ABSTRACT
The tragedy of the Indochina War lies in what happened to the South Vietnamese people. The Communist strategy of protracted guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and covert political penetration had not stalled the American-South Vietnamese pacification drive. In March the first major land reform ever undertaken in South Vietnam was enacted—the "Land-to-the Tiller" law. During the efforts to build a genuine South Vietnamese nationalism, Americans took over too much of what the government should have done itself by going directly to the people with propaganda. American advisors under Civil Operations and Rural Development Support Agency assisted the South Vietnamese in all phases of the campaign leading to elimination of the suspects. Most Southern peasants probably could not understand how their personal position would deteriorate under the Communists, and the stigma of "foreign invader" and "colonialism" used by the Viet Cong to discredit the United states was tough to counter.
