tom added.
“Excuse me?” Gaston said.
“It takes courage to take on the U.S.”
“It does. Gentlemen, if I may.”
“Please,” Serrano said.
“They have been studying you. They infiltrated the cities. You had been telling the world that the cities were safe. The VC and NVA proved you wrong. That may very well end up being the most lasting impact of Tet. Mr. Smith, do you know what District Eight is?”
“No.”
“It was the gold standard, an area of Saigon built up by the Americans. It’s where Westmoreland took visiting senators to showcase what was possible in Vietnam.
Homes were built with none of the overcrowding found in most of the city—clean water, electricity, TVs, refrigerators.
And today it is in ruins. Ho and Giap knew if they had a VC presence there as part of Tet then the American military would destroy it for them, along with the pipe dream that it could become a reality for all Vietnam.
The Viet Minh used a similar tactic in Hanoi against the French in ’46.
Both in Hanoi and Saigon the results were the same: gunships, artillery, destruction.
Now the people see the Americans, not the VC, as having destroyed their homes, killed their husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter.
How can you blame them? The VC don’t have helicopter gunships or bombers.
The Americans do. You may have created more VC than you killed. ”
“You may be right,” Tom agreed.
“The attacks around the country are important, but none are as important as what happened in Saigon. They proved they could hit the epicenter of American power in Vietnam, and they brought that victory into the living rooms of the American voter, showing them that American blood is being spilled here, not just in the hamlets, but in the heart of Saigon.”
“The press isn’t helping,” Serrano offered.
“Your press, Halberstam and Sheehan in particular, assassinated Diêm and Nhu on the page well before soldiers put bullets and knives to them in the back of an armored personnel carrier that was supposed to give them safe passage to the airport and out of the country in ’63.
Killed in an accidental suicide, isn’t that right, Mr. Serrano?
We may never know exactly what happened, but your Ambassador Lodge seemed to have a penchant for playing God.
I do not know why neither Kennedy nor Johnson did not remove him earlier.
That coup has come to haunt us all. Maybe they both feared Lodge would run against them for president?
Or perhaps they intended to use him as a scapegoat for a failing war while at the same time marginalizing him politically?
Regardless of the reason, that line of thinking backfired.
Did Diêm’s ousting solve the Buddhist problem?
It just exacerbated it with more monks self-immolating in the months after the coup than in all Diêm’s years as president.
And where were those New York Times and Washington Post articles then?
Perhaps the truth no longer fit their purposes?
Your press is complicit in this story, in the exacerbation of this war.
And they are watching it play out from the roof of the Caravelle Hotel. ”
“What is our biggest hurdle after Tet?” Serrano asked.
“The problem with American policy in Vietnam is that it is based around a single principle that your president’s advisors, for all their education and experience, have bought into ‘hook, line, and sinker’ as I believe you like to say.”
“And what is that?”
“Anti-communism. Anti-communism is your doctrine. That makes it easy to counter. It silences debate. The consensus is around anti-communism and not Vietnam. The communists are threatening to take over the free world, yet we voted freely in January 1946, and we voted for communism. You have become so focused on how to save the government of South Vietnam that you stumbled right past any coherent debate on why the government of South Vietnam is worth saving. That will be your ultimate downfall.”
“What do you say to the notion of collective security as outlined in the UN charter? You benefit from the U.S. providing security on the seas around the globe. Trade and commerce have flourished since the end of World War Two.”
“It’s one of the reasons import and export is such a profitable business. I don’t have to pay to defend my ships. The United States does it for me.”
“If South Vietnam falls, isn’t Thailand next?”
“Your Domino Theory.”
“Yes.”
“We have a contingency to set up our headquarters in Thailand should the need arise, if that gives you an answer. You are looking at Vietnam as the test, a crucial test, of the ability of the military and political might of the United States to counter the Soviets and Chinese through a third party. You yourselves made it a test.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“Ah, the real question. Your government won’t do it.”
“What?”
“Have the South Vietnamese government request that you leave. Have them publicly say they are ready to take on the North. Have them thank your country for all you have done. That is probably something that in hindsight you should have done following the crackdowns on the Buddhists or the November 1963 coup, but you didn’t.
It is not too late to orchestrate a reason to leave.
Then go ahead and put bases in Thailand if that makes you feel better. Counter the red menace from there.”
“Then Saigon will fall.”
“And fall it may very well. But you control the timing. Think of the lives you will save. Not everyone here is a staunch anti-communist, regardless of what they tell you to your face.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“A communist or anti-communist?”
“I am a businessman. It is not so simple for me, or for my daughter.”
“One day you might have to pick a side.”
“Perhaps. Though I was born without a country. That gives me flexibility. You and Mr. Smith were born to your side. And since we are talking as friends, I will give you another tip. Stop framing this conflict in terms of victory. Your countrymen see victory through the lens of VE Day and parades from the Second World War. What you are really doing in Vietnam is avoiding defeat, maybe even just prolonging the inevitable. Victory and avoiding defeat are two different things, Mr. Serrano.”
“So, defeat is inevitable?”
“You walked into a trap. You inherited a war from the French. A war the Viet Minh won. And now you have invested so much military and economic, not to mention political, capital into South Vietnam that those losses have consumed your approach, so much so that you have forgotten to ask the all-important question: What is the importance of Vietnam to the United States? Rubber? Maybe, but there are other places you can grow rubber. What do you want here?”
“Our goal is for the government in Saigon to exercise sovereignty over the South; the elimination of guerrilla and terrorist attacks from the North; the defeat of the insurgency supported by Hanoi; and the cessation of large-scale cross-border attacks by the NVA into South Vietnam.”
“And how long do you think you can sustain the strategic losses of Tet to achieve this? One year? Two years? Three? Four? Mr. Smith, what do you think?” Gaston asked.
“It’s a question of will. On my first deployment back in ’63, we captured a VC guerrilla hiding in a village.
He had a three-day-old stomach wound. His intestines had spilled out, and he had put them in a dirty cooking bowl offered by one of the villagers.
I think about him when I think about the will of the enemy. ”
“And what did you do with him?”
“We got our corpsman on him immediately. Washed the intestines in clean water from our canteens and called in a Huey. Transported him to the FOB, where they stabilized him as best they could and then got him to Saigon for next-level care. I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he survived.”
“And why is that? Isn’t he your enemy?”
“He was. But we probably have more in common with one another than we do with the people who ordered us into the trenches from the relative safety of Washington and Hanoi. Or maybe I just respect anyone who can live for three days with their guts in a bowl.”
“Fortitude,” Gaston said.
“That’s right. But, to answer your question, it’s not just the will of the soldier, it’s the commitment of the citizenry and our elected representatives, but most importantly our president.
I don’t see all those entities having a long-term determination to win when the guerrilla tactics of our adversaries continue to erode that political resolve. ”
“With Tet, Westmoreland, McNamara, and Johnson have lost whatever credibility they had,” Gaston added. “That might be the most severe wound of Tet. I believe that President Johnson has been focused on legacy.”
“What legacy?” Tom asked.
“He wanted to be remembered as the greatest domestic president in a generation. Instead, he got Vietnam.”
“ ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ ” Serrano said, quoting from Thomas Paine.
“There is something else,” Gaston said. “You want to show the world that what your President Kennedy termed ‘so-called wars of liberation’ will not work. If you want to win, you go to Hanoi, but your president seems to be afraid of triggering some as yet undisclosed agreement between the North and Moscow or Beijing, which would result in the deployment of Soviet or Chinese troops to Vietnam turning the whole fiasco into World War Three. Now, Mr. Serrano may know more, and some such treaty might indeed have been signed, but I have not heard whisperings of it, and I doubt it exists. As long as you operate in fear of this nonexistent treaty, you will continue to lose.”
“To win, North Vietnam merely needs to survive,” Serrano said.
“Quite perceptive. Your leaders think that Ho and Giap will behave as did the North Koreans. They will not. Their tolerance for death is exceedingly high. If your strategy is to try and make it so costly in terms of dead and wounded for the North that Ho will be forced to the negotiating table, we are in for a long war. Though it may not look that way, the North is fighting what you call a total war, while you are fighting a limited one. The longer this war goes on, the better for the North. Your secretary of war…”
“Of defense,” Serrano corrected.
“Forgive me. That’s right, and it is another reason you will lose.”
“What’s that?”
“You need a secretary of war, not defense.”
“On that we agree.”
“It is well documented that McNamara and his Whiz Kids look at war in quantifiable terms. If they spoke French, they would be familiar with élan—spirit, energy, animation, vigor. élan is not a quantifiable term, yet that is what the North has in spades and is counting on to outlast the Americans. It is a nationalistic spirit, an anti-colonial spirit. You are overextended in Vietnam, Mr. Serrano. Remember what Ho said of the French in the fifties: ‘You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.’ Your search-and-destroy operations are not going to win this war, just prolong it. If the communists win, I will work with the communists. If the South, and by South I mean the Americans, win, then I will work with the Americans.”
“Very pragmatic.”
“I am a businessman.”
“So, you are going to sit on the fence?”
“Such an American term, but yes. You could say I am ‘playing both sides against the middle.’ I have a business to run, Mr. Serrano.”
“I understand.”
“Do you know what they call the war in the North? Dau Tranh Vu Trang, ‘the violence struggle,’ struggle being the key word. It comes down to how many Americans you are willing to sacrifice before you lose Vietnam. And on that note, gentlemen, and ma chérie, I will bid you goodnight. Lê and Tr??ng will show you to your chambers. Rest well.”
As Tom lay on the bed beneath the mosquito netting, smoking a cigarette, in the eerily silent room, he kept going back to something Gaston DuBois said over dinner.
How many Americans are you willing to sacrifice?
Looking at the ceiling through the white netting, his thoughts of dead Americans and Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, were intruded upon by a vision, a vision of Ella, her face half bathed in an orange glow.