Silence Was a Weapon

A down to earth personal perspective on how the Viet Cong was able to recruit, maintain their force and fight the US and South Vietnams armed forces. It gives a view of how and why the insurgency was successful among a rural people. The story holds some valuable lessons that can be appled today to the current conflict.

This is a must read for all military personnel. This book tells how one man was able to do great damage to the enemy by winning over the people's hearts and minds. if the people don't support you, then there will not be a victory. This book also shows how torture is not onlys unproductive, but often leads to greater support for the insurgency. if torture didn't work in vietnam then it will not work now or ever.

I read this in a counterinsurgency course in college--the book was so good that, despite the fact that it was out of print, the professor photocopied it for all of us (no, I don't recommend that you all violate copyrights :). The unique thing about this book--what makes it indispensable in studying Vietnam and counterinsurgency more generally--is that Stuart Herrington, before being stationed in Vietnam as an intelligence officer, learned Vietnamese fluently. Thus, he was able to talk with all of the Vietnamese (including the peasants), and not merely the educated, English-speaking ones, and he was often privy to what the Vietnamese said to one another, thinking no Americans would understand them. Herrington served in Vietnam in the early 1970's, and documented the changes in tactics that took place as Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as the U.S. commander, and as U.S forces were drawn down. Abrams was far more effective than his predecessor, replacing the blunt instrument of search-and-destroy missions with intelligence-gathering and small, targeted raids, while paying attention to maintaining good relations with the civilian population in the villages. The effectiveness of Abrams' new tactics is often forgotten, since they came after the war had been lost politically at home. Herrington's most insightful observation--and one that needs to be drilled into the head of anyone contemplating the subject of counterinsurgency--is that the Vietnamese, for the most part, did their best not to take part in the conflict, but ended up drawn into it anyway. He estimated that about 10% of the population supported the Communists, another 5% the government of South Vietnam, and the rest--about 85%--were what Herrington called the "U" group, willing to support either side when it appeared necessary or advantageous to do so. Herrington thus makes the point that Vietnam was not so much a conflict against "the Vietnamese", but a contest for their loyalty--or at least, the conditional loyalty of enough of them to deprive the other side of support and defeat the remaining minority loyal to it. In such a conflict, merely "destroying the enemy" will not win the war--not if "the enemy" is potentially 95% of the population.

Author Stuart Herrington got unique insights on the underlying causes of the Vietnam War by debriefing several Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers who were captured or surrendered. He also learned effective ways of fighting the enemy, and how the South Vietnamese government (and the U.S.) inevitably lost the war by failing to change. This book should be of great interest Vietnam veterans and others who wonder why we "lost" the Vietnam War despite the vast amounts of money, time and lives we devoted to the fight.