THE WAR
Viet Nam is for men with double vision. There has never been a war quite like it. Tt is two kinds of combat against a two-faced enemy, and the combination is deadly. One fight pits the U.S. and its allies against North Vietnamese and main-force Viet Cong regular soldiers whose primary mission is as old as war itself: to kill and maim the opposing armies. The second fight is waged by a second enemy, the clandestine Viet Cong guerrilla. His uniform is the peasant's black pajamas, and his mission is a Communist innovation: to steal people as well as territory away from the South Vietnamese government.
For the Communists and for the West —and for history—the dual confrontation is critical.
No Longer a Contest. For the enemy, both elements of the Viet Nam war are coordinated and directed from Hanoi. And both have the same aim: the takeover of South Viet Nam and the reunification of the Vietnamese under Hanoi's Red rule. But the dual assault, with all its variations, has made the task of the U.S. and its allies doubly difficult—tough to assess and hard to explain. Victories over the North Vietnamese troops do not readily translate into visible progress in the guerrilla war. The bombing of North Viet Nam may slow the southward flow of arms and aid, but as yet has not notably diminished the vast acreage of land now in Viet Cong hands. That differential in payoff is the chief reason for the war's frustration. For it is accepted as axiomatic by everyone concerned that the war will be won or lost in the countryside, that final victory requires the defeat and dispersal of those faceless little men in black pajamas, the Viet Cong.
More than anything else, the current talk of stalemate in Viet Nam stems from the disparity in the progress of the two wars. In the big-unit war that is being fought largely by U.S. troops, success is real and measurable. In a long string of aggressive campaigns stretching back to the first major U.S. North Vietnamese battle in the la Drang Valley in 1965, American fighting men time and again bested Hanoi's best; they have prevented the Communists from getting a major offensive of their own under way. The combat toll in Red manpower, Hanoi's most precious asset, has been horrendous: 50,000 Communist dead so far this year alone. By frequent ground sweeps and incessant bombing, the U.S. has destroyed the sanctuaries in mountain and jungle that the enemy so long enjoyed. On the brink of falling to the Communists when the U.S. buildup began in mid-1965, South Viet Nam is now a citadel of sovereignty that even Hanoi admits cannot be taken by overt aggression. In that sense, the conventional war is no longer a contest. "The U.S. can defeat us in positional warfare," is the blunt admission of North Vietnamese Lieut. General Nguyen Van Vinh, deputy chief of staff in Hanoi.
Impromptu Tollbooths. As U.S. forces faced up to the vital job of coping with the regular Communist armies, the hope was that when the big Red units began to topple in defeat, the guerrillas in the rear would lose heart. It seemed reasonable to believe that as their supply lines were bombed and as their soldiers were denied their customary rice rations, the Viet Cong would lose their stomach for revolution. So far, there are few signs that the elusive and dedicated guerrillas have lost either heart or stomach for