To Laos and Back
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
ARVN ON THE RUN To Laos and Back BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Saigon Shortly after the last bedraggled South Vietnamese units completed their retreat, but before the recriminations began, the operation's...
...The Prince's early sense of despair underscored the generally grim assessments that surfaced latei --privately in Saigon and publicly (after some silly initial posturing about everything going "according to plan") in Washington...
...The government line still trumpets glorious victory, but Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky is reportedly condemning the invasion (a move probably based as much on political aspiration as personal conviction), and some South Vietnamese military leaders are openly grumbling about insufficient American bomber and helicopter support...
...The point was not lost in Saigon, where Nixon's remarks received considerable play in the press...
...Certainly the Laos invasion was important, providing ARVN 's first major trial under fire and a challenge to Hanoi's lifeline...
...American military brass claimed to have recognized these facts from the start, and never to have envisioned the Laos exercise as anything more than a temporary move against enemy supply lines...
...I mentioned that more than 44,000 Americans had lost their lives in Vietnam, but this did little to allay his anger...
...The popular bitterness is beginning to extend to Saigon officials...
...if not, it would smash all hopes of Vietnamization...
...It is any way the enemy can move south...
...From the outset, political debate, inflated boasts and ill-informed speculation tended to create a widespread impression that this engagement would prove "decisive": If successful, Saigon's thrust would sever Hanoi's supply line and turn the tide of battle...
...The combination of ignominious South Vietnamese retreat and harsh recriminations among allied officers leaves Hanoi the clear psychological victor...
...Vietnamization and pacification will continue, but so will the southward flow of enemy supplies...
...First he offered the mandatory reply: "It is too early to tell, of course...
...air power, not his colleagues' ground fire, was responsible...
...gradually pulling out, Saigon will, not mount a more forceful effort against the Ho Chi Minh trail in the future...
...The drive was mounted, Nixon said, to insure continued American troop withdrawals, to reduce the threat to remaining American forces, and to boost ARVN 's capabilities--in that order...
...He insisted that the invasion could not be judged in "traditional terms of victory and defeat," and that press coverage was distorted because it concentrated on the more sensational negative aspects...
...This is significant, yet it need not prove fatal to Saigon, as some critics now contend it must...
...President Nixon has been forswearing military victory since he assumed office...
...With the campaign less than three weeks old, General Hoang Xuan Lam, head of the operation, said he had completed his "major mission" of disrupting the enemy supply flow...
...officials have their knives out, too...
...Nixon showed no distress about that...
...If nothing else, two decades of continuous war should have taught any Western observer that "decisive" battles in Indochina rarely are...
...attempting to sever it is like trying to trap a ball of mercury...
...Laos' Premier Souvanna Phouma, having looked on helplessly as his country became a battleground for foreign forces, sat glumly in his office pondering a question I had put to him about the battle results...
...commanders first learned about this offensive from Thieu...
...Lam's questionable claim followed Thieu's declaration a few days earlier that the invasion had foiled an imminent offensive against his country's five northernmost provinces...
...Moreover, while enemy forces absorbed appalling casualties--even if the official figure of 13,000 is inflated--any observant South Vietnamese soldier had to recognize that U.S...
...Arnold Abrams regularly reports in these pages from Southeast Asia...
...Your President could be more tactful in discussing his purposes," one Saigon resident said to me...
...In slow, measured tones, the Prince talked about the new hardships he feared for Laos...
...This ignored the enemy's amply proven ingenuity as well as the long conflict's most elementary lessons...
...By sending no more than 20,000 men across the border, Saigon never had a chance of permanently blocking the Ho Chi Minh trail...
...This amused U.S...
...A subtle psychological element of the Laotian operation may prove more important to the future conduct of the war...
...Neither result ever was likely...
...the war will go on with military victory beyond Saigon's reach...
...forces in Vietnam, was simply to destroy stockpiles in the hope of forestalling a Communist offensive later this year...
...border, the North Vietnamese in hot pursuit...
...One astute American officer has described the trail as more "a state of mind" than a physical track...
...Although called a trail, Hanoi's main supply route is actually a 6,000-mile network of hidden roads, paths and waterways weaving down through eastern Laos...
...Indeed, he spoke of the 20,-000-man invasion force leaving Laos with "higher confidence" and "greater morale" because "they know they have given much more losses to the enemy...
...The objective, said General Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S...
...Saigon admits that more than 5,000 of its men were killed or wounded, which amounts to a brutal 25 per cent casualty rate...
...At worst, Souvanna said, the incursion might lead to further North Vietnamese expansion into Laotian territory...
...But it wasn't, of course, so he told...
...The American command is believed to have urged President Nguyen Van Thieu to commit more reinforcements and stay in Laos another month to inflict more lasting damage...
...Cutting the trail for an extended period would have required at least 60,000 troops...
...the actual rate may be closer to 50 per cent...
...But one thing is clear from the outcome of the Laotian adventure: With the U.S...
...Maybe the enemy had been planning such an action, and maybe it really was foiled...
...U.S...
...Nevertheless, Saigon was quick to make victory claims...
...Thieu declined, they say, because of the potential effects of more ARVN casualties on his reelection campaign next fall...
...For manpower problems aside, South Vietnamese soldiers would not have been able to fulfill the operation's exacting communication and coordination requirements...
...Nixon himself contributed to the distortion, declaring the enemy "would have to fight here" on the Ho Chi Minh trail or "give up" the struggle...
...To establish an effective barrier, the blocking force would have had to man a defensive line stretched west more than 100 miles across the rugged terrain of south-central Laos...
...But it was destined to end indecisively...
...Naturally, President Nixon first tried to paint a positive picture...
...ARVN ON THE RUN To Laos and Back BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Saigon Shortly after the last bedraggled South Vietnamese units completed their retreat, but before the recriminations began, the operation's dismal outcome was keenly felt in Vientiane...
...advisers at Khe Sanh, who saw the battered, hangdog state of most ARVN units racing back across the...
...After Laos, he may start to believe his words...
...I anticipate more North Vietnamese pressure," he said, indicating that the damage arvn troops had done to the Ho Chi Minh trail was temporary...
...Perhaps the Laos operation did buy six months' or even a year's extra time...
...The formidable task would also have required considerably more American participation...
...officials, and not solely for security purposes...
...And if body count were the decisive factor, Saigon would have won this war long ago...
...This was true enough, given the essentially murky character of all fighting in Indochina, the ambiguity of the invasion goals as defined by different allied leaders, and the limitations clamped on the mass media (whose attempts at wider coverage were restricted by U.S...
...It is our blood that is flowing in Laos...
...Still, whatever the operation's fundamental goal--ostensibly a time-buying disruption of the main enemy supply route--ARVN forces paid a high price for it...
Vol. 54 • April 1971 • No. 8
