Bernard B. Fall > Quotes

“This hard fact must be hammered in until it is constantly on the mind of those who have to contend with RW: Why is it that we must use top-notch elite forces, the cream of the crop of American, British, French, or Australian commando and special warfare schools; armed with the very best that advanced technology can provide; to defeat Viet-Minh, Algerians, or Malay "CT's" [Chinese Terrorists], almost none of whom can lay claim to similar expert training and only in the rarest of cases to equality in fire power?
The answer is very simple: It takes all the technical proficiency our system can provide to make up for the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy of most of the regimes that the West has thus far sought to prop up. The Americans who are now fighting in South Viet-Nam have come to appreciate this fact out of first-hand experience.”
― Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy

“But the Viet-Minh had had about ten months in which to establish their administration, train their forces with Japanese and American weapons (and Japanese and Chinese instructors), and kill or terrorize into submission the genuine Vietnamese nationalists who wanted a Viet-Nam independent from France but equally free of Communist rule. The first round of the war for Indochina already had been lost for the West before it had even begun.”
― Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina

“This is not a military war in the old sense. It is not even a political war. What we’re facing here is a social war, a class war. As long as we don’t destroy the mandarin class, abolish excessive tenancy rates and do fail to give every farmer his own plot of land, this country’ll go Communist as soon as we turn our backs.”
― Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina