BEHIND A LEGENDARY FIGURE
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Beginning the 21st Century, the Vietnam Communist Party will hold many celebrations this year, including the 25th Anniversary of its victory over South Vietnam on April 30.
To draw international attention, Hanoi government will set up other events that includes conferences to discuss the Vietnam War. Renowned personages are expected to participate. One of them has made a starting signal is Mr. Vo Nguyen Giap, the four-star general who is praised by many Westerners as a military genius.
Last Saturday, the retired Communist general now 88 years old, held a rare press conference in Hanoi on the occasion of April 30, which Hanoi calls the "Day of Liberation of the South."
The very purpose of Mr. Giap's press conference seemed to implore Washington to help Hanoi with aids. According to AP, Giap says that the Americans have an obligation to return and rebuild Vietnam. "As we help in finding U.S. soldiers, the United Sates should also help Vietnam overcome the extremely enormous consequences of the war," Giap was quoted as saying.
There is a mistake in the AP report: "Giap, who successfully ousted the Japanese and French forces in Vietnam before taking on the American..." In fact, Giap's small army of several guerrilla platoons were operating only as military intelligence units without having any important combat engagement with the Japanese army before the Japanese soldiers in Vietnam were disarmed by Nationalist Chinese army and repatriated by the end of 1945.
Giap, as usual, found the conference a good chance to reiterate his strategy of "People's War," once heard on every lip of Vietnamese Communist leaders - including Giap - when their bilateral relations with Red Chinese were still warm. He boasted about the most important factor that brought him victories: the strength and determination of the Vietnamese people.
At some aspects, Giap is right. The American side relied too much on firepower and didn't give proper consideration on the troops' morale, which could have been promoted and strengthened by just sufficient and accurate information, not necessary by propaganda or lies. Similarly, American commanders often underestimated the endurance of enemy soldiers who were under iron discipline and intensively indoctrinated with anti-American lessons.
Like Ho Chi Minh, Giap was eulogized to the skies by the party propaganda system as an invincible military leader, second only to Ho. In fact, the entire success of the Vietnam Communist forces in the wars was not made by Giap's capability.
In Dien Bien Phu, the key factor of the victory over the French was artillery power. Heavy shelling isolated the French units, limited their movements. It destroyed most of equipment and constructions on the ground, and disabled the runway, thus cutting down much of the French resupply capability. But most of the artillery batteries were of the Red Chinese. They were moved up to dominant gun positions on top of high hills by man power. French airplanes failed to silence the well hidden howitzers, guns and rockets. Moreover, there was the presence of a Chinese advisory delegation headed by a three-star Chinese general who contributed an important part of the campaign. Both have been rarely taken into consideration.
In the Vietnam Communist regime, the Communist Party was playing the key role in military efforts. Namely, Giap was a commander-in-chief but actually he had to rely on the supports of the whole party for almost everything. Local party committees down to village level were providing Giap's units with food supplies, labor for transportation of foods and ammunition, guides.
An infantry division of Giap's army had about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, all combat soldiers. Logistics affairs were handled by the party system. Civilian front line labor behind each division was estimated at about 10,000 people in charge of what were done by logistic soldiers in the South Vietnam and its allied Armed Forces. Communist military activities were based mostly on intelligence information provided by local party secret cells, except for battles in uninhabited jungle areas.
However, the VCP's victories were made mainly by the party's terrorist strategy that proved itself the most effective weapon that Giap's rivals in Saigon and Washington dared not use systematically. In the war, a South Vietnam village under Communist control at night was handled by only one or two members of a "security cell" in the village clandestine "self-govern" council of about 5 members.
With large power, the cell could mobilize the people into anti-government actions such as protesting, demolishing public health and administrative facilities, schools roads and bridges... They were allowed to execute anyone who were found "unpardonable reactionary" after quick approval from their superiors in the district security office. There were South Vietnam villages where nobody dared to accept the job of village chief because Communist security agents had vowed to kill every one who was elected to the position.
Giap's had no influence on the terrorist campaigns, which scared the population away from the South Vietnamese government side. Without terrorism exerted by the Communist Party system, Giap's regular army would have done nothing significant.
In North Vietnam, the Communist leaders took harsh measures to support the war. The food rationing system was so effective that when a youth got a draft card, he had no ways to dodge conscription, because at the deadline his food stamps (only with which he could buy a ration of rice and potato) would be revoked and it was impossible to buy elsewhere. Draft dodgers could have hidden safely somewhere but they couldn't find food to live for a week.
Thus Giap didn't have to worry about recruiting, logistics or intelligence. He just trained and maneuvered his army as if he had been just a J-3 of his own staff.
To the Italian reporter, Ms. Orion Fallaci in an interview in February 1969, when she asked him about how Dien Bien Phu had cost Giap 45,000 soldiers dead, he said, "Every two minutes, three hundred thousand people die on this planet. What are forty-five thousand for a battle? In war death doesn't count."
Despite the objectives of a war, good or bad, a commander of an armed force cannot be a military genius if he hold the life of his soldier so cheap as if it were money that can be paid to win a battle at any price.
In the above-mentioned interview, when Ms. Fallaci asked him whether he thought the Tet Offensive was a failure, Giap said, "Tell that to, or rather ask, the Liberation Front."
He explained it was a delicate question that he couldn't express judgments, that he wouldn't meddle in the affairs of the Front. He also said, "I won't discuss the Tet offensive, which didn't depend on me, didn't depend on us; it was conducted by the Front."
The interview thus revealed some of Giap's personality. First of all, everybody knows for certain that during the war, all major campaigns in South Vietnam must be initiated or approved by the Politburo and executed by Giap's staff. But Giap denied his responsibility. Passing the buck to the subordinates is not what should be done by a gentleman, particularly a general officer, commander-in-chief of an army, and a top leader with international reputation.
Some reliable sources in Hanoi disclosed that in a Politburo meeting to discuss the intended 1968 Tet Offensive, Giap objected to the operation plan, but the majority of its 13 members voted to go on with it. After the Communist forces suffered extremely heavy losses, the Politburo criticized Giap of poorly executing the Politburo's resolution, and that his reluctance might have caused a part of the failure.
He has lost his comrades' trust since. But it was in 1979, after the Vietnam Communist forces overthrew Khmer Rouge regime and occupied Cambodia that Giap really lost all power.
According to the same sources, once again in a secret meeting of the Politburo about the campaign to liberate Cambodia from Pol Pot ruling, Giap opposed to the idea. To make the issue more serious, Giap's loquacity turned against himself. He was telling almost all of his close friends about the meeting and why he had stood against the Cambodia campaign. He anticipated that Hanoi would be seriously bogged down in Cambodia.
This time the supreme ruling body did not tolerate him and Giap was ousted from the Politburo. His status of the top leader was revoked. Later he was appointed president of the National Family Planning Committee, a job that brought Hanoi humorous people a subject for dozen of satirical poems and jokes.
Giap is a victim of his own arrogance and legends. He has kept silent for years. If he has to speak, his statements must be serving the party course of action. That is what he said in the press conference, "In a little over a decade I will be 100, but my communist spirit still remains that of a youth."
Now that he is 88, he is still a decoration of the regime, emerging at request to reaffirm the past glory and the power of the party. Or to implore the Americans to give aids to his party's regime.
If people seek for a career military leader with Western standards in him, they would be disappointed. He cared little about conventional armed forces organization and traditions. He doesn't have the appearance of a general graduated from a military academy.
Still, Giap could be praised as a good Communist strategist and a persistent Communist revolutionary leader, though he is not a military genius as he has been cracked up to be in the last four decades.
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