The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

The third prong of Nixon’s strategy was to disrupt North Vietnamese base camps in Cambodia and Laos. When the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969–70 accomplished, as the president put it, “Zilch,”27 he ordered a ground “incursion”—the word “invasion” was studiously avoided. A total of 19,300 U.S. and 29,000 South Vietnamese troops moved into Cambodia beginning on April 30, 1970, backed by massive American aerial and artillery bombardment, but, as a South Vietnamese general admitted, “The Cambodian incursion proved, in the long run, to pose little more than a temporary disruption of North Vietnam’s march toward domination of all of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam.”28 An incursion into Laos—Operation Lam Son 719—the following year, undertaken by ARVN troops with American airpower and logistical support but no American ground troops, was even less successful. The operation would last only forty-two days, not the planned ninety days, and pictures of South Vietnamese troops hanging onto helicopter skids to escape would prove an international embarrassment.