Vietnam's 'Search and Destroy' Tactics: A Critical Reflection

Greetings travelers! Continuing with the Vietnam thoughts, I wanted to reflect upon, “What was effective or not effective about the ‘search and destroy’ strategy employed during the war?” After reading the text and looking at a few other sources, here are my thoughts.

The Facts

Search and Destroy was part of Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition to beat the North Vietnamese and their NLF comrades. There were some short-term tactical victories, such as at Ia Drang. These missions also proved and honed the Air Assault doctrine that came to symbolize the war. The strategy relied on aggressively seeking out the enemy where they hid and engaging them while also destroying their source of supply. This worked well with the Air Mobile concept. However, this is where the success list ends.

These tactics led to heavy civilian casualties and saw whole villages burned to the ground. The NVA quickly adapted to this tactic and avoided any large-scale maneuvers and focused on hit-and-run attacks on patrols. They also relied on booby traps and IEDs to harass and break the will of the Americans in their country. Search and destroy also prioritized mobility and body count over holding territory, which diminished the impact of a mission.

Search and Destroy missions led to a breakdown in American morale due to the ambiguity of the mission as well as the constant frustration with the elusive enemy and their traps. These issues combined to erode the Americans’ confidence in their leaders and the war. To add to the pressure, the highly publicized nature of the fight in Vietnam brought the war home to the American people who saw the brutal images of war and the destruction of the countryside.

Analysis

In really thinking about this strategy, one must wonder what Westmoreland was thinking. Short of proving the concept of air mobility and developing the doctrine, there was not much good that came from Search and Destroy. What it did do was further alienate the population as well as create the environment for atrocities to be committed by Americans in places like My Lai. The mobility-over-territory concept also highlighted the disconnect between military tactics and political objectives of building a stable South Vietnamese government. The NVA and NLF guerilla strategy further exacerbated the problems by making American units chase an elusive enemy, further compounding the frustration of the American war fighters. It also neutralized the technological and equipment superiority of the Americans. None of it led to success in stabilizing the country and its government, nor would it have ever led to victory. Just dead and wounded soldiers on both sides and exaggerated body counts to justify what they were doing.

Opinion

In my opinion, this — just as with all the faulty thinking of American leadership in this war — is a good example of how to not win a war. Having been a Marine as well as at some jobs, I am aware of how quickly morale will erode when the team is engaged in days of meaningless tasks with no clear mission. The strategy of search and destroy even made the victories Pyrrhic and wasteful. Johnson and the rest of the knuckleheads in charge were so worried about losing American prestige and credibility they had no choice but to escalate, yet they didn’t fight the war like they wanted to maintain it. The more I study this fiasco, the more disgusted I get.