Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[James DiEugenio]

Now Mike is saying that VIetnam was really not one country?

This is one of the things that Draper went after Podhoretz about.  

The USA had created a civil war by taking over for the French and Bao Dai in the British occupied zone.  And they were now going to prop up Diem and have him, with Lansdale's encouragement: 1.). Vote out Bao Dai by not letting him run a campaign, and 2.) Diem would refuse to participate in the national elections.

By accomplishing these two objectives, South Vietnam became a creation of the USA. And the reason it was created was simple: Ike knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any national election. (I should add, the French commander there, Ely, was another voice who had  strong reservations about America coming in to essentially occupy Vietnam. That now makes three: Ely, Heath and Wilson.)

But since DIem was a Catholic, and there was a period of free flow in Vietnam before the scheduled elections, Lansdale created a huge operation in which he used black propaganda techniques to get about a million Catholics to go south to help prop up DIem.  Buckley used to use this to say: well see the refugees went south.  Leaving out the fact that Lansdale had used terror and death threats to get them to flee, since there were so few Catholics in the south for DIem to lead. 

BTW, even after this operation, the population in South Vietnam was 70 % Buddhist.

Edited September 12, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Now Mike is saying that VIetnam was really not one country?

This is one of the things that Draper went after Podhoretz about.  

The USA had created a civil war by taking over for the French and Bao Dai in the British occupied zone.  And they were now going to prop up Diem and have him, with Lansdale's encouragement: 1.). Vote out Bao Dai by not letting him run a campaign, and 2.) Diem would refuse to participate in the national elections.

By accomplishing these two objectives, South Vietnam became a creation of the USA. And the reason it was created was simple: Ike knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any national election. (I should add, the French commander there, Ely, was another voice who had  strong reservations about America coming in to essentially occupy Vietnam. That now makes three: Ely, Heath and Wilson.)

But since DIem was a Catholic, and there was a period of free flow in Vietnam before the scheduled elections, Lansdale created a huge operation in which he used black propaganda techniques to get about a million Catholics to go south to help prop up DIem.  Buckley used to use this to say: well see the refugees went south.  Leaving out the fact that Lansdale had used terror and death threats to get them to flee, since there were so few Catholics in the south for DIem to lead. 

BTW, even after this operation, the population in South Vietnam was 70 % Buddhist.

 

For those who haven't read it, Fletcher Prouty talks in detail about this Lansdale op to transport Catholics from North Vietnam to the South in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.

He was directly involved in the op.

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy: Prouty, L. Fletcher, Stone, Oliver, Ventura, Jesse: 9781616082918: Amazon.com: Books

[Michael Griffith]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Now Mike is saying that VIetnam was really not one country?

This is one of the things that Draper went after Podhoretz about.  

The USA had created a civil war by taking over for the French and Bao Dai in the British occupied zone.  And they were now going to prop up Diem and have him, with Lansdale's encouragement: 1.). Vote out Bao Dai by not letting him run a campaign, and 2.) Diem would refuse to participate in the national elections.

By accomplishing these two objectives, South Vietnam became a creation of the USA. And the reason it was created was simple: Ike knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any national election. (I should add, the French commander there, Ely, was another voice who had  strong reservations about America coming in to essentially occupy Vietnam. That now makes three: Ely, Heath and Wilson.)

But since DIem was a Catholic, and there was a period of free flow in Vietnam before the scheduled elections, Lansdale created a huge operation in which he used black propaganda techniques to get about a million Catholics to go south to help prop up DIem.  Buckley used to use this to say: well see the refugees went south.  Leaving out the fact that Lansdale had used terror and death threats to get them to flee, since there were so few Catholics in the south for DIem to lead. 

BTW, even after this operation, the population in South Vietnam was 70 % Buddhist.

You still haven't bothered to watch any of the videos I've linked, including the Buckley-Vaughn debate where this issue came up, have you? You just keep repeating these very old left-wing/communist talking points. If you could gather up the courage and objectivity to examine the other side of the story, you would realize how soundly these talking points have been refuted.

Now, as you can confirm by reading any serious study of Vietnamese history, from the early 16th century to the early 19th century, there was no nation of Vietnam but two, three, or more ruling entities that controlled various regions. For about 70 years of that period, there were two nations, one in the north and the other in the south. The southern Vietnamese nation was the Le dynasty. The northern Vietnamese nation was the Mac dynasty. For long stretches of Vietnamese history, there were three ruling entities, one in the north, another in the central region, and another in the south. 

When Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the founding of the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" in 1945, at best he had tenuous control over 2/3 of the country. In the National Assembly election of 1946, the Vietminh lost in the southern third of the country, and it was clear that many Vietnamese in the central and northern regions did not support Ho's government either.

Certainly, most Vietnamese wanted a unified, single nation, but only if the rights of the two major regions would be respected and only if both regions had a fair voice and influence in the government. 

For heaven's sake, at least go read Tang's memoir A Vietcong Memoir. I provided a summary of his memoir in a previous reply. Tang was a dedicated and high-ranking Vietcong and the minister of justice in the PRG. He also strongly believed in socialism at the time. Go read his book and you'll find ample evidence of the fact that Vietnamese in the South felt a strong bond and identity with their region and considered themselves "southerners," while at the same time they were willing to support a unified Vietnam that justly represented all Vietnamese.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

I saw the Buckley Vaughn debate years ago.

I am sorry if I do not view it as you do.  I have always thought that Buckley was as bad on Vietnam as he was on civil rights.

And I am also getting very tired of you saying this is a left/right issue and I am bringing up old leftist talking points.

Anderson's book is not an old book.  And its one of the best studies of the Eisenhower administration in Vietnam that I have read.

Ely, Wilson and Heath were not lefties.  And they all felt America should not intervene.,  General Collins was not a lefty.  He thought Foster Dulles was wrong in supporting DIem.

I could easily turn this around on you and say that what you are doing is reciting Republican revisionism out of H W Bush, who said that we had finally licked the "VIetnam Syndrome".

After Libya and Iraq I don't think we did. I don't think we learned the lessons of VIetnam.  I think the Power Elite did all they could to disguise and camouflage them.  And it was Reagan's and Bush 1's job to revise the story as some kind of noble cause.  And I think it was their hired scribes job to rewrite the history of the war in such a way as to make it appear that somehow, America did not really lose. That somehow Rolling Thunder was either not enough or it was misapplied.  My big problem with those two jerks Novick and Burns is they at least partly backed this concept, and actually tried to minimize the anti war movement, even though it was those protests which stopped Nixon from launching Duck Hook. 

I don't agree with Novick and Burns, or Reagan and Bush 1..  And I think what America did, under Nixon especially, was to spread a debacle even further into Laos and Cambodia. With horrendous results.

As per the history of Vietnam, that is a long and complex story that goes back eons.  You can cherry pick all you want, but it was the USA which divided a country that had been one for over a century.

Edited September 13, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Let me add one other point about this whole issue:

How long did Thieu last after America pulled out?

It was a matter of months.

This is what I mean.  There was no there there. When Nixon announced he was removing American troops, a guy I know who was there said: this is it.  There is no way in Hades that the ARVN had any chance at all against the VIet Cong and Hanoi.  And this was after how many years of nation building in the south? You can date that from Diem's arrival in Saigon. So that would be almost two decades.

When is enough enough? 

[James DiEugenio]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

 

For those who haven't read it, Fletcher Prouty talks in detail about this Lansdale op to transport Catholics from North Vietnam to the South in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.

He was directly involved in the op.

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy: Prouty, L. Fletcher, Stone, Oliver, Ventura, Jesse: 9781616082918: Amazon.com: Books

One of the best parts of that book I think. Nice one William.

[Michael Griffith]

21 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

But since Diem was a Catholic, and there was a period of free flow in Vietnam before the scheduled elections, Lansdale created a huge operation in which he used black propaganda techniques to get about a million Catholics to go south to help prop up Diem.  Buckley used to use this to say: well see the refugees went south.  Leaving out the fact that Lansdale had used terror and death threats to get them to flee, since there were so few Catholics in the south for Diem to lead. 

So Lansdale's "black propaganda" was the reason that some 3 million North Vietnamese tried to flee to the South, not the thousands of executions, the jailing of dissidents, and the repression of basic rights carried out by Ho's brutal regime??? And how do you explain the fact that so few people in the South moved to the North?

And how do you explain the fact that during the Tet Offensive, contrary to what the communists believed would happen, the vast majority of the South Vietnamese people did not side with the communists but remained loyal to South Vietnam's government? (Some NVA and VC soldiers were so infuriated by this that they took out their anger on South Vietnamese civilians, e.g., the massacre at Hue.)

Speaking of that "period of free flow," which was mandated by the Geneva Accords, apparently none of the sources you’ve read mentioned that the Vietminh openly and severely violated this provision of the accords. The Vietminh prevented as many as 2 million North Vietnamese from moving to South Vietnam (Robert F. Turner, Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development. Hoover Institution Publications. 1975, pp. 100–105; Ronald Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam, 1954–55, Texas Tech University Press, 2007, pp. 158-167). 

The communists used a variety of methods to try to prevent people from going south. They prohibited water traffic in key areas of the Red River Delta to prevent people from getting to the port of Haiphong. This forced many refugees to flee to the nearest unguarded coastal point, where they would wait for emigrant ships heading south. However, the Vietminh put mortars at some of these points to prevent refugees from boarding those ships. 

The communists sent battalion- and brigade-sized forces into rural areas to intercept groups of refugees, beating and even killing some of them to force them to turn around. They did this because the French and the Americans controlled the larger cities, including Haiphong, but had no presence in rural areas. The Vietminh attacked units of the anti-communist Vietnamese National Army to prevent them from helping refugees who were trying to go south. 

One last thing: Regarding the “decent interval” argument, here, too, liberals have distorted, or perhaps in some cases honestly misread, the evidence. Historian Larry Berman, whom no one would accuse of being a Nixon admirer, wrote an entire book on this subject: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (Free Press, 2001). Using previously unavailable/classified sources, Berman shows that Nixon intended to use the Paris Peace Accords as a justification for resuming air attacks if North Vietnam launched another invasion. Nixon had no intention of allowing South Vietnam to collapse after a “decent interval.” 

Nixon did say privately that he believed South Vietnam would only survive for a year or two after the Paris Peace Accords, if they received no assistance. This is the context that most liberal scholars ignore. He was not predicting South Vietnam’s collapse. He was saying that if the communists invaded again, and if South Vietnam received no assistance, South Vietnam would collapse in a year or two. But, again, as Berman shows, Nixon had no intention of allowing that to happen. Says Berman, 

The record shows that the United States expected that the signed treaty would be immediately violated and that this would trigger a brutal military response. Permanent war (air war, not ground operations) at acceptable cost was what Nixon and Kissinger anticipated from the so-called peace agreement. They believed that the only way the American public would accept it was if there was a signed agreement. . . . Just as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution provided a pretext for an American engagement in South Vietnam, the Paris Accords were intended to fulfill a similar role for remaining permanently engaged in Vietnam. Watergate derailed that plan. (p. 9)

Berman harshly condemns Nixon for his plan, even calling it a betrayal, but I do not. Nixon hoped that if North Vietnam violated the Peace Accords by launching another invasion, Congressional Democrats—and perhaps even the news media and the anti-war movement—would support renewed air attacks and supply operations to help South Vietnam as long as no ground troops were used.

Nixon never would have felt compelled to resort to such a stratagem if Congressional Democrats, the news media, and the anti-war movement had not smeared the war effort, whitewashed North Vietnam, and demonized South Vietnam. Nixon’s opponents seemed determined to let South Vietnam fall to communist tyranny. They parroted communist talking points and screamed bloody murder every time Nixon took rational steps to win the war. Every stray American bomb or shell was a war crime, but communist atrocities went unreported.

And let us remember that Nixon lobbied furiously against the Case-Church Amendment, correctly noting that it would give North Vietnam a green light to invade South Vietnam again.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

The figure I have seen is about 900 K to a million, by Peter Hanson in an article from 2009.

I don't know where you get these Hoover Institute studies and their numerical basis.  Well, yes I do, but I have problems with what the Hoover Institute did to the Lansdale files that Newman and I saw.

The idea that Nixon was going to intervene again was blasted by McGeorge Bundy in a famous article he wrote for Foreign Affairs I think in 1979. Congress had repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and passed the War Powers Act.  So Bundy asked what would have been the basis of any such intervention?

The other way to look at this is how Ken Hughes did in his 2015 book Fatal Politics.  He considered it part of Nixon's Madman Theory, which RMN had expressed to Haldeman as such:

“They’ll believe any threat of force that Nixon makes because it’s Nixon. I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button.’”

Nixon believed this trick would work, saying “Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

BTW, in that book Nixon says twice what Mike says he never did:  namely that Vietnam could not be won.Once to Whelan, Buchanan, and Price, and once to Kissinger.  Nixon came to this conclusion early, in 1969. (Hughes, pp. 14-15) Thus, the optics now became Peace with Honor.  GIving Saigon a hope of survival, which Nixon knew was a mirage.  But he wanted to use it politically to hurt the left and their idea, which he termed  surrender. (p. 19) So knowing the critics were correct, and it was Nixon and Ike who got us into the war, Nixon and Kissinger were determined to lengthen the conflict for purely political gain.  Plus the fact that Saigon could not fall on his watch, as he told Haldeman.

But the Madman Theory did not work and Nixon even tried for a phony worldwide nuclear alert which again did not take in the Russians.  They saw through it.  And as LBJ predicted, the mining of Haiphong was ineffective. So now Kissinger wrote Zhou En Lai that they wanted a Decent Interval.  (Jeff Kimball actually found this document in the Nixon Archives. Its in the Epilogue to the Burr/ Kimball book Nixon's Nuclear Specter)

As Kissinger said to Nixon “If we can, in October of ’72 go around the country saying we ended the war and the Democrats wanted to turn it over to the communists then we’re in great shape.” To which Nixon replied, “I know exactly what we’re up to.” (Hughes p. 29) Since this was all done in secret, they could get away with a purely political ploy even though it resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. All this was done to make sure Nixon was reelected and the Democrats looked like wimps."

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

The whole key was the Decent Interval.  Which is why Nixon used massive bombing over the Easter Offensive.  But even after that Hughes writes that the Pentagon noted, Hanoi could go on like this for two years. But the Easter Offensive showed just how easily Hanoi could win the war with America gone.

Kissinger was very specific with the Chinese after: he wanted a one or two year interval between the political agreement and the military collapse. (Hughes, p. 79).  After which, Kissinger told Nixon that VIetnam would be a backwater. (Hughes, pp. 84-85) Le Duc Tho understood through Zhou that "reunification will be decided after a suitable interval following the signing." Kissinger and Nixon knew the whole peace plan was BS and the war would continue, but Nixon would be gone. (p. 88)

So when Mike says there was no Decent Interval plan and Nixon did not know he could not win the war, I am  puzzled by this. Sounds like Hoover Institute boilerplate to me.   Its on tape. And in writing. How badly did Nixon sell out Saigon? When Kissinger brought Thieu the agreements, there were only three countries mentioned: Laos, Cambodia and VIetnam. (p. 118). His fate had been decided.  With that, Thieu did not buy Nixon's reassurances  that he would intervene.  He was correct.  Nixon did not veto the congressional cut off of aid to Vietnam. (Hughes, p. 165)

And with that, Nixon could now claim he had not lost Vietnam.  It was the Democrats that stopped him from winning.  Which he and Kissinger knew was a lie and a political ploy.  But Mike buys it.

Edited September 13, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Kirk Gallaway]

Michael, It's not clear to me

You think JFK was assassinated as result of a conspiracy

You believe there was and is? a deep state?

But you don't think JFK's foreign policy including Vietnam was really a departure from the established MIC direction.

Why was JFK assassinated?

[Michael Griffith]

In previous replies, I’ve mentioned some of the evidence that has emerged from North Vietnamese sources. I’ve also mentioned that liberal scholars on the Vietnam War ignore this evidence because it has proved highly embarrassing and problematic for the liberal version of the war. In contrast, conservative scholars on the war, including Mark Moyar, George Veith, Geoffrey Shaw, and Dale Walton, have made extensive use of this important evidence. Let us take a closer look at what this evidence has revealed. 

First off, where does this evidence come from? Some of it comes from the numerous volumes of internal North Vietnamese government documents that the government of Vietnam released in 2005 to mark the 30th anniversary of the communist victory. These documents include memos between the leaders in Hanoi and North Vietnamese army (NVA) commanders. Another part of this evidence comes from memoirs written by North Vietnamese civilian officials, NVA officers, and Vietcong (VC) officers and officials. Many of these memoirs were not available in English until the 1990s and early 2000s. 

Here is some of what we have learned from North Vietnamese sources: 

-- Hanoi’s leaders were pleasantly surprised that the American anti-war movement and news media would uncritically repeat communist propaganda, such as North Vietnam’s false claims that the Thieu government was holding 200,000 political prisoners and that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN—read as “Ar-vin”) was engaging in widespread abuse of NVA and VC POWs. 

-- When President Thieu released 37,000 NVA/VC POWs, they were generally healthy, unlike most of the ARVN POWs who were released by the NVA. In fact, the NVA/VC POWs were in such good condition that the NVA quickly put them back into active service. 

-- The Hanoi regime did all they could to covertly support and encourage the American and European anti-war movements. (We know from released Soviet records and disclosures that the KGB did the same thing.) 

-- Hanoi’s leaders viewed Ngo Dinh Diem as a mortal enemy because he enjoyed considerable support from the general public in the South and because even a sizable portion of the North’s general public viewed him favorably. 

-- North Vietnamese agents infiltrated the Buddhist community in South Vietnam and led some Buddhists to engage in agitation against the Diem government. The Buddhists who burned themselves alive in public did so at the behest of communist agents in an effort to damage Diem’s credibility. 

-- Hanoi believed it was important to infiltrate the Buddhist community in the South because Diem was actually reaching out to Buddhists and was even allocating funds to rebuild Buddhist places of worship. 

-- North Vietnamese agents regularly fed propaganda stories to American journalists in Saigon, including Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam, and those journalists usually repeated them (they didn’t realize that their sources were communist agents). Some of those false stories involved the treatment of the Buddhists, the nature of the Buddhist protest movement, ARVN, and South Vietnam’s government. 

-- None other than General Giap himself opposed the 1968 Tet Offensive and the 1972 Spring Offensive (aka the Easter Offensive). He opposed both offensives because he felt it was a grave mistake to engage the Americans in a large set-piece battle. 

-- Hanoi’s leaders were astounded that the American news media was describing the Tet Offensive as an American defeat. After the catastrophic losses that the NVA and the VC suffered during Tet, Hanoi’s leaders admitted among themselves that the offensive had been a military disaster, but they were greatly encouraged by the American news media’s coverage of the offensive and by the impact that this coverage had in the U.S. 

-- Hanoi’s leaders were shocked and dismayed when most South Vietnamese stood by the Saigon government and refused to support the communists during the Tet Offensive, especially during the initial phase of the offensive when the communists were able to capture a number of cities. Hanoi’s leaders had truly believed that most of South Vietnam’s population would rise up in revolt against Saigon once the NVA and the VC launched the Tet Offensive. 

-- The NVA hoped to capture the American base at Khe Sanh. They hoped that the fall of Khe Sanh would have the same devastating impact on the American government that the fall of Dien Bien Phu had had on the French government. (As it turned out, Giap’s forces at Khe Sanh suffered severe losses, were never able to shut down the airfield, were never able to take any of the high ground around the base, were chronically low on food because most of their supply lines were cut, and were forced to flee in desperation by the surprise American counterattack.) 

-- Hanoi’s leaders were puzzled and pleasantly surprised by the Johnson administration’s halting “gradual escalation” bombing strategy. This strategy (which even the level-headed and temperate Colin Powell later called “a disaster”) left numerous crucial targets and entire areas untouched, literally untouched. Hanoi’s leaders were downright puzzled by the strategy. They were only too happy to take full advantage of the strategy by placing airfields, weapons depots, and bases in the areas that they quickly realized were “prohibited areas” for American air raids. 

-- The VC were entirely controlled by the NVA. COSVN was nothing more than an extension of the NVA command structure. 

-- The Hanoi regime hoped that George McGovern would win the 1972 presidential election. 

-- The Hanoi regime wanted a coalition government because they intended to use it to take full control and planned on destroying the coalition government once they had seized power in the South. (Similarly, after Saigon fell, the Hanoi regime broke its repeated promises to the NLF and the PRG about power-sharing and imposed communist rule on the South led by North Vietnamese communists.) 

-- Although Hanoi’s propaganda machine portrayed ARVN as an inept, unwilling army of stooges, the NVA knew that, on balance, ARVN was actually a formidable fighting force. 

-- Soviet and Chinese military aid, especially Soviet aid, was absolutely crucial. Without that aid, North Vietnam would not and could not have won. 

-- The NVA suffered such heavy losses in manpower, armor, and artillery during the 1972 Spring Offensive that massive Soviet military aid was required before the NVA could launch another large-scale operation. 

-- The December 1972 Operation Linebacker II air raids “overwhelmed” Hanoi’s air defenses. The damage and losses that the North Vietnamese were suffering from Linebacker II were “unsustainable.” During periods of the operation, the NVA actually ran out of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). (Without SAMs, Hanoi was defenseless against B-52 attacks. B-52s flew too high to be hit by anti-aircraft guns. The only way to shoot down B-52s was with SAMs.) Linebacker II caused panic and desperation among Hanoi’s leaders, which is why they were so worried about the return of American air power after the Paris Peace Accords. 

-- Hanoi’s leaders decided they could safely brazenly violate the Paris Peace Accords once they realized that the U.S. Congress would not allow Nixon/Ford to intervene to defend South Vietnam. However, before they came to this realization, given the devastating effects of the Operation Linebacker II bombing raids, Hanoi’s leaders were deathly afraid of doing anything that would provoke the U.S. to carry out more air raids like Linebacker II. 

-- After the NVA conquered South Vietnam, the communists imposed a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese that included executing tens of thousands of “traitors” and “collaborators” and sending 1-2 million people to brutal “reeducation” camps. 

-- Ho Chi Minh had no intention of abiding by the Geneva Accords and began violating them soon after they were signed. He viewed the accords as a temporary necessity forced on him by the Soviets and the Chinese and as a step toward imposing communist rule on South Vietnam. 

-- Ho Chi Minh was an ardent, hardcore communist and a long-time tool of the Soviet government. His early overtures to the U.S. during and right after WW II were deception operations designed to buy time. He had no intention of ever being a U.S. ally. He deeply admired the Soviet Union and later Maoist China and firmly intended to remain in the communist orbit. Ho was trained in the Soviet Union. The Soviets tasked Ho in 1924 to organize Vietnamese emigrants and other Asians in Canton into revolutionaries. In 1939, the Soviets sent Ho to Hong Kong to combine two factions of Vietnamese communists into a single group. 

-- Shortly before the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh told the Chinese government that the Vietminh cause was hopeless without large-scale Chinese intervention.

 

 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

20 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Michael, It's not clear to me

You think JFK was assassinated as result of a conspiracy

You believe there was and is? a deep state?

But you don't think JFK's foreign policy including Vietnam was really a departure from the established MIC direction.

Why was JFK assassinated?

So you think that the only reason JFK was killed was Vietnam??? I think the evidence clearly indicates that the plotters had a number of motives for wanting Kennedy dead: the Bay of Pigs, JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s willingness to let developing nations control/seize/limit U.S. corporate property and operations within their borders, JFK’s ongoing effort to neuter the CIA, JFK’s firing of Dulles and Lemnitzer, JFK’s move to strip the Federal Reserve of its control over our currency and to return that function to the Treasury Department, and JFK’s war on the Mafia. I’m not even sure that Vietnam was one of the plotters’ top three motives.

If Vietnam was one of the plotters’ motives, it was because they knew that JFK was strongly against a large-scale Korea-like intervention in Vietnam. However, even this theory can be credibly challenged. Why? Because Eisenhower was also doggedly against any sizable intervention in Vietnam and because Eisenhower squandered a golden opportunity to wipe out the vast majority of Ho Chi Minh’s forces when he refused to authorize bombing raids at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Ho Chi Minh committed virtually the entire Vietminh army to take Dien Bien Phu. U.S. air raids on Dien Bien Phu could have wiped out most of the Vietminh army and crushed Ho’s chances of winning the war for many years to come, if not permanently. Yet, Eisenhower wasn’t assassinated but stayed in office for seven more years.

Nevertheless, I do believe that some of the plotters were indeed deeply angered by JFK’s determined opposition to deploying regular combat troops in Vietnam. I would bet a good chunk of money that JFK never, ever would have agreed to the kind of massive intervention that LBJ authorized. I think the evidence indicates that JFK would have provided South Vietnam with ample weapons, supplies, and financial aid, and I think he would have authorized air raids to defend South Vietnam, but I don’t think he would have gone very far beyond those measures.

Also, even if JFK had eventually determined that he needed to authorize a sizable deployment of regular combat troops (and remember that RFK indicated that this was not totally off the table), I have to believe that JFK would not have made the catastrophic blunder of choosing General Westmoreland to command our forces in South Vietnam.

LBJ made a horrendous mistake when he chose Westmoreland. What is especially baffling about the selection is that the Pentagon submitted four candidates for the job, including General Abrams, who had far better credentials than Westmoreland. Yet, somehow, someway, LBJ chose the blockheaded Westmoreland, who had no command combat experience above the brigade level and had little formal training in strategy and tactics.

To give you some idea of how incompetent Westmoreland was, shortly before the battle of Khe Sanh heated up, he asked an aide to study how the French had lost at Dien Bien Phu and to report back to him! Holy cow! The guy chosen to command U.S. forces in South Vietnam did not know how the French had lost at Dien Bien Phu?!

Yes, Westmoreland did make a few smart moves in South Vietnam, but he made many more inexcusably bad ones. He practically ignored the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) and showed little interest in pacification. In contrast, when General Abrams took over in mid-1968, he immediately made training and equipping ARVN a top priority and abandoned Westmoreland’s attrition strategy in favor of pacification.

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Kirk Gallaway]

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

So you think that the only reason JFK was killed was Vietnam???

You should read what I asked more carefully.

Kirk: But you don't think JFK's foreign policy (including Vietnam) was really a departure from the established MIC direction. Why was JFK assassinated?

I included Vietnam as an afterthought. But it was you who took the Vietnam part and made it 90% of your post. 

But what you are saying is yes, it was very largely JFK's foreign policy, and I agree with a number of your points. Actually I first suspected some of those points long before i ever entertained the idea it was because of a JFK desire to pull out of Vietnam. But let's review your list.

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think the evidence clearly indicates that the plotters had a number of motives for wanting Kennedy dead: The Bay of Pigs

It's not clear from what I've read. What do you think of JFK's handling of the BOP?

I

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis,-

I'm not clear what you think of how JFK handled this as well.

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

JFK’s willingness to let developing nations control/seize/limit U.S. corporate property and operations within their borders,

Without trying to sound pejorative, You've seemed pretty firmly in the Allen Dulles camp on this point.

 

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

JFK’s ongoing effort to neuter the CIA, JFK’s firing of Dulles and Lemnitzer,

That's not clear either. Was JFK right to fire Dulles and Lenmitzer?

 

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

If Vietnam was one of the plotters’ motives, it was because they knew that JFK was strongly against a large-scale Korea-like intervention in Vietnam.

As I said, just by the pure volume of your observations here, and the volume of what you posted earlier.  You do think that could have been a significant motive, and you're clearly not in the Kennedy camp.

Would it be fair to say, that you share a considerable number of the complaints about JFK as the plotters?

This isn't a trick question. Of course, you could, and still be repulsed by the idea of assassinating the Chief Executive.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

You are bringing up talking points that you have already noted.  This time you have just piled on as many as you could, while ignoring the two tellings facts that I just wrote about. And ignoring them with a silence that is thundering.

1. You said that really there was no Decent Interval by Nixon and Kissinger for when Saigon would fall, as long as it was after America was gone.  I just proved there was. In fact I did not even note the Snepp book which actually had that title on it.  Which makes now four sources.

2. I also proved that Nixon did know that Vietnam was a war that could not have been won. And he himself said it, more than once.

Why are these issues important?  Because it was Nixon and Ike  who originated the American commitment to Vietnam, a point Nixon always tried to camouflage.  But after the massive demonstrations sidelined Duck Hook, even he realized that it would not be possible to get a Korea style settlement.  Therefore, the Decent Interval strategy was decided on through the Chinese, and he have this in writing as I noted above.  

You clearly want to ignore these facts, even though they go to the heart of the matter. I mean if Nixon thought it was lost, it was lost.

I have a hard time understanding your other Hoover Institute talking points.  Is it supposed to be shocking that Hanoi hoped McGovern would win the 1972 election?  I mean so did I. And because of that are you really saying that Hanoi had a prominent influence on the anti war movement?  How? McGovern got bombed. And you must know that Johnson and Helms searched high and low for this significant outside influence don't you?  LBJ had Helms start a whole new program for this. Helms could not find anything of any significance.  Maybe he should have asked Hanoi to send their archives?  Or maybe the Hoover Institute is creating stuff, which they are good at.

Did Russia and China also run out of SAMs?  Are there only a finite amount of those missiles in the world?

I am at a loss for you bringing up that whole issue of Khe Sanh and Tet again.   I quoted Giap as saying Khe Sanh was not important strategically to him.  America made it a huge issue since it brought up the echo of Dien Bien Phu.  The important aspect was Tet.  With Westmoreland bringing 45,000 into Khe Sanh, that allowed Tet a better advantage.  

As per Tet, this has been argued for decades on end.  In fact what you are arguing is what LBJ was telling the Wise Men back in 1968.  Well see Dean, the Viet Cong sustained huge losses, and we turned them back, so we won.  Well Dean Acheson walked out on that one.  Because the important thing was the VIet Cong actually were running wild inside the American Embassy, and a diplomat in tie and suit, had to take out a .38 pistol and start shooting to protect himself.  That picture got into Life magazine. Millions of people saw it.  So if you cannot even secure our own embassy, how are we winning the war?

The whole idea that LBJ and Westmoreland were selling, that "hey we are winning this thing, and its all going to be over in six months, and RFK will be humiliated along with his dove friends", that was all exposed as BS.  In fact, after Tet, Westmoreland asked for 210,000 more troops! Which would have brought the total up to 700,000 in theater!  700,000 men to fight a guerilla war in the jungle. As Cronkite said on TV after Tet, the VIetnam War was not winnable, and it was not worth maintaining any more. That was the importance of the whole Tet offensive.  It was historically and politically irrelevant whether it was a military success or not.

You ignore what I think is the major point: How did Shackley miss it?  Because if the intelligence had been good, he would not have missed it,  the USA would have been better prepared, and maybe we would not have diverted all those troops to Khe Sanh.

I have already contested your other points, which you are just repeating, the whole thing about the "Reign of Terror " which Moise and Porter dispute the numbers about.  And man, Mike, how can anyone with any knowledge say that DIem and Nhu were making progress with the Buddhists? Talk about cherry picking from the Hoover Institute. That one is a little sickening. When monks and nuns--nine of them total--are, on camera, immolating themselves in the streets of Saigon and Nhu is preparing police raids on the pagodas--I mean, that is making progress? To me this sounds like Nixon's rewrite of history, when he said that there really were not that many Buddhists in South Vietnam.  Yeah sure Dick. Diem and Nhu had simply gone over the edge, past the point of no return, with this campaign.  And as John Newman has said, the tragedy of Diem is that he simply could not control Nhu and his wife. Or do you want ignore her completely, with her "Buddhist barbecues".  That really rallied the populace right?

Whew, that is a big one to ignore.

Edited September 15, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

And man, Mike, how can anyone with any knowledge say that DIem and Nhu were making progress with the Buddhists?

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 278:

<quote on, emphasis added>

On Thursday, October 31, General Don went to Gia Long Palace and talked with both Diem and Nhu.  He inquired about the petition he and General Dinh had given Diem in September, asking for cabinet posts and policy changes.  He was told that since everything had resumed to normal there was no need for changes…

General Don was busy on Thursday with last-minute preparations for the coming action.  That was the day [activist professor] Buu-Hoi went with two Buddhist monks to see Ngo Dinh Nhu.  They asked him to intervene with Diem to set free “all Buddhist dignitaries, laymen and students still under detention,” and Nhu “promised to obtain from the president a favorable answer to this request.”

The news was announced in an official press release.  It would be a banner headline on the front page of the Times of Vietnam the next day.

This was awkward news for the generals.  The Buddhist issue, which had been slipping away ever since the arrival of the mission from the United Nations [Oct. 24], seemed to be disappearing before their eyes, and a convenient excuse for their coup with it.

<quote off>

 

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs 201-2

<quote on>

In Saigon on Friday morning, November 1, Ambassador Lodge and Admiral Harry Felt, Commander in Chief of the Pacific, met with President Diem, as rebel troops were gathering outside the city…

“Tell President Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out but it is a question of timing.”

This was the response from Diem that Kennedy had been waiting for, and Lodge recognized it.  In his comment on Diem’s statement, Lodge cabled: “If U.S. wants to make a package deal, I would think we were in a position to do it.  The conditions of my return [to Washington] could be propitious for it.  In effect he said: Tell us what you want and we’ll do it.”

A milestone had been reached.  Diem had finally responded to Kennedy in a hopeful way through a reluctant ambassador, and Lodge had conveyed the message to Washington with a supportive comment.

However, Lodge buried Diem’s message to Kennedy near the end of his report.  Moreover, he did not send the report on his breakthrough conversation with Diem until 3:00 PM, an hour and a half after the coup had started.  He also chose to send this critical cable by the slowest possible process rather than “Critical Flash,” which would have given it immediate attention in Washington.  As a result of Lodge’s slow writing and transmission of Diem’s urgent message to Kennedy, it did not arrive at the State Department until hours after the rebel generals had laid siege to the presidential palace.  It was too late.

<quote off>

 

"Today's World Report: Truce Moves Reported In Viet Nam," New York World-Telegram & Sun, (Friday), 25 October 1963, p.6:*

"LONDON - The government of South Vietnam and Communist North Viet Nam are apparently making exploratory contacts that could lead to a truce, diplomatic sources said. There was no official confirmation…Diplomatic sources said the current moves were believed to be aiming at some sort of truce arrangement with possible wider ramifications." <quote off>

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 156:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

When [Diem and Nhu] had first claimed that Americans were active behind the scenes in the agitation spreading in Saigon, they had sounded paranoid – a favorite word among Americans for Diem and Nhu that summer.  But who could disbelieve [David] Halberstam, with his excellent sources in the Central Intelligence Agency, when he reported that the CIA had been openly sending its agents into the pagodas and making daily contact with Buddhist priests and “other participants in this crisis”?  These agents were acting under orders – and they did not go to the pagodas to discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

<quote off>

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs. 184-5

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

Kennedy’s main State Department advisers on Vietnam, Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman, and his White House aide, Michael Forrestal, were all just as dismayed as Lodge was by the president’s decision to send McNamara and Taylor to Vietnam [on late September ’63 fact-finding mission].  When Harriman learned about it, he phoned Forrestal to say he and Hilsman thought the president’s proposal was “a disaster” because it meant “sending two men opposed to our policy” of promoting a coup.  Forrestal glumly agreed.

But Kennedy had made his decision.  The coup that his closest State Department advisers on Vietnam and his Saigon ambassador regarded as their policy, and that they had manipulated the president into endorsing, was not in fact his policy.

<quote off>

Roger Hilsman:  Buddhists bit – tasted a little bit of political blood.  Bit harder – tasted more political blood -- and then finally began to use American television.  None of them spoke English but their signs were all in English.

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24909-max-boot-gets-booted-on-lansdale-in-vietnam/page/5/

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5:

<quote on, emphasis added>

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

<quote off>

Edited September 15, 2022 by Cliff Varnell