Michael Griffith

9 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

Mike, did you even look at the evidence Miller and Laderman provided? They spell it all out.

You are descending into comedy now. You have not even read Moyar's book yet, and you ran with the negative reviews in Triumph Revisited before you had read any of Moyar's responses in the book, and yet now you are asking me if I have read "the evidence" that Miller and Laderman provided. 

Both reviewers quote directly from Triumph Forsaken and compare the claims in the book to what the citations for those claims actually say. That Moyar deliberately misrepresented multiple sources to push his revisionist agenda is not a matter of interpretation. It’s a fact.

That is total nonsense. This is as bogus as your bluffing falsehood that some other revisionists consider Moyar extreme.

Moyar’s replies are spirited and of course well written but read ultimately like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, cause there’s really no way to wriggle out of this sort of thing. 

Or so you wish. Objective people who read the book and Moyar's replies therein will wonder if you actually read the book or how you have reached those conclusions after reading it. 

And you are misrepresenting what I’ve said. I addressed the North Vietnamese sources in a previous comment. The overall very positive review “Triumph Forsaken as Military History” quotes directly from several of those sources to actually support Moyar’s claims that the ARVN did make real progress and even regained the initiative in ‘62-63 in many ways. He even adds some additional communist sources of his own. However, the reviewer, and several other scholars that deal directly with this issue in Triumph Revisited argue that Moyar makes a massive and unwarranted leap from military progress to decisive progress in the entire war effort. . . .

Listen to yourself: "ARVN did make real progress and even regained the initiative in '62-63 in many ways" but, oh no, this was not "decisive progress in the entire war effort." Are you ever going to break down and read the North Vietnamese sources yourself, not to mention books that document the other evidence that "the entire war effort" was going well in '62 and '63?  

to push the idea that the war was actually winnable, and that such a leap is not supported by the sum of the evidence.

Your severe lack of research shows itself yet again. Entire books have been written on the evidence that the war was winnable, but of course you have not read them (and probably never heard of them until now). I suspect you will never read them, but for the sake of others, some of these books include the following:

Dr. Lewis Sorley's A Better War

Dr. C. Dale Walton's The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam

Ira Hunt's Losing Vietnam

Phillip Davidson's Vietnam at War

Bruce Palmer's The 25-Year War

Hunt was the deputy commander of USAAG for two of the three final years of the war. Davidson was the chief of U.S. intelligence in South Vietnam under both Westmoreland and Abrams. Palmer was the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in South Vietnam and later the U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff.

This is the tip of the iceberg of what could be said on this issue. Sir Robert Thompson, famous British counterinsurgency expert and the head of the British military mission in South Vietnam, who was frequently critical of the early war effort, declared that by late 1972, the U.S. had "won the war."

For a quick introduction to the subject, here is a 2018 online article by Mackubin Owens, a professor emeritus at the Naval War College and a National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin:

The Vietnam War Revisited: Whe the Conventional History Is Wrong

Another issue directly relevant to this idea of a winnable war is Moyar’s claim that the Chinese would not have entered the war if Johnson invaded North Vietnam in ‘64. Multiple reviewers criticize Moyar’s questionable citation on this one, but the Chinese expert in the first chapter, I forget his name, slams Moyar for relying on a single dubious source while ignoring a massive new body of evidence from Chinese sources that directly contradict his claims. The reviewer also flatly states that Moyar’s citation does not actually say what he claims it says. This one might be quote-worthy too at some point. 

Yikes. You obviously do not realize how badly you are blundering here. Where to start? For starters, as a boatload of scholars have pointed out, China was in no condition to intervene against a U.S. invasion of North Vietnam in 1964.

Guess who said this regarding China's intentions:

          Mao signaled to Washington that Beijing would only enter the war if Chinese territory were attacked. The chairman was only willing to fight the Americans down to the last Vietnamese. 

What "extreme revisionist" made this statement? Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen, a professor of history at Columbia University, in her widely acclaimed 2012 seminal study Hanoi's War (p. 75). She is not really a revisionist, by the way, although her book contains a large amount of material that contradicts the orthodox view.

Are you aware of the fact that the North Vietnamese and the Chinese explicitly agreed on October 5, 1964, that if the U.S. invaded North Vietnam, the Chinese would not intervene, and the North Vietnamese would not even try to keep the Americans out of North Vietnam but would retreat from the coast and engage primarily in guerrilla warfare? Why do you suppose that the two scholars who assail Moyar on this issue, Keith Taylor and (mostly) Qiang Zhai (the Chinese scholar whose name you could not recall), say nothing about this fact, not to mention the other facts mentioned above? Why?

And I’m only really doing this to add some balance to this thread, and the discussion of Vietnam on this forum in general. The contradictory evidence and counterarguments to Moyar’s book are notably absent from any of your previous comments, and I think interested readers should have the opportunity to get some perspective, do their own research, and make up their own minds. I have no agenda, other than to share a few arguments from the other side, and this lame attempt by you to shoot the messenger by calling me a “novice” or “unqualified” is frankly ridiculous.

I do not believe you. And, no, it is not ridiculous to observe that you are clearly a novice who is in way over your head. You are not "the messenger." From the outset, you have done nothing but run to liberal sources and have uncritically quoted their arguments. The "contradictory evidence and counterarguments are notably absent" line is the kind of silliness you would hear in a junior-high debate, especially coming from someone who has not read a single scholarly book that disagrees with what you want to believe about the war.

All I’ve been doing is posting verbatim quotes from top scholars in the field.

No, you have been posting "verbatim quotes" (is there another kind of quote?) from a few top liberal scholars in the field, while you have studiously ignored what top conservative scholars in the field have said about Moyar's research. You have also ignored Vietnamese scholars, such as Nghia M. Vo, a former ARVN doctor and author of several books on the war, including The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam (2021), which does an even better job than Wiest's book in debunking the myth of an unwilling, weak ARVN.

This idea that Moyar and the revisionists are the sole truth tellers on a conflict as complex as Vietnam is absurd. You’d think that Moyar’s provable use of ambiguous and even contradictory source material to advance his arguments would be enough to warrant just a little bit of hesitation, but instead you are still uncritically and credulously defending every claim in Triumph Forsaken as if it is gospel. Who’s not being objective and open minded again? 

That would be you. The liberal reviews you have cited do not prove that Moyar uses "ambiguous and even contradictory source material." One would think you would have learned your lesson when you got burned by relying on Chapman's dishonest and erroneous "review" in the roundtable review.

I’ll also try to post some more quotes on the Buddhist Crisis this weekend, along with Moyar’s almost comically weak reply to Miller, etc. 

"Comically weak reply to Miller"? Such a comment makes it very hard to take you seriously. If anything is comical, it is Miller's specious attack on Moyar regarding Communist influence in the Buddhist protests. I notice you simply ignored the evidence I cited on this point in my previous reply: the admission of two prominent Vietnamese Communists and the discovery of weapons and Viet Cong documents in seven Buddhist pagodas. Miller says nothing about this evidence, so I guess you are going to search far and wide on the Internet looking for some answer to it. I am guessing you have no intention of reading Dr. Geoffrey Shaw's research on this issue, right?

I also notice that you did not defend Miller's claim that there is no evidence whatsoever that Tri Quang was a Communist sympathizer. Why? Because that is a curious argument to make given that Tri Quang was in the Viet Minh, that he claimed that Buddhism and communism were compatible, and that he stated that the South Vietnamese should collaborate with the Communists. And, again, are you ever going to read Dr. Shaw's research on Tri Quang? (He devotes 18 pages to the Buddhist protests and Tri Quang--his full name was Thich Tri Quang.)

Is it not revealing that after the Communists conquered South Vietnam, they gave Tri Quang a job in Hue, whereas they imprisoned many other monks who had been politically active? Perhaps this was because Tri Quang had urged his fellow Buddhists to seek aid from the Viet Cong in their effort to topple Diem, among other actions.

Finally, for the sake of others, here are just a few worthwhile quotes from Moyar's replies in Triumph Revisited that discuss some of the false claims and dubious complaints in the reviews:

          William Stueck calls into question my assertion that the Viet Minh were in serious trouble at the time of Dien Bien Phu, and argues that unless the communist forces at Dien Bien Phu had been completely annihilated, the communists would have occupied a favorable military position across Indochina after the battle. He asserts that my argument is based primarily on Khrushchev’s memoirs and Janos Radvanyi’s book. But the two endnotes supporting my interpretation (426, notes 63 and 64) cite six different sources. One of the sources is a book by Ilya Gaiduk, for whom Stueck expresses respect elsewhere. Two of the other sources, written by North Vietnamese leader Le Duan and North Vietnamese witness Bui Tin, show that the Viet Minh had sent most of their mobile armed forces to Dien Bien Phu, refuting the view that the Viet Minh had great numbers of troops elsewhere that would have pressed on to victory had the Dien Bien Phu attack failed. (p. 63)

          Stueck also criticizes me for using multiple sources in a single endnote at the middle or end of a paragraph. Many other scholars of the Vietnam War, and many other historians, have done the same, which was why I cited sources in this manner. Examples of books on Vietnam include: Fredrik  Logevall’s Choosing War (University of California Press, 1999); Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam & America (University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Howard Jones, Death of a Generation (Oxford University Press, 2003); Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam (Duke University Press, 2004). I do not recall seeing any reviewers assert that these or other historians undermined their credibility by citing sources in this way. (pp. 63-64)

          Qiang Zhai takes issue with my portrayal of Ho Chi Minh as a committed Leninist, contending that he was instead “half Gandhi and half Lenin.”  But he offers no evidence to suggest Gandhi-like characteristics, while there is much evidence that Ho was far closer to Lenin than Gandhi on key issues like pluralism, religion, and the use of violence. Nor does Zhai provide any support for his assertion that Ho was less constricted by communist ideology than other Asian communist leaders. (p. 67)

Comment: Zhai's claim that Ho Chi Minh was not a fanatical, dedicated Stalinist-Leninist Communist is astounding and inexcusable. Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's book Hanoi's War, Dr. William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life, and Dr. Christopher Goscha's recent book The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam prove that Moyar's description of Ho Chi Minh as a hardcore Communist is indisputably correct. It is amazing that any alleged "scholar" in the 21st century would deny this fact. Let us continue:

          Zhai and Stueck neglect to mention Mao’s stunning remark to Edgar Snow in January 1965 that China would not fight outside its borders (360–361). I cannot believe that Mao would have made this statement insincerely, for he could not have gained anything and could have lost much by lying on this score—luring American ground forces into North  Vietnam by promising to stay out would have frustrated his ambitions in Southeast Asia, endangered the survival of his North Vietnamese allies, and produced a military situation in which he could not make good use of  his relatively modest military resources.  

          Zhai asserts that I did not cite a source when asserting that the Chinese communist land reform campaign killed more than one million people. I am not sure why he raised this issue, since today’s most prominent scholars all put the death toll at between one and three or more million.  

          Zhai contends that I provided no source for my contention that the North Vietnamese and Chinese were considering an invasion of Thailand. But elsewhere in the book I do cite sources stating that they discussed the matter, on August 13, 1964, and again on May 16, 1965 (482, note 78; 489, note 61). (p. 70)

2 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I found another devastating review that directly addresses Moyar’s misrepresentation of source material. After conclusively proving that Moyar’s portrayal of Tri Quang as a communist agent and the Buddhist crisis as a communist controlled movement lacks any credible evidentiary support whatsoever, the reviewer, Edward Miller, states: 

“As the above examples suggest, there are many points in Triumph Forsaken at which Moyar’s interpretation of particular documents is open to criticism. Yet these interpretive problems are not the most troubling aspect of Moyar’s use of sources. In a few cases, Moyar does not merely misinterpret sources; he actually misrepresents their textual content.”

Miller goes on to give an example of how Moyar: 

“…relates what purports to be a verbatim account of the dialog between Harkins and Diem, as indicated in his use of quotation marks to indicate what was said to the other. But the sole document that Moyar cites for this exchange is an American memorandum of the conversation, which does not contain anything that can be construed as a verbatim record of the meeting.”

Miller then puts Moyar’s imaginary conversation and the memorandum side-by-side, and continues by saying:

“One might argue that the text of the memorandum still supports his interpretive claim about Harkins’ ability to “coach” and advise Diem. But such an argument does not excuse the fact that Moyar has reconstructed a historical event in a way that dramatically embellishes the available record of that event. That Moyar repeats this practice elsewhere in the book - for example, in his account of a 1963 meeting between Diem and Robert McNamara on page 254 - raises worrisome questions about whether and how frequently he plays fast and loose with his sources.” (Triumph Revisited, pp. 204-206) 

Moyar is allowed a reply in each of the chapters, and he makes some valid points in response to certain criticisms, but his justifications for the behavior pointed out by Laderman and Miller do not reflect very well on his academic honesty, IMO. I’m sure Mike will try to spin it somehow, but the evidence that Moyar both distorted and deliberately misrepresented his sources to advance a particular narrative is conclusive, period. Jim is right, that’s what propagandists do. 

And Mike, I’m reading the whole book, including Moyar’s lackluster defense briefs. The negative reviews I’ve quoted are the most compelling since they provide concrete proof of Moyar’s highly questionable and deceptive use of source material. 

Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. There are two problems here: One, you have done very little reading on the Vietnam War, and thus, even if you were willing to be objective and open minded, you do not have the needed foundation to properly judge the negative reviews. Two, you are bound and determined to believe the negative reviews and to reject Moyar's responses, no matter what. Your surprising claim that Moyar's responses to Miller and Laderman "do not reflect very well on his academic honesty" is a good indication of this.

I invite interested readers to read Triumph Revisited and see for themselves whether Moyar effectively answers the criticisms contained therein.

Unfortunately for you, you picked a really bad example of an alleged error by Moyar, i.e., the issue of Communist influence on the Buddhist leader Tri Quang and in the Buddhist "crisis." Miller's claim that there is no evidence that Tri Quang was a Communist agent or that Communists played a role in the Buddhist crisis is a perfect example of bogus claims made by liberal scholars who have no excuse for not knowing better (assuming they really do not know better and are not deliberately making claims they know are false). 

Your reliance on Miller regarding Tri Quang and the Buddhist crisis shows what can happen when a novice who is determined to believe something uncritically accepts utterly bogus claims because they reinforce what he wants to believe and because they are made by a scholar with whom he agrees. 

Are you aware that Tri Quang was a member of the Viet Minh? That during his sermons he said that Buddhism and communism were compatible? That he openly urged collaboration with the Communists? Gee, I wonder why Miller mentions none of these things. Why do you suppose that is?

This being said (much more could be said), I should note that Moyar allows that Tri Quang may have not have been a Communist sympathizer but a political opportunist who was hedging his bets for his own reasons. Moyar believes the evidence indicates--not proves, but indicates--that Tri Quang was a Communist operative but allows that he may not have been. 

As for the Communist influence in the Buddhist crisis, Miller grossly understates what the primary sources say on this matter. Incredibly, Miller does not mention the fact that two Vietnamese Communists later admitted that they brought large numbers of Communists to the famous massive 8/18/63 demonstration at the Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon and that these Communist agitators posed as devout Buddhists during the demonstration.

Equally incredibly, Miller says nothing about the fact that when a limited number of Buddhist pagodas were raided in late August 1963, government forces found weapons and Viet Cong documents in seven of the pagodas. Shucks, why do you suppose Miller says nothing about this evidence? 

Miller cites the conclusion of CIA analysts that Tri Quang was not a Communist, but Miller is not giving his readers the whole story. For instance, a 10-page CIA memorandum on Tri Quang, though it found against the Communist-agent charge, did note that Quang was "prone to see Catholics as a greater immediate danger than the Communists," and that "there are grounds for considerable doubt about the compatibility of his ultimate aims and long-term U.S. interests." The memo further noted, "there is little doubt that he regards the Catholics as a more pressing immediate danger to his own concept of nationalism than the Communists." Sheesh, if Tri Quang was not a Communist agent, he was certainly Communist dupe to believe that the Catholics were more of a threat than the Communists.

FYI, Moyar is certainly not the only scholar who has presented evidence that Tri Quang was doing the bidding of the Communists and that the Communists played a key role in fomenting the Buddhist crisis. I would recommend you read the book The Lost Mandate of Heaven (Ignatius Press, 2022), by Dr. Geoffrey Shaw, a Canadian historian who specializes in Southeast Asian history. Shaw spends several chapters just on Tri Quang and the Buddhist crisis and presents considerable evidence that supports Moyar's position on the subject. Some of the scholars who have praised Shaw's book include Thomas Marks, Stephen Sherman, Nghia M. Vo, and William Stearman.

Another problem is that you desperately want to believe that the North Vietnamese sources do not destroy the key facets of the orthodox view. You have not read them yet. Nor have you have read a single scholarly book that presents statements from those sources that clearly, plainly, and undeniably contradict the orthodox portrayal of the war. Instead, you keep running to find any source that will tell you that Moyar and numerous other revisionist scholars are misrepresenting the North Vietnamese sources.

You say that you will read Moyar's responses, but, again, given the mindset you have displayed, I suspect you will come back and report that you find Moyar's arguments insufficient, yet I also suspect that you will not lay a finger on the statements he quotes from the North Vietnamese sources. 

14 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I got curious and decided to pick up the book Triumph Revisited, which is a collection of scholarly reviews of Triumph Forsaken, and it’s a very interesting and entertaining read. A common criticism is that Moyar’s endnotes either do not support or flatly contradict the claims in his book. A review by Scott Laderman addresses this issue directly with concrete, indisputable examples of Moyar’s highly questionable use of source material. I don’t feel like transcribing several pages for a forum comment, but it’s pages 94-98 if anyone is interested. I can’t resist quoting Laderman’s conclusion though: 

“This example appears typical of Moyar’s style. Favorable evidence marshaled in framing the monograph’s arguments, while inconvenient evidence was ignored, downplayed, or dismissed. It is, of course, necessary for scholars in evaluating sources to make subjective decisions about which evidence seems credible and which evidence does not. But given how often Moyar used seemingly incriminating details from sources authored by leading specialists while concomitantly overlooking the many other details that lend these specialists’ work a nuance that Triumph Forsaken, for the most part, does not possess, readers would be well advised not to pick up the time in isolation. 

For reasons that are hardly surprising, Moyar’s book has found an enthusiastic audience among proponents of a militaristic foreign policy. They find in its pages an assertive revisionist account in which, it turns out, Ronald Reagan was right after all. It was a “noble cause” that the United States fought in Southeast Asia, just as it is a “noble purpose” being fought now in Iraq (and Afghanistan). If assessments of Triumph Forsaken from Vietnam and Vietnam War specialists have been decidedly cooler than those of the general public, it is largely because scholars have had the time and the inclination to closely examine the the evidentiary foundation on which the book rests. The results have, to say the least, been deeply troubling thus far, particularly for a study that purports to have been driven by the pressing need for historical accuracy.”

Sounds a lot like the Warren Report. I am admittedly actively looking for quotes like this, but they are not very hard to find, and the examples this guy gives would make Arlen Specter blush. 

The North Vietnamese sources regarding military progress in ‘62-63 are addressed directly by two of the reviews I’ve read so far. One reviewer states that Moyar is correct that the enemy conceded in internal reports that the military successes in that period were real, but that he goes too far in claiming that the South was actually winning the war. He says that the North Vietnamese’s own characterization of the progress of the war as a “see-saw situation” was most apt. (pp 134-135). 

Another reviewer commends Moyar for using North Vietnamese sources to show that the communists were not indestructible and “faced grave setbacks at various points and managed to avoid battlefield defeats by surprisingly thin margins”, but prefaces that comment by saying “To be sure, he stands on shaky ground in his attempt to demonstrate that the Saigon government was on its way to military success when the United States torpedoed it by overthrowing Ngo Ding Diem in November 1963.” (pp. 175-176)

So the consensus even among sympathetic reviewers seems to be that the North Vietnamese sources are significant in that they demonstrate the Communists were mortal, but they are far from being so “historic” as to “destroy the key components of the liberal/orthodox view of the war”

There’s more that I’ll probably get bored and post at some point but I need to catch a plane in the morning. 

I had hoped you had learned not to reflexively rely on negative reviews before reading the other side after you uncritically ran with the roundtable reviews, only to find out that they were all flawed to varying degrees, the worst being Chapman's (your favorite).

Yet, here you are doing the same thing again, this time uncritically endorsing the attacks in Triumph Revisited.  And, needless to say, you do not appear to have read Moyar's responses in Triumph Revisited. His three responses in the book constitute over 60 pages of the book's text, but you do not seem to have read any of them. 

The North Vietnamese sources do in fact destroy the key elements of the orthodox view. But, you do not know this because you have not read them yet. It seems you are eager to read and accept any review that attacks Moyar's research, but you are unwilling to read Moyar's research, or any research that support's Moyar's writings. It seems you did not even bother to read any of Moyar's responses in the very book that you claim refutes Moyar's position. 

As for "the consensus even among sympathetic reviewers," those reviewers are hardly "sympathetic." They grudgingly make some limited concessions about the validity of Moyar's arguments, but then they seek to dismiss those arguments with sophistry, misrepresentation, and omission. Read Moyar's responses in the book and then see what you think of the "consensus" that you describe.

A paragraph from your latest reply deserves special attention:

Another common criticism is that Moyar’s analysis lacks nuance, and the competency of the ARVN is a good example. Moyar demonstrates, using the so-called “historic” North Vietnamese sources, that the ARVN did have legitimate battlefield successes, and that  they could indeed be an effective fighting force at times. However, Moyar attempts to stretch communist reports that are somewhat critical of their own performance and respectful of the ARVN as a combat force into evidence that the ARVN was actually winning the war, and that the war overall was actually winnable, while the record as a whole doesn’t even come close to supporting that conclusion, and often suggests the exact opposite. 

You would know how lame and misleading these arguments are about ARVN and the winnability of the war if you had read Moyar's Triumph Forsaken and his newest book Triumph Regained, and/or if you had read Dr. Lewis Sorley's A Better War and/or Dr. George Veith's Black April and/or Ira Hunt's Losing Vietnam, not to mention Dr. Andrew Wiest's study on ARVN's performance, Vietnam's Forgotten Army, to name a few scholarly sources--not to mention Moyar's responses on these issues in Triumph Revisited. 

Hunt's and Veith's books are particularly compelling answers to your portrayal of what the North Vietnamese sources and other evidence reveal about ARVN's performance. Moyar does a good job on this issue in one of his responses in Triumph Revisited, but Hunt and Veith make a more in-depth case because they were not limited by space in their books. FYI, Hunt is the former deputy commander of USAAG in Thailand (1973-1974), and his main job was to track and analyze the fighting in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, mainly in South Vietnam.

Just curious: Are you aware that British counterinsurgency expert and the head of the UK's military mission in South Vietnam, Sir Robert Thompson, said that the war was going well until Diem was killed? 

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

There was no "Oswald Project" and there was one and only one historical Lee Harvey Oswald. Everything else is just delusion.

The delusion is that there is no evidence of two Oswalds. I would invite interested readers to check out Jim Hargrove's responses to Mark Stevens:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424663

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424694

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424733

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424759

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424838

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=424839

9 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Absolute nonsense, because there never were "two Oswalds." Mark Stevens authoritatively shredded the Stripling theory in this thread.

Stevens' article is mostly a bunch of nit-picking and accusing witnesses he does not like of lying, exaggerating, or misremembering. WC apologists always apply draconian standards to conspiracy witnesses but apply extremely lax standards to lone-gunman witnesses. And when parts of a pro-WC witness's story are clearly problematic, WC apologists ignore the dubious parts and accept the parts that support their view. Can you say "Helen Markham" and "Howard Brennan" and "William Whaley"?

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

If you have never read Sylvia's Meagher's 1967 book, "Accessories After the Fact," you will be amazed. 

"A deep study of the Warren Commission Report convinced her (Meagher)that the its detailed evidence contradicted its general conclusions. Meagher therefore published Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report (1967). Meagher was unconvinced that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a lone gunman and concluded that the Warren Commission had attempted to cover-up details of the real people behind the assassination. Meagher believed that John F. Kennedy had been killed by a group Anti-Castro exiles."

---30---

The damning title of Meagher's book says it all---there was the JFKA, and then those who suppressed the truth, and helped the perps escape justice. They were the "accessories after the fact" to a brutal homicide.

Today we have the latest accessories after the fact, those who are suppressing the remaining JFK Records and other documents. 

There is no statute of limitations on murder.  I still want to see the JFK Records. 

Meagher's book was one of the first books I read after my interest in the JFK case was sparked by watching Oliver Stone's movie JFK. Before I saw Stone's movie, I had zero interest in the assassination and held a negative view of JFK.

8 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-two-oswalds/

Sorry if this is old news, but it was new to me. I stumbled across it while researching another aspect of the assassination and I found it interesting.

It seems that for Texas Monthly magazine's November 1998 issue, reporter Joe Nick Patoski interviewed John Armstrong for a story entitled "The Two Oswalds." Apparently by coincidence, Patoski had been a student at Stripling Junior High in Fort Worth at the time of the assassination. Officially Oswald attended Junior High in New York and New Orleans, not in Fort Worth.

Patoski contacted former Stripling Junior High vice principal Frank Kudlaty. Retired in Waco, Texas in 1998, Kudlaty apparently confirmed to Patoski that the day after the assassination the principal of Stripling Junior High (identified in the story as Mr. Wylie) asked Kudlaty to pull Oswald's records and give them to FBI agents.

According to Patoski (who characterises himself as disbelieving the Harvey & Lee theory) Kudlaty looked at Oswald's records and that Oswald's grades weren't very good. Kudlaty expressed doubt that a student with such grades could successfully teach himself the Russian language on his own.

Yes, I stumbled across that Texas Monthly article a few years ago and was impressed by it. To be honest, I do not want to accept Armstrong's theory because its implications are disturbing and fantastic, but Patoski's article supports Armstrong's case.

On 7/11/2023 at 5:12 PM, Tom Gram said:

Mike, I think appeals to authority are bogus and arguments should be judged on merit. That’s kind of my whole point. Whenever anyone here, Jim D. in particular, challenges your view of any aspect the Vietnam war, you label their arguments as some variation of “fringe” or “far-left” and/or claim they are not qualified to even comment because you’ve read more books on Vietnam. Example A: me, just for posting articles and quotes from experts you disagree with you.

Just to set the record completely straight, I raised the issue of the depth of your research compared to mine because you were making claims about Moyar that I knew were false. I knew you were bluffing when you said that some of Moyar's fellow revisionists regard him as "the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet" and that even some of the favorable reviews of his book Triumph Forsaken say that he "goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis." 

Many liberal historians have attempted to smear Moyar as an extremist to try to discredit him and to discourage people from reading his books. When you read his books or watch his lectures and panel discussions, you immediately see that he makes his case in a measured, careful, and methodical way, and that his books are thoroughly documented and reflect detailed and extensive research. 

Also, the only arguments that I have labeled as fringe and far left are arguments that are in fact fringe and far left. For example, I have never applied those labels to the argument that the war was unwinnable, because that is part of the majority view on the war. It is an argument that is flatly contradicted by the North Vietnamese sources and by plenty of other evidence, but it is not a fringe, far-left argument because mainstream liberal historians also make that argument.

When someone gets on a public board and argues that ARVN was a feckless, incompetent fighting force, that ARVN was "no match for the Viet Cong," that, gee, ARVN must have been pitiful because Saigon fell in "like three months," etc., you know that that person is not to be taken seriously, and that their research on the war has been meager and one sided. At the very latest, this false portrayal of ARVN became inexcusable when the History of the People's Army of Vietnam, compiled by Vietnam's Ministry of Defense, was translated by Merle Pribbenow in 2002 (Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975, University Press of Kansas). Even this obviously pro-Communist history of the war destroys the myth of a cowardly, inept ARVN, as I have documented in other replies in this forum, and as anyone can verify by reading the book.

You see, the myth of an unwilling, weak ARVN was one of the lies that the anti-war movement peddled to undermine support for the war. "Why should we fight for South Vietnam when South Vietnam's own army does not want to fight?", they dishonestly asked. It was one of the lies that the anti-war majority in Congress used as their excuse for slashing aid to South Vietnam in 1973 soon after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and they used this same lie, among others, in 1974 and 1975 to justify their refusal to restore the promised aid levels to South Vietnam, even after it became impossible to deny that North Vietnam was resuming its aggression.

21 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

Mike, I think appeals to authority are bogus and arguments should be judged on merit. That’s kind of my whole point. Whenever anyone here, Jim D. in particular, challenges your view of any aspect the Vietnam war, you label their arguments as some variation of “fringe” or “far-left” and/or claim they are not qualified to even comment because you’ve read more books on Vietnam.

Unfortunately, it just so happens that Jim repeatedly expresses views that truly are fringe and far left when it comes to JFK and the Vietnam War. Even the vast majority of liberal historians reject the claim that JFK was determined to abandon South Vietnam after the election, not to mention moderate and conservative historians. Similarly, Jim repeatedly cites Nick Turse's awful book. Even Neil Sheehan sharply condemned Turse's shoddy research, and Turse and his publisher were forced to issue a formal retraction to settle a lawsuit over bogus claims made in Turse's book. And, Jim still peddles the old myth that ARVN was a feckless, incompetent fighting force, a myth that even liberals such as Daddis and Hastings have repudiated. 

Example A: me, just for posting articles and quotes from experts you disagree with, including the following article on the Vietnam revisionist movement from an award winning Vietnam historian and director of the LBJ library, which I think is worth posting again. 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/ut1markl

I’m sure this guy is just one of those kooky liberals though…

His article “Revisionism as a Substitute for Victory” is a gold mine of quotes, e.g. 

Revisionists might be gaining favor, as many of them contend, because they are finally setting the record straight by heroically challenging a left-leaning academic establishment congenitally hostile to the use of American military power. The problem with that view is that younger academics, relatively free from the antiwar sensibilities of the older generation and benefiting from unprecedented access to source material, are consistently reinforcing the old view in a remarkable body of new work about the war: No decision the United States could have made would have brought victory in Vietnam at a sensible cost. 

You say you think appeals to authority are bogus, yet you keep appealing to authority. You keep quoting condemnations of revisionism by orthodox historians on the Vietnam War, the vast majority of whom are liberals, yet those quotes are usually devoid of specifics and devoid of substantive responses to the evidence that revisionists have presented. As we see in Moyar's reply to the roundtable reviews, when orthodox historians have offered specific criticisms and responses, their arguments have been faulty and are frequently based on misrepresentations of the revisionist case.

Is it really reasonable to think that not one Vietnam academic has come to a different conclusion regarding these so-called “historic” North Vietnamese sources than people like Moyar? 

Huh??? As I have already noted in previous replies, Moyar is by no means the only Vietnam War scholar who has presented the historic information from the North Vietnamese sources that refutes the key components of the orthodox view. I refer to such as scholars as Dr. Lewis Sorley, Dr. George Veith, Dr. Robert Turner, Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen (who is not a revisionist), Dr. Max Hastings (who is not a revisionist and is center-left in his politics), Merle Pribbenow (widely regarded as the best Vietnamese linguists on the planet), Dr. Geoffrey Shaw, Dr. Tuong Vu, among several others.

Furthermore, liberal historians have not challenged the new information from North Vietnamese sources. As you saw in the roundtable reviews, not a single reviewer, not even Chapman, disputed the import and meaning of the statements quoted from the sources . Not once did any of them say, "Moyar says that the North Vietnamese sources show that the Communist war effort was going badly in 1962 and 1963, but this is wrong, and here is why." Not one word along that line. 

If the evidence is really so lacking in ambiguity that it “destroys” the prevailing academic wisdom on the war, would the head of the LBJ library still be making statements like the above and saying things like: The problem with surging revisionism is that just about every academic expert on the war disagrees.”?

Another whopping appeal to authority, as if to say, "Gee, the North Vietnamese sources cannot say what revisionist and even some non-revisionist scholars say they say because otherwise the head of the LBJ library would not be attacking revisionists!" And well might a WC apologist ask, "If the case for conspiracy in JFK's death is so clear and compelling, would not the vast majority of American historians who have written about JFK or that era reject the lone-gunman theory?"

Here is an idea: Why don't you read the information from the North Vietnamese sources yourself and make up your own mind? Moyar's two books present more of this historic information than any other book, but a sizable chunk of this information is also presented in the books by the scholars I named above. Go read it for yourself and make up your own mind.

Forgive me for being skeptical. If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t actually given an opinion on this whole debate. I just think it’s important to present both sides of an argument, and you’ve been vigorously promoting a position on Vietnam that is clearly ambiguous and highly disputed as if it is the pinnacle of enlightened historical thought.

The North Vietnamese sources say what they say. They cannot be wished away. Yes, absolutely, they destroy the key components of the liberal/orthodox view of the war. There is a reason that not a single liberal "academic historian" has even tried to refute or explain the historic information from the North Vietnamese sources. The sources are too clear to allow any wiggle room.

Similarly, anti-JFKA-conspiracy academic historians have not attempted to explain the historic new information from the ARRB-released materials because they cannot do so, so they dismiss them or ignore them. 

HSCA staff investigator Dan Hardway, co-author of the Lopez Report, stated in a 2020 interview that if there was a JFK assassination conspiracy and it did not involve the CIA's William Harvey, he would be surprised. 

Hardway also said that he believes Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City.

CIA obfuscation clouds HSCA insider's efforts (swtimes.com)

12 minutes ago, Calvin Ye said:

I have no interested in reading Moyer's book

If you are unwilling to read anything that disagrees with what you want to believe on the subject, then there is no point in discussing it with you. Personally, I would never get on a public board and make sweeping, adamant statements on a controversial historical subject unless I had read at least two books and/or several articles on both sides of the issue. And I would certainly not dismiss a book published by a major publishing house and written by a qualified scholar unless I had read the book. But that's just me.

25 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Michael,

Thanks for replying to my question. 

In reply to your question: In the apparent absence of relevant grounds for moderators' decisions, the possibility of irrelevant grounds arises.

In relation to the threat of further sanctions on my good self, I'll have to invoke the assistance of the Irish national security state. Its reputation for inflicting crushing defeats on the Yanks is second to none.

Ha! Nice one. 

My wife and I lived in England for five years when I was in the U.S. Army. I was stationed at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate in the mid-1990s. Beautiful country. Wonderful people. We still keep in touch with some of our British friends.

1 hour ago, Calvin Ye said:

I agree with Chapman about Moyar's version of events.

Based on what? You might want to read Moyar's book and all the evidence he presents before you reach a conclusion, if you are interested in making an informed judgment. A basic tenet of critical thinking is to consider both sides of an argument before drawing a conclusion about it.

For starters, Moyar's version is based on the new information from North Vietnamese sources. Chapman did not even try to address a single item of this historic evidence. Let me summarize some of the things the North Vietnamese sources document:

-- The Communist war effort was going badly in 1962 and 1963 but began to improve a few months after Diem's death.

-- The Communist war effort went very badly throughout 1967, and this development was the reason the Hanoi regime decided to launch the Tet Offensive in January 1968.

-- The Viet Cong were tightly controlled by Hanoi and relied on Hanoi for most of their arms and supplies.

-- South Vietnam's army, aka ARVN (ar-vin), was a formidable fighting force in the majority of cases. ARVN usually defeated the Viet Cong during 1962 and 1963 and performed well during the Tet Offensive.

-- The Hanoi regime was unpleasantly surprised by the performance of ARVN during the Tet Offensive. Most of the Communists' attacks were aimed at ARVN units, since Hanoi believed they could be easily defeated. Hanoi's leaders were surprised when this failed to occur.

-- Hanoi's leaders were stunned by the refusal of the South Vietnamese to rise up against the Saigon government at the start of the Tet Offensive. The Hanoi Politburo firmly believed that once their forces attacked, most South Vietnamese would welcome them as liberators. 

-- After the Tet Offensive, the Communists lost control of most of the areas they had held in South Vietnam before the offensive. They had lost control of a number of areas in 1967, but they lost control over even more areas after the offensive.

-- From 1967 through early 1972, the Saigon government and MACV steadily increased their control of the countryside.

-- The Viet Cong's ranks were so decimated during the Tet Offensive, and recruiting became so difficult after the offensive, that from that point onward, most of the Viet Cong's soldiers were North Vietnamese.

-- The 1967-1968 bombing of North Vietnam did even more damage than MACV and the Pentagon estimated it did at the time, even when the bombing did not include targets near and around Hanoi.  

-- The Operation Linebacker I and II bombing campaigns and the mining of Haiphong Harbor in 1972 brought North Vietnam to the verge of collapse. 

-- Hanoi's leaders had no intention of honoring the Paris Peace Accords.

-- The Hanoi regime launched a propaganda campaign to blame South Vietnam for violating the Accords in an attempt to draw attention away from Hanoi's egregious violations of the Accords. 

-- Even with American aid slashed, ARVN often put up stiff, sometimes "ferocious," resistance in 1974 and 1975. 

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

Not this again.  I never said mods never explained their actions.  I said the explanations given were inadequate and avoided the main point that should be addressed:  that a thread should not be moved if it was relevant to the JFKA, regardless what other point the thread made.

 

Please stop distorting what I said. 

Enough already. 

13 hours ago, John Cotter said:

 

Would it be fair to say that neither Michael Griffith nor Chris Scally would be favourably disposed to the idea of RFK Jr becoming US president?

No, it would not be fair to say that, not in my case. I guess you have missed the many posts where I have defended/praised RFK Jr. Besides, what does this have to do with the subject at hand?

I got a one-day ban last week without warning for allegedly belittling another member. I didn’t make a fuss about it because I’d more or less decided to stop posting in the forum for the time being at least, for reasons touched on in my last post.

You got off way too lightly. Your next infraction will result in the disabling of your computer for two weeks, the withdrawal of $200 from your checking account, and the placing of wheel locks on your car's tires for two weeks. 

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Look, Regis Blahut was a CIA agent assigned to the HSCA.

Blahut lied about every aspect of subterfuge he performed.  He opened the safe, he took out the photos, and one was removed from its sleeve.  He reportedly fled when he heard someone coming.  

Through three interviews, he lied.  Blakey and Cornwell got a meeting at Langley with Stansfield Turner and Robert Gambino, chief of security.  When Blakey asked for Blahut's security  file, Gambino gave him the personnel file.  As we will see, this was a revealing move.

Blakey asked for an investigation to see if Blahut was part of an operation by the CIA against the committee, and if he had a control agent at Langley. The Agency offered him 4 options to perform the inquiry: the FBI,  the HSCA itself, the DC Police, or the CIA.  Blakey chose the CIA. Even though the CIA encouraged him not to choose them.  When he made that choice, a CIA officer wrote, "My interpretation of what Mr. Blakey said was that he wishes CIA to go ahead with the investigation of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean  bill of health for the CIA."

The Agency did three polygraphs on Blahut, he failed to pass any of them. Blakey later said the affair was not a high priority for him.

The Blahut affair was not revealed to the public for almost a year. When it eventually broke, even Richardson Preyer, who ran the JFK side, was not aware of it.

When it was leaked to George Lardner it created a  small flurry of media attention. So much that the House conducted an inquiry. It confirmed the worst.  Blahut was a part of a CIA program codenamed MH/Child. It was later discovered that Blahut actually left the room with one photo and then returned. The CIA later admitted, that it was not the IG who did the Blahut inquiry.  It was Gambino.  And when Blahut was caught, he was waiting for a call from the Office of Security. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 86-88)

Jim, I take it your statements are based on released files and/or other documents. Can you briefly outline the sources for your statements? 

If what you say is true, the Blahut incident was no innocent affair.

I think RFK Jr. should be recommending Stone's documentary JFK Revisited instead of Douglass's book JFK and the Unspeakable. One, most people are more inclined to watch a documentary than to read a book. Two, Douglass's book is far too political.

Douglass wrongly assumes that JFK was a liberal, that he was dovish toward the Soviet Union by 1963, and that he was determined to totally disengage from South Vietnam after the election. 

I think it is time to share segments from Dr. Mark Moyar’s 14-page reply to the roundtable reviews of his book Triumph Forsaken. We have people in this thread who are stridently condemning Moyar’s book even though they have not read it, and even though their research on the Vietnam War has obviously been very limited and one sided. Rejecting a book and attacking its author before you have even read any of his books violates the most basic principles of critical thinking and credible scholarship.

Below are some portions from Moyar’s reply to the roundtable reviews. The quoted portions focus on Chapman’s review, since it is the most negative of the reviews. As you will see, there is reason to wonder if Chapman actually read Moyar’s book or if she merely skimmed through it. For those who want to read Moyar’s reply in its entirety, here is a link to it:

https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/TriumphForsaken-Moyar.pdf

From Moyar’s reply:

          I will address the reviews one at a time, starting with Jessica Chapman’s, which contains the greatest number of accusations. Near the beginning of the review, Chapman states that “the literature on the Vietnam Wars is vastly more complex and nuanced than [Moyar’s] liberal orthodox/conservative revisionist dichotomy implies.” I should begin by noting first, that this dichotomy is not something I created. David Anderson, Marc Jason Gilbert, Stephen Vlastos, and many other well-known scholars have accepted and analyzed this dichotomy. In Triumph Forsaken, moreover, I note that not every book fits into one category or the other. (xii) (All subsequent page references are from Triumph Forsaken) All of the major works that address the war’s biggest questions—such as the merits of U.S. intervention and the viability of alternative American strategies—clearly can be placed within either the orthodox or revisionist groupings. . . .

          According to Chapman, “Moyar contributes little of substance to what he has termed the revisionist perspective.” The review by James McAllister, which calls Triumph Forsaken “an original work of scholarship that can rightfully claim to be the most consequential revisionist book ever produced on the Vietnam War,” does much to undermine Chapman’s assertion by enumerating some of the major original points in the book. Later, Chapman states, “rather than bringing up new veins of argument, [Moyar] revived a number of old debates that most scholars were all too happy to replace years ago with more sophisticated lines of inquiry.” She appears to believe that old debates are off limits. Chapman does not mention the military history in the book, which, as McAllister notes, provides a significant portion of the book’s original conclusions. As I pointed out in a recent journal article (“The Current State of Military History,” The Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, March 2007), military history can be far more complex than the uninitiated often believe. Some of the other sophisticated lines of inquiry that Chapman missed are the nature of conflict in Vietnamese history, Vietnamese political culture, the impact of the militant Buddhist movement, North Vietnamese strategy, American intelligence, and international opinion about Vietnam. . . .

          Chapman next states, “Despite his claim to have rooted his work in Vietnamese sources, he does not appear to read Vietnamese, and makes only limited use of Vietnamese materials in translation.” The suggestion that the book does not rely extensively on Vietnamese sources is untenable. In the endnotes can be found over two hundred citations of Vietnamese[1]language sources, many of which have never before been cited. I am not aware of any general history of the war that contains so many references to Vietnamese-language sources.

          Chapman also appears to fault me for not having spent time in archives in Vietnam. She is correct in noting that she, Edward Miller, Philip Catton, and Matthew Masur have done research in Vietnamese archives for extended periods of time. They have produced noteworthy works from this research, as I mention in Triumph Forsaken. What she fails to say is that most of the information presently available to foreign researchers in Vietnam is not relevant to the big questions of the Vietnam War, though this fact may be inferred from the absence of any statement from Chapman about specific information that would contradict my interpretations. As my endnotes attest, the works of Miller, Catton, and Masur (Chapman had not published any of her research by the time I finished Triumph Forsaken) contain only a handful of sources from the archives of Vietnam that illuminate the big picture in ways that other sources do not.

          Chapman, and another reviewer, criticize me for relying on a translator in using Vietnamese sources. I do not see how reading voluminous translations from a world-class translator, Merle Pribbenow, is less effective than reading Vietnamese sources when the Vietnamese of many scholars is inferior to that of Pribbenow. A substantial number of other scholars of the Vietnam War, including some who read Vietnamese, have employed Mr. Pribbenow’s translations because of their reliability, though I am not aware that any of them has been criticized for it as I have. No one has offered any evidence that the numerous translations Mr. Pribbenow provided me were inaccurate in any way.

          One might expect a historian with Chapman’s interests to welcome the introduction of so many new Vietnamese sources into the history of the Vietnam War, particularly since my Vietnamese sources offer many new insights into the thoughts and actions of the war’s Vietnamese participants, which in turn help us evaluate American policy and strategy much more effectively. Most previous historians who have covered policy and strategy during the war have not used any such sources—for example, David Anderson, Larry Berman, Robert Buzzanco, George Herring, Michael Hunt, Seth Jacobs, Howard Jones, David Kaiser, Jeffrey Kimball, Fredrik Logevall (Chapman’s dissertation advisor), Andrew Preston, and Robert Schulzinger. These historians have seldom been criticized for the absence of Vietnamese sources. They have received excellent book reviews and coveted prizes, and some have been rewarded with jobs at top universities. It is therefore very curious that Chapman tries to turn my use of Vietnamese sources into something negative.

          Chapman alleges that I am guilty of “fragmentary and often questionable use of evidence,” and charges that there is “a disturbing lack of critical analysis throughout the book.” Those are serious charges, not to be made lightly. Yet Chapman provides little evidence to support them. She provides only five specific supporting points, and all are incorrect.

          Chapman states the first of the five points as follows: “I would certainly welcome clarification from Moyar on why Vietnam was of such vital strategic importance to the United States in 1954.” In Triumph Forsaken I do not state that Vietnam was of vital strategic importance in 1954. I note that Eisenhower did not consider Vietnam to be strategically vital in 1954. (27-8) Eisenhower had changed his views on the subject by 1961 (125), and later in 1961 Kennedy concluded that Vietnam was strategically vital (137-42), a conclusion that had considerable merit in my estimation.

          Second, Chapman accuses me of inconsistency for accepting Ho Chi Minh’s supplications to the Chinese as evidence that he was pro-Chinese while not accepting his entreaties to the United States as evidence of pro-American sentiments. Contrary to how Chapman expressed it, I did not rely primarily on Ho Chi Minh’s overtures to China and the United States in analyzing his true sentiments. Rather, I studied Ho Chi Minh’s actions, beliefs, and circumstances in depth to assess how he viewed the two powers.

          On many occasions, Ho Chi Minh professed that he had been inspired by Lenin, and his ideological writings and his actions as a national leader all show the influence of Lenin’s ideology, including Lenin’s internationalism. (8-10, 14) Ho repeatedly advocated temporary alliances with non-Communists against other non-Communists followed by destruction of the surviving non-Communists. (10, 14, 104) He never advocated destruction of other Communists (save for Trotskyites), whether foreign or domestic, and on numerous occasions he urged his followers to remember that they were not just fighting for their own country but for their fellow Communists across the world. (11, 83, 359) Ho lived in China for many years, serving in both the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Army. (9-11, 14-15) He never lived in the United States and never served in the U.S. government or army. During the Franco-Viet Minh War, Ho let Chinese leaders dictate strategy and revolutionary policy (22- 3) and during that war and the war against the Americans, he invited Chinese troops onto Vietnamese soil. (27, 362-3) In the Sino-Soviet dispute, Ho usually stayed closer to the Chinese position while trying to get the two sides to patch up their differences in the spirit of international Communist solidarity. (60-61, 102, 138)

          Third, Chapman contends that I depict “total unity” between the Chinese and North Vietnamese prior to 1963, and in this context asserts that I overlooked the works of Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ilya Gaiduk, Qiang Zhai, and Chen Jian. Chapman does not state specifically what pre-1963 problems between the Chinese and North Vietnamese I missed. If she is referring to the end of the Franco-Viet Minh War in 1954, that subject is addressed below. As far as the period between 1954 and 1963, I do spend considerable time describing amicable relations between China and North Vietnam and offer supporting evidence from a variety of sources. But disagreements also receive mention. I note that the land reform debacle caused the Vietnamese Communists to lose their veneration for radical Chinese policies (62), that in 1958 the Chinese refused a Vietnamese request to begin the armed insurrection (79), that the Chinese told the Vietnamese to limit the scale of the insurgency in 1960 (101-2) and again in 1961 (146). Concerning the contention that I overlooked Judge, Gaiduk, Zhai, and Jian, a quick look at the endnotes will show that I refer repeatedly to all four of these historians, frequently with respect to relations among the Communist countries. . . .

          Fifth, Chapman contends that I did not produce compelling evidence that Diem was an effective leader. I find it hard to understand how she arrived at this conclusion, because the book is packed with information about Diem’s effectiveness. The early chapters show how Diem consolidated control over a badly fractured country and defeated the underground Communists. The middle chapters show how Diem, after initial problems in countering the insurgency, led a very effective counterinsurgency effort in 1962 and 1963. The latter chapters show how the removal of Diem crippled South Vietnam’s ability to fight the Communists. I provided an enormous amount of new information on the war in 1962 and 1963, much of it from Communist sources, showing how the South Vietnamese were winning the war. Chapman does nothing to show that any of this information is untrustworthy.

These paragraphs are only a small part of Moyar's reply. I encourage interested readers to read the entire reply. 

I was not aware that guests could post topics, especially bizarre ones, since there is no accountability unless the guest gives their identity. 

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

Mike, you are the one mischaracterizing Vietnam scholarship by pushing hardcore revisionism as though it somehow aligns with the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the war.

You know, or should know, that this is false. One, it is not "hardcore" revisionism. Two, I already said that in the academic community, the pro-Vietnam War view is the minority viewpoint.

May I ask about your background in Vietnam War research? I have been studying the Vietnam War for over 30 years. I have read at least 70 books on the subject, along with innumerable papers, studies, and articles, such as the dozens of war-era DoD reports available on the DTIC website and on other websites. I have maintained my own website on the war for going on 20 years. Your comments indicate that you are quite new to Vietnam War scholarship, and are far out of your depth here.

I might add that among Vietnam vets, the pro-war/revisionist view is by far the dominant view. Similarly, if you look at official Navy, Marine, Army, and Air Force histories of the war published within the first five or 10 years after the conflict, those histories defend the war effort. Even today, the majority of professors at the Army War College, Navy War College, Marine Corps University, etc., who deal with the subject, support, to varying degrees, the revisionist view.

In reality, revisionism is a minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of academic historians. Many of these scholars take the tenets of revisionism seriously and still conclude that they are lacking evidence, rely too much on counterfactuals, and are politically motivated to the point that many of the core arguments border on polemics.

The "vast majority"? Let me put it this way: The percentage of Asia/Vietnam War academic historians who support the pro-war/revisionist position is greater than the percentage of Kennedy-era academic historians who support the conspiracy view of the JFK assassination.  

And, again, when we move the arena from civilian academia to Vietnam vets and military institutions, the picture changes substantially. 

“Regarded as perhaps” is not the same thing as “literally call him extreme”. Even the supportive reviews I’ve read of Moyar’s book say that he goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis. 

Really? So you can read minds? They did not actually say that Moyar is extreme, but they regard him as such. Huh. Amazing. You have talked to them, right? Or you can read their minds? You really need to stop trying to bluff your way through on this subject. 

Anyway, I do not believe you. Cite just one favorable review that says Moyar pushes the revisionist position further than "just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis." I am confident I have read every favorable review of Moyar’s books published so far. Not one of them said what you claim some of them have said. Prove me wrong. 

"Just about" is a convenient hedge. I can think of several pro-Vietnam War historians who are more emphatic and pointed in making their case, such as Sorley, Turner, Sharp, and Veith. They are all fine scholars and have written top-notch, highly regarded books on the war, but their tone and polemic is a bit sharper than Moyar's. 

I did find this in a quick google search though. I’m not sure if this lady is a revisionist in the traditional sense, but she is an academic historian, favorably reviews a revisionist book over an orthodox one, and still labels Moyar’s book as “extreme”.  

https://cindyanguyen.com/2017/07/16/orthodox-revisionism-vietnam-war/ 

You must be kidding. First off, if Cindy Nguyen were a Vietnam War historian, I would know about her. Second, a quick look at her CV shows she had written nothing about the war until the article that you cite, and her article is not about the war itself but about scholarship on the war. In 2021, she wrote a review of Olga Dror's sociological analysis of war and youth identities in North and South Vietnam. Her own description of the book makes it clear that it is not about the war itself but about a sociological aspect of Vietnamese society during the war.

Turning to the Cindy Nguyen article that you cite, I see some problems right off the bat. She puts Christopher Goscha and Lien-Hang Nguyen in her "Vietnam-centric" column but not in the “Revisionist” column. Do you know who Lien-Hang Nguyen is? She wrote the book Hanoi's War, one of the best exposes of North Vietnam's Stalinist state ever written and that challenges several key tenets of the anti-war/”orthodox” position. 

Do you know who Christopher Goscha is? He is arguably one of the most knowledgeable scholars in the world about Indochina. His latest book, published just last year, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam, is one of the most devastating exposes ever written of the cruelty, deceit, and brutality of Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and the Viet Minh as a whole. 

If Goscha’s book had been published in, say, 1970, the anti-war movement would have called him a right-wing fascist who was peddling far-right propaganda about the Viet Minh. 

Cindy Nguyen labels Moyar “extreme” on two issues, not on all issues, and she says Moyar is “extremely well qualified”: 

          Revisionists fight an uphill battle for recognition, even when extremely well qualified like Mark Moyar. 

I will be charitable and assume that you honestly overlooked the fact that she only describes him as "extreme" on two issues on the war, and that she calls him "extemely well qualified." 

Regarding the North Vietnamese sources Moyar uses, I’m still not sure if you’ve even read the reviews you posted. 

Oh, I have read them. The problem is (1) you have not read enough to realize how badly you are blundering here, (2) you apparently did not notice that nothing the roundtable reviews said (or that you cited) actually addressed the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources, and (3) you obviously still have not bothered to read Moyar's detailed reply to the roundtable reviews (otherwise, you would not have repeated the embarrassingly silly argument below). 

Moyar is slammed in I think the first review of that roundtable for not reading Vietnamese and using select translated sources to push his arguments. That is not an isolated interpretation either: 

This is a truly pathetic argument, not to mention a downright silly and petty one. In using the North Vietnamese sources, Moyar relied on one of the most renowned Vietnamese linguists in the Western world: Merle Pribbenow. You would know this if you had read Moyar's books and/or his reply to the roundtable reviews. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of the scholars who have written about the Vietnam War and who have cited North or South Vietnamese sources do not read or speak Vietnamese but rely on translated versions and on professional linguists for untranslated material, just as Moyar did. 

Also, I guess you did not notice that not one of the roundtable reviews claims that the translated passages from the North Vietnamese sources in Moyar's books are wrong. Did you not notice this? 

To be clear, my reference here is to the work of scholars conducting primary research on the Vietnamese side of the war and/or relevant aspects of modern Vietnamese political history. The scholarship to which I refer does not include Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken…which relies on select translated sources in order to substitute tendentious revisionist arguments about the Vietnamese dynamics of the war for tendentious orthodox ones.  

https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Zinoman-on-Bradley.pdf 

This is an inane argument. It comes from a footnote in Peter Zinoman's review of one of Mark Bradley's books. Of course the translated sources are "select." Every book ever written on the Vietnam War that uses any Vietnamese sources, North or South, uses "select translated sources"! This is a juvenile argument that does not address the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources. 

Have you caught on yet that the various liberal historians who dismiss Moyar's research studiously avoid dealing with the evidence from the North Vietnamese sources? I will not bother to repeat all the crucial information that those sources reveal. I have provided summaries of some of that evidence in other threads and replies.  

I could go on, but the point is that you are pushing all these pro-war analyses as fact while completing ignoring that the vast majority of experts strongly disagree with you, and immediately rejecting any alternate interpretation of the evidence by tossing around dismissive terms like “liberal historian”, “far left”, “fringe”, etc. Basically, you are accusing others of cherry picking and falling victim to confirmation bias while doing exactly that to promote your theories. 

No, I have mainly been talking about historic information from newly released/available North Vietnamese sources, information that destroys the view that prevails in the civilian academic world. You, on the other hand, clearly have not read any scholarly book that discusses this information. Moyar is not the only historian who has presented it. Such scholars as Veith, Sorley, Kort, Hunt, and even Hastings, to name a few, have also examined it at length. You keep relying on scholars who have not even tried to explain this evidence. 

No, the "vast majority of experts" do not disagree with me. Most civilian historians do, but when we shift to a different arena, your view becomes the minority view. 

And, I would repeat the point that the "vast majority" of academic historians reject the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. If you're going to appeal to the authority of academic historians and ignore other arenas, then you need to be consistent in appealing to them. The vast majority of the historians you are citing also believe in the lone-gunman theory and regard WC critics as uneducated, paranoid, etc., etc.

19 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Talk about an awkward position, when unless one is willing to believe the Zapruder film was altered after 2009, the filmmakers themselves are openly admit that it looks like a shadow, even though the whole point of their project is that to claim it doesn't look like a shadow.

A circular shadow that remains on the same spot on the head even as the head and car move? What object would have cast a circular shadow? How does the shadow remain over the right-rear part of the head even when JFK moves and turns his head? 

12 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

 

Given that US elites---Wall Street, Silicon Valley, entertainment---are happy to do hundreds of billions of dollars of business every year with the Communist Party of China--which, btw gave $5 mil or so to the Bidens---what say you now about the Asian wars "against communism"?

I think you are comparing apples to oranges. China has come a long way since Mao Tse Tung. China has largely abandoned socialism, and as a result economic conditions are far better now than they were under Mao. China is still a repressive regime, to be sure, but it is not as repressive as it used to be. China allows a degree of religious freedom that was unknown under Mao. My church (the LDS Church) has a sizable membership in China and just received permission to build a second LDS temple in China. This would have been impossible under Mao. 

Were the Asian wars really wars "against communism"---or wars to keep markets and labor pools available to Western economic and financial elites? 

I think this is a sad and cynical view. Look at South Korea today compared to North Korea. We fought to keep South Korea free, and South Korea, with our help, has performed an economic miracle since the war. South Vietnam could have done the same thing if the Democrat-dominated Congress had not betrayed them and slashed aid less than a year after the Paris Peace Accords.

At present, there has been 20 years and counting of stomach-churning de-liberalization in Beijing.

See above.

Apple, BlackRock, JP Morgan, Disney, NBC Universal, Tesla, GM, Microsoft---you name it, they curry favor with Beijing communists, and send Biden and Treasury Secy Janey Yellen on missions to make nice with the commie rulers. 

But this cuts both ways. China is enormously, critically reliant on U.S. trade. We could crash the Chinese economy in a matter of weeks, if we wanted to do so, by slapping prohibitive tariffs on Chinese goods. Yes, we would suffer too, but not as much. Mitt Romney was wise to point this out in 2012. Trump pointed it out a few weeks ago. China needs us a lot more than we need China.

So...what was the Vietnam War really about? 

That is easy and simple: It was about trying to keep 18 million South Vietnamese from falling under the same kind of brutal tyranny that the people of North Korea and North Vietnam suffered under.

If we sent 60,000 boys to die for in war against Asian communism, and killed up to 6 million in SE Asia---we are US elites so deeply in bed with Beijing commies now? 

That is a false comparison and a false-choice argument. Again, look at South Korea. Or, look at Thailand and Indonesia, which we helped to resist communism. As many scholars have pointed out, our prolonged presence in South Vietnam gave courage to the Thai and Indonesian governments and peoples to resist communism. Look at Cambodia after the Communists were finally ousted from power.

18 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Mike is presenting the arguments of the revisionist school of Vietnam scholars as if they are established facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moyar in particular is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists. His attempt to rehabilitate Diem in Triumph Forsaken is ridiculed by just about everyone, and many of his arguments are every bit as “fringe” as the positions Mike criticizes here on a daily basis, if not more so. Here’s a nice summary of Vietnam revisionism from a scholarly review of Moyar’s book from JSTOR: 

A majority of observers and scholars perhaps. But not all. A more exculpatory narrative of American intervention in Vietnam has fiercely challenged those who see the war as a mistake. Given popular expression by Ronald Reagan in a speech before the 1980 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Chicago when he called Vietnam a “noble cause,” self-styled “revisionists” - among them Vietnam generation military figures and diplomats, as well as some journalists, political scientists and historians - argued that Vietnam was a necessary war…

…As the failures of the ongoing Iraq war have once again unleashed the ghosts of Vietnam into national political debate, revisionist accounts of American policy in Vietnam have become increasingly visible and are often employed to underscore arguments that military solutions to the chaos engulfing Iraq can work. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40007304?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

Here’s another informative article on revisionism that I recommend everyone read: 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

There are a lot of great quotes in this one. For example: 

“More recently, the vast majority of historians have reviewed revisionist texts by Moyar and Boot unfavorably, critiquing their books for questionable use of sources and politically inspired wishful thinking.”

“The real problem with revisionism, as the last 50 years have shown, is that it is driven not so much by an honest desire to fine-tune what we know about the war as by a desire to use the Vietnam War as a cudgel in political and policy-making battles. On the political side, it is no coincidence that revisionism has surged in moments of polarization when right-of-center leaders have found advantage in emphasizing nationalist themes and degrading liberals as out-of-touch elites incapable of using American power to maximum effect.”

In other words, a lot of Mike’s arguments on Vietnam are based on a politically motivated minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of experts in the field - the exact same scenario he uses to invalidate arguments made by Jim D by calling them “extreme far-left”, “fringe”, etc.

Everyone’s arguments should be judged on merit, but let’s not pretend like we’re getting an objective history lesson here. 

This is a distorted and misleading portrayal of Moyar's scholarship and of Vietnam War scholarship in general. So far in this thread you have done nothing but carefully cherry pick a handful of negative statements by liberal historians, while ignoring more moderate statements by other liberal historians who recognize the important contribution that Moyar has made, especially in his ground-breaking research on newly released/available North Vietnamese sources.

I would also note that you have once again ignored all the positive reviews that Moyar's books have received from historians and Vietnam War scholars, not to mention Moyar's detailed reply to the roundtable review. You keep acting like they do not exist. The scholars who have praised Moyar's research are just as qualified and knowledgeable as the ones who have attacked it.

It is utterly erroneous to claim that Moyar "is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists." That is total nonsense and indicates you are new to Vietnam War research. You name me one revisionist scholar who has said that Moyar is "extreme." In fact, Moyar is known for his careful, methodical, and measured scholarship. So, yes, do name a single scholar who defends the Vietnam War who has called Moyar "extreme" or anything along that line. 

If you were familiar with Vietnam War scholarship, as I am, you would know that Moyar is anything but extreme. Many liberal historians label any scholar who disagrees with them about the war as "extreme." FYI, Moyar is not nearly as strident as, say, Dr. Lewis Sorley or Dr. Robert Turner, both of whom are fine scholars who have written highly regarded books on the Vietnam War. Go watch some of the panel discussions on the war that Moyar has chaired or taken part in. Here is one such panel discussion, chaired by Moyar, and it included Sorley, Daddis, Selverstone, Veith, Nu-Anh Tran, and Villard: LINK.

Go watch that video and come back and tell me with a straight face that Moyar is "the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet." (BTW, why do you suppose Moyar was the one chairing the discussion?)

How would you compare Moyar's Triumph Forsaken and Triumph Regained books with Dr. Michael Kort's The Vietnam War Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2017), or with Dr. George Veith's Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 (Encounter Books, 2012), or with Dr. Lewis Sorley's A Better War (Harcourt, 1999), or with Dr. Christopher Goscha's The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton University Press, 2022)? I am guessing you have not read any of these books (I have read all of them), so you have some reading to do before you can answer my question.

Finally, I ask you again, why do you suppose that not one of the liberal reviews that you have quoted even tried to address the evidence that Moyar presents from North Vietnamese sources? I asked you this earlier, and you chose not to reply.

On 7/9/2023 at 11:17 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Yesterday, by way of explaining the delay in my response to Jeremy's post, I mentioned that I had been banned from posting on Thursday for 2 days. The ban was by personal note to me from Sandy.  No announcement was made to the group (more on the problem with that below).

 

Later in the day, Sandy brought it up himself, without mentioning my name: 

"I gave one guy a two-day suspension the other day for what I think most people consider quite offensive". His note to me was headlined "outrageous statements". What, the reader might ask,  did Odisio say that was so offensive and outrageous?

 

Here is Sandy's statement accompanying the ban notice: "for stating numerous times that the moderators have not explained the reason for moving threads, when in fact we have explained numerous times."  IOW, It's a fact that they have explained the reasons numerous times. The implication is undeniable:  I was lying when I claimed otherwise and therefore deserved a ban.

 

I had questioned the policy of moving threads and asked for an explanation.  Since all posts relevant to an understanding of the JFKA should be allowed (a statement that seems obvious to me), I had asserted that a threshold determination of *irrelevance* should be made before removing a thread from the forum, regardless of what other topic a thread also included (like politics).

 

Neither Sandy nor Mark argued against that assertion. There was no discussion. Instead Sandy said he had already explained the reasons threads were moved, but "Roger has refused to listen". I quickly responded that I had read everything that was said, but nothing offered was an adequate explanation, considering that information people here should be seeing was being removed from the forum.  IOW, my question was about the *adequacy of explanations offered, not about whether any had been offered.

 

That drew only a repeat that I simply refused to listen to the mods when they reasserted *the fact* that they had offered explanations for the moves.  The real question about adequacy was left unexamined.

 

It seems to me that Mark also indicated that the politics forum in EF was being shortchanged if the threads that discussed some political aspect were not moved there. I suggested, twice, that to the extent that was a problem, it could be solved by leaving the thread in JFKA, and copying it to the politics forum.  Again, no response. 

 

The stage was set for when the next time I mentioned the inadequacy of the policy of removing threads, the hammer of a ban could be lowered.  

 

They had turned a disagreement about the adequacy of their policy, that they had consistently declined to discuss, into an outrageous and an offensive "refusal to listen" to their claim of having explained the reasonableness of their policy. 

 

Needless to say, I find the claim in support of the ban to be without merit, absent further discussion by the mods.

 

Perhaps all of this could be cleared up if Sandy and Mark would explain why each thread they moved was irrelevant to an understanding of the JFKA. Or why relevance doesn't matter, at least to the extent I claim. 

 

In addition, while they're at it and in view of Sandy's remarks about what he said I did, I would like my name back.

 

Now a word about how the ban policy works, in case one of you runs afoul of the mods.  I was astonished at how it works.

 

No warning of a possible ban is given.  The note from Sandy said: Warning, you may not post again on EF for the 2 days. There was no warning that a ban is being considered to give the person I chance to respond. The ban is imposed without warning, despite what the note says. 

 

No response to the ban is permitted.  You must simply acknowledge receipt.  You will not be permitted to post again, your suspension will be extended, until you do acknowledge it.

 

No announcement of the ban or the reasons for it is made to the group.

 

Everything is done in secret via a personal message from the mods.  They have to explain nothing.  They allow no response to their actions.  They have no accountability. Members don't even know what has been done in their name.

 

Besides no posting, no contact with other members is permitted using info on EF.  If a member contacts you, you cannot reply to his message.

 

Effectively you are placed in solitary confinement within EF for the length of the ban. 

 

This is way too much power for any mod to have, not just the current mods.

 

Changes are needed, starting with, at a minimum:

 

*All bans must be announced by the mods to the group, including the reasons for the ban. 

 

*This will allow a discussion of the ban's efficacy.  A ban should not be given lightly.   Censorship of speech of any kind is repugnant, even more so that which is done in darkness.

 

*The banned person must be allowed to use the EF contact facility to discuss with other members what they think of the ban or the possibility of a ban.

 

* A warning should be given to the person for whom a ban is being considered, to allow that person to give his side of the story before the ban is imposed.  Once a ban is imposed and announced to the group, it becomes a matter for group discussion, if members are so inclined.

 

Look, Sandy and I strongly disagree on some issues, but I must say that I have found Sandy to be fair and tolerant in how he moderates the board. The problem is that you seem incapable of taking No for an answer. You repeatedly seem to intent on trying to push the envelope. If you don't like how the board is run, go post on other JFK-related boards.

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

So? This in no way lends credence to the notion that the film was "altered" at Hawkeye Works or NPIC. In fact, I find it ludicrous to believe the evil conspirators would go to such trouble on just ONE of the assassination films when they could in no way be certain that OTHER films wouldn't surface later and completely contradict the now-altered Zapruder footage. 

Then why in the world did the Secret Service take the Zapruder film to a secret CIA-contracted photo lab that did not do analytic work and whose very designation was classified? Why? And why did they then take it to NPIC? Why were those historic evidentiary briefing boards destroyed? Why the cloak of secrecy that was thrown over the film's detour to NPIC? People do things and try to hide them for a reason. 

If you find alteration "ludicrous," then you need to explain the missing events, impossible movements, and technical anomalies in the film. I discuss some of these in my article "Evidence of Alteration in the Zapruder Film.

You could start with the suspicious circular black blob that appears on JFK's head. The blob is obvious. I have yet to hear a rational explanation for it. If it were some freak shadow, it would not remain fixed in position as the car and head move, conveniently covering the same spot on the head where dozens of witnesses in three different locations saw a large avulsed wound. 

The Nix film was confiscated and the out-of-camera original was never returned. Even so, the extant Nix film glaringly contradicts the Zapruder film on how far on the limo's trunk Jackie crawled, as others have noted, and as I discuss in my article. 

The Muchmore film is of limited value. 

Theory cannot erase fact. However unlikely you think it is that the film was altered, you need to explain the visible evidence and other evidence of alteration.