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The basic problem that McCone had stressed in December 1963 was well understood. The VC "believe in something," Lodge reported in January 1964: "the Communists have conveyed to these men [a] clear picture of a program which they think will make life better. We have not. They are also well organized politically; we are not." The US client regime has overwhelming military advantages, but "the VC have simply shifted from military to political tactics and are defeating us politically," following "the old Mao Tse-tung maxim." "We are at present overwhelmingly outclassed politically." We must "enunciate a political program" and organize precinct workers. The US is militarily strong but politically weak, unable to enlist support for its plans for the Third World, a persistent problem in Indochina as elsewhere, always a mystery to the planners.
US disadvantages were compounded by a problem discovered by Hubert Humphrey on a June visit: "the relatively indiscriminate use of heavy weapons and napalm are not calculated to win the support of the people," he found. Furthermore, "A political base is needed to support all other actions toward gaining victory," and we should guide the Vietnamese to develop such a base, which the Vietnamese, unlike the Viet Cong, sorely lack. He too rejected any thought of withdrawal without victory or permitting "a `neutralist' solution," which would signal "to the people of southeast Asia that we have lost confidence in them and that the game is lost." "The people" are our favorite generals, for this shining light of American liberalism.88
In November 1964, Ambassador Taylor wrote a think-piece on these political problems, revealing the astuteness that caught the eye of JFK, whom he had impressed as "an intellectual who quoted Thucydides" as well as an expert in "unconventional warfare," Newman writes (127, citing David Halberstam). Taylor deplored the "national attribute which makes for factionalism and limits the development of a truly national spirit" among the Vietnamese, perhaps "innate" or a result of their history of "political suppression" under the French. This "national attribute" makes it difficult for the Vietnamese to confront the Viet Cong, who "have an amazing ability to maintain morale" and are able "continuously to rebuild their units and to make good their losses," exhibiting "the recuperative powers of the phoenix." This is "one of the mysteries of this guerrilla war," JFK's specialist on political warfare lamented, adding that "we still find no plausible explanation" for it. Since "we are playing a losing game in South Viet-Nam" (the political game), "it is high time we change and find a better way": pressuring the DRV to direct an end to the southern resistance.89 Only North Vietnamese orders can now compel the VC aggressors, who are so radically different from the Vietnamese in their innate and acquired characteristics, to end their "assault from the inside" (JFK) and to dismantle the political base that we cannot duplicate.
Such thoughts appear throughout the internal record, as in public commentary. For the planners, as for the political class generally, it is never easy to comprehend why backward peoples to whom we minister do not comprehend our magnificence, why "their side" looks ten-feet tall while "our side" are crooks and gangsters, suffering from defects that may even be "innate." And in contemplating these mysteries, they easily fall into musings, even self-contradiction, that would be comical if the consequences for the victims were not so disastrous. These are enduring themes of the 500-year conquest, sure to persist.
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