The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

The Vietcong troops were well led, and believed deeply in their cause; in contrast, the government troops were made of the same raw material but their leadership was bad. They were commanded by division, regimental and even battalion officers who had never heard shots fired in anger, who held their posts only because of loyalty to Diem, and who were under orders not to allow casualties because this would be considered a reflection against Diem himself, a sign that he was not as beloved and respected as he believed. Since the Vietcong leadership was perfectly willing to accept very high casualties for each individual political gain (“It is,” wrote one Vietcong soldier in his diary, “the duty of my generation to die for our country”), the outcome again and again was almost predetermined. As in China, it was a modern army against a feudal one, though this was not perceived by Western eyes, particularly Western military eyes, which saw that the ARVN was well equipped, with radios, airplanes, artillery and fighter planes, and that the Vietcong had virtually nothing, except light infantry pieces. Western observers believed the reverse, believed that the ARVN was a legitimate and real army, and that the Vietcong, more often than not wearing only black pajamas, not even uniformed, were the fake army, the unreal one—why, they did not even seem to have a chain of command. It was ironic; the United States had created an army in its own image, an army which existed primarily on paper,...