The War: Critical Season

Optimism is a sturdy soldier, frequently able to survive even against overwhelming odds. Last week in Viet Nam it joined the list of casualties. Not since the early months of 1965, when the Communists were on the verge of overrunning South Viet Nam just before the U.S. buildup, had the mood and prospects of the allies looked so totally grim.

At the uppermost levels of the Administration and the Pentagon, where optimism has been endemic from the war’s earliest days, officials were still trying to find something comforting in the recent Communist Tet offensive despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared that the Saigon regime “if anything has been strengthened by the attack,” and on TV the U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker, in effect agreed. Despite some qualifications made by both men, such statements sounded absurd (see THE WORLD).

In contrast, middle-and lower-echelon officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. headquarters in Saigon voiced profound pessimism. They were dismayed by the uncertain performance of the South Vietnamese government, dejected by the demoralization of a populace suddenly feeling even less secure than before, disappointed by the failure of U.S. intelligence in anticipating the scope of the Communist move at a time when such attacks clearly should have been anticipated. No one of course believed that half a million U.S. troops could be defeated by the enemy in Viet Nam; but there was considerable fear that they had been spread entirely too thin over too many crisis areas to be effective. While the U.S. and its allies officially reported 40,000 enemy soldiers killed since the Tet offensive began at the beginning of the lunar New Year, some U.S. officers in Saigon reckoned the losses to be closer to one-third of that figure. That would leave North Viet Nam’s Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap with considerable muscle for a new wave of attacks on the cities. U.S. casualties were a fraction of the Communist losses, but they were the war’s heaviest nonetheless, totaling more than 1,350 dead and 6,800 wounded since the beginning of the Tet strikes.

Growing Criticism. Since the U.S. began its buildup in South Viet Nam 2½ years ago, it has been committed to two wars: one of bombs and bullets, the other of plows and pamphlets. In both wars, the U.S. effort has been set back by months, and perhaps years, as a result of the Communists’ recent attacks against the cities of the South. With the countryside wide open to Viet Cong soldiers, recruiters and tax collectors, the crucial rural-pacification effort is at a standstill. “We have had a hell of a setback,” admitted a high-ranking U.S. official in Viet Nam. “To even mention ‘the other war’ at this time is just a lot of nonsense.”

The emphasis is very much on the war which is at hand. General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Saigon for his eleventh visit—and his first in seven months—”to gain firsthand information on the situation.” Wheeler went out of his way to blunt the growing criticism of the way that General William C. Westmore land, the U.S. commander, is conducting the war, and to slap down speculation that he might soon be relieved of his command. “A corollary purpose” of the tour, said Wheeler, “is to convey to General Westmoreland the great confidence placed in him by the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Between Extremes. Frustration only feeds extreme views both on the hawk and the dove side. There are some who want saturation bombing of Haiphong’s harbor, then of Haiphong and Hanoi themselves, and finally of the Red River dikes. Others talk instead of a phase-down or even quick withdrawal. As it has been for so long, the President’s position seems firm and fixed between the extremes. He is determined to stand fast. He is, moreover, determined to hold Khe Sanh, for he believes that the loss of the outpost would allow the Communists to roll from the mountains of Laos right down to the South China Sea. Addressing American sailors on the deck of the 60,000-ton aircraft carrier Constellation last week during a tour of U.S. military facilities, he put his feelings into forceful words. “Men may debate and men may dissent, men may disagree,” said Johnson, “and God forbid that a time should come when men of this land may not—but there does come a time when men must stand. And for Americans, that time has now come.”

In short, the President is sticking with the formula that he has applied all along: more of the same. Last week the Pentagon announced that its April draft would total 48,000 men, including 4,000 for the Marines—the biggest one-month call-up since October 1966. For all of 1968, inductions are expected to total 302,000 men, an increase of more than 70,000 over last year. In addition, there were reports that 40,000 or more reservists would be called, that 130,000 would be put on special alert and that the President would mobilize some National Guard units. Whether the additional manpower would be used to reinforce the thinly spread U.S. fighting forces in Viet Nam was uncertain. Members of both the House and Senate Armed Services committees predicted that Johnson would raise the present 525,000-man ceiling on U.S. troops there by 50,000 to 100,000, or extend the current Viet Nam tour of duty (currently twelve months for soldiers, 13 for Marines), or both.

Decisive Period. In any case, Defense and State Department officials expect the next two or three months to be a critical season with hard and frequent strikes by the enemy. Johnson has told his aides that he anticipates a rough time in March and April. Others believe that the decisive period of the war lies immediately ahead. Warned the Wall Street Journal, a firm supporter of the Administration’s war policies: “We think the American people should be getting ready to accept, if they haven’t already, the prospect that the whole Viet Nam effort may be doomed; it may be falling apart beneath our feet. The actual military situation may be making academic the philosophical arguments for the intervention in the first place.”

On the other hand, one of the oldest axioms about Viet Nam, as a U.S. official reflected last week, is that “things are never as good as they seem when they are good, or as bad as they seem when they are bad.” The fact still remains that for all its space-age logistics, its split-second mobility, its advanced weaponry and its superb manpower, the U.S. has been forced from a flexible to a static strategy. And despite all the expert assurances of ultimate success from Washington and Saigon, the man who is calling the turns in Viet Nam today and for the immediate future is not General Westmoreland but General Giap.