Word: guerilla
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...forces in South Vietnam seem to be trying everything short of outright fighting to stem the growing strength of the guerilla revolt. But plush relocation camps to concentrate the peasants and helicopter supply lifts cannot sustain unpopular President Diem's rule without direct U.S. military support. Even such military action, however, would be likely to succeed only in the distant future. If U.S. policy continues, as guerilla fighting spreads and more American troops pour into Vietnam, the U.S. will doubtless be involved, in a shooting capacity, with a long and messy jungle...
Inspiration for the program came from a similar plan that the British used successfully to put down a Communist guerilla revolt in Malaya. But the Vietnamese situation is fundamentally different from the Malayan. In Malaya the guerillas were Chinese and therefore could not effectively appeal for support on nationalist grounds. Moreover, the British offered immediate compensation to evicted peasants. As Malaya is a peninsula, the war was in effect quarantined from foreign assistance. And the British still had to spend ten difficult years crushing the revolt...
Operations such as "Sunrise" fail because of a misunderstanding of the nature of guerilla warfare. Although the American soldiers and military advisors sent to Vietnam have all been specially schooled in guerilla theory, they do not see that guerilla warfare is more than skill. Guerillas require the active support of a sizable portion of the area they occupy. Indeed, the Communists consider guerilla warfare nothing less than a means of social revolution. It is the same Che Guevara, after all, whose guerilla handbook American soldiers now study, who described effective guerillas as ready "to die, not to defend an ideal...
...more than 1400 now. The State Department claims these military personnel are present in non-combat capacity. But U.S. soldiers are taking part in tactical operations, airlifting supplies and combat equipment to strategic places; and U.S. helicopters have been transporting South Vietnamese troops into the jungle and sometimes pursuing guerilla attackers...
...ninety U.S. airmen killed on an aircrash on their way to Vietnam are included, over a hundred Americans have already lost their lives by non-direct military participation. And after a few atrocity stories in the American press,--complete with photographs of American boys mutilated by Communist guerillas--this country will be in a fighting mood. Unless America wants to take full responsibility for suppressing a rebellion which although Communist led, becomes more widespread by the day, it will have to reevaluate both the effectiveness and goals of its present position. The status quo is intolerable. As long...