Word: vietnamize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...sense are culpable because of that. My guess is they really didn't know about them, or that they didn't believe the attacks could be as widespread, as well coordinated, as strong as they were. I mean I think the American military command in South Vietnam has suffered from what one newsman called an enormous dose of self-deceit. They had begun to believe their own statistics, which is terribly dangerous when the statistics are fundamentally in error. There was no sign that these attacks were expected. Americans were on leave all over the country. The South Vietnamese Army...
There was a lot of stew in the days just after the attack. General Westmoreland got on the Armed Forces Vietnam network to tell us all that this was the greatest defeat that the enemy had ever suffered. Ambassador Bunker got on to tell us that American forces and their gallant allies were having their greatest victory. They even had a brief dub-in from President Johnson in Washington telling us that this was a great defeat for the Viet Cong and a victory for America and South Vietnam. And that this was an act of last desperation...
...several very dramatic effects. It demonstrated to every Vietnamese citizen, that the government of South Vietnam and the enormous military power of the United States, were unable to provide them with the one thing which they thought they could get, security in the cities. Every major city in South Vietnam was broached. Every major city was invaded and attacked, sometimes by small groups, sometimes by much larger ones. If you want to undercut the authority of the government, if you want to undercut confidence in it, this was done with real ferocity...
...have been lost completely. There's another set of secondary effects which have come which I think are perhaps of even longer range importance. And this was the inability of both the United States and the South Vietnamese to cope with the attacks. We watched the government of South Vietnam and the American military call in air strikes against their own cities and their own civilians. We watched the whole Eastern industrial suburbs of Saigon, Gia Dinh, burned out, sector after sector, for five days running. And the thousands--hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring out of the area...
...visited a couple of the refugee camps in the days just after the initial fighting and the indignation was very high. They pointed the finger directly at the United States and the government of South Vietnam...