III.

The Beginning of the War: 1959-1965

Diem represented the interests of the urban, Catholic minority in South Vietnam. Although Diem also found some support in the countryside among non-Communists, he did not enjoy a broad base of support. The repressive measures of the Diem government, designed to persecute Viet Minh activists and gain control of the countryside, eventually led to increasingly organized opposition within South Vietnam. The United States initially backed Diem’s government with military advisers and financial assistance to keep it from collapsing. The political situation in South Vietnam became even more unstable after Diem was killed in a military coup in 1963, leading to more direct involvement by the United States. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 gave President Lyndon B. Johnson permission to launch a full-scale military intervention in Vietnam. The first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam in March 1965.

A.

Rebellion in South Vietnam

When Vietnam was divided in 1954, many Viet Minh who had been born in the southern part of the country returned to their native villages to await the 1956 elections and the reunification of their nation. When the elections did not take place as planned, these Viet Minh immediately formed the core of opposition to Diem’s government and sought its overthrow. They were greatly aided in their efforts to organize resistance in the countryside by Diem’s own policies, which alienated many peasants.

Beginning in 1955, the United States created the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in South Vietnam. Using these troops, Diem took land away from peasants and returned it to former landlords, reversing the land redistribution program implemented by the Viet Minh. He also forcibly moved many villagers from their ancestral lands to controlled settlements in an attempt to prevent Communist activity, and he drafted their sons into the ARVN.

Diem sought to undermine the Viet Minh, whom he derogatorily referred to as Viet Cong (the Vietnamese equivalent of calling them “Commies”), yet their influence continued to grow. Most southern Viet Minh were committed to the Lao Dong’s program of national liberation, reunification of Vietnam, and reconstruction of society along socialist principles. By the late 1950s they were anxious to begin full-scale armed struggle against Diem but were held in check by the northern branch of the party, which feared that this would invite the entry of U.S. armed forces. In 1960, however, widespread opposition to Diem in rural areas convinced the party leadership to officially sanction the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (commonly known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF). The NLF was a classical Communist-front organization; although Communists dominated the NLF leadership, the organization also embraced non-Communists who opposed the South Vietnamese government. The aim of the NLF was to overthrow the Diem government and reunify Vietnam. Toward this end, the NLF began to train and equip a guerrilla force that was formally organized in 1961 as the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF).

Diem’s support was concentrated mainly in the cities. Although he had been a nationalist opposed to French rule, he welcomed into his government those Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French, and many of these became ARVN officers. Catholics were a minority throughout Vietnam, amounting to no more than 10 percent of the population, but they predominated in government positions because Diem himself was Catholic. Between 1954 and 1955, operatives paid by the CIA spread rumors in northern Vietnam that Communists were going to launch a persecution of Catholics, which caused nearly 1 million Catholics to flee to the south. Their resettlement uprooted Buddhists who already deeply resented Diem’s rule because of his severe discrimination against them.

In May 1963 Buddhists began a series of demonstrations against Diem, and the demonstrators were fired on by police. At least 7 Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest the repression. Diem dismissed these suicides as publicity stunts and promptly arrested 1,400 monks. He then arrested thousands of high school and grade school students who were involved in protests against the government. After this, Diem was viewed as an embarrassment both by the United States and by many of his own generals.

The Saigon government’s war against the NLF was also going badly. In January 1963 an ARVN force of 2,000 encountered a group of 350 NLF soldiers at Ap Bac, a village south of Saigon in the Mekong River Delta. The ARVN troops were equipped with jet fighters, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers, while the NLF forces had only small arms. Nonetheless, 61 ARVN soldiers were killed, as were 3 U.S. military advisers. By contrast, the NLF forces lost only 12 men. Some U.S. military advisers began to report that Saigon was losing the war, but the official military and embassy press officers reported Ap Bac as a significant ARVN victory. Despite this official account, a handful of U.S. journalists began to report pessimistically about the future of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam, which led to increasing public concern.

President John F. Kennedy still believed that the ARVN could become effective. Some of his advisers advocated the commitment of U.S. combat forces, but Kennedy decided to try to increase support for the ARVN among the people of Vietnam through counterinsurgency. United States Special Forces (Green Berets) would work with ARVN troops directly in the villages in an effort to match NLF political organizing and to win over the South Vietnamese people.

To support the U.S. effort, the Diem government developed a “strategic hamlet” program that was essentially an extension of Diem’s earlier relocation practices. Aimed at cutting the links between villagers and the NLF, the program removed peasants from their traditional villages, often at gunpoint, and resettled them in new hamlets fortified to keep the NLF out. Administration was left up to Diem’s brother Nhu, a corrupt official who charged villagers for building materials that had been donated by the United States. In many cases peasants were forbidden to leave the hamlets, but many of the young men quickly left anyway and joined the NLF. Young men who were drafted into the ARVN often also worked secretly for the NLF. The Kennedy administration concluded that Diem’s policies were alienating the peasantry and contributing significantly to NLF recruitment.

The number of U.S. advisers assigned to the ARVN rose steadily. In January 1961, when Kennedy took office, there were 800 U.S. advisers in Vietnam; by November 1963 there were 16,700. American airpower was assigned to support ARVN operations; this included the aerial spraying of herbicides such as Agent Orange, which was intended to deprive the NLF of food and jungle cover. Despite these measures, the ARVN continued to lose ground.

As the military situation deteriorated in South Vietnam, the United States sought to blame it on Diem’s incompetence and hoped that changes in his administration would improve the situation. Nhu’s corruption became a principal focus; Diem was urged to remove his brother, but he refused. Many in Diem’s military were especially dissatisfied with Diem’s government and the ARVN’s inability to rout the NLF, and they hoped for increased U.S. aid. General Duong Van Minh informed the CIA and U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge of a plot to conduct a coup d’état against Diem. Although the United States wanted to remove Diem from power, it did not give formal support for a coup. When the military generals finally staged the coup on November 1, 1963, it resulted in the murder of both Diem and Nhu. In the political confusion that followed, the security situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate. Meanwhile, the CIA was forced to admit that the strength of the NLF was continuing to grow.

B.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Succeeding to the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson felt he had to take a forceful stance on Vietnam so that other Communist countries would not think that the United States lacked resolve. Kennedy had begun to consider the possibility of withdrawal from Vietnam and had even ordered the removal of 1,000 advisers shortly before he was assassinated, but Johnson increased the number of U.S. advisers to 27,000 by mid-1964. Even though intelligence reports clearly stated that most of the support for the NLF came from the south, Johnson, like his predecessors, continued to insist that North Vietnam was orchestrating the southern rebellion. He was determined that he would not be held responsible for allowing Vietnam to fall to the Communists.

Johnson believed that the key to success in the war in South Vietnam was to frighten North Vietnam’s leaders with the possibility of full-scale U.S. military intervention. In January 1964 he approved top-secret, covert attacks against North Vietnamese territory, including commando raids against bridges, railways, and coastal installations. Johnson also ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct surveillance missions along the North Vietnamese coast. He increased the secret bombing of territory in Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a growing network of paths and roads used by the NLF and the North Vietnamese to transport supplies and troops into South Vietnam. Hanoi concluded that the United States was preparing to occupy South Vietnam and indicated that it, too, was preparing for full-scale war.

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese coastal gunboats fired on the destroyer USS Maddox, which had penetrated North Vietnam’s territorial boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson ordered more ships to the area, and on August 4 both the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy reported that North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on them. Johnson then ordered the first air strikes against North Vietnamese territory and went on television to seek approval from the U.S. public. (Subsequent congressional investigations would conclude that the August 4 attack almost certainly had never occurred. In 2005 the release of previously classified documents added more support to the finding that the August 4 attack never occurred. The documents included an account by a National Security Agency (NSA) historian who concluded that NSA intelligence officers “deliberately skewed” the evidence of an attack and failed to pass on information to officials that would have shown that no attack occurred.) The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which effectively handed over war-making powers to Johnson until such time as 'peace and security' had returned to Vietnam.

After the Gulf of Tonkin incident Johnson declared, “We seek no wider war.” United States bombing was significantly reduced. Meanwhile, North Vietnam began to dispatch well-trained units of its People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) into the south. The NLF guerrillas coordinated their attacks with PAVN forces. On February 7, 1965, the NLF launched surprise attacks on the U.S. helicopter base at Pleiku, killing 8 Americans, wounding 126, and destroying 10 aircraft; on February 10 they struck again at Qui Nhon, killing 23 U.S. servicemen and wounding 21 at the U.S. enlisted personnel’s quarters there. The attacks coincided with two high-level diplomatic visits: one in Hanoi by Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin, and the other in Saigon by U.S. national security adviser McGeorge Bundy.

Within hours of the attacks, Johnson approved reprisal air strikes against North Vietnam. In Hanoi, Kosygin abandoned his initiative to persuade North Vietnamese leaders to consider negotiations with the United States, and instead promised them unconditional military aid. Johnson’s advisers, chiefly Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, believed it was imperative to conduct an intensive air campaign against the North, in part to demonstrate it would pay a price for supporting the NLF. Johnson authorized a sustained bombing campaign to begin on March 2. Johnson’s senior planners reached the consensus that U.S. combat forces would be required to protect U.S. air bases, as the ARVN was considered to be too weak for the task. On March 8 the first of these forces, 3,500 U.S. Marines, landed at Da Nang. By the end of April, 56,000 other combat troops had joined them; by June the number had risen to 74,000.