Diên Biên Phú remains a historic wake-up call: 50 years ago, Vietnam stunned France
Fifty years ago, the world could not believe what had happened. In retrospect, though, it set the tone for much of the future. A ragtag group of indigenous farmers defeated the mighty French army, sending a colonial power packing with it's tail between it's legs.
In this remote valley 260 miles northwest of Hanoi, ringed by mist-shrouded mountains, the French chose to make their stand, hoping to strangle supply routes from Laos and China to Ho Chi Minh's ragtag army.
Commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap, the legendary military strategist, the peasant army had been inflicting significant damage. The French plan was to draw the Vietnamese into a conventional battle and crush them.
Instead, the French ended up trapped in the small valley when the Vietnamese managed a near-impossible logistical feat of disassembling and dragging heavy artillery over the mountainous terrain before beginning the 56-day siege that choked their enemy.
Col. Christian de Castries, the French commander, surrendered on May 7, 1954, as the Vietnamese raised their flag above his bunker. It was the end of a colonial war and a triumph for communism that set the stage for the American war in Indochina a decade later.
The human price was high: The French suffered more than 2,000 deaths in battle and countless others died during a forced prison march; the Vietnamese suffered at least three times as many deaths during the fighting, plus tens of thousands wounded.
Of course, over the next few years, the French would be supplanted by the Americans. Before our involvement would end, more than 50,000 young Americans would die in Vietnam, and a generation would be shattered. What's more, every significant military effort undertaken by this country is now defined by our Vietnam experience. Santayana was right- those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.
It would be easy to throw around the Vietnam comparisons when discussing American the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To do so would also miss the point of the wars currently being fought- if in fact you believe there is one. Certainly, we need to be conscious of what has come before and learn from those experiences. By comparing any military effort to Vietnam in simplistic terms, we run the risk of paralysis by analysis.
Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT Vietnam. The American military and (hopefully) the Administration are at least smart enough to make a whole different set of mistakes. Either way, though, a whole lot of young Americans are going to die, and that is the tragedy.
