Viet Cong
The Viet Cong (VC; Victor Charlie) were the main communist terrorist force operating in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The media sometimes refered to them as "communist guerrilla soldiers" formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.
History
- The Viet Cong (VC) were the communist insurgents of South Vietnam (Republic of South Vietnam - RVN) that, supported by the North, fought a guerrilla war to overthrow the government and unite the country under the communist regime of the North during the period between 1963 (battle of Ap Bac) and 1976. They fought a bitter and terrible war of ambushes and hit and run actions ut tp the Tet Offensive (1968) when they more or less came out from hiding attacking strategic objectives and supporting regular army formations from the North in open armed confrontations against the South and US forces. VCs were known for their tenacity and frugality fighting with every weapon at disposal, in any weather and condition and with little or no food.[1]
Leftists, as well as uninformed people, claimed then and now that the USA was not capable of defeating the Viet Cong. This is simply false. If the USA could defeat the modern, 1st world nations of Germany and Japan, it could certainly defeat a ragtag guerrilla group from a backwater 3rd world country. Ultimately, the Viet Cong won the war not because they had better soldiers, more training, or more men and materiel, but because a small but powerful clique of radical leftists within the United States skillfully utilized the institutions of US society to destroy the war effort on the home front.
One of the leftists' favorite tools for doing this was of course the mass media. US citizens were constantly bombarded with TV clips of supposed US atrocities, most notably a clip of Vietnamese children being burned with napalm dropped from a plane. The media told outright lies for many years that a US pilot had dropped this napalm bomb. Only later was it found out that the media was lying, and that the pilot who dropped the napalm bomb was not American but South Vietnamese. [2] At the same time, atrocities committed by the Viet Cong, such as the Dak Son Massacre, [3] were not given nearly as much attention.
The Viet Cong were also aided by the fact that the USA tried to fight the Vietnam War as a politically correct "limited war". In other words, the USA tried to fight the war while placing severe restrictions on itself. For instance, the USA refused to simply invade North Vietnam and capture Hanoi, which would have ended the war very quickly, if not immediately.
Further reading
- Gordon Rottman (Autor) / Howard Gerrard (Illustrator): Viet Cong Fighter, in "Warrior", Volume 116, 22 May 2007
