2

We Do Not Doubt
the Outcome

THREE DAYS BEFORE Thompson’s disastrous first foray in the Citadel, Bernard Weinraub, a New York Times correspondent in Saigon, assessed the significance of the ongoing Tet Offensive. He made only a passing reference to Hue but reported that, contrary to official assurances, the surprise attacks had shaken South Vietnam to its core. Relying mostly on unnamed American sources, Weinraub found a widespread sense of panic.

“There is an opportunity here to be seized or lost,” an American official said today. “If the [South Vietnamese] Government moves with decision, they’ll wind up in a strong position. If not, they’re in trouble.”

“. . . The people are frightened and they want some kind of leadership—maybe the word is protection,” said another official. “And this is the time for the Government to act and show what they can do.”

Although couched as opportunity instead of disaster, the unnamed official was conceding a lot more than the MACV would. Beyond the impact in South Vietnam, Weinraub reported that the American embassy was losing confidence in President Nguyen Van Thieu’s regime. The story cited its concerns with corruption, patronage, and Saigon’s lack of control over its generals, who ruled their own armies and regions like warlords. In the past, the relatively small VC presence in most parts of the South, particularly in big cities like Saigon and Hue, made it easier for citizens to simply acquiesce to Thieu’s government as the better bet. Tet had changed that.

Weinraub quoted an anonymous Saigon journalist who said, “Now, with the war brutally and unexpectedly brought to their doorsteps, most city people are forced to think over their traditional indifference and make a choice between the Government and the Viet Cong.”12

While that choice may still have been academic in Saigon, in Hue it had become a matter of survival. Either you dug in and played Russian roulette with American shells, or you braved the cross fire and murderous commissars in the streets in a frantic search for safety. The great tragedy unfolding in Hue seemed not to register with those in charge. Neither Saigon nor the MACV—nor the press, for that matter—expressed concern for the masses of people trapped by the fighting. The only concern expressed about collateral damage concerned Hue’s historical treasures, and after Thompson’s debacle the last vestiges of that vanished. None of the stories written about the fierce fighting in the city mentioned mounting civilian casualties, and yet there was hardly a marine fighting in the Citadel who had not encountered underground bunkers filled with civilians, alive and dead. Avenues of escape were few in the fortress, so the crisis there was particularly dire. The lucky ones who emerged alive from the shelling and fighting did so with their hands up, bowing submissively, and were led back to the growing numbers of refugees encamped around Mang Ca. When civilians did make it into stories filed from the battlefield, it was only to describe the mounting logistical challenge of dealing with them.

President Johnson evinced few pangs about killing Vietnamese. As the battle for Hue began its third week, he reiterated his support for bombing the North—the very policy his own advisers had judged ineffective.

“Let those who would stop the bombing answer this question,” he said. “What would the North Vietnamese be doing if we stopped the bombing and let them alone? The answer, I think, is clear. The enemy force in the south would be larger. It would be better equipped. The war would be harder. The losses would be greater. The difficulties would be greater. And of one thing you can be sure: it would cost many more American lives.”13

Johnson was increasingly frustrated by both Vietnams, North and South. On Wednesday he told Clark Clifford, whom he would soon name defense secretary, that the current secretary, McNamara, “deeply feels that Teddy and Bobby [Kennedy] are right, that the South Vietnamese are no god damn good and that they ought to do more and that we ought to have a confrontation.” Using a political metaphor for the current crisis in South Vietnam, he added, “I think it’s a hell of a poor time though, just before the day of election for you to divorce your wife!” As for Hanoi, Johnson had tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to draw it into peace talks, stopping and starting the bombing campaigns. United Nations secretary-general U Thant, whom Johnson called Hanoi’s “agent almost,” was just then pressuring him on the matter. The Tet Offensive, which LBJ referred to as “this murder,” had made such a renewed offer impossible.

“We went just as far as a human could, and they come up and they haven’t moved one inch!” he complained to Clifford. “We know that. Therefore, since they have answered it with this murder we cannot reward this kind of stuff. And therefore we’re gonna clean this thing up before we do anything . . . the Vietnam cities and the Khe Sanh battle. Old U Thant is going to be here tomorrow morning to demand we stop the bombing.”

Clifford agreed and outlined the talking points for a “backgrounder” with the press to clarify the administration’s reading of Hanoi: “We’ve now extended in the past six bombing pauses,” he said. “Not one of them has been productive of anything at all. This last time we made an all-out effort . . . which would have required minimum from them . . . more than we had ever done before, we extended the minimal requirements—all they had to do was start talks going promptly and not increase the flow [of soldiers to the south]. That’s absolutely minimum . . . everybody agrees to that. They don’t accept it. What they do is they come back with this ferocious attack, both militarily and on civilians, murder thousands of them and so forth, and that’s their answer to us . . . This discussion about the bombing is just part of their propaganda strategy.”14

Johnson was feeling increasing pressure from Congress, too. Senator William Fulbright was holding hearings about the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, in which Congress had authorized LBJ to escalate the war after two American warships were fired upon by the North Vietnamese. The hearings were examining whether that provocation had been faked or exaggerated by administration hawks as an excuse to widen the war. Senator Eugene McCarthy was also pressing his antiwar challenge on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

And the Battle of Hue ground on. Every report of further marine casualties added fuel to antiwar criticism. Former president Dwight Eisenhower had advised Johnson to avoid a protracted war, one where losses mounted slowly over years. Better, the great World War II commander argued, to finish the war in a move that might lose twenty-five thousand men a day and “get it over with, than to fight a war where you lost 2,500 men every month for years.”15 What was happening now was the worst-case scenario; the pace of the killing had accelerated at the same time as its end seemed ever more distant.

This was, of course, deliberate. North Vietnamese prime minister Pham Van Dong had explained, “Our purpose is, through a program of all-out attacks, to cause many US casualties, and so to erode the US will that antiwar influences will gain decisive political strength.”16 By this measure, the Tet Offensive was a major victory for Hanoi.

Time reported that week, “As the ancient capital of Viet Nam, Hue was a prime piece of captured real estate for propaganda purposes.” It faulted Westmoreland not just for inflated body counts but for his bloodthirsty embrace of them:

Less than two months ago, he was reporting publicly that the Viet Cong had been so bloodied that some U.S. troops might be able to start home in 1969. Last week, he speculated that heavy Communist losses during their attacks on the cities “may measurably shorten the war.” If the losses are indeed as heavy as claimed, he may be right. But the White House found his optimism in the midst of carnage a trifle embarrassing. Privately, Johnson last week ordered the general to tone it down.

There is no indication, however, that Westmoreland’s reports to the White House have been less exuberant than his public pronouncements. Presumably, he was misled by his intelligence unit. Nearly all military experts agree that Westmoreland has underestimated Communist strength—or overestimated the effectiveness of [South] Viet Nam’s regular army and paramilitary units. His own command admits that the strength of the enemy Tet offensive came as a shock.17

Johnson flew to California on Saturday the seventeenth to help send off men from the Fifth Marine Division who were to reinforce the troops fighting at Hue, Khe Sanh, and elsewhere.

“This is a decisive time in Vietnam,” he told the ranks as they stood at attention for his remarks. “The eyes of the nation and the world—the eyes of history itself” were on them. “We do not doubt the outcome,” he said. “The duty of peace is burdensome. It is a duty many generations of Americans have chosen as their own. It is a duty many other young men have borne as you bear it now. In the discharge of that duty, none have honored themselves—none have honored their nation—so nobly, or so bravely, as the United States Marines.”18