Lost Inside the Machine

We trickled into Vietnam with no knowledge of the country or its culture. Worse, we were oblivious to its people. Lean, sinewy figures in rubber sandals, black cotton pajamas and conic basket hats, we dismissed them as "primitive." But they were a highly sophisticated folk whose civilization dated back millenniums. Over those centuries they recurrently resisted foreign invaders, particularly their predatory Chinese neighbors. That tumultuous history ingrained in them an intensely nationalistic spirit illustrated by their willingness to give their lives for their cause.

Perplexed by the phenomenon, General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of the U.S. forces from 1965 to 1968, maintained that "life is unimportant to Asians." His fatuous, racist observation ignored the reality that our adversaries were engaged in a sacred crusade, while we were caught in a quagmire that swallowed up our blood and treasure. He ought to have remembered the warning that Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader, voiced to a French diplomat on the eve of his war with France in 1946. "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, but in the end I will win and you will lose." I heard roughly the same remark from General Vo Nguyen Giap, the eloquent North Vietnamese commander, when I asked him during an interview in Hanoi in 1990 how long he would have gone on fighting against the U.S. He thundered, "Another 20, maybe 100 years, as long as it took to win, regardless of cost."

We faced an enemy that, like bamboo, could be bent but not broken. As a result, the war was essentially unwinnable. For Kerrey and his buddies, who grievously suffered, and are still haunted by the ordeal, the epitaph for Vietnam and similar ventures is succinct: "Never Again."

Stanley Karnow, the author of Vietnam: A History, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1990