What I learned from the Vietnam War

April 30, 1975, marks 43 years since North Vietnamese army tanks No. 391 and No. 843 crashed through the gates of the presidential palace, bringing about the collapse of the Saigon government and the end of the Vietnam War.

As the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s PBS documentary, “The Vietnam War,” bore out, the war is deeply engrained in the psyche of the 2.7 million of those of us who served there, including 41,820 from Hawaii (285 lost their lives), survivors of service people killed, and all who lived through those tumultuous times.

Otherwise laid-back Hawaii saw the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus engulfed in anti-war protests. Many clearly remember evening TV news reports of the number of Americans killed in action that day and the surreal sight and sound of Huey helicopters nightly flying into their living rooms.

Perhaps the deepest scar of the Vietnam War is the everlasting division in American society that it spawned. The lesson for many was that you could no longer trust the government to tell the truth. Thus the spirit of societal consensus has yet to be recovered and the foundation of U.S. social polarization was laid.

My job was to review intelligence reports about the location and intentions of enemy troops and to identify those who were farmers by day but guerrilla fighters by night. Because of the nature of the work, I worked very closely with a Vietnamese staff of interpreters, translators, ex- Republic of Vietnam government officials, etc.

Many hours were spent talking to Vietnamese colleagues about the causes of the war, the conduct of the war, the Saigon government, U.S.-Vietnam policy. When I was not learning from my co-workers, I would be reading books about Vietnam. There was the added advantage of access to the intelligence reports and estimates that I read every day.

Thus, I came to learn:

>> The importance of meaningful land reform in classically Third World countries where the wealthiest 5 percent control 95 percent of the wealth, which in Vietnam meant land ownership. Conversely, 95 percent of the population tilled the land owners’ land, which barely enabled them to eke out a living. Promised ownership of their own land, for those who tilled the land for others, became the backbone of the Viet Cong.

>> To never underestimate Asian people. The U.S. underestimated the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, only to be beaten by them. We underestimated the Japanese in the 1980s to the point that Japan was on the cusp of overtaking U.S. economic leadership. We underestimated the Chinese to only now be facing a situation where their global strategic and economic influence might supplant ours.

We used to laugh at the North Koreans, thinking that they were backward and unsophisticated, only to see them develop intercontinental missiles that will soon be able to accommodate nuclear warheads.

>> Vietnam lacked political stability. The Vietnamese never knew who the government would be from day to day, thus their support for their government was guarded, if not situational.

>> To wage war, you must understand the culture of those you are fighting as well as those you are supporting. Clearly, the U.S. got involved in the Vietnam War without any basic understanding of Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers catalogued the mistakes of the Vietnam War. However, it seems unlikely that Bush II Pentagon policy makers read them. We invaded Iraq in much of the uninformed, impulsive way we entered Vietnam.

No wonder the polarization in U.S. society continues.

Bill Sharp is host of the TV news show, “Asia in Review,” and fomer “Look East” columnist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.