The large base was hung out there as a magnet to attract an elusive enemy; it worked. On January 21 of 1968 20-30 thousand troops from the People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) began an assault on the combat base that would go on for 77 days. it would cost the lives of over 700 marines and more than 5000 NVA troops. The marines found themselves encircled by artillery on the surrounding hills. On the first day a shell detonated their store of artillery and mortars, and they lost ninety percent of their ammo immediately. Surrounded, outmanned, and outgunned is a bad way to start your day.
For the next two months the main American priority was to keep the base supplied as the marines repelled assaults and led some of their own. Westmoreland launched Operation Niagara which would rain down countless tons of artillery shells and bombs from B-52s on the NVA positions in the hills. Artillery was often being exchanged at WW1 levels, a small Verdun in the jungle. The Americans were able to keep the base supplied with things like low-level drops from cargo planes onto the runway; the planes never landing because of the danger.
It must have been hell for both sides. I read an account of a marine patrol at the time that came across a NVA soldier walking out of the jungle to surrender to them, he was naked. A shell exploded nearby, and he immediately squatted down and began defecating and urinating. The unrelenting bombardments had destroyed this man’s nervous system.
At the end of January, the north launched the Tet Offensive, named for the lunar new year. They assaulted nearly every city in the south simultaneously. It began to look as if instead of us drawing them out they had drawn us north to leave the cities less protected. It didn’t work; every attack was eventually repulsed by American and South Vietnam forces. It was a complete military defeat, but it was a political victory. The press and the American public began to question our handling of the war. If the North was on the verge of collapse, as our leadership claimed, how were they able to organize such a well-orchestrated campaign? What were we doing there? The siege was eventually broken at Khe Sanh; but the damage was done. Westmoreland was relieved of command. In July the base was ordered destroyed and abandoned, adding insult to injury.
The U.S. intervention in Vietnam lasted nearly twenty years and cost more than 58,000 American lives, and probably more than a million dead Vietnamese. For what? We won every battle but lost the war. Images and politics. Many veterans returned home to scorn instead of parades. The fall of Saigon in 1975, with humiliating images of thousands of people around the U.S. embassy, begging for help, scrambling over the walls in a desperate attempt to gain access to the helicopters on the roof to escape the communists approaching the city was the inglorious end to the Vietnam War.
Fast forward to the next century and what images does history give us? Thousands of people scrambling after U.S. aircraft in a desperate attempt to escape Kabul as enemy forces take over the city. Another country in Asia. Another 20-year war. Another two decades of letting young Americans win every engagement only to lose the war. More feckless leadership. More images and politics. It took us 20 years, four presidents, and over two trillion dollars to take Afghanistan from the Taliban and give it to the Taliban.
Why do we do this? Are democracies just bad at war? Our performance in the two world wars would indicate otherwise. What was the difference? The difference is counter intuitive; in both WW1 and WW2, we had to virtually reinvent the American military from scratch. We had no large standing army; we did not need one. We are the mightiest industrial economy that has ever existed, we can militarize in moments if the need is great.
I have a radical proposal: the U.S. should dismantle the bulk of our national security apparatus, including most of the Pentagon. My dad was a marine, I was a marine tanker, (something that no longer exists), and my son is still a marine and served in all our recent escapades, including Afghanistan. I am pro military, but I do not trust our political class.
I used to support, in theory, the neocon instinct for nation building and exporting democracy. They argue that it is the best path for international stability. The ghosts of Khe Sanh and Helmand and Baghdad and Tripoli would argue, I think. There are voices in government and media today that seem to be itching for Americans to start shooting at Russians over Ukraine. These people cannot be trusted with our sons and daughters. If they do not have a large military standing around waiting to be used, they will not be tempted to use it. Perhaps some of them may have to grow up and become statesmen. We need to take away their toys.
When it comes to national defense our needs are few. We need to maintain a nuclear deterrent, subs, missile defense, etc. We need robust cyber-warfare and satellite capabilities. And the coast guard should be enhanced. Get rid of most of the rest of it. What could we do with an extra trillion dollars? Maybe the conservatives could pay down the debt they pretend to care about every four years. Maybe the liberals could begin to fund some sort of basic national healthcare, their holy grail. Although that would just be transferring money from one industrial complex to another, neither should be trusted.
Some would dismiss me as an isolationist. But to present this as a false binary choice between interventionism and isolationism is just infantilizing the debate, which is all we seem to do in this land. If you approach Washington D.C. from any direction, you will find it ringed by lots of buildings with the names of weapons manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. This is who our political establishment serves. Generals retire from the Pentagon and then walk down the street to a big paycheck serving on the board of some defense industry company. Our capital has become an incestuous leviathan laying in a swamp. It’s bad for us, and the world.
I apologize for the long gloomy post, if you are still reading, but there is a lot I left unsaid. Things get stuck in my head, and I can only get rid of them by writing. This week, Khe Sanh got stuck in my head, this is what came out.
“Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys.”
– PJ O’Rourke
“I had a brother at Khe Sanh, fightin’ off all the Viet Kong. They’re still there, he’s all gone.”
– Born in the USA