Task in South Viet Nam

Report Outline
Undeclared War in South Viet Nam
Non-Red Opposition to Diem Government
American Criticism of Viet Nam Venture

Undeclared War in South Viet Nam

The United States again risks becoming deeply involved in what Secretary of State Dean Rusk has called a “dirty, untidy, disagreeable” war across the Pacific, this time in the rice bowl area of Southeast Asia. American forces helping the government of South Viet Nam to wage war against Communist guerrillas now number more than 12,000. The Americans, all of them professional military men, are ostensibly advisers and instructors. In point of fact, their role is far more important.

The operation is exacting a heavy toll in men and money. Since Jan. 1, 1961, American casualties have numbered 80 dead (31 in or as a result of combat), 139 wounded, and six missing in action. Support of U.S. and Vietnamese troops is estimated to cost the American taxpayer $2 million a day. Top U.S. military commanders have asserted that the end may be in sight; Adm. Harry D. Felt, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said last Jan. 29 that the task would be completed in three years. But some officials and newspaper correspondents, recalling that it took more than a decade to root Red guerrillas out of nearby Malaya, suggest that such views are over-optimistic.

Four senators who visited South Viet Nam at President Kennedy's request last December were disturbed to find that the country appeared, seven years after it had become a republic, “less, not more, stable than it was at the outset, … more removed from, rather than closer to, the achievement of popularly responsible and responsive government.” In the opinion of the senators, not only the government of South Viet Nam, but also “our policies, particularly in the design and administration of aid, must bear a substantial, a very substantial, share of the responsibility.” After noting that the aid programs were being reshaped and support of the Vietnamese armed forces intensified, the senators said in a report to the Foreign Relations Committee: