War of a different kind
We wish to congratulate new Army chief Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Bautista, son of the late Brig. Gen. Teodulfo Bautista of PMA Class 1952, who was murdered by Moro separatist rebels in Patikul, Sulu, in October 1977. An MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) commander, Usman Sali, got him to lower his guard ostensibly to talk about a ceasefire and possible peace. He and his men paid dearly for trusting a treacherous enemy.
Bautista, the son, takes over command of Army forces 34 years after the Patikul massacre, and less than a month after scout rangers were similarly massacred by Moro separatist rebels in Al-Barka, Basilan. This time our soldiers were killed in such a brutal manner by the same enemy.
Perhaps the lesson here is that we can only talk peace from a position of strength. Peace talks without strength and the will to use such strength send the wrong signals to the enemy, which takes the talks as a sign of weakness, a sign that we will accept peace at any price, even the possible dismemberment of our nation.
Remember the Bangsa Moro Juridical Entity (BMJE) that almost came about in Kuala Lumpur with, apparently, then US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney’s support? Are we headed for another similar exercise?
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Some 36 years after the fall of Saigon in 1975, a war over the Vietnam War continues among scholars and historians. The key issue has to do with whether the conflict which took the lives of 58,000 US soldiers was a “bad war” and therefore unwinnable, or a “good war” that could have been won using different tactics and strategy.
Among the anti-war books are those of Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,” a Pulitzer Prize winner; David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” a New York Times bestseller; and Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History.” They espoused the view that Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated nationalist leading a mass-based liberation movement and that the Saigon regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and the one that succeeded it after he was assassinated by military officers with CIA support were illegitimate and hopelessly corrupt. This view are opposed by military officers, and some civilians, who argue that the war could have been won by a different approach. But even among these officers, there exist diverse views. Some favored more conventional tactics such as invading Cambodia and Laos, even going all the way to Hanoi. Others preferred more of counterinsurgency actions rather than “search and destroy” operations involving large-unit sweeps.
One of the more interesting views on the war which recently saw print is Lewis Sorley’s “Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam.” Sorley, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran summarizes William Westmoreland’s pre-Vietnam career: “Eagle Scout at 15… president of the high school senior class, Citadel cadet, First Captain at West Point, Battalion Commander at age 28 with the Presidential Unit Citation earned in combat in North Africa, full Colonel at 30, then a Brigadier at 38 while leading the airborne regimental combat team in Korea, Major General—youngest in the Army—at 42, serving at the right hand of the famous Maxwell Taylor, then sent by him to command the 101st Airborne Division, on to West Point as the dashing superintendent… then corps command, again with his beloved airborne and the third star.”
Max Boot, noted author and a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, takes up some of the more important points in Sorley’s book:
“It was Westmoreland—not Lyndon Johnson or even Robert McNamara—who decided to fight a ‘war of attrition’ sending large and cumbersome American formations to thrash throughout the jungle and rice paddies in search of elusive enemy units.
“It was Westmoreland who kept demanding more American troops and who encouraged them to fire as many artillery rounds as possible even if they lacked specific targets.
“It was Westmoreland who made ‘body counts’ the key metric of the entire war effort in the futile hope that the United States could inflict enough casualties on the Communists to make them cry ‘Uncle.’ He did not seem to realize or care that in the process, he was inflicting lesser but still considerable casualties on American forces and that a democracy like the United States was much more casualty-averse than a one-party dictatorship like North Vietnam.
“Mr. Sorley shows that Westmoreland was well-intentioned and conscientious but also dense, arrogant, vain, humorless, and not too honest. He mentions some assessments from the late general’s associates. Air Force General Robert Beckel thought that ‘he (Westmoreland) seemed rather stupid. He didn’t seem to grasp things or follow the proceedings very well.’ Army General Charles Simmons says: ‘General Westmoreland was intellectually very shallow and made no effort to study, read, or learn. He would just not read anything. His performance was appalling.’
“In 1964, when Westmoreland was first being considered for an assignment in Vietnam, one general privately warned that ‘it would be a grave mistake to appoint him. He is spit and polish… this is a counterinsurgency war and he would have no idea how to deal with it.’”
After the Tet Offensive in 1968, Westmoreland was kicked upstairs to become Army chief of staff and spent the rest of his life trying to redeem his reputation.
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In 2006, Gen. David Petraeus, current CIA director, drawing on the failures and mistakes of Vietnam, published his “Counterinsurgency Field Manual,” now the bible for US Army counterinsurgency operations. Among the guiding principles he espouses are the following: troopers must “live among the people,” they must “patrol on foot and engage the population,” and they must “hold areas that have been secured.”
Do our troops live among the people?
Do they patrol on foot and engage the population?
Do we have enough forces to hold areas that have been secured?
These are three vital questions that must be answered truthfully if the Armed Forces of the Philippines is to succeed in the implementation of Oplan Bayanihan.
