For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  The idea that continued American intervention was immoral was gaining widespread credence in the United States....These were signs that told us the offensive was a success and at this stage of the war we received them with as much satisfaction as we received news of any military victory.

  ARVN counterattacks and other military successes increased throughout May. A thousand paratroopers hit the NVA behind their lines in Quang Tri Province and killed 300. B-52s inflicted immense casualties on NVA massed formations. Along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in North Viet Nam, B-52s destroyed pipelines and pumping stations, reducing the amount of fuel available to the NVA’s fleet of vehicles. The ARVN 23d Division counterattacked at Kontum and the 9th and 21st divisions at An Loc. In the midst of the fighting, Richard Nixon flew to Moscow for a summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev. As the NVA reattacked Kontum (the tank-led frontal assault was shattered in the city by B-52s) and as they opened a fourth major front against provincial and regional forces in the Mekong Delta, politicians in Saigon and Hanoi both feared sellouts by their superpower patrons.

  Although North Viet Nam committed a 200,000-troop force to the spring offensive, some commentators labeled it “Hanoi’s essentially political offensive.” In the long run, they were right. Hanoi’s political goals were to capitalize on U.S. domestic antiwar sentiment, to discredit Saigon and Viet Namization, and to convince the United States to acquiesce to their negotiation demands. Senator George McGovern told the American people on 7 June that he would go “anywhere in the world” to negotiate an end to the war. On 3 June, Seymour Hersh had made the secret Peers Report on My Lai public. On the 17th, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. A month later, as the U.S. Senate voted to force the withdrawal of U.S. support within 120 days of the release of all American POWs, Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda “visited” Hanoi. In August, as an average of 206 South Viet Namese civilians were killed or seriously wounded every day (60-day average) by attacking NVA, 3,000 antiwar protestors marched behind death masks at the Republican National Convention in Miami.

  Still the fighting, the offensive and counteroffensive continued, but the NVA had been hurt by Hanoi’s miscalculation of the RVNAF’s abilities and by the premature assumption on the part of Hanoi’s Politburo that the state of American resolve was so low there would be no significant response by U.S. air power. The NVA suffered an estimated 100,000 casualties plus the loss of 50 percent of its heavy equipment. Those figures are astonishing. A modern army unit which loses 15 to 20 percent of its fighting men is considered operationally out of commission, and with regard to the NVA, subsequent military and political activities indicate that it was so crippled. North Viet Nam’s most famous general, Vo Nguyen Giap, victor of Dien Bien Phu and designer of the Khe Sanh and Tet 1968 offensives, was eased from power and replaced by Senior General Van Tien Dung.

  Still the offensive did not stop, though by 1 September it was a matter of public show not territorial gain, a matter of keeping up the appearance of a major offensive though the NVA had actually reverted to the tactical defensive generally launching only battalion-sized cross-border forays. Meanwhile, the morale of the ARVN, flush with mounting victories, was riding an adrenaline high. As for television, there were no news stories about NVA defections, though they reached an estimated 20,000 during the offensive.

  For the Khmer Communists, both the KK and the KVM, and thus for the battle for Cambodia, there was probably no single event more important than the NVA Easter offensive. FANK and the republic had become nearly totally dependent on foreign financial assistance. In the wake of his disastrous meddling and his mishandling of Chenla II, in March 1972 Lon Nol dissolved the National Assembly and declared himself president and supreme commander of the armed forces. Internal conflicts, corruption and ineptitude increased. American support for Lon Nol increased as his situation worsened.

  The decimation of major NVA elements made the NVA unable to return to their deep Cambodian bases and protect their hold on that country’s revolution. The drain-off occurred in late 1971; the offensive had been launched in March 1972 and had continued until August. The drain-off continued during the last months of the offensive because Hanoi’s desire to obtain the greatest political concessions of the war required every last troop it could scrape up. In that nine-month period the KK purged much of the KVM infrastructure and conquered (not “inherited”—the most frequently used word in histories of the period) many of the old NVA “liberated” zones.

  THE PARIS PEACE AGREEMENT

  On 27 January 1973 “An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam” was signed in Paris by American, North Viet Namese, South Viet Namese and Viet Cong representatives. American and Communist officials signed one version; Saigon’s agents signed another. The Saigon version stood fast by Nguyen Van Thieu’s unwillingness to acknowledge or legitimize the Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government. The settlement included eleven essential points, of which the most important were a cease-fire-in-place coupled with the withdrawal of all American forces (including advisors) and the dismantling of all U.S. bases within 60 days, the release of all U.S. prisoners of war, the recognition of the NVA’s right to maintain troops on Southern territory, the withdrawal of all foreign troops from and the prohibition of resupply lines through or sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos, recognition of the temporary status of the 17th Parallel DMZ until reunification of North and South, North Viet Namese “respect” for South Viet Nam’s right to self-determination, and a renunciation of the use of military force to “reunite” the country. No Khmer faction signed any version of the agreement.

  American, Viet Namese and Cambodian military actions of 1973 can be understood only in light of events prior to the Paris accords: the Nguyen Hue Offensive, the Christmas bombings, Operation Enhancement Plus, land-grab tactics, and Norodom Sihanouk’s and Lon Nol’s offers and other actions.

  Bombing allegedly had broken the ability and the will of the NVA to continue its massed blitzkrieg spring-summer offensive in South Viet Nam. After pulling seasoned forces from Laos and Cambodia and augmenting them with green troops from North Viet Nam, after suffering 100,000 combat casualties and after the destruction of 50 percent of its armor, artillery and trucks, the NVA dropped this military strategy and reverted to dispersed terrorism and small-unit engagements. In Saigon, in Washington and in Phnom Penh, as well as in Hanoi, Peking and Moscow, military planners and political leaders rediscovered the effectiveness of tactical-strategic bombing. Even though ARVN ground force counterattacks, supported by U.S. and South Viet Namese tactical air power, played a greater role than the oft-noted B-52s, some observers, including many leading civilian detractors of South Viet Nam’s forces, concluded that bombing won the battle.

  In the periods of the drain-off from Cambodia, of the reversion to guerrilla tactics and the rebuilding of forces, when the NVA could not sustain combat, Hanoi launched the political offensive that led to the initial “breakthrough” agreements of October 1972. Those agreements led the Nixon White House to implement Operation Enhancement Plus, a move to transfer two billion dollars in materiel from U.S. forces to the RVNAF. (The figure included the value of bases of little use to the defending forces, who had a parallel network of bases, plus used weapons valued at replacement cost. The amount of arms and munitions was still significant.)

  The breakthrough agreement was seen in Hanoi as America’s capitulation. In negotiations after the agreement was “reached” (Saigon’s leadership never accepted it), North Viet Nam increased its demands. On 21 October Pham Van Dong announced five conditions for the cease-fire, including the realignment of Saigon’s governmental structure to reflect a VC-RVN coalition and the demand for a general election within six months. On the 26th, Le Duc Tho, in an atmosphere of U.S. congressional, media and public disgust with the war, won agreement for a total U.S. withdrawal and the permanent presence of the NVA in the South.

 
In response President Nixon declared there would be no signing until all issues were resolved. This need for resolution, Pham Van Dong stated, forced the NVA to launch 142 attacks on 2 and 3 November in South Viet Nam.

  Ten days later, as the United States turned over the Long Binh facilities to the ARVN, and as indigenous Southern rebel troops (VC) unsuccessfully revolted against a major purge attempt of Southerners by Northerners in the border-based units, Norodom Sihanouk, nominal head of the Khmer Communist government in exile, rejected Lon Nol’s offer to join the cease-fire agreement.

  The situation deteriorated further in early December. Hanoi ordered strategic reserve units throughout North Viet Nam to head south to grab as much territory as possible before any agreement was finalized. (Saigon’s forces were doing the same.) Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut were rocketed; heavy assaults were launched in the Central Highlands and south of the DMZ. In Paris the Communists demanded that the International Supervisory Team be limited to 250 members (the United States wanted 3,000), and Saigon’s representatives demanded that Southern sovereignty be recognized. In Cambodia, Khieu Samphan rejected Lon Nol’s renewed request for negotiations. On 13 December U.S. jets caught and destroyed one hundred Soviet-built T-54 tanks heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. All talks broke off.

  Now came Operation Linebacker II, the “Christmas bombings.” At 9:43 p.m. on 18 December 1972, U.S. B-52s unleashed their bomb loads on Hanoi. For seventeen of the next eighteen days (Christmas excluded), American planes dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on North Viet Nam. Fifteen B-52s and eleven escort planes were shot down during the raids, which amounted to 729 B-52 sorties and 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties.

  During the period, Hanoi reported 1,623 civilians killed. Free world press reports were heavily critical of “America’s immoral act.” There were almost no reports of NVA attacks on civilian population centers in South Viet Nam, during the period even though Northern troops attacked or shelled cities throughout the South, peaking with fifty-six attacks on 27-December.

  Operation Linebacker II ended on 30 December with indications from Hanoi’s representatives that they’d had enough. Again, military and political planners in all the countries involved concluded that the decisive element that had returned Hanoi to the negotiations was bombing. Again, bombing allegedly had won the battle. Bombing was a decisive tool.

  To many in the West the issue was confused—internal contradictions were stimulated. Martin F. Herz and Leslie Rider, in The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing (1972), revealed major discrepancies between the reports and the reality.

  “The U.S. prestige press [The New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the commercial TV networks] was outraged....The Times said that ‘civilized man will be horrified at the renewed spectacle of the world’s mightiest air force mercilessly pounding a small Asian nation.’ ” Later it called the bombing “terrorism on an unprecedented scale.” The Post said it was “the most savage and senseless act of war ever visited, over a scant ten days, by one sovereign people upon another.”

  Editorial writers and columnists also uncritically accepted certain assertions. A December 28 Post editorial said:

  To pretend...that we are making “enduring peace” by carpet-bombing our way across downtown Hanoi...is to practice yet one more cruel deception upon an American public already cruelly deceived. It is, in brief, to compound what is perhaps the real immorality of this administration’s policy—the continuing readiness to dissemble, to talk of “military targets” when what we are hitting are residential centers and hospitals and commercial airports....

  According to Herz and Rider; the Post accepted as fact Hanoi’s charges that residential areas of Hanoi were “carpet-bombed”; “it accused the administration of ‘cruel, deception’ ” about why the peace talks broke down; “it was convinced...that the bombing would not lead to an agreement; and it rejected the Administration’s statements that our bombers were aiming only at military targets....The Post, like the Times, had for years given greater credence to enemy claims about the war than to statements issued by U.S. officials—not always without justification.”

  Yet eyewitness accounts of the damage to Hanoi contradict the claims of carpet-bombing. A Times writer reported from Hanoi after the January agreement that the damage “was grossly overstated by North Vietnamese propaganda.” A Washington Star reporter wrote from Hanoi in late March: “Some press reports had given...the impression that Hanoi had suffered badly in the war—but in fact the city is hardly touched.”

  Herz and Rider concluded, “The editorial position of the prestige press doubtless affected their selection of news stories...converting news reporting to editorializing via selection and thus subverted the free formation of opinion essential to a democracy.” Further, the authors found, “The relative silence of the U.S. government...deprived the media of some information....”; that there was “no evidence that the U.S. Air Force engaged in the ‘carpet-bombing’ of civilian centers” and that “As an incentive to resume serious negotiations, the bombing...appears to have been...effective...this reality has never been acknowledged by the prestige press, which did so much to obscure the issue.”

  All these perceptions and more, accurate and inaccurate, by planners, policy makers and the public, were brought to bear on Cambodia. The peace accords, by dealing with only one of four fronts, set the stage for the war’s continuation.

  Now, the Krahom would begin in earnest to launch its own offensive and would simultaneously attempt to eliminate all “tainted” elements from within its own structure. And America would respond with its only “decisive tool.”

  Then would follow the second eye of the storm, a lull after that most violent of firestorms—a firestorm of pure flame and arc-light combined.

  PART THREE

  THE REPUBLIC OF CAMBODIA FALLING

  The breaking of a nation’s will to resist is the final object in war....In international power politics, the willingness to accept challenge is far, far more important than physical capacity to wage war. Here we have failed. Currently, ally and enemy alike regard the United States as having lost its will to resist Communism in all other parts of the world with the exception of the United States. [Though we] have affirmed and re-affirmed our commitment...our actions do not follow our words.

  —Ernest Cuneo,

  syndicated columnist,

  April 1970

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1972

  HE STOOD IN OUDONG, in his filthy stinking Caucasian skin, in his rotting fatigues, in his disgust, attempting, why he didn’t know, to control his exasperation and the volume of his voice. “Talk to the refugees,” he said. “We still don’t know what really happened. Talk to them.”

  “Oh yes, Captain! We know.” The FANK liaison officer smiled broadly. “It is very good that you aren’t killed.”

  “Damn it!” Sullivan could no longer control it. “There’s a proper system for this. There’s a way to get results. You can’t continue to fall headlong into these things without knowing what you’re hitting.” With Sullivan were a small group of frightened civilians, as filthy and emaciated as he from their months of hiding, trudging through backwater swamps, not knowing the front had evaporated, not knowing they could have safely emerged weeks earlier.

  “Here”—the liaison officer’s smile pasted on his face infuriated Sullivan—“in Cambodia we have our own ways. My senior officer...”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  “Of course, Captain. You must clean up; have dinner with...”

  “Damn it,” Sullivan barked. “Look!” He grabbed a map from a second rear staff officer. “Look, you’ve got to get to the heart of this. Your commander has a responsibility to more than the glory of command. He’s got people. He’s got...” Sullivan stopped. Ten feet to his right Rita Donaldson was snapping his photograph. “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “Are you advising, Captain?” She laughed mockingly. “Phew! You’re a sig
ht!”

  “Only observing end use, Mrs. Donaldson.” Sullivan backed a step away from the Cambodian.

  “Ms.”

  “Hum?”

  “Ms. Not Mrs., Captain. I think the photos will show you advising. You’ve been...”

  “You got a real obsession with that, don’t you, lady?”

  “Do you mean, I’m obsessed with following the letter and spirit of American laws?”

  “God! For what, a month I’ve...” He curbed his speech.

  “Yes, tell me. You were missing in action. General Cleland will be happy you’re back.”

  “Back! I...” Again he curbed his tongue. “Who?”

  “While you’ve been doing what you say you haven’t, MEDT had a command change. Cleland for Mataxis. Now...it’s John, isn’t it? May I call you John? Call me Rita.”

  Sullivan sighed. He shook his head. “I...”

  “Yes? Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been watchin guys, the bravest soldiers I’ve ever known, stop an NVA charge. One guy...You bitch! I’ve been struggling to get back....Where the fuck do you think I’ve been? I watch this guy, Suong...poor fucker got greased...and you, Mrs. Donaldson! come up here one fucking hour after I get dragged from the fucking swamp and tell me I’m advising!”

  “Photographs don’t lie, Captain.”

  Stung Treng was symbolic. The Krahom had moved back, east, into KVM-NVA territory. The NVA had withdrawn its main force units to border sanctuaries and staging areas for duty yet farther east. The drain-off was at hand.