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Griffin Daily News
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(First of Two Parts.)
By TOM TIEDE
NEA Staff Correspondent
SAIGON — (NEA) — Right from the beginning of U.S.
participation in this war, the official military outlook has
been unfortunately bright.
Some of the very first assessments of the battlefield
situation told of an enemy who was busy digging his own
grave—an enemy whose redoubts were depleting, whose
logistics were failing and whose will to fight probably
couldn’t continue in the face of enormous troop losses.
That was nine years ago this month.
Since then, more than SIOO billion, more than 10,000 air
craft, more than 140,000 friendly soldiers and more than
one nation’s patience have been spent trying to bury the
other side’s obstinate corpse.
And the war of the 1960 s has become the war of the
19705.
The lesson of all this is most obvious: Optimism has
been no helpful ally in Vietnam. In fact, as much as enemy
artillery, it has served to blow holes in the world’s hope
for peace.
So it is, after my fourth reporting assignment here, and
with no real end to the fighting yet in sight, I hesitate to,
but must, echo the past.
The military outlook here is still bright.
Facts are facts. There can be no denying them. The way
war progress is measured, by statistical superiority and
territorial ownership, the Communists in Vietnam have
been mauled. Were they anything but dedicated guerrillas
drawing extraordinary transfusions from the social and
political peculiarities of the war, the probability is they
would now be altogether dead.
This isn’t to say they are defeated. It’s obvious they
aren’t. They maintain 200,000 regular troops in the South
(half North Vietnamese, half Viet Cong); they have another
estimated 100,000 irregulars here, they are present one way
or another in every village in the land: and they continue
to kill, wound or capture at least 2,500 allied combatants
every week.
Still, the Reds are hurting. Seriously. And the evidence
of their suffering and incapabilities are seen everywhere.
Some major examples:
• A few years ago as much as 50 per cent of South Viet
nam was either in enemy hands or strongly under enemy
influence. Early last year the figure dropped to 25 per
cent. Currently the percentage is slightly below 10.
Sat, and Sun., Jan. 17-18, 1970
8
Progress, But No
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SPANNING 63 YEARS, David Sarnoff has left his mark as a citizen, an industrial leader and a visionary. Recog- |
nized throughout the world as a pioneer in radio, television and electronics, Sarnoff started with Marconi in 1906
at $5.50 a week; soon advanced to S6O a month as wireless operator on Nantucket Island, top center. In 1911, bottom g
center, Sarnoff was wireless operator on a sealing expedition to the Arctic. He followed this with duty at a New g
York radio station, bottom right, where he stayed at his post 72 hours reporting the Titanic disaster in 1912. By g
1921, he was an executive with RCA, exchanging ideas with such personages as Albert Einstein and Charles Stem- g
metz, bottom left. Sarnoff is at left in front row with Steinmetz at right, next to Einstein. In World War 11, Sarnoff g
saw active service; achieved rank of brigadier general, top right. Recent photo, top left, shows Sarnoff as he g
announced his retirement as RCA chairman of the board, concluding 50 years with the company.
One indicator of significant change-territorial
control. Areas under substantial enemy
control have declined from more than 50 per
cent of the South Vietnamese countryside
a few years ago to 10 per cent or less by the
U.S. command's current estimates.
• In the past 12 months the Communists lost more than
60,000 men in battle deaths and 42,000 men through de
fections. This brought their nine-year war loss total to more
than 700,000—more than six times the allied sum.
• Even with U.S. withdrawals, the ratio of allied to
enemy troops steadily widens. Five years ago it was about
four to one. Last month South Vietnam increased its forces
by 80,000 and the ratio now stands at seven to one.
But the statistics do not tell all of the military progress
here. Perhaps they tell only very little of it. The real evi
dence of allied superiority is manifested in a more personal
than documented way.
Some years ago, for instance, I was routinely shot at
while motoring on major roads at the fringes of major
cities But just recently I hitchhiked without incident from
Cu Chi to Tay Ninh, 80 miles distance, through what once
was (and still is) some of the most contested battleland in
the war.
Some years ago, a Viet Cong sniper took an inaccurate
shot at me while I was sunning on the roof of my Saigon
villa Now I sun without shields. Saigon, even with its
thousands of Red sympathizers, is so thoroughly pacified it
has fewer shooting incidents than any comparably sized
U.S. cities.
Some years ago I took a helicopter tour of the Ist In
fantry Division’s Second Brigade (near the Michelin plan
tation) and counted 63 enemy kills for a day’s combat. Re
cently I repeated the trip—but the area is now so secure,
the enemy so scattered, I counted only one dead VC for 12
hours of U.S. effort.
And some years ago I spent my visits to the 25th Infantry
Division in bunkers, waiting out mortar attacks. Now that
unit camp is so quiet, even dull, many bunkers are torn
down, sentries sleep soundly and sergeants must keep
Gls alert by using such “peacetime” harassments as but
ton and shoeshine checks.
To be sure, the present military situation in Vietnam is
subject to change. Possibly abrupt. Some feel the enemy is
actually not so much suffering as preparing for new of
fensives. Some feel the enemy is not so much devastated
as he is deliberately laying low for more opportune times.
But just now, this day, the Communists are bleeding
badly.
As U.S. officials tell it, the enemy’s redoubts are deple
ting their logistics are failing and their will to fight prob
ably can’t continue in the face of enormous troop losses.
In short, officials here are, uh, optimistic.
End Is Yet in Sight
Deep within the top secret vaults
of the U.S. command here there are rumored to be “con
tingency plans” which would protect American soldiers in
the event of a revolt by our South Vietnamese allies.
The plans are said to cover these possibilities:
(1) A change of government to one hostile to the United
States; (2) a desperate uprising by the people, or (3) a
Communist acquisition of Saigon power.
Right now it appears such plans will never need go
operational. Politics in the South aren’t particularly boil
ing. The people are relatively quiet. And the Communists
are farther from control than ever before.
But who knows about tomorrow? The fact that contin
gency plans to fight one’s friends may exist at all is an
other ironic illustration of the hand-wringing unpredictabil
ity of the goopy war in Southeast Asia.
In effect, what the plans conclude is that after a decade
of American dedication to the stabilizing and democratiza
tion of South Vietnam, the nation essentially remains a
place where good pals must employ food tasters.
Old hands here, foreign and domestic, agree this fact
may be the only hard fact in the country today. The war
may be going well, the fighting may have tapered off, the
Americans may be able to withdraw. But the future of
South Vietnam still hangs by a much knotted sociopolitical
string.
One Vietnamese educator puts it thus:
“The war began in the first place because the people had
no trust in the government. And it probably will never
really end until the people do.”
If this prediction holds, unfortunately, it looks as if the
battling will go on for some time. Although the government
of South Vietnam has noticeably improved in recent years,
the people here continue to be suspicious.
Some of the suspicion, probably, is not warranted. Many
people here cling to old memories about their governments
—firing squads, political torturing in cages at the Saigon
zoo, Gestapo tactics of the muscular elite—that simply
do not apply to the administration now in charge.
But much of the suspicion is warranted. Especially that
which deals with the corruption and self-seeking of official
dom at all levels.
Such as:
• All crimes in South Vietnam’s large cities, including
murder, can be absolved by proper administration of pres
sure or money. Graft is out of control in police and other
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1966 1970
The U.N.i .5 in the Mideast
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Unarmed and stationed between firing lines—that’s the position of 217 U.N. military
observers in the Suez Canal sector. They’re truce observers from more than 10
nations, assigned to monitor cease-fire lines in the Mideast war. Protected only by
the blue U.N. flag, two have been killed and seven wounded.
public agencies. In some cases, it is even condoned. Our
salaries,” one Saigon cop says with a wmk, are very
small.” , , ....
• Land reform proposals, which are absolutely vital to
politician-proletariat trust, and which would give nearly
two million Vietnamese an earthy stake in the nations
future, are being steadily ignored by the lawmakers. The
reason? Many of the lawmakers are absentee owners of the
land in question. .
• Communist agents, constantly caught and jailed, are
likewise constantly released and forgotten. Sometimes be
cause of bribes. Sometimes because of connections. Some
times becatlse cowardly officials are simply afraid of
threatened reprisals by the captured Reds.
• Bureaucratic snobbery, evident in all nations, is espe-
cially odorous here. Government agencies operate at their
leisure, government functionaries are Napoleonic, govern
ment limousines sweep people aside on the streets. And
officials in every agency have their hands out with expecta
tions. . , , ,
The message of these few examples is perfectly clear.
The government looks out for itself—the people must do
the same.
So when a farmer must bribe an officer to get his crop
on the Saigon market, he may instead skip the bribe and
sell to the Viet Cong. And when an importer must provide
an official favor (sometimes his wife) to acquire his goods,
he may instead keep his wife and deal with the black mark
et And when the widow of a war victim must give 60 per
cent of her government insurance to get back 40, she may
wonder if the Communists could be any worse.
People here are not blind. They see new cars, gaudy
gold pieces and fine silk clogging Saigon streets, and they
don’t understand why the nation can’t afford fertilizer
plants They see hotels and mosaic homes rising every
where and they don’t understand why most children still
sleep with rats. They see the United States spending S3O
billion on their country each year, and they don’t under
stand why their average annual income remains $l5O.
Therefore, suspicion. Bitterness, too. And continuing war.
In fairness, all is not the fault of the South Vietnamese
government. There are thousands of compassionate of
ficials here; there are hundreds of things being done; and
perhaps peace, justice and democracy may yet prevail in
the land.
But the present fact is the politics are pork-barrel, the
people unhappy—and the United States has contingency
plans to get out in the open in case the walls of this pre
carious national structure come crashing down.