ERNEST MANDEL:
Trotsky s Marxism
OO 82% o & Vol. 6, No. 5 February 9, 1968 A New Stage Opens in
Vietnamese Revolution
Japanese Students March Against U. S. Nuclear Warship
A NEW STAGE OPENS IN THE VIETNAMESE REVOLUTION
By Joseph Hansen
The world's mightiest imperialist power has been dealt a stunning blow. The blow is primarily political although its immediate military impact is considerable. What has occurred is a sudden upsurge of the Vietnamese revolution; and those who are carrying it forward have written one of the most extraordinary and heroic pages in history.
Fantastic claims have been made by the Pentagon on the casualties suffered by the National Liberation Front. However, they are based on "body counts" furnished by the South Vietnamese puppet forces, who compensate for their lack of energy during battle by their zeal in collecting statistics afterward. Even the U.S. press admits that the compilations are triple if not four times the actual count.
The blow fell on January 30, which was Tet, the lunar New Year, when simultaneous major assaults were made by the freedom fighters on twenty-six provincial capitals, and uncounted smaller towns, airfields and military bases. The surprise was overwhelming despite the Pentagon's effort to make out that it knew long in advance what was in store.
Saigon itself was the scene of heavy street fighting, the American enbassy being seized in a dramatic raid by a heroic squad of twenty men, nineteen of whom laid down their lives.
The New York Sunday News, a rabid, warmongering sheet, raised its hands in holy horror over the "betrayal of Tet," although it has not exactly distinguished itself in the past by piety in observing the Vietnamese lunar New Year.
The editors can now better appreciate the feelings of the redcoats over the "betrayal of Christmas" committed by George Washington when he crossed the Delaware and interrupted the festivities and merrymaking of the British colonial forces at Trenton on December 26, 1776.
Fulminations over the Vietnamese "sneak attacks" were all the more nisplaced in view of the fact that the Saigon puppet government had canceled the Tet truce in the northern provinces and announced that the air strikes would be continued without interruption over North Vietnam.
The New York Times played down the events. This is understandable from its point of view, for although it has maintained a steady campaign of criticism of Johnson's course in Vietnam, its differences are of a tactical nature and it can
only deplore a defeat for U.S. imperial-
ism. All the more instructive was its
assessment February 4 of the reaction
in Washington.
"The shock of the Vietcong ranm-
page," it said, "coming on top of the
humiliating Pueblo incident, left Wash-
ington numb, grim and off-balance last
week.
"The Pentagon's quick response
was that the enemy losses were 10 times
those of the allies. Confirmed hawks like
Senator John Tower of Texas called it the
Vietcong ‘death rattle.'
"But far more typical of Congress
was the reaction of the middle-of-the-
roader.
"'Good Lord, how did this thing
happen?' he moaned. 'I thought we were
winning the war.'
"Within the Government, veterans
of Vietnam said the assaults were impres-
sive beyond their expectations. A few
military men complained anew that this
showed American forces in Vietnam -- and
Korea, too ~- were stretched too thin. A
few voices criticized the South Vietnan-
ese authorities for being caught so total-
ly off guard."
Johnson, the Times noted, "took no
new major moves" but chose to wait. "It
was a time, in one of the President's pet
phrases, for "hunkering down like a jack-
rabbit in a Texas hail storm."
The truth is, said the Times, that
"the facts of life about the war have fi-
nally been made unmistakably clear to
everyone in the United States, from Presi-
dent Johnson on down.
"Swept away in last week's hurri-
cane of fire were the rising piles of
glowing reports of progress in pacifica-
tion, retraining of the South Vietnamese
army, and destruction of the enemy's po-
litical and military forces."
In an editorial, the Times spoke
even more frankly. It characterized the
Tet offensive mounted by the National
Liberation Front as "spectacularly suc-—
cessful." It proved that "the bombing of
North Vietnam has failed in its purpose."
The continued bombing "has reduced nei-
ther the enemy's will nor his capacity to
fight. Instead, as the bombing has in-
creased, so have the determination and
strength of the enemy forces; and so
have American casualties."
The Times declared that the seizure of the Pueblo and the Tet offensive "make it imperative for the Administration at last to reappraise rigid policies that have brought this nation and its fighting men unprecedented humiliation and peril."
Columnist James Reston, writing in the same issue of the Times, describes the astonishment and perplexity prevailing in top government circles in Washington:
“Something has happened here in the last few days, some conflict between logic and events. How could the Vietcong launch such an offensive against the American Embassy and the American bases all over South Vietnam? How could the North Vietnamese, who were supposed to be getting weaker, like the Vietcong, gather a force large enough to challenge the U.S. Marines at the demilitarized zone?"
The pundits are offering two answers. First, that the Tet offensive represents a "last gasp"; second, that it is an attempt at a "breakthrough" which, if it fails, will be followed by a retreat back to the jungles and the border.
"Yet neither of these explanations satisfies Washington. The dramatic events of the last few days have given it the feeling of dealing with something wholly alien and inexplicable and therefore with forces entirely unpredictable." Reston then wanders off into musings about the inscrutable nature of the Oriental mind.
Washington's mood is not unprecedented. In fact history teaches us to expect such feelings among ruling circles confronted by powerful revolutionary upsurges, which to them are always "something wholly alien and inexplicable."
The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House have been hypnotized by the military chessboard. No matter with what brutality they may engage in this game, its rules still remain the rules of war. By all the logic of war the Vietnamnese should have been smashed long ago. What the Washington strategists left out of account is that the logic of war tends to pass over into the logic of revolution, which supersedes war. This applies all the more pertinently to Vietnam where U.S. intervention was intervention in a deep-going civil war.
Two spectacular facts in the Tet offensive show the altered nature of the situation in Vietnam. The first is that armed action of the National Liberation Front was directed in the main against the South Vietnamese puppet forces. The New York Times noted that the attacks "were concentrated almost entirely against the South Vietnamese Army and governmental installations." With the exception of attacks against airfields and helicopter pads, "clearly meant to slow the movement of reinforcements, the Americans were simply bypassed." The Times, however, failed to note the significance of this. Even this newspaper, so concerned about the situation is blind to what is happening.
If the South Vietnamese forces are dealt a staggering body blow; if sectors of them begin to pass over in mass, along with their arms, to the NLF side, what happens to the American position? The losses to the NLF entailed by the attacks are quickly recuperated. And the American position becomes still more untenable militarily, not to mention what happens politically both in Vietnam and inside the United States. The Tet offensive, it is absolutely clear, proceeded in accordance with these revolutionary political considerations.
The second spectacular fact is the revolutionary appeal issued by Liberation Radio in South Vietnam. It declares that "the revolution we waited and yearned for has broken out....We must rise up to wrest back power and restore independence, peace, freedom, and a clean and comfortable life....
"Compatriots, the hour to wash away our national dishonor and to liberate ourselves has come. Everybody must stand up and launch attacks against the hideouts of the Thieu-Ky clique and topple the traitorous and country-selling Government in various areas. We must set up at once a revolutionary government, build various revolutionary armed forces and various patriotic organizations, punish and arrest all the cruel lackeys of the Thieu- Ky clique and foreign nations, and help the revolutionary armed forces fulfill their duties...."
A direct appeal is made to the forces in the other camp. "We exhort the officers, soldiers and the police forces of the Saigon regime to side with the ranks of the people and to give their arms and ammunition to the revolutionary armed forces.
"We exhort all those who have been going astray to quickly wake up. Those who recognize their faults and are willing to accomplish an exploit will be forgiven by the revolution. Those who willingly resist the revolution will be duly punished...."
A direct appeal for sympathy is made to the American troops, to their allies and to the American people.
Coupled with the transfer of struggle to the streets of the cities, and the involvement of the city masses, such a call is of first-rate importance. All the facts seem to indicate that it marks the beginning of a new stage. The turn has already given the Vietnamese revolution fresh power and impetus.