Word: viets
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...freedom, yet will not back these men when they wage war as they have been ordered? No one condones this alleged act of violence, yet one cannot help feeling that this man is being made a scapegoat to ease the minds of those who believe that our position in Viet Nam is unethical...
EXCEPT for the Communists, America's worst enemy in Viet Nam has been American official optimism. Years of miserable stalemate have been accompanied by overblown pronouncements from Saigon and Washington about how well the war was going. Credibility gapped in the Johnson Administration, when cant phrases like "turning the corner in Viet Nam" and "light at the end of the tunnel" became bitter jokes. In recent months, however, U.S. officials-backed by scattered reports from perennially skeptical journalists -have cautiously begun to spread word that the situation on the ground in Viet Nam looks better than...
Among themselves, the officials are not always even cautious. "We are winning going away," one field-grade officer in Viet Nam wrote to a Pentagon colleague last week. Not long ago a presidential aide mused: "The reports from the field are so incredibly good that we don't talk about them. We don't dare." Thus the optimistic talk is muffled. "Nobody around here is going into a dream world," an Administration expert insists. "Washington has been through this many times before." The American generals in Viet Nam, from U.S. Commander Creighton Abrams on down, sedulously forgo...
Rather, explains TIME Saigon Bureau Chief Marsh Clark, "the enemy is increasingly unable to achieve his own aims, which are military victory and overthrow of the Thieu government. The chance of success for the often repeated U.S. object in Viet Nam-to guarantee the South Vietnamese the right of self-determination, free from outside aggression-has vastly improved during the past year, because gradually an environment has been created in which the South Vietnamese can fend for themselves...
High-ranking U.S. officers in Saigon point out that main-force enemy units have been driven away from population centers. No major city in South Viet Nam has undergone an important attack this year. The strongest enemy divisions are now clustered along the Laotian and Cambodian borders. Local guerrillas and sappers still manage daily forays inland, but American officials argue that at the moment the enemy capacity for full-scale offensives appears drastically reduced...