Garden of Eden: The Turning Point

Garden of Eden

   A heart-warming novel sharing love, heroism, and the rite of passage during the Vietnam War.

The Turning Point

What would I have done had I been President Johnson? Knowing what I know today probably nothing. Ho Chi Minh was our friend during World War Two. His men rescued American fliers shot down by the Japanese. Ho and his forces performed heroic deeds helping the Allies against Imperial Japan. Toward the end of the war Ho asked President Roosevelt to declare Vietnam a sovereign nation to get the Colonial French off the backs of the Vietnamese people. Roosevelt was ill at the time, preoccupied with the Pacific, a dying man. Truman ignored Ho's request because France was an ally. So Ho turned to Moscow who was only too happy to oblige.

Had I been Nixon replacing Johnson I would have met personally with Ho. "Uncle Ho" died September 4, 1969, so Nixon had the opportunity. Protocol was just another stumbling block which is the usual circumstance with politics. Kissinger was a lousy negotiator. He was all about himself and playing God.

Had my meeting with Ho failed I would have given him and his Politburo fair warning. We were committed so it was a matter of honor and saving American lives. Get your troops out of South Vietnam in thirty days or forfeit Hanoi, Haiphong, and your Red River rice dikes. Blowing people and places off the map has a certain sobering effect.

I don't know when Johnson and McNamara decided to play it safe over their fears China might enter the war on the side of the North. Militarily, both of them were pussies. The turning point via combat was January 30, 1968, the Tet Offensive.

North Vietnam threw 85,000 troops into the offensive, mostly Vietcong, against the objections of General Giap. General Giap was commander of the North Vietnamese Army. He predicted correctly that Allied firepower would decimate his communist forces. But the Politburo overruled Giap and went ahead with their offensive. This was according to the Chinese Doctrine of direct confrontation. The USSR urged caution. The Vietcong were virtually wiped out. What NVA were involved sustained heavy casualties. 

North Vietnam suffered a terrible defeat, but the world news media played it up as a loss for the Allies. The liberals in America coveted an American defeat in Vietnam. When that didn't happen they manufactured one. That was flat-out treason, but many in Congress were Left-wing defeatists so it went unchallenged. Walter Cronkite's "We are mired in a Stalemate" was broadcast on the CBS Evening News February 27, 1968. Public opinion then swung Left against Johnson and the war. 

What North Vietnam never envisioned was a political victory. They lost the battle, but due to the media and the war protesters and a gutless Congress and the American Left, we sacrificed over 58,000 of our men and women plus another 300,000 wounded over a lousy political chess game. 

How does one win a war? Kill people and break things! Bombing Soviet trucks along the Ho Chi Minh Trail with B-52 bombers while leaving Hanoi and Haiphong intact was political insanity. It cost us the war.