SETBACK OF UNPRECEDENTED MAGNITUDE"
The White House and the Pentagon have done their utmost to cover up the extent of the defeat suffered by U.S. imperialism at the beginning of February. At first they claimed it was actually a victory for the U.S. and Saigon, being nothing but a "desperate" move and "last gasp" by "the foe."
It became more and more difficult to maintain this posture in view of the newscasts shown daily on America's ninety million television screens. Finally it had to be given up when the White House approved sending 10,500 more troops and indicated this was only the beginning of a new escalation.
With a few exceptions, the true situation has still not been indicated by the American press. One of the exceptions was the three-part series by Beverly Deepe, a special correspondent in Saigon, which appeared in the February 3, 5 and 7 issues of the Christian Science Monitor. _
"The Communists' three-day blitz war -- actually a war within a war -- has opened up the possibility of the United States losing its first major war in history," she stated.
"An American defeat in South Vietnam is not necessarily inevitable, as the Communists have long maintained, nor is it likely to be imminent. But, according to some preliminary Vietnamese analysis, it is no longer an impossibility, as an American officer once predicted.
"The Communist blitz war has pushed, rapidly if perhaps impermanently, the favorable politico-military balance of force within the South from the allied side toward the Communist camp....
"Hence, the internal options open to the United States as seen in Saigon have shifted dramatically in the past week. The original policy choice of fighting for a battlefield victory or negotiating at the conference table has flipflopped into the choice of either negotiating or being defeated. Also, within the negotiations option, the choice has shifted from negotiating on terms favorable to the allies to negotiating on terms favorable to the Communists.
“Whether this balance of forces can be reversed across the board by American officialdom and the Government of South Vietnam is highly debatable in the opinion of knowledgeable Vietnamese....
"In other words, the Communist blitz has at least temporarily snuffed out the hope of hard-line hawks for an American military victory."
The opinion in Saigon, according to Miss Deepe, is that the National Liberation Front inflicted a "“politicalpsychological setback of unprecedented magnitude for the American-supported South Vietnamese regime.
"The initial assessment of the political damage is of such an order of magnitude that it has changed the entire complexion and character of this manyfaced war in the South."
The qualitative difference, as Miss Deepe puts it, is that the struggle "has been extended to the political arena which now is considered the heart of this war within a war.
"The Communist military rampage has definitely surfaced, accelerated, and emphasized the political character
of this conflict as it never has been before -- and has opened the possibility it may become the decisive dimension of the war."
She explains how. The objective is "overthrowing the current anti- Communist-elected President and entire governmental apparatus in a manner described by Western-educated Vietnamese as reminiscent of the blood bath of the French revolution of 1789."
She reports "knowledgeable Vietnamese sources" as viewing the current offensive "as only the beginning of several phases leading to the climax of an all-out popular insurrection."
An anti-Communist Roman Catholic told Miss Deepe that when the attack began, everyone thought it was "another coup d'état, with Ky trying to overthrow Thieu." When it was realized that it was the NLF, everything changed. "The typical reaction among the working-class people was, 'The VC are much stronger than we thought.' And the typical reaction of the upper-class people was, 'This government is incapable of protecting us any more.'"
A week after the fighting began,
the NLF was stepping up its recruiting
of military supporters in Saigon. Units
were still hitting police stations, ware-
houses, and bridges inside city limits.
"Government outposts surrounding
the capital are being overrun and uproot-
ed. All roads leading out of the city
are either barricaded or cut by the Com-
munists. Saigon is an island."
Looking at the tactical pattern of
the war as a whole, Miss Deepe concluded
that the American troops vpened an offen-
sive in the jungles "to secure the rear."
The Saigon forces, left to hold the popu-
lated centers, “irritated the Vietnamese
urban population by shakedowns, bribery,
embezzlement, nepotism, and kickbacks
from bars and brothels, which mushroomed
on such a large scale as to seem immoral
and un-Vietnamese to the townspeoples.
"The Communist blitz has thus in
a conventional sense outflanked the Amer-
ican troops along the borders with a
lightning, and gigantic maneuver -- a
sweep into the urban centers in the rear.
THE