Why are the American aggressors bringing in massive troops of an expeditionary corps for a direct invasion of our country?
By the end of July 1965, after General Taylor had to resign and as McNamara, back in Washington from Saigon, had been busy pressing more troops for South Vietnam, the American press said: The reason for the new U.S. involvement is obvious. . . because the Saigon army and government have lost the war. So the 500,000 puppet troops commanded by the Americans have not been able to cope with our people’s patriotic war; our people’s patriotic war has prevailed over the U.S. special war. The immediate dispatching of a U.S. expeditionary corps to the South Vietnam battlefield in an untoward emergency move, a strategically passive move in an attempt to retrieve the worsening predicament of the puppet clique.
As was pointed out over and again, the U.S. imperialists’ aggressive design is to try to turn South Vietnam into a U.S. new-type colony and military base of aggression. However, throughout the past 11 years, the process of realization of this aggressive policy in the south of our country has been also one of heavy and repeated setbacks for the U.S. imperialists, who have been driven deeper and deeper into a state of passivity and a morass.
In the south of our country, as in many parts of the world, faced with the growth of the socialist camp and the national liberation movement, to hide their aggressive nature the American imperialists have applied neocolonialism with the customary policies and maneuvers, hoping to enslave our nation through their agents and by means of military and economic aid. All during the period between 1954 and 1959, since the day when they brought Ngo Dinh Diem to Saigon and staged the Republic of Vietnam farce, the U.S. imperialists sought every means to carry out their neocolonialist tricks. However, right from the start the southern people exposed the true colors of the American imperialists and their stooges, waged an enduring political struggle to demand the correct implementation of the 1954 Geneva agreements on Vietnam, independence and freedom, and peaceful national reunification. The U.S. imperialists and their lackeys mustered the puppet forces, used most vicious military measures to repress the people’s political struggle, and launched a unilateral war for four or five long years.
But far from being extinguished, the patriotic fire of the southern people blazed up with every passing day; by the end of 1959 the southern revolutionary movement shifted to the offensive, resorted to combined political struggle and armed struggle, and defeated the U.S.-Diem policy of pacification by violence. In the face of the revolutionary storm of the scattered uprisings of millions of peasants, the policy of aggression by traditional maneuvers of U.S. neocolonialism in South Vietnam went bankrupt.
Continuing their scheme of aggression against the south, the American imperialists had to resort to new war methods to reach their goal.
The use of war to achieve neocolonialism constituted a heavy setback for the U.S. imperialists. In their passivity they still tried to hide their cruel nature under the disguise of an undeclared war, the so-called special war. This is a kind of war that many American military theoreticians do not regard as a real war, as far as the aggressor is concerned. As a matter of fact, this is a kind of war waged by the native stooge reactionary forces, the puppet army and administration, equipped with arms, materials, and other war means supplied by the United States following the American imperialists’ plan and commanded by the United States with a view to crushing the revolutionary struggle and destroying the patriotic forces in the south of our country.
The first plan mapped out by the American imperialists for this war was the Staley-Taylor plan. They reckoned that with their enormous material force they could pacify the whole south of our country within 18 months. But they met with the extremely heroic resistance of the southern people, led by the South Vietnam National Front for Liberation (NFLSV). The Staley-Taylor plan came to grief and was buried together with the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, which piteously collapsed on 1 November 1963.
In 1964 the U.S. imperialists put forward a new strategic plan, the Johnson-McNamara plan, aimed at pacifying South Vietnam within two years. Again they increased the flow of war means, military and economic aid, and advisers. They even stated that by the end of 1965, after their victory, the withdrawal of their advisers would begin, in an endeavor to force upon the American people and world public opinion the belief that it was not an American war. However, the resistance for national salvation of the liberation armed forces and people in the south gained strength and great successes which culminated in the glorious Binh Gia victory. Soon the Johnson-McNamara plan shared the fate of the Staley-Taylor plan.
In the face of this failure and predicament the U.S. imperialists took a step further in their adventurist aggression by raising their special war to its highest degree in the hope of retrieving this strategy when the initiative is lost. Their scheme is:
1--To step up their aggressive war in the south of our country by reinforcing U.S. and satellite combat units while consolidating the puppet administration, strengthening the puppet army, and bolstering the puppet reactionary forces as the mainstay and a tool of the aggressive war;
2--To expand the war mostly by intensifying their airstrikes against the north of our country, regarding it as part of their neocolonialist aggressive war to threaten the north and save the situation in the south; and
3--Together with this intensification and expansion of the aggressive war they carry out a so-called diplomatic and psychological campaign with doubletalk about peaceful settlement and unconditional discussions in an attempt to dupe public opinion and cover up their dark design.
However, the American imperialists cannot shake the determination of our people in both zones to fight them for national salvation, cannot cause any decrease in the wholehearted assistance of the northern people to the patriotic struggle of the southern people, let alone stabilize the very critical position of the puppet army and administration.
In brief, in the south as well as in the north, in mid-1965 the U.S. imperialists and their henchmen were meeting with heavy setbacks:
In the face of the repeated offensives of the South Vietnam Liberation Armed Forces, the puppet army had been driven further into a passive situation, an increasing number of puppet battalions had been wiped out, and the morale of the puppet troops had been alarmingly declining;
The Saigon puppet administration had been ever more rotten and after 13 coups it had become utterly inefficient in the hands of the unruly Young Turks;
The system of strategic hamlets continued disintegrating while the people’s movement in towns was rising. The powerful upsurge of the army and people in central and south-central Vietnam compelled the enemy to abandon part of his scheme to concentrate on pacifying the Mekong River delta. The rural areas controlled by the U.S. imperialists and their agents had been markedly reduced while the liberated areas expanded and built into the firm rear of the liberation war;
In their escalation against the north, the U.S. imperialists, unable to shake our people’s determination to fight them for national salvation, had been suffering heavy losses. The northern people’s hatred for the U.S. imperialists had been all the more bitter and their emulation drive for production and fighting for national salvation had become the more resolute to defeat the U.S. imperialist aggressors, to defend North Vietnam and to liberate the south.
The situation described above shows that the U.S. strategy of special war developed to its highest degree had been foiled in the main. The fact that Johnson recalled Taylor in July 1965 while hurriedly dispatching troops to South Vietnam at an accelerated tempo evidences the American imperialists’ panic and passiveness in the face of their discomfiture. And it is due precisely to this failure and passiveness that they frenziedly stepped up their war efforts according to a new strategy aimed at reversing the situation and wresting back strategic initiative in the south. This once again proves that the U.S. imperialists’ scheme to occupy the south has not changed at all. Thereupon the impudent nature of the American aggressors has been fully laid bare. The U.S. imperialists have thrown off their last mask and appeared in their true colors as colonialist aggressors.
With the large-scale introduction of an American expeditionary corps into South Vietnam the U.S. imperialists have shifted their aggressive war to a new stage.
It is not the case of an ordinary transfer from one stage to another but a shift to a new strategic stage of their aggressive war. The main characteristic of this stage is that the American imperialists not only make use of the puppet reactionary armed forces--that is, the puppet army--as the main tool of the war, but they also bring in a U.S. expeditionary corps for a direct invasion of the south while continuing to expand the war of destruction, mostly by airstrikes to the north of our country.
In other words, on the South Vietnam battlefield at present the American imperialists are using a U.S. expeditionary corps together with the puppet army to wage their aggressive war. Both the American expeditionary corps and the puppet army plan an important part, helping each other and coordinating their action.
The U.S. troops are the core, serving as the military mainstay of the puppet army and administration and the main mobile force, and as the occupying force in important strategic bases and the strategic and tactical reserve, taking a direct part in the combat in an attempt to wipe out our people’s revolutionary force on the southern battlefield.
The puppet army, which relies on the American troops to exist, consolidate, and Develop, constitutes both the mobile force on the battlefield and the main force to control and pacify the people, while serving as the political mainstay of the U.S. troops.
Clearly enough, in military strategy the American imperialists have gone beyond the limits and scope of the special war. Of course, while they step up their aggressive war according to their new strategy, the U.S. imperialists’ purpose is to continue achieving neocolonialism in South Vietnam. No matter how many American troops they bring in, all the same they have to actively consolidate the native reactionary force, the puppet army, and administration as the necessary political and military mainstay of their colonialist aggressive war. It is precisely in the process of the implementation of their new strategic plan that the Johnson clique harps on their alleged obligation to keep their commitments, to increase aid, and so forth, and frenziedly go ahead with most perfidious political, economic, cultural, and social measures in the general line of neocolonialists. They maintain the puppet administration and strengthen the puppet army; together with the military methods of aggressive war they feverishly step up political moves of neocolonialism. Hence, their war in this stage, as in the former one, is still an aggressive war aimed at realizing the political aims of neocolonialism, a neocolonialist aggressive war.
The war that the U.S. imperialists have started and pursued in Vietnam with the south of our country as the main battlefield, whatever strategic plan they have followed and in whatever stage, is invariably aimed at occupying the south and turning it into a U.S. new-type colony and military base; therefore by its nature this war is an aggressive and unjust war. Having grasped the nature of this war, we clearly understand that whatever turn it may take, it cannot avoid the fundamental contradictions and the inevitable failure of aggressive war and of neocolonialism in this era, especially in the specific conditions of the south of our country. The more obdurately the U.S. imperialists pursue and intensify this war, the sharper these contradictions, the worse their situation, and the more [?pitiful] their ultimate defeat will be.
Previous: Introduction
Next: II. U.S. Outward Strength and Most Fundamental Weakness