Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [41]
As it was, the diplomatic approach did not work. In May 1965, two months after the first U.S. infantry unit arrived in South Vietnam, Siha-nouk shut down the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, the capital, and turned a blind eye to the communist base camps that expanded rapidly on the Cambodian side of the border as the NVA responded to the escalating U.S. commitment. Hanoi acted in secrecy, considering it unpro-ductive to allow world opinion to view a liberation army engaged in the exploitation of the military weakness of its neighbors. In this they were abetted not only by a resigned Sihanouk, who could not have brandished his rhetoric of neutrality had the NVA/VC presence been duly reported on, but also by a cautious Johnson, who sought no open confrontation with this potential ally. General Westmoreland, his every request for decisive military action against the sanctuaries denied, wrote bitterly in his memoirs, “…all we could do to the enemy in Cambodia was drop propaganda leaflets on our side of the border whenever the wind was right to blow them across.”
Exploitation of the eastern border regions of Cambodia and its northern neighbor, Laos, became integral to the NVA/VC war effort in South Vietnam. When the multibranched Ho Chi Minh Trail, down which came a continual flow of reinforcements and supplies from North Vietnam through Laos across northeastern Cambodia into South Vietnam, was somewhat constricted by U.S. bombing–Johnson permitted bombing in North Vietnam and Laos–Sihanouk allowed Hanoi to use his recently completed seaport, Sihanoukville, as an alternate supply conduit. From there, a Chinese firm trucked the material up the U.S.-built Friendship Highway through Phnom Penh, and on to the border bases.
At night, those aboard U.S. helicopters flying the border could see the headlights of these supply convoys through binoculars, but the rules of the game did not allow such lucrative targets to be seen instead through bomb sights. The exasperation, frustration, and bitterness at high command was put into perspective by Brig. Gen. Douglas Kinnard, chief of operations analysis MACV, 1966-67, and artillery commander and chief of staff, II FFV, 1969-70, who, although privately skeptical about the value of South Vietnam to the strategic interest of the United States, understood the tactical considerations that motivated his more hawkish peers:
The constraints policy pertained to ground operations in North Vietnam and, probably less understandably, to Laos and Cambodia where, to begin with, the borders weren't very clear. The Lapttan/Cambodian area near the border, in view of this policy, became two things for the enemy. It became a place to store the materials brought in through Sihanoukville and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and from a tactical point of view it also gave him a place to place his troops when he did not want to use them, which has a great deal of significance in the fact that it gave the enemy the initiative. Since it was not a territorial war and we were restricted from going to the enemy's home country, it became a war of attrition– but a war of attrition in which the enemy had the initiative since he could remove himself from the battle area. As a practical matter this was bad because, among other things, a war of attrition is a war of wills and not a war of power. And, for a variety of reasons, American society is just not equipped to handle the long, drawn-out, inconclusive war whose purpose is not clear. That was the forgotten lesson of Korea. A war of attrition is a war of will. The problem is they had the will and we had the power, and we weren't able to apply the power.
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