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Ivan W.
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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In This Issue: Viet Nam Diaries,
*A discussion
of Lewis Sorley’s book A
BETTER WAR *
Real Lessons of Viet Nam * “Clear and
Hold” strategy for Afghanistan has roots in
Viet Nam * Desperate
Offensive |
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VIET NAM
DIARIES, MY WAR
OF WORDS By Ivan W. Parkins
Saturday, October 10, 2009, I happened upon a repeat television
broadcast of Lewis Sorley reviewing his excellent book, A BETTER WAR,
published in 1999. Monday, October 12,
I opened my WALL STREET JOURNAL, to find the upper 40 % of the Opinion Page
devoted to similar remarks by Sorley.
That was enough to convince me that some of my own remarks from the
time of Vietnam may still have salience. More
re Sorely later; I will now return to the verbal war that I “fought”--
and lost. - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - May
30, 1967, several faculty members, on the campus of what is now UNC Asheville, presented a prepared discussion
of the war for students and local
media. I began my argument with “I am happy to be here fighting the most
necessary and most vital battle of the Vietnam War.” My
argument, based heavily upon writings of Walter Lippmann, was that American
scholarship, as well as communist ideology, denied that the United States was
capable of fighting a prolonged, low intensity, and in many respects
irregular, war. -
-- - - -- -- -- - -- -- - -
June 29, 1969, in a letter published by the DETROIT FREE PRESS, I
renewed my argument:
Two key dovish contentions are difficult to reconcile with the
President’s [Nixon’s] hopeful plan of
withdrawal. The first is that we are
in Vietnam to satisfy some irrational anti-communist tendency which afflicts
the more provincial of American leaders and public. The
second is that the South Vietnamese consist of Vietcong sympathizers on the
one side and apathetic peasants led by greedy incompetents on the other. .
. . .. An
American success, i.e. withdrawal leaving a viable and friendly regime in
South Vietnam, would seriously damage the intellectual and moral standings of
American doves. - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From my column entitled TREASON ISSUE, Daily Times-News,
February 16, 1972: …. On the military side the
key to the position of the “doves” is the alleged
hopelessness of our situation. . . . To say that they are consciously aiding
and abetting the enemy with that position is, I think, inexact. When one compares the pre-Tet news of 1968
with that recently, it becomes difficult to believe that Asian
Communists are really America’s principal adversaries. Two enemy ambushes of American convoys on
one day recently made news—one of our men was wounded. Four years ago we lost dozens killed and
scores wounded in ambushes just before Tet, and enemy sappers overran our
airbase at Kontum. The largest Communist victory in recent days has been
overrunning a thirty-man local defense force in South Vietnam. In fact, at rates prevailing for the last
several months, more Americans are being shot to death by other Americans in
Detroit than are killed by the enemy in Vietnam. . . . . MORE ON SORLEY’S BOOK, “A BETTER WAR”…...
Sorely’s book has, in my opinion, at least one shortcoming. Emphasizing, appropriately, the great
success of General Abrams’ clear-and-hold strategy, Sorley neglects the horrendous
failure of North Vietnam’s 1968 Tet offensive.
Following Tet, much of our media speculated that “now” we would be
confined to the cities; all of the countryside would again be hostile. It did not happen. Even before Abrams’ strategy was
implemented, most of the countryside was quiet. The reason was simple. Many thousands of the most experienced Viet
Cong entered the cities, not just to conquer them, but also to join with
large civilian uprisings. Most of the
VC remained there, not as conquerors, but as corpses. There were no
uprisings. And that was still on
General Westmoreland’s watch. He gets
too little credit. (Westmoreland’s book, A SOLDIER REPORTS, lists
fatalities in the first two weeks as 32,000 enemy, 1001 American, and 2082
ARVN and other allies.)
Most importantly, Sorley makes it very clear that our Executive Branch
(President Nixon, and the military) brought the war to an apparently
victorious conclusion. South Vietnam
appeared to be both willing and capable, with the limited support that we
pledged, of defending itself. But,
Congress quickly withdrew all three of the limited elements of support that
we had promised. The Soviets and
Chinese promptly increased their aid to North Vietnam beyond anything it had
been before. And America’s reputation
as a reliable ally evaporated.
[Assuring that we would be tested again, and now we are.] Today, our military has adjusted to the
problem and has provided a workable solution, but our political system has
not. Are we to suffer unnecessary
casualties on the battlefield to satisfy the liberal elite’s political notion
of an acceptable war? It certainly
appears to me that we need to remember the lessons of Viet Nam. |
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DESPERATE OFFENSIVE Column, April 5,
1972, Daily Times-News By Ivan W. Parkins
This communist offensive, because of its intensity, is being compared
to Tet, 1968. The differences between
the two are vast; a couple of examples may be extremely significant.
While the Tet offensive in 1968 attempted to infiltrate and overwhelm
the defenses of Saigon and other major cities throughout South Vietnam, this
offensive is concentrated in the one province closest to North Vietnam and
farthest from Saigon. American
strength in early 1968 was half a million and still building; it is now about
twenty percent of that and declining.
American casualties in early 1968 occurred at a rate one hundred times
as high as at the present time. On the
enemy’s side, the 1968 offensive was spearheaded by tens of thousands of
guerrillas native to South Vietnam.
Today, locally-born guerrillas are no large threat to the security of
South Vietnam, and the enemy is a more or less conventional invasion carried
out by regular units of the North Vietnamese Army. Thus, in his method of warfare, as well as
in the scope of his offensive, the enemy has changed radically. Why?
Even early in the war the enemy was not particularly favored in his
capacity for matching large units with the South Vietnamese in pitched
battles. Why should he try now that
the ARVN is larger, better trained, and better equipped than ever
before? Our own press hails this as a
test of the ARVN and of our Vietnamization policy. Since the enemy’s propaganda emphasizes
that time is on his side, why should he be in any hurry for this larger test? I
am suggesting that the current enemy offensive is a product of desperation, a
Vietnamese Battle of the Bulge. Except
for the elements of enemy desperation and initial success, that analogy does
not go very far. . . . . The
most probable goal of the current offensive is to hasten a negotiated
peace. This is not to imply that the
Communists are either peace-loving or humane.
Evidently, the Communists’ capacity to make huge sacrifices of human
beings is their most significant military advantage, in Vietnam and
elsewhere. But, after having sacrificed
many hundreds of thousands of lives, the North Vietnamese face more and
better prepared opposition in S.E. Asia today than they did a decade
ago. Now, they want to halt the
fighting, but they also want to claim some sort of accomplishment. . . . . .
With only limited military gains in prospect, it requires an unstable
mixture of desperation and reliance upon political sympathizers within
America to explain why the enemy would concentrate his dwindling forces
within range of South Vietnamese firepower and American aircraft. |
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VIETNAM LESSONS? Column,
May 10, 1972, Daily Times-News By Ivan W. Parkins The
gravest danger stemming from our involvement in Vietnam is not that we will
suffer a defeat but that we will learn the wrong lessons from our
experience. Even though what happens
in S.E. Asia is important to our national interests, what Americans
learn from what has happened there is more important than the actual
events. Unless the outcome of the
present fighting is so obviously favorable that it discredits most antiwar
elements in the United States there is a danger that we will withdraw from
Vietnam having less understanding of our public affairs than when we entered. . .
. . . .Based upon the historical record of nearly two centuries, to give more
of the war power to Congress will increase, not the likelihood of our
remaining at peace, but the likelihood of our being defeated in future wars. . ..
. . . The lesson that we need to learn is not how to keep Presidents from
committing us to war against the will of Congress. That has not been a problem. But, how can we get members of Congress to
honor commitments in which they have concurred? A
second lesson from Vietnam relates to the press. Much of the press insists that freeing it
of all legal and political accountability to the American public will enable
it to inform us more accurately, and to assure that Presidents hear more than
the advice of a few yes men. I do not
believe that the record of leading media supports that view. What the PENTAGON PAPERS illustrated was
that the President had more detailed and varied advice than he might have
gotten from THE NEW YORK TIMES. In
this matter the TIMES has played the hypocrite in grand style, excoriating
Presidents for decisions which it had originally supported, publishing stolen
documents to prove its 20/20 hindsight, and failing to mention errors of its
friends and its own reporting. The
commitment of the mass media to truth and candor seems to be no more reliable
than the commitment of Congress to peace, or to war. A
further lesson concerns the intellectuals, especially education and the
arts. Are we to learn from their
self-evaluations that they are unselfish and broadminded servants of humane
and public values, or may we consider the statistical evidence? What the statistics show is that in the
very period during which intellectuals were calling most loudly for reduced
military spending and for public sacrifices to aid disadvantaged minorities
they were claiming for themselves material benefits far exceeding any that
they had enjoyed before.
There is little logical reason why our Vietnam experience should not
be understood as a re-affirmation of our past. We need chiefly to avoid swallowing the
nostrums being offered by Senators, journalists, and academics who (Is it
mere coincidence?) stand to benefit in power, freedom, or money if we change
America as they direct. Foremost among
new lessons to be learned from Vietnam is one that I have never heard
mentioned by those who are most enthusiastic in their advocacy of change. It
is that leadership in matters of politics and public opinion cannot be left
independent of military leadership.
Our own suffering and such advantages as the enemy enjoyed in the
course of the Vietnam War both suggest that politics,
information, and education are vital parts of any large military commitment. |