American Valor Quarterly Issue 4 - Autumn 2008 | Page 22

Rufus Phillips

results from our verbal or written warnings. I told him personally
how back in 1955 the Vietnamese had taken two much less
disciplined and untrained army divisions, and after three weeks
of intensive indoctrination, had occupied an area previously
controlled by the Vietminh for nine years without a single civilian/
soldier incident. Comprehensive civic-action indoctrination was
again needed, I urged. Stilwell seemed to agree, but the idea
received no priority within MACV.
In the first systematic attempt to induce a change in military tactics,
Rural Affairs focused on the largely indiscriminate use of firepower
by our planes and helicopters when fired upon even from friendly
villages, as well as on the bombing and shelling of suspected VC
locations when they included villages with civilians. I sent a memo
to Ambassador Nolting with a copy to General Stilwell
emphasizing that winning the support of the people was the only
way to defeat the insurgency. What that meant “was [that] . . . so
A school is constructed in a strategic hamlet in South Vietnam. Phillips long as actions taken in the war contribute to winning the people,
they contribute to winning the war. When they do not contribute
saw the strategic hamlet program as having potential in the larger
to winning the people, they contribute to losing the war.” A
counterinsurgency effort, which needed to focus on protecting the
population and winning them over to the South Vietnamese
mistaken view, all too prevalent in practice, was that “those who
government’s side.
do not support the government, or are not in governmentthe top level of MACV remained so impervious to its own controlled areas, must suffer for this (after all, war is hell). . . .
[A]fter suffering enough they