Hearts and Minds

• Most Vietnamese were rice growing peasants, living in small villages in mud and bamboo houses without running water or electricity. American soldiers couldn’t conceive of this lifestyle, partly explaining why they sometimes treated them as sub-human.
• Johnson didn’t understand what motivated Ho and NV. He promised Ho economic aid if he would stop the war in April 1965, not appreciating that Ho was fighting for a United Communist Vietnam and unwilling to compromise.
• The US were frustrated by guerrilla warfare. Westmoreland would have preferred traditional set-piece battles, and soldiers found it difficult to know whether someone was a guerrilla, guerrilla sympathiser, neutral or pro-Saigon.
• Villagers often gave guerrillas food, shelter and hiding places, turning many US soldiers against the people they were supposed to be helping.
• 16 March 1968 - My Lai massacre. Village apparently pro-communist, and US soldiers killed 347 unarmed civilians, including old men, women, teenagers and babies. Women were raped then shot and livestock was killed then dropped into wells to poison the water.
• American actions such as those at My Lai, a result of VC guerrilla warfare, made them even less popular.
• Cluster bombs - after exploding mid-air they would release 350-600 baby bombs. Each exploded on impact with thousands of metal pellets. Fibreglass substituted for metal, meaning it didn’t show up on X-rays, so harder to extract.
• US firepower concentrated more on SV because they wanted to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail and drive VC out of South.
• In search of VC, US dropped bombs that forced peasants to move away from their homes, crops and ancestral graves, and killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians.
• US bombing obliterated five towns with populations over 10,000 and many villages.
• Agent Orange used to defoliate SV jungles from 1962 to make enemy more visible and destroy rice crops which fed VC. Just alienated friendly and neutral Vietnamese and Americans themselves.
• Fighting and bombing drove around two thirds of SV’s peasants from countryside into towns and cities.
• Increase in urban population - many housed in primitive camps that bred disease, and lived off Americans.
• Saigon during war - drugs, brothels, black-market goods and 56,000 registered prostitutes.
• American dollars distorted the Saigon economy. Taxi drivers would only stop for Americans and Vietnamese professionals lost status and influence.
• Washington wanted to bring democracy to Vietnam, but this was meaningless to the Vietnamese who had no experience of American-style politics.
• Strongest Vietnamese political tradition = hatred of foreigners. Soviet and Chinese aid to communists not visible like US aid to SV. VC seemed anti-American patriots, SV bound up with foreigners.
• At Johnson’s insistence, Ky held democratic elections observed by US politicians. Even though Ky ran the elections, his candidate Thieu only managed 37% of vote.
• US aid often pocketed by military and urban elites. Amount of cement supposedly needed and given to Vietnamese officials in one year enough to pave entire country.
• Corruption of Vietnamese officials largely due to Vietnamese emphasis on family duty. Thieu’s cousin ran a wealthy province - for a fee he would let VC out of jail or keep ARVN out of battle.
• Saigon wanted to avoid losses. e.g. Feb 1971, 30,000 ARVN invaded Laos with orders to retreat if more that 300 died. Frustrated US and poor results damaged morale.
• Many military leaders in ARVN appointed for political reasons. Urban middle-class officers didn’t get on with peasants in lower ranks.
• Buddhists constituted 80% of ARVN but 5% of its leadership.
• ARVN wages so low that some pocketed pay of deserters, sick or dead men. Lower ranks bullied and robbed the population and some deserted to communists.
• ARVN disliked by Vietnamese for association with US, Westmoreland unwilling to use ARVN assistance as he despised them and preferred to use Americans.