Vietnam: a revised verdict

I just finished reading a selection in "Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited."

Chapter 9 of the book was authored by Lewis Sorley and focused on the conduct of the war. Sorley criticizes LBJ's choice of generals and Gen. Westmoreland's "Search and Destroy" tactics. He favorably reviews Gen. Abrams "Clear and Hold" tactics, and assesses that the effort to train South Vietnam to defend itself was a success.

Thus there came a point at which the war was won. The fighting wasn’t over, but the war was won. The reason it was won was that the South Vietnamese had achieved the capability, with continuation of promised American support, to sustain themselves indefinitely as a free and independent nation. President Nixon promised President Nguyen Van Thieu – repeatedly, both in writing and through high-level intermediaries – three key things.
The first was that if, after completion of the Paris Accords supposedly ended the fighting, the North Vietnamese violated terms of the agreement and continued their aggression, then the United States would reintroduce military power to punish those violations. Second was that if there were a resumption of fighting the United States would, as provided for in the Paris Accords, replace on a one-for-one basis South Vietnam’s losses of major combat systems (such things as tanks, artillery pieces, and aircraft). And third was that the United States would continue robust financial assistance for the foreseeable future.
In the event, thanks to actions of the Congress, the United States defaulted on all three commitments. The result was predictable. As CIA Chief of Station Tom Polgar cabled from Saigon: “Ultimate outcome hardly in doubt, because South Vietnam cannot survive without US military aid as long as North Vietnam’s war-making capacity is unimpaired and supported by Soviet Union and China.”

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