April 30thThe Fall of Saigon marks the end of Vietnam’s war.
It’s April 30,Th demarcates more than just the end of the first war America lost; that date could be used as the beginning of the end of many “myths” about the war — the first being, that America’s military “lost.” In reality, the men who fought in Vietnam weren’t allowed to win. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, was one of the Washington politicians who made our troops ineffective by setting up absurd rules for engagement (ROE) which rendered it virtually impossible to win.
JFK selected Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense. McNamara was not an expert in warfighting or understanding the tactics involved. Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ retained the Ford former executive.
McNamara persuaded Johnson to believe that the myth of the Gulf of Tonkin was a plot to force us into war. McNamara had a great deal of intelligence, but was an incompetent decision to head DoD. To calculate the victorious war, he used only raw numbers. Kill X number of bad guys and lose only Y number — we win. Seriously, that was McNamara’s method of fighting a war.
McNamara established the following EROs
- ground forces could only engage in “inhabited” areas if the enemy was identified and only for defensive purposes.
- Only the chief of the provincial province can authorize the use of artillery.
- To warn citizens of incoming fire, leaflets and loudspeakers were needed.
- The orders to soldiers were to only shoot to inflict wounds.
And there’s this. It was necessary to tell fleeing enemies troops to stop before they could fire on them.
ROEs are just as ridiculous in the air.
- Vietnam’s capital city Hanoi, along with major ports and rail stations, were off limits.
- MiGs could only be engaged in the air, and only if they “displayed hostile intent.”
- The newly developed “beyond visual range” missiles were useless because fighters needed to wait to see the enemy before engaging.
- SAMs could not be launched unless the first one was created.
You can see that the main myth surrounding Vietnam is that no one believed our soldiers had any chance of winning.
“Baby killers” and other myths
Our men are often ridiculed when they return from the war. The Vietnam War is perhaps the most famous war, and this partly explains why. A photo of a girl named Kim Phuc, seen naked and crying after a napalm attack, illustrated that America was indiscriminately “napalming” civilians. They were “baby killers.” But, it was a myth. The planes that actually dropped the napalm were South Vietnamese planes — flown by South Vietnamese pilots.
Other myths continue to hold – like the war was fought by mostly draftees. Two-thirds, in fact, of the men who served in Vietnam was a volunteer. And 70 percent of men KIA were volunteers.
Although Muhammad Ail refused to serve, the United States Supreme Court reserved the conviction — not on merit, but on a technicality. He wasn’t vindicated. Also, the myth that more Blacks served and were “cannon fodder” is a continuing myth. Blacks were almost equal to the black population. 12.6 percent of KIA was made up of Blacks, which is almost exactly the same percentage as American blacks.
Vietnam veterans were treated poorly after their return, and many simply didn’t talk about it. Later, however, this changed. The stolen valor clowns emerged from their hole in 1995 when Americans began to recognize veterans. According to the 1995 census 9,492,958 people claimed they had served in Vietnam. However, the Vietnam War saw 1,713,823 soldiers.
An example of this is the Battle for Khe Sanh Airbase, which took place during the Tet offensive. Two married couples I know had their parents fly resupply missions to Khe Sanh. They would never talk about it unless asked — and I asked. It was a terrible time for them to share their memories.
There’s a joke that goes, if three guys are at a bar and they all claim they served at Khe Sanh, two of them are lying. Based on the census, maybe it should be revised to “10 guys” at a bar–and NineYou are lying.
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