Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[Matthew Koch]

9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

You just got knocked out by Gary Dean, who lives in Saigon. And I can understand why you do not want to acknowledge what he said on Len's show.  There are now 80 story skyscrapers in Saigon.  They form  part of a second skyline to the city.  Kids at his business college do not want to work at the Sheraton, which is there on the square where Graham Green's explosions took place. Not enough money in that.  They want to go into banking and high finance.  There are all kinds of restaurants there.  And even fast food places.   He said when he first moved there he lived in Hanoi.  Where his landlord sublet a large villa into four apartments for rents. 

Hanoi practices protectionism to guard their own car industry which ow produces both gas powered and EV vehicles.  Those dirty commies.  

Gary Dean is an eye witness who disproves your thesis, with a vengeance.  He said that his college existed back in 1976. And he said that once Le Duan passed on, the leadership became much more practical.  Which proves my thesis, that the war by the Americans helped the ideologues secure more power.  But once they passed on, Vietnam became something like another southeast Asia economic tiger.  This would have never occurred with Kennedy. What happened after aided a catastrophe.

So this case is now closed.  Those books you have been quoting are now exposed as rightwing jibberish to distract from the present history of the area and how America did more harm than good.

It always helps to consult someone who is there.

Bye Bye.  

James is declaring "Mission Accomplished" 

I personally don't think Gary Dean living in Vietnam 40 years later means much about the war. It wasn't just sunshine and roses once America left.  I've enjoyed reading your debate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think either of you two have mentioned the Vietnam Sino war that follow the US withdraw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War  
I've included another very interesting article about how the war may have been fought by China to remove the Soviet backed Vietnamese to create a "Neutral" Vietnam 
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/china-and-fall-south-vietnam-last-great-secret-vietnam-war


The funny thing is I half agree with both of you, Kennedy was getting out, and the Vietnam war could have been fought better and with some better decisions into a stalemate similar to Korea. (Which I think Kennedy got that and didn't think the human cost was worth it.)I think Kennedy from being in Vietnam earlier in his life got that the Buffalo Bills (The French) had been playing the Super Bowl for the Americans and now he was taking over the game down big two minutes left in his own end zone. What the US forces did with the conditions set wasn't the problem they didn't loose a battle. But since the Catholic migration to the south there were no allies in the north. There was no one to fight to. Once China got the nuke it made that even more unrealistic because guerrilla armies in the jungle can't really be nuked... 
 

The 600lb gorilla in the room that both of you are missing IMO is: After the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK and Khrushchev had changed their relationship and were beginning to work with each other. There wouldn't have been an escalation like we saw in Vietnam if the Assassination had not happened. I think it's very unlikely that the Chinese could have used kicking out Khrushchev as a condition to back the war like they did. The missed opportunity was that these TWO men were removed when the conditions for deescalation in Vietnam had been created. They had already worked with each other in Laos for a neutral Laos because both men didn't really have the heart to put up a fight there. From Vienna to Gulf of Tonkin event some very major events changed the context of the war and who was making the decisions. Both the participants of the Vienna meeting were removed from power, China getting the Nuke changed the context of the war because the original deterrent wasn't there anymore. Lyndon Johnson who was now telling audiences 'we seek no wider war' was creating a wider war that no longer had it's original deterrent. From that point forward the more we escalated the more China aided and escalated with Soviet support. But the didn't matter much to the Daddy War Bucks who were literarily and figuratively making a killing from the undeclared war. 

Diem being executed is problem imo for the Kennedy getting out people narrative because as Michael has said and I also agree. JFK wasn't going to cut and run and do a Biden Afghanistan style embarrassing withdrawal.  But, I don't JFK would have had to do that with Khrushchev in power because they would have most likely worked toward a neutral Vietnam like they did with Laos, this is during the Sino Soviet split after all. 

[James DiEugenio]

Gary was there about 27 years after, not 40. Sorry I could not get him there faster Matthew. And if you were listening, the business school he teaches at was there from at least 1976.

 One of the reasons that the Hanoi leadership became more practical was because  Le Duan's first five year plan failed.  It was this and his later passing which changed the economic and social calculus.  Did you listen to the interview?

If you want to ignore all Gary said, then fine.  But, in my view, you simply cannot do that and get an honest rendering. The idea that Mike is trying to convey, that somehow if America would have won the war that we would have saved Vietnam from a cruel and backward communist dictatorship that  denied its people any kind of human or economic rights is simply false.  You don't get things like 80 story skyscrapers unless people are renting offices and/or condos.  You don't get a whole second skyline unless businesses are investing in large buildings.  The Sheraton does not move in unless they know travelers are going to rent their rooms. Want me to go on?

This result, which began to seed itself over 35 years ago, would have simply started sooner if LBJ had not chosen to directly intervene.  And when he did that, the Le Duan coterie, which was more ideologically oriented than Ho Chi Minh, asserted itself.  If this had not happened, the end result that Gary describes in detail, this would have occurred even faster than it did.

 Mike's  conservative scholars somehow could not bring themselves to admit all this.  Which must be evident to anyone who visits there.  That, to me, is simply dishonest.  To not admit to any of this is a very bad historical approach to the subject. It disobeys the ethical and scholarly purpose of historical inquiry.  As far as I am concerned Gary's interview exposes the fact that Mike has been making his arguments in a fabricated rightwing  vacuum. One that fails to acknowledge what really happened in Vietnam socially and economically, and what is happening there now. 

The only reason to do this is to guard against information that is so undeniably contrary to your thesis that it collapses it.

That is why I will not reply any more.  I only wrote this to reply to you.

PS: I don't appreciate being compared to W, a man who killed 650,000 Iraqis on the basis of a lie. So there is a big difference between my visual and yours. And just recall, that number almost pales in comparison to the 3.8 million Vietnamese who died for another lie, which Gary helped expose.

 

Edited October 22, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Tom Gram]

43 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Gary was there about 27 years after, not 40. Sorry I could not get him there faster Matthew.

 One of the reasons that the Hanoi leadership became more practical was because  Le Duan's first five year plan failed.  It was this and his later passing which changed the economic and social calculus.  Did you listen to the interview?

If you want to ignore all he said, then fine.  But, in my view, you simply cannot do that and get an honest rendering. The idea that Mike is trying to convey, that somehow if America would have won the war that we would have saved Vietnam from a cruel and backward communist dictatorship that  denied its people any kind of human or economic rights is simply false.  You don't get things like 80 story skyscrapers unless people are renting offices and/or condos.  You don't get a whole second skyline unless people are constructing large buildings.  The Sheraton does not move in unless they know travelers are going to rent their rooms. Want me to go on?

This result, which began to seed itself over 35 years ago, would have simply started sooner if LBJ had not chosen to directly intervene.  And when he did that, the Le Duan coterie, which was more ideologically oriented than Ho Chi Minh, asserted itself.  If this had not happened, the end result that Gary describes in detail, this would have occurred even faster than it did.

 Mike's  rightwing scholars somehow could not bring themselves to admit all this.  Which must be evident to anyone who visits there.  This, to me, is simply dishonest.  To not admit to any of this is a very bad historical approach to the subject. It disobeys the ethical and scholarly purpose of historical inquiry.  As far as I am concerned Gary's interview exposes the fact that Mike has been making his arguments in a vacuum. One that fails to acknowledge what really happened in Vietnam socially and economically, and what is happening there now. 

The only reason to do this is to guard against information that is so undeniably contrary to your thesis that it collapses it.

That is why I will not reply any more.  I only wrote this to reply to you.

 

I had a sales call once with an American expat in Vietnam that turned into an hour-long chat. The guy told me pretty much the exact same stuff as Gary Dean on BOR. He said there were McDonald’s, Starbucks, capitalism everywhere - and that it was a beautiful country and I should visit when I get a chance. He also said the same thing you do in this comment: that the American portrayal of Vietnam as a communist hellhole is not at all accurate, and that American intervention in the war only delayed the country from developing into a prosperous free-market society with a Starbucks on every other corner. 

There are still plenty of human rights issues in Vietnam, but was the massive human cost of the war, and even bigger cost that would’ve been necessary to win the war - if that was even possible - really worth “eliminating communism” with no guarantee that the country would’ve turned out even the slightest bit better than it is today? I’m gonna go ahead and say no freaking way. 

[James DiEugenio]

Starbucks on every other corner?

That really is like LA.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/10/2022 at 4:42 PM, James DiEugenio said:

IMO, this is the best documentary ever made on the subject.  If you have not seen it, you should.

 

As I said, this documentary is trash. Getting your information on the Vietnam War from the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, J. William Fulbright, Clark Clifford, and a few of the small minority of disgruntled Vietnam vets is like getting information on the civil rights movement from the Ku Klux Klan. Here are just a few of the facts that the documentary fails to mention:

-- The North Vietnamese army (NVA) and the Vietcong (VC) frequently shelled fleeing civilians and also purposely shelled civilian residential and commercial areas even when they knew there were no U.S. or Allied soldiers in those areas, whereas we did not do these things (R. J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide, University of Virginia, 1997, chapter 6).

-- South Vietnam never launched a large-scale invasion of North Vietnam, but North Vietnam launched three large-scale invasions of South Vietnam.

-- I mentioned this in my first reply about the Hearts and Minds documentary, but it bears repeating: The North Vietnamese would have been unable to wage war against South Vietnam if the Soviet Union and China had not provided them with massive amounts of weapons and supplies and billions of dollars of financial aid to keep them afloat. Also, China stationed over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam, and Russia provided over 1,000 military advisers to help operate Hanoi’s Russian-made SAM batteries. These facts are profusely documented, but if they are new to you and you doubt them, here are a few of the references that discuss them:

- “Chinese and Soviet Economic and Technical Aid to North Vietnam, 1955-1960,” Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies, volume 5, number 2 (2021), pp. 88-106, available online at https://vietnamjournal.ru/2618-9453/article/view/87090#

- Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)

- Andrew Wiest, The Vietnam War 1956-1975 (Osprey Publishing, 2014)

- James Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive (Encounter Books, 2012)

- Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

- Nghia N. Vo, The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam (McFarland Press, 2021)

- Mark Woodruff, Unheralded Victory (Ballantine Books, 2005)

- George J. Veith, Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 (Encounter Books, 2013)

- International Communist Aid to North Vietnam (CIA, 1968), available at https://www.intelligence.gov/assets/documents/tet-documents/cia/INTERNATIONAL_COMMUNIST_A%5B15617751%5D.pdf

- Paul Combs, “The Little Known Role of the Soviet Union in the Vietnam War,” Medium (October 22, 2021), available at https://medium.com/perceive-more/the-little-known-role-of-the-soviet-union-in-the-vietnam-war-2da12f2b6c4e

- The VC alone killed far more civilians than did American and Allied forces, and the VC usually did so deliberately as part of their campaign of terror, whereas the vast majority of civilians killed by American-Allied forces were unintentionally killed/collateral damage in combat operations against the NVA and the VC (W. P. Davison, Some Observations on Viet Cong Operations in the Villages, The Office of the Assistant Secretary Defense and the Rand Corporation, 1968, available online; Center for Research in Social Systems, Insurgent Terrorism and Its Use by the Viet Cong, Defense Documentation Center, 1969, available online; Patrick Shaw, Collateral Damage and the United States Air Force, School of Advanced Air Power Studies, Air University, 1997, available online; Fred L. Borch, What Really Happened on 16 March 1968? A Look at the My Lai Incident Fifty Years Later, Army Historical Foundation, 2018, available online; Brent Scher, “That Time John Kerry Defamed America and American Soldiers,” The Washington Free Beacon, January 2, 2017, available online; Gary Kulik and Peter Zinoman, “Misrepresenting Atrocities: Kill Anything that Moves and the Continuing Distortions of the War in Vietnam,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014, available online [this is a thorough, 37-page critique of Nick Turse’s sleazy book Kill Anything that Moves]).  

-- South Vietnam, for all its faults, was far less repressive than North Vietnam; the South Vietnamese were definitely the good guys, and the North Vietnamese were most assuredly the bad guys (Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, chapters 1-3; Nghia N. Vo, The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam, chapters 1, 7, 11-14; Nguyen Duy Hinh and Tran Dinh Tho, The South Vietnamese Society, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980, available online).

-- In a survey conducted by the Veterans Administration after the war, 92% of the veterans who responded said they agreed with the statement that political leaders did not let our armed forces win the war, and 90% said they were glad to have served in Vietnam (Panel Discussion on Ken Burns’ Vietnam War Documentary, 54:01-54:52).

Anyone who believe that Hearts and Minds is "the best documentary ever made on the subject" is woefully uninformed about the war and cannot be taken seriously until they educate themselves by expanding their research. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

In 1964, none other than liberal icon Adlai Stevenson, our UN ambassador at the time, set the record straight about the Vietnam War in a statement to the UN Security Council. Stevenson,  who had twice been the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee (1952 and 1956), pointed out that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that South Vietnam was the victim, that the war was no civil war, that Communist China was backing North Vietnam’s aggression, that the Vietcong were controlled by Hanoi, and that the Vietcong were torturing and murdering children, medical workers, priests, and teachers, among other civilians, and were targeting hospitals and schools and other civilian facilities:

It is the people of the Republic of Vietnam [i.e., South Vietnam] who are the major victims on armed aggression. It is they who are fighting for their independence against violence directed from outside their borders. It is they who suffer day and night from the terror of the so-called Viet Cong. The prime targets of the Viet Cong for kidnapping, for torture, and for murder have been local officials, school teachers, medical workers, priests, agricultural specialists, and any others whose position, profession, or other talents qualified them for service to the people of Vietnam--plus, of course, the relatives and children of citizens loyal to their government.

The chosen military objectives of the Viet Cong--for gunfire or arson or pillage--have been hospitals, school houses, agricultural stations, and various improvement projects by which the Government of Vietnam for many years has been raising the living standards of the people. The government and people of Vietnam have been struggling for survival, struggling for years for survival in a war which has been as wicked, as wanton, and as dirty as any waged against an innocent and peaceful people in the whole cruel history of warfare. . . .

The United States Government is currently involved in the affairs of the Republic of Vietnam for one reason and one reason only: because the Republic of Vietnam requested the help of the United States and of other governments to defend itself against armed attack fomented, equipped, and directed from the outside. . . .

Aggression is aggression; organized violence is organized violence. Only the scale and the scenery change: the point is the same in Vietnam today as it was in Greece in 1947 and in Korea in 1950. The Indochinese Communist Party, the parent of the present Communist Party in North Vietnam, made it abundantly clear as early as 1951 that the aim of the Vietnamese Communist leadership is to take control of all of Indochina. This goal has not changed--it is still clearly the objective of the Vietnamese Communist leadership in Hanoi.

Hanoi seeks to accomplish this purpose in South Vietnam through subversive guerrilla directed, controlled, and supplied by North Vietnam. The Communist leadership in Hanoi has sought to pretend that the insurgency in South Vietnam is a civil war, but Hanoi's hand shows very clearly. Public statements by the Communist Party in North Vietnam and its leaders have repeatedly demonstrated Hanoi’s direction of the struggle in South Vietnam. . . .

The International Control Commission in Vietnam, established by the Geneva Accords in 1954, stated in a special report which it issued in June 1962, that there is sufficient evidence to show that North Vietnam has violated various articles of the Geneva Accords by its introduction of armed personnel, arms, munitions, and other supplies from North Vietnam into South Vietnam with the object of supporting, organizing, and carrying out hostile activities against the Government and armed forces of South Vietnam.

Infiltration of military personnel and supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam has been carried out steadily over the past several years. The total number of military cadres sent into South Vietnam via infiltration routes runs into the thousands. Such infiltration is well documented on the basis of numerous defectors and prisoners taken by the armed forces of South Vietnam.

Introduction of Communist weapons into South Vietnam has also grown steadily. An increasing amount of weapons and ammunition captured from the Viet Cong has been proven to be of Chinese Communist manufacture or origin. For example, in December 1963, a large cache of Viet Cong equipment captured in one of the Mekong Delta provinces in South Vietnam included recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, carbines, and ammunition of Chinese Communist manufacture.

The United States cannot stand by while Southeast Asia is overrun by armed aggressors. (“Statement by the Honorable Adlai E. Stevenson, United States Representative to the United Nations, Before the Security Council of the United Nations, on the Cambodian Complaint,” May 21, 1964, available online at https://dolearchives.ku.edu/sites/dolearchive.drupal.ku.edu/files/files/historyday/originals/hd11_vietnam25.pdf)

Amen. Amen. And Amen.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/16/2022 at 5:43 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Here are links to some information re; Korean War:

Mass executions in summer of 1950:

https://www.fosters.com/story/news/2008/05/19/ap-impact-thousands-killed-by/52408147007/

Review of academic coverage from History Dept University of Chicago:

https://alethonews.com/2011/03/17/the-korean-war-the-unknown-war/

A My Lai like incident in July 1950:

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/no-gun-ri-massacre/

An academic named Jeffrey Kaye has been working with declassified documents which establish that the U.S. military was indeed using biological weapons in Korea. Kaye’s work is extensive and detailed:

https://jeff-kaye.medium.com/a-concealed-war-crime-u-s-anthrax-bombings-of-china-during-the-korean-war-14782ceb40a9

Are you going to discuss the much more numerous war crimes committed by North Korea? Or do you only care about war crimes committed by anti-communists?

I won't ask if you are trying to suggest that it would have been better if North Korea had won the Korean War, since any sane, honest person can see that the people of South Korea were far better off than the people of North Korea, and that modern North Korea is a giant gulag while modern South Korea is a thriving democratic state.

And, it goes without saying that if the Communists had not taken over China in 1949, there would have been no Communist Chinese army to cross the Yalu River and reimpose communism on North Korea during the Korean War. If the Chinese Communists had not intervened, the people of North Korea would be vastly better off today. 

Liberals show themselves to be disconnected from historical fact when they mock the Domino Theory and claim that somehow it was disproved. In fact, North Korea would be a much better place today if the Communists had not conquered China in 1949, and Laos and Cambodia would not have fallen under Communist tyranny in 1975 if we had conducted Linebacker-II-like air operations against North Vietnam during any 9-12-month period between 1965 and 1973. In so doing, our troop losses would have been reduced by at least 90% and North Vietnam would have been forced to surrender on terms that would have made it impossible for them to resume aggressive military action. 

[Michael Davidson]

https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1585778959018442752?s=20&t=0gFwvczibragnEpSl7gBdw

[Michael Davidson]

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/28/2022 at 9:29 AM, Michael Davidson said:

 

You're citing Turse's book again???! Let me repeat what I said about Turse's book in a previous reply:

-- Perhaps the best response to Nick Turse’s book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, is the 37-page critical review written by Vietnam War scholars Gary Kulik and Peter Zinoman. Here’s a brief excerpt from their review: 

          Turse’s slipshod approach to the existing scholarship highlights more general problems with his research methods. “Only by combining veterans’ testimonies, contemporaneous press coverage, Vietnamese eye-witness accounts, long classified official-studies, and the military’s own formal investigations into the many hundreds of atrocity cases that it knew about,” he writes, “can one begin to grasp what the Vietnam War really entailed” (258). But Turse’s sloppy and tendentious use of sources represents the book’s most serious problem. A perusal of the notes indicates that he relies on an indiscriminate mix of credible and unreliable sources and that his agenda-driven selection and presentation of evidence frequently misleads. Gary Kulik’s “War Stories” (2009) uses the same military documents to examine the first American atrocity discussed at length in Turse’s book: the so-called Trieu Ai massacre. Comparison with Kulik’s much longer and more detailed account reveals a working method on the part of Turse marked by the cherry picking of data and the partisan framing of evidence. Eyewitness accounts of the incident that Turse collected in Vietnam in 2006 and 2008 raise more questions than they answer and point to problems with his use of this complicated source. Americans killed civilians at Triệu Ái, but Turse jumps to false conclusions about the circumstances that led to the killings, and he offers unqualified speculation about this episode as emphatic truth. As historians, we argue that Turse’s opposition to war atrocities does not excuse these mistakes. (https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/e-journal/articles/zinoman_kulik.pdf) 

Vietnam veteran Tom Equels, who was personally slandered in Turse’s book, had this to say about Turse’s work: 

          I was personally defamed by Turse's disregard for truth. It is ironic that he talks about overkill and then with careless disregard for the truth trashes the reputations of honorable soldiers, having zero factual basis. Journalistic overkill at its worst. He interviewed no one regarding the incident and obviously did not even read the record he so liberally cites. I had to gather the official documents, gather witness statements, and then prove I was not within a hundred miles of the alleged incident to get a retraction/correction! (https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-12/zinoman-and-kulik) 

To read more about Turse’s irresponsible handling of evidence regarding Tom Equels, see Agreement Reached to Retract Story that Decorated Vietnam War Hero Participated in Civilian Massacre -- Equels Law Firm | PRLog. Turse and his publisher were eventually forced to issue a formal retraction of his false claims about Equels. 

-- I have presented some of the evidence regarding the “reign of terror” (quoting former VC official Tang’s words) that the North Vietnamese army (NVA) imposed on the South after Saigon fell, which terror included executing tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sending 1-2 million others to brutal “reeducation” camps, where thousands more died from forced labor, starvation, neglect. 

Along this line, mention should be made of the fact that during the NVA’s final invasion of South Vietnam in March and April in 1975, the NVA killed thousands of civilians by shelling highways that were clogged with fleeing civilians. 

The NVA did the same thing in 1972 when they shelled Highway 1 during their Easter Offensive. I quote from an article on the subject titled “Appeasing the Spirits Along the Highway of Horror,” published on a website maintained by Vietnamese refugees: 

          In contrast, the RVN government [South Vietnam’s government] (before it was defeated in 1975) claimed that the PAVN [another acronym for the North Vietnamese army] intentionally targeted civilians.[22] Bolstering the RVN’s assertion was the confession of PAVN Private Lê Xuân Thủy, who was serving as a radio operator for the 4th Battalion, 324th Division, when he defected on 31 July 1972.[23] At an RVN government-organized press conference on 8 September, Thủy revealed that his unit had been ordered to “maintain an ambush position along Route 1” for six days to allow other PAVN troops to capture Quảng Trị city.[24] Thủy’s commander had instructed his unit to shoot into the column of people fleeing Quảng Trị, even though it was clear that many civilians were present. The troops were told that the refugees were the enemy because they were opting to leave rather than stay. Troops were commanded to shoot at all vehicles, including civilian cars, buses, and bicycles. According to Thủy, this event shook his faith in the DRV [North Vietnam] and led to his defection. 

          The testimony of one defector in state custody does not make for credible evidence. His assertion that the PAVN fired on civilians, however, corresponds with other contemporary reports and eyewitness accounts. Many observers reported that civilian presence on the road was clearly discernable during the attack. . . . 

          The full extent of the attack was known only in July, after the ARVN [South Vietnam’s army] regained the southern parts of Quảng Trị province. As mentioned above, the two reporters who broke the story for Sóng Thần, Ngy Thanh and Đoàn Kế Tường, were among the first to return to the highway. Being members of the military force themselves, both reporters arrived with the troops on 1 July.[40] As the airborne headed toward Quảng Trị city on the western side of Highway One and the marines on the eastern side, the two reporters went on their own and found a way across the Bến Đá Bridge, which had been destroyed in late April. Because they arrived before the ARVN troops, Ngy Thanh and Tường were able to witness the scene before soldiers cleared the highway of vehicles and bodies to make it passable. 

          According to Ngy Thanh and Đoàn Kế Tường’s article, published on 3 July, the 10-km stretch of highway southeast of Quảng Trị city was a scene of mass destruction. The road was obstructed by damaged tanks, buses, cars, and Red Cross vehicles with stretchers still inside. Motorcycles were abandoned with keys in the ignition. Strewn around and in these wrecks were hundreds of bodies; some were soldiers but most were civilians, including women and children.[41] Many more bodies could be found in the sandy banks along both sides of the highway, the soft sand acting as their grave. The reporters noted that because the corpses had been there since the end of April, a significant number had already begun to decompose. 

          Other Vietnamese journalists reported equally horrifying sights along the highway when they returned in July.[44] War correspondents Vũ Thanh Thủy and Dương Phục recorded in their joint memoir the eerie and surreal sight that they encountered along this stretch of highway.[45] According to them, there were so many corpses that it was difficult for journalists to walk along the shoulders of the highway. They had to use walking sticks to help avoid stepping on corpses.[46] (Appeasing the Spirits Along the 'Highway of Horror' - DVAN) 

The NVA also used South Vietnamese civilians as human shields during the Easter Offensive by surrounding some of their positions with captured South Vietnamese refugees. 

-- Former Army Green Beret and veterans rights activist Ted Sampley discussed North Vietnamese war crimes in a 1997 article in U.S. Veteran Dispatch: 

          North Vietnamese Army Regulars, on orders from Vietnam's infamous "war hero" General Vo Nguyen Giap, rounded up and marched the civilians to a dry river bed and summarily executed them with bullets, bayonets and clubs. Some were buried alive with their hands tied behind their backs. Their only crime — they believed in democracy or they were Christians. . . . 

          The record is absolutely clear. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975, communist leaders orchestrated as official policy the use of terror as a weapon targeted directly at the non-communist population of Vietnam. Communist terrorists blew up churches, schools and bridges, and murdered thousands of South Vietnamese civilian officials. In some cases, the communists murdered the wives, children, and even livestock and pets of the officials. . . . 

          After North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Agreements and took over South Vietnam by bloody military force, they murdered thousands more civilians. Those that were not executed were taken from their homes and jailed for years in forced labor concentration camps. Some are still being held today. 

          There is no question about the intentional deprivation, beatings, torture and murder that U.S. and South Vietnamese prisoners of war were subjected to by the communist Vietnamese during the war. Many of the torturers are easily found today. They are still running the Vietnamese government. (Atrocities Committed by Vietcong (11thcavnam.com) 

And what did the likes of John Kerry and Bella Abzug have to say about these atrocities? Nothing. How about all the misguided, duped college students who had staged numerous angry protests when we attacked NVA positions in Laos and Cambodia? Surely they protested these war crimes, right? Nope. They had nothing to say either, not one word, not one protest, not one poster, nothing. 

These people were not really “anti-war.” Rather, they were against any U.S. military action against the NVA or the Vietcong. They said nothing when North Vietnam launched another full-scale invasion of South Vietnam in late 1974—not one peep of protest. Nor did they say anything about the Communists’ mass executions and their internment of 1-2 million people in brutal concentration camps after Saigon fell—not one word.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Michael is impervious to the facts that:

1. The USA said it would abide by the Geneva Accords after Giap and the VIet Minh defeated the French.  We did not.

2. We then sent Lansdale to build a country called South Vietnam which did not exist before.

3. Lansdale then was supplied by the CIA with a ruler for this new country, who happened to be a catholic when 70 per cent of the south was Buddhist. 

Now, right there would not one conclude that the reason for this was that Eisenhower--who later admitted this-- knew that that election would have been won by Ho Chi Minh?  The same man who worked with the OSS during the war and wrote letters to Truman about how he admired the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.  And let me add, France wanted to get out of that war earlier, but Foster Dulles would not let them negotiate or he said he would drop all funding.  Foster Dulles was joyous at the prospect of gaining this new area and making it an imperial asset of the USA. He said, with France gone there can be no claim of colonialism.

Uh Johnny, what about imperialism?

Now,I do not think any serious person can deny that Ho would have won that election and it would likely have been pretty much a peaceful unification.  Because it would have been democratically supervised and elected.

It was the USA that stopped all of that.  And we did just what Seymour Topping and Edmund Gullion said we should not do.  We replaced France as  carrying the White Man's Burden.  Except the Vietnamese clearly would have. elected the Asian guy, Ho Chi Minh.  But America knew better.

Except, they did not. Diem never had the support of the people.  At first this showed up in the country side, where the first revivals of the Viet Minh began. It later began to make inroads into the urban areas.  As time went on, it became  obvious that Diem was a creation of Ed Lansdale and the CIA. He had no real following in the peasantry because, unlike Ho, he had no interest in them.  And as poor as that failing was, it was even worse with his brother and sister in law: Nhu and Madame Nhu. If you had to try a reverse template to find a model that would lose out to Ho Chi Minh, it would be difficult to find a more well cast one for that job than Diem.  But the complaints against Diem, his undemocratic methods, his practice of nepotism, his inability to relate to the peasantry, his insistence on wearing Western suits etc.  These complaints were brought up by VIETNAMESE at first!  Because they felt that Diem was betraying what they fought the French for. What did Diem do in the face of this well founded criticism? He brutally suppressed it.  Proving that the criticism was valid.

Edited October 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Now, how fast did these doubts about Diem come to the surface?  It was not 1959, 1960, 1961.

No, it was mush earlier than that: in the middle of 1955! J. Lawton Collins was sent to Saigon to evaluate how Diem was  doing. Even at that early date, Collins thought we had placed our chips on the wrong man.  He thought we needed someone with stronger leadership qualities, if not to replace Diem then at least put someone like that in the cabinet. He suggested Phan Huy Quat. Collins and people at State, urged DIem to make Quat Secretary of Defense.  Here is the clincher:  Even Lansdale thought this was a good idea. (David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success, p. 96)

Diem refused. Collins considered this a grave mistake. Which it was. Collins messaged Foster Dulles that this was a signal that DIem and his family were not interested in providing unity, and decisive leadership in South Vietnam. (ibid) Because of this, Collins recommended no further overt backing of Diem.  In fact he argued we should begin a gradual withdrawal.

So, as anyone can see, there were people who understood the problem Foster Dulles and the CIA had created in 1.) Manufacturing a country and 2.) Then picking a man who was simply the wrong guy to lead it.  This is 1955 and the warning bell is being sounded.

To make a long story short: How did DIem survive this early challenge, which even had Foster Dulles doubting him?  Before Foster Dulles cast his negative vote, he heard about the Binh Xuyen outbreak. Knowing that the army DIem had would overwhelm the greatly outnumbered illicit gang, he decided to wait.  David Anderson makes a good case that there was collusion between Foster Dulles and Saigon (Lansdale)  and that it was really DIem who provoked the battle. (ibid, p. 111-12). And this secret back channel  is what saved Diem in the summer of 1955. 

That is how early the divisions over DIem's leadership started. It was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Edited October 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/22/2022 at 11:47 AM, Matthew Koch said:

 

Matthew,

You made some very thoughtful comments. Very refreshing. Here's my reply:

I personally don't think Gary Dean living in Vietnam 40 years later means much about the war. It wasn't just sunshine and roses once America left.

I'd be curious to know what Gary Dean say about the mass executions, the concentration camps, the suppression of basic human rights that occurred after Saigon fell. As more and more Asia scholars, especially Vietnamese Asia scholars, have done research among South Vietnamese refugees and among southern Vietnamese in Vietnam, we have learned a lot more about the reign of terror that the Communists imposed after they took power. 

I've enjoyed reading your debate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think either of you two have mentioned the Vietnam Sino war that follow the US withdraw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War  

Yes, in 1979, China and Vietnam came to blows, and Vietnam repelled the Chinese incursion. 

I've included another very interesting article about how the war may have been fought by China to remove the Soviet backed Vietnamese to create a "Neutral" Vietnam 
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/china-and-fall-south-vietnam-last-great-secret-vietnam-war

I cited this article myself in an earlier reply. FYI, the author of that article, George Veith, is one of the finest Vietnam War and Asia scholars in the world, and is the author of the superb book Black April, which is the best work published so far on the fall of South Vietnam.

Anyway, the very real and intense North Vietnamese-Chinese tension is an interesting subject. Lien Nguyen's must-read book Hanoi's War, based on previously unused or unavailable North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese sources, sheds a lot of light on the subject. Frankly, in spite of all the reading I'd already done on the war, I was not aware of the depth of hostility and mutual distrust between North Vietnam and China until I read Nguyen's book.

Nguyen also sheds important light on the conflicts between Cambodia and North Vietnam, such as the fact that Sihanouk actually detested North Vietnam and deeply resented the NVA's occupation of his eastern border area and then later, after we expelled the NVA from the border region, the NVA's occupation of northeastern Cambodia. 

The funny thing is I half agree with both of you, Kennedy was getting out, and the Vietnam war could have been fought better and with some better decisions into a stalemate similar to Korea. (Which I think Kennedy got that and didn't think the human cost was worth it.)

Even the limited Rolling Thunder operations in mid-1966 and 1967 proved that our air power could cripple North Vietnam in less than a year. We could have forced North Vietnam to surrender and recognize South Vietnam if we had just kept up even that limited level of air operations. As of mid-June 1967, 85% of North Vietnam's total electrical capacity was inoperative because of Rolling Thunder bombing.

Of course, we now know that Hanoi's leaders decided to launch the Tet Offensive because they believed that they were losing the war and that time was no longer on their side.

The 600lb gorilla in the room that both of you are missing IMO is: After the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK and Khrushchev had changed their relationship and were beginning to work with each other. There wouldn't have been an escalation like we saw in Vietnam if the Assassination had not happened. I think it's very unlikely that the Chinese could have used kicking out Khrushchev as a condition to back the war like they did. The missed opportunity was that these TWO men were removed when the conditions for deescalation in Vietnam had been created. They had already worked with each other in Laos for a neutral Laos because both men didn't really have the heart to put up a fight there.

I fear this is based mostly on wishful thinking and counter-factual history. Kennedy's deal with the Soviets in Laos was a disaster. The Soviets did not give up in Laos (nor did the Chinese), and North Vietnam quickly occupied the southeastern edge of Laos and made it into a key junction in the Ho Chi Minh trail and built large supply and troop bases there. The Joint Chiefs were absolutely correct when they warned JFK that failing to at least secure eastern Laos would make defending South Vietnam vastly harder. As vital as the NVA bases in eastern Cambodia were, the NVA bases in Laos were even more vital to North Vietnam's war effort. 

From Vienna to Gulf of Tonkin event some very major events changed the context of the war and who was making the decisions. Both the participants of the Vienna meeting were removed from power, China getting the Nuke changed the context of the war because the original deterrent wasn't there anymore. Lyndon Johnson who was now telling audiences 'we seek no wider war' was creating a wider war that no longer had it's original deterrent. From that point forward the more we escalated the more China aided and escalated with Soviet support. But the didn't matter much to the Daddy War Bucks who were literarily and figuratively making a killing from the undeclared war. 

China signaled early in LBJ's second term that they would not intervene in the war unless we attacked Chinese territory. When Nixon launched Linebacker I and II, which dwarfed any previous bombing raids and included strikes on key rail lines within a few miles of the Chinese border, neither the Soviets nor the Chinese intervened. The CIA told LBJ repeatedly that the Soviets and the Chinese would not intervene unless perhaps we tried to install a pro-Western regime in North Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs said much the same thing. But, LBJ chose to listen to McNamara, Clifford, McNaughton, and Rusk instead. 

Diem being executed is problem imo for the Kennedy getting out people narrative because as Michael has said and I also agree. JFK wasn't going to cut and run and do a Biden Afghanistan style embarrassing withdrawal.  But, I don't JFK would have had to do that with Khrushchev in power because they would have most likely worked toward a neutral Vietnam like they did with Laos, this is during the Sino Soviet split after all. 

Yes, it is clear that JFK had no intention of totally disengaging from South Vietnam regardless of the situation on the ground. He was determined to keep South Vietnam free, and he deserves praise for that position.

Deposing Diem was a catastrophic error that set us back at least two years. JFK never should have appointed Lodge as ambassador in the first place, and he certainly never should have green-lighted the coup. Lodge was arguably the worst person he could have picked. Lodge knew nothing about the situation, made no effort to learn, and was overly sensitive to the anti-Diem reporting coming from American journalists (many of whom were being fed their stories by Communist agents). JFK's weakness and lack of leadership in the Diem affair is very disappointing, and had tragic results. However, I blame Lodge more than JFK. Also, to be fair, we should keep in mind that JFK never intended that Diem be killed; he thought he would just be exiled.

I really recommend that you read Nguyen's Hanoi's War. I think you'll see that it is unlikely that Khrushchev could have pushed North Vietnam to stand down. If Khrushchev sincerely wanted a neutral Laos (and perhaps he did), the Soviet army certainly did not agree. Plus, and this is a key point, the Laotian Communists (Pathet Lao) got most of their aid from the Chinese, not the Soviets, and the Chinese never curbed their aid or activities after neutrality was declared. 

Also, until literally the last few weeks of the war, the Chinese were utterly determined to see South Vietnam fall, which is why they did all they could to enable the NVA to occupy southeastern Laos. The Chinese were the ultimate hardliners in the Vietnam War. They were furious with Hanoi for agreeing to negotiations in 1968. The Chinese even temporarily scaled back their aid to show their displeasure. When the Chinese changed their mind about South Vietnam and made backroom efforts to create a neutral South Vietnam in the last days of the war, it was too late. It was an odd love-hate-love-hate relationship.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

MIke Griffith: Yes, it is clear that JFK had no intention of totally disengaging from South Vietnam regardless of the situation on the ground. He was determined to keep South Vietnam free, and he deserves praise for that position.

This is not what McNamara said in his last debriefing.  

As Newman says in the film, he and Kennedy had decided America was leaving after the training mission was over. And it did not matter if Saigon was winning or losing.  America could not fight the war for them or we would fall into the trap France did.

It does not get more clear than that.

Let me add, I have always thought that what McNamara did with the Pentagon Papers was his way of showing what 1.) what Kennedy would have done, and 2.) How Johnson had broken with that policy.

BTW, Matt made those comments over a week ago.  Mike i s just discovering them?

Edited October 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Another Ike administrator was in agreement with Collins. 

Charles Wilson  said, "We should not trap ourselves into going to war in Southeast Asia to save South Vietnam."  For the simple matter that South Vietnam did not belong to the USA. (David Anderson, Trapped by Success, p. 71). Wilson later got even more clear, he said we should get out. (p. 83) Heath, the ambassador at that time agrees.  Foster Dulles sends him packing. (p. 84)

Foster Dulles was determined to make this new country part of the USA.  So he devises SEATO, of which Indochina was a separate protocol, they could call the members for aid if subverted.

Ike then announced a crash program to sustain the Diem government and to establish security in South Vietnam.  Now millions went into a MAAG program so Diem could build a small army.  France is now being bypassed by the Dulles brothers, and the CIA is now entering the country. With the CIA in hand, Diem decides on a referendum between the previous leader French stand in, Bao Dai, and himself.  Bao Dai was not allowed to campaign.  Diem won with an astounding 98 per cent of the vote. Diem got more votes in Saigon than there were registered voters. By 200, 000 votes! (Anderson, p. 125, Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin, p. 85)

The next year, 1956, in national assembly elections, Diem disallows any opposition party--whether they be conservative or members of the Viet Minh. Madame Nhu won a seat. (p. 130). Diem now proclaims a  mandate from heaven. With this mandate from heaven, Nhu operates a police state centered in Hue, including a team of assassins. (p. 132). And by early 1956, Nhu has sent about 15-20,000 former VIet Minh into reeducation camps. All former village councils have been abolished, replaced with Saigon appointed administrators. Many of these new leaders were Catholics.

The overwhelming majority of aid by Ike is military in nature. By 1956, the French military has been completely replaced. The USA has  usurped the French and Ike is determined to expand that role further.

Edited October 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio