Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

132 Chapter 3
eign Relations. On 20 February 1968, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara testified before the Committee that when the facts had been
established to the complete satisfaction of all responsible authorities, the
U.S. had responded with an air strike on the facilities that supported the
attacking vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin. Mr. McNamara's testimony
prompted the chairman of the Committee to raise the matter of the contingency
draft of the Southeast Asia Resolution "Mr. McGeorge Bundy
[President Johnson's National Security Advisor] told this Committee that
this draft had been prepared some months before the Tonkin incidents in the
hearing. " 306
Harry Summers Jr., an expert on military affairs, bluntly described the
duplicitous resolution and its consequences:
In voting unlimited presidential power, most members of Congress thought they
were providing for retaliation for an attack on our forces, and preventing a largescale
war in Asia, rather than authorizing its inception... . 307
Once the Americans got involved, they found that their adversaries were
conducting warfare mainly with guerrilla tactics, for which the American
and their South Vietnamese allies were insufficiently prepared. Finding
themselves outmaneuvered, they resorted to a strategy of large-scale
bombardment.
The level of warfare produced correspondingly large flows of refugees. 308
Reports pointed out that people were forced to flee to escape from both
Communist harassment and American bombings. 309
Whatever its strategic value, the bombing was overwhelmingly
destructive. By the end of the war, the U.S. had dropped 7 million tons of
bombs and dumped another 7 million tons of explosives on Vietnam,
compared to 2 1/2 million tons in Europe and the Pacific during World War
II. Vietnam thus earned the unwelcome distinction of being the most
heavily bombed country in the history of the world. The result of that le vel
of violence was that one person in every thirty was killed, one in
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306 U.S. Senate. The Gulf of Tonkin: The 1964 Incidents; Hearing before the
Committee on Foreign Relations, 1968, p. 11,12.
307 Harry G. Summers Jr., On Strategy. A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam
War, (No-vato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982), p. 23.
308 U.S. Senate. A Report to the Committee on the Judiciary. Refugee
Problems in South Vietnam, Subcommittee to Investigate Problems
Connected -with Refugees and Escapees, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess. March
4,1966, p. 11,14.
309 Edward B. Marks. "Saigon: The Impact of Refugees," Reporter, 36, No. 1
(1967), pp. 33-36.
Analytical Discussion 133
twelve was wounded, and one in five was made a refugee or a displaced
person. 310 Every time the war escalated, the flow of refugees increased
dramatically. Those who survived the disruption were thoroughly demoralized
by all the turmoil. Their utter lack of control over their situation turned large
portions of the local population into indifferent and passive burdens, who
certainly could have managed their lives independently if their lives had not been
disrupted by governmental policies with which they had little motivation to
identify. During the period of the Tet and May offensives of 1968 and the 1972
Easter offensive, the number of registered refugees and displaced persons was
particularly high. Altogether, between 1965 and 1973 more than ten million
people became refugees or displaced war victims. 311
The large-scale refugee flows that had been produced by the intensification of
the war posed enormous challenges to both the Vietnamese and the U.S.
capacities. The sudden enormousness of the refugee flow in 1965 made a policy
response urgent. There was no survey of the refugees' needs, and the U.S. AID
Mission in Saigon did not have a single person assigned full-time to refugee
affairs. 312
In July 1965, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Refugees began conducting
public hearings on problems related to refugees in Vietnam. Although Vietnam's
Ministry of Social Welfare was at that time responsible for emergency aid to the
evacuees, and the Ministry of Rural Development for their resettlement, the
capacity of the Vietnamese authorities to handle this tasks was overwhelmed.
Dramatic needs caused by a "stepup in the bombing of certain villages, with a
corresponding increase in the number of refugees" (Senator Kennedy estimated
500,000 or
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310 Harrison Salisbury, ed., Vietnam Reconsidered (New York: Harper, 1984), p. 267.
311 For detailed statistics, see Appendix, Chart I: "Newly Registered Refugees by
Official GVN/USAID Count, 1965-1973" and Table: "Statistical summary of refugee
and war victim movement in South Vietnam, 1965-73." In US Senate.
Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to Investigate Problems connected with
Refugees and Escapees. Relief and Rehabilitation of War Victims in Indochina:
One Year after the Ceasefire. A Study Mission Report. 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1974,
pp. 12 and 6-7.
312 U.S. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to investigate Problems
connected to Refugees and Escapees. Civilian Casualty and Refugee Problems in
South Vietnam: Findings and Recommendations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.,
1968), p. 2.