Vietnam War - Facts and Fiction
Sat November 22nd, 2003 13:49 MSTThis article was posted to provide a focus for the inevitable Vietnam references that turn up in response to other Useful Fools articles. This is the place to fight out the old fight, if you are a reader of this blog.
Left wing opinion, widely reflected today in History courses and the media, is that the US lost a war in Vietnam against a local, popular guerilla movement (the Viet Cong). Furthermore, it is asserted that the people in South Vietnam wanted to re-unite with the North under communism. Some have argued that the US had nefarious motives (profit, oil, etc) in its war in Vietnam. It is assumed that the US was defeated in the field of battle by this movement.
All of that is incorrect.
The US entered the Vietnam War as part of George Keenan’s Containment Doctrine, developed under Truman. This doctrine was based on the (correct) observation that the Soviet Union had the intent of dominating the world by using subversion or military power to convert countries to communism, in a manner where the USSR would control those countries, or at the very least be strong allies. Their subversive methods often relied on hijacking genuine popular revolutions or the sentiment behind them. Their military methods involved direct invasion and conquest (Eastern Europe) or conquest by proxy (the Korean War, use of Cuban troops in Africa). The subversive methods were used throughout the world, both through the use of direct KGB assets (such as Kim Il Sung in North Korea, Soviet intelligence agents in the US) or those who were indigenous communists (such as Ho Chi Minh, who became a communist while living in Paris). The Containment Doctrine was to stop this expansion of Soviet Power by combating Soviet methods by our own intelligence operations, providing aid to existing governments, and directly involving our troops in combat.
Vietnam was historically a French colony, and the French were hated by many Vietnamese. After World War II, the French chose to re-establish their oppressive colonial regime. The Viet Minh, headed by Ho Chi Minh, fought the French (who were collaborating with the Japanese) until the Japanese took direct control of Vietnam in March, 1945. Then, with US help through the OSS, the Viet Minh fought the Japanese forces for a few months until the defeat of Japan. At that point, Ho Chi Minh welcomed back the French, signing the “March 6” agreement to bring the French army back into Northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh and the French cooperated to kill thousands of leaders and members of nationalist groups (potential rivals to the communists), with the French giving Ho Chi Minh military equipment..
Having destroyed other legitimate nationalist groups, in 1946 Ho Chi Minh turned against the French. Starting in 1950, Communist China armed and trained the Viet Minh, and supplied the artillery that lead to the final French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The US refused to support the French with its available air power.
In 1954, the Geneva Accords ended the war. Elections were to be held in 1956 to choose a government for Vietnam. In the meantime, the country was split into two parts. All of the Viet Minh were to go north, while all who fought for the French were to go south. Civilians were to be able to move as desired. Hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese moved south and fewer Viet Minh sympathizers moved north (many were ordered to stay in the South to form the core of a communist insurgency in case the Communists lost the elections).
The Geneva accord called for nationwide elections. However, South Vietnam did not sign the accords and hence did not participate, negating the validity of the elections. The North violated the accord, leaving forces intact in the South. In addition, the North obstructed free movement to the south (see Lan Nguyen’s addendum below). The North did not attack at the time because they were weakened from their radical land reform and the resulting popular unrest and internal resistance.
Subsequent corruption and dictatorship by the Diem Regime in the South made it ripe for a revolution, and the VC (the military arm of the National Liberation Front) started operating against the government. They were supported by the North. The US supported the South with supplies and military advisors.
In 1963, the US government under Kennedy encouraged the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) to overthrow the corrupt dictator, Diem. Diem was replaced by a series of subsequent governments.
In 1965, with the South in danger of losing the war, the US started bombing North Vietnam and deploying US combat troops in country. At the time, the VC was mostly native South Vietnamese, although they were commanded by the North. Under Lyndon Johnson, the US was strongly restricted in its bombing of the North, causing it to be ineffective. Since the North was the arsenal of the VC in the South, this effort failed to suppress supplies going to the VC.
By 1968, the US had large numbers of troops in Vietnam. During the traditional truce at the annual Tet holiday, the VC launched a massive offensive. They were trying to win the war with a single surprise attack, and believed their own propaganda that the people would rise up and join them. The military result was that the VC were effectively destroyed, and never recovered. The failure of the people to join the VC, and the VC’s execution of thousands of civilians in Hue (the only major city they captured) gave lie to the contention that the war in the south was a popular revolution. This fact was lost on US press commentators and of course on the anti-war protest movement. Subsequent to Tet, 1968, almost all communist forces in the South were NVA invaders from the North, who traveled through “neutral” Laos and Cambodia on the “Ho Chi Minh Trail.”
Unfortunately, Tet was a gigantic propaganda victory for the North. Reporters, who had been assured that the VC were losing (which they were), suddenly saw brutal combat in the cities of Vietnam. They falsely concluded that they were being mislead (as they often had been), and reported the incident as a great defeat for the US. Some, such as Walter Cronkite, decided to use their position of trust to shape the news against the war, with the hope of ending what they viewed as a futile and un-winnable war.
Shortly thereafter, President Lyndon Johnson, who had badly mishandled the war against the advice of his military, and who had micromanaged the campaign against the North, announced he would not run for re-election.
The subsequent election was won by Richard Nixon on the theme of “Peace with Honor”. Nixon’s plan was to strengthen the South, seriously damage the communist position, negotiate an enforceable peace agreement, and withdraw all American troops except a few advisors and black operators. The peace agreement would be enforced by American air power if the North launched major attacks. Nixon kept his word, and was able to defeat a major Communist offensive (the Easter Offensive of 1972) with almost no US ground participation – leaving the ground fighting to the much maligned Army of South Vietnam (ARVN). After finally removing most of Johnson’s restrictions on US bombing of the North, the US mined Haiphong Harbor, the North’s only cargo port, and attacked Hanoi with B-52’s in the Christmas Bombings on 1972. After negotiating without substance for years, the Communists, confronted with a demonstrated willingness by the US to truly damage them, signed a peace agreement within a month.
However, the Communists continued to fight, utterly ignoring their agreement to cease infiltrating into the South. After Watergate, Nixon lost his political power at home, and ultimately his office. The administration was no longer able to enforce the peace agreement against a rabidly anti-war congress. US military intervention (via air power) to counter overt communist invasions was banned by Congress, as was almost all military aid.
Given this abject betrayal of South Vietnam, the Communists invaded with a massive force (22 divisions with integrated armor and anti-air artillery including missile units), and fairly rapidly defeated a now betrayed and demoralized South Vietnamese army. After the conquest, many Vietnamese were sent to forced labor camps, where they died out of sight of the media, often while clearing mine fields with inadequate tools, while sick and malnourished. As was typical with communist conquests using indigenous anti-regime personnel, many of the remaining NLF and VC were themselves imprisoned in these camps, because the North’s rulers did not want people trained in subversion who might fight the new dictatorship. Thus, ironically, many former NLF and VC became “boat people.”
Many analysts have claimed that the war in South Vietnam had part of its desired effect – the prevention of the spread of Communism into all of Southeast Asia and the Philippines, but it was still a major defeat for the US, leading many other nations in the world to conclude that the US was an unreliable ally. During the subsequent Carter administration, which itself gave no confidence to anti-communist forces and US allies (especially by betraying the Shah of Iran), many nations in the world experienced communist-led insurgencies (Cambodia, Angola, etc.) or insurgencies (like the one in Nicaragua) where a broad popular movement overthrew the government, after which the Communist members of the movement seized power and disenfranchised or imprisoned their revolutionary partners. Other nations distanced themselves from the US and made accommodations with the Communists, damaging US interests world-wide. It was not until Ronald Reagan changed the terms of the conflict from containment to roll-back of Soviet gains that the situation began to reverse.
Another negative effect of the Vietnam War and the way it was prosecuted, especially under Johnson, was the enormous transfer of power from the moderate left to the far left in US politics. The left went from being anti-Communist to pro-Communist (although they won’t admit it today), and many became truly anti-American on all issues of foreign policy, and remain so to this day. On issues of national security, there are few moderate left in America today. The kinds of attacks on the administration that are required of Democrat presidential candidates to be nominated today would never have occurred prior to this shift.
Also, trust in government was seriously damaged as the Johnson administration consistently lied about the progress and plans for the war, and the Nixon administration, facing strong antiwar movements, hid a number of necessary military actions such as the invasion of part of Cambodia and the shadow war in eastern Laos. The distrust (and its never good to unquestionably trust the government) has led to a large amount of destructive cynicism in the Vietnam generation. This has damaged the quality of modern political discourse, and has granted too much power to a relatively monolithic mass media as a mostly left wing, powerful political force.
The Vietnamese boat people represent yet another tragedy of that war. South Vietnamese, including many former Viet Cong, risked and often lost their lives fleeing the now Northern dominated dictatorship of Vietnam.
The biggest lesson from the Vietnam War is that one should understand the full ramifications of an intended conflict, from the political (domestic and international) to the military. Vietnam was won in the military arena, but subsequently lost in the political.
Another big lesson is to not lie to the public except when absolutely necessary for operational security, and then to correct that information as quickly as possible. In other words, public trust is very important.
A third lesson is to be prepared to use adequate force and to have the will to last out the enemy.
Vietnam was ultimately betrayed by a United States Congress, newly filled with anti-war leftists, who abandoned Vietnam to its conquerors from the North. Cambodia was likewise lost, leading to the murderous Pol Pot regime, which ironically was later defeated when Communist Vietnam, by then a Soviet proxy, invaded Cambodia, a Chinese proxy.
General Giap, the North Vietnamese Commander, stated that he knew he could sustain far more casualties than could the US. North Vietnam was cynically breeding generations of cannon fodder… conscripted peasant soldiers from the North who would be killed in vast numbers, but always replaced by more.
The impact of leftist propaganda (much of it produced by the USSR or local American communists and sympathizers, and disseminated by the anti-war movement) is another lesson. Millions of Americans were led to believe that the war in Vietnam was between the US as an imperialist power (which is absurd given US history and the facts at the time) and the oppressed peasants of South Vietnam. The dangers of international Communism were obscured. Although there was some truth early in the war that the US was propping up a very unpopular and oppressive regime (Diem, until JFK had him deposed), in fact the most oppressive faction in the war was the North and through them, the Viet Cong.
The few cases of US war atrocities were widely used as propaganda by all war opponents, while the US press, especially after the anti-war movement started, failed to report the huge number of atrocities against civilians that were committed as the official policy of the NVA. These actions were taken against villagers who refused to cooperate with the VC/NVA, and often consisted of the brutal murder of the village chieftain and his family. In a similar matter, once the oppressive regime of Diem had been replaced, the VC found it impossible to recruit adequate volunteer forces, as the peasants were no longer interested in revolt. Hence the VC used press gangs to forcibly induct South Vietnamese peasants.
Furthermore, the far left Vietnam Veterans Against the War, partially funded by Jane Fonda, held the “Winter Soldier Investigation” which produced damaging charges that atrocities were normal and approved practices by American Soldiers. John Kerry then testified to the Senate using the results of this “investigation:”
I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
It turned out that this “investigation” was a propaganda exercise:
When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America in Vietnam
It is likely that if the apologists for the enemy, such as Kerry, had not been so effective, and the Watergate scandal had not unseated Nixon and deeply damaged the Republican Party, South Vietnam today would be a prosperous democracy like South Korea, and the North would be the same despotic, corrupt and poor regime that it is now.
—————————–UPDATE——————————
I would like to thank Lan Nguyen, former South Vietnamese aviator, for reviewing this history and adding the following commentary.
John,
As I have mentioned before in a previous note, your article is spotless. I can only add few more facts are well known within the Vietnamese but rarely known from the outside world for whatever the reason.
1) During the repatriated period of 1956, the North had exercised maximum control to restrict the movement of people migrating to the South. In large cities near the port of Haiphong, where foreign observers were present, movement was fairly unrestricted but outside those cities, movement was utterly restricted. You could not leave your town or village without a pass by a VC high ranking official, and it’s almost impossible to get that pass. My parent-in-law left the town in Thai-Binh province outside of the foreign observer’s watch, by a note from my mother-in-law’s brother who was a very high ranking VC official asking her and her family come to visit him. Only then the local officials allowed them to leave.
2) In the South, in the area where they controlled, the VC staged a force marriage en mass to marry local woman with the repatriated soldiers. Their purpose is to impregnated woman to establish a family relationship for the fathers to coming back later in the insurgency period.
3) South Vietnam has never had a chance to have a good government. In all fairness, Diem’s government is the least corrupted government. His downfall started when he began to “cap” the reformists as VC. Many reformists were not the VC and were also religious leaders of Buddhists, CaoDai and HoaHao. When he started capping the Buddhist leaders, the shit hits the fan. My wife’s 1st cousin is the famous girl being killed at Saigon protesting Diem’s regime and her statue was erected afterward in middle of Saigon capital. Her death is the final call to arm to Buddhists in Vietnam, considering more than 80% of the population is Buddhists. Few months later, Diem was overthrown and the country was falling in even deeper shit.
We, the principle soldiers of South Vietnam, did the right thing to defend our freedom, with your help, the principle soldiers of America. Losing that war is nothing to be ashamed. Our battle was staged utterly wrong from the beginning and spiraled down the slippery slope. You and your comrade in arm have never betrayed us. We fought for the right thing side by side, and losing that war did not negate our principles. We are forever in debt for your blood and suffering.
Your friend,
Lan Nguyen
A proud South Vietnam Aviator fighting alongside you guys to the bitter end.
This is a very informative piece. Would you be willing to site sources?
Sources range from my own memory of the events to various books that I have read to sites on the net. Sorry, but didn’t record them. I wrote this in a hurry to move a discussion away from an Iraq thread.
Bonfire of the Vanities - Week 21
The Bonfire of the Vanities celebrates Thanksgiving by offering up the plumpest, juiciest turkeys of the week. The motto this week is “Is It Ready Yet?.” This weeks entries prove that even when their cupboards are bare some bloggers post…
During the Vietnam War, the US dropped more bombs on the Indochinese peninsula than were employed by all sides during World War II.
Under the charmingly entitled “Operation Ranch Hand”, the United States used Agent Orange and other chemicals to destroy the rice crops of Vietnam’s peasants and the country’s mangrove forests.(The witty slogan of the chemical-spraying pilots was, “Only you can prevent a forest”).
The death toll may be as high as four million; the numbers injured and traumatized also run into the millions
http://www.nnn.se/levande/lessons1.htm
And your point is??
My comment on these observations are that the US was using the wrong tactics, fighting in the South insteads of lancing the boil of the North. Had we ruthlessly attacked the North in the ’60s(as Nixon finally did in 1972), the war would have been won quickly and decisively. South Vietnam would have been like South Korea (which is a total paradise in comparison to today’s Vietnam).
One can only take your observations seriously (as written in the link you provided) if one denies the evil of the Communists and ignores their denial of freedom to their people to this day. One can only take it seriously if one ignores the millions of “boat people” who risked their lives to escape the tyranny of the communist regime of the North. One can only take it seriously if one ignores the many errors of fact, all of which support the anti-American side, in the reference you provided. One can only take it seriously if one has not studied the Cold War and does not understand the evil nature of Soviet Imperialist Communism.
And of course, your little narrative of US High Technology against poor, unarmed peasants is an utter lie, since the VC and NVA were heavily armed by the Soviet Union, such arms transported through internationally declared neutral countries in violation of those accords. Furthermore, the VC found out, as I posted, that they did NOT have the support of the populace by 1968. They planned a total victory during the Tet Offensive (which, of course, was a truce violation), because they expected the “peasants” to rise up and join their forces. No such uprising happened, and the VC were destroyed as a fighting force in that campaign. However, their kind intent towards their countrymen was shown during their temporary occupation of Hue, where they brutally executed, without trial, over 2,000 civilians of the city.
The US maintained the Embargo because Vietnam was an ally of our greatest enemy, the ruthless Soviet Union.
As far as the POW’s, the Vietnamese long treated MIA remains as currency which they would trade for political gain. This ruthless use of human suffering hardly gained them any favor in the US. Furthermore, the brutality with which they treated the POWs, which of course you neglect to mention, violated all international standards of war.
Vietnam, BTW, was not bombed back into the Stone Age. The US was careful to not attack the irrigation structures in the North. It mostly avoided attacks on large cities (except for the Christmas Bombing of Hanoi, which led to an immediate cease fire and end of killing). The South was not damaged by the US to any significant extent. Most bombing was into jungles and other uninhabited areas and difficult terrain, because that was where the enemy concentrated troops and moved supplies. That villages were bombed was undeniable. That the NVA had an official policy of murdering village officials and their families is likewise undeniable.
A quote from the link which is an utter lie: “Another less of the Vietnam War, is that the mainstream media shine the most favorable light on U.S. actions, no matter what. As one who experienced that war from many perspectives, all I can say is that this lie is disgusting and almost the direct opposite of the truth! Without the US media’s untrue reporting of the war, especially after 1968, the war would almost certainly have been won!
The US did indeed have noble motives, and it certainly blundered in its efforts to do good. That not all individuals in the US were noble is obvious and irrelevant. I personally volunteered for service in that war because I believed in our motives (stopping the advance of Totalitarian Communism, which I had witnessed first hand in East Berlin).
Of course, the link also quotes Noam Chomsky, which is always a sign of propaganda. Chomsky never misses an opportunity to lie about his country. When he says there was no Vladimir Danchev in the United States, he leaves out such notable figures as Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” who decided after the 1968 Tet Offensive (which he misunderstood) to use his vast powers to mislead the American people into abandoning the war.
By the war, apologists for the Vietnamese Autocrats and their miserable economy blame it on the American destruction of the country. That’s because they cannot accept the fact that centralized communist systems are both extremely inefficient and remarkably corrupt - a fact shown clearly in Russia and China, until China removed much of its central control (at which point the corruption remained but the economy improved). There has never been a successful communist economy. That fact is hard to explain away except by the densest of true believers - those for whom this blog is named.
It is easy to cast the whole Vietnam War as a simple black/white dichotomous morality play, where either side can take either color. The war and related events were far too complex for such a simple minded approach. That Ho Chi Minh was a communist with deep ties to the USSR is beyond doubt. That he was a nationalist who did not want to be anybody’s vassal is also without doubt. That he and his cadre were ruthless murderers, who systematically used force to eliminate all opposition in the North is also a rarely heard truth.
The lies are that the US had colonialist or imperialist goals for Vietnam. The lies are that the US engaged in atrocities as a matter of policy. The lies are that the US had any intent other than to stop the threat of Communism in SE Asia. And, of course, it is also a lie that the US engaged in South Vietnam for the benefit of the South Vietnamese.
Finally, the purpose of Operation Ranch Hand was to destroy jungle to reduce the cover for the enemy.
Great info package, thank you very much
John,
Aside from the obvious political slant, the first half of your post contains little to argue about. The second half is political spin.
Who loaded Congress with anti-war liberals? The American people: the same common people whom conservatives place so much faith in today. Those folks didn’t want their countrymen dying in large numbers in Vietnam. We should respect that decision. They were no more misled sheep back then than they are today. (Also, the U.S. and South Vietnam postponing elections gives lie to the argument that the communists were not popular. If they would have come close to being elected, they must have enjoyed substantial support. This does not in any way excuse their violent ways.)
One question that popped to mind in reading your post is whether the unified Vietnam today poses a lesser or greater threat to the United States than a split and isolated country with a north the likes of North Korea. I believe that countries, just like individuals, have things that they need to get out of their systems before they can be open to common sense and democracy. Vietnam may not be a model country today, but its government appears to be courting the United States actively as a trading partner, and one hears very little about them being a threat to world peace. Maybe it was better in the long run for them to stew in the mess that they created after a successful revolution, just as I enjoy watching the mullahs in Iran fighting to save their cushy jobs as the people awake and start to demand more freedom. These leaders are dinosaurs and they know it.
America should not squander its great energy and risk damage to its national fiber by getting involved in every dog fight around. Vietnam did great damamge to our society; even if we had won in a long dirty war, I think that much of the damage to our society would have been present. I think that we need to weigh the consequences of action and inaction and, at appropriate times, just step aside. (It is fair for you to point out perceived weakness as one reason not to step aside. In addition to Carter, Reagan and Clinton were also guilty of this at one time or another –e.g. Lebanon & Somalia.)
I wish we could discuss Vietnam and other historical matters without such polarizing left-right mudslinging. I don’t recall growing up in an America that was close to going commie. That’s how you make it sound. I think you exaggerate the extent of communist influence and the “extreme left” mentality of most Democrats back then. To one degree or another there was a broad left/right consensus on the need to confront the communist threat around the world. Slandering the Deomcrats over Vietnam requires all sorts of intellectual acrobatics and obscurs all of the complexities of the situation. Your description of the historical events lacks the smell of napalm.
For clarity’s sake, I was responding to the main article at the top of this thread … not clear to me who actually wrote it, John or someone else.
CVS,
While there is blame being cast in my writeup (yes, I wrote it), it is accurate as far as I can tell. Yes, the American public elected the far left congress. But the main reason was disgust with Watergate (which perhaps I should have emphasized). Also, by that time the press bias (which I document) had become pervasive. Americans were still being told that Vietnam was about a popular insurgency, when no such insurgency existed. Keep in mind that in those days, there was no internet and no cable TV. Americans were primarily dependent for news on the big three TV networks (and to a lesser extent, depending on where they lived and how they cared, to a few big metropolitan dailies or two wire services). In any case, simply referring to it as political spin is too easy a way to deny the facts that are contained in there… and there are lots of facts.
The 1974 congress was elected years after Nixon had pulled all troops out of Vietnam, but by then the Democrat party had been largely taken over by the radical anti-war crowd (who took over the party apparatus in 1972 as part of the McGovern campaign). The critical change in the Democratic party was the destruction of the Jacksonian wing (of which JFK was a part)
Contrary to your assertion, the American people had no reason to fear their countrymen dying in large numbers in Vietnam, and elected that congress out of their disgust with Watergate, not to end a war that we were by then only peripherally involved in. The only involvement American soldiers had by then was to be available (but not active unless provoked) to provide air support in repelling a South Vietnamese invasion. In other words, your reasoning is inconsistent with the time scale. In any case, America badly betrayed an ally.
As far as the US and South Vietnam postponing elections, that took place in 1956, over a decade before the Tet Offensive. By Tet, the people had realized what butchers the communists were, which is why they did not support the VC during that offensive. So once again, your timing is off. Yes, in 1956 the communists might have won an election (although given the butchery taking place in the North, that is doubtful, but the US took no chance). But in 1968 General Giaps attack plan in Tet (when they violated the truce) was for the people in “liberated” areas to rise up and join the VC. This did not happen at all. This is probably because the rural folk knew first hand of the relative brutality of the VC vs the South, and the urban folk had a fairly decent life which the VC threatened. In any case, the experiment took place and failed, PROVING that the communists were not popular. The fact that after Tet the VC was rendered insignificant also testifies to their lack of popularity.
As far as threats today with Vietnam, that is really not an appropriate way to evaluate the outcome, although to answer your speculation, I think that an isolated North Vietnam would not represent the sort of threat that North Korea does, simply because there were significant differences in the two movements. Ho Chi Minh, although a Paris trained communist, was a genuine nationalist. Kim Il Sung was a true Stalin puppet who spent WW-II in Russia. Kim Jong Il was born and raised in Russia.
But most importantly, remember that Vietnam was part of the containment doctrine. The biggest problem with the situation was that Johnson handled it extremely poorly. Nixon, on the other hand, won the war (and then lost everything because of Watergate). Had Kennedy not been assassinated, he might also have won the war. Johnson’s behavior (and psychological state) during the war was about as far from optimal as would be possible. By the time Nixon inherited the situation, it was too late on the domestic front, which was where the war was lost. You will not that this is not a partisan view… I think JFK would have done well (unless he relied too much on MacNamara’s advice).
In any case, the precedent of abandoning South Vietnam - refusing to enforce the truce we had negotiated - was a major betrayal that set a precedent for the rest of the cold war and into the war on terror. Saddam launched the first gulf war believing that the US was too cowardly (after Vietnam) to oppose him. A significant number of countries were subverted by the Russians (and to a much lesser extent, the Chinese) starting immediately after Vietnam, with the result that brutal communist governments started popping up in Africa, and powerful, foreign subsidized and trained communist revolutions appeared in Latin America. THAT was the price of the fecklessness of the US Congress, which contrary to your spin was not elected to end a war which was already militarily over for the US.
The reason that Vietnam is no longer a threat is due to the fall of the Soviet bloc. Until that time, it represented a threat to neighboring countries, and provided the USSR with a critical airfield and warm water port at Cam Rahn bay.
As far as polarization, it was Vietnam and Watergate where the mudslinging really started (although if you go farther back in history, much worse partisanship and mudslinging was the norm in US history for almost the entire history of the country). America was never close to going communist (and I do not assert that). But I do not exaggerate the extent of communist influence and the extreme left. With the fall of the USSR, we have ample evidence of the deep Soviet involvement in the peace movement, and there can be no doubt that the peace movement provided many of the activists that today constitute the most influential leftists today. Having attended a number of anti-war demonstrations and having known some of the leaders, I can attest first hand to the communist involvement. I saw it. I knew organizers who were members of CPUSA. That doesn’t mean that most democrats were or are extreme leftists, and nowhere above do I assert that the Democrats *were* communist.
However, you are wrong that, after Vietnam, there was a broad left/right consensus on the need to confront the communist threat around the world. That simply is not true. The Democrat party refused to do so (although Carter was shocked out of his complacency by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). If you examine the record of the Democrats, academia and the press in the Carter and Reagan years, you will see a strong and consistent bias towards not fighting the communists, towards not demonizing the communists (and in fact, quite the opposite - the Sandinistas, as one example, were not only lionized in the US press, they were also negotiated with by democrat members of congress). For Reagan to stop two Soviet-backed communist takeovers in our own back yard (El Salvador and Nicaragua), he had to fight consistently against a Democrat majority in congress that DID NOT WANT TO FIGHT THE COMMUNISTS. The infamous Boland amendments tried to criminalize ANY attempt to overthrow the communist Nicaraguan government, even as that government was increasing its ties to the USSR. This can only be interpreted as a democrat repudiation of the “broad left/right” consensus to confront communists.
The rise of the new left, a result of the dynamics that arose during Vietnam, in fact destroyed that broad consensus among democrat leaders and replaced it with a cynical attitude that was close to that of the communist view - that the US was imperialist, that any use of force was to support “oppressors” vs. the “oppressed”, that the Soviets were a peaceful force or at least not a threat, etc. Furthermore, leading Democrat intellectuals (such as Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser, Strobe Talbot), argued that the Soviet communist system was more efficient than our capitalist system and that they would soon surpass us in economic output.
Also, I remember very clearly watching the TV news (where most Americans got their news) consistently attack every conservative policy and consistently avoid describing the realities of communists and communism. I watched Democrats describe Reagan as a great threat to peace, and I watched many of today’s Democrats try to stop Reagan’s militiary buildup. This isn’t slander… it is historical reality.
One could see this at work even in the Clinton administration, where Hillary, a classic Vietnam-era new leftist, clearly supported the Palestinians (the “oppressed”) - a view that “changed” only when she needed Jewish votes to become NY Senator. One can see it at work in the outrageous charges made by the Democrats and the left wing papers like the New York Times that Bush went into Iraq out of selfish motives (such a charge is really a charge of mass murder for profit, and should be recognized as such).
Interestingly, Bill Clinton was not one of these new left Democrats. He tried to pull the party to the center, because he was a brilliant politician who knew that Americans were not interested in electing people whose main view of America as a world power was negative. He failed to do so, however, as is evident from today’s presidential candidate field, where the only person acting moderate on foreign affairs is Joseph Lieberman. Furthermore, his actions regarding terrorism and Iraq continued the perception of US weakness. For example, attacking the Iraq intelligence ministry with cruise missiles, but announcing that it was done so at night to avoid too many casualties, was an announcement that we were afraid to kill out enemies!
As far as intellectual acrobatics and obscuring the complexities, please explain which you are talking about. I gave facts. Do you deny them?
As far as the perceived weakness, After Vietnam, Carter was the epitome of this, forcing out our ally, the Shah, and then letting our people be held hostage for a year. Reagan added to the impression by pulling out of Beirut after the marine barracks bombing, although his attack on Tripoli should have been a clue that this was not normal behavior. But most people agreed that the “Vietnam Syndrome” didn’t end until Gulf War I. However, by leaving Saddam in place (as required by the UN), Bush 41 left the impression in the middle east that we would not depose leaders, which was perceived as weakness. Clinton’s failure to adequately deal with terrorism and Saddam added to the appearance of weakness.
Today, if we stay the course in Iraq, we will have vanquished that impression.
As far as the comment “lacks the smell of napalm” - I don’t know what you mean. I am not discussing battlefield tactics, but geopolitical events.
John,
My points about Congress and the postponement of elections were not referring to the same time periods.
The reference to postponed elections was parenthetical, sort of an afterthought. The communist insurgency may have been popular enough shortly after WWII to force the postponement of elections. I have no knowledge of how popular the communists were later on. You deny that there was much support for the communists, but your description fails to explain the resolve with which so many North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fought over such a long period of time. This had less to do with supplies or support from abroad and more to do with an essential conviction of the need to drive the foreign forces out of their country. I have no illusions about the brutality of their methods, but they were determined and they were many. You don’t have to call it popular if you don’t want to, but it was something that motivated many people. Look at Iraq as a comparison. There, hardly anyone was willing to risk his life to defend Saddam’s corrupt regime. The country simply caved in. For this reason, I think that a book like “Fire in the Lake”, for all its other limitations, is valuable. It helped me to understand the mindset of the Vietnamese, couched in their culture and history, in a way that all your facts do not.
We also have to discard the fantasy that we would have implemented a modern democratic system in Vietnam. In the end, our model would most likely have been corrupt. I’m not saying that they were equally bad, but the average Vietnamese did not see a choice between clean government on the one hand and totalitarian dictatorship on the other. Both sides were compromised. Those were the facts on the ground, and it is fruitless to speculate on what we could have accomplished if the facts had been different. Why am I more optimistic about our ability to foster democracy in the middle east … because of the big time difference?
As for Congress, my focus was on a much larger time period than yours. I suspect that the trend towards an antiwar Congress was well underway in 1968. I’d have to read up on the post-Watergate elections to see if I agree with you that there was some sort of radical shift to the left in 1974. (We certainly wanted to wash our hands of Nixon’s dirty dealings, didn’t we? I always thought we tried to put Jesus in the White House in 1976 to atone for Nixon. That was my first election, and I voted for Ford — since then for Democrats.) But to put the blame for abandoning Vietnam solely on the Democrats is really out in right field. The overwhelming majority of Americans wanted us to get out of Vietnam. Nixon had an entire first term to do things his way, but he had committed himself to getting us out of Vietnam. Back in those days there were a lot of moderate Republicans, too (oh how I miss them), who presumably supported a peace initiative. Nixon and Kissinger did their best to put a good face on it, but everyone knew that once we pulled out, we weren’t coming back. Dropping huge quantities of bombs on them without the willingness to commit our armed forces would be cowardly, and I doubt that it would have accomplished much. I can understand why this looks like a cop-out. It is not a proud moment in our history, but neither is the story of our engagement in Vietnam …
which brings us to the smell of napalm. Unless you are willing to acknowledge the extremes we went to intimidate the North, the untold civilian casualties, the questionable tactics — even today stories are beginning to surface about the systematic killing of women and children by our troops in contested areas — you certainly will not understand why Americans simply got fed up with what we were doing and said “enough”. That appears to be a blind spot in your history, just as you appear to be unable to understand why the Shah was so much more and less than “our ally”.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand and have sympathy for the reasons why we became involved in Vietnam. Buy me a couple of beers and I’ll even defend the initial engagement. But we have to be honest about our excesses and failings, if only to be able to avoid them the next time around. Everything that I’ve seen tells me that our military and political leaders have learned valuable lessons from that engagement. We may have overreacted on the side of caution immediately afterwards, but one of our strengths is that we keep fine-tuning things.
I looked at some of your other posts and really resent your vindictive calls of “traitor” simply because Democrats are standing up to Bush and Co. Reasonable minds can disagree over the necessity of the war in Iraq and over the way it was handled. Dissent is not unpatriotic. You can now find scathing critiques of Bush’s handling of Iraq and the war on terror coming from fairly respectable sources (e.g. the recent war college report). We need a debate on these things. Only history will tell whether we created more enemies by marching into Iraq than we created potential allies. I sincerely hope that we win the hearts and minds of Iraqis and other Muslims in the region. I have the greatest respect for our troops and for the brilliant military campaign, and Bremer really appears to be trying to get it right after a shaky start. I am hopeful.
To close, your history of Vietnam contains much fact and caused me to stop and think about issues that I have not dealt with for a long time. It would have been more enjoyable without the partisan vitriol, but I enjoyed my brief visit.
My reference is to the mid-50s which is when the elections were supposed to take place.
There are several issues here. First, one must consider the time frame. The VC lost popularity with time as a result of their brutal tactics. Furthermore, many of their forces were recruited with armed press-gangs from rural villages. When the country was partitioned, people who liked the communists had the opportunity to move north, and many did. Those who feared the communists (especially Christians) moved south. So by the time we had forces in the war, it was almost a decade after a voluntary ideological migration had taken place.
Second, the idea that the VC fought with great determination ignores the fact that communist asian armies in general fought with great determination (and had NCO’s or officers behind them to shoot those who fail, or in other cases made threats against their family). Certainly the VC had popularity in some areas, but not enough to capture the country by themselves. You assert that they were motivated by nationalism but really offer no proof other than their supposed fierce fighting over a long period of time.
But let’s take a closer look at that assumption… First, we know that the Viet Minh left behind a large number of sleepers who formed the cadre of the VC. In other words, these were doctrinaire communist rebels who had been part of the original nationalist rebellion against the French and japanese. Second, only three years after the US entered the conflict with our own forces, the VC was destroyed in the Tet offensive. That is not what I consider a long period of time. After that, the US fought NVA regulars. These were soldiers who had been indoctrinated since they were born by the Communists in the North, and who had families back north who would be punished if they failed to follow orders. So once again, the assertion of high motivation to drive out invaders doesn’t hold water.
The most important thing to understand about Vietnam, and I don’t think you are looking at it this way, was the total control of the local enemy (VC, NLF, NVA) by a neighboring, heavily armed and well supplied totalitarian regime. This was true from the start until the end. The fact that southern VC leaders were imprisoned after the war shows just how little of this effort was really an indigenous action of the people of the South. Likewise, as I pointed out before, the failure of the VC to gain any support during the 1968 Tet offensive showed that the VC simply did not have much popular support.
Put another way, if North Vietnam, armed by the Soviet bloc, was not there, there would have been no Vietnam War. There would have been an easily suppressed rebellion, followed by a kleptocratic regime (as happened in Korea) that probably would have evolved to a prosperous democracy as happened in Korea.
Yes, it’s called fear and lifelong indoctrination, plus of course individuals who had suffered as a result of actions of one side or the other who joined out of anger.
The was a very different situation. Saddam had no powerful backers. He was not nearly as effective as Ho Chi Min and Giap. He did not have as attractive a cause to motivate people. His military knew that it had no chance whatsoever, while the Vietnamese knew that they had a good chance. There were no jungles to hide troops in, no internationally decreed safe zones for his supply lines and for troop rest and training (i.e. no Laos and Cambodia). We embarked in an extremely successful campaign, through direct contact with commanding generals, to arrange pre-emptive surrender by the Iraqi army. We also applied air power the likes of which was never seen by Vietnamese, utterly destroying entire divisions (mostly Republican Guard) who had not surrendered.
If haven’t read that book. I have read some others, but it might be interesting to read that one. But the important issues are more at the level of who was fighting who, and who had what forces. More on that below.
This is one of the reasons that there was so little real support for the VC. Few expected a revolution to make things any better. Corruption was a way of life, and for the average person, was better than corruption plus loss of land (as happened in the North) plus constant ideological harrassment.
What are the facts on the ground? It would appear the we have significant disagreement about what was really going on. And as I said far above, I don’t think we would have immediately created a democratic paradise. On the other hand, history has shown that corrupt “right wing” dictatorships tend to convert over decades to democracies. Yet Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea are still totalitarian dictatorships. However, there is no question in my mind that the South Vietnamese would have avoided a tremendous amount of suffering had the communists not taken over. After all, you didn’t have millions taking enormous risks with the lives of their entire families to escape the pre-Communists regimes, but you sure did afterwards! I think that one problem the modern left has is its tendency to view right wing dictatorships as worst that communist dictatorships, when the former tend to work better and fade away while the latter (with the exception of the USSR and its dominos, which fell to a major strategic attack) do not. The average communist dictatorship killed 10% of its population after first taking power (the Vietnamese killed fewer, the Cambodians many more), while the right wing dictatorships killed far fewer.
No, I don’t think it was. 1968 was a pivotal year but at a different level. In 1968, most folks still supported the war, but the kids had started demonstrating in large numbers. The anti-war distortion of the news didn’t really start at a large level until 1968. But the antiwar movement was much larger by 1972 and then 1974. Between 1968 and 1972 a constant drum beat of bad news (even as we were winning) came from Vietnam. Furthermore, Nixon attacked Cambodia (as was necessary to interdict supply lines) and many Americans were very alarmed at this (why, I don’t know). The peak troop levels occurred during that time.
Once again, let me remind you that Nixon did exactly what he promised. He got Americans out of Vietnam and ended the draft! He set up a situation where the only future American involvement required to hold Vietnam would be military aid and the occasional air campaign (not many, either). It is important to look at tghe sequence of events:
1968 Tet Offensive, Nixon Elected
June 1972 - Watergate is first revealed.
August 1972 - Last U.S. combat troops leave Vietnam.
December 1972 - Nixon order massive attacks against North Vietnam and mines HaiPhong Harbor
January 1973 - Truce Agreement is signed. Major combat ceases, although NVA activity continues to some extent in violation of the true. American POWs are repatriated shorly thereafter/ Use end the draft.
June 1973 - Congress passes the Case-Church Amendment, prohibiting further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia!
Feb 1974 - North Vietnam captures Phuoc Loc Province with no U.S. military response (now prohibited by congress).
March 1975 - North Vietnam invades the south in strenght.
April 1975 - Cambodia falls to Pol Pot, South Vietnam falls to the North
Now, if you look at this, you see that Nixon and Kissinger set everything up for a low cost victory (once they cleaned things up a bit), but in June 1973, the Congress betrayed the South. By that time, the American public already had what it wanted - we were out of Vietnam, we had no draft, out soldiers were no longer in danger!
Now, regarding assigning blame… since you dislike my “vitriol”. First, let me comment that I have deep feelings on this as a Vietnam Veteran and a citizen who watched the situation. I can’t tell you how horrible I felt when I saw the video of the US Embassy being evacuated in Saigon, with the thousands of Vietnamese trying to get on the last helicopters. So yes, I throw blame around, but it is factually based. If you find it uncomfortable that it lands mostly (see below) on the Democrats, that’s unfortunate, but not inappropriate.
The major Republican failure was Nixon’s paranoia, which ultimately led to Watergate. Without Watergate and its gradual erosion of Nixon’s political power, Congress would not probably not been able to take actions which prohibited the US from helping the Vietnamese. Nixon would have stayed in office and North Vietnam would have been stymied. And if you think this is purely partisan, as I mentioned before, I suspect Kennedy might have won the war way back in the ’60s if he had lived.
But the Congress was totally conrolled by Democrats. And it was the Congress which took the actions to not get our soldiers out of Vietnam, but to absolutely prevent our ability to help them in any way! And remember, this took place after we had reduced the cost to the US (in lives, draft, etc) to negligible.
The biggest villains in Vietnam were Johnson and the US Congress. Nixon has an ambivalent position, since his actions in Vietnam led to a winning strategy, but his actions around Watergate led to the loss of political power which enabled the Congress to lose the war.
Cowardly is not an interesting issue. Results are. The US demonstrated its ability to repell a massive North Vietnamese invasion using only American air p ower and Vietnamese ground forces and air power in repelling the “Eastertide Offensive” in 1972. As far as a peace initiative, the leading republican in that area was Nixon! And, of course, there is a question about what a “peace initiative” is. There have been many peace initiatives offered over the years that are almost always just disguised surrenders by the good guys. To me, peace is not the most important thing in the world, but rather peace with victory over those who threaten us. That was what Nixon sold, and what Nixon delivered, although at the time nobody (including myself) believed him because the level of anti-government cynicism was unbelievably high by then!
The vietnam war was bloody, but I don’t think the US was particulary extreme in its actions. We were far less hard on civilians in the Viet Nam War than we were in World War II, and yet everyone remembers that as the Last Great War! So what “extremes” are you talking about? Our military was constantly complaining (especially under Johnson) that we were so afraid of civilian casualties that we couldn’t hit critical targets. Even Nixon placed the irrigation system of North Vietnam off limits, even though a few days of attacks on that would have paralyzed the north and quickly won the war.
And we did not ever engage in the systematic killing of women and children. I don’t know where you got that. Certainly in any war there are attacks that take place where civilians live, but the US did not have a policy of “systematic killing” of civilians (except for NLF officials in Project Phoenix, of course, who were enemy agents). And that is one of the problems I have with modern history - the idea that we intentionally killed huge numbers of civilians. It was a lie when the anti-war people said it, and it is still a lie. We had the occasional atrocity (as always happens) but unilke the enemy we had ROE’s that, as much as possible, protected civilians. And when an especially bad case happened, we prosecuted. Lt. William Calley, who led the Mei Lai massacre, was turned in by other soldiers, and served prison time. I can remember endless wailing about what would have not have been reported in World War II, and yet virtually no coverage whatsoever explaining the circumstances that made it so hard not to kill civilians and virtually no coverage of the intentional (and now well documented) campaign by the VC. I remember constantly being hectored about how evil we were, while I knew that the VC/NVA were killing civilians as a matter of high policy, and targeting individuals and their entire families as part of a major pattern of a Giap-authorized terror campagin. I hope you understand the anger I feel when the US is pilloried when its opponent was in an entirely different league of viciousness! I felt the anger then, and I still feel it. It is so terribly unfair to our leaders and our soldiers.
Keep in mind, as you envision the pictures of burning Vietnamese villages or the famous little girl running from napalm, that the VC/NVA violated the laws of war consistently by hiding behind civilians. A major challenge in Vietnam was sorting out the good guys from the bad guys. And of course, civilians got killed in this process, as they did when American troops were attacked from civilian villages.Also remember that reporters and cameramen could go where they wanted in Vietnam with our forces, but were not welcome with the VC. Naturally that led to horrific images (war is hell on civilians - ALL war except perhaps the latest Iraq war), all of which seemed to be caused by us. To this day, if you read a book or see a documentary, you are mostly going to see our forces doing the killing and bombing, and to this day that will leave you with an inappropriate emotional sense of the war if you aren’t careful!
When people repeatedly lie while criticizing our country when it is involved in a major war (Iraq is just one theater), and those lies help our enemy, an enemy which has to rely on painting us as bad guys in order to recruit, then those people are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and do so in a manner that is indeed wrong. Traitor? Not if you tell the truth. And many Democrats tell the truth. It’s not like the Democrat party is a party of traitors! But there have been too many lies spread about, too much revisionist history, that helps only the person telling the lie and the people who want to kill our citizens. And that is what I am talking about.
Dissent is indeed not unpatriotic. There are many reasons that one can disagree with the Iraq War, and there are many conservatives who disagree with it also. And that disagreement doesn’t get my condemnation (even if I disagree with it). I certainly listen to it. But when Democrat politicians accuse Bush of waging war to help “his friends in Haliburton,” they are, on the one had helping the Arabs who are too willing to believe such things, and at the same time they are accusing Bush of a horrendous crime, a crime that in itself is traitorous. In other words, they are accusing Bush of being a traitor. So I think what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander! Likewise, when they twist the history of the pre-war period, and accuse Bush (and they do this continuously) of having claimed “imminent danger from WMDs” as his casus belli, they are lying. There are many more cases. And that is why I made that post (which, btw, is I believe the only one which raises the rhetoric to that level).
So my question is: what happened to the honorable Democrats? Is Joseph Lieberman the only one left at a high level?
Whether we need to have a debate right now about all the details of how we got into Iraq was is not, to me, a given. The war is still happening. There is still fighting in Iraq and a huge terrorist threat. I think the best debate would be one about what to do next. But that is not what I am hearing from the Democrat presidential candidates. Their main schtick is to blame Bush, enlisting lies in the process. Furthermore, their criticisms are remarkably idiotic - they are an insult to the American people - because they criticise Bush for carrying out politicies that they advocated when defending Clinton just a few years before! Unilaterialism? The UN did NOT give any authority to invade Kosovo! Attacking Iraq - Clinton did it frequently, often with timing that made it hard to come to any conclusion other than it was for domestic political purposes. Invading Iraq - many of those same people, as representatives and Senators, voted to give Bush the authority.
I could go on and on, but it would get tiring.
But consider this observation: the Democratic party today is engaged in an attack on Bush based on lies - lies that are easily fact checked. Why is this so? Why don’t they tell us how they would make the country safer from terrorism? I haven’t heard any positive suggestions at all. The party is one of “anti” rather than one with ideas.
Finally, let me comment that I take this stuff extremely seriously. I wrote the Vietnam article because I fear it that the same domestic forces, already deeply embedded in the establishment (which they weren’t during most of Vietnam), will cause us to back out of conflicts that need to be fought, and will lead us away from the path we need to defeat the most dangerous threat in a very long time.
I call them as I see them. I did not want to leave out the strong adjectives (although I think “partisan vitriol” is too strong. I have been exposed many times to Real Partisan Vitriol (TM) as a conservative, and its a hell of a lot worse than anything I said!). Partisan Vitrol is calling people like me greedy and uncaring; It is accusing us of being in favor of oppressing people; it is labelling conservatives as stupid; and it is extremely common.
I felt it was important to label a betrayal as a betrayal, and say who actually did it. When I bring up the influence of communists, of leftist propaganda, and of a biased media, it is because those forces are still very active (although communism is no longer “cool” - but many of its damaging ideas are active - especially its division of the world into oppressors and oppressed). When I show the extreme bias of the reporting, it is because so much is happening today. Fortunately there are alternative outlets, including the internet, so that those who care can fact check what they hear. For example, I read a number of Iraqi and soldier blogs to get ground truth from Iraq. That wasn’t possible in Vietnam!
John, thanks for the measured reply.
Well, you’ve given me food for thought for further reading. I’ve read a lot about war and history in other time periods. I have no illusions about what happens in war. It is a big risk to apply our current values and judgments to times past. Here are some other suggested articles that you might want to check out. Please take them in the spirit in which they were intended, not as someone lecturing us on our past but someone trying to understand events that unfolded. I consider atrocities to be almost inevitable in war. They should be punished by the military where appropriate, but it would be hypocritical of a civilian to condemn as a class the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. We owe them our respect because they were fighting in our name, almost all of them served their country honorably, and we are all responsible for their actions.
“The Vietnam debacle — The revisionists who believe that the war was just — and winnable — are rewriting a history they don’t understand.” By Stanly Karnow
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/04/27/revisionists/
Here’s a brief quote that addresses one of our debating points:
“Yet Ho was never, as the current crop of revisionists insists, a pawn of communist masters. In August 1945, when Ho declared independence, he read the American Declaration of Independence in front of the Hanoi opera house. Earlier, when he formed a provisional government in the jungle in 1950, he asked for recognition from Marshal Tito — whose nonaligned stance in Yugoslavia made him Stalin’s enemy No. 1. This was not the action of a man controlled by Moscow. As for China, its relationship with Vietnam could best be described as one of mutual hatred. The notion that the North Vietnamese communists ever advanced a Chinese agenda is preposterous.”
As for systematic abuses in the military here are a couple of articles:
“Is it time for a Vietnam truth commission?” By Bruce Shapiro
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/05/02/kerrey/
Some excerpts (that are out of order):
“And while the Pentagon’s own post-Vietnam syndrome involves blaming the press for losing the war, the fact is that until very late — indeed, through the very period in which Kerrey’s Raiders landed in that village — the press was fully complicit in covering up American attacks on Vietnamese civilians. Indeed, it took Seymour Hersh’s My Lai exposé, months after Thanh Phong, before correspondents began to admit that the systematic and indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians by American troops was old news.”
“Until My Lai, most American reporters in Vietnam simply had not deemed human-rights atrocities newsworthy. Frank McCullough of Time magazine, for instance, covered the war for four years without ever reporting on atrocities. But after My Lai broke, he recalled seeing Viet Cong prisoners pushed from airplanes by American troops, shot with their hands tied behind their backs and devoured by Dobermans unleashed by interrogators. Many other reporters told similar stories: It was as if the floodgates had opened, as if the press suddenly had official sanction to report a previously suppressed government secret.
The Vietnam correspondent Neil Sheehan — to whom Daniel Ellsberg entrusted the Pentagon Papers — eventually described the thinking of American reporters in those years. It bears listening to now, because Kerrey’s high-profile confession may have an impact similar to My Lai in released bottled-up atrocity stories.
Sheehan recalled that in 1966, three years prior to the events in Thanh Phong and My Lai, he personally witnessed American troops wipe out five fishing villages, killing as many as 600 Vietnamese civilians. The raids “seemed unnecessarily brutal,” but “it did not occur to me that I had discovered a possible war crime.” He went on: “I had never read the laws governing the conduct of war, though I had watched the war for three years in Vietnam and written about it for five … The Army field manual says it is illegal to attack hospitals. We routinely bombed and shelled them … looking back, one realizes the war crimes issue was always present.”
Finally, and this is what I think I recall reading about recently:
The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) investigative report on Tiger Force atrocities
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE
As for our current campaign in Iraq, and to assuage concerns that Salon.com is hopelessly prejudiced on matters military, try:
“Iraq is not Vietnam” By Edward W. Lempinen
http://archive.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/09/22/iraq_vietnam/index.html
I’ve got to get back to work. Happy trails.
OK, one last post. There is a fascinating debate going on right now at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093620/entry/2093641/
about Iraq among a group of so-called liberal hawks. Tom Friedman and Paul Berman, in particular, come very close to expressing my views on Iraq. To be honest, I never made up my mind about the war, but believe that we now must see things through. Some of the liberal hawks are waivering, but Friedman and Berman are sticking to their positions. The general mood is that the next few months are critical to the success of the effort. I agree. There is even a brief comparison to Vietnam in today’s post, a sort of utilitarian reflection.
The Karnow article is really pretty meaningless. Other than throwing a few insults (”lightweight neocons”), it really distorts the history of the period.
First he raises a strawman - that Ho Chi Minh was controlled by Moscow. But I never asserted this - the issue wasn’t who controlled him (nobody), it was his strong alliance. That the USSR did indeed use Cam Rahn Bay and that Vietnam did indeed invade Cambodia and Laos shows that Vietnam was strategic in the cold war. It was only the rivalry between the USSR and China (aided by Kissinger’s work) that destroyed that expansionism, although it required a Chinese invasion of North Vietnam to do it!
He tries to debunk the domino theory, but is unsuccessful (of course, the fact that he doesn’t add any facts is important). Three countries fell to the communist bloc. That Thailand didn’t is probably because it built up its resistance to Communist takeover during the long time fighting in Vietnam, and because the people there saw the negative results. But many other countries fell during the immediate post-war years - just not in SE Asia. There is no doubt that the failure of America to back up an ally, even after losing 50,000 men and winning the military victory, was a powerful factor in the calculations of leaders and revolutionaries throughout the world.
He is also highly misleading (not surprising):
Americans had won the war BEFORE the measures were taken to prevent us from holding on to victory. He completely ignores this and the fact that by 1975 our combat troops were long gone, having left Vietnam years before as a result of Nixon’s “Vietnamization”. What I experienced, as did many others, was a deep shame that our country was so untrustworthy, and also a deep anger towards the left - at least those who seemed to always be against any American cause in the world (which is still most of them as far as I can tell).
So my view of Karnow’s piece is that it is rather unclever disinformation - propaganda to put it bluntly.
As for Shapiro’s piece, all it really does is rehash the Kerrey episode. Since we have all agreed that atrocities do occur in war, it really adds nothing to the issue at all. Millions of Americans fought in Vietnam. In spite of that, we have heard only a small number of war atrocities mentioned, and many of them involved execution of enemy POWs - enemy POWs who, in almost every case, were fighting without uniforms and thus, by the the law of war, could be summarily executed. Given the time since the end of the war, it is hard to swallow Shapiro’s implied theory that there are lots more atrocities but nobody is talking. Furthermore, the comment that “we routinely bombed and shelled [hospitals]” is simply a lie! It would be interesting to find out what hospitals he is referring to!
And like so many of these commentators, he engages in the typical pro-communist bias (I can hardly describe it otherwise):
You would think, in such a long list, he could at least mention the much more numerous communist atrocities that took place during the periods he mentioned, including those in Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, and Africa. But he doesn’t. And it is this kind of one-sided reporting that so much angers those of us on the right. It is no surprise that Americans lost their will to fight, when this type of reporting was the norm starting around 1968 and continuing through the present! His description of this war is biased in the same way that a discussion of the Iraq war would be if nobody ever mentioned that Saddam was a bloodthirsty tyrant who killed hundreds of thousands!
When you hear conservatives talk about media bias, consider that we have seen this total lack of balance as the norm starting during the Vietnam War. And here is another viewpoint abou Sheehan and his lack of reliability.
The third article is interesting because it tries to bring some sense to the left, which has gone totally looney about Iraq. But again, its treatment of Vietnam is pathetic:
In one sentence, we have a description that makes us look like total bad guys, and ignores context. First, as we know, there was not a popular uprising in the South - there was a subversion controlled completely by the North. Second, because of the exchange of populations which had taken place in the ’50s, the pro-communists were largely already in the North. Third, one would gather that somehow if it wasn’t for us, there would be a democratic government in Vietnam - otherwise why say “impose a non-democratic government in its place?” In what’s place? In place of a totalitarian government that was willing to sacrifice millions of its own people in order to conquer the whole country? Your first article quoted Giap who implied he would fight - i.e. throw away generations of his people - in order to win his conquest, which would involve “imposing a non-democratic government” - which in fact is exactly what happened!
So you have provided some good examples of the sort of left-wing biased reporting which, when it became mainstream as opposed to just in left wing journals, ultimately led to the rise of talk radio and FOX News! Now we can enjoy our own bias on our small part of the electromagnetic spectrum!
Regarding the libhawks and Iraq… even though one of the authors shows the typical liberal disdain for Bush and Neocons, overall the entire groups sounds exactly like the Neocons currently so despised! The one which discussed “bursting the Terrorism bubble” is closest to my own view, although he said it much better than I. That is *exactly* what Iraq was about. It’s really that simple - burst the myth, destroy an anti-american hero, and at the same time remove a provably dangerous regime. The WMD argument, of course, remains totally valid - the fact that we didn’t find them doesn’t affect the reasoning because we had every reason to expect to find them, and we may yet.
Interestingly, as they mention that Iraq is no Vietnam, they forget to compare it to the Balkans. There we fought a war without UN approval, but the Democrats were all in favor of it because a Democrat President was in power. Likewise, they approved of his attacks on Saddam, only to turn around and attack Bush for finishing the job.
These guys ask… how long will our troops be in Iraq?
Well, Clinton promised us that our troops would be in the Balkans for 1 year. It has been more like 8 years now! Again, this little “oops” goes unmentioned by the left.
So am I being partisan? Yes, I am. Because unfortunately the country has become extremely partisan, as shown by the selective use of facts by the Democrats and especially the more leftish ones.
Personally, I was opposed to the Balkan operation. Not being a Neocon, I do not consider humanitarian reasons in themselves to be a strong case for war. Not that we shouldn’t help when we can and it doesn’t hurt our national security, but the Balkan operation was really about bailing out the Europeans (most of the atrocities happened before we got involved) - the same Europeans who condemn us for not getting UN approval in Iraq! The hypocrisy is deafening!
And the “vitriol” you detected is a reflection of the deep anger I have felt since the betrayal of Vietnam. Many people of my generation share that anger.
We’re never going to agree on much about Vietnam. You repeatedly use epithets to denigrate the left. Basically, it is a form of ad hominem attack and discourages principled debate. The equivalent coming from my side of the political spectrum would be laughable for being so clichee.
In your discussion of the doctrine of containment way up top you pretty clearly link North Vietnam with the Soviet quest for dominance, but you deny it in the preceeding post. I think a pretty strong case can be made that Vietnam does not fit into the classic scenario that say, Eastern Europe or even Afghanistan did, and that because of Ho’s independent nationalist character, the rivalry between the USSR and China and other factors, the Domino Theory or Containment Doctrine needs to be qualified with respect to Vietnam and is not as convincing a justification for an all-out war. (Also, we must take a fair bit of credit for so weakening Vietnam’s neighbors with our own military campaign that they were vulnerable to invasion.)
I think your attack on the second quote is a bit over the top. The sentence truncates the last years of the Vietnam war but doesn’t really imply that he doesn’t know when the troops were pulled out — it doesn’t strike me as misleading. I can remember the day it was announced that the troops were being pulled out: in my southern middle-class neighborhood, people all up and down the street stood in their driveways and banged pots and pans and honked their car horns.
Again, you then engage in epithets to denigrate the writer as a propagandist.
As for the “Kerry” article, my point was and is, until you acknowledge the extremes we went to (and the price we paid) to try to dominate North Vietnam you cannot understand why the war became so unpopular, resulting in the shifts in Congress and the overwhelming pressure to pull out. You prefer a “Dolchstoss” argument that is self-destructive and, frankly, dangerous. Read up on the fate of the Weimar Republic.
Calling the discussion of truth commissions communist propaganda is again way over the top. Correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve not reread the article in a while, but the guy isn’t advocating re-opening investigations for war crimes but rather for providing traumatized soldiers a chance to get things off their chests in a Truth Commission similar to the one in South Africa. He wasn’t listing instances of atrocities but rather Truth Commissions. If the Russians and Chinese had made any real effort to deal with their bloody pasts I suppose they would have been on the list, too. Crying “commie” on that statement is extreme. (As an aside, sometimes when I talk to Germans about the holocaust, they throw out the atrocities of the Russians and the Chinese as examples that somehow reduce their country’s culpability for the holocaust. I always point out that it surprises me that a people that, at least in earlier times, considered itself to be highly superior to such countries would find comfort in being included as equals on such a list.)
As for the third article and the fourth quote you cited, again your use of “looney left” keeps things to the lowest common denominator. Jeez, that quote seems so harmless. You don’t like the “popular uprising” term, but I’ve already stated why I don’t accept your characterization of the situation either. On the one hand you have a very dedicated group of people willing to fight for generations to get rid of us and on the other — our ally’s — side, a group that seems to lack any conviction. The guy was just trying to make a case why Iraq is different. Give him a break.
The swipe at the liberal hawks is gratuitous. They’ve been around a lot longer than the neo-cons and their domestic agenda is light years from that of the neocons. What they share is a belief in exporting democracy, aggressively if needbe.
I’m going to move on to other pastures after this post. It is saddening to me to see how polarized my country has become. The right has to bear equal blame for what happened. What I find particularly bothersome in the tone of your rhetoric is the fact that the entire Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House are all controlled by Republicans, and the media ownership has become very concentrated and certainly can not be accused of being controlled by liberals, and yet you engage in name calling as if you were in the minority and being oppressed by the Democrats. It is petty John and it is extreme and it overlooks the fact that since Truman a concerted effort was made by Democrats and Republicans alike to contain communism around the world. You can go on licking your wounds over perceived slights from the past, but I don’t think you’re doing our country any favors by slandering people who are left of center. The Democrats and the Republicans each have their own share of kooks at the extremes, but those folks don’t have anything to say. We have a two party system, and it’s just a natural consequence that the Democrats will always have a slightly red patina and the Republicans a slightly brown one. That doesn’t make me a communist any more than it makes you a nazi.
Farewell
I told you that I was angry about Vietnam, but I didn’t use epithets… I used negative adjectives - pejoratives if you like, wherer I strongly believe they are correct. It would indeed be cliche (in other words, so normal as to be boring, coming from the left, which was one of my points in the argument). Walk a day in my shoes and you will be insulted at least once or twice by the left if you just listen to the news!
By the way, from your comments it would appear to me that any characterization of a piece of writing other than neutral or favorable is somehow supposed to be left out of a discussion. You take my characterizations, which I believe to be accurate, and call them “epithets”. Does this mean that it conservatives are not allowed to say what they think and observe? That is just way too touchy as far as I am concerned. If I see something that is wrong, and that serves as propaganda, I see no reason why I cannot label it as such.. You are essentially telling me that I cannot make any value judgements or give my evaluation of rhetorical tactics, and yet those judgements are an important PART of the debate! The reason is that rhetoric was the most important weapon of the North Vietnamese. In the old days, we couldn’t call a communist a communist, or else be considered part of the tin foil hat crowd or someone afraid that the commies were poisoning our water. Now I can’t call misleading leftist writing propaganda, when it meets all the critera for same. Today, it is still taboo for conservatives to say almost anything that implies a value judgement, even though the outlets of the left do it all the time. Perhaps they don’t listen critically to themselves.
Please understand that one reason I use the terminology is to make a point that this IS misleading, that it is TYPICAL of what the right has to endure a lot, and that it was CRITICAL to the political outcome of the war. If you choose to not debate in this way, it is unfortunate, because this has been an interesting debate and you have come up with some interesting articles.
It is unfortunately that you are so offended by blunt assertions, but I am not a diplomat. Believe me, if I wanted to be insulting, I could be. I am trying to avoid any degree of ad hominem, but you seem to be taking my comments very personally, which I regret.
I do indeed link North Vietnam with the Soviet quest for dominance. Why else would the USSR have given such vast amounts of military hardware to the North. But I have never claimed that Ho Chi Minh was a puppet, any more than Mao was a puppet. It is not necessary to the containment argument to prove that they are puppets, only allies. The idea of containing the USSR was about containing the size of its zone of control and, importantly, its zone of influence and number of allies. And that is what Vietnam was about. No president, from Eisenhower thru Ford, thought any differently as far as I know.
See above as to that modification. There are lots of different cases. Eastern Europe was a special case - we GAVE it to the Russians. Afghanistan was a clear invasion. But the Domino Theory is just a name given to one aspect of the containment doctrine. Even if there had not been dominoes, and there certainly were, preserving one country from communism was justifiable. As far as our military activities making the other countries vulnerable to invasion, I just don’t see how you can say that! Our activities were to PREVENT the invasion by the ARVN! How that made them more vulnerable is a mystery I’d like you to explain. Cambodia fell to a Chinese supported insurgency, not an invasion. Laos was invaded by the North early in the game, and never invaded by us. As far as all out war, we never waged all out war. That was our biggest mistake and the reason yours truly actually went to some anti-war demonstrations. The closest we came was the Christmas bombings, which yielded an immediate victory. If we had waged all out war, the VC and NVA would not have had many supplies, because we would have interdicted the supply lines (and destroyed Haiphong argor). They wouldn’t have had any food as we would have destroyed the dike system that the North used to control its water. We never even came close to al out war!
I’m sorry, but his truncation leads one to believe that the rest of the characterization lasted until the end. That is just horribly wrong. Remember, the fall came very long after the announcement you discuss. Furthermore, for such a complex subject, the area he choses to compress into oversimplicity is just coincidentally the one that significantly destroys his thesis! Maybe I am more sensitive than you, because I am so unhappy with the poor accounts given of the Vietnam war - especially its last 5 years (which is the area he compresses out of existence).
Yes, I call the writer a propagandist, because he is writing one-sided stuff. Why does that upset you so much? To me it looks like propaganda, and I have been studying leftist propaganda for a long time (I used to be a regular listener to Radio Moscow and Radio Havana). Call me a propagandist if you wish. To me, propaganda is information which is intentionally one sided and is used to persuade. Maybe I use too strong a term, but I don’t know a better term for it.
Yes, I prefer a Dolchstoss argument because I believe it is true. I don’t know why you consider it self destructive… if it is true, it is true. I am well aware of the Weimar Republic, which is neither here nor there! I don’t “prefer” a Dolchstoss argument out of some petty reason. I use that argument because I believe it to be true, and have supported it with substantial facts. There is no question but what the US stabbed South Vietnam in the back - none whatsoever - and that is how it was perceived by the rest of the world. Even the argument between you and me has been mostly about whether it was done so as the will of the American people or by a leftist faction thereof. Beyond that, there is no question that this was done by a congress which had become dominated by anti-war politicians. And there is also no question that many were elected when the American people were still gravely afraid that their sons would be dying in Vietnam and yet the actions were taken after that threat was gone. And that is my problem with the whole thing!
And frankly, it is clear to me that a major reason the war became unpopular was because of a constant barrage of biased news reports and because the people lost their trust of government. Johnson lied about Vietnam, and Nixon told the truth about his objectives but lied about specific actions (invasion of Cambodia). and was so sneaky otherwise and so hated by the press that nobody believed him. I remember clearly how the war was portrayed on TV. After Tet, it was pretty much showed as dead Americans, dead Vietnamese civilians, and constant commentary about how we could not win. I also remember that the anti-war demonstrations vanished into smoke after the possibility that the demonstrators could get drafted and sent to Vietnam went away. So yes, the public shifted against the war, but the war shifted also, and that latter part was poorly reported. By the end of US combat presence, the situation was relatively stable. Remember, the South fell to an invasion. The American people were not against stopping invasions, they were against propping up “democractic governments” that everyone knew were not against a “popular uprising” that only existed on television!
Why you say my argument is dangerous is beyond me. We are talking events of 30 years ago. The only fact relevant to today is that many of the more extreme leftists have become part of the establishment, taking over almost all universities, most of the press, many NGOs and many philanthropic foundations, not to mention the soul of the Democratic party (note, by the way, that as much as I despise Clinton, I do NOT include him in that list - Clinton was not one of these people and in fact did not take the country very far left except on environmental issues). But we are not really arguing about today’s leftists (except when they put out falsehoods, which I label propaganda, which offends you), we are talking about what happened in Vietnam. And as far as I am concerned, the Congress betrayed South Vietnam. America betrayed South Vietnam. And that was shameful. And the importance of that today is to recognize when similar things may happen again. That means that those of us on the write are going to be debating propaganda. Unlike the ’70s, we now have outlets where our views can be heard… conservative talk radio (not the most intellectual area, but important), FOX news, and the internet - especially blogs.
Reading the entire article, I didn’t feel the emphasis on truth commissions. Perhaps the fact the the truth commissions only happened where they every one of those is a favorite leftist cause should give pause. The fact that he can throw off such a list, and yet not list the many others is simply wrong. Now maybe he doesn’t believe that the Russians engaged in atrocities, but many are well documented. A friend of mine’s father was one of the few Polish officers to survive Stalins Katyn forest massacre, where the entire Polish officer corps was executed by the Soviets. I would think that might be worth listing. Or how about the many communist atrocities in ‘Nam? So shouldn’t he perhaps be mentioning (say, when he discusses the British Bloody Sunday investigation) the atrociies of the IRA? I brought that particular issue up more to illustrate how this sort of reporting ends up mentioning all sorts of things, but never atrocities of the left! Also, since we are on the subject, do you remember the behavior of the left during the Cambodia slaughter? Do you remember how Joan Baez was drummed out of the anti-war movement because she had the temerity to comment that the communists appeared to be engaging in atrocities?
Or perhaps I am being to hard on him, using him as a scapegoat for those on the left who never mention atrocities except those that are felt to be “right wing” in some way.
You misread my comment. I did not characterize the author as “looney left.” Quite the opposite… I said he was trying to bring some sense to the left, which has gone looney over Iraq (and even more so over Bush). There are others on the left trying the same thing, because they realize that. For example, Hillary Clinton is being very careful not to move with the current leftist mania. Now, I can’t stand Hillary, but she recognizes that the left has gone off the edge, and is personally staying back from it. So is Joe Lieberman.
Sorry, but I didn’t swipe at the liberal hawks. I pointed out that they are like neocons, and in most areas I agree with neocons. That is hardly a swipe. Furthermore, many of the neocons used to be libhawks! This is merely an observation, and in fact was meant to be a compliment! Chill out a bit, please!
I’m sorry, but I am aware of no law of nature that says that blame has to be apportioned in any particular way! I do not believe the right has to bear equal blame for what happened. In fact, there hardly was a “right” in government until Reagan. Nixon, no conservative at all, certainly has to share blame for his misbehavior, but he has to share credit for doing what Johnson (who, btw, was not a leftist) was unable to do!
I can see how you might believe this, as most on the left do, but let’s be more precise. The Congress has a razor thin republican majority, which means it is not controlled by conservatives. The Supreme Court is certainly not to the right - on most issues the right cares about it’s rulings are usually disliked. The White House is indeed controlled by a conservative. As far as name calling, I don’t think the type of rhetoric should be associated with ones position in the relative power structure. Why should the “oppressed” get to call names while others cannot?
As far as the current polarization, I believe that it is a direct result of the takeover of the Democratic party and many organs of society by the hard left in the ’70s, and the resulting backlash. Many people are angry conservatives who used to vote Democrat in the 70s. In a number of areas, the left went too far - taking truly noble causes such as Civil Rights and turning them into the opposite of what they are supposed to be (i.e. racial set-asides, quotas, etc); the left used extreme vitriol against conservative politicians - things which make everything in this thread seem extremely tame and civilized; the media started telling us nothing but politically correct stories; we were constantly lectured about how bad we were, if we were white or male or whatever. This particular frenzy by the left angered a whole lot of good people. And it was that behavior by the left (and of course, I am not talking everyone on the left) which created the market filled by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk show hosts, and by FOX news. Since you are about to assert that the media is not controlled by liberals, let me point out that every attempt to start a left wing talk radio show has failed. The reason: people on the left already have their views represented in many outlets. And yet right wing talk radio was a phenomenal success. Likewise, when FOX appeared, and people realized it was not going to feed them nothing but PC stories, it rapidly became the number one cable news outlet. These two things alone are strong evidence that the media was serving the left but not the right. If you would like a deeply detailed list of this stuff, read Ann Coulter’s “Slander.” (NOTE: do NOT read her next book, “Treason” because she goes over the edge on that, by far).
The media ownership trope is one conservatives get thrown all the time. The fact is that the only influence media ownership has, for the most part, is when a story might come up that would criticise the owner. Just because rich capitalists own ABC or CBS or whatever doesn’t mean that capitalist propaganda issues forth from there. As Bernie Goldberg (a liberal now blacklisted in the media world) so courageously pointed out in his book, the major decision makers in the news business are leftish and in polls are 85% leftish. This is not some Conservative fantasy - it is reality - and it is one I have watched and fact-checked over the years. With the internet, the lefties in the media (especially the New York Times) are having a harder time of it, because there are fact checkers who cause their inaccuracies or biases to be rapidly and widely distributed.
I’m sorry that you fail to understand my point, and are so shocked that I actually make value judgements! Is it petty to be upset that the US, after spending 50,000 lives, turned tail on an ally and not only ran away but also stabbed them ni the back? No, I don’t think so. You mention Truman, and yet neglect the fact that I specifically dated when I think the left took over the Democrat party. That treatment clealy means that I did not include Truman in the mix! And furthermore, I mentioned that I thought Kennedy might have succeeded where Johnson failed. And yet you seem to think I am engaged in only Democrat bashing! And then you say I am slandering! That is a very strong term. Actually, when I see what I perceive as bias, I call it that way. And you sent me a bunch of biased articles that appear in journals (especially Salon) that are strongly left leaning, and then get upset when I pick them apart.
If you bother to read this at all, please take home with you the knowledge that what I wrote is no more “slanderous” than what I hear from the mainstream media, day in and day out. Except normally, it is conservatives who are slandered. And I’ll leave you with a challenge:
Listen to the news on the major networks for a few weeks. Count how many times a person or group is characterized as “right wing” vs how many times one is characterized as “left wing.” Maybe then you will start to see what i am talking about.
The French Left
Someone who knows more about French history than I do could probably comment more profitably, but… Isn’t it possible that the reason France leans so far to the left is because they’ve gotten beaten badly at least three times in…
In regard to my earlier message re Gen. Giap. This information came from either “Treason” or “Useful Idiots”. I believe it was the former but am not certain. I have since sent both books on to others to read so am unable to verify which book contained the information. Sorry I cannot be more specific.
I might also state that one aim of the Communist Party, USA was to infiltrate Higher Education, the Media and Entertainment Industries of this country. It sure looks like they have now succeeded.
They sure did. Unfortunately the way the draft was run during the Vietnam War helped with that. Those who didn’t want to serve, and were most likely to be leftist, were the ones who stayed in school (for the deferment) and ended up in influential positions.
Thanks for the info.