“Atrocity Was Intrinsic

To The Very Nature Of American Intervention In Vietnam”
“Given The Policy Of Fighting A Counterrevolutionary War On Behalf Of A Client State Incapable Of Winning Widespread Support Among Its People, American Atrocities Were Inevitable”

From: Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, by Christian G. Appy, U. Of North Carolina Press, 1984

One might argue, as I have, that atrocity was intrinsic to the very nature of American intervention in Vietnam; that given the policy of fighting a counterrevolutionary war on behalf of a client state incapable of winning widespread support among its people, American atrocities were inevitable.
In truth, American soldiers were not responsible for the war. Most were not even old enough to vote. (The voting age was not lowered from twenty-one to eighteen until.
1971.)
Harper's own views about the war, as he readily conceded, were confused. In the same breath he could denounce limitations on American bombing and the initial U. S. intervention in Vietnam.
That is not necessarily a contradictory position. In effect he said, we should have won the war or stayed out.
A simple enough argument to state, but one that evades the questions of whether the war could have been won or whether it was worth winning (that is, a just cause) and the further question of why it would be right to continue trying to win a war in which the original intervention was wrong or misguided.
When those questions are broached, Harper's conflicted feelings and those of many veterans are drawn to the surface.
A 1979 Harris survey found that a vast majority of veterans (89 percent) agreed with the statement, “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”
Yet a clear majority of veterans (59 percent) also agreed with a completely contrary viewpoint: “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war we could never win.”
The general public shared this contradictory view (73 and 65 percent agreeing with each statement, respectively).
Of course, both formulations have a common appeal: they put the onus of responsibility for the war and its outcome on American leaders, not on ordinary soldiers and civilians.
They also pose the same attractive alternatives suggested by Harper: win or stay out.
As for the moral legitimacy of the war, Steve Harper struggled to defend U.S. intervention. The United States, he said, was helping the people of Vietnam, people who “wanted us there” and who “wanted their freedom.”
Hard as he tried to sustain that view, however, his memories of the war kept contradicting it.
He could not forget how the Vietnamese almost always seemed to be helping the Viet Cong (“they take all the Americans have to offer and give us nothin' and give the VC all they have”).
Nor did he try to disguise his disdain for the Vietnamese military and government, which he saw as riddled with corruption and unable and unwilling to fight successfully against the Viet Cong (“they'd turn and run, from their officers on down”).