[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 129 (Friday, August 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8514-H8515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
KOREAN WAR MEMORIAL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, with all the rush of events, before we take
a long 5-week break, I wanted to mention what will be one of my
greatest memories serving in Washington, and that was the dedication a
few days ago of the Korean War Memorial.
It was absolutely an inspiring day. Veterans of the Korean conflict
came from all over the country, some from around the world, to be part
of this memorial ceremony. Most of them were a bit hurt that it was not
a Ronald Reagan or someone like that to officiate as the Commander in
Chief.
They felt the speech that Mr. Clinton delivered could have been the
very same speech with the word ``Vietnam'' transposed instead of the
word ``Korea.'' They are both small Asian countries, almost the same
identical population, both divided as a fallout of World War II and the
end of colonialism, whether it was French colonialism or Japanese
imperial warlord colonialism.
One had a DMZ on either side of the 30th parallel; the other had a
DMZ on either side of the 17th parallel. As we look across the
reflecting ponds from this uplifting Korean War Memorial, we think how
sad the struggle was, the birth pangs of the Vietnam Memorial which
came chronologically, in a strange way ahead of the Korean Memorial.
One can see that, by design, the Korean Memorial was to elicit not a
feeling of inspiration, which turned out to be true the minute the
first hero's name was etched into the black marble, but somehow or
another was supposedly to evoke shame, a black gash in the ground the
way it was described by its 21-year-old young architect.
No American flag was ever to be on top, in front of or at either end
of that memorial.
I was in pilot training when the Korean War mercifully came to an end
after two years and thousands of deaths while they argued over a
negotiating table, the same way the Vietnam War dragged on for two or
three years from 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, all over
arguments, in the same city, Paris basically, P'anmunjom, Paris, the
same type of communist negotiators, never negotiating in good faith. It
was tragic.
Those of us who were veterans, in the House fought to get a flag at
the Vietnam Memorial, and they made us take it off the top, put it down
in front in the grassy courtyard area where the gash was to be cut into
the earth, the depression. Then we fought for a statue of three
Americans, a Hispanic-American, an African-American, a heritage
soldier, a soldier representing all of the other various heritages.
Now, I can totally understand why Native Americans who fought in
every one of our wars and on both sides of the so-called Plains Wars
would like some sort of recognition with a memorial, and I promised the
Native American Indian vets that I would fight for that.
Mr. Speaker, we finally got the statue approved. It is beautiful and
inspirational. When we left the room, a source
[[Page H 8515]]
told me later, they pushed the flag and the three beautiful soldiers
into the woods where they are today, around the flag. It has a great
memorial plaque. It says, These men fought wonderfully.
There are eight women's names on the Vietnam Wall, and it says, Under
very difficult circumstances. This is Vietnam.
Yes, the same type of difficult circumstances with no win nor
strategy for victory in Korea, but at least, in Korea, half a victory.
Korea is now the 14th most vibrant economic nation in the world. There
was a half a victory there, half the country is free.
But we walked out on our allies in Vietnam. The end result was the
killing fields, 68,000 of our friends executed, in concentration camps,
killing fields in Laos, 750,000 dead. In the South China Sea, pirates,
rape, murder, sharks, drowning, all of that dismissed by Mr. Clinton
when he tries to normalize with the communist congress in Hanoi.
Well, Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Thursday,
August 3, there was an article, ``How North Vietnam Won the War.'' I
ask unanimous consent to put this in the Record. When we come back in,
I will take a special order and read it word for word slowly.
I am not being humorous, Mr. Speaker. Every single question a young
scholar would want to know about Vietnam is in this Wall Street Journal
article. It will go in today's Record.
[From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 1995]
How North Vietnam Won the War
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the
American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet
Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in
fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the
North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the
following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen
Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui
Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army,
received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on
April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the official
newspaper of Vietnam, he now lives in Paris, where he
immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of
Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will
to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Q. Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's
victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war
from our rear was completely secure while the American rear
was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to
world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of
the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like
Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and
ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the
face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda,
wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference
that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that
she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The
conscience of America was part of its war-making capability,
and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost
because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost
the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had
granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos
and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the
war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South
Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but
the commanding general officers were inept.
Q. Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front
would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Glap [commander of the North
Vietnamese army] believed that guerilla warfare was important
but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions
with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese
believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a
different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Le
Duan [secretary general of the Vietamese Communist Party]
once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to
win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to
sacrifice one, or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent
political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a
decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We
always said there was only one party, only one army in the
war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times
there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power
to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and
maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of
thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical
stations, communication units.
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never
compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52
strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the
top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the
war always came
out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit
significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing has been concentrated at one time, it
would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in
slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had
plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities.
We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for
months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice
from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on
us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve
during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics
caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi
Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the
rural population and that his main forces were being pushed
out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that
Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut
the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Gen. Thanh
proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of
the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war
effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that ``America is
wealthy but not resolute,'' and ``squeeze tight to the
American chest and attack.'' He was invited up to Hanoi for
further discussions, He went on commercial flights with a
false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi.
Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then
Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more
troops. We realized that America had made its maximum
military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently
important for the United States to call up its reserves. We
had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more
frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to
withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.
Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We
would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities
during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops
would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice
American units to advance close to the borders, away from the
cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we
would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of
American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose
some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each
target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams like
the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be
sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids.
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise, Giap
later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we
had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson
agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The
second and third waves in May and September were, in
retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly
wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971
to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North
Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces
had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could
have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970
as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we
knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North
Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, ``he's the
weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect
him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene
in Vietnam again.'' We tested Ford's resolve by attacking
Phuoc Long in January 1995. When Ford kept American B-52's in
their hangers our leadership decided on a big offensive
against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their
hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never
deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
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