Monday, May 1, 1972
A Note Of Optimism In Vietnam
One old Vietnamese friend, a guerrilla with Ho Chi Minh's forces in his younger days, has been pessimistic about the outcome of the war in all the years we've known each other.Always the army was doing poorly. The political situation was deteriorating. The Communists were gaining strength. Hanoi would win in the end.A few days ago, after the first two weeks of Communist victories, another letter arrived. Again full of pessimism. The South Vietnamese army lacks morale. The political situation is bad. Corruption is worse.But, curiously, my friend had doubts in his mind, for the first time since I have known him, that the North Vietnamese would win the military victory."First," he said, "I would like to let you know that the Communist offensive ... will not lead to a collapse of the South Vietnamese army or the Saigon government."This is undoubtedly the most optimistic statement my friend has ever made on the war.His complaints in this letter are of a different order entirely ... that the war will take too long to win. But he no longer talks of defeat."I would like you to come here one more time to see and to realize what is the situation. It is not bad, you know, but I am very sorry that with all the aid that you give us, we cannot do the job better and defeat the Communists more quickly."My friend wants the United States and South Vietnam to do a great deal more to build strong political parties and do more to bring a civilian democracy. All this is a far cry from the defeatism which has plagued my friend's thinking for the past eight years.This change in thinking, which first showed itself after major Communist advances at a time when there were no South Vietnamese victories to point to, is in a way somewhat like the attitude of some of my other South Vietnamese friends after Tet-1968.This time they are up against the mainline North Vietnamese armies in full force. It was an invasion that in the back of their minds they had expected and feared. They did not know how they would react.Now they have been hit with the actuality of the invasion, and they are surprised that they have done as well as they have. They did not expect miracles. And they have not gotten miracles. But they have found something more. Inefficient as their armies may be, they have not collapsed."A Note of Optimism in Vietnam", by Ray Cromley, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Monday, May 1, 1972 and reprinted form European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.