[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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