NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
on behalf of an effective government it should be obvious that the Viet Cong would have no chance of success or takeover. Washington is currently having an intellectual orgasm on the unbeatability of guerrilla war. Were guerrillas effective in a ratio of one to fifteen or twenty-five it is obvious that no government would be safe. The Viet Cong, it should be noted, is strongest in the southern delta which is not jungle but open rice paddy.
The fundamental difficulties in countering the insurgency, apart from absence of intelligence, are two-fold. First is the poor command, deployment, training, morale and other weaknesses of the army and paramilitary forces. And second while they can operate -- sweep -- through any part of the country and clear out any visible insurgents, they cannot guarantee security afterwards. The Viet Cong comes back and puts the arm on all who have collaborated. This fact is very important in relation to requests from American manpower. Our forces would conduct the round-up operations which the RVN Army can already do. We couldn't conceivably send enough men to provide safety for the villages as a substitute for an effectively trained civil guard and home defense force and, perhaps, a politically cooperative community.
The key and inescapable point, then, is the ineffectuality (abetted debatably by the unpopularity) of the Diem government. This is the strategic factor. Nor can anyone accept the statement of those who have been either too long or too little in Asia that his is the inevitable posture of the
