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

by Max Boot

Failing to get American help, Ho Chi Minh could not prevent the return of the French. On November 23, 1946, in an attempt to drive the Vietminh out of the port of Haiphong, French warships and aircraft opened fire on the Vietnamese quarter, killing thousands of civilians. The French then secured Hanoi after a brief battle, but Vietminh units slipped out to continue the struggle—a pattern that would recur in the years ahead. The French forces could inflict casualties, but they could not achieve victory. The French war machine, like the American one that would come after it, was simply too slow, too ponderous, and, above all, too clankingly loud to annihilate the elusive Vietminh fighters in la guerre sans fronts (war without fronts). The guerrillas would inevitably hear the attackers coming and scatter long before they could be pinned down. In frustration, the French resorted to old colonial habits, torturing prisoners and bombing villages that were suspected of harboring insurgents. In the process, they made many of the same mistakes the Philippine army had made in its losing battles against the Huks before the reforms instituted by Magsaysay and Lansdale—only on a much bigger scale. What made the situation even more dismal from the French perspective was that the government they were asking the people to support was far more illegitimate than that of Elpidio Quirino. Quirino may have been elected president in a crooked election, but at least he was a Filipino and he did h...