Last August, when the North Vietnamese PT boats fired on American naval vessels in the Bay of Tonkin, Americans wondered what Hanoi could possibly have had in mind in launching such a futile, unprovoked attack. After the retaliatory bombings, official Washington treated itself to elaborate speculation on the erratic North Vietnamese behavior. Little of this speculation centered on the interesting fact that American vessels had been inside North Vietnam’s self-proclaimed 12-mile limit the night of July 31, when South Vietnamese forces were shelling offshore islands in the North. Although Washington insisted our ships were minding their own business that night, the North Vietnamese might be excused—in the light of considerable invasion talk in America—for seeing the matter in a different light. In short, Hanoi might not have seen the PT boat action as entirely unprovoked. At least the North Vietnamese action would have looked less futile and gratuitous if Washington had been somewhat more candid about the circumstances.
The lesson here is that one man’s unprovoked attack is often another man’s retaliatory raid, and to be perfectly sure about which is which, one must have a well-rounded confidence in official communiques and news stories. In the light of Washington’s enormous power to construct in the public mind an explanation of events that might not be total, it is worth approaching the latest reprisal raids on the North with a certain amount of healthy skepticism. Is it possible that the guerrilla attacks were provoked by action in the North, or—as is the case in the Bay of Tonkin—by acts that can be interpreted as provocative? What assurances do we have that the attack on Pleiku was so markedly different from the ordinary raids and counter-raids that it had to be answered by three separate air strikes across the border? Washington has depicted the raid as a clear break from the pattern of war, as an exercise in escalation that had to be matched. Yet reports from the field say that a company of Vietcong, or less, took part in the raid, and as Charles Mohr, former correspondent in Vietnam, wrote in the New York Times, “This is not a large Vietcong assault. Many are much larger.” Washington also insists that the attack on Pleiku was masterminded from North Vietnam and co-ordinated with attacks the same night at Tuy Hoa and a group of villages. Yet there have been many other such multiple attacks as a common feature of the war. One is entitled to ask why Washington is so sure of the deliberate planned nature of the simultaneous battles, and why it is so sure Hanoi was behind them. Guerrilla movements develop their own momentum and are notoriously hard to control. at any rate North Vietnam’s role in the South has been consistently overrated; according to the best estimates only 2,500 guerrillas, a fraction of the total, are North Vietnamese. In view of the sentiment for extending the war, it is important that we are clear about the details here.
Other disturbing questions present themselves: Why three raids of reprisal? One seems sufficient to make the point. More can only raise questions about whether the United States is using the guerrilla attacks as a cover for aggression against the North, which, while arguable on its merits, has not been suggested in the Washington version offered to the press. Another question concerns the role of air attacks. In a guerrilla war that the American-South Vietnamese forces are losing, air raids constitute a dramatic demonstration of strength—the show of force by which the United States has the least to lose militarily. When and if provocation can be shown, the U.S. also has little to lose politically, in the eyes of the world. Yet the air attacks should not be allowed to becloud America’s impotence on the ground, or the political instability in Saigon that rots the heart of the war effort. It is doubtful whether even massive bombing of supply routes of North Vietnam bases and cities would affect the war in the South very much. Apart from their use as reprisals, air raids demonstrate American determination and relieve a good deal of frustration, but they are essentially irrelevant to the problem at hand.
