The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2015 57 Revolutionary Development Support program, or CORDS. While U.S. provincial military advisers strongly supported the local self-develop- ment and self-defense program, at upper echelons MACV focused on conven- tional warfare. The Vietnamese army was advised to undertake large unit sweeps, which often turned up empty-handed as Viet Cong units melted away. This mistake was compounded by the overuse of air- power to attack villages and by blind artil- lery fire into predetermined areas thought to harbor Viet Cong. With the exception of one province, where a Vietnamese army regiment was permanently stationed and provided back-up support for the hamlet program, the war was being fought on two different levels. One was local, through the hamlet program aimed at protecting and winning over the civilian population. At most regu- lar Vietnamese army unit levels, however, the main objective was to win the war by killing Viet Cong (with insufficient concern about the adverse effects of such tactics on the civilian population). 1964-1966: Mistakes, Confusion and Decline The U.S.-supported coup against President Diem on Nov. 1, 1963, brought progress to a crashing halt. The generals lead- ing the coup were initially opposed to continuing the hamlet program. At the same time, almost all province chiefs, good and bad, were replaced; and most paramilitary units providing outside-the-hamlet security were disbanded. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong had already begun a concerted campaign to destroy the hamlet system, particularly in the Mekong Delta, where it was overextended and most vulnerable. When the junta finally agreed to continue the hamlet effort under a different name, another coup occurred, encouraged by American impatience because the generals were slow to get organized. Now that one person—the new coup leader, General Nguyen Khanh—seemed to be in charge, U.S. officials believed that the war would suddenly be prosecuted with renewed focus and energy. Instead, Khanh’s attempts at one-man-rule backfired; political chaos ensued, and military cohesion declined. The absence of an acceptable Vietnamese political way forward undermined everything else, not the least the effort to counter the insurgency. Compounding the confusion, a new USAID mission director decided that much of the Rural Affairs program was wrong. He abolished the joint provincial committees and returned decision-making to Saigon. Just when direct funding of counterinsurgency at the provincial level was most needed, it was largely cut off by our own actions. Chaos continued into 1965, when President Lyndon B. John- son sent in U.S. combat troops to counter the insertion of regular North Vietnamese units that threatened to divide the country in half. The character of the conflict changed when responsibil- ity for winning was taken over by the United States. We were going to win the war militarily, then give the country back to the Vietnamese. There was a refocus on counterinsurgency after Henry Cabot Lodge returned as ambassador in mid-1965, but it received mainly lip service from General WilliamWestmore- land, the MACV commander. Lodge brought out Ed Lansdale to coordinate counterinsurgency; but lacking Lodge’s strong back- ing, he was undermined by the various U.S. civilian agencies and MACV. Each agency ran its own counterinsurgency program until the end of 1966, when a combined civilian effort was attempted. Courtesy of Bruce Kinsey FSO Doug Ramsey (center) and USIS FSO Frank Scotton (right). In 1966, as a USAID provincial representative in Hau Nghia, Ramsey was captured by the Viet Cong and held in the jungle under unspeakable conditions for seven years.