The Prospect Ahead

Truth -- the whole truth -- is an inevitable casualty of any war, if only because it is often drowned in the din of combat or smothered by the demands of security. This is particularly so in a war as complex as that in Viet Nam, which has ignored most of the time-honored tenets of military experience. Last week the U.S. was exposed to a spate of assertions, contradictions and speculations about the Vietnamese war that illustrated both the strength of a democratic society and the frustration of searching for clear answers to elusive problems. From it all, one sobering message emerged: although the war in Viet Nam is going well in many respects, some of the most decisive battles --and hardest decisions--still lie ahead.

No Timetable. The week's seesawing began with a report from Saigon citing Army and Marine Corps studies in the Pentagon concluding that North Viet Nam could endure its present rate of losses in the South for another eight years. Even if the present U.S. manpower commitment of 291,000 troops in South Viet Nam were raised to as much as 750,000, according to these projections, the Communists would still be able to replace enough men through infiltration and recruiting within South Viet Nam to continue the fight for several years.

From Lyndon Johnson on down, official Washington replied to these chilling estimates by denying any knowledge of the studies; the President even told his press conference that Defense Secretary McNamara did not agree with the conclusions of the non-studies. The Administration has wisely made no public timetable predictions about the end of the war, but many Americans have certainly felt that it could hardly last beyond a year or two more.

Yet the men who are running the war have, for the most part, a consistently harder view than Washington of its length and future costliness. They do not take too seriously the Administration's belief that North Vietnamese rationality will sooner or later open Hanoi's eyes to the impossibility of victory. They see a long, grubby, slogging war ahead of them, and their professional responsibilities compel them to assess realistically both the enemy's strength and their own needs. Few of them think that the job can be done with much less than double the present American force, and some indeed feel that the American buildup must reach 750,000 --though the Pentagon says that it does not envision such a commitment.

Up to Korea. U.S. troop commitments are steadily moving toward planned higher levels; last week, more than 3,000 fresh troops arrived in Viet Nam. The number of American troops will reach about 400,000 by the end of 1966--at which point it will equal for the first time the U.S. troop strength in Korea--and then go up to half a million by next spring. The problem is that the enemy's buildup continues to match, step for step, that of the U.S. In the past year, the allies have not been able to increase their troop-strength advantage of 4 to 1, despite the influx of Americans. Although the Communists in the first seven months of 1966 have had 25,250 men killed--more than three times the number of allied combat dead--and lost another 15,000 in prisoners and defectors, the latest intelligence reports put total Communist troop strength in South Viet Nam at 280,000, a net increase of 50,000 since January.

Continued infiltration from the North is believed to have brought between 35,000 and 54,000 fresh Communist troops into South Viet Nam since January. The Communists also have an effective "recruiting" program that still supplies between 10,000 and 15,000 men a month. Many of these recruits--as well as much of the rice on which the Viet Cong live--come from the Mekong Delta region, a huge area in which, instead of combat units, the U.S. has advisory teams that work with the South Vietnamese army. Because the Viet Cong are able to operate so freely in the Delta, apparently as the result of at least a partial accommodation with the South Vietnamese, the U.S. believes that the war cannot be successfully concluded until the region is pacified (see THE WORLD). To that end, American troops will be sent into the Delta, probably in the next few months, to begin fighting what promises to be virtually a whole new and bitter war.

Some military sources feel that the U.S. will eventually need four divisions in the Delta, but the Pentagon scoffs at that figure, insists it will be much lower. The White House is also concerned by the amount of materiel now being stockpiled by the North Vietnamese in the demilitarized zone, and there is some speculation that U.S. troops may-have to go in and clean it out. Military commanders in Viet Nam are counting on a reserve call-up to make regular units available to them before the end of the year, and the Senate Appropriations Committee last week urged the call-up of some reserves to help meet the rising manpower needs of the war.

The bombing of the oil facilities in the North, which the Pentagon claims was highly effective, has had little ascertainable effect on the North Vietnamese ability to move men and supplies. The oil tanks are being dispersed and put underground, and some Western observers in Hanoi say that the North's main problem is that supplies are pouring in so fast from Red China and the Soviet Union that bottlenecks are developing, particularly in the port of Haiphong. Inevitably, there are some shortages, as evidenced by the new slogan for the North Vietnamese militia: "Shoot down more U.S. aircraft with less ammunition."

Battered & Bloodied. Lyndon Johnson recently told an aide that friendly sources had informed him that both Hanoi and Moscow "are convinced that we are falling apart." Hanoi seems to think that its battered economy and bloodied army will endure longer than U.S. domestic support of the war, which adds up to an unfortunate judgment by the Communists and a gloomy prospect for tl ; U.S. But if Hanoi continues on its present course, the President is determined to increase U.S. military pressure as needed. The Communists, as the President observed recently, "have less to write home to mother about than I do." Just how long it will take them to grasp this homely idea is, of course, what all the talking is about.

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