Why Vietnam was different

Quoted in Hue, 1968, on page 502:

"Emmet John Hughes, a former speechwriter for President Eisenhower who was then working with Republican presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller, wrote in Newsweek that it had been a mistake to consider the struggle in Vietnam as part of global Communist expansionism:

'The fateful basis... has been a false analogy - the dogged insistence that the war in Vietnam signaled precisely the same political commitment as all U.S. actions since WWII... deterring communist aggression. On the contrary, the intervention in Vietnam has been unique and unprecedented... No previous conflict cast America in the role of an effective heir to hated colonial authority, alienating rather than arousing national pride. And no previous conflict engaged America in the audacious labor of creating a new sovereignty... A policy disdainful of such historical differences could have but one end. You cannot truly win a conflict that you cannot truthfully define.'"

Leadership - need for accurate information (the truth)

Quotes from "Hue, 1968" by Mark Bowden. Page 25

"The truth was bent at every fold for reasons that went beyond propaganda to self-interest, sycophancy, and wishful thinking. In Hanoi there was no pretense of truth whatsoever; 'facts' were what served the party's mission. American commanders, on the other hand, supposedly embraced a more enlightened standard. Accurate information was essential to war planning, and, unlike Hanoi, the United States was dogged at every turn by an independent press. But, in practice, there was every incentive for field commanders to inflate or even invent body counts. It was how their performance was assessed, and it became one of the greatest self-reporting scams in history. Everyone knew it was going on. Some of the more senior commanders discouraged the practice, but it was so widespread-and so hard to disprove-that few if any field officers were ever disciplined for it. No one in a position to know better took the numbers that emerged form this process seriously. But Westy was far enough removed to embrace them. He was the last man up the self-reporting chain. The absurd body counts and kill ratios were proof of his leadership. He sold them to LBJ, who in turn presented them as fact to the American people."

Quotes from "Hue 1968" by Mark Bowen

"Some things found in the houses stayed with marines in other ways. Eden Jimenez was clearing rooms, tossing in grenades, waiting for the blast, then racing inside shooting for all he was worth. He entered one room this way that was empty except for a tall old wardrob, which he had filled with holes. He opened it gingerly, and inside found a young woman, whome he had mortally wonded, who was holding a baby and a rifle. One of Jimenez's rounds had pierced her throat. She was bleeding and choking to death, and soon died, still holding the baby, which was miraculously unscathed. He handed the child off and it was passed to the rear. When he was an old man, living in Odessa, Texas, he still wondered almost every day about that woman and child. Why was she holding a rifle? did she think that was going to protect her? Did she think that no one would look inside the wardrobe? Who was she? How would he have felt if he had killed the baby, too? What ever happened to it? Should he have looked before shooting into the wardrobe? These things turned over and over in his mind and gave him a sick feeling."

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