Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #748… “THE STRATEGY OF THE WEAK IS THE CHOSEN STRATEGY OF IDEALISTS AND IDEOLOGUES. It turns the strength of Asia–its capacity for endurance in suffering–against the vulnerability of the strong. It does this by inviting the strong to carry their strategic logic to its conclusion, which is genocide.”… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT of History 404: “The role of the fighter-bomber in the Vietnam War and OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER”…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy Saturday, 23 MARCH 1968…
Page 1: “WESTMORELAND TO LEAVE VIETNAM TO HEAD THE ARMY–U.S. MAY ADD 30,000 TROOPS–565,000 TOTAL IS IN VIEW–Strategy Change Weighed–Shift Due In July–President Announces Change For General Who Was Recently Criticized”… “The Administration is moving toward adoption of a plan to send 30,000 more fighting men to Vietnam over the balance of the year. The troop increase is likely to include an Army division or its equivalent, four to six Air Force squadrons and a few thousand Navy men. The increase would be beyond the 525,000 men already approved for Vietnam and 10,500 paratroopers and marines rushed in a reinforcements last month. It would bring the new force level to about 565,000 men.”… Page 13: “THE GROUND WAR & KHE SANH”... Page 1: “There was little fighting in the operation called Quyet Thang–‘determined to win’–on the fringes of Saigon, Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division found 40 tons of food–mainly rice in 100-pound bags–buried and camouflaged 23 miles northwest of the capital. Nearby, they found a pit containing 65 mortar shells… It was the second day this week that Americans in Operation Quyet Thang had uncovered large amounts of enemy supplies. The finds seemingly bore out allied intelligence reports indicating the presence of up to 10,000 enemy troops in the area…. Meanwhile, the crews of Army and Marine helicopters killed 86 North Vietnamese and Vietcong. About 100 North Vietnamese mortar and artillery shells exploded in the Marine outpost of Khe Sanh and B-52s carried out three missions in the area.”… Page 13: “MOBILE GUNS IMPERIL KHE SANH”... “The North Vietnamese are using for the first time a mobile antiaircraft gun at Khe Sanh that threatened the outpost’s air lifeline. United States officers consider the presence of the 37-mm antiaircraft guns north and south of Khe Sanh a serious threat. Guns of this type downed planes trying to resupply Dienjbienphu in the 1954 defeat of French fores. About seven of these guns around Khe Sanh have been destroyed.”… Page 2: “THAI AIDE DEPLORES DEBATE IN U.S.”... “The Foreign Minister of Thailand says faith in America in this part of the world is being eaten away by the debate on the Vietnam War in the United States. “Too many politicians, too many in the press, express doubts about the United States, about the Government, the regime, the policy of their own country,’ Foreign Minister Thanat Khomnan, a staunch supporter of the United States said in an interview.”... Page 13: “HUE LIVES IN FEAR OF A NEW ATTACK–Rebuilding Of City Put Off–Defenses Are Bolstered”…
Page 1: “ISRAELIS TELL UN RAIDERS UNCOVERED BIG TERRORIST BASE IN JORDAN”... “Israel told the Security Council yesterday that Thursday’s raid into Jordan had uncovered a large terrorist base at Karameh, serving about 1,000 men. It was stocked with a large amount of ammunition.”… Page 5: “Raids Questioned By Many Israelis–Values and Cost Debated–End To Terrorism Doubted”… Page 1: “Guerrillas Back At Camp”… “If the Israelis’ purpose in yesterday’s attacks across the Jordan River was to wipe out Palestine guerrilla commandos and their camp, they failed…the amp was swarming today with men carrying Soviet-made machine guns and grenades, and voicing pride over the fight they put up yesterday.”… Page 3: “Major Victory Claimed By Arabs–Crushing Defeat of Israel’s Raiders Hailed In Press”…
Page 12: “MARCH INTO NORTH VIETNAM IS FAVORED BY KY–But Saigon Opposes Attack–He Says In Visit To Carrier Kitty Hawk”… “… Page 6: “PUEBLO CREWMEN REPORTED IN PLEA–North Koreans Say Letters Urge U.S. to Apologies”… “North Korea broadcast tonight what it said were five letters to President Johnson. Congressmen and relatives written by Pueblo Crewmen admitting to espionage…some asserted that a refusal by the United States to apologize could cost the lives of the 82 man crew of the Navy intelligence ship, which was captured January 23 off North Korea.”… Page 5: “SWISS REJECT MOVE FOR TIES FROM HANOI”…
23 MARCH 1968… THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF (CIA/TS-SI partial declas)… NORTH VIETNAM: New armed units are apparently being organized in North Vietnam and seems to be moving southward through the central party... PHILIPPINES: Marcos has got himself in a first-class mess. Some energetic newsmen are playing up the discovery of a secret training camp on Corregidor that was apparently training Philippine guerrillas to infiltrate Malaysian Borneo….NORTH VIETNAM: Contacts With Switzerland: The North Vietnamese apparently received less than the full established of diplomatic relations which they were seeking from Switzerland. Less formal ‘contacts’ have been set up. The recent talks with the Swiss have nevertheless again served Hanoi’s purpose of publicizing its position on the war by putting the Communist case before a wider Western audience…. HANOI’s NEW SEDITION LAW… Hanoi has just publicized a new decree on “crimes against the state” which was put into effect Last November. A broadcast of the new law on 21 March, and an accompanying Nhan Dan editorial on the same day, claim that the law is a formal codification and updating of existing regulations…
STATE DEPARTMENT, Office of the Historian, Historical Documents, Foreign Relations, 1964-68, Vietnam Two documents dated 23 March 1968 of interest…Document 151 is an exchanges of telegrams between the President and General Westmoreland, who gets “booted upstairs” to Chief-of-Staff of the Army and responds with a “thank you very much”… A Three Star read… Document 152 is a short handwritten note from the President’s lawyer (McPherson) suggesting a sequence of events that could produce peace talks and most important look like there is activity toward peace for the consumption of the public. The President bucked the note to Rostow with a note: “Walt–For Rostow, Rusk, Clifford, comments at once.”…
151. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d151
152. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d152
23 MARCH 1968…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (24 Mar reporting 23 Mar ops) Page 1: “Planes Pound a Chemical Plant in North”... “In the air war over North Vietnam, the number of American raids dropped into the eighties after two days in which more than 100 missions were flown. For the first time Navy pilots struck the Haiduong chemical plant midway between Hanoi and Haiphong…The explosions on the ground were reported. A spokesman said he believed that fertilizer was among the plant’s products. American pilots also bombed the Baithuong airfield, 22 miles northwest of Thanh Hoa, the Uongbi power plant, 15 miles north of Haiphong, the major port of entry, and several supply trucks moving through the southern area of North Vietnam…. An American general, reflecting on the bombardment of Khe Sanh earlier that the fading of the northeast monsoon, which gives way to clear skies round Khe Sanh in mid-May, makes an all-out attack on the outpost increasingly less likely. But they continue to say that the enemy could strike at any times…”
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 23 March 1968
(1) CAPTAIN EUGENE PHILIP McKINNEY was flying an F-100D of the 614th TFS and 35th TFW out of Phang Rang in an attack on Vietcong buildings near An Nhon, about 8 miles southeast of Phu Cat, when hit by enemy ground fire on his third ordnance delivery run. There was no ejection and an Army helicopter was on scene quickly to confirm CAPTAIN McKINNEY had been killed in action. His body was recovered and he rests in peace in the Resurrection Cemetery in Jefferson City, Missouri… He is remembered on this 50th anniversary of his last flight…
(2) CAPTAIN LARRY JACK CLANTON was FAC and flying a Bird Dog O-1F of the 19th TASS and 504th TASG flying out of Bien Hoa on his 118th day in combat when he incurred a mid-air collision with another Bird Dob aircraft. CAPTAIN CLANTON did not escape from the falling aircraft and was killed in the crash. His remains were recovered and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery where he rests in peace… He is remembered on the 50th anniversary of his final flight with respect and admiration…
(3) An 0-1F Bird Dog out of the 21st TASS and 504th TASG based at Nha Trang suffered an engine failure and was successfully crash landed allowing the two unidentified aviators in the aircraft to survive to fly and fight again….
RIPPLE SALVO… #748…. Humble Host posts a short essay of timeless value in the White House War Room… A lesson for our National Security leaders of 2018, just as it was for the Joint Chiefs, Walt Rostow and President Johnson in 1968… Author is WILLIAM PFAFF…(NYT, 23 Mar 68, p. 30)
THE STRATEGY OF THE WEAK IN VIETNAM…
“The reason the Vietnamese war is so demoralizing to Americans–even to believers in the political necessity–is that we and the enemy share no understanding about what is important. When we fought the Kaiser’s Germany, or the Japanese Empire, or even the Nazis, we understood what it would take to bring the war to an end. Victory and defeat both were recognizable. This is not true today. In individual battles in Vietnam it often happens that we and the Vietcong both claim victory. This is not simple propaganda, or misinformation or misunderstanding. There may actually have been victories for both sides, since both sides are fighting separate wars with contradictory values and expectations.
“In Vietnam, in Asia as a whole, our strategy of the strong confronts a strategy of the weak. The struggle is between cultures radically different in what they expect of war and peace. We and the Vietnamese–we and the Koreans and Chinese–hardly understand one another when we speak of war, revolution, peace and the future.
“We, the strong, use firepower or wealth to achieve impersonal objectives: democracy, liberal government, the Containment of Communism. The weak practice defiant and personalized violence, stoically accepting the destruction of wealth and the loss of lives. We believe that the enemy can be forced to the ‘reasonable’ decision to compromise or capitulate. We assume that the enemy wants to avoid pain, death and material destruction, and that if these are inflicted on him, at some point in the process the issues of the war will come to seem less valuable than to stop the suffering and destruction. Ours is a very plausible strategy, but it expresses the values of those who are rich, who love life and fear pain.
STOICISM AND DEATH…
“The weak deal in absolutes, among them that man inevitably suffers and dies. When the weak are confronted with the alternatives of death and capitulation, the one may be as plausible a choice as the other. Interrogation of Vietcong, when they ask the prisoner what will happen if the Americans do not quit the war and leave the country, often have elicited the incomprehensible reply, ‘then we will all die.’
“For the strong, to surrender is a reasonable choice in a given situation. To die for a cause may be necessary or noble, but we see it as the consequence of an unreasonable situation. We want life, happiness, wealth, power, and we assume that in a reasonable society these all are possible. But happiness, wealth, power–the very words in conjunction reveal a dimension of our experience beyond that of the Asian poor. For us, then, death and suffering are irrational choices when alternatives exist. For the weak, there may be no intelligible choice.
“The strategy of the weak is the chosen strategy of idealists and ideologues. It turns the strength of Asia–its capacity for endurance in suffering–against the vulnerability of the strong. It does this by inviting the strong to carry their strategic logic to its conclusions, which is genocide. The Chinese Communists seem to have said this explicitly, although it is not clear that they grasp the significance of the claim that they could ‘win’ a nuclear war in which 300-million Chinese died.
“The strategy of the weak is to force us to do to others what is most abhorrent to us. Because we project on Asians our own values, we believe that the threat of steadily enlarging destruction will force a ‘reasonable’ end to the war. But if the weak defy us we find ourselves compelled to carry out our threat; and we balk. They force us to inflict on them what we ourselves most fear. and we grasp that to do this is to destroy ourselves–that by contradicting our own system or values we destroy it.
NUMBERS WITHOUT VICTORY…
“With no shared values of victory, there is no logical point at which the war will stop. And the marginal utility of destruction diminishes as destruction is carried out. To kill one man may change history. To kill a million in a war of attrition may change nothing.
“In Vietnam two wars are being fought, with two strategies and two sets of beliefs. These wars encounter one another only on a battleground, and they lead to two different victories–or two defeats.” End quote…
RTR Quote for 23 March: FREDERICK THE GREAT: “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”…
Lest we forget…. Bear
