Mekong Delta is: If pacification is going badly elsewhere in Vietnam, how likely is it to ‘succeed in the most securely held of all NLF territory? r :
On paper, the strategy of pacification can be summarized in a few sentences. The July 9 Economist states: "While the regular government forces pursue the main units of the enemy elsewhere, the police field force, backed by the regional and local armed forces, will carry out mopping-up operations against the corresponding local Vietcong elements who have been left behind by the sweep. The police will operate in groups of battalion strength based on district towns....The field force must on no account move on until it is certainly safe for ordinary police to take over -- until the village copper has rather better than a. good chance of survival."
In practice, it has not worked out. The Economist suggested one reason.at the time: "The police field force now stands at a little over 3,000 men....Sadly, an embarrassing number of the national police in the north joined up with the rebels. Little more than a thousand police have yet been allocated to a village police work (South Vietnam has 2,560 villages and 13,650 hamlets) against the 1970 {sic] target of 20,000."
A more devastating appraisal was provided two months later by New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan: "Once a battle has ended, the American and South Vietnamese troops withdraw. The theoretical follow-up by South Vietnamese territorial forces,
police and administrators to pacify the region does not materialize except in a very limited number of instances, and the Vietcong guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies move in again. The Americans eventually return and the same region is thus fought over repeatedly." (October 9.)
After almost two years of bloody campaigning, countless thousands of deaths, horrendous bombing, it is little to say for the "war effort" that the same region is thus fought over -- repeatedly. Such considerations must prove worrisome to the military, for it belies their glib propaganda and confirms the charge "that the ‘war of. liberation,' far from being cheap, safe,: and disavowable is costly, dangerous, and doomed. to failure." (General Maxwell D. Taylor, February 17, 1966. ) According to the. Wall Street Journal's Feinstein, the situation is reinforcing a significantly modified conception of pacification in Washington:
"Even as U.S. and Saigon planners talk of handing more and more of this effort over. to the South Vietnamese army, while U.S. troops. concentrate. on battling the: eneny's ‘main force' units ,. an on-the-spot check of 'pacification' progress finds performance spotty at best. The ARVN. (Army of. the Republic. of. Vietnam) is only occasionally effective in providing and maintaining security for villagers on its own. Partly for this reason, follow-up efforts of the Saigon government to win the allegiance of the populace are more. often.than.not inept or nonexistent. .
"The clear conclusion: 'Pacification' works’ best when local security is rein- — forced, at least in the early stages, by_the presence of U.S. (or in one notable case, Korean) combat troops." (Emphasis added. )
If "pacification" is to work in the. Mekong Delta, or anywhere in Vietnam for that matter, a significant section of the military now feels that the second holding stage . must also be conducted by U.S. troops. The implications for this position are clear enough in terms of. the gigantic escalation of troop commitment that would be required. It "could drastically alter the rosy projections, offered by Defense Secretary McNamara just before Election Day, of a marked decline in the rate of the U.S. troop buildup," Feinstein. adds. It takes a considerable number of forces to conduct a successful occupation. _ .
Feinstein gives the example of what Washington considers an effective case of pacification: "One 'bamboo shoot’ of progress can be seen in Binh Dinh province, about 265 miles north of Saigon, where. 53,000 U.S., South Korean, and South Vietnamese troops and militiamen have erected an effective security screen against some 9,000 North Viet-. namese regulars and 17,500 Vietcong based in nearby hills. Behind this barrier 18 ‘'revolutionary development teams are helping to build a better life for. thousands of farmers and fishermen who earlier this year saw their homes turned into a battle zone."
Their success, Feinstein holds, is symbolized by this anecdote of patriotic heroism: "One father stoically reported to a local cadre leader that three Vietcong agents would be harassing a hamlet one night. He knew, he said, because one was his son. Under the cadre's instruction, hamlet residents set up an ambush and all three Vietcong were killed."
In facts and figures, the success is not quite .so clear cut: "Even in. Binh Dinh," Feinstein concedes, 'progress is slow. Of 675 hamlets in the province only 122-are con— sidered secure and 212 more are in some stage of clearing. That still leaves more than half of Binh Dinh's hamlets subject to encroachments by the Vietcong. ®
"One veteran in the program thinks it may take three more years. to pacify Binh Dinh..." The Economist's 1970 projection may prove to-be on the short side.
In reality, the intrinsic logic of Washington's invasion of Vietnam was evident long before the military ponderations over attacking the Mekong Delta reported in the Wall Street Journal. The Saigon puppet regime is hopelessly incapable of rallying any _lasting support from the south Vietnamese populace, let alone sufficient strength to enforce police-state occupation of a territory once ruled by the National Liberation Front. In order to destroy the revolution, and that is what pacification means, it will be necessary for U.S. forces, and U.S. forces alone, to do the vast part of the dirty and long-term job of occupying the country.
Whatever the actual next stage or stages of escalation may be, one thing is absolutely certain about Johnson's plans. So.long as the Democratic party and the ruling class which it represents is bent on teaching the south Vietnamese the. lesson Maxwell Taylor had in mind, it will mean more war, more fighting, more deaths.: After nearly five years of fighting in Vietnam, after nearly 6,000 American soldiers have been killed, the end is nowhere in sight.