Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency

13. The 1968 Tet Offensive and Accelerated Pacification

281 chaPTer 13 The 1968 Tet Offensive and Accelerated Pacification The effectiveness of the organizational reforms and accelerated material investment introduced by CORDS depended as much on broader strategic and political questions as it did on the programs themselves. President Nguyen Van Thieu, elected in September 1967, was prepared to acknowledge that, as a U.S. Army historian put it, pacification prospects depended not only on “battlefield successes, but on . . . reform and reorganization efforts within the South Vietnamese armed forces and government.” In January 1968, Thieu told a senior CORDS official, Major General George Forsythe, that he wanted to get the ARVN corps and division commands out of territorial security, and cut the deadwood out of the officer corps. But the Americans had to understand that the “army could not be removed from politics overnight.” It was not only his “major political supporter,” but “the only cohesive force holding the country together.”1 As Thieu had stipulated, to acknowledge a need was one thing, to act on it another. Komer told Ambassador Bunker in early January that the GVN might simply be unable to meet the communist challenge, for Thieu’s ministries did not function and the president’s commitment to reforms looked “hollow.” General Thang expressed himself more forcefully, complaining to his American contacts that the ARVN corps commanders were sabotaging pacification. He saw the GVN as showing a “frightening reluctance” to seize opportunities, preferring to let the United States bear the burden of the war. In his view, the GVN performance was marked by “corruption in the provinces and districts, inefficiency at corps, and incompetence in Saigon.” Thang was not merely let- VIETNAM DECLASSIFIED 282 ting off steam, for he soon left the Joint General Staff, where he had run the territorial forces and pacification programs, to become IV Corps commander in late February.2 These GVN deficiencies led to a paradoxical result. A Rand researcher interviewing peasants in the Delta found that growing peasant discontent with the Viet Cong and severe communist combat losses were not, surprisingly, eroding insurgent political strength. On the contrary, communist political influence was actually growing. A weak GVN land reform program accounted for part of this; other factors identified in the Rand study included GVN ineffectiveness against the VCI, with the associated problem of indiscriminate repression of suspected VC, and the disdain for the peasant still displayed, after all these years, by urban-bred administrators. “At least the current Revolutionary Development cadres have not been accused of the misbehaviors often associated with past pacification personnel, but the peasants still consider them ineffectual in comparison with the Viet Cong cadres.” The Rand author concluded that “at the village level . . . the revolutionary war in South Vietnam is being fought and lost” by the GVN.3 The study that documented this conclusion did not appear until 1969. Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1968, military considerations dominated allied thinking. President Thieu seemed to think he had General Westmoreland’s endorsement of a “pinch out” strategy, in which allied clearing operations beginning in the Mekong Delta would gradually drive communist military forces northward and out of South Vietnam. In point of fact, Westmoreland was concentrating at the moment on I Corps, and especially on the siege of the U.S. Marine bastion at Khe Sanh, near the Lao border just south of the DMZ. In any case, the leadership in Hanoi was about to seize the military initiative. Its decision had come in June 1967, when after apparently vigorous debate the Politburo decided to unleash a countrywide assault in 1968.4 Even now, Hanoi’s expectations of the offensive remain obscure. It is known that both Ho Chi Minh and General Giap opposed it, on the ground that allied strength in the South precluded a decisive victory. Hanoi’s official military history says nothing about the disagreement, asserting only that the North acted on the belief that an offensive against the cities, especially Saigon, Da Nang, and Hue, would spark a “general uprising,” with massive desertions from ARVN followed by GVN collapse. Central Resolution 14 of January 1968 is more circumspect, listing final victory as only one of three possible outcomes , the others being a standoff or a U.S. expansion of the war into North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.5 Resolution 14 was preceded by preliminary guidance to commanders in The 1968 Tet Offensive and Accelerated Pacification 283 the South, and indications of a...