Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[Tom Gram]

12 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think it is important that we distinguish between escalation to the point of introducing ground troops and a complete, precipitous withdrawal regardless of the consequences. Those are two very different issues.

I agree that JFK was strongly against putting in ground troops, although RFK indicated in April 1964 that JFK may have opted to do this if South Vietnam were on the verge of collapse. But, yes, JFK strongly wanted to avoid sending in ground troops. I acknowledge this. However, this in no way means that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. forces regardless of the situation on the ground and regardless of the consequences. 

I think Stone and other conspiracy theorists would be on much stronger ground if they focused on JFK's opposition to sending in ground troops and did not insist that JFK would have completely pulled out of South Vietnam even if it meant losing South Vietnam to the communists.

 

That’s your opinion, but with the ARRB declassifications the argument that JFK was withdrawing from Vietnam has very strong evidentiary support - and though there may be some ambiguity, the argument is not even remotely “debunkable”, despite the massive effort put forth to do so from the so-called left. 

The “counterargument” usually comes off as twisted polemical B.S., in my opinion. The Chomskyites etc. first decide that JFK could not have been withdrawing from Vietnam, and desperately twist the evidence suggesting that he was withdrawing to fit that initial decision.

It’s just denial dressed up in Bugliosian persuasive language. JFK absolutely would not have introduced ground troops, and there is very compelling evidence that he was withdrawing completely - the Hawaii Sec Def conference being just one example of many. 

[James DiEugenio]

Michael:

I really do not understand your position.

Do you know that in Vietnam today there is a Banking University?

Its in the heart of Saigon, today called Ho Chi Minh City.  It has been there for many years.  They teach business, finance and banking.

Do you know there are McDonald's, Ben and Jerry's and Bank of America?  Do you know there are open air malls where merchants sell their products?

How is this communism?  And this would have happened faster if America would have left sooner, and we had established trade relations with Hanoi, which we did not do until Clinton.

Kennedy did not get us into Indochina.  Dulles and Eisenhower and Nixon did by breaking the Geneva Accords.  That created a country which had not existed before, and propped up a dictator who did not have the backing of the populace.

As Kennedy said to Forrestal, the day before he left for Dallas, we have about a 100-1 chance of winning.  Now recall, at that time he had already made the withdrawal part of policy over the fierce objections of Sullivan, the Bundy brothers and Cooper.  And signed NSAM 263.  He also told Wayne Morse he was correct and would talk to him when he got back.  LIttle known by anyone, but true, in early November he had ordered a contingency evacuation plan for American personnel out of Saigon. Does that sound like he was planning on staying?

Now, after 5 years of reversal of Kennedy's policy and the escalation of the war, which Halberstam and Sheehan wanted, Johnson realized it was hopeless.  He was trying to negotiate, but Nixon sandbagged him through Chennault.  This was purely political because Nixon knew the war was lost also.  But even though he knew that, he was still going to try and get a Korea style settlement.   This was through a closely held Top Secret plan called Duck Hook.  Which was one of the craziest operations I have ever seen.  Talk about escalation. It included the bombing of the dikes, use of tactical nuclear weapons, saturation bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, mining of Haiphong and a possible invasion of the north. You are talking about the deaths of probably, at the very least, 750,000 people. In addition to the massive casualties incurred already. The reason it was not enacted was because of the anti war protests and people threatened to resign.  At this point, Nixon turned to his Peace with Honor motif.  Which 1.) was not peace, and 2.) was not honorable.  It was a way to disguise and delay what Nixon knew would happen without atomic weapons and bombing of the dikes : the fall of Saigon.  (BTW, the best scholar on this is someone Mike ignores, Jeff KImball.)

Kennedy's strategy was to get out earlier, and to make sure Saigon did not fall until after the 1964 election. Thus saving the lives of about 6 million Indochinese, 58,000 Americans, billions of dollars, a genocide in Cambodia, and the splitting asunder of the USA to the worst extreme since the Civil War.  And would have hurried the entry of Ben and Jerry's, and McDonald's and the Banking University.

For the life of me, I don't see how there was a better alternative than Kennedy's withdrawal. What happened after, under LBJ and RMN, was a horrifying debacle.  All done in the name of anti communism, which as we can see, was a chimera.

 

PS Nixon said the war was unwinnable twice.  Both are in Kimball's book Nixon's VIetnam War, and both are documented.  Once he even said it to his speechwriter Price.

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Furthering the last, Nixon was a real prevaricator on this subject.

In his book No More VIetnams, he wrote that he never considered bombing the dikes or using atomic weapons.

False.  

He did so twice.  Once with Duck Hook, and once during the Easter Offensive.  The first is on paper and the second one is on tape. This is why RMN fought with a fleet of lawyers not to declassify his records. It did not really happen until after his death.  The guy had a lot to conceal.

Even a rather sympathetic biographer, Ambrose, once said that Nixon was actually a little nutty when it came to Vietnam. After doing some work on the issue of RMN and Vietnam, I agree.

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

13 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

This isn't a conservative vs. liberal issue. I'd be willing to bet the farm that the vast majority of self-described conservatives today believe our involvement in the Vietnam war was a mistake. The few hold-outs, moreover, claim the war failed because the U.S. should have been more aggressive, to the point of using nukes, as Barry Goldwater famously suggested. Almost no one outside of this small minority thinks this would have been a good thing.  

I take it you don't read conservative journals and don't hang around many conservatives. Go look at articles on the Vietnam War published in conservative publications over the last, say, 10 years. You'll see that the overwhelming majority argue that the war was an honorable effort that was undone when the Democratic-controlled Congress slashed our aid to South Vietnam soon after the Paris Peace Accords and forbade the president from ordering U.S. military forces into and/or over South Vietnam without Congressional approval. Ronald Reagan talked about this. So did George W. Bush. So did John McCain. So has Ted Cruz. 

You might check out the Vietnam Veterans for Factual History website:

https://www.vvfh.org/

Here's a 2017 Townhall article on the group:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2017/11/08/vietnam-vets-group-demands-pbs-documentary-correct-inaccuracies-n2406540

 

[Pat Speer]

11 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I take it you don't read conservative journals and don't hang around many conservatives. Go look at articles on the Vietnam War published in conservative publications over the last, say, 10 years. You'll see that the overwhelming majority argue that the war was an honorable effort that was undone when the Democratic-controlled Congress slashed our aid to South Vietnam soon after the Paris Peace Accords and forbade the president from ordering U.S. military forces into and/or over South Vietnam without Congressional approval. Ronald Reagan talked about this. So did George W. Bush. So did John McCain. So has Ted Cruz. 

You might check out the Vietnam Veterans for Factual History website:

https://www.vvfh.org/

Here's a 2017 Townhall article on the group:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2017/11/08/vietnam-vets-group-demands-pbs-documentary-correct-inaccuracies-n2406540

 

I'm well aware of the arguments. But I suppose we are in disagreement over what qualifies as a conservative. You apparently believe ultra-conservative historians and Nixon-apologists represent the views of conservatives as a whole, i.e. people who ID as conservative. But this isn't the case. The vast majority of people who ID as conservative today are suburbanites and Trumpists, who for the most part frown on foreign entanglements with countries who have not attacked us. Those believing we could have "won" the war are those who think we should have escalated far beyond where LBJ and Nixon took the war. And those believing we could have propped up the South Vietnamese government for the foreseeable future are simply delusional. As revealed in the book Decent Interval, Nixon knew full well that South Vietnam would fall--he just wanted it to fall after he was out of office so he wouldn't be blamed for "losing" a war. That's pretty pathetic. As proved by the Palace File, moreover, the treaty agreed upon by Nixon was almost exactly the treaty LBJ was pushing back in 1968. So the historical record is crystal freakin' clear that Nixon--a "conservative"--kept a war going for more than 4 years for political purposes, and that millions of people died in Southeast Asia for his ego. 

The evidence for this is so overwhelming in fact that it created a backlash--crap written by the cognitively impaired to get Nixon off the hook for his crime. One of these books, in fact, tries to lay the blame for Watergate at the feet of Ted Kennedy. "Po' Dicky. Po' po' Dicky. His mom was a Quaker, for crying out loud..." Please...

 

[James DiEugenio]

PS:  As proved by the Palace File, moreover, the treaty agreed upon by Nixon was almost exactly the treaty LBJ was pushing back in 1968.

Good point.

Theodore Draper also made this one.  And he asked the logical question: what was the point of what Nixon did then?  He actually dropped more bomb tonnage over Indochina than LBJ.  And his bombing expanded the war much further into Laos and Cambodia. With disastrous results. (William Shawcross, Sideshow)

VIetnam was an enormous strategic mistake.  It was never a part of American security at all. 

And BTW, the night that we finally got out--the infamous helicopter atop the American embassy--Kissinger called an old friend and said, we should have never been there.  Is Kissinger a liberal?

But even richer, Kennedy had come to that conclusion--13 years prior.

Edited August 26, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, I thought the Novick/Burns series was kind of soft on Nixon.

It was Nixon's treachery with Chenault that was really the beginning of Watergate.  Hoover had told Nixon about what LBJ had done to get info about what he suspected was RMN's sabotaging  of his truce  efforts.

When Tom Huston came back with the (false) info about the file on that being at Brookings, Nixon proposed firebombing the place to get it out. 

In other words what RMN did was first, prolong the war so that he could eliminate any possibility of losing in 1968.

He and Kissinger then prolonged the war again to make their Decent Interval strategy work. In other words, no one would ask the question in say 1972: Well, why did you keep the war going for 4 more years when this settlement is pretty much the same as LBJ was trying for back in 1968? But back then, very few were aware of the whole Chenault sabotage. Which would have made it worse.

Also, the film never went into the whole Kissinger/Nixon caused collapse of the Sihanouk government, rise of the Khymer Rouge and the consequent genocide. Over genocides, Kissinger was the heavyweight champ.  He wore three rings: Bangladesh, East TImor, and the worst, Cambodia. And the idea that somehow Nixon and Kissinger were foreign policy gurus is one of the most pernicious myths in contemporary  American history.  It is being rent asunder by the belated declassification that Nixon resisted so mightily.

Edited August 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Bacon]

Great history lesson Gentlemen!  Thank you.

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, I thought the Novick/Burns series was kind of soft on Nixon.

It was Nixon's treachery with Chenault that was really the beginning of Watergate.  Hoover had told Nixon about what LBJ had done to get info about what he suspected was RMN's sabotaging  of his truce  efforts.

When Tom Huston came back with the (false) info about the file on that being at Brookings, Nixon proposed firebombing the place to get it out. 

In other words what RMN did was first, prolong the war so that he could eliminate any possibility of losing in 1968.

He and Kissinger then prolonged the war again to make their Decent Interval strategy work. In other words, no one would ask the question in say 1972: Well, why did you keep the war going for 4 more years when this settlement is pretty much the same as LBJ was trying for back in 1968? But back then, very few were aware of the whole Chenault sabotage. Which would have made it worse.

Also, the film never went into the whole Kissinger/Nixon caused collapse of the Sihanouk government, rise of the Khymer Rouge and the consequent genocide. Over genocides, Kissinger was the heavyweight champ.  He wore three rings: Bangladesh, East TImor, and the worst, Cambodia. And the idea that somehow Nixon and Kissinger were foreign policy gurus is one of the most pernicious myths in contemporary  American history.  It is being rent asunder by the belated declassification that Nixon resisted so mightily.

Ditto everything Jim D. has said here, but in spades. 

So several millions dead in the SE Asia, horrible carnage and injuries, at fantastic, counter-productive expense. 

And for what? Now US multi-nationals vie to get into bed with Beijing. Apple, Disney, GM, Tesla, NBA, BlackRock, WalMart, you name it 

So now, communism and repression are not so bad. Even the Biden family is in on the gravy.

Vietnam would likely have cozied up to the US in the late 1950s, to avoid Sino hegemony.  I am not really a fan of all the geo-politics stuff, but that was a likely outcome. 

If you ever want to be depressed, just read up on SE Asia 1945-85. 

 

[Michael Griffith]

18 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

That’s your opinion, but with the ARRB declassifications the argument that JFK was withdrawing from Vietnam has very strong evidentiary support - and though there may be some ambiguity, the argument is not even remotely “debunkable”, despite the massive effort put forth to do so from the so-called left. 

It’s just denial dressed up in Bugliosian persuasive language. JFK absolutely would not have introduced ground troops, and there is very compelling evidence that he was withdrawing completely - the Hawaii Sec Def conference being just one example of many. 

You are misinterpreting the Hawaii SecDef conference. Did you watch Selverstone's 2016 video? 

I again point to Bobby's comments in his April 1964 oral interview. If anyone knew what JFK was thinking on Vietnam, it was Bobby. Bobby said JFK was determined to win the war, and that JFK never considered a complete pullout. Bobby also said JFK would have provided air strikes, and he indicated JFK may have approved large-scale escalation if South Vietnam were facing collapse. 

Abandoning 18 million people to communist tyranny would not have been a noble act. Even today, Vietnam is a repressive, totalitarian regime. Yes, Vietnam, like Russia and China, has allowed some Western businesses to operate in the country, but Vietnam is still a brutal dictatorship. Go read the last several Human Rights Watch reports on Vietnam. This is from the current Human Rights Watch assessment of Vietnam:

Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in all areas. The Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights, including freedom of speech, opinion, press, association, and religion, are restricted. Rights activists and bloggers face harassment, intimidation, physical assault, and imprisonment. Farmers lose land to development projects without adequate compensation, and workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system lacks independence. (Vietnam | Country Page | World | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)

 

 

 

[Michael Davidson]

16 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

the overwhelming majority argue that the war was an honorable effort

 

 

Are you high right now ? 

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Ditto everything Jim D. has said here, but in spades. 

So several millions dead in the SE Asia, horrible carnage and injuries, at fantastic, counter-productive expense. 

And for what? Now US multi-nationals vie to get into bed with Beijing. Apple, Disney, GM, Tesla, NBA, BlackRock, WalMart, you name it 

So now, communism and repression are not so bad. Even the Biden family is in on the gravy.

Vietnam would likely have cozied up to the US in the late 1950s, to avoid Sino hegemony.  I am not really a fan of all the geo-politics stuff, but that was a likely outcome. 

If you ever want to be depressed, just read up on SE Asia 1945-85. 

 

As I recall, Ho Chi Minh actually liked the U.S., and would almost certainly have been a pro-U.S. communist. The problem is that the mucky-mucks in Washington at that time saw communism as anti-religion and anti-Capitalism and thereby a grave threat to the U.S. But Ho Chi Minh didn't see it that way. As I recall one of the biggest revelations from the Pentagon Papers was that we actually supported Ho during WWII, in his battles with Vichy France. He was our ally. 

After the war, however, we turned on him, and (for the most part) supported France against him. I'm sure Jim knows all the details but I believe this rubbed JFK the wrong way, to the extent he felt we should stay the heck out of it. 

This attitude of his was a problem for the "believers" within the U.S. Govt...who believed we were on a mission from God to defeat Communism. It may have cost him his life.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

Pat:

Ho was hanging out with the OSS near the end of WW2.  With a guy by the incredible name of Archimedes Patti who sought Ho out to help eject the Japanese.  Which Ho did by supplying good intel reports.  Ho was very interested in what the USA would do when the Japanese were gone.  Patti told him that FDR was for independence and no recolonization. 

This changed though through the cooperation of England with France after Japan was defeated, and the ascension of Truman. In 1945-46, Ho wrote 8 letters to Truman telling him how much he admired things like the Declaration of Independence. And asking him, in essence, not to change FDR's policy.  He said that France wanted to recolonize and asked Truman to bring the issue before the UN.

Truman, nor anyone else, ever replied to those letters.  In the occupation after the Japanese left, England and France were in collusion for Paris to resume control.  Ho tried to negotiate with the French for months on end,  but this failed. And the French/Indochina war broke out in late 1946. In short order, the USSR and China backed Ho and the USA and Chiang backed France.  But there is very little doubt that by 1950, the American aid to France greatly outweighed the aid from Hanoi.

IMO, this was one of the worst foreign policy blunders made by Truman after FDR's death. When Kennedy visited Saigon in 1951, both diplomat Edmund Gullion and journalist Seymour Topping told him that France was doomed. Those two meetings had an enormous impact on Kennedy's thinking.

Edited August 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

I thought this thread would be a debate about the claim that JFK would have totally withdrawn and disengaged from South Vietnam, even if it meant a communist victory. But I see there are numerous replies on the Vietnam War itself. Rather than answer each reply individually, I will answer to them in this response.

-- The authors of the replies don’t appear to have read or viewed any of the sources that I recommended/linked. They especially appear to be unaware of the important revelations from North Vietnamese archives, revelations that liberal books on the war continue to ignore. Dr. Mark Moyar, among other scholars, discusses these important disclosures at length in his books on the war.

-- By no humane, rational standard can the communist takeover of South Vietnam (SV) be viewed as anything but a terrible tragedy. North Vietnam’s (NV’s) brutality and oppression against SV’s population is profusely documented. Even today, communist Vietnam is a repressive, brutal regime. Just because Vietnam, like Russia and China, has allowed some Western businesses to operate within its borders does not change the facts about the state’s oppression and violence. The following comes from the latest Human Rights Watch report on Vietnam:

Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in all areas. The Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights, including freedom of speech, opinion, press, association, and religion, are restricted. Rights activists and bloggers face harassment, intimidation, physical assault, and imprisonment. Farmers lose land to development projects without adequate compensation, and workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system lacks independence. (Vietnam | Country Page | World | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org))

I find it troubling that some here seem to think that handing over 18 million South Vietnamese to communist tyranny was the right thing to do. For all its flaws and corruption, SV’s government was vastly better than NV’s brutal regime.

-- For all intents and purposes, we had the Vietnam War won after NV’s disastrous Tet Offensive in 1968. The communists suffered horrendous, devastating losses. Even a modest follow-up campaign against NV would have led to a communist collapse, but no such campaign was launched. Why not? Because our news media and the anti-war movement did NV an enormous favor and falsely painted the Tet Offensive as an American defeat and as evidence that the war was hopeless.

-- One major reason that NV’s forces suffered such horrible losses in the Tet Offensive was that they believed that once they attacked, a large portion of the South’s population would join them. Instead, the vast majority of South Vietnamese remained loyal to the Thieu government, and SV’s army fought well.

-- The My Lai massacre, where 340-500 civilians were murdered, was a one-off event. Even Hugh Thompson, the brave chopper pilot who landed and intervened to stop the massacre, years later said that My Lai was the exception and not the rule. On balance, American soldiers fought honorably.

In contrast, the North Vietnamese routinely committed atrocities, the worst being at Hue in 1968, where they murdered over 3,000 civilians. Our news media said next to nothing about Hue, and the anti-war movement seemed unconcerned about it; some anti-war activists even claimed the Hue Massacre was a myth created by the U.S. Army.

Hue Massacre | Freedom For Vietnam (wordpress.com)

-- I would like to see the two statements where Nixon allegedly said the Vietnam War was unwinnable. I suspect these are hearsay comments attributed to Nixon by others. In every single firsthand statement, written or spoken, that Nixon himself made on the subject, he ardently rejected the view that the war was unwinnable. In fact, he repeatedly made the point that if Congressional Democrats and the anti-war movement had not acted as agents for NV and had not smeared the war effort, the war most certainly could have been won.

-- NV’s 1972 Easter Offensive proved that SV’s army, with American air and logistical support, could hold its own and even defeat NV’s forces. The SV army did virtually all of the ground fighting. If we had just made it clear that we were willing to keep providing SV with air and logistical support for as along as needed, SV would still be a free nation today.

But, incredibly, the Democratic-controlled Congress voted to markedly reduce our aid to SV and then passed the Case-Church Amendment, which assured NV that the U.S. would not provide air or logistical support if the North invaded. When NV launched its next major offensive, in violation of the Paris Peace Accords, Congress refused to authorize any American air or logistical support for SV, even though NV was receiving huge amounts of weapons and ammo from the Soviet Union.

-- We could have defeated NV in a matter of months if we had used the full force of our air and sea power. This would not have required nukes. Many Americans still are unaware of the obscene, absurd restrictions that were placed on U.S. forces during most of the Vietnam War, restrictions that were unheard of in WW II and the Korean War. Admiral Sharp discusses these insane restrictions in detail in his book Strategy for Defeat.

When Nixon lifted most of those restrictions, lo and behold, this did not start World War III. Nixon was on the verge of bringing NV to its knees with Operation Linebacker II, as we now know from North Vietnamese archives. That’s why NV agreed to resume negotiations. Another few weeks of bombing would have toppled the communist government or caused it to surrender.  

-- Ken Burns’ documentary The Vietnam War is a biased, incomplete left-wing attack on the war. If you’ve watched this documentary and have any interest in doing balanced research, you should watch AIM’s two-part documentary Television’s Vietnam:

 Television's Vietnam: The Real Story (1984) - YouTube (part 1)

Television's Vietnam: The Impact of Media (1985) - YouTube (part 2)

-- Every attack on the Vietnam War can be made with equal or stronger effect against the Korean War. Yet, would anyone in their right mind say it’s too bad that North Korea didn’t win? Look at the stark differences between North Korea and South Korea. South Vietnam could have been another South Korea, if we had just continued to provide air and logistical support.

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

Over on the other thread, Coup in Dallas, I answered all these queries you made and produced the documentary record that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam.

Which is what the USA did eventually anyway.  If you recall, that was under Ford and Nixon.  So why do you make this a liberal v conservative argument? Even Kissinger said we should have never been there.

What happened in Vietnam as a result of our backing of the French, and then our direct intervention was a colossal disaster. From the best estimates I can come up with, about 5.8 milion people perished, along with 58,000 Americans. When it was all over, what happened was the collapse of a puppet government under Thieu, which was the same thing that would have happened when Kennedy withdrew after 1965. Which is the same thing that would have happened if the Geneva Accords had been honored in 1956 with no South Vietnam in existence. That would have been under free elections which Ho would have won which Eisenhower knew. 

IMO, the Geneva Accords should have been honored. It would have saved 20 years of a senseless, hugely divisive and grossly expensive war that could not be won.  Which is why Nixon was withdrawing combat troops--the combat troops that JFK would not allow-- and negotiating his way out.

I fail to see how the Vietnamese taking classes in business and finance, buying ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, and banking at Bank of America equates to a brutal communist tyranny.  You might be confusing Saigon with what happened in Cambodia under the Khymer Rouge

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio