turn been granted an inside look at the country’s military situation. What he had seen firsthand pretty much jibed with the intelligence reports he’d read and viewed before coming: Vietnam had an earnest and courageous force that was thoroughly outnumbered and ill-prepared to fight in the twenty-first century.
If there was a surprise, it had come from the Chinese. Their equipment was better in many respects than had been predicted, but their leadership was much worse. The generals running the war had been more timid than Perry expected, shutting down drives when dealt the slightest setback.
On the one hand, this was a valuable psychological insight: it told Perry that the Chinese army had quite a distance to go before it would truly achieve its potential. On the other hand, it was the sort of flaw that might be reversed quickly, if the right general were found to lead the charge and then clean house. But whether a Chinese Ulysses S. Grant emerged or not, the advantages the Chinese held over the Vietnamese were so extensive that even a McClellan would win this war in a matter of weeks.
Which brought Perry to the question of what the U.S. should do.
The United States could defeat China in a head-to-head battle. No war was easy; Perry knew from his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan that even a lopsided battle brought heartache and pain to the victor. But defeating China in Southeast Asia was possible. The key was acting quickly and decisively, with massive amounts of force.
A-10As and Apaches were only the tip of the spear as Perry saw it. He needed a lot more force. And he’d asked for it.
The idea wasn’t simply to stop the Chinese and get them out of Vietnam. They had to be soundly defeated — a strong punch in the nose that sent them to the mat. Such a strike would convince their army that the Americans weren’t to be messed with. Better, it would undermine China’s premier. And that was the key to a peaceful future: ousting Cho Lai from power.
The Chinese had seen decades of wise leaders. While they certainly hadn’t always acted in America’s best interests, they had recognized the importance of peace to their, and the world’s, prosperity. Cho Lai was a different character entirely, a throwback to times when brutality ruled. That approach would eventually be disastrous for everyone; the sooner he was removed, the better.
So, massive involvement by the U.S. now made a lot of sense… but what if that wasn’t possible? What if the best the U.S. could do were wing-and-a-prayer operations along the lines that Major Murphy had undertaken against Hainan?
By conventional measures, the operation there had been a success — the Chinese had completely overreacted, apparently scrapping all plans for a seaborne assault, at least in the near term. But that had had minimal impact on the longer term. The war continued and would continue, as the new assault proved.
While certainly valuable from the Vietnamese perspective, such small tactical victories would not change the overall outcome of the war if the U.S. stayed out of it.
They were poisoned victories from the American perspective. For one thing, the longer the war went on, the more likely a Chinese Grant would emerge. The longer the Chinese army fought, the more experience their “middle managers” — the NCOs and junior officers — would gain for the future.
If the U.S. was eventually going to have to fight China, and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do it now, then it was definitely in America’s best interest to have the PLA as inexperienced and even overconfident as possible. In that sense, small setbacks aided them immensely.
Perry also feared that any revelation that the U.S. was involved would provoke a severe reaction among the American public. Everyone he spoke to at the Pentagon made it clear that public sentiment was against intervention. Throw in a congressional investigation and a bunch of headlines about dead Americans in Vietnam, and they might turn against the Army itself.
The longer the war in Vietnam continued, the more tempting it would be for the president
And once they were there, the logic for more would be inescapable.
Incrementalism killed you: put a full force in at the very beginning, and you could win. Play into battle piecemeal and watch yourself get ground down. That was a basic lesson of just above every battle in history.
Harland Perry stood at a crossroads. The President — who happened to be a personal friend- had sent him here for advice.
He had made a suggestion for extreme force, and been rejected. Not yet in so many words, but the delays showed Greene lacked enough public support to commit troops.
So now Harland Perry had to make another recommendation. His advice would be to withdraw completely and quickly — to simply stand aside.
It was almost certainly not what the President wanted to hear. And while it was extremely logical, it went against Perry’s own wishes and emotions — his instinct was to fight, and much better sooner rather than later.
But emotions didn’t win battles; logic did. And it was his duty and responsibility as an officer to present the President, most especially this President, with the best recommendation he could make.
20
If the rings under his eyes were any indication, Thieu had had less sleep in the past twenty-four hours than Zeus. Yet he seemed energetic as he walked Zeus around the aircraft prior to their takeoff. A quartet of small bombs had been fastened to the wings; they supplemented the 23 mm twin-cannon mounted beneath the fuselage. Aircraft were so precious that even his recce mission would be combined with an attack sortie.
“Think those holes will be a problem?” Zeus asked, pointing to a few fresh notches in the belly.
Thieu laughed. “Ha-ha, Major Zeus, always making jokes.”
“Those are holes,” said Zeus.
“No worry. Board now.”
The Albatros was a two-seater, and Zeus sat in the rear. He had a flight stick and throttle, and Thieu insisted on giving him a quick orientation on how to use the controls if something happened.
“This way, if I am shot, you will land,” said Thieu over the plane’s interphone circuit. “Plane is very valuable.”
“What makes you think they’d get you and not me?” said Zeus.
“Ha! You are very lucky man, Major Zeus. The captain is very lucky to be flying with you today.”
“Oh yeah. I’m just oozing luck.”
The oxygen pumped into his mask gave Zeus a jolt of energy. Having flown with Thieu before, he had skipped breakfast — a decision vindicated by the roller-coaster takeoff that buried his stomach somewhere behind the tailplane.
“See — we miss all potholes!” said Thieu triumphantly as they climbed out.
The sun wouldn’t rise for another half hour. The dim sky and darker ground made it hard for Zeus to orient himself. The course Thieu laid out was due east to the sea, then north along Route 18 in the direction of Tien Yen.
Zeus strained to see out the sides of the cockpit, looking for lights or other signs of life. But there was
