Vietnam Lessons the U.S did not learn

Robert McNamara was one of the first leaders to perceive that the war was not going on track. Westmoreland here with one of his trips to Vietnam (1965). Despite the extraordinary effort and the feeling of triumph, the U.S had not finished understanding the kind of war in the fighting and the enemy he faced.

This was felt in the ongoing quantitative statistics and reports requested and handled by the controls without excessive attention to the speeches of Communist leaders, showing they behaved like any conventional war, where the emphasis is on data from the potential enemy, instead of a guerrilla war, where it is vital to separate the guerrillas of popular support.

Furthermore, the Demilitarized Zone was still a hotbed of communist infiltration, despite the harsh battles fought there, despite the McNamara Line and its advanced technology and batteries installed. But more critical was the situation in the so-called Iron Triangle area 50km from Saigon, full of tunnels and full of Vietcong and soldiers of the EVN.

That area was always a dagger on the capital of the South, halfway between safe havens in Cambodia and the main southern city, with their richer areas. Operation Attleboro was the example of a major operation mounted to locate and destroy the shelters and the units, but the soldiers of the 196th Light Infantry Division received a tremendous beating when they tried in August 1966.

The Communists succeeded in preventing the siege and fled to Cambodia. Again they attempted in January 1967 the framework of Operation Cedar Falls and again battles were fought, but the Vietcong did what the Americans thought was impossible: to disappear. They captured lots of material and destroyed many tunnels, but the bulk of the guerrilla forces had returned to evade the attack.

Most of the Johnson administration supported the idea of increasing funding and personnel assigned to Southeast Asia, but Robert McNamara, one the earliest and most ardent supporters of U.S intervention, started to doubt in 1966 and openly considered the impossibility of winning that war in 1967.

According to him the lead in fighting the communists were, they could choose how many casualties and few infringed on their opponents, thus stated McNamara. They kept their losses to a low enough level to endure indefinitely, but high enough to tempt them to increase their forces to the extent that the American public rejected the war. A similar view was shared by the CIA agent who also postulated the impossibility of winning the conflict by military means alone.