That followed the 1968 tet offensive, the u. S. Media documented a growing crisis. Frequent stories of desertion, of drug use, combat, challenges to legitimate authority, along with reports of scandals and atrocities, most infamous of which was the massacre. And internal military documents tell much the same story. So in thinking about what happened after the tet offensive, we suggested that things were different in the period before 1968. So as we Start Talking about posttet, id start by giving you a quick picture of pretet. And the most common claim thats not going to work. The most common claim that originated in the military and circulated through the press is that in vietnam, the United States fielded the best trained, best equipped, best disciplined force in its history. A force with very high morale. Heres general westmoreland speaking in may 1966. Their performance is exceeding my expectations. I have also the journalist peter arnett in 1966 saying, morale is remarkably high. And heres marshall, the former combat historian from world war ii who is insisting that if morale were bad, we would know about it because the journalists are sniffing and barking on the trail of poor stories about the army or the military. But more than anything else, i wanted to point to the briefing that was given to the secretary of defense in saigon in 1967 in which the claim was without exception that morale was exceptiexcep exceptionally high. They leave vietnam with a sense of personal satisfaction that theyve served their country well and have insisted in the noble task of assisting the vietnamese. Now what you see here, obviously, is some spin. This language is way over the top no matter what the state of morale was. But when you look at the statistical information from the time with close to half a million u. S. Troops in vietnam, the courtsmartial rate stayed at about 2. 2 per thousand in vietnam compared to 2. 7 or 3. 0 per thousand for the army. And this is, unfortunately army centric and the rest of the country. They estimated, i think, improperly, that the use of marijuana was 1 in 2,000. They found no evidence whatsoever of heroin use. There was no mention whatsoever of racial conflict. There was no fragging, no mention of combat refusal or of any kind of dissent. And its really impossible to make claims like this post1968, even with a fair amount of spend. So theres an internal peryoeptsion and external perception that something had changed. So what were asking here is what actually did happen during this period in this period following the tet offensive . And were going to begin with our first session, which is a roundtable that is moderated by professor greg daddis and features professor bill allison from georgia southern, professor charissa threat and Professor James willbanks from the u. S. Army command and general Staff College and now is happily living in texas. Absolutely. Well turn it over to the first session. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming. I want to thank beth for inviting us out today. I also want to thank this center of military history for supporting this as well as the center for study here at ku. So beth has already introduced this amazing panel. So ill let you read the bios in the program as we get started. For me, i think the best place to start is 1971. And that summer, the Armed Forces Journal publishes this amazing article. Its a scathing indictment of the armed forces, especially those that are in vietnam. And its called the collapse of the armed forces. You can kind of tell by the title this is not an uplifting kind of assessment. And the author is this marine colonel robert hainel. My sense is hes not very excited by what he sees. And hes far from subtle in his claims. Listen to what he says. This is how he opens the article. The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the u. S. Armed forces was lower and worse at any time in the history of the United States. Those posers at valley forge had it good, right . And the situation wasnt bad. It was really bad. Social turbulence, pandemic drug addiction, race wars, sa dition, civilian scapegoatees, draftee recalcitrance and barracks theft and common crime and an armed forces listen to this distrusted, disliked and often reviled by the public. So, jim, ill start with you. But i do think this is a good place to start this morning. Jim, i do want to start with you because as beth said, weve got a great opportunity here to have in jim, not just a veteran but also a scholar. So how did the army feel to you in 1971 and 72 and did you get a sense that hainal was on to something here or was he overstating his case . And secondly, have your views changed as youve made that transition from veteran to scholar and kind of delved into this as a historian over the last few decades . I think ill preface that by saying i was commissioned in 1969. Thought i was going to vietnam immediately. Ended up in germany. Arrived in january 1970. So if, by 1971, if i told you i had read the Armed Forces Journal as a first lieutenant, id be lying because i had no idea there was an Armed Forces Journal in 1971. But i will tell you i would have had a hard time disagree with at least his major points. I was in the 3rd infantry division. I arrived into a unit that an army, 7th army that seemed to me as, you know, unenlightened 2nd lieutenant, an army in disarray. In our battalion alone, we were under strength. Had about half the people i was supposed to have. So i would submit to you that the army in europe was paying the price for vietnam. And it manifested itself in a number of ways. Not enough people. The troops that we had, a large number of them were unmotivated. They just wanted to get out of the army and get as far away from it as possible. There were no funds for training or maintenance. The barracks were falling apart. At one point, the unit i served, half our vehicles were in admin storage because we couldnt man them. We couldnt fix them. And we couldnt fuel them. We did not have the money. So it was a bit it was a bit disconcerting to go out to our position on the german border to defend against the soviets and put up little metal signs that said automatic rifleman machine gunner because i department hid bodies. I had signs. I had enough to man the four tracks in my platoon, and that was it. The barracks were falling apart. Junior ncos were coming from vietnam with less than a year to do. The best ones soldiered on and did their job. The worst ones just put their time in so they could get out. A lot of the senior ncos did not want to confront the troops. The units were rife with indiscipline. Awol high awol and desertion rates. Drug use. High crime in the barracks. Racial strife. Extreme drug abuse. Things got so bad and it will sound melodramatic, but i volunteered to go to vietnam to get out of 7th army air. I arrived in vietnam in december 71. To a Different Army. And it was an army that only had four infantry battalions left out of a high of, i think, about 77, if i remember right. And thats not to say that the combat units havent been fighting because they have. And if you just track the time, the battle of Hamburger Hill in 69, the cambodian incursion in april 1970. Fehrbase rip cord. You talk about combat effectiveness. Consider firebase rip cord where a small base was outnumbered 10 to 1. Three medals of honor and Six Distinguished Service crosses were awarded there. So the battle donetone continue. We did support from the aurand lost 107 helicopters. So the war continued. The combat units, i think, felt a sense of purpose because they had to for their own salvation. But by the time i got there, there were some fractures that were beginning to show. And whether it was to the extent that hainal mentions or not, its clear that there was some Serious Problems going on. Firebase pace. Firebase marianne to mention a few of these incidents. And i wont go into the specifics because some of our other speakers will. And recent scholarship suggests hainal was a bit overblown. I agree with a major who said in 1971, vietnam has become a poison of veins in the u. S. Army. The degree of demoralization in vietnam is not immediately dangerous. When they have to, u. S. Troops fight, and they fight well. The central question, however is whether an army thats begun to wilt can imagine to wilt just a little. And i think thats been sort of the thrust of what i found in my research is that the combat units continued to fight but increasingly, you begin to ask yourself, who wants to be the last guy killed in vietnam for going home anyway . So ill just leave it at that for now. So, bill allison has also done some really interesting work on military justice and military Justice System in vietnam. And so, bill, i wanted to ask you, did the cases that were being prosecuted by the judge advocate corps suggest that there was a problem here . Because you state in your book that military crimes were among the more telling indicators of the disintegration of u. S. Military forces in South Vietnam. So how did the cases that were being prosecuted by the jag corps at this time relate what was going on . Sure. Yeah, this dovetails with what jim just talked about. The people were there doing their jobs and doing them well, especially in the battle space. But outside of that, as 1969 wore into 1970 and vietnamization starts to take hold and people were withdrawing, that sort of thing, theres a lot of people in vietnam, as well find out later today with in of the other talks. Most people in vietnam arent dont have a gun in their hands. They are in rare areas. And the veterans in the audience will recognize the nomenclature of a remf. I wont go any further than that. But, but as things wind down, youve got a lot of people there with a lot of money, a lot of materials still there, a lot of time on their hands, and vietnam was a good place to find trouble. Because there was plenty of it. First, military crimes, those are things we usually associate with like jim just mentioned, awol and desertion, combat refusal, assault and murder usually involving rank which we term as fragging, that sort of thing, but the other things jim mentioned from his experience in germany going on in vietnam. Drug use, and this is both dealing and using. I like that. Very timely. So drug use, illicit activities, this is the black marked, misappropriation of military property, and then as jim also mentioned in the article, thefts. Soldier on soldier thefts, in the ba rarrracks, wherever it i. This is going on in the United States and vietnam. And the assault and murder of vietnamese civilians. Combat situations or war crimes, but also in relation to black market activities, currency fraud and things like that. Very quickly, because i know its the first thing in the morning and the last thing i want to do is hit you with a bunch of data, but beth opened the door because she mentioned Court Martial rates and things like that before tet. Real quick, and this is just for the army and vietnam like beth had mentioned as well because it was the easiest numbers to pull out. 1968 for insubordination, refusal, basically mutiny. 94 cases are tried. 82 convictions. 128 tried and 1970 you have 152 tried and 131 convictions. I think you can probably safely double that for the ones that are investigated and dont go to trial perhaps even more. Awol rates, 1966, awol is 57. 2 per thousand. Desertion 13. 7 per thousand. This is the army in vietnam. 1989, awol 112 per thousand. 1971, 176 per thousand, and desertion, 73 per thousand. Fragging, 1969, 126 incidents with 37 deaths. 70, 271 incidents with 34 deaths. 1971, 333 incidents but only 12 deaths. This brings up some interesting concepts about the point and purpose of fragging. Or the effectiveness. Well, fragmentation. Lastly, nonjudicial punishments, these are article 15 and some of you may be too familiar with that. Article 15s are things for minor offenses and i think from my research i found a lot of times it was probably something that maybe warranted a specialty or summary, but we dont have time, we dont want to do the paperwork. Its easy to take care of this this way. With an article 15. Its just for the army, 1967, 46,000, 1988, 59,000, 1969, 66,000, 70, 64,000, 1971 when jim got there, still 41,000 article 15s. Numbe numbers dont lie too much. That tells me there is a problem. Is there a problem in the battle space . Less its a problem of not being in the battle space and having too much time on their hands. This was really affecting all the services in vietnam. Ill stop there. One other thing i think is really interesting when you go back and read the article is his views on race. If you listen to him as hes talking about racial conflicts in his article, he talked about how theyre being sparked by young black enlisted men. Get this, that white soldiers were more afraid of getting mugged by black after dark than being attacked by the enemy. Africanamerican voices in particular are completely absent from this conversation. So i can ask you to generalize, and i know thats difficult to do with vietnam in particular. Based on your own research, how were Race Relations both at home and abroad part of this conversation on morale after tet . Im actually going to use the microphone. Its hard to generalize that, but ultimately i think one of the things we need to be thinking about is that whats happening at home amongst africanamericans and in the Africanamerican Community and particularly in the Civil Rights Movement is theres really a fracturing of the movement in the late 1960s and that does reflect whats happening in vietnam among soldiers, whether theyre ncas or enlisted personnel. You see older mainstream more deser conservative organizations who are very hesitant in 1966 and 67 to speak out against vietnam and johnson for that matter, the things that were happening in vietnam, more established africanamerican soldiers who had been for many years are touting a lot of the details that that started with, that the army wasnt a place they could go very far and do a lot of things. But at the same time, there is a young generation both at home and those kind of enlisted draftees on the late 60s, young, maybe first time in the military, who are really disillusioned by a lot of the problems that they see both in kind of duty assignments, in their treatments in terms of whether or not theyre going to be get an article 15, and thats reflected also at home where you have young generation of activists, people like john lewis, who are members of core or members of snick who are against vietnam and speak out quite early about vietnam. By the time we get to 1967, 68, and 69, that perspective is kind of changed and kind of across the board starting with Martin Luther king in april of 67 really speaking out against the vietnam war, do you start to see followed by Whitney Young of the urban league who starts to get a sense that participation in vietnam has not been good for africanamericans. That kind of that then reflects post tet what is happening amongst a larger group of africanamerican soldiers which is that they are either more angry and upset and disillusioned by their participation and their experiences in vietnam and amongst their fellow soldiers and that kind of anger and disillusiononme disillusi disillusionment transfers into rioting and radical behavior more than we see pretet that matter. The shift reflects larger things that are happening in the Africanamerican Community at home that we see this kind of not necessarily, you know, fracturing of the more mainstream movement, but stronger stance against the kind of hope that many held dear to in the mid 60s of civil rights legislation, making things all right, and it seems that way to begin with, but certainly by 1968 even Johnsons Great Society his kind of failed them. Its interesting that we, chris and i were talking, theres actually a time article in august of 1971 and the title is im sorry, New York Times article in april of 1969 and the title is tensions of black power reach troops in vietnam. Youre really starting to see these relationships between whats going on at home and the war in vietnam. If we can, and maybe open it up for the entire panel, using that as a segue, Senior Officers in the military after tet specifically talked about this permissiveness in American Society that was steeping into the armed forces. And for them, that was really a main cause of the morale and dissident. I want to kind of get your alls take on this about how much of this Permissive Society was at the root of the cause of morale problems in the army, in the armed forces after tet. I should preface this, i was hardly around very few americans almost the entire time i was in vietnam, but since ive done quite a bit of research, i find that i dont know if its permissiveness or not, abut aftr nixon announces the first troops in august of 1969 and there are 15 more increments there after, increasingly, the combat units, because thats what i know most, is that the question was okay, is this necessary . Do we really need to do this . I mean, at the bottom of the fire based pace incident was the fact that the captain was asking them to kuconduct a patrol throh an area that had 10 more mines in it from a previous unit. So the question nthen become system that a smart thing to do . Is that a mutiny or is that lets not do something stupid . I think increasingly, troops began to question some of their orders that in some cases probably ought to be questioned. Im not sure that answers your question complete, but thats my perspective. I guess the question is the term permissiveness. Thats a really big question, what does he mean by permissiveness. Yeah. Im questioning the term permissiveness. Does it mean that we let soldiers do what they want to do or are they really kind of pushing back against things they dont agree with, that dont make a lot of sense after nixons kind of decided that theyre kind of draw down is going to happen. It isnt an excuse for senior military leaders to say there are some fundamental problems here with trying to reconcile asking you to sacrifice for a war in which we are clearly withdrawing and soldiers lodgecallodg logically questioning orders like you just mentioned. I wouldnt put permissiveness on it. I would say people began to question whats the sanity of conducting this operation today if, in fact, were going to get on an airplane in three weeks and go home . So you have to make a better case for whatever the operation may be. I think some of the Senior Officers perhaps didnt want to make a better case. They just wanted to get an order. Thats what we had traditionally done. I will say one other thing. I think for a lot of that kind of war to actually point to the militant group of africanamericans, although presented it is much smaller than in reality, i think permissiveness might actually reflect the fact that a lot of africanamericans, even if they dont subscribe to Something Like black power or promote black power are really starting to understand that the military for them was not a place they thought they were going to make such big strides. It had been promoted as a place to kind of highlight pushing for life at home and by 70, 71, 72, it certainly wasnt that place any longer for many. Not all, but for many. So thats where i think the needed a pushback, why am i here fighting for this when im still dealing with a whole host of inequality even after the 64 and 65 civil rights legislation had passed and 68 civil rights legislation had passed. Why am i still here dealing with this when my family still cant live basically. Just to add, i think one thing important to remember is who these Senior Leaders were. Theyre often from theyre world war ii veterans, theyre career veterans, theyre lifers. To a degree, i think they see the problem they want to see. Of whats happening. That lends clouds like it does for everybody. That experience, you know, clouds how you see things. But it must have been unbelievably jarring for those officers to see what was happening and also to be stuck in a war that was at the point that it was. Compared to their previous experience. And its kind of hard to get a handle on, i think. Its interesting, too, crystal, you said there is a sense of failed expectations here i think more generally, right . That this is not the man making experience i want it to be, to read earlier memoirs, theres some expectation that im going to fulfill my patriotic duty and become a man and those expectations by this time when Senior Leaders and young draftees that are coming in are both seeing those expectations not come to realization. So if its ys not fully about t permissiveness in American Society, how much did the policy of actual withdrawal from vietnam then affect soldiers . Jim, you mentioned earlier that there are Many Americans on the ground who dont want to sacrifice their lives and be the last one killed for a war from which youre leaving. How much of that policy of withdrawal is having an impact here on issues of morale and discipline . I think it has a tremendous impact. If youre conducting combat operations and you see people going home, 50 clicks away getting on an airplane and going home and this is happening every 90 days in jumps of 15 to 25 to 35,000, you begin to ask yourself what the hell are we doing here . If this war is over and its pretty clear at this particular juncture that its on a downward spiral, then why conduct that operation tomorrow . That being said, when there was contact made with the enemy and the u. S. Forces equipped themselves very well. When they had to fight, they did fight. The question was should we be fighting . I read lots of memoirs from guys who were there before my period, because when i got there, there were 125,000 left v, four empty battalions and about 7,000 left in the field and they were all advisers. It was a way Different Army and way different vietnam by the time i got there than say it was in 1965. I think you dont see that ambiff lens in 1965. Thats a Different Army. So by 1970 that army is decidedly different and beginning to ask some questions as they see people getting on the freedom birds and going home. Why are we still doing combat operations. Then laird comes out and says we are now in the defensive mode. Well, it doesnt feel very defensive if youre running a patrol against a 33rd mba regiment. Yeah, i think that does have an impact on morale. The less combat there is, and theres still people there, theyre in rural areas, they got time on their hands. And just the black market numbers, they just skyrocket in 1970. Everyone is trying to get their take before this thing is over. But theres still a whole lot of people, again, doing their jobs, doing what theyre supposed to be doing. They are not involved in these illicit activities at all, but they see them and they see them being allowed to continue and theyre involving officers and ncos and enlisting of all ranks. Thats got to affect your morale. Its got to make you ask questions about what is it that were doing here . But you can find that situation in almost any conflict, especially as it winds down. In world war ii, i would wager theres probably a little of this going on more recently. There is an interesting racial component, the relationship between the american and vietnamese. There is one quoted in 1970, if nixon is going to withdrawal by the time clearly its been almost a full year since withdrawal has begun, then lets all go home now. I dont want to be killed buying time. For the theres a sense of racism and i wonder if that has an impact on morale. Its not that im leaving. Its that im turning over the war to the vietnamese and if it hasnt gone well, it hasnt gone well because of them, so theres some blaming going on from the americans placing that blame on the vietnamese, or is it just more general that if youre withdrawing from war, the morale is inherently going to drop . I think its both. I mean, theres got to be a little bit of both of that. Last night, wheres the memorial you were showing us . Westminster. Yeah. The american g. I. And the g. I. Standing together but facing Different Directions and the american g. I clearly standing down from an active role. Hes got his helmet. This is in Little Saigon in california. The american soldiers got his helmet in his hand. The other soldier is still wearing his helmet. I think the american has his rifle over his shoulder. The other has it in his hand. Clearly adjusting something. Yeah. I think in the specific context of that memorial, not trying to say that message, but from an outside observer, just looking at it as it is, you can read volumes in it for sure. I think its both. I think that i talked to very few American Veterans who fought u. S. Units when have much good to say about the army and thats almost to a person. So i think there is some of that, you know, is it worth dying for these people who wont fight for themselves . I think thats a perspective that comes from the lack of familiarity. I lived with them 24 hours a day. I saw some were good, some were bad, and some were mediocre just like american soldiers. But i think universally the opinion of u. S. Soldiers that did not work with them was pretty low in the South Vietnamese and i think that has an impact on okay, so the war is over, do i really want to be the last man to die in vietnam or for the South Vietnamese . Weve been fighting their war. Now time for them to fight their war. Theyve been fighting since, you know, 1956 off and on. I think that antivietnamese feeling has a part to play here in terms of morale with regard to Us Withdrawing but still continuing to conduct operations in the field. I think more for the question of racism, the use of the word gook and racism, if both of them are highlighting, there is general antivietnamese feel thats affecting morale in general. We did our part, but the vietnamese are not doing theirs i think is very much prevalent. What about Senior Leaders on each of them that youve spoken on, how did they perceive what was going on . Were they different from the soldiers in the field . Were they similar . Was there some generational component to this . You sort of alluded to this earlier about those that had experience in world war ii and korea or in lexicon of the day between lifers and draftees. Did you get a sense that there was a different understanding of these problems based on whether you were in the higher leadership position or whether you were in the field actually seeing and dealing with it . I would think that for seeing leaders, not only in vietnam, but back in washington, a good example, it scared the hell out of them. It really did. They immediately, especially when callies trial was going on, this concern that there could be a thousand other of these, whatever. You can understand their concern, that perception and that Immediate Reaction to that. Clearly the data doesnt support that. Ron byrons very fine book, not a gentlemans war he kind of refutes the concept of the dumb lieutenant, that sort of thing. But from a manpower perspective, personnel perspective, an officer training perspective and stuff, it got their attention. Now, how that played among the lower ranks, you know, people still out there, im not sure. Whats more, the chief of staff of the Army Commission was run by the Army War College in 1970, i believe. Yeah. You know, i think i highlighted this a little bit in my opening comments, but i do think that in terms of morale there is a different perspective amongst officers and ncos. They tend to be a bit more conservative. They have longer careers. They are concerned about morale but in a different way than people are entering the military the first time out in late 60s and early 70s and they tend to err on the side of being quite supportive and trying to figure out how do we make the situation better, how do we improve morale, not necessarily acknowledging there is a huge morale problem, but how do we deal with this to improve overall. I think that relates a lot to whats happening in the civilian world amongst some of the older generation africanamericans who, again, are coming from a different generation. You highlighted this. Who may have been dealing with world war ii and korea afterwards, who just have a very different perspective. I love the idea of the officers, the hotline to your commander, the commander of the post, you know. Wow. Thats saying something that i were trying whatever they could to open the lines of communication literally, but also in a military organization that seems unfathomable to a large degree. I think in terms of frame to reference, the troops and the Senior Officers are on different planets. The troops are going to ask questions. That particular generation is going to ask questions. Why go on that patrol through that particular area . To guys like westmoreland, you go an order and people respond. The idea that you would say is this a good idea, maybe theres another way to do it, i think the lieutenants and the senior and cos and the Company Commanders learn how to deal in that environment, but i think the Senior Officers on another planet. They have no frame of reference as far as that goes. Its just an athema that anyone would question an order for any reason. But thats a Different Army than the army that they grew up in. So whats their crisis . Theres new scholarship, whether its on combat performance or on the true impact of drug use that suggests that maybe there wasnt, and yet this collective memory persists that there was a major problem, so what do you think . Was there, in fact, a crisis here in the armed forces after tet . Yes. Yeah. Good answer, bill. No. I think so. And we can clearly, we are debating degrees of the reality of that crisis versus its perception, but i know theres a couple of lawyers in the room. The perception like possession is nine tenths of the law and perception matters. When youve got those brick riots, theyve long been and got a marine brig riot at okinawa, i dont think they had a clue what to make of those things, why those things happened, what was going on. Its just unparalleled in their experience to have things like that. Theres just too many indicators. Yes, we may have made more of it through Popular Culture and postvietnam looking at all of this, but they certainly believed it at the time and i think at all levels they saw it at the time. I think that matters. In terms of racial tensions, you can look at the brig riots youre talking about not only in vietnam, but in germany. A racial incident at ft. Mcc ft. Mclelland in alabama. I think they are recognizing ongoing racial tensionings that needed to be dealt with. In various ways the military tried to deal with it through the late 70s and early 80s. Jim . I think there was a problem. We can argue about the degree. Im colored by my experience in europe and there were desperate problems there, desperate problems. Someone who had six people in jail for major felony offenses at one time in my platoon out of about 18 people, those arent good percentages. I had less evidence of that in vietnam, but i was certainly aware of it, because by the time i got there, there was 125,000 troops. There were four entry battalions left, so aviation units. Everybody else was on cameron bay, long bend, all these big bases as you so aptly point out with lots of time, lots of money, and not much to do. And there was all kinds of opportunities to get in trouble and to blame the racial tension and all the other things. Certainly the ready access to drugs and i know that the scholarship suggests, recent scholarship suggests that the drug problem wasnt that bad. I dont believe it. At least in my experience it was extremely bad. That was even on the advisory team. There were evidences there that i could go into. So yeah, i think there was a problem. Now, whether all that he describes in the terms that he described it, which some of the terms were unfortunate in his choice of words, yes, definitely, yes. Its important to note that the fact that jim had six of 18 of his soldiers in jail doesnt say anything about lieutenant wilbanks leadership, i just want to point that out. Or it might. You never know. Our last question before id like to turn it over to you all to engage with our panel. We seem to be in agreement here that there was at least a problem, if not a crisis. How much of these problems that youve identified this morning how much have they had an impact and effect on the ongoing war and whether or not americans achieved victory perhaps in quotation marks in South Vietnam . Did this have any impact in terms of the result that the americans saw coming out of South Vietnam . Kind of the chicken or the egg thing. Yeah, there were problems before we decided if you want to phrase it this way that we werent going to win. Once that decision is made, who wants to be the last guy, or the last person to die for a mistake, so yeah, i dont know. Its hard to pinpoint one or the other as the cause. Preexisting versus the situation, but they both certainly feed off each other pretty intently, i think. Certainly theres some causal effect there, but its not the determine at cause. I think the determined cause for the way the world went out was we were going to withdraw regardless. If you look at the announcement midway in june of 69 about the withdrawal and the result of the brigade ninth decision that leaves in august, it was always going to be predicated on what was going on with the battle field, how we were doing, how they were doing in terms of vietnamizing themselves and what the enemy was doing. Once those things started, it was as kissinger so aptly put, it was like eating salted peanuts. Then it became irrelevant what happened on the battlefield. Once it was over and the South Vietnamese prevailed with massive amounts of u. S. Air power, nixon now has his opportunity to declare victory and go home. Whether morale had anything to do with that decision or not, that was certainly questionable. A decision had to be made regard little of morale and other issues and other problems. Of course, once were gone, then its their problem. I defer to the gentlemen. You want the last word on how it ended up in vietnam . Any questions from the audience . I had a comment on jims comment. You talked about the differences in the perception of leadership troops. When i was in the seventh infantry division, the commanding general used to emphasize for me understanding the troops because he said the troops perception is those bastards of that platoon and i think thats a good way to describe it. Thank you all for your time this morning. Im sure the panel will be more than happy to take your questions. Again, i appreciate the conversation. Look forward to spending the rest of the day with you. Thank you. [ applause ] heres a look at our primetime schedule on the cspan networks. Starting at 8 10. A debate on gun rights and the right to bear arms. At 8 30 eastern on cspan 2, book tv with authors and books on the supreme court. And at 8 00 p. M. On cspan3 its American History tv with programs on the life and career of president richard nixon. 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The all Day Conference on military manpower and morale after the 1968 tet offensive in vietnam continues now with a discussion on the u. S. Draft and enlistment rates of college graduates. We also hear about defense secretary Robert Mcnamaras plan to recruit