1st Battalion 22nd Infantry Randy Cox Page 11

1st Battalion 22nd Infantry

Randy Cox

Page 11

Miscellaneous entries: Rules of Engagement, Admiral Nimitz WWII

The Rules of Engagement in the 2nd Indochina War (Vietnam)

By Paul Schmehl

This is a subject that is little known or discussed among the so-called experts on the war but had a significant impact on its outcome. While it is well known that Washington micromanaged the war (thus the famous story about LBJ boasting that the military couldn’t bomb an outhouse without his approval 1), the details of what that meant are not as well-known. When viewed through the lens of military strategy they border on the insane.

The rules of engagement were drawn from three different sources; the President and Secretary of Defense, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of the Military Assistance Command and the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command. Except if you were operating in Laos. Then the State Department set the rules.2 3 4

There are two primary facets to the rules of engagement; the air war and the ground war. The following are lawful targets according to the laws of war. 5

a. Military
a. complexes
b. equipment and supplies
b. Economic
a. power
b. industrial (war supporting/import/export)
c. transportation (equipment/lines of communication/petroleum)
c. Political
d. Geographic
e. Personnel
a. military
b. civilians participating in hostilities

The targets that the US military were permitted to attack from the air per Secretary McNamara were

1. Transportation
2. Military outside of populated areas

Air War 6

1. Pilots could not attack targets that were not on the approved list
1. Hanoi and Haiphong had 30-mile perimeters that were no bombing zones
2. A 30-mile perimeter on the northern border of North Vietnam prevented pursuit of attacking MIG fighters
3. Rail yards and switching stations were off-limits
4. Airfields were off-limits
5. MIGs could only be shot at if they were airborne, clearly identified and displayed hostile intent
6. SAM sites could only be attacked if they attacked first
7. SAM sites and antiaircraft sites could not be attacked while they were under construction
8. Locks, dams and dikes could never be attacked
9. Hydroelectric plants could not be attacked
10. Military targets could not be attacked if they were in protected zones
11. Trucks in Laos and North Viet Nam could not be attacked unless they were on a road and displayed hostile intent
12. Military truck parks more than 200 meters from a road could not be attacked
2. Pilots had to travel routes specified by Washington and would face court-martial if they disobeyed.
1. The PAVN knew these routes and placed all their antiaircraft defenses on those routes, forcing American pilots to run a gauntlet of enemy fire to complete their missions.
2. They were forced to fly over targets in weather so bad they could not release their bombs but still had to face the enemy’s radar-controlled ground fire.
3. Pilots in South Viet Nam could not provide air support to ground troops, even if fired upon, unless they got clearance, and they first had to drop leaflets warning possible civilians to clear the area.
4. The average time in Laos between the discovery of a target and permission to strike was fifteen days!

Senator John Stennis, Chairman of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated, in 1967, “That the air campaign has not achieved its objectives to a greater extent cannot be attributed to impotence or inability of air power. It attests, rather, to the
fragmentation of our air might by overly restrictive controls, limitations, and the doctrine of ‘gradualism’ placed on our aviation forces which prevented them from waging the air campaign in the manner and according to the timetable which was best calculated to achieve maximum results.” 7

The Subcommittee found that Secretary of Defense McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson had “discounted the unanimous professional judgment of U.S. commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and substituted civilian judgment in the details of target selection and the timing of strikes.” 8

In 1972, President Nixon authorized all of the targets that the JCS requested with the exception of three. The results were reported by Admiral Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton at the time.

At dawn, the streets of Hanoi were absolutely silent. The usual patriotic wakeup music was missing. The familiar street sounds, the horns, all gone. In prison, interrogators and guards would inquire about our needs solicitously. Unprecedented morning coffee was delivered to our cell blocks. One look at any Vietnamese officer’s face told the whole story. It telegraphed accommodation, hopelessness, remorse, fear. The shock was there; our enemy’s will was broken. The sad thing was that we all knew what we were seeing could have been done in any 10-day period in the previous seven years and saved lives of thousands, including most of those 57,000 dead Americans. 9

Ground War 10

1. Commanders in direct contact with the enemy in uninhabited areas could request direct artillery fire without prior authorization.
2. Commanders in direct contact with the enemy in inhabited areas could only authorize direct fire if their mission was in jeopardy and the enemy was positively identified and only for defensive purposes.
3. Indirect fire could only be utilized after approval of the Province Chief for the province where the fire would be directed.
4. No artillery could be fired in areas where friendly troops were not operating without the prior use of leaflets or loudspeakers, even if enemy fire was received from the area
5. Direct fire against enemy forces that were not in direct contact in inhabited areas required approval of both the Province Chief and the battalion commander
6. Indirect fire missions in inhabited areas required the approval of the Province Chief, the battalion commander and the dropping of leaflets or the use of loudspeakers to warn civilians prior to commencement
7. Cordon and search missions could only be conducted with the approval of the district and village chief as well as the US commander, and RVN advisors must accompany all missions
8. Attacks in inhabited areas required that the commander explain to the inhabitants why the action was initiated, after the attack was over
9. Fleeing enemy troops could not be engaged unless they were first ordered to halt and failed to obey. Then they must be fired upon with the intent to wound only, by firing at the lower extremities.
10. The much discussed “free fire zones” had to have prior approval from RVN political authorities and were still restricted by all the other rules of engagement.

Senator Barry Goldwater was so appalled by the rules of engagement that he had them entered into the Congressional Record along with this statement.

Mr. GOLDWATER. Mr. President, I ask this because I think it is very, very necessary for the Members of this body. the public, the press, and media to understand fully the restrictions that were placed upon all of our forces in South Vietnam.

It is absolutely unbelievable that any Secretary of Defense would ever place such restrictions on our forces. It Is unbelievable that any President would have allowed this to happen.

I think on the reading of these restrictions, members of this body will begin to understand in a better way just what happened to the American military power in South Vietnam. As I say, it is unbelievable.

I am ashamed of my country for having had people who would have allowed such restrictions to have been placed upon men who were trained to fight, men who were trained to make decisions to win war, and men who were risking their lives. I daresay that these restrictions had as much to do with our casualties as the enemy themselves.

1. Broughton, Jacksel, and John D. Lavelle. “Air Force Colonel Jacksel ‘Jack’ Broughton & Air Force General John D. ‘Jack’ Lavelle: Testing the Rules of Engagement During the Vietnam War.” HistoryNet. History.net, 12 June 2006. Web. 26 Dec. 2016. http://www.historynet.com/air-force-
colonel-jacksel-jack-broughton-air-force-general-john-d-jack-lavelle-testing-the-rules-of-engagement-during-the-vietnam-war.htm.

2. Emerson, J. Terry. “Making War Without Will: Vietnam Rules of Engagement.” The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 161-70. Print.

3. USAF Ops from Thailand Jan 67 – Jul 1968 (Part 1), Undated, Folder 01, Bud Harton Collection, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 23 Dec. 2016. http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=168300010948.

4. Congressional Record – Senate on “U.S. Rules of Engagement in Vietnam War – 1969-1972”, 1985, Folder 05, Box 52, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 03 – Legal and Legislative, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 23 Dec. 2016.
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=2185205001.

5. Parks, W. Hays. “The Bombing of North Vietnam and the Law of War.” The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 172-73. Print.

6. Broughton, Jacksel M.. “Rolling Thunder from the Cockpit.” The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 149-60. Print.

7. Staff of Senate Committee on Armed Services, Preparedness Investigating Committee, Air War Against North Vietnam, 90th Congress, 1st Session, at 2 (1967).

8. Emerson, J. Terry. “Making War Without Will: Vietnam Rules of Engagement.” The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York:.

9. Parks, W. Hays. “The Bombing of North Vietnam and the Law of War.” The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 179. Print.

10. US Military ” Rules of Engagement”, January 1975, Folder 11, Box 51, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 03 – Legal and Legislative, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 23 Dec. 2016. http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=2185111001.

The above Rules of Engagement are from the Vietnam Veterans for factual History Blog

3/9/2019 Vietnam War Quotations

Vietnam War Quotations

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but
even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
--Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first
one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over
very quickly.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and
Vietnam is the place.
--John F. Kennedy, 1961

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every
front of human activity.
--Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're
going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
--Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand
miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be
doing for themselves.
--Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever
faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars,
and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose
this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the
greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did
the least to prevent its happening.
--Ronald Reagan, 1964

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave
the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be
home by Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan, 1965

I see light at the end of the tunnel.
--Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of
what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's
whole culture--aware only of its own history, insensible to
everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
--Stephen Vizinczey, 1968

Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate
the United States. Only Americans can do that.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1969

I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
--Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969

This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that
it threatens to pull the country apart.
--Sen. Frank Church, May 1970

By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States
was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of
hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the
containment of communism and the security of the Free World
to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of
arguments between two colonels' wives.
--Frances Fitzgerald, 1972

We believe that peace is at hand.
--Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972

You have my assurance that we will respond with full force
should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
--Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973

If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them
go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!
--Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the
living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America-
-not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
--Marshall McLuhan, 1975

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed
before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend
neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the
world.
--Gerald Ford, April 1975

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
--Michael Herr, 1977

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not
serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us
the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy
when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of
guerrilla war.
--Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979

Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in
which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain
and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the
outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine
tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
--Henry Kissinger, 1979

It's time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble
cause.
--Ronald Reagan, Oct. 1980

There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo
against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the
soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that
resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then
pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude
that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible
for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.
--Philip Caputo, 1982

Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few
and nothing of most in America.
--Myra MacPherson, 1984

Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the
corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the
prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division
of the family, the division of the country--it had all been done
in our name. . . . The French city . . . had represented the
opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun
the heroin phase.
--James Fenton, 1985

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the
Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is
misremembered now.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1985

The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the
ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And
if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the
other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around
the world.
--Jean Baudrillard, 1986

America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing.
We are the richest people in the world and they are among the
poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and
we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help--
because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And
perhaps because they won.
--Martha Gellhorn, 1986

I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam
because they were my babies.
--Benjamin Spock, 1988

All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people
who remember it should forget it, and all the people who
forgot it should remember it.
--Michael Herr, 1989

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz,

(San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive)

The story is entitled God and the 3 Mistakes, and it makes the rounds on the internet every once in a while. Here’s a version of it from armchairgeneral.com:

Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, “Reflections on Pearl Harbor” by Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Sunday, December 7th, 1941 — Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection, and defeat–you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.

As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, “Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?” Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?”

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, “What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?” Nimitz explained:

Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk–we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That’s why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.

I’ve never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, Texas –he was a born optimist. But any way you look at it–Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver
lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.

President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.

There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.

John in county May 31 1970
FSB TERRACE, 27 MAR 70
FSB TERRACE, 30 MAR 70
FSB TERRACE, 1-7 APR 70
FSB TERRACE, 18-20 APR 70
FSB NIAGARA, 23-27 APR 70
FSB VALKYRIE (CAMBODIA), 7-13 MAY 70
FSB CHIPPAWA, 21-23 MAY 70
FSB BAXTER, 1-2 JUN 70
FSB BAXTER, 5 JUN 70
FSB BAXTER, 14 JUN 70
FSB NIAGARA (THE BATTLE OF THE ROCK), 18-30 JUN 70
FSB NIAGARA, 1-5 AUG 70
FSB NIAGARA, 9-13 AUG 70
FSN WINNIE, 8-13 SEP 70

Decorations of Randy Cox

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Randy Cox

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