Meditations on the Vietnam War: Debate and Disillusionment

Building on the operational success of the Ia Drang Valley campaign, General William Westmoreland propelled through 1966 and 1967 with a series of large search-and-destroy operations intended to find North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (PAVN) base camps and border areas. The goal was to annihilate both the units defending the camps and the logistical infrastructure underpinning the capacity for the PAVN to wage war in the South.  Thereby, it was hoped, the South Vietnamese government could stabilize the country.  This post is a broad overview of that phase of the war.  I chose not to go into the specific big operations (there are links provided for that) and focus instead on the larger strategic matters of this time.

“Westmoreland tested the effectiveness of the attrition tactics in a series of major search-and-destroy operations in the fall of 1966 and the first half of 1967.  The MACV hoped to force the enemy into the open where the superior firepower of the allies could annihilate them.  Despite killing thousands of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese fighters and seizing hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, the operations did not significantly affect the Vietcong’s ability to wage the war.” (Schulzinger, page 199)

The assessment of "insignificant" impact upon the PAVN is a controversial one.  It is true that wherever the Americans fought, they almost always tactically won.  It is also true that within a few weeks of any given victory the Viet Cong usually returned to any given area and regained political control of it in a matter of weeks.  However, at that time, there seemed to be reason for optimism among many members of the Johnson administration.

“In June 1966 [Robert] Komer returned with a glowing report on Westmoreland’s ‘spoiling operations.’  In 1967 he told the President that he was ‘more optimistic than ever before.’  He believed that by the end of 1967 the war would be all but won.  How similar these words sounded to the expectations of the French generals in 1952 and 1953.  Komer and other Americans remembered the French experience, but they believed that the United States’s vast superiority in wealth and modern equipment would make the outcome different.” (Schulzinger, page 201)

It is possible that "progress" was generally being made, at least from a military perspective.  But that progress was based upon fact that the situation in South Vietnam was much worse in 1965 than previously believed.  At best, Westmoreland's search-and-destroy missions neutralized the imminent demise of South Vietnam but, instead of victory, this merely created a strategic stalemate.

In his classic book Vietnam: A History, Stanley Karnow summarizes: “…Westmoreland resolutely pursued his strategy of attrition, with a series of search-and-destroy operations code-named Junction City and Francis Marion and Kingfisher; and the enemy ‘body count’ mounted astronomically.  By the end of 1967, the U.S. troop presence was up to nearly a half million an increase of a hundred thousand during the year, and American soldiers killed in action exceeded nine thousand – bringing the total battlefield deaths for the past two years to more than fifteen thousand.  More than a million and a half tons of bombs had been dropped since the air strikes began, on both the north and the south.  But the war was deadlocked.  General Fred Weyand, one of Westmoreland’s field commanders, grimly measured the progress for a visiting Washington official: ‘Before I came over here a year ago, I thought we were at zero.  I was wrong.  We were at minus fifty.  Now we’re at zero.’” (Karnow, page 512)

But the "real" war in Vietnam had little to do with large search-and-destroy operations though such actions certainly stabilized and prolonged the war.  Instead, the Vietnam War was largely a series of much smaller battles, reflecting the fact that, while often spectacular, search-and-destroy missions failed to address the pacification and control of the population and the territory of the countryside.

“Despite Attleboro, Cedar Falls, and Junction City, over 96 percent of all engagements with the Vietcong and North Vietnamese occurred at company size strength (under two hundred men) or smaller.  The proper way for the United States to have responded to these tiny confrontations with the enemy would have been to employ small-unit guerrilla-like tactics of their own.  To have done so, however, would have meant reversing the military’s reliance on technology and mobility in favor of infantry and foot patrols, and such a reversal seemed to the military planners likely to prolong the war, raise the number of U.S. casualties, and reduce public support for the effort.” (Schulzinger, pp. 201-202)

“Twenty percent of the men wounded in South Vietnam fell victim to booby traps rather than direct enemy fire.  The enemy wired bodies with mines, and dug holes on the trails covered them with leaves and twigs so the Americans would fall into them to be impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes.  Reporters wrote derisively that troops would ‘search and avoid’ the enemy.  One combat soldier bitterly recalled ‘they booby-trapped the trails they knew we’d take, because we always took the same trails, the ones that looked easy and kept us dry.’” (Schulzinger, page 195)

From the beginning of the war, U.S. planners and policymakers argued about whether Westmoreland made the correct choice with his operations.  A competing strategy advocated by others was known as the "enclave strategy" which favored "clear-and-hold" operations over search-and-destroy.  Though this was his initial strategy in 1964 and 1965, debate persisted in American circles and Westmoreland ultimately abandoned the enclave approach because it was a "passive" policy, waiting for the enemy to come to his troops.  Instead, he advocated and implemented the more aggressive strategy of seeking out PAVN forces and killing them.  

“Advocates of traditional methods of counterinsurgency wanted the Americans to keep their soldiers on the ground, protect the population centers, and use long range patrols to drive the guerrillas into evermore remote areas.  Eventually, guerrillas would find that they had been denied their supplies form the rural population.  They would then have to come out in the open.  At that point the Americans could use their technological superiority to annihilate the main force of the Vietcong.

“Yet Westmoreland and his principle lieutenants rejected suggestions that the army spend more time in the field, rely more on small arms, and express less confidence in helicopters, fighter bombers, and heavy fire power.  ‘That’s’ not the American way,’ one said, ‘and you aren’t going to get the American soldier to fight that way.’” (Schulzinger, page 194)

Still, military planners, including Westmoreland, understood that killing NVA/VC fighters was not enough to win the war.  Victory could only result from pacification of the countryside to deny the Viet Cong basic support from the population.  Efforts of pacification were marginally successful.  What never got on track at all was transforming that effort into a mechanism to garner greater support by the population for the Saigon government, the only alternative to the NLF.  

“While Westmoreland was winning his war in the South, the United States was losing another war there – pacification.  Despite many ringing declarations from Washington and Saigon about the need to ‘reach the people,’ despite bales of ambitious plans and unrealistic reorganizations, the problems which blighted the pacification program in 1965 and 1966 continued into early 1967.

“In 1966 and early 1967, and for that matter throughout his commandership in Vietnam, Westmoreland viewed pacification as a stepchild.  While he pontificated about the importance of pacification, he devoted his energies and interest to operations like Cedar Falls and Junction City, not to clearing and holding the insignificant hamlets and villages around Saigon.  

“The United States emphasis on military operations at the expense of pacification might not have been harmful had it not created an even more damaging side-effect on ARVN.  Taking their cue from their United States counterpart, the good ARVN commanders wanted some of the ‘big-unit’ war too – not the tedious, unglamorous, piddling operations associated with pacification support.  Unfortunately, this support was ARVN’s primary job, so mandated by the 1967 Combined Campaign Plan, and dictated by the nature of the situation and force structures of the two allies.  If ARVN did not do it, or did not do it well, then pacification would wilt, and in early 1967 it was a wilted and unhealthy plant indeed.” (Davidson, pp. 430-431)

With respect to the strategic situation from the American point of view, Secretary Robert McNamara sounded a cautious tone as he summed up the war in this memo submitted to President Johnson in October 1966: "Enemy morale has not been broken - he apparently has adjusted to our stopping his drive for military victory and has adopted a strategy of keeping us busy and waiting us out (a strategy of attriting our national will).  He knows that we have not been, and he believes we probably will not be, able to translate our military successes into the 'end products' [that count] - broken enemy morale and political achievements by the GVN [Government of South Vietnam].

"The one thing demonstrably going for us in Vietnam over the past year has been the large number of enemy killed-in-action resulting from big military operations.  Allowing for possible exaggeration in reports, the enemy must be taking losses...at the rate of more than 60,000 a year.  The infiltration routes would seem to be one-way trails to death for the North Vietnamese.  Yet there is no sign of an impending break in enemy morale and it appears that he can more than replace his losses by infiltration from North Vietnam and recruitment in South Vietnam.

"...Pacification has if anything gone backward.  As compared with two, or four, years ago, enemy full-time regional forces and part-time guerrilla forces are larger; attacks, terrorism and sabotage have increased in scope and intensity;...we control little, if any, more of the population; the VC [Vietcong] political infrastructure thrives in most of the country, continuing to give the enemy his enormous intelligence advantage;  full security exists nowhere (not even behind the U.S. Marines' lines and in Saigon);  in the countryside the enemy almost completely controls the night.'" (McNamara, pp. 262 - 263)

Inefficiency and corruption ate away at the American system supporting the Saigon government, rendering the meager results of pacification transitory and impotent.

 “…ordinary South Vietnamese soldiers grew more estranged from their leaders intrigues.  A wild gulf separated the top ARVN officers from the troops they led.  In a country where about 80 percent of the population were Buddhists, only about 5 percent of the senior colonels or generals said they were Buddhists.  Unlike the NLF fighters, who endured hours of political indoctrination each week, ARVN soldiers often were left in the dark  about the reasons they fought and their nation’s politics.

“Millions of dollars of goods provided as aid by the United States were stolen from warehouses and PXs, fueling wild inflation throughout the Republic of Vietnam.  American cigarettes, whiskey, and razor blades as well as rifles, ammunition, uniforms, boots, and helmets were available on the black markets of the teeming cities of South Vietnam.  One American senior adviser reflected that too many officers lacked ‘aggressive, leadership ability, and a full professional outlook.’  Commanders spent more time fighting one another than engaging the enemy.  Officers pocketed the pay of thousands of ghost subordinates – deserters, men on leave or in hospitals or even dead.  As many as 25 percent of the 261,000 men supposedly in the regular armed forces and 30 to 40 percent of the territorial guards were missing at any time.” (Schulzinger, page 191)

Another absurdity of the war and of Westmoreland's large search-and-destroy missions was that enemy units (when they chose not to run away and avoid contact altogether) were not the only casualties of U.S. operations.  Westmoreland's approach destroyed the South Vietnamese culture and society it was designed to save in the first place.  In turn, this further undermined pacification as the American war machine alienated the population more than the threats and persistence of the Viet Cong, who fought with the idea of nationwide "independence" (as opposed to another "colonial intervention") on their side.

“The United States tried to make vast areas of South Vietnam unlivable to the Vietcong.  Air force and navy planes rained bombs on suspected Vietcong strongholds in Operation Arc Light.  The American army sent villagers scurrying away from their homes into larger hamlets that could be defended by the ARVN.  The United States also sprayed a variety of different herbicides on the forests of Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 in order to deprive NLF and Vietcong fighters of leaf cover.

“The war turned life in Vietnam upside down.  A country that once fed itself now imported rice.  The bombing forced millions of people to flee their rural homes.  At any given time about four million people, roughly one quarter of the republic’s population, were refugees crowded into squalid suburbs of South Vietnam’s cities or large towns.” (Schulzinger, page 193)

However, from a pristine military perspective, Westmoreland's large unit attacks on the PAVN infrastructure and supply bases throughout South Vietnam did, in fact, negatively impact the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.  Coupled with the destruction wrought by the controversial limited bombing of North Vietnam (Rolling Thunder), the U.S. military effort sparked a fierce internal debate among leaders in the North.

“In late 1966 and early 1967, as Marigold and Sunflower withered and died, so did Hanoi’s military prospects.  The year began with the timeworn and bitter arguments in the North Vietnamese Politburo over what to do in South Vietnam. Giap, Truong Chinh, and their supporters held firmly to the position that in the South, priority should be given to political dau tranh and guerrilla-type warfare.  Giap, himself, made it clear in a speech given in early January.  His old rivals, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh and Le Duan, persisted in their view that the key to victory lay in battles between Communist Main Force units and large American formations.  Thanh’s spokesman, the artful Truong Son, in a speech published in June 1967, bluntly contended that the task of ‘…annihilating enemy forces had been minimized’ and ‘…that it is the foremost task in any war.’  In an even franker vein, he confessed that the task ‘…is not satisfactorily performed in certain areas.’

“American operations in early 1967 in South Vietnam, however, quickly made the old quarrel within the Politburo irrelevant….Westmoreland’s forays into the base areas and his hardhitting mobile defense operations along the peripheries of South Vietnam had undermined the foundations on which Giap and Thanh had built their competing strategies.  Westmoreland’s damaging raids into the base areas, particularly Cedar Falls and Junction City, had struck a catastrophic blow to Giap’s strategy of the protracted, guerrilla war, as it drove the Main Forces away from the guerrillas and deprived them of vital Main Force support.  Thanh’s concept, too, had suffered severely.  Just south of the DMZ, in northern South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese effort to gain the initiative had failed, while further south, Thanh had completely lost the ‘Big I,’ and the basis for his strategy.” (Davidson, pp. 434-435)

“Thanh’s strategy of confrontation had ended in failure, especially after his defeat in the Iron Triangle and the Cambodian border areas so North Vietnam’s military leaders voiced doubts and criticized Thanh’s conduct of the war.

“General Nguyen Giap advocated instead a temporary retrogression to defensive warfare.  He believed in the spring of 1967 that the North Vietnamese Army was not ready to confront American superiority.  He had recommended that operations be focused on small-scale, harassment attacks to consolidate their defense positions in the South, and but time for training additional North Vietnamese Army units.

“Thanh rejected Giap’s plan, saying he was one of those he considered ‘conservative and a captive of old methods and past experience.’  He thought only of mechanically repeating the past and were incapable of analyzing the concrete local situation which required and entirely new kind of response.’

“The Thanh/Giap disagreement was not resolved until North Vietnamese leaders aligned themselves behind Giap to extol guerrilla activities that had been successful in South Vietnam.  Thanh stuck to his views until his death of cancer July 6, 1967, in Hanoi.  Politburo members pointed to disruption of South Vietnam’s pacification efforts throughout the year, and obstruction of United States logistic buildup activities, interdiction of vehicle traffic by ambushes on major routes, and terrorist activities in major cities as irrefutable proof of guerrilla warfare’s effectiveness.  The results, they emphasized, were producing a favorable psychological impact that greatly enhanced communist prestige throughout the world.  They cited the shelling of Independence Palace October 31, 1967.  This attack, during the formal reception marking the inauguration of South Vietnam’s Second Republic with American Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey in attendance, they claimed was of particular importance.” (Morrison, pp. 370-371)

“The accumulated damage and casualties of the limited air war were having an adverse effect on the North Vietnamese population.  Giap was concerned that further suffering might generate an undercurrent of frustration that could end in bitterness and jeopardize the long-term war effort.  North Vietnam’s economy, that had earlier shown improvement, now plunged downhill as the result of stepped-up bombing of strategic targets.  Increasingly dependent upon Soviet Russia and the People’s Republic of China for military and economic aid, North Vietnam was experiencing difficulty in steering a middle course between these two nations without alienating either, while both appeared to be headed toward a period of aggravating animosity.” (Morrison, pp. 372-373)

“In the South, the Viet Cong had lost control of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 Vietnamese in the last half of 1966 and the first two months of 1967.  This population loss reduced the tax and food base of the Viet Cong and made recruiting more difficult, while the GVN gained these people, with consequent political and economic advantage.  The evidence which Hanoi saw of nation-building in the South was even more alarming.  The GVN’s growing efforts at constitutional government and the relative stability of the Thieu – Ky regime signaled a significant shift in the political winds blowing through South Vietnam.  Thus, looking at the military and political scene in the South, Ho, Giap, Thanh, and their comrades saw that a strategy of ‘more of the same’ in South Vietnam had to be thoroughly restudied, and probably abandoned.

“Giap, however, saw in the military of early 1967 an even wider and more ominous threat to the Communist effort in South Vietnam.  He believed that the United States forces would shortly invade either North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia.  Any of these incursions would pose a possibility of a war-losing disaster to the North Vietnamese.  For the Communists, the base areas in these three sanctuaries were indispensable.  Even with them, the war was being lost; without them, the Communists foresaw terminal defeat.

“The second major factor which influenced Ho and Giap’s assessment was posed by the United States air attacks on North Vietnam.  Hanoi could take a rosier view of this war than the one in the South, but it gave the Communists no cause for jubilation.  The United States sortie rate over North Vietnam had risen from 2,401 a month in June 1965 to 12,249 in September 1966, and although bad weather inhibited the attacks after October 1966, an average of 8,000 to 9,000 per month continued to batter North Vietnam during the rest of 1966 and into early 1967.  Then, on 24 January 1967, the president authorized the United States air arms to attack sixteen critical targets around Hanoi,  So, in addition to an increase in attack sorties, the level of target ‘pain’ rose, too, for North Vietnam.” (Davidson, pp. 436 – 437)

“North Vietnam depended on both of its big allies.  China furnished small arms, food, trucks, and other smaller supplies, as well as highway and railroad maintenance assistance in northeast North Vietnam.  Russia gave North Vietnam its antiaircraft guns, missiles, tanks, and other sophisticated military equipment.  To make matters more touchy, North Vietnam’s two major allies espoused different strategies on how North Vietnam should win the war.  China, drawing on its own experience, advocated the ‘protracted war’ approach, emphasizing political dau tranh and guerrilla warfare in the South in an effort to create favorable conditions for bargaining.  The North Vietnamese tried to steer a neutral course between its two big allies.” (Davidson, page 439)

“The Buddhist struggle campaigns and the series of internecine political intrigues convinced them that the Government of South Vietnam had no popular basis of support, and, if given the chance, the people of the South would overthrow President Thieu and the GVN.  They believed also that the South Vietnamese hated their ‘American oppressors’ and would turn on them at the first opportunity.  Finally, they had long ago convinced themselves that the South Vietnamese armed forces were badly trained and equipped, that their morale was low, and that they had no motivation to defend the South Vietnamese government.” (Davidson, page 439)

“The fall election of 1967 in which Thieu and Ky received only 34 percent of the popular vote was seen by the communists as particularly significant.  [Hanoi] pointed to Truong Dinh Dzu’s 17 percent share of the total vote as indicative of this reasoning.  An obscure lawyer with an unsavory reputation, Dzu had campaigned on a platform of ‘restoring peace and ending the war.’  This also was the National Liberation Front’s political line.

“Giap said he believed these things would have the inevitable effect of a catalyst that would start a popular insurrection.  He viewed the basic objective of a people’s war as that formulated by Mao Tse-tung that victory should have political significance and toward that end be made to look like a popular rather than a military success such as the proposed general offensive.” (Morrison, page 373)

While the North Vietnamese leadership was debating and somewhat staggering toward a new general strategy for 1968 in response to American search-and-destroy operations and Rolling Thunder, the United States war effort encountered fundamental disagreements of its own.  Unlike their adversaries, however, American in-fighting did not lead to any major revision of strategic policy.  Instead it only brought about dissension and disillusionment, the true weakness in the U.S. war effort.  Many Americans gradually lost faith in the war effort and were confused about our purpose there.  In short, Hanoi adapted to the circumstances of the war, America never successfully did so.

“Until late November 1965, McNamara had believed firmly in the American crusade in Vietnam.  But his attitude altered perceptibly during his quick trip to Saigon at this juncture.  The U.S. combat performance impressed him, yet he was shaken by evidence that North Vietnamese infiltration into the south had risen so dramatically – and would surely continue.  Discarding his customary display of public optimism, he candidly told correspondents in Saigon that ‘it will be a long war,’ and returned to Washington to offer Johnson a bleak set of options.

“The current plan to boost the number of American troops in Vietnam to some three hundred thousand by late 1966 would merely serve to avert disaster – in which case, he advised, the best approach was to seek a ‘compromise solution’ through negotiations.  On the other hand, the United States could ‘stick to our stated objectives’ by providing ‘what it takes’ – a total of at least six hundred thousand men by the beginning of 1968,  But, McNamara cautioned, even that will not guarantee success.’  For one thing, it might raise the American casualty rate to about a thousand deaths a month.

“Johnson fretted about domestic dissent as he pondered his choices.  Student opposition to the war was spreading in response to larger draft quotas.  ‘The weakest chink in our armor is American public opinion,’ Johnson warned his staff.  ‘Our people won’t stand firm in the face of heavy losses, and they can bring down the government.’” (Karnow, pp. 480 - 481)

Almost alone against the rest of the Johnson administration, McNamara could not see how to translate any military success into its ultimate purpose - to stabilize and legitimize the government in Saigon.  But, more critically at that moment, he felt Rolling Thunder was a complete waste of time and resources, even though its limited damage caused consternation among the opposing leadership and forced them to improvise a new war strategy for 1968 (unknown to the U.S. at the time).  McNamara wanted the bombing and Westmoreland's killing operations to bring North Vietnam to the negotiation table.  Here was the great disconnect in his mind.  His desired "message" to Hanoi was the problem.  North Vietnam would adapt to the destruction of the war but it would never negotiate.  The source of McNamara's frustration was that he could neither force negotiations to take place nor strengthen the Saigon government by military means alone.  Meanwhile, North Vietnam could plainly see that South Vietnam was a brittle, corrupt, unstable mess.  Hanoi had no reason to respond to the bombing and the killing as McNamara desired.

McNamara writes of his growing apprehension about the war:  "As one diplomatic initiative after another fizzled, my frustration, disenchantment, and anguished deepened.  I could see no good way to win - or end - an increasingly costly and destructive war.

"More Buddhist uprisings in South Vietnam in the spring of 1966 intensified my anxiety.  This internecine strife underscored the Saigon government's fragility and lack of popular appeal.  It bothered me that the South Vietnamese battled one another while the enemy pressed at the gates." (McNamara, pp. 260 - 261)

"Looking back, I deeply regret that I did not force a probing debate about whether it would ever be possible to forge a winning military effort on a foundation of political quicksand.  It became clear then, and I believe it is clear today, that military force - especially when wielded by an outside power - just cannot bring order in a country that cannot govern itself.

"Most of my colleagues viewed the situation quite differently.  They saw (or wished to see) steady political and military progress.  In the summer of 1966, Dean commented that 'the situation has reached the point where North Vietnam cannot succeed.'  Walt wrote, 'Mr. President, you can smell it all over: Hanoi's operation, backed by the Chicoms, is no longer being regarded as the wave of the future...We're not in, but we are moving.'  Lodge cabled that 'the military side of this war is going well....This means that the real danger - and the only real danger - would be if the American people were to lose heart and choose to 'bring the boys home.'  This would indeed be the first domino to fall.'" (McNamara, page 261)

As his disillusionment progressed from frustration to despair regarding the war over which he was predominantly presiding, McNamara became more direct and aggressive with his assessment of the situation - something with which most of Johnson's advisers disagreed.

"The secretary of defense forwarded a personal memorandum to the president on November 1, 1967, that explained in blunt language why he believed the current course of action in Vietnam 'would be dangerous, costly, and unsatisfactory to our people.'  In his memorandum, McNamara suggested alternative moves toward 'stabilization of our military operations in the South...and of our air operations in the North, along with a demonstration that our air attacks on the North are not blocking negotiations leading to a peaceful settlement.'

"Secretary McNamara concluded his memorandum with three recommendations, similar to the ones he made in August 1966.  First, he suggested that the United States announce that it would not expand air operations in the North, or the size of combat forces in the South, beyond those already planned.  Second, the secretary proposed a bombing halt before the end of 1967.  Finally, he favored a new study of military operations in the South aimed at reducing U.S. causalities and giving the South Vietnamese greater responsibilities for their own security." (McNamara, Blight, Brigham, page 361)

Failing to rally a consensus, McNamara fell out of favor with Johnson.  The two became more argumentative and Johnson ultimately felt that McNamara had become demoralized about the war.  The secretary of defense was dismissed - whether by resignation or termination is unclear in the historical record.

"McNamara left the government a disillusioned man, and he made no attempt to conceal his anguish at a farewell luncheon at the State Department in late February 1968, just before his official departure.  Among those present, along with Rusk, Clifford, and other senior officials, was Harry McPherson, a Johnson aide, who recalled to me his own astonishment at McNamara's display of emotion. 'He reeled off the familiar statistics - how we had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on all of Europe during World War II.  The his voice broke, and there were tears in his eyes as he spoke of the futility, the crushing futility, of the air war.  The rest of us sat silently - I for one with my mouth open, listening to the secretary of defense talk that way about a campaign for which he had, ultimately, been responsible.  I was pretty shocked.'" (Karnow, page 512)

The "crushing futility" was a result of trying to drive North Vietnam into a negotiated settlement of the war.  The enormous and risky bombing campaigns in southeast Asia, all administered (if not personally supported) by McNamara, did not achieve their stated ends.  But, part of McNamara's dismay was the result of his own metrics.  According to American military theory about the war, there was a "crossover point" where the "kill ratio" was enough to bring about the PAVN's disintegration, or at least rendering it ineffective. 

“During 1966, Communist battle deaths had totaled about 5,000 men a month, but during the first six months of 1967 Communist KIA’s (Killed in Action) soared. MACV estimated that from January through June 1967 the total enemy losses exceeded 15,000 men per month.  Since the Viet Cong could recruit about 3,500 men per month, and NVA infiltration ran to about 7,000 per month, the ‘crossover point’ had been reached, that is, more Communist soldiers were being put out of action than they could recruit in-country or infiltrate from the North.” (Davidson, page 435)

But when that point was plainly reached in 1967 there was no discernible indication that it mattered.  Achieving "crossover", however, emboldened Westmoreland and other prominent American officials with whom McNamara now disagreed.  The military effort was largely successful.  Westmoreland publicly declared that "we have reached an important point where now the end begins to come into view."  As 1968 began, the expectation by American politicians, the press and public was that war would soon be winding down and Saigon would be able to take it from here as the Americans began to withdraw.  The Politburo in North Vietnam, however, had other ideas.